101 Cards - Rocco, Storm Chef

Rocco, Cabaretti Caterer

by Chris Seaman

"Rocco, hurry up; we have two pepperoni pizzas, three arancini, a carbonara, and one 'Cabaretti Special' coming up!"
You rush through the kitchen, juggling between half-baked doughs and bowls filled with variations of tomato-based sauces. With one hand, you throw some pancetta in a pan with your favorite olive oil while the other hand is already picking pepperonis from the fridge.

As your brain goes a thousand miles per second, juggling all the dishes you have to prepare, a thought pops into your head: "Do we put linguine or tagliatelle in the Cabaretti Special?"
You drop the pan and start running to your cookbook for the answer. You start furiously scrolling through your recipes. A floating paper flies from your book to the floor as pages turn. You drop on your knees to pick it up when you hear your boss from across the kitchen.

"ROCCO, PEOPLE ARE WAITING!'
"Comiiing", you say, as the tickets stack grows bigger by the minute.
You manage to grab the note. You notice the writing isn't yours, and the yellow tint of the paper indicates it's been here for decades.

"How to cook a storm -- Ma' Cabaretti"
Could it be that your grandma gave you this recipe? Unfortunately, you can't remember when she would have given it to you.

The recipe is as simple as it is cryptic:

"To cook the perfect storm, you'll need:
-- Something that makes mana
-- Something that makes you draw
-- Something that makes you exile
-- Something that makes you close."

Intrigued, you start looking around the room for ingredients: time to cook a storm!

What is this deck about?

This is a storm-cooking deck -- our goal is to assemble all the ingredients to make the perfect storm and serve it to our friends around the table. While we're cooking, we'll be punishing our opponents serving appetizers to our friends to make sure we have time to finish our recipe.

To understand how we're going to assemble those ingredients, let's take a look at our chef for this evening:

• Rocco's first ability provides card advantage to everyone on our end step by forcing an impulse-draw on the table. While this will seem good to everyone at first, this will allow us to force decisions on everyone to either play the exiled card or lose it forever -- and that's if they can even play it (exiling an Avenger of Zendikar
  on turn 3 feels really good). To that extent, our deck is entirely optimized around playing cards costing 4CMC or less (with only 2 cards at 5 CMC), meaning we only have a 2% chance of losing a card to our impulse-draw compared to the table.
• Rocco's second ability rewards us for anyone playing cards from exile by giving us a food token and a +1/+1 counter to put on a creature we control. While this will appear innocuous, we will leverage these two resources hard and turn them into all the ingredients described above to play our entire deck. Since we don't want to be dependent on others playing cards from exile, we'll need to assemble an extra engine to be able to play multiple cards from exile per turn and end by playing our entire deck to kill the table.

This makes Rocco an extraordinarily versatile commander with group-huggy type interactions that makes it super fun to pilot (we're even running political cards like  Spike Weaver

TL;DR, you'll enjoy Rocco, Street Chef

Let's Cook Up A Storm!

To cook the perfect storm, we need to make sure we have all our ingredients ready for our guests: in this section, we'll go over the four main ingredients for our recipe and how they work together.

Something That Makes mana

This is the base ingredient for any good storm: we need to find a way to keep having mana to burn as we cast our entire deck for the win. To do so, we will leverage our two primary resources: Tokens and +1/+*1 counters.

Tokens
This list runs many cards that can turn tokens into actual mana, making every spell we play from exile mana neutral or positive. This includes:
- Academy Manufactor

To support our token strategy, we're also running cards like:
- Mondrak, Glory Dominus

+1/+*1 counters
On top of the tokens, we're going to abuse +1/+1 counters using creatures who can turn their power into colored mana:
- Kami of Whispered Hopes

To support our token strategy, we're also running cards like:
- Hardened Scales

Since these two engines live next to each other, it's common for us to have a massive amount of mana by turn 4/5 (generally when the deck starts getting out of control). Due to the sheer redundancy of pieces that allow us to generate mana, it will be difficult for opponents to assess what to remove to stop the engine from running.

Finally, we're running multiple dorks to help us cast Rocco, Street Chef

Something That Makes You Draw

Once we've assembled the mana to make sure our storm is brewing, we need to find a way to continuously draw cards from our deck to feed the storm. To do this, we will use a similar strategy -- leveraging our tokens and counters to turn them into draw.

Tokens
- Peregrin Took

+1/+1 counters
- Dusk Legion Duelist

Finally, we run more generalist draw engines to ensure we can keep our hand full:
- Skullclamp

Something That Makes You Exile

Getting cards in exile is critical in accessing our food token and +1/+1 counter and keeping the engine going.

Looking through this list, you might be wondering why we don't play cards like Knowledge Pool

Instead, we're going to leverage three main tools to get our cards from our hand into exile:

- Birgi, God of Storytelling // Harnfel, Horn of Bounty

- Invasion of Kaldheim

- Quicksmith Genius

On top of these three engines, we're also running other lighter tools to exile cards:
- Jeska's Will

Something That Makes You Close

Alright, everything is in the oven. Now we just need to find a way to turn all of this casting from exile into closing the game. To do this, we will use multiple tools that can turn all our shenanigans into actual damage to our opponents.

These include:

- Walking Ballista

With these engines online (you'll typically have 2-3 of them on the board as you storm), you'll be able to close out the game the way god intended: by dealing food-based damage to your opponents and getting their life points down to 0.

Protecting the Engine

To ensure our cooking is not interrupted, we will run multiple protection & recursion cards on top of a high redundancy of critical pieces for our engine.

Protection
- Allosaurus Shepherd

Recursion

- Noxious Revival

Fishing For The Engine

Looking through cabinets for the right ingredients can take some time. Hopefully, we have a way to accelerate that process. The deck runs a high number of tutors that will allow us to fetch the right cards as we build up our engine

- Enlightened Tutor

You've Been Served

Looking across the now quiet room, you can't help but smile.
Your guests' stomachs have expanded beyond their original function, to the point where food is slowly dripping from their mouth.
Ma' Cabaretti would be proud.

[Creatures]

*1 Rocco, Street Chef
*1 Academy Manufactor
*1 Allosaurus Shepherd
*1 Avacyn's Pilgrim
*1 Birds of Paradise
*1 Birgi, God of Storytelling // Harnfel, Horn of Bounty
*1 Bloom Tender
*1 Conspiracy Theorist
*1 Crystalline Crawler
*1 Dockside Extortionist
*1 Drannith Magistrate
*1 Dusk Legion Duelist
*1 Elvish Mystic
*1 Esper Sentinel
*1 Hedron Detonator
*1 Heronblade Elite
*1 Hopeful Initiate
*1 Imperial Recruiter
*1 Incubation Druid
*1 Jaheira, Friend of the Forest
*1 Kami of Whispered Hopes
*1 Mindless Automaton
*1 Mondrak, Glory Dominus
*1 Mother of Runes
*1 Peregrin Took
*1 Pia Nalaar, Consul of Revival
*1 Priest of Titania
*1 Professional Face-Breaker
*1 Quicksmith Genius
*1 Reckless Fireweaver
*1 Recruiter of the Guard
*1 Rosie Cotton of South Lane
*1 Runaway Steam-Kin
*1 Samwise Gamgee
*1 Spike Weaver
*1 Sylvan Safekeeper
*1 Walking Ballista

[/Creatures]

[Spells]

*1 Altar of Bone
*1 Arcane Signet
*1 Beast Within
*1 Carpet of Flowers
*1 Doubling Season
*1 Eladamri's Call
*1 Enlightened Tutor
*1 Exploration
*1 Faithless Looting
*1 Ghirapur Aether Grid
*1 Greater Good
*1 Hardened Scales
*1 Heroic Intervention
*1 Inspiring Statuary
*1 Invasion of Ikoria // Zilortha, Apex of Ikoria
*1 Invasion of Kaldheim // Pyre of the World Tree
*1 Jeska's Will
*1 Light Up the Stage
*1 Nature's Claim
*1 Noxious Revival
*1 Passionate Archaeologist
*1 Phyrexian Altar
*1 Sensei's Divining Top
*1 Sevinne's Reclamation
*1 Skullclamp
*1 Sol Ring
*1 Soul Partition
*1 Swords to Plowshares
*1 Sylvan Library
*1 Teferi's Protection
*1 Vandalblast
*1 Winds of Abandon
*1 Worldly Tutor

[/Spells]

[Lands]

*1 Arid Mesa
*1 Battlefield Forge
*1 Bountiful Promenade
*1 Branchloft Pathway
*1 Brushland
*1 Cavern of Souls
*1 City of Brass
*1 Command Tower
*1 Copperline Gorge
*1 Exotic Orchard
*1 Fire-Lit Thicket
*1 Forest
*1 Jetmir's Garden
*1 Karplusan Forest
*1 Marsh Flats
*1 Mistveil Plains
*1 Misty Rainforest
*1 Mountain
*1 Plains
*1 Rockfall Vale
*1 Rootbound Crag
*1 Rugged Prairie
*1 Sacred Foundry
*1 Spectator Seating
*1 Spire Garden
*1 Stomping Ground
*1 Sunpetal Grove
*1 Temple Garden
*1 Wooded Bastion
*1 Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth

[/Lands]

[/Deck]