Cloud, Ex-SOLDIERCloud, Ex-SOLDIER | Art by Justyna Dura

For such a prevalent archetype in fiction, Rebels don't feature often in Magic.

Across decades of releases, there are specific bursts of rebellion cropping up across sets. Mercadian Masques, All Will Be One, Final Fantasy, and Avatar: The Last Airbender all incorporate good swaths of Rebels. But across the majority of sets, Rebels feature rarely if at all.

Which makes sense, doesn't it? Rebels are clandestine by nature, operating in cells to avoid notice, so it's quite thematic for them to avoid the spotlight and only arrive in force and en masse when the time is right.

Though that certainly isn't the only way to play them.

What Is Playing "Out Of Type?"

In a sense, playing Out Of Type is rebelling against the established meta.

There are many different ways to construct a deck, and the ways to pilot them are nearly endless. While, yes, there are well-trodden paths and certain staple cards will see more play than others, they aren't requirements.

At higher brackets? Most definitely.

But if you're playing for fun with other players who want to have a good time, sticking to lower brackets where experimentation is welcome? That's exactly where you can "suboptimal" strategies.

And that's exactly where you can play Out of Type.

What Rebels Do Well

The strengths of each group of Rebels relies entirely on the circumstances they're rebelling against. As a result, each set that features Rebels not only ascribes them a primary mechanic, they also swap around which color the Rebels are. As a result, Rebels as a creature type are extremely disorganized, only loosely tied together by their shared cause of pushing back against the establishment.

Which is a narrative win, if nothing else.

Tutoring

When they were introduced in Mercadian Masques, Rebels acted as a white-aligned creature type specializing in recruiting cheaper Rebels once played. This meant that Rebels relied heavily on maintaining tempo, which white facilitated via its many forms of protection. Once you had a mid-sized Rebel down, you could rapidly tutor and deploy many more creatures to the field.

Interestingly, this same mechanic featured in the black-aligned Mercenaries creature type.

Seen as "evil" Rebels, Mercenaries functionally acted identical just on a different part of the color pie, though Mercenaries are considered outlaws while Rebels aren't, giving them a slightly more rounded-out support pool due to Outlaws of Thunder Junction.

Over time, Mercenaries have become much less tied to their origins as "evil rebels" and are now flavorfully neutral. They've even expanded into other colors!

Equipment

Pushing back against the Phyrexians in All Will Be One, modern Rebels fight simply to survive. Without the luxury of tutoring, they rely on desperation and Equipment to deal with the Phyrexian invasion, particularly to the cry of "For Mirrodin!"

Rebels feature primarily in this set as 2/2 red creature tokens, spawned by the for Mirrodin! keyword upon playing certain Equipment. This automatically attaches the Equipment to the Rebel, who can then take on even more Equipment to be as powerful as you'd like them to be.

Something like Barbed BatterfistBarbed Batterfist is a very straightforward numerical value change, while a Bladehold War-WhipBladehold War-Whip actually allows for interesting synergies and strategies. Artifact affinity or a Dragonspark ReactorDragonspark Reactor aside, the value of Equipment automatically coming into play with a 2/2 shouldn't be overlooked. Then the nontoken Rebels printed in the set all had some benefit to either the token spam or Equipment they deploy alongside!

More Artifacts

Somewhat coincidentally, the Final Fantasy set also included red-aligned, Equipment-oriented Rebels. What are the odds?

Rinoa HeartillyRinoa Heartilly as the exception.

At least with Barret, Avalanche LeaderBarret, Avalanche Leader, you can even get a generalized, slightly worse version of for Mirrodin! It doesn't automatically attach the Equipment, but his second ability compensates for that in an alternative way. It's actually more flexible than for Mirrodin! as it allows you to swap your Equipment around your Rebels instead of just giving each new one an empty vessel, though the themes of "a collection of small creatures supported by artifacts" continues with this set.

+1/+1 Counters

Of the most recent Rebels at the time of writing, there are two groups within Avatar: The Last Airbender. You have Jet's Freedom Fighters as well as Jeong Jeong's deserters. They keep up the trend of being primarily red-aligned, though the Freedom Fighters lean closer to Boros with how many white creatures they have.

The Freedom Fighters mostly revolve around +1/+1 counters and creature spam, strengthened in numbers.

Something like Freedom Fighter RecruitFreedom Fighter Recruit strengthens off of your board state, which when combined with token spam is never a bad thing. This also builds off of a combination of Wartime ProtestorsWartime Protestors with Treetop Freedom FightersTreetop Freedom Fighters to get a group of mid-range creatures. Then you can add Pipsqueak, Rebel StrongarmPipsqueak, Rebel Strongarm for yet another mid-range creature if you'd like.

They synergize off one another in a very safe way, just creating weak creatures and giving minor buffs. It actually feels quite green-aligned, just a bit slower. It does have some more interesting synergies with some of the named Freedom Fighters, allowing for a more robust game plan, but most of them follow the same strategy.

Jeong Jeong's deserters don't have as much meat to them as the Freedom Fighters, which makes sense given how few there are, but none of them particularly have a unifying theme, going for flavorful representations of the characters depicted over cohesive mechanics.

They continue the theme of +1/+1 counters, at least.

Combat Buffs

Then there are the various Rebels that focus on short-term benefits, mostly during combat. A rallying cry to take an underdog force up against an impossible foe is perfectly on-theme, and they tend to revolve around stat buffs.

These are important, notable inclusions for a Rebel insurrection, though none of them will win the game on their own. They're meant to facilitate an already-existing strategy and give it that push over the finish line, rather than something to be built around.

They're effective, but only insofar as the Rebels they're supporting, which is a thematic win for sure.

But What If You Played Like A Rebel?

Rebels on a narrative, mechanical, and even meta level rely on subterfuge! Why else would there be inconsistent cells of them scattered throughout the sets, always joined together by their adherence to the martial ideals of white and red? With a reliance on numbers, Equipment, and strengthening the weak? Surely this archetype was designed this way on purpose.

Subterfuge

There's actually quite a few ways for Rebels to simply mess with the plans of other players.

More than one blue card lets a Rebel copy an opposing creature, such as Flesh DuplicateFlesh Duplicate. Infiltration is a necessity for any clandestine operation! Then you have the ability to tap other creatures as a means of shutting down the plans of others.

When running Rebels like actual rebels, you shouldn't try to take on the largest foe. It's a matter of taking the path of least resistance, striking when the iron is hot, and exploiting chinks in armor. Don't act like you have the resources of the institutions you're rebelling against!

Sabotage

There's actually a surprising amount of removal in the Rebel archetype. Ballista SquadBallista Squad is but a single example, where various Rebels can destroy creatures. These usually have some restriction surrounding the target, but it's still removal.

Not to mention that Rebels love white and red, which have plenty of exiling and damage. Fewer Rebels find their home in black, which has more removal than your opponents have creatures, though there are some. And then there's always the evil counterparts to Rebels to consider.

Hired Help

Mercenaries have no mechanical overlap with Rebels, despite being a dark mirror of one another. Rebels aren't considered outlaws, and there's very little mechanical support for counting both a Rebel and a Mercenary, but what Rebel group hasn't had some hired help from time-to-time?

So while not technically Rebels, Mercenaries can make a fine addition to make your Rebel deck feel more disjointed, which sounds like a negative, and mechanically it certainly can be. But flavorfully, it adds to the narrative of the archetype you're building.

If you're trying to stick to specific theming, Avatar: The Last Airbender also brings some Mercenaries to the table! They each make for fairly potent single-creature inclusions, given they aren't even loosely organized.

Final Fantasy does the same, given the nature of its characters' work, and with a card like Cloud, Midgar MercenaryCloud, Midgar Mercenary, it even has an Equipment synergy to line-up with your Rebels!

Rebels Are Scarce But Consistent

Across all of the set releases, Rebels have the general tenants of being white or red, having an affinity for artifacts and particularly Equipment, and rarely having high base stats but gaining +1/+1 counters. They flourish when able to make many small creatures and buff a few heavy hitters, with a surprising amount of trickery to unfold.

None of those are bad things, but their rarity makes them hard to build an entire deck around. Their lack of synergy with Mercenaries might just be the most surprising thing about the archetype, given their history in the game as well as their similarities.

Not to mention, any significant artifact removal will ruin a Rebel deck. Even relying on +1/+1 counters, rare is the Rebel that doesn't stay strapped. There are other options to solve problems, of course, but Rebels simply don't have the numbers to effectively tackle those solutions, which, again, tells quite the compelling underdog narrative, but that makes them difficult to justify making a deck around, at least by themselves.