Overview

Grand Larceny is built around a simple but deeply satisfying premise: your opponents have the best cards in their decks, and you are going to cast them. Gonti, Canny Acquisitor rewards every instance of combat damage dealt to a player by exiling the top card of their library and giving you the ability to cast it, spending mana of any colour. The more unblockable creatures you land, the more of the table's resources flow into your hand.

The deck runs a dense package of evasive creatures, ninjutsu enablers, and saboteur payoffs designed to maximise the number of combat damage triggers per turn. Felix Five-Boots sits alongside Gonti as the secondary commander and doubles every triggered ability that fires when a creature deals combat damage, turning single triggers into double value and accelerating the theft engine enormously.

Key Cards

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Felix Five-Boots
Trigger Doubler · Secondary Commander
When a creature you control dealing combat damage to a player causes a triggered ability to fire, Felix makes it trigger an additional time. That means Gonti's exile effect fires twice per successful attack, and every other saboteur in the deck doubles its output. Felix is the single card that transforms a slow accumulation strategy into a runaway engine.
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Fallen Shinobi
Saboteur · Ninjutsu
Ninjutsu lets you swap it in for any unblocked attacker mid-combat, then exile the top two cards of the defending player's library and play them for free this turn. A single connection generates enormous immediate value. With Felix doubling the trigger, a single swing nets four free cards from an opponent's library in one attack step.
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Thieving Amalgam
Passive Theft · Token Generator
At the start of each opponent's upkeep, manifest the top card of their library — it enters as a 2/2 face-down creature under your control. You can turn over any that are creatures and keep them, or sacrifice them as fodder. Over a full table rotation, Thieving Amalgam generates a wide board of stolen permanents without needing to attack at all.
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Edric, Spymaster of Trest
Card Draw · Attack Incentive
Rewards any player who deals combat damage to an opponent with a card draw, which typically redirects aggression away from you while keeping your hand full. In Grand Larceny the effect is self-serving: your small evasive creatures attacking into opponents draw cards while also triggering Gonti and every other saboteur on the board simultaneously.

Playing the Deck

The first few turns are about deploying evasive creatures and protecting them long enough to connect. Slither Blade, Triton Shorestalker, and Silhana Ledgewalker are one-mana creatures that can never be blocked under normal circumstances. Landing one alongside Arcane Signet or Sol Ring on turn two sets up an attack into Gonti as early as turn four.

The mid game revolves around converting combat damage into card advantage faster than opponents can answer Gonti. Ohran Frostfang gives all attacking creatures deathtouch and draws a card whenever they deal damage, stacking beautifully with the saboteur triggers already firing. Whirler Rogue creates Thopter tokens and can tap two creatures to make any attacker unblockable for a turn, protecting your most important creatures at a critical moment. Once Felix Five-Boots joins the board the engine becomes very difficult to stop without dedicated removal.

The late game often involves casting opponents' most powerful spells against them. Villainous Wealth is one of the deck's most powerful finishers: dump enough mana into it and exile a player's top cards, then cast everything that costs X or less for free. Hostage Taker permanently steals a creature or artifact. The combination of a full grip of exiled cards, Gonti on the table, and Felix doubling every trigger routinely generates enough value to close out games in a single combat phase.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Strengths: The deck generates card advantage passively through combat damage, meaning it does not need to spend its own cards to refuel. The theft plan scales with the quality of opponents' decks: the stronger the table, the stronger the cards you cast. Felix Five-Boots provides explosive burst potential by doubling every saboteur trigger simultaneously.

Weaknesses: The strategy depends on combat, which makes it vulnerable to pillow fort effects, fog effects, and wide defensive boards. A single Propaganda-type effect can stall the engine completely. The deck also needs Gonti to be on the battlefield consistently and lacks protection to keep it there beyond Swiftfoot Boots and Lightning Greaves.

Verdict
Grand Larceny is a compelling and flavourful precon that rewards pilots who enjoy playing from a position of information advantage. Casting opponents' own cards against them never gets old, and the Felix Five-Boots trigger-doubling engine creates genuinely explosive turns that feel powerful even out of the box. Players who want to upgrade should focus on adding more evasion-granting effects and ways to protect Gonti, as keeping the commander alive is the core prerequisite for the engine to function.

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Full Decklist

All 100 cards from the out-of-the-box Grand Larceny precon, enriched with current prices. Click any card to expand it.

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