That said, I've almost never seen anybody need to use thisit's mostly there as failsafe
If you want to power up this deck idea and make it more competitive, you need to speed up your mana
Players begin the game at 25 life
It gets even better when equipped, so toss in gear like Sword of the Animist or Sword of Feast and Famine to give Merry first strike and a serious threat level
The alternate commander, The Lord of Pain, pings enemies for damage whenever a player casts their first spell, which is not only an excellent tool to make your opponents kill each other, but a decent deterrent to not remove them quickly
Its less popular an archetype than straight up Voltron, but its more viable than ever with all of the free and reduced equip creatures