The Commander
First strike
Guide
Gameplan
Ramirez DePietro is a 5/4 first striker who mostly serves as a color-identity anchor for a Dimir Pirates or value deck rather than a build-around engine. You curve out pirates and evasive threats, protect a strong board, and grind card advantage through Dimir control tools until you can close with combat damage or a finisher. Treat the commander as a respectable beater with first strike that you only commit when you can defend it.
Strengths
- Cheap to cast for a 5/4 first striker once on a stable board, and dies to fewer blockers thanks to first strike
- Anchors Dimir, the best color pair for card advantage, removal, and counterspells
- Flexible shell—no parasitic synergy required, so the 99 can be tuned to any power level
Weaknesses
- Rules text is just first strike, offering zero card advantage or recursion on its own
- Six mana for a vanilla-ish body is slow in a format full of better commanders
- No built-in evasion means it gets chump-blocked easily without support
- Dimir lacks the explosive ramp and mass haste of other color pairs
Key Cards
- Coastal Piracy — Turns your evasive Pirates into a repeatable card-draw engine every combat.
- Admiral Beckett Brass — Premier Pirate payoff that steals permanents when your crew connects alongside Ramirez.
- Fellwar Stone — Cheap ramp helps you deploy the six-drop commander a turn early and rebuild after wipes.
- Whispersilk Cloak — Grants unblockable and shroud, making Ramirez a protected, evasive Voltron threat.
- Cyclonic Rift — Dimir's premier blowout that clears blockers so your board connects for lethal.
Upgrade Path
Decide on a single axis—Pirates aggro, Voltron, or Dimir control—and cut redundant beaters for cheap interaction like Counterspell, Swan Song, and Fierce Guardianship. Add efficient ramp (Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Dimir Signet) so the six-drop lands earlier, and lean on card-advantage engines like Reconnaissance Mission and Bident of Thassa. At higher power, swap the fair gameplan for a tight wincon such as Thassa's Oracle plus mill or a reliable Voltron unblockable shell.
Core Cards
The most-played cards for this commander, built from aggregated deck data (the Mythic Graph). Build public decks to seed it.
Win Conditions
- ▸Repeated combat damage from an evasive, equipped Ramirez and a Pirate crew
- ▸Commander damage (21) via Voltron equipment and unblockable
- ▸Milling out opponents with Dimir self-mill and library-targeting effects
- ▸A compact combo finish such as infinite mill or reanimator value
Archetypes
- Pirates Tribal — Ramirez is a Pirate, so he slots into a Dimir crew built around Coastal Piracy and Admiral Beckett Brass.
- Voltron — First strike plus equipment and evasion lets him reliably deal commander damage.
- Control — Dimir's counters and removal protect your threats while you grind toward a single strong finisher.
- Mill — Blue-black gives access to dedicated mill packages as an alternate win route.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (BU), by popularity.
