Cleon, Merry Champion Commander Deck Tech
We Could be Heroes
While I play a lot of crazy combo and synergy decks, I've found myself playing a lot more Aggro decks in Commander recently. Some of this has to do with how streaming and playing online has impacted my playstyle: trying to win games before technical difficulties, conflicting schedules, postwork fatigue, or any of a number of other problems threaten to ruin the game.
As a result, I play a lot of low-to-the-ground decks that set the pace early and get in chip damage before big turns. You know: good, old-fashioned Magic.
When it comes to low-to-the-ground Aggro, the first place to look is The Boss: Tom "Boss" Ross, known for a number of Aggro decks, especially Heroic Red, which beat hundred-dollar decks with a pile of pennies in Theros Standard. As soon as I saw Cleon, Merry Champion, I immediately thought of the Boss.
Core Synergy
Cleon is a mono-red commander that turns the spells that target it into cards exiled to cast later, one of red's eminent sources of card draw and advantage. Combining cheap spells with a repeated engine for card advantage is a strong secondary strategy for an aggro deck, as is surrounding a lightning rod of a commander with other creatures to target.
In addition to other Heroic creatures, Magecraft and prowess trigger similarly and give us more options for bodies in the setup phase. As a result, we can cut some of the more expensive (mana-wise) creatures and replace them with mana engines, like Storm-Kiln Artist, which provide the Treasures we need to fuel our casts off the top.
Soul-Scar Mage and Monastery Swiftspear, also known as "Taylor Swiftspear", provide our preferred turn-one plays. You will notice that this is one of the rare decks that doesn't include Sol Ring. It breaks that cardinal rule of deckbuilding because, while the deck does need mana, it gets that by hitting land drops; its early terms are spent on bodies instead.
Goblin Wizardry is a deceptively powerful card in prowess decks. It not only creates multiple bodies with prowess, but it also triggers prowess on its own cast, making it a synergistic element that bridges the deck's phases the same way it bridges the mana costs.
Win Conditions
The primary win con for the deck is attacking early and often. We need spells that can help to push through damage or hit opponents directly, such as Ground Rift and Grapeshot, which also help to work with our engines and cheap spells.
In addition to the storm-centric win cons, we want to make sure that our spells aren't too expensive and that our cheap spells don't get outclassed. City on Fire is an amazing way to turn our damage sources into huge threats, and it has convoke to allow us to either use our bodies to help cast it or allow us to make new bodies that contribute to our board and act as hasty mana dorks.
Draw
While a lot of cheap draw is poor quality or cantrips, especially in red, there are some powerful single-card engines. Sensei's Divining Top is solid top deck manipulation, and we can get it back by exiling the top cards with our commander. Skullclamp is similarly strong and provides incentives to attack into blockers.
Sticky Fingers is an excellent source of Treasures and mana, and all for low mana investment. It also triggers Heroic, as do a large amount of cheap cantrips. These cantrips might not make advantage on their own, but they do replace themselves and continue powering our commander's engine.
Magmatic Insight is a high risk/reward card. It's particularly good in an aggressive deck that doesn't pack a lot of ramp, as it uses the excess lands to dig deeper into the deck. This allows us to play extra lands and not be concerned about flooding.
Dragon Mantle was one of the more powerful cards in Tom "Boss" Ross's Heroic Red deck. It's cheap, replaces itself, and provides a mana sink to enable smaller creatures to trade up and larger creatures to smack through lots of damage.
Ramp/Free Spells
While we're casting spells from our hand and out of exile, we need to be able to cast the spells quickly. We don't want to spend our time ramping, so we need to be able to play spells for cheap. Pyrokinesis is a particularly nasty one, as it deals damage divided among any number of targets, so we can burn our opponents' creatures while triggering Heroic on our own.
Downhill Charge is another powerful spell that can hit opponents out of nowhere. It hits opponents equal to the number of Mountains we control, and it can be cast for free. We can use it aggressively to present a threat, or we can use it in response to declare blockers to smash through for large damage.
The general plan is to get cheap Heroic, prowess, or Magecraft creatures out, target them with spells, and draw cards to restock. We want to be able to apply pressure while recovering the advantage we lose in card quality via synergy.
