Poor Baru. He never really got his chance in the spotlight, and now he's outclassed by Avenger Zendikar. For two more mana, Avenger brings an entire army with him, and the damage buff is permanent. But fear not! we can still make a janky, but fun deck with our beloved Baru!
The main focus of this deck is to ramp into Baru, plopping down a few 1/1s in the form of elves or Dryad Arbors, then swinging in for an alpha strike the following turn with a number of spells to get some forests into play. Of course, this strategy is incredibly fragile, so the deck has been fine tuned to ramp and build an army for Baru to smash with as soon as possible
There are a number of cards that can help us find Baru. In addition to the obvious tutors, we can fix our draws with Oracle of Mul Daya and all of the shuffle effects in our deck. Explore also plays really nice with oracle, allowing us to draw a card if we see that we need it immediately. We need all of these ways to find Baru because he will usually be targeted, shutting the deck down. In the event that our 1/1s are too fragile to stay in play until showtime, we can always create some giant wurm tokens with Baru's grandeur ability.
Finally: In the event that all creatures are just too fragile to maintain on board, we turn to our backup plan of Rude Awakening to swing at our opponents with an army of 2/2s out of nowhere. This card also works with Baru of course, but on it's own it can usually be lethal if your opponent is open and not expecting it
Fun Baru tech
Ghost Quartering one of your tapped lands is a cheap way to get another extra forest landfall trigger for Baru. You can also use it to shuffle your deck if there's not a relevant draw with Oracle of Mul Daya in play.
Hunting Wilds is versatile at any point in the game. Great ramp early on, useful finisher late game. If it's kicked with Baru in play, then you get 2 5/5's with haste and trample and Baru becomes a 6/6 trampler.
Praetor's Counsel can refill your hand with all of the sorcery ramp spells, ghost quarters, and destroyed forests to provide more food for Baru, as well as any extra discarded Baru's to re-use with his Granduer ability. You usually waste your turn playing it though so it can be a bit slow, but if you can afford the turn, it will usually set you up for a win in a couple of turns
