Welcome to my new article series: What’s Missing? In these articles, I’ll analyze cards that I’d love to build a Magic: the Gathering deck around, and I’ll discuss the pieces that are missing from the deck. Today, I’m taking a deep dive on General Ferrous Rokiric in EDH.

When you’re done reading, please give me your feedback in the comments!

General Ferrous intrigues me because he’s a cheap commander who’s trying to take Boros in a new direction. This commander has clear inputs and outputs: Play multicolored cards–which in a General Ferrous deck will always be exactly red and white–and get big artifact creatures.

I’m writing a What’s Missing? article about General Ferrous because I’m unsure that Boros has enough cards available to build a deck around any theme more specific than combat-centered good-stuff. There are lots of amazing, fun cards in red and white, but only about 200 cards in Magic‘s history that are both red and white.

In order to figure out whether there are enough cards to fill in the deck I want to play, I have to first decide what I’m looking for. So, let’s talk about the deck’s high-level game plan.

There are two deck archetypes I can imagine building around General Ferrous Rokiric:

Small Stuff: The first archetype is something we’ve seen before in different colors. There are a handful of legendary creatures like Talrand, Sky Summoner, which have abilities that are very similar to General Ferrous. In those decks, the goal is to play lots of cheap spells, usually cantrips, to generate a ton of tokens very quickly. Then, you can play some sort of finisher that allows you to use all those tokens to win via combat. Compared to Talrand, General Ferrous makes much bigger tokens. Furthermore, Boros has access to lots of spells that pump your whole team, which makes this an attractive deck archetype.

Big Stuff: The second type of deck that’s available to General Ferrous is a little more unique. Instead of focusing on cheap spells, you could fill the deck with larger spells like strong enchantments, artifacts, and even planeswalkers, while still creating free, huge blockers that protect your life total from people who see you as a threat. This deck archetype is attractive because it would grant its player access to noncreature effects that are less powerful in other types of decks because they don’t have a large impact right away, or because they leave you vulnerable.

So, what’s missing?

Ramp

These days, many EDH decks include upwards of ten ramp spells. The Big Stuff build of General Ferrous Rokiric almost certainly wants to do the same. Unfortunately, there are only two ramp spells in Magic’s history that are exactly red and white: Forging the Tyrite Sword and Prosperous Partnership.

Other than their color, these cards have two things in common: They cost three mana, and they ramp by creating Treasures. Of the two, Prosperous Partnership is more powerful because it can ramp repeatedly. With General Ferrous on the battlefield, casting Prosperous Partnership will net three creatures, allowing an immediate activation. Its ramp will accelerate in the late game as General Ferrous pumps out additional creatures. Therefore, Prosperous Partnership would be a great inclusion in a General Ferrous deck.

Forging the Tyrite Sword, on the other hand, is like a Worn Powerstone that only ramps once–hardly an attractive addition. Depending on the build, fetching a copy of Halvar, God of Battle or an Equipment may be useful, but not groundbreaking.

Unfortunately, even if you are willing to make a deep cut and include both of these Boros ramp cards, you’d have to fill the rest of your ramp slots with cards that are not multicolored, thereby diluting your ability to take advantage of General Ferrous.

Card Advantage

Card advantage is important for any EDH deck, and cantrips are especially important for the deck archetype that wants to use General Ferrous like Talrand, Sky Summoner and pump out tokens.

Unfortunately, there are only three Boros instants and sorceries that draw cards: Thrilling Discovery, Heartwarming Redemption, and Lorehold Command.

Of these, only Thrilling Discovery is cheap enough to fit the Talrand-style game plan. Without multicolored cantrips, it would be difficult for General Ferrous to pump out tokens without quickly emptying your hand.

Boros does have a handful of other card advantage options available, but they are often limited to specific deck themes. For example, Akiri, Fearless Voyager, Jor Kadeen, First Goldwarden, and Wyleth, Soul of Steel only draw cards in an Equipment deck. Meanwhile, Winota, Joiner of Forces could actually trigger quite often in a General Ferrous deck, but the cards in your 99 would have to skew heavily towards Humans–and at that point, aren’t you just playing a Winota deck?

Equipment

Here’s a fun fact: despite being ostensibly the color combination that cares the most about Equipment, there has never been a single Equipment card printed that is both red and white. So even if you want to build that kind of deck to take advantage of some of Boros’s better card advantage options, you won’t be able to include a single Equipment that triggers General Ferrous.

Planeswalkers

At first glance, General Ferrous seems like a unique and powerful Superfriends commander. In theory, every time you play a red and white planeswalker, General Ferrous would create a free blocker for you. This ability would make it easy to use your planeswalkers’ abilities to create advantage in other ways without leaving themselves vulnerable. Older cards like Talrand don’t fit the bill in the same way because Talrand’s token-making ability doesn’t trigger off of casting planeswalkers.

Unfortunately, there just aren’t many good planeswalkers that are both red and white. Of the options available, only Nahiri, the Harbinger strikes me as a card with a suitably powerful ultimate.

While I’d prefer to use multicolored finishers, a General Ferrous deck could still use an “Artifact Creatures Matter” theme, making something like a Blightsteel Colossus a powerful and thematically-appropriate target for Nahiri’s ability.

Unfortunately, there aren’t many other red-and-white planeswalkers that would add advantage to General Ferrous’s board of Golem tokens. There’s one Nahiri that only cares about Equipment, another that doesn’t really have an ultimate, a Huatli who only cares about Dinosaurs, another Huatli that doesn’t have much of an ultimate–you get the idea. I could see myself including a copy of Comet, Stellar Pup for the laughs, but two cards do not make a decklist.

“Artifact Creatures Matter”

The type of deck I’d really like to build around General Ferrous is one where all of his inputs care about his outputs. That is, I’d like to build a deck full of Boros cards that care about the fact that they’re triggering General Ferrous to create artifact creature tokens. Unfortunately, “Artifact Creatures Matter” is still a relatively new archetype, and only a handful of its cards are exactly red and white. So far, there are only three cards in Boros that really fulfill this fantasy: Alibou, Ancient Witness, Arcbound Shikari, and Jor Kadeen, the Prevailer.

I especially love Alibou, as it immediately creates an artifact creature token and gives it haste. While there are quite a few anthem effects in Boros colors, I love that Arcbound Shikari and Jor Kadeen care about the fact that General Ferrous is specifically creating artifacts.

Unfortunately, that’s where the well runs dry on these kinds of effects.

Removal

This actually may be the one category where Boros colors provide enough cards to fill a General Ferrous deck. I was surprised to find that Boros’s removal options aren’t limited to cards like Lightning Helix. In fact, there are three red-and-white cards that are flexible enough to destroy either an artifact or enchantment.

Wear // Tear, Duergar Hedge-Mage, and Rip Apart provide enough cheap removal options to round out General Ferrous’s deck and allow it to remove more than creatures. Additionally, General Ferrous has access to Deafening Clarion, and can benefit from both modes since his tokens will survive the boardwipe.

While I’m glad to see that there are plenty of removal cards that also trigger General Ferrous’s ability, it’s fairly disappointing that this is the only fundamental category where Boros can fill the slots the deck is looking for.

Conclusion

There are enough Boros cards to craft a deck around General Ferrous, but it’s difficult to do so in a way that actually plays to his strengths. Many of Boros’s best cards are finishers that cost five or more mana, meaning that while they might be strong individually, they’re unlikely to enable General Ferrous to actually generate enough tokens to finish the job. Unfortunately, every monocolor or colorless card you add to the deck to fill in the missing ramp, card advantage, or other setup and payoff slots dilutes your ability to use General Gerrous even further.

Wizards has added a lot of great new cards recently that are red and white, but very few of them are red AND white. For General Ferrous to really shine as a Commander, they’ll need to print more cards that target this color combination specifically.

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