Magic: The Gathering - Gev, Scaled Scorch Commander Deck Guide (2024)

Gev, Scaled Scorch is one of the many legendary creatures you can use as a commander released in Magic: The Gathering's Bloomburrow set. Gev is a Rakdos (black/red) commander that acts as a burn deck and primarily utilizes creatures of the Lizard typing to play into its effect.

A Gev, Scaled Scorch Commander deck is a slow burn, literally. You don't need to be actively attacking, instead taking advantage of passive abilities that burn your opponents with burn effects and permanents that cause the burn to be much bigger than it normally would be. Gev plays more like a Tempo deck, taking advantage of the effects of cheap permanents and winning off of them.

Decklist

The deck contains 33 creatures, seven sorceries, two instants, 13 artifacts, ten enchantments, and 34 lands. Since Gev cares about you casting Lizard spells, the majority of the deck is made up of Lizards.

Key Cards

Gev, Scaled Scorch

The commander of the deck, Gev, Scaled Scorch, is what the whole deck is built around. It gives you slow burn damage, dealing one damage to a target when you cast a Lizard spell. This only targets one opponent, but the targeting also commits a crime from which other cards can benefit.

It'll also passively give all your creatures a stat boost with a +1/+1 counter. Since most of your creatures are Lizards, it'll guarantee they enter with a counter since just by casting it, Gev will deal burn damage to ensure an opponent loses life.

Agate Instigator

Agate Instigator is a Lizard that helps to play into the burn strategy. It turns all creatures entering the battlefield into burn damage to all opponents. Since it has offspring, you can get an extra copy of it on the battlefield.

While one burn damage (two if you used offspring) isn't the most amount of damage, it is when mixed with other cards that cause noncombat damage to be doubled. It progressively stacks, and later in the game, the burn damage Agate Instigator does can help close out games.

Descent Into Avernus

With Descent into Avernus, the game will get an exponential speed to the end. The burn damage it does gets rapidly larger, as does the amount of Treasure generation. While giving your opponents Treasure is less than ideal, you get them as well to ramp, something Rakdos can struggle with.

What makes Descent into Avernus so good in a Gev deck is that you can out-burn your opponent before Descent into Avernus burns you out of the game.

Burn Multipliers

Gev's burn damage is a bit minimal, but with the inclusion of cards like City on Fire, Dictate of the Twin Gods, and Fiery Emancipation, the burn damage can very quickly become massive.

They are a bit costly on mana (although City on Fire can be convoked), but well worth the mana investment to get on the battlefield as soon as possible.

Many of them cause damage to be doubled or tripled on all levels, not just noncreature damage. Gev can benefit from it, as well as the cards that deal a small amount of damage to all creatures and players, which can make the burn damage even more explosive.

Laughing Jasper Flint

Something to note about Lizards is a lot of them are outlaws, which enables Laughing Jasper Flint's effect. This helps to give you more cards to cast from an opponent's library. There is no guarantee of what you will exile, but you have the potential to steal a powerful creature that Gev can put counters on when it enters.

The amount that you exile with Laughing Jasper Flint gets progressively larger, especially since creatures you cast from your opponents' libraries are considered outlaws.

Since you primarily have creatures in your deck, you can utilize interaction and removal from your opponents' libraries to take care of any problems on the battlefield.

How To Play The Deck

A Gev, Scaled Scorch Commander deck wants to use its many tools to burn your opponents' life totals down to zero as quickly as possible. This is primarily done through Gev itself, along with the permanents that cause sources to deal extra damage than they normally would.

Gev isn't the only card that does burn damage. Agate Instigator, Impact Tremors, and Witty Roastmaster all deal damage for creatures entering the battlefield.

Since you have so many creature cards, these effects will go off frequently, especially if you're also casting creatures exiled with Laughing Jasper Flint.

Normally, a downside of burn decks is that you are open to combat. However, Gev's ability to give creatures +1/+1 counters makes your normally weaker creatures into much bigger threats in combat. It also makes them solid attackers so you don't have to rely only on burn damage to bring your opponents' life totals down.

Gev, Scaled Scorch has a very slow start, and it takes a while for the engine to get going. As such, you are fairly susceptible to offensive early in the game.

However, once burn multipliers hit the battlefield, this is when you can start turning the game around. A benefit to Gev is because of how slow it is at the start, your opponents won't see you as a threat, giving you time to set up.