BorosLegendary Creature — Human ArtificerSami, Ship's Engineer
Mana value4Rank#13,211
The Commander
At the beginning of your end step, if you control two or more tapped creatures, create a tapped 2/2 colorless Robot artifact creature token.
Guide
Gameplan
Sami rewards you for keeping creatures tapped — attack aggressively, use tap abilities, crew Vehicles, and convoke spells, then bank a free tapped 2/2 Robot every end step. The army snowballs as your earlier Robots are themselves tapped, fueling more tokens, until you alpha-strike or go wide with anthems and finishers.
Strengths
- Free recurring token engine attached to your normal aggressive game plan — attacking already satisfies the condition
- Robots are artifacts, enabling improvise, affinity, and artifact-matters payoffs
- Cheap commander (4 MV) that produces value the same turn it lands
- Synergizes naturally with tap-based mechanics: crew, convoke, exert, and tap-to-activate creatures
Weaknesses
- Reward triggers only on your end step, so a board wipe before then resets everything
- Tokens enter tapped, so they can't block the turn they're made and offer no immediate defense
- Wide, creature-heavy board is vulnerable to sweepers and Pyroclasm-style effects
- RW lacks card draw and recovery, so grinding back after removal is hard
Key Cards
- Intruder Alarm — Untaps your creatures whenever a token enters, letting you re-tap and loop with any tapper for engine combos.
- Skullclamp — Turns expendable 2/2 Robots into a relentless card-draw engine, fixing RW's biggest weakness.
- Reconnaissance — Lets attackers tap to satisfy Sami without ever taking combat damage, guaranteeing the end-step Robot.
- Smothering Tithe — Premier white ramp that snowballs into the explosive mana your wide artifact board can dump.
- Anointed Procession — Doubles every Robot token Sami makes, accelerating the board exponentially.
- Akroma's Will — Closes games by giving your tapped-out army evasion and protection for a lethal swing.
Upgrade Path
Add fast mana (Sol Ring, Smothering Tithe, Mana Crypt) and token doublers (Anointed Procession, Mondrak) to snowball faster. Lean into an Intruder Alarm package with cheap tappers for a combo backup, and include resilient finishers like Akroma's Will or Coordinated Charge plus protection to dodge the sweepers RW struggles to recover from. Skullclamp and Welcoming Vampire patch the color pair's card-draw gap.
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
- ▸Anthem and overrun effects (Cathars' Crusade, Craterhoof-style) turning the token swarm lethal
- ▸Combat alpha strike enabled by Akroma's Will or mass haste/evasion
- ▸Intruder Alarm combos generating an arbitrarily large or infinite Robot army
- ▸Skullclamp-fueled card advantage grinding into an unbeatable board state
Archetypes
- Tokens / Go-Wide — Sami passively builds an artifact army that anthems and overrun effects can turn lethal.
- Artifacts / Affinity — Every Robot is an artifact, powering improvise, affinity, and metalcraft payoffs.
- Aggro — Attacking is the easiest way to keep two creatures tapped, rewarding a proactive beatdown plan.
- Convoke/Crew Synergy — Tapping creatures for spells and Vehicles doubles as fuel for Sami's end-step trigger.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (RW), by popularity.
