Tinybones, Bauble Burglar is a mono black commander introduced inMagic: The Gathering’sFoundations set. Despite its restriction to just one color, the card can do a whole lot, playing a mixture of a theft strategy mixed with forced discard.
A Tinybones, Bauble Burglar Commander deck is great if you want to be playing cards your opponents own, and winning with their win conditions rather than relying just on your own deck. It’s a unique take on a theft deck, letting you choose the cards (in most cases) that you’re stealing by taking them straight out of your opponents' hands to cast them later.
x27 Swamp
Temple of the False God
War Room
The decklistcontains one planeswalker, 25 creatures, 15 sorceries, three instants, 12 artifacts, nine enchantments,and34 lands. Most of the cards in the deck are either cards that force your opponents to discard or cards that benefit from cards being discarded.
Key Cards
Tinybones, Bauble Burglar
The commander of the deck,Tinybones, Bauble Burglaris the main way you’returning discarded cards into castable cards later.Tinybones needs to be on the battlefield for the cards to be exiled with a stash counter on it. Otherwise, they will simply go to the graveyard if Tinybones is ever removed.
If Tinybones is ever removed, the cards already exiled with stash counters will remain exiled with them. Tinybones need to be on the battlefield to cast them, but they can always be cast even if the exile happened during a separate instance of Tinybones being on the battlefield.
Tinybones, Bauble Burglar allows you tocast any spells exiled with stash counters using any color. Since Tinybones has weak stats, you don’t want to be attacking with it andwant to be using its effect for all opponents to discard a card instead.
Waste Not
Waste Notis the primary way you can push your advantage as your opponents' hands are rapidly diminishing. Waste Not canprovide card draw, board presence in the way of 2/2 tokens, or ramp with mana generation. All of this depends on what cards your opponents discard when they have to (or in some cases can be chosen by you).
The biggest strength of Waste Not is that ittriggers for every card that gets discarded. So if an opponent has to discard two cards, Waste Not triggers twice. There are a handful of ways to force all opponents to discard multiple cards, which will make Waste Not give you a ton of extra value.
Chain Of Smog
Chain of Smogis a card that in theory, could cause everyone to lose their hands. Thetarget of Chain of Smog can choose to copy it themselves,letting them force another player to discard two cards. This can lead to a chain of events of everyone constantly changing Chain of Smog copies until no one has a hand.
If Professor Onyx is on the battlefield, you can choose to target yourself with Chain of Smog, and choose to make a copy and target yourself again. You can loop this, and Professor Onyx will burn your opponents for two life and gain you two life each time you copy Chain of Smog todeal infinite damageand gain an infinite amount of life.
Theone downside is that whoever you target can target you with the copy. However, this allows you to target someone else to force more discard and get more cards exiled with stash counters.You don’t need to worry about your hand since you can cast the exiled cards instead. So not having a hand is not a big deal for Tinybones decks.
Bandit’s Talent
A lot of the ways to force discard also make you discard as well. While you’re able to work without a hand thanks to Tinybones,Bandit’s Talentturns your opponents not having hands into extra cards in yours. It draws you an extra cardfor each opponent with one or less cards in their hand. So if all three opponents only have one or no cards, you will draw three extra cards at your draw step.
Bandit’s Talentforces a minimum of one discard for each opponent, but if they don’t have a nonland to discard, they have to discard two instead. At level two, you can start gaining life you might have lost since there aren’t a ton of defenses in the deck.
How To Play The Deck
A Tinybones, Bauble Burglar Commander deck isall about discarding your opponents' cards and playing them for yourself. Since you can spend mana of any color, the deck playsmore mana rocks than usualto always have an excess of mana.Thieving Varmintalso can tap itself to add two mana of any color so long as that mana is used to cast spells you don’t own.
You want to wait to start forcing your opponents to discard until Tinybones, Bauble Burglar is on the battlefield to ensure they are exiled with stash counters so you’re able to cast them later.
Thebest cards for discarding are ones that force everyone to discard.Dark Deal, Delirium Skeins,andRankle’s Prankall force everyone to discard, whileLet’s Play A Game, Syphon Mind,andTasigur’s Crueltyall make only your opponents discard.
Since you’ll wind up discarding too, ways to draw cards are appreciated in the deck (albeit not required).Waste NotandBandit’s Talentis a situational draw,Hostile Investigatorturns discard into Clue tokens, andTergrid, God of Frightcan put discarded permanents directly onto your battlefield.
Theprimary win condition of the deck is winning by out-valuing your opponents.You want tocut off access to their game-winning cards and combosthrough forced discard and keep them on little to no hands. Meanwhile,you’re casting the cards exiled with stash counters to push your advantage further. Tinybones, Bauble Burglar Commander decks are grindy, and can be slow to win, but very effective at what they want to be doing.
Thebiggest weakness of the deck is its low defenses. While you can force your opponents to discard a ton of cards, if creatures hit the battlefield, you won’t have much to defend with. Yourdefenses rely on what you steal from your opponents,so if they’re weak creatures, you’ll have a weak board presence and become a prime target for attacks.
