Fblthp, Lost on the Range: Just For Fun or A Powerful cEDH Commander?

Outlaws of Thunder Junction has brought us a new commander in the form of Fblthp, Lost on the Range

Who or What is Fblthp?

Why Play Fblthp?

Fblthp's ability is like a nerfed Future Sight

Unfortunately, even if you plot an instant, you can only cast it at sorcery speed, which means plotting counterspells really only gets them off the top of your deck without any way to use them, but most cards are still very useful to plot, and plotting cards to play all in one turn in the order of our choice rather than playing them as mana is available earlier can lead to stronger turns and make combos harder to interact with. As an aside, if this restriction didn't exist and plot worked like foretell, I think Fblthp might actually be an oppressive commander in cEDH since you'd just get to preload face-up counterspells that others can't really try to go off into, and then you could go off with a ton of free protection.

My goal to take advantage of Fblthp is to play a lot of very cheap cards so that I can plot as many cards as possible. It's also good to have ways to reset the top of your library in case you still have mana but can't plot the top card. Sensei's Divining Top

Plotting With Fblthp

Once we have a lot of cards plotted, we can make great use of the storm mechanic, except that there aren't really that many good mono-blue storm cards, and the best, Brain Freeze

Cards that cost zero are of course the best to plot, and most of those are artifacts, so I want to lean into cards that play well with having a lot of zero-mana artifacts. For example, Sai, Master Thopterist

All this to say, this deck is built around an engine rather than built toward achieving a particular combos. Combos are built into the deck to arrive at states where you clearly win, but the operating principle is "Make Fblthp work," so I want to start by looking at how to do that rather than what we're building toward.

How Do You Play Fblthp?

Hitting useful but cheap or free artifacts on the top of your library is a big part of what you're hoping for, so let's start there. These are the basic cogs that make the deck function, first, those that can make mana:

Next, the others:

Any cheap spells are great, not just artifacts, but we also want ways to control the top of our deck to find cheap cards, so we want cheap library manipulation:

Notably, because we're looking to control the top of our library more than we're looking to draw cards, Serum Visions

Solutions to Rule of Law

There are a variety of cards that are extremely good against what we're trying to do, like Rule of Law

Filter Out

While counterspells aren't good with Fblthp, it's nice that on our combo turns we don't necessarily need to use mana for our proactive spells, so we can have mana to cast counterspells, and they're just strong tools for blue decks, so we certainly want to play a few of the best:

This is a very low number of counterspells, but the deck will draw a lot of cards, and we don't want them getting in the way of our core operations. It's worth also considering Blue Elemental Blast

We're playing blue, so we'll want the basic card draw engines:

Winning With Fblthp

That covers a lot of the big groups of cards, so let's get into some of the more nuanced plans in this deck. It's not trivial to find good ways to win in mono-blue, but one good option with this many artifacts is to include a KCI combo package:

Myr Retriever

With or without the KCI combo, we can also generate a large or infinite number of spells being cast, so we have a few storm payoffs:

A few cards that really help have explosive storm turns to maximize Fblthp's storm potential:

As a largely artifact-based combo deck, we'll want some artifact tutors:

Speaking of, one of the cleaner artifact combos that we can find is Power Artifact

Artifact Synergy Cards

The remaining creatures in the deck mostly work well with lots of artifacts:

Of those, Displacer Kitten

Counterbalance?

The last spell is a bit of an oddball:

This is basically just good with library manipulation, and I think the deck benefits from the minor stax element since it can take some time to set up. It would be nice to have more stax elements, but most of the cards you're allowed to play would be pretty detrimental to your game plan. Maybe a card like Cursed Totem

Finally, the lands are the typical choices for a mono-blue deck plus 13 Snow-Covered Island

The expected gameplay with this deck is just to tear through your deck with Fblthp as much as possible to find an infinite combo, then try to win, ideally with available mana to use counterspells thanks to your plotted cards.

Overall, my expectation without playing the deck is that it's a little weaker than Urza, mostly because I think generating extra mana is generally a little stronger than generating extra cards, and I worry about Fblthp taking too long to set up without have enough elements to slow the opponents. It kind of wants a stax-heavy table so that it has time to set up its plots, but a lot of stax pieces also prevent it from doing its thing.

That still might work out well since you can just create a giant pile of plotted cards and then win as soon as you unlock by dealing with whatever's been holding you back, and the deck does have the ability to spike fast wins if it gets a little lucky, so I do think it has a realistic chance.

When Should You Play Fblthp?

I would very rarely keep a hand that can't cast Fblthp by turn two at the latest, as I think you need to start plotting as soon as possible in most pods.

Where is Fblthp?

Totally Lost