Raul, Trouble Shooter: MTG Artist Spotlight and Career Highlights

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Raul, Trouble Shooter MTG card art from Fallout set

Image courtesy of Scryfall.com

Meet Raul, Trouble Shooter: Artist Spotlight and Career Highlights

If you’ve wandered the post-apocalyptic halls of Fallout with a keen eye for character design, you’ve likely brushed shoulders with the moody silhouette of Raul, Trouble Shooter. Designed as a Legendary Creature — Zombie Mutant Rogue, this card from the Fallout Commander set infuses two colors—Blue and Black—into a world where intellect, grit, and a dash of unholy luck collide. The art by Irina Nordsol captures that noir-meets-western vibe: a survivor who has traded a frontier pistol for a more arcane toolbox of spells and strategies. In Raul’s world, every graveyard becomes a workshop, and every milling moment is a doorway to the next decisive play. 🧙‍♂️🔥

Raul costs {1}{U}{B}, a compact mana cost that mirrors his nimble, opportunistic nature. At a glance, he’s a creature with power and resilience to spare (1/4), but his true value emerges from the way he interacts with the graveyard. The ability text—“Once during each of your turns, you may cast a spell from among cards in your graveyard that were milled this turn.”—turns milling from a liability into a library. The more you mill, the more options you unlock from your graveyard, and Raul becomes a pivot for tempo-driven, midrange strategies. Then there’s the tap ability: “T: Each player mills a card.” That shared milling moment can cascade into clever synergies, creating a subtle tug-of-war that rewards thoughtful timing and deck-building foresight. ⚔️🎲

Design that tells a story

The Fallout set sits at an intriguing intersection of Universes Beyond and Commander-style depth, with Raul acting as a characterful nod to frontier resilience. The mana identity of Blue and Black reflects the dual nature of Raul’s toolkit: Blue for counterplay, card draw, and reframing threats; Black for graveyard manipulation, self-menalysis, and the inevitability of the grave. The card’s rarity—uncommon—belies the degree of strategic nuance packed into a single 3-mana body. In practice, Raul invites you to build around mill milestones, graveyard reclamation, and political table dynamics where milling can be used to prod opponents into suboptimal lines while you recover value from discarded or milled cards. The flavor text, “Raul Alfonso Tejada, former gunslinger and sole survivor of Hidalgo Ranch, at your service,” anchors the card in a Western-flavored survivalist realism, even as the mechanical engine hums with arcane energy. 🔥💎

Artistically, Nordsol’s portrayal elevates Raul from a mere card into a character you can imagine sitting at a table with us, sleeves rolled and eyes steely. The character design—scars, weathered attire, a glint of resourcefulness—complements the card’s mechanic: it’s not just milling for milling’s sake; it’s about what you recover, what you cast, and how you leverage a single line of text into a recurring engine. The Fallout set’s Commander framing, with its black border and distinctive frame details, invites players to treat Raul with the reverent tweak of a gunslinger’s legend rather than as just another creature. The art and flavor work hand in hand to invite storytelling at the table, which is, after all, a core element of MTG’s magic. 🎨🧙‍♂️

Drafting a Raul-friendly deck: strategy notes

For players who love a good graveyard plan, Raul is a natural fit in decks that lean into milling and recurrence. Stellar inclusions include cards that mill multiple cards per turn or that benefit from cards entering the graveyard, enabling Raul to “cast from your graveyard” more often. Since Raul triggers on cards milled this turn, you can design a sequence where you mill with your own as well as a few mill-friendly opponent effects to maximize the number of spells you can retrieve and recast. The tap ability, while clocking in a mill for all players, also invites cunning play: you can set up a turn where you mill strategically to unlock a specific spell or to disrupt an opposing strategy just enough to tip the balance in your favor. 🧙‍♂️⚔️

In multiplayer formats, Raul’s presence invites negotiation and synergy with decks that care about the graveyard in different ways—think synergistic looting, reanimation, or spell-heavy control plans. The two-color identity makes him a flexible choice for midrange and attrition builds, and his 1/4 body provides resilience on the board while you assemble your engine. If you’re piloting Raul in a more offensive cadence, consider pairing him with flash enablers or spells that exile cards from graveyards to reduce clutter, since the more you mill, the more you can fetch back into play. The result is a layered gameplay experience that blends storytelling with deliberate planning. 🎲🧙‍♂️

The Fallout set’s design team deserves a nod for giving Raul a clear identity: a tactician with a frontier past who can turn mill into momentum. For collectors, the card’s rarity, along with Irina Nordsol’s distinctive illustration, makes Raul a memorable addition to a Commander collection—especially for players who enjoy the performance story of a western-tinged, post-apocalyptic graveyard recursion deck. If you happen to be chasing a foil version, the card’s foil price on market trackers hints at consistent interest among players who love the interplay of mill and recast effects. ⚔️💎

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