{"ops":[{"insert":"Muerra, Trash Tactician — The Queen of the Dumpster Primer\n\nMuerra, Trash Tactician\n=======================\n\nThe Queen of the Dumpster Primer — a friendly, filthy (in a good way) Commander deck guide\n\n“For Glory. For Snacks. For Bloomburrow!”\n\nCommander: Muerra, Trash Tactician — {R}{G} Raccoon Warrior, 2/4\nColors: Gruul (red + green)  ·  Playstyle: Big-mana aggro-combo of raccoon proportions\n\nPlan A: Flood the board with Raccoons (and their identical changeling cousins), make absurd mana, trigger expend for snacks and impulse draw, win with giant X spells.\n\nPlan B: Steal the train, untap everything, and fight an extra combat or two.\n\n=======================\n\nWelcome to the Kingdom of the Dumpster. This primer is a guide to running a small woodland realm whose exports are stolen mana, recycled garbage, and unmanageable enthusiasm. You will learn the sacred art of dumpster diving (impulse draw), the subtle science of snack acquisition (life gain), and the glorious moment when you spend the entire budget at once (big X spells — plural X, the fun kind).\n\nTABLE OF CONTENTS\n----------------\n1. Meet the Queen\n2. The Trash Economy\n3. Changelings: Nature’s Fake ID\n4. Expend & Snacks\n5. Impulse Draw City\n6. The Bouncer Squad\n7. Polite Removal\n8. Ramp It Up\n9. Win Con #1: Big X Energy\n10. Win Con #2: The Great Train Heist\n11. The Grand Unified Game Plan\n12. Optional Swaps & Daydreams\n\n1. Meet the Queen\n-----------------\n\nMuerra, Trash Tactician is a raccoon. Not just any raccoon — a tactician. Her battlefield is the trash can; her strategy is looting it with style. Let us read her card like the sacred text it is:\n\n-----------------\n * Muerra, Trash Tactician {1}{R}{G} — Legendary Creature — Raccoon Warrior\nAt the beginning of your first main phase, add {R} or {G} for each Raccoon you control.\n\n Whenever you expend 4, you gain 3 life. (You expend 4 as you spend your fourth total mana to cast spells during a turn.)\n\n Whenever you expend 8, exile the top two cards of your library. Until the end of your next turn, you may play those cards.\n \n2/4\n-----------------\n\nThree abilities, three promises, one very busy raccoon:\n - The Mana Engine. Every Raccoon you control makes you an extra {R} or {G}-equivalent-mana every single turn, right in your first main phase. This is the whole economy. More raccoons = more budget. Budget goes to spells. Spells go to triggers. Triggers go to win.\n - Expend 4 + gain snacks (3 life). The moment you’ve cast enough spells to total 4 mana during your turn, Muerra finds a snack and you gain 3 life. This is called the snack break, and it is mandatory.\n - Expend 8 + dumpster diving. Cross 8 total mana’s worth of spells in a turn and Muerra kicks open the dumpster (your library’s top two) and hands you anything shiny: you can play those cards until the end of your next turn. That’s card advantage you don’t have to pay for, and the raccoon economy loves free.\nBecause both expend triggers only care about total mana spent casting spells across your turn, the deck is built to spend 8+ mana per turn, every turn, mostly in chunky first-main-phase bursts of cheap spells and fatter ones. If you ever end a turn without expending both, an accountant raccoon shows up, checks your paperwork, and tsk-tsks. Do not let this happen.\n\n2. The Trash Economy (How Money Works Here)\n-------------------------------------------\n\nMuerra’s first ability turns Raccoons into per-turn mana taps. The math is deliberately ridiculous: with six raccoon-jobs on the board, she drops a free 6 mana on you at the start of your first main phase — for free, every turn, in addition to your lands. This deck simply reroutes the entire national budget into casting spells, because casting spells is how you expend, and expending is how you get paid again. It’s a wheel of cheese and it is delicious.\nTwo crucial fine-print notes on the engine:\n - The mana is a phase credit, not a piggy bank. You get it at the start of your first main phase, and unspent leftovers vanish when you move to combat. So the play pattern is: first main phase = fire every spell you’ve been hoarding. That’s fine — that’s exactly when this deck wants to do business. (Your lands stay untapped through combat, which is where the train gets stolen. More in Section 10.)\n - Activated abilities don’t expend. Expending counts mana spent casting spells. Equipping boots, activating Maskwood Nexus, tapping for mana — none of those count, sadly. Cast. Spells. That’s the law.\n\n3. Changelings: Nature’s Most Convincing Fake ID\n------------------------------------------------\n\nHere’s the beautiful worm in the apple: a Changeling is every creature type, which legally makes it a Raccoon. Not a raccoon imitation — a genuine, card-text-certified raccoon, eligible for the full raccoon pension of Muerra’s mana engine. Changelings stroll into the Queen’s court with a perfect fake ID and nobody bats an eye, because everybody’s too busy eating snacks.\nThis is the deck’s not-so-secret weapon: a changeling plays every role a raccoon plays, and the deck has an abundant supply of them. Every changeling you cast is one more mana in your first main phase.\nAnd then there’s Maskwood Nexus. Creatures you control are every creature type — same for creature spells you cast and creature cards you own that aren’t on the battlefield. Translate that to raccoon law: every creature in your deck, in your hand, in your library, and on your board becomes a Raccoon. The tokens generated by Sandwurm Convergence become Raccwurms, the 6/6 March-of-the-World-Ooze elephants become Elephecoonzes, and the goblins from Goblin Negotiation show up late to the meeting, discover they’re Gobcoons now. \n\n---------------------------------------------------\nThe Queen's Army \nCard-counted with royal seal of approval\n---------------------------------------------------\nRaccoon & Changeling Squad | Job Description | Cost\n\n\nRaccoon Rallier | The hype man. Taps to give any creature haste so the party starts immediately. | {1}{R}\n\nBakersbane Duo | Squirrel-Raccoon diplomatic envoy. Brings a Food token to the meeting; turns into a hockey player when you expend. | {1}{G}\n\nTeapot Slinger | The arsonist. Every expend 4: 2 damage to each opponent. Raccoon-powered kettle. | {3}{R}\n\nJunkblade Bruiser | Trample tax man. Every expend 4 he gets +2/+1. Grows into a forklift. | {3}{R/G}{R/G}\n\nRoughshod Duo | A Mouse and a Raccoon: double citizenship. Pumps any target creature on expend. | {2}{R}\n\nBark-Knuckle Boxer | Bodyguard. Expend 4 → indestructible until end of turn. Do not punch the raccoon. | {1}{G}\n\nWandertale Mentor | Two jobs at once: taps for {R}/{G} and grows +1/+1 every expend. | {R}{G}\n\nRust-Shield Rampager | Can’t be blocked by power 2 or less, and brings a tiny copy of himself (offspring). Squeaky wheel, gets the combat damage. | {3}{G}\n\nBramble Familiar | Raccoon mana dork on the front; Fetch Quest on the back mills 7 anddeploys a creature/enchantment/land for free. | {1}{G}\n\nChangeling Wayfinder | Changeling that fetches a basic land on arrival. Freshly claimed territory for the Queen and dual citizenship. | {3}\n\nGuardian Gladewalker | Changeling with a +1/+1 counter to gift on arrival. Welfare served fresh. | {1}{G}\n\nMutable Explorer | Changeling that makes a free Mutavault token — a land that becomes a 2/2 of every creature type. An honorary raccoon that is also expands kingdom. | {2}{G}\n\nRooftop Percher | Flying changeling. Exiles two graveyard troublemakers and gains 3 life. Pest control + snack control. | {5}\n\nSizzling Changeling | Dies → dumpster dive (exile top card, may play until your next end step). Posthumous snacks. | {2}{R}\n\nThree Tree Mascot | Changeling that taps for any color once a turn. Basically a raccoon with a key to every dumpster. | {2}\n\nBarkform Harvester | Changeling with reach; tucks a graveyard card back into the library. Recycling, literally. | {3}\n\nFirdoch Core | A changeling artifact that taps for any color and turns into a 4/4. Not a raccoon. Definitely a raccoon. | {3}\n\nCount them. Most of the army either is, or is legally required to identify as, a Raccoon. \n\n4. Expend 4, Gain Snacks: The Snack Economy\n-------------------------------------------\n\nExpend is the Bloomburrow keyword that reads like it was written by a raccoon accountant: you expend 4 when you’ve spent your fourth total mana on spells this turn, and you expend 8 when you hit the eighth. Both fire once per turn at the moment you cross the line — not once per spell after that. So the entire game is: make sure you cross both lines, then cross them again next turn.\nThe line-crossing is easier than it looks, because this deck is stuffed with cheap spells. A single turn of “Blossoming Defense (1) + Wear Down (2) + Demand Answers (2) + Faithless Looting (1)” is 6 mana spent — expend 4 snacks already banked, and you’re two mana from the big dumpster. Every {X} spell you cast does the same job at the other end of the turn. The thresholds are a tide, not a chore.\nYour expend-4 payoffs, in full:\nWhen you expend 4 | What happens\n--------------------------------\n\nMuerra, Trash Tactician | You gain 3 life. Snack break. Non-negotiable.\n\nTeapot Slinger | 2 damage to each opponent. The kettle is whistling at them.\n\nBakersbane Duo | Gets +1/+1 until end of turn. Hangs out, gets bigger.\n\nBark-Knuckle Boxer | Gains indestructible until end of turn. Un-punchable.\n\nJunkblade Bruiser | Gets +2/+1 until end of turn. The forklift revs its engine.\n\nRoughshod Duo | Gives a creature +1/+1 and trample until end of turn. Crowd control.\n\nWandertale Mentor | Puts a permanent +1/+1 counter on itself. Retirement plan.\n\nNotice the beautiful synergy: you gain life when you expend 4, and the life lets you play loosely — pay life costs (Karplusan Forest), block aggressively, wave at face-down attackers. And the life total is not the prize; the prize is expend 8.\nExpend 8: the dumpster opens. Exile the top two, play them until the end of your next turn. Sometimes they’re lands (great, play them). Sometimes they’re a Great Train Heist you can hold for the right combat (amazing). This is how the deck turns casting-spells-into-more-casting: you spend mana, gain snacks, get free cards, cast more spells, and the wheel spins so fast someone should call safety.\n\n5. Impulse Draw City: Dumpster Diving for Fun and Profit\n--------------------------------------------------------\n\nThe Queen’s expend-8 opens one dumpster. This deck opens an entire landfill of impulse draw. The motto: “Why wait to draw a card when you can simply reach in and take it?”\n - Valakut Exploration — the MVP of the whole landfill. Every land you play exiles the top card of your library, and you may play it while it stays exiled. Then at your end step, the leftovers get flung at everyone: each opponent takes damage equal to the number of cards still exiled. Translation: your ramp spells become draw spells, and whatever you don’t use becomes a missile. Landfall × dumpster diving × burn. This card does more chores than a raccoon with a clipboard.\n - Zenith Festival — the X-sized dumpster: exile X cards, play them until the end of your next turn, and it even has Harmonize to climb out of your graveyard for a second work shift.\n - Triple Triad — every upkeep, everyone exiles a card and you can play any of them with lesser mana value than your own. You are literally stealing card advantage from the whole table with a card game. The Final Fantasy of it all is a bonus.\n - Sizzling Changeling — dies, takes a card with it. Graveyard-to-hand is for amateurs; exile-and-play is the Queen’s brand.\n - Gathering Stone — name Raccoon (say it loud, say it proud), and every creature spell you cast costs {1} less, and every upkeep you peek at the top card and can simply take raccoons into hand. With Maskwood Nexus out, every creature in your library is “a card of the chosen type.” The Stone believes in you.\n - Highway Robbery — cheap card advantage: discard or sacrifice a land, draw two. Plot it, cast it later for free, rob mid-turn. On-mission.\n - The looting patrol: Faithless Looting, Thrill of Possibility, Demand Answers, Grab the Prize (bonus: 2 damage to each opponent if you discarded a non-land!), Seize the Spoils (draw two and a Treasure). Cheap, instant-speed, and each one nudges you across the expend thresholds. Graveyard clutter is fine — you have Barkform Harvester for recycling and Peerless Recycling for politely taking permanent cards back.\n - Reforge the Soul — the emergency wheel. Everyone discards, everyone draws seven, everyone blames you, miracles happen.\n - Garruk’s Uprising — not impulse, but free-flowing: trample for the squad and draw a card whenever a 4+ power creature enters. Combined with March of the World Ooze turning everything into 6/6s, this is a card-drawing waterfall wearing a hunter’s hat.\n\n6. The Bouncer Squad: 15 Ways to Keep Your Raccoons Alive\n---------------------------------------------------------\n\nMuerra is the whole board of directors. If she gets removed, the trash economy collapses and the coons scatter. So this deck carries more protection than a raccoon crossing a street at night:\n - Hexproof & indestructible instants: Blossoming Defense (+2/+2!), Snakeskin Veil (with a counter), Silkguard (X targets, plus all your Auras/Equipment/modified critters!), Tyvar’s Stand (the X-sized one — +X/+X and hexproof and indestructible on the same target; this doubles as a finisher), Biosynthic Burst (counter + reach + trample + indestructible + untap, so huge on a March of the World Ooze or a Stonecoil Serpent).\n - Fogs: Blinding Fog (hexproof + damage prevention) and Clinging Mists (prevent all combat damage; at low life it also taps the attackers, which is a raccoon scam of the highest order).\n - Equipment: Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots — haste for the rescue party, shroud/hexproof for the Queen. Equip Muerra turn 1 after she lands and watch opponents sigh.\n - Board armor: Spidersilk Armor (+0/+2 and reach for everyone — nothing flies over the trash heap now) and Sandwurm Convergence (flying creatures can’t touch you, plus a free 5/5 Wurm every end step. The wurm is also a Raccoon under Maskwood Nexus. Everything is.)\n - The Boxer: Bark-Knuckle Boxer hands out indestructible every expend 4, like a gym membership.\nFun fact: the protection suite doubles as an expend battery. Most of it costs 1—2 mana. Cast it at instant speed on your opponent’s turn? No — cast it on yours when you need to cross the threshold. The spells protect the raccoons and feed the economy. It’s not a bouncer squad and a finance department; it’s the same department.\n\n7. Removal, But Make It Polite\n------------------------------\n\n - Blasphemous Act — the polite way to say “everyone’s creature dies”: 13 damage to all creatures, discounted per creature on the table. Costs a pittance when you’re the raccoon player with the biggest field and, conveniently, the most life and indestructible tricks.\n - Calamity of Cinders — 6 damage to each untapped creature, paid with convoke: tap your own raccoons to cast it, so your raccoons are tapped when the damage hits. You just cast a board wipe that philosophically missed your own board. Chefs kiss.\n - Goblin Negotiation — X damage to a creature; the excess damage converts to 1/1 goblin tokens. You are literally liquefying a blocker into expendable employees. With Maskwood Nexus, those goblins punch in as Raccoons.\n - Wear Down — destroy an artifact/enchantment; promise the gift and it’s two. Cheap, sorcery-speed, and one mana of expend fuel.\n - Steelbane Hydra — the Executioner: enters with X counters, spends counters to destroy artifacts/enchantments, keeps getting huge. Removal AND body AND an X spell in one stretched turtle-raccoon.\n - Collective Inferno — choose a creature type and double all damage from your sources of that type. Choose Raccoon. With Maskwood Nexus, every creature you control deals double. Teapot Slinger’s pings double. The Great Train Heist’s extra-combat beatdown doubles. This enchantment is the difference between a polite kitty and a fire-breathing god-damned trash panda.\n\n8. Ramp: Build the World’s Biggest Trash Pile\n---------------------------------------------\n\nYou need mana to make mana. The pile:\n - Rocks & rings: Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Talisman of Impulse.\n - Forestry services: Nature’s Lore, Three Visits, Rampant Growth — the turn-2 classics. 36 lands × fetch ramp = no mana screw.\n - Enchanted lands: Utopia Sprawl and Wild Growth — a single Forest paying for two-thirds of a Great Train Heist every turn.\n - Critters with day jobs: Wandertale Mentor (taps for {R}/{G}), Three Tree Mascot and Firdoch Core (any-color taps), Mutable Explorer (free Mutavault!), Bramble Familiar (front: mana dork; back: Fetch Quest, one of the best cards nobody reads twice).\n - The X-sized funnel: Animist’s Awakening. Reveal X cards, slam every land from them into play (tapped), and thanks to Spell Mastery — which this deck, absolutely drowning in instants and sorceries, always has — untap them all. Cast it big with Muerra’s raccoon mana, and your entire deck becomes a pile of lands you get to play for free this turn. This is the moment accountants call “the audit.”\n\n9. Win Condition #1: Big X Energy\n---------------------------------\n\nThis deck hoards mana the way raccoons hoard everything, which means the natural language of victory here is {X}. Plural X. Big, greedy, quadruple-digit-edition X.\n - Animist’s Awakening for everything (see above) — the X that starts the fire.\n - Zenith Festival for a fat number — the X that reads “free cards for two turns.” Exile 12, then play all 12, including the instants you’ve been waiting to point at someone. Then Harmonize it back from the graveyard later and do it again.\n - Silkguard and Tyvar’s Stand for combat X’s — untargetable, indestructible, enormous. Cast Tyvar’s Stand with X=15 on a Stonecoil Serpent and the table learns respect.\n - Steelbane Hydra and Stonecoil Serpent for creature X’s — a removal hydra and a reach/trample/protection-from-multicolor serpent that scales with the budget. Under March of the World Ooze, even baseline 6/6s feel like X spells.\n - Celestial Reunion — the X tutor: search for a creature of mana value X or less; behold two creatures of a chosen type (it’s “Raccoon,” it’s always “Raccoon”) and it comes straight into play. Go get the biggest Bruiser money can buy.\n - March of the World Ooze — the secret X spell that doesn’t have an X in its cost but behaves like one on the battlefield: all your creatures become base 6/6 Oozes (in addition to their other types — still raccoons, the court ruled). An army of chunky 1/1s instantly becomes a bludgeoning squad, and every 6/6 entering triggers Garruk’s Uprising for a card. Oh, and opponents casting things off-turn? Free 3/3 elephants. Stop. Feeding. The. Raccoons.\n - Sylvan Scavenging — end step: a counter somewhere, or make a 3/3 Raccoon token whenever you control a 4+ power creature. Post-March, that’s basically “make a raccoon every turn,” which is compound interest on Muerra’s mana engine. Raccoons making mana making raccoons. The economy is self-sustaining, go home.\n - Biosynthic Burst + Collective Inferno — the double-damage firestarter, on a 6/6 that just became unblockable… enough.\n\n10. Win Condition #2: The Great Train Heist (All Aboard)\n--------------------------------------------------------\n\nThe crown jewel of the list, and the only card that justifies the deck’s entire government:\n\n > Great Train Heist — {R} Instant (Spree — choose one or more):\n >\n > • {+2R}: Untap all creatures you control. If it’s your combat phase, there’s an additional combat phase.\n >\n > • {+2}: Creatures you control get +1/+0 and first strike until end of turn.\n >\n > • {+R}: All your creatures create Treasure tokens when they hit the chosen player.\n\nRead that again. It’s an instant extra combat card that also gives everything first strike and prints Treasures when you connect. For a mana curve that peaks at “as much as I can hold,” this deck has one hand in the cookie jar at all times and the other already on the conductor’s hat:\n - The namesake turn: your combat begins. Cast the Heist with all three modes. Everything untaps, everything gets first strike and +1/+0, there’s a whole second combat, and every hit schedules a Treasure. Two combats × first strike blockers you don’t have to respect × Treasures for next turn = a train robbery the entire table watches in slow motion.\n - It’s an expend foot-soldier too. Need exactly one more mana to cross expend 4 before combat? Fire the base {R}-cost Heist as a 1-mana flex. Snacks, and a heater in hand... well, graveyard? No — it resolves and can’t be recast, but the abandon on getting snacks is real. (Just usually you’ll want to save it.)\n - Who’s attacking? Everything small becomes effective: Raccoon Rallier pre-hastes your squad, Rust-Shield Rampager can’t be chump-blocked by power-2-and-under, Bark-Knuckle Boxer is indestructible after expend, and March of the World Ooze makes the whole notion of “small” moot. With Maskwood Nexus & Collective Inferno, every one of those attackers deals double damage. First strike + double damage on extra-combat turns is not a combat step, it’s a census.\n - Sequencing note for the purists: Muerra’s automatic mana arrives and expires in your first main phase, so the Heist’s combat-phase bill is usually paid by your lands, Treasures, and mana dorks — which is why the deck runs 36 lands and every Treasure maker it can find. Don’t tap out in the first main phase if the train is coming.\nPlan C, equally legal: Steal the Show. Mode one is a politely aggressive awkward–discard-and-redraw for someone; mode two burns a creature or planeswalker for the number of instants and sorceries in your graveyard. This deck puts dozens of cheap spells in the bin per game. Do the math quietly, at someone’s giant blocker, and smile.\n\n11. The Grand Unified Game Plan\n-------------------------------\n\n * Turns 1–3: Lay Track (and Recruit)\nFetch and enchant lands (Nature’s Lore, Utopia Sprawl, Wild Growth, Rampant Growth, Three Visits) and drop your first racquet-tier raccoons: Bakersbane Duo, Bark-Knuckle Boxer, Bramble Familiar, Wandertale Mentor. Turn 3 you usually want the Queen herself, with a hexproof spell or Boots in the wings — she comes down, looks at the board, and clarifies who runs this dump.\n * Turns 4–6: The Queendom Blossoms\nNow every first main phase is a lottery win: Muerra feeds you a couple of free mana per raccoon, you rip through your hand (dumpster-diving via Valakut Exploration, Zenith Festival, Triple Triad), you cross expend 4 (snacks!) and expend 8 (free cards!) every single turn, and the table slowly realizes you’ve built a perpetual motion machine out of trash. Drop Maskwood Nexus here; that’s the moment changelings get the corner office and every creature becomes family. Gathering Stone discounts all your creature spells if you named the obvious type.\n * Turns 7+: The Heist\nEither explode on the spot with a giant Animist’s Awakening → Zenith Festival → Great Train Heist with Collective Inferno and March of the World Ooze already on stage — or play rocket raccoon regularly: 6/6s everywhere, double damage, extra combats, Treasures cloning themselves. If someone boards-wipes, you have Blasphemous Act for mirror purposes, Calamity of Cinders with convoke citizenship, fogs, and enough recursion (Peerless Recycling, Barkform Harvester) to rebuild before dessert.\n\n * Mulligan Recommendations\n - Keep: 3+ lands and a ramp card. Keep: any hand with a raccoon or changeling and the Queen arrives by turn 3–4.\n - Ship: zero-ramp all-lands, one-land dreams, and any hand with more than one six-drop that isn’t a game-ender.\n - If you keep a 4-lander with a dork, you’re basically already up.\n * The Threat Assessment You’ll Need\nYou have no true card draw outside impulse engines, so keep Valakut Exploration alive like a sacred dumpster. You win through combat damage — blockers with reach or first strike are your actual enemy until the train arrives. And remember: the table’s removal is aimed at Muerra. Bait it with a changeling first, laugh, and re-cast her from the command zone; your land count forgives it.\n\n12. Optional Swaps & Daydreams (Not in the List)\n------------------------------------------------\n\nEvery monarch keeps a filing cabinet of ideas the royal court hasn’t approved yet. These aren’t in the list — they’re just famous friends of the raccoon economy, if you ever want to tinker:\nCard | Why it would love this deck\n----------------------------------\n\nFinale of Devastation | Search up any creature for X; at X≥10 everything gets +X/+X, haste, trample. The raccoon pays for its own riot.\n\nAggravated Assault / Savage Beating | More extra combats. With Muerra’s recurring mana pile, Aggravated Assault is nearly infinite; Savage Beating is a one-and-done encore.\n\nCrackle with Power / Walking Ballista | The classic big-X murder buttons. Crackle splits 5×X; the Ballista turns your mana pool into a gun with legs.\n\nAetherflux Reservoir | Spend spells, gain life, then pay 50 life to delete someone. The final snack.\n\nShared Animosity | Every attacking raccoon buffs every other attacking raccoon. Raccoon rush hour.\n\nCommune with Lava | Instant-speed Zenith Festival that reads X cards into your hand, playable until your next turn. The spiritual sibling of your Festival.\n\nIn conclusion: cast raccoons, burn through cheap spells, gain snacks, dive dumpsters, then spend like a raccoon with a budget — all of it — on a giant X and a stolen train. The table will either applaud or call for a recount. Either way, the raccoons are already in the trash can.\nFor Glory. For Snacks. For Bloomburrow. 🦝\n\n"}]}