Raff Capashen, Ship's Mage
CMM · uncommon · Released 2023-08-04
Power
Tier shown as baseline → best-case (in its ideal shell). The score (-8 to 19) is a rank signal derived from tier + kind + atoms; browse by it on the cards page.
Derived from the 7 atoms below.
on rate
minor value alone
needs a shell
scales up
multiple modes
broadly useful
easily answered
Commander Bracket
Archetypes
No active conflicts.
Roles
Risks
Mechanics
—
Typal
—
Structural
Rationale
Raff is a 4cmc 3/3 flash flyer that extends flash to all historic spells (artifacts, legendaries, sagas), letting the controller hold up interaction and deploy threats at instant speed. Signature in legendary-matters and artifact-matters shells where flashing in legends or artifacts at end of opponent's turn is a tempo and protection-from-counter play. His value scales directly with the density of historic spells in the deck, making him a build-around rather than a generic include.
Learnings (3)
Raff's flash-grant is a static ability that applies to all historic spells in hand simultaneously — it is not limited to spells cast while Raff is on the stack, so opponents cannot respond to a Raff ETB to prevent the first historic spell from having flash.
tagging · claude-sonnet-4-6
In commander, Raff is most impactful as the commander himself since he grants flash to your entire historic spell package the moment he resolves, enabling reactive gameplay with legends and artifacts during opponents' end steps.
tagging · claude-sonnet-4-6
Raff does not grant flash to non-historic spells (instants/sorceries), so in spellslinger or non-artifact/non-legendary builds he provides almost no value beyond a vanilla 3/3 flyer.
tagging · claude-sonnet-4-6
Popularity
- EDHREC rank: #6,364