(Arcee, Sharpshooter | Art by Volta Creation)

Technically Playable - Arcee, Sharpshooter

Welcome to Technically Playable, where our mission statement is "Every commander is technically playable" (the best kind of playable). The way this works is every article will have a commander generated using EDHREC's random button, I'll talk through the card, then I'll write about how we can build around it!

This week's random commander is

Arcee (I assume pronounced Ar-See, like RC, the shortened version of Remote-Controlled) is split between wanting to cast spells on the Vehicle side and wanting to stack up as many counters as possible on the Robot side. In this article, I'm going to look at cards that work with each side so you can make a deck to really get the most out of whichever version of Arcee you like best.

Loading up Counters on Arcee

We'll look at the front side first. Arcee, Sharpshooter cares about +1/+1 counters, the more the merrier. This gives us a great way to use an underrated mechanic: modular. Wizards of the Coast has tried to make modular work in Commander before, most notably Zabaz, the Glimmerwasp, but even that card is only at the helm of 0.036% of decks. I feel like Arcee is a great way to utilise modular as best as possible.

Of the 22 modular cards legal in a Boros deck, the only ones we probably shouldn't use would be Arcbound Wanderer, a six-mana 2/2, simply not worth the cost, and Power Depot, since we're not in the market of losing lands for a single counter. Other than that, the other 22 cards all fit in. The biggest downside of Arcee being red and white is the lack of cards like Hardened Scales since that's the best way to properly abuse modular, but we have alternatives. The only real replacement is Lae'zel, Vlaakith's Champion (a character whom I kill every single playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3).

The most important modular cards to run are definitely Zabaz, the Glimmerwasp, for additional counters from your modular creatures and the ability to get rid of them at instant speed, Arcbound Shikari, to spread more counters across your board, and, of course, Arcbound Ravager, probably the strongest of the modular cards and another way to sacrifice your creatures to get your counters onto Arcee at will.

Steel Overseer is one of the best cards in this deck for sure: since all of the modular cards are artifacts, this is effectively a lord that lets us make the most out of our counter synergies. Similarly, the outlast cards from Khans of Tarkir, like Abzan Battle Priest and Abzan Falconer, also work as pseudo-lords, providing really powerful keywords to (pretty much) our entire deck.

Since we have a high density of creatures, we can also use cards like Cathars' Crusade and Uncivil Unrest to make the deck get really out of hand, causing each creature to flood our board with counters alongside haste and double damage. The best part of Uncivil Unrest is that it doesn't specify "combat" damage, allowing you to remove all of your counters from Arcee to shoot your own Brash Taunter or Stuffy Doll to turn Arcee from creature removal into player removal.

Get in, We’re Going Shopping (For Spells)

The reverse side of Arcee works like a very watered-down version of Feather, the Redeemed. This kind of sucks since it means we're just playing a worse version of a different commander, but equally means we can simply jam both copies of Feather (the original and Feather, Radiant Arbiter) as well as the other "Feather at home", Mavinda, Students' Advocate.

But just having these by themselves doesn't do anything; we need some good spells to pump up Arcee as much as possible. I've become more of a fan of proliferate since building my silly Tekuthal, Inquiry Dominus and Moira Brown, Guide Author decks, and Arcee is ripe for proliferating too. I'd absolutely slam Unbounded Potential in for some bonus counters and proliferation, while Angelfire Ignition is a brilliant way of getting Arcee through for those turns when you really need to deal some combat damage. As well as these, we can also use some cheap spells, too, like Gird for Battle or Restoration Magic, to get even more triggers from Arcee's ability.

We can also make use of one of the most nostalgic mechanics for me: Heroic. I started properly playing Magic when the original Theros came out, so having a Commander deck that can make sure of cards like Phalanx Leader, Anax and Cymede, and Akroan Crusader makes me beyond happy. Of course, we have newer Heroic cards, like Cleon, Merry Champion, as well as not really "Heroic" cards, like Tenth District Legionnaire and the Standard-dominating Heartfire Hero.

This version of Arcee looks really aggressive, but the biggest issue there is having to deal 40 damage three times; for this, we need resources. Using Zada, Hedron Grinder with cards like Defiant Strike keeps our hand full to keep making Arcee bigger, and Storm-Kiln Artist, Birgi, God of Storytelling or Urabrask give us the mana we need to keep casting spells and to keep up with the green decks.

We can also use our spells to leverage cards that help us end the game. The most obvious of these are cards like Young Pyromancer and Monastery Mentor, but these still need to win through combat damage. Luckily, there are plenty of cards that help us get around that.

Caldera Pyremaw works amazingly well with Arcee since it cares about spells and counters, which means you can spam all of your spells to make it huge, then use The Ozolith in case it dies to move those counters over to Arcee afterwards. We can also make the previously mentioned Heartfire Hero huge and let it die to do a great impression of Chandra's Ignition (this also works with The Ozolith).

A lot of these Transformers cards are very niche, with only a handful of them getting more than 1000 decks in total, with of course Slicer, Hired Muscle being the most popular. This makes it difficult to find a wide range of cards to put into the deck (no one wants to read an article of just 50 combat tricks), so trying to brew for Arcee was a lot of fun and has made me look at the Transformers cards in a new light, Flamewar, Brash Veteran I'm coming for you next.

As with all Technically Playable articles, this was a very quick look at Arcee, Sharpshooter as a commander, and a few of the cards that can really make a deck with Arcee as the commander tick. Let me know in the comments below if you play Arcee, Sharpshooter, if you want to build a Arcee, Sharpshooter deck, or even if you just enjoyed this article!