A quick insight into my actual life for a moment. Right now, I'm writing a series of articles on how to build to the Brackets. (They should be on the site soon, so please go check them out when they are!) Because of that, I'm thinking about the Brackets a lot; what are they, how do they function, and what is asked of us because of them.

I think, for many of us, the Brackets are labels we put on decks we already have. That makes sense! We're all players here. We have decks already, and we got this system thrust upon us. So, we look at the decks. No Game Changers? A couple tutors and a clear, efficient win condition? Call it Bracket 3 and be done with it. Precon? Bracket 2. Horse Kindred? Bracket 1. See?

But this is not, I believe, the intention of the Brackets. The hope - at least, from the group at Wizards of the Coast attempting to make these function well in the community - is people will decide what Bracket their deck will be before they build it... and make decisions accordingly. The truth is, you can kind of make any Commander fit any of the first three Brackets (Brackets 4 and 5 have their own metagames which don't apply as much here.) Sharuum the Hegemon can be Bracket 1 if you do some goofy thing where you attempt to build a tower with your Artifacts or something. Lady Orca can be a viable Bracket 3 with some solid deck construction, careful planning, and a clear line to win. The Commanders aren't in the Brackets, the deck is - and it's up to you to build it that way.

So, that's very much on my mind. When I choose and write my columns each week, I'm considering what Bracket I want this week's deck to fit in. And this week, I wanted to take what looks, on its face, to be a Bracket 3 Commander and make it Bracket 2. Let's take a look.

So... kaboom, right?

We have a five-mana 4/6 who either blows stuff up (including Lands!) every time he attacks, or he does damage equal to his power.

Immediately my mind started working - increase his Power. Double it, even. Damage doublers and triplers, too, because that makes the decision to not let the thing be destroyed much harder. And we're in the color of multiple Attack phases, so let's do that too! Why not jam a Sword of Feast and Famine and a Relentless Assault and go infinite, emptying peoples' boards or just killing them outright?

If that's what you want to do, go for it. It'll likely be a strong deck, certainly a force to be reckoned with at a casual table, and will force players into the game, making turtling up or prolonging the game much harder.

But then I took a breath. I thought about it some more. And I realized, I just kind of think this guy is cool. It could be a fun deck. We can build one that still has a decent shot at winning at a table, but won't absolutely demolish a group of players with smaller card collections or who tend to prefer longer, slower, less intense games.

So, we're going to build a little slower. We're still going to attack with Combustion Man, and he's still going to make things hard on our opponents, but we're not going to optimize attacking with him and making the choice impossible. (Occasionally, sure, but not all the time.) And we're going to have some fun, too - as long as we're having fun with Attacking, let's have some more fun with it, yeah? Here we go.

Combustion Man | Commander | Mark Wischkaemper

• Commander (1)
• 1 Combustion Man

• Creatures (26)
• 1 Acolyte Hybrid
• 1 Anger
• 1 Avatar Roku, Firebender
• 1 Balor
• 1 Bane of Bala Ged
• 1 Calamity, Galloping Inferno
• 1 Captain Lannery Storm
• 1 Caves of Chaos Adventurer
• 1 Chaos Channeler
• 1 Cityscape Leveler
• 1 Coastline Marauders
• 1 Combat Celebrant
• 1 Conspiracy Theorist
• 1 Delina, Wild Mage
• 1 Dragonhawk, Fate's Tempest
• 1 Drakuseth, Maw of Flames
• 1 Embereth Skyblazer
• 1 Enduring Courage
• 1 Etali, Primal Storm
• 1 Moraug, Fury of Akoum
• 1 Neheb, the Eternal
• 1 Professional Face-Breaker
• 1 Scourge of the Throne
• 1 Star Athlete
• 1 Tannuk, Steadfast Second
• 1 Tuktuk Rubblefort

• Planeswalkers (1)
• 1 Zariel, Archduke of Avernus

• Instants (5)
• 1 Big Score
• 1 Demand Answers
• 1 Great Train Heist
• 1 Thrill of Possibility
• 1 Unexpected Windfall

• Sorceries (3)
• 1 Blasphemous Act
• 1 Faithless Looting
• 1 Overpowering Attack

• Enchantments (3)
• 1 Firebender Ascension
• 1 Gimli's Reckless Might
• 1 Rising of the Day

• Artifacts (21)
• 1 Adrestia
• 1 Adventurer's Airship
• 1 Anduril, Flame of the West
• 1 Argentum Armor
• 1 Bessie, the Doctor's Roadster
• 1 Bitterthorn, Nissa's Animus
• 1 Blackblade Reforged
• 1 Caged Sun
• 1 Conformer Shuriken
• 1 Cryptolith Fragment
• 1 Cursed Mirror
• 1 Diamond Pick-Axe
• 1 Hammer of Purphoros
• 1 Heraldic Banner
• 1 Gauntlet of Power
• 1 Glittering Stockpile
• 1 Mind Stone
• 1 Sword of the Animist
• 1 The Fire Crystal
• 1 Two-Handed Axe // Sweeping Cleave
• 1 Worn Powerstone

• Lands (40)
• 27 Mountain
• 1 Arcane Lighthouse
• 1 Arena of Glory
• 1 Bonders' Enclave
• 1 Castle Embereth
• 1 Den of the Bugbear
• 1 Fire Nation Palace
• 1 Flamekin Village
• 1 Mines of Moria
• 1 Myriad Landscape
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Shinka, the Bloodsoaked Keep
• 1 Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
• 1 War Room

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Rather than starting with optimizing Combustion Man, I started with other Creatures which care about Attacking. But before all that, we've got mana to contend with. 40 Lands is our baseline (like always), and the vast majority of them are Basic Mountains. We can have some fun, though, with Lands like Arena of Glory, Den of the Bugbear, Fire Nation Palace, and Mines of Moria. Shinka, the Bloodsoaked Keep can be quite useful. And Rogue's Passage, of course, is awesome here, making sure whichever Creature we want most to get through will get through.

A good number of Artifacts help with our mana as well. The Fire Crystal reduces prices, and Gauntlet of Power and Caged Sun both double how much mana we make (and buff up our Creatures). We've also got a few other Mana Rocks like Heraldic Banner (more Power buffs!), Glittering Stockpile, and Cursed Mirror. Cryptolith Fragment is a super fun because it helps us a bunch of ways - lowering life totals, adding mana, and ultimately making a Creature which wants to Attack! (I should point out I dropped Sol Ring in here as if by instinct - we're ramping, and we're ramping hard. The thing is, Sol Ring isn't really a Bracket 2 choice - it's a bit too aggressive, too quick for a slower game. So, I cut it for Worn Powerstone, which will still provide us with a good mana boost but at a more leisurely pace!)

Mono-Red, of course, is the home of rummaging and impulse drawing, so that's what we're going to do, with spells like Unexpected Windfall and Caves of Chaos Adventurer. Something like Conspiracy Theorist is pretty great, because we can ditch something we can cast this turn in the hopes we draw something stronger for later. War Room is also great for us, and we make plenty of mana so activating it shouldn't be a problem. Adrestia can be crewed by Combustion Man to draw, too. Etali, Primal Storm doesn't draw outright, but it should give us some pretty great stuff.

We're going to win by Attacking for sure, but not just with Combustion Man. Avatar Roku, Firebender, for example, is great - we attack (not even with this Creature, though why not?) and we can buff up the Power of some of our Attacking Creatures. That's great. Bane of Bala Ged makes people have to get rid of more of their things. Calamity, Galloping Inferno lets us create copies of our Creatures. Embereth Skyblazer does a nice job of buffing everything on our team. Star Athlete is kind of a mini Combustion Man. You get the point. We're going to attack, and do it with things that want to attack. Should create a fun board state.

Hopefully, our Attacking will cause enough problems for our opponents we won't have to remove too much otherwise - if you're attacking with a couple of Creatures every turn which remove permanents, we'll probably keep most board states under some amount of control. If not, well, we've got Blasphemous Act.

But now we get to the fun part. First up, we're giving everything Haste. Gimli's Reckless Might is a great example - we'll probably be able to use it as a removal spell, but it gives everything Haste. We have a number of ways of doing this, and keep in mind we only need one at a time, so don't be afraid to stockpile them or even discard them to draw more cards when needed.

Second, we are going to take some extra Combat steps, we're just not going to do it infinitely or all the time. We do have stuff like Great Train Heist and Savage Beating, though, for when we need it (or when we have the win on board - more on that in a second). Moraug, Fury of Akoum, too, can grab us an extra Attack step, or Scourge of the Throne. Overpowering Attack is super fun because it cares about Assassins - and Combustion Man is one!

Finally, we have a few one-offs which are worth mentioning. Two-Handed Axe can bump up Power through Double Strike, but more importantly, it doubles Power of something, making the decision to take the damage from Combustion Man harder. Blackblade Reforged makes it really hard to take the damage. Argentum Armor makes him even more brutal when he attacks (or anything else, for that matter), and Conformer Shuriken can both help get him through and make him bigger. Finally, Firebender Ascension is kind of our cool, somewhat limited Strionic Resonator; once it's active, it doubles up on all our Attack triggers.

This deck has some Power, and it will force people to play the game. They'll also lose their stuff, and if they don't want to lose their stuff, they'll have to take some damage to keep it. We can take an extra Combat step if we have it or, better yet, we know we can end the game with the single extra step, but we're not doing it all the time. These are all fine for Bracket 2! The key here is we aren't doing everything consistently. We're not guaranteeing we'll hit some huge Power boost or attacking three times every turn. This may be at the top of Bracket 2, but a consistent Bracket 3 deck this is not.

Thanks for reading.