Grenzo's House Party

Commander / EDH* Aggro Casual Control Mono-Red Tokens

JarLoz

Creature (31)

• 1x Anger
• 1x Blight Herder
• 1x Dockside Extortionist
• 1x Etali, Primal Storm
• 1x Frenzied Goblin
• 1x Fumiko the Lowblood
• 1x Gingerbrute
• 1x Goblin Engineer
• 1x Hangarback Walker
• 1x Hanweir Garrison  ^Meld
• 1x Heartless Hidetsugu
• 1x Hope of Ghirapur
• 1x Kari Zev, Skyship Raider
• 1x Krenko, Tin Street Kingpin
• 1x Legion Loyalist
• 1x Legion Warboss
• 1x Loyal Apprentice
• 1x Neheb, the Eternal
• 1x Oblivion Sower
• 1x Ox of Agonas
• 1x Phoenix of Ash
• 1x Pia and Kiran Nalaar
• 1x Prophetic Flamespeaker
• 1x Pyreheart Wolf
• 1x Robber of the Rich
• 1x Siege-Gang Commander
• 1x Solemn Simulacrum
• 1x Tin Street Dodger
• 1x Treasure Nabber
• 1x Urabrask the Hidden
• 1x Zealous Conscripts

Artifact (15)

• 1x Ashnod's Altar
• 1x Chaos Wand
• 1x Extraplanar Lens
• 1x Fellwar Stone
• 1x Lantern of Insight
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Mask of Memory
• 1x Mind Stone
• 1x Nevinyrral's Disk
• 1x Sculpting Steel
• 1x Skullclamp
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Sword of the Animist
• 1x Tome of Legends
• 1x Wayfarer's Bauble

Sorcery (7)

• 1x Blasphemous Act
• 1x Disrupt Decorum
• 1x Gamble
• 1x Insurrection
• 1x Mob Rule
• 1x Vandalblast
• 1x Wheel of Fortune

Instant (4)

• 1x Chaos Warp
• 1x Pyroblast
• 1x Reverberate
• 1x Scour from Existence

Commander (1)

Land (36)

• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 1x Hanweir Battlements  ^Meld
• 27x Mountain
• 1x Myriad Landscape
• 1x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
• 1x Rogue's Passage
• 1x Scavenger Grounds
• 1x Strip Mine
• 1x Throne of the High City
• 1x Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle

Enchantment (6)

• 1x Bedlam
• 1x Berserkers' Onslaught
• 1x Blood Moon
• 1x Goblin Bombardment
• 1x Stolen Strategy
• 1x War Cadence

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Sideboard

Artifact (2)

• 1x Endless Atlas
• 1x Ruby Medallion

Enchantment (1)

• 1x Curse of Opulence

Creature (2)

• 1x Burnished Hart
• 1x Goblin Rabblemaster

Instant (1)

• 1x Volcanic Offering

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Maybeboard

Creature (16)

• 1x Arcbound Stinger
• 1x Dire Fleet Daredevil
• 1x Dualcaster Mage
• 1x Ferropede
• 1x Goblin Glider
• 1x Goblin Tunneler
• 1x Hovermyr
• 1x Impetuous Sunchaser
• 1x Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs
• 1x Krenko, Mob Boss
• 1x Pilgrim's Eye
• 1x Pili-Pala
• 1x Rakka Mar
• 1x Treasure Nabber
• 1x Varchild, Betrayer of Kjeldor
• 1x Yellow Scarves Cavalry

Enchantment (5)

• 1x Experimental Frenzy
• 1x Goblin War Drums
• 1x Outpost Siege
• 1x Raging River
• 1x Rite of the Raging Storm

Instant (2)

• 1x Comet Storm
• 1x Grab the Reins

Sorcery (1)

• 1x Aftershock

Artifact (1)

• 1x Whispersilk Cloak

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There ain't no party like goblin party. Welcome to Grenzo, Havoc Raiser

As far as monored commanders go, they tend to be very narrowly focused. Whether it is combo kills with Zada, Hedron Grinder or swarming your opponent with Krenko, Mob Boss, doing one thing, and doing it well, is the kind of tunnel vision that's emblematic of Red as a color. Grenzo, Havoc Raiser is different, because unlike so many other red legendaries, Grenzo has no plan of his own. The whole deck relies entirely on your opponents' cards to gain advantage, both by crashing their creatures at each other, and by drawing their cards. This ends up creating a deck that is both unpredictable without being chaotic, and controlling without being oppressive.

You might like Grenzo, Havoc Raiser if:

• You think skipping combat phases is boring
• You are envious of the powerful cards your friends are playing
• You want to rebel against the conventional wisdom
• You want to be surprised by your own boardstate
• You like improvising

You might not like Grenzo, Havoc Raiser if:

• You think the combat phase is an unfortunate necessity in EDH
• You like linear decks with clear plans
• You can't be bothered to pay attention to the boardstate
• You don't like touching other peoples' things
• You like winning

The man in charge

Let's take a look at our commander. The first thing to note is the very low cost, which allows Grenzo to come out early and often. It's a monored deck after all, so things are going to get messy. Also, while your opponents might ignore the unassuming 2/2 at first, once they realize what's going on, you can bet a lot of removal will be thrown at him.

Of course, a 2/2 for RR is not hugely exiting on it's own, so let's look at the ability. Ignoring the trigger condition for a second, we have two very powerful options at our disposal: we can either screw with our opponent's board or we can draw cards. Well, we can draw our opponents' cards, but who cares about details! In fact, they are probably running better cards than we are, as you are about to find out.

A few things to note about Grenzo's ability. First of all, the trigger condition doesn't require Grenzo himself to get into the thick of things, so feel free to leave him to lead the charge from the back. Secondly, understanding how precisely goad works is important. From Comprehensive Rules:

701.36a Certain spells and abilities can goad a creature. Until the next turn of the controller of that spell or ability, that creature attacks each combat if able and attacks a player other than that player if able.

Take note of the parts "Until the next turn of the controller" and "A player other than that player if able". The first part means that a creature goaded by you will stay goaded until your next turn. If, for some reason, the goaded creature participates in multiple declare attack steps before that (Assault Suit, anything that steals a creature, ect.), it will be forced to attack in each of those steps. The second part means that creatures goaded by you will have to attack you, if you are the only possible target. This is obviously the case if only two players remain in the match, but also effects such as Ghostly Prison or Island Sanctuary can affect this. In case of Ghostly Prison, the controller of the goaded creature can choose not to pay, which might limit their options of legal attacks to you.

General Strategy

With an unorthodox deck such as this one, unorthodox strategy applies. The common wisdom of EDH gameplay is as follows: the most efficient playstyle is to work towards your own win condition, only interacting with other players to stop them from reaching theirs. However, with Grenzo, you have to start playing the whole table right from the start. You are essentially playing a strange low-powered stax deck by constraining your opponents' choices, and your wincon is to somehow ride to victory using the card advantage you get from casting other peoples' spells.

Your one advantage over other decks is the uniqueness of your angle of attack. Aggroing out is generally not a very efficient strategy in EDH, but in Grenzo's party, everyone's gotta play by Grenzo's rules. By constantly goading, you'll be essentially forcing everyone to play in the most suboptimal way possible. Be surgical with your goads. Sometimes it's correct to goad that big fatty over the vulnerable dork just to make sure the trampling 12/12 doesn't hit you in the face. You can make deals too: "Don't attack me now with this creature, instead leave it behind as blocker, so I can goad that Notion Thief to run into it on my turn". Goading is an art, and an artist must know their tools. A painter uses a paintbrush to turn a canvas into a masterpiece, while Grenzo uses your opponents' creatures to turn the board into a messy bloodbath. Poetic, no?

Of course, we need to talk about the elephant in the room, wraths. Generally speaking, a monored creature-focused aggro deck will usually just run out of steam once the board gets wiped once or twice. This is where the second option in Grenzo's ability comes to play. Goading, no matter how powerful it can be, is only the way to slow your opponents down. Stealing your opponents' stuff, that's how you win. (Or by resolving Insurrection, whichever comes first.) The rule of thumb is to goad when you have to, and to exile whenever you can. Casting those exiled cards gives you the kind of incremental advantage that will eventually wrench the control of the game over to you. Those exiled cards also allow you to be very conservative with casting your own cards, avoiding overextending. The wraths will come, make no mistake about that, and you must always play around that. Only play enough of your own cards to get the Grenzo triggers going, and then expand your board using the cards you steal. Once someone decides they've had enough, and wipes away everything, you should have enough gas stashed in your hand to rebuild. This is the true unique advantage of Grenzo, and the one thing that makes this deck capable of working at all.

A thing to note is that exiling your opponents things is advantageous, even if you hit only lands, or if you can't cast whatever you flip over from their deck. In case of lands, there's always a possibility of you casting an Oblivion Sower later in the game. More generally, simply milling your opponents' cards straight to exile deprives them of those cards, and there's always a chance you're going to just take away one of their key cards forever. In this note, sometimes it's even correct to just leave a card in exile even if you could cast it. Being familiar with your opponents' decks helps you decide when you just want to get rid of something forever.

So, Grenzo's ability is very powerful. However, to use it, we need to trigger it. This leads us to..

The Cards

The biggest challenge in the deck is obviously managing to trigger Grenzo's ability as many times as possible, so we need to have our creatures in the red zone as soon as Grenzo hits the field.

One way to go around this would be to go full-on goblin tribal, and just swarm the board with tokens. Going wide with disposable creatures is something red does naturally very well. However, the token strategy lends itself to building up towards one big turn where you overwhelm everyone with an enormous alpha strike. In this case, you might as well be running Krenko, Mob Boss as your commander and forget about Grenzo. If you are going to be killing your target anyway, Grenzo's trigger doesn't even do anything useful. Building a big board also represents a large card investment that is easily wiped out with wraths, as discussed above.

What Grenzo wants is creatures that can consistently get in for the damage. With unevasive 1/1 tokens, you will have to throw enormous amounts of them at blockers just to get the triggers, which in turn will require you to keep replenishing your goblin army with cards from your hand, counteracting the card advantage you are trying to get. No, for Grenzo, we want cheap, naturally evasive creatures, that can keep poking your opponents turn after turn, gaining that advantage without having to overextend with your own cards. A bit of efficient token production is good too, but the deck can't hinge entirely on vanilla 1/1s.

Were we playing a blue deck, this would be a nonissue. Unblockable creatures and cheap flyers are absurdly abundant, just look at any Edric, Spymaster of Trest decks. However, the premier red evasion keyword is menace, so we have to go a bit deeper. In fact, a lot deeper. Grenzo is a deck that plays a lot of cards that no other deck plays, as you will see.

Without further ado, let's go through the cards in the deck, and discuss their roles.

Creatures

As mentioned before, the plan here is simple. Evasion, at any cost!

• Hangarback Walker: One of the cheapest ways to amass flying tokens, also a great chump blocker.
• Frenzied Goblin: The ability is surprisingly good, especially combined with menace.
• Hope of Ghirapur: Flying Men with an upside. The ability can be devastating to many decks, effectively robbing them of a turn.
• Legion Loyalist: Stopping tokens from blocking is veeeery good, a lot of decks rely on pumping out tons of tokens to chump attackers.
• Arcbound Stinger: It's a cheap-ish flyer with a marginal upside. Once you start scraping the bottom of the barrel, this is what you find.
• Goblin Glider: A classic! You won't be blocking anyway, so it's like there is no downside at all! Trust me!
• Goblin Tunneler: Guarantees at least one unblockable dork per turn, often Grenzo himself. You'll going to be activating this guy every turn.
• Hovermyr: Yet another cheap-ish flyer. Vigilance is surprisingly nice in a deck that plans to attack every turn anyway.
• Impetuous Sunchaser: With red flyers, either you can't block, or you gotta attack every turn anyway. At least this guy has haste.
• Kari Zev, Skyship Raider: Kari has found her way in, out and back in again the deck multiple times. Can't really make up my mind on her.
• Pili-Pala: It's a 2 mana flyer with no downside. I'll take it. Also perhaps fringe usage with activating abilities of stolen creatures requiring colored mana?
• Yellow Scarves Cavalry: Essentially an unblockable 1/1 for 2. Unless some monster in your playgroup is running Riding the Dilu Horse, in which case I cannot help you. Sorry.
• Burnished Hart: Artifact ramp. It's not an excellent card, but gets you to the top of your curve.
• Dualcaster Mage: Reverberate is very good, and this comes stapled to a body.
• Ferropede: Worse version of Yellow Scarves Cavalry, but unblockable is the Holy Grail of evasion. The triggered ability is cute, counters tend to be everywhere in EDH.
• Goblin Rabblemaster: Very efficient dude generator. Throw him under the bus if the attack clause is causing you trouble.
• Hanweir Garrison: Another efficient token generator. Will take over the game if unanswered.
• Pilgrim's Eye: It has evasion, it gives us a card. It's good enough.
• Prophetic Flamespeaker: Card advantage, we take it where we can get it. Double Grenzo triggers too. Low key one of the best creatures in the deck.
• Pyreheart Wolf: Menace for all, on a recursive body! What's not to like? Also, I once managed to have this bad boy with Ferropede and Skullclamp, so uh, combo?
• Anger: Haste, haste, haste. It's actually a bit of a crap card unless you manage to discard it somehow, but once you get the angry man in the bin, it's pure value. Also, it's the only graveyard matters-card in the deck, so your opponents might be less inclined to nuke your bin if there are green or black decks in the pod.
• Fumiko the Lowblood: Fumiko really throws a wrench in your durdly opponents' plans. Also, paradoxically for a red card, she's an incredible blocker that will usually just overpower anyone who dares to attack you. A great thing to drop on an otherwise too gummed up board.
• Krenko, Mob Boss: The king of all token-producers. Never drop without haste, expect to get one activation before every single removal spell, including boardwipes, are thrown at you.
• Pia and Kiran Nalaar: Mum and dad come with two evasive dorks AND a sac outlet for them. Dripping with value.
• Rakka Mar: Initially I thought the card was a bit underwhelming, but haste on both Rakka and the tokens makes her potent enough. A gift that keeps on giving.
• Solemn Simulacrum: It is an EDH deck after all.
• Neheb, the Eternal: The mana production ability has great synergy with Grenzo, and the beefy statline makes this zombie cow-man great at both blocking and attacking.
• Siege-Gang Commander: The drunk party girl is the step up from Mom and Dad. Tokens lack evasion, but benefit from fringe goblin benefits. A very good post-wrath card.
• Urabrask the Hidden: The worst Praetor shines here! Synergies should be obvious.
• Etali, Primal Storm: Etali works perfectly with our card advantage plan. An absolute beast worthy of being a commander itself, this dino buddy is a great fit.
• Oblivion Sower: Just a bit of synergy with the exile effects. Tends to pay itself back very quickly in late game

Artifacts

Artifacts are the traditional way of patching up red's failings in ramp and card draw. Nothing very special here.

• Lantern of Insight: One of the more annoying cards in Modern makes an appearance! Obvious synergies with Grenzo's ability, essentially turning the deck into a poor man's impression of Lantern Control.
• Skullclamp: Autoinclude.
• Sol Ring: Yes.
• Fire Diamond: Why the bad rock? Because the color requirements in this deck are pretty intense. A lot of double and triple red. On the other hand,  Fellwar Stone might just do the trick anyway...
• Mask of Memory: Card draw, yes. You are planning to get creature damage in anyway.
• Mind Stone: Just another manarock. I like the low cost and the ability to cycle.
• Ruby Medallion: Our curve is low enough for this little card to essentially generate several colorless mana per turn.
• Sword of the Animist: A bit expensive ramp, but since you are planning to attack all the time anyway, it's definitely worth it.
• Ashnod's Altar: One of the best sacrifice outlets in the game. Great synergy with Grenzo's ability, if you manage to exile some high-CMC bombs.
• Extraplanar Lens: The cheapest of the mana-doubling artifacts.
• Sculpting Steel: After seeing this one in action, I've started to wonder why I don't play this in all of my decks. Artifacts are everywhere in EDH, and even just copying a Sol Ring is a pretty good deal.
• Whispersilk Cloak: It's a tossup between this and Lightning Greaves. The greaves are obviously better in general, but evasion is still so very important for this deck.
• Nevinyrral's Disk: The Disk offers an one-size-fits-all solution to all your permanent-related problems.

Enchantments

A random collection of weird red crap. The deck used to be weighted much heavily towards enchantments, but I eventually ended up cutting a lot of them. There's still a good bunch of them, but I foresee the category getting smaller as time goes on.

• Goblin Bombardment: Great sac outlet, right there with Ashnod's Altar. I've lost the count of the games I've managed to win with this one.
• Raging River: Old and weird, kind of inverted Menace. Made for this deck.
• Goblin War Drums: Menace is best in bulk.
• War Cadence: It's the inverted Ghostly Prison! Paying 2 mana, 3 at most per turn to make your whole team unblockable is a decent deal.
• Bedlam: Very good, very dangerous, easily among the more powerful cards in the deck. The best part is seeing the gears turn in your opponents' heads once this baby hits the board. Oh yes, it's on now.
• Outpost Siege: The bad red Phyrexian Arena. Card advantage doesn't come easy.
• Rite of the Raging Storm: This card is essentially made for the deck. The elemental has trample, which makes them super annoying to deal with.
• Stolen Strategy: Free cards! Yes! Redundancy is always good.

Instants

A meager selection of answers.

• Pyroblast: The ultimate "Gotcha!" against shenanigans. Countering the Zur player's Decree of Silence just as he was about to lock the board with it and Solemnity feels really good.
• Comet Storm: A halfway-decent instant speed removal. Might swap for Magmaquake or something similar.
• Reverberate: We don't get Counterspell, we get Reverberate. I'm okay with this.
• Chaos Warp: The catch-all red removal for pesky permanents, including the hated enchantments. Never leave home without it.
• Scour from Existence: For those times when you just really don't want to see that enchantment ever again.

Sorceries

Wipes and answers. Also Insurrection.

• Vandalblast: The great artifact wipe is autoinclude in any red deck.
• Wheel of Fortune: Yes.
• Aftershock: Expensive, but it answers everything red can answer. A true EDH card.
• Disrupt Decorum: So, Wizards decided to just print a card in C17 for Grenzo, and hide it in the Vampire deck. Very sneaky!
• Insurrection: For those times you actually want to win the game.
• Blasphemous Act: The most mana-efficient boardwipe. Rare are the times when I have paid more than R for this.

Lands

Some usual land-based utility.

• Hanweir Battlements: A haste-enabling land, and you might have it with Hanweir Garrison. I have managed to meld them once, and I've played this deck A LOT.
• Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx: Might as well, seeing how many double-red manacosts we have floating around in our creatures.
• Rogue's Passage: Clutch evasion when you really need it.
• Scavenger Grounds: Random graveyard hate. We don't use our own yard for anything (minus Anger, so the opportunity cost is low.
• Strip Mine: Cuz sometimes you just gotta Strip Mine a fool. Bonus points for mining basic Islands. It's all about sending a message.
• Throne of the High City: Monarchy gives us card-draw, and with our evasion package we can usually get it back when it inevitably gets stolen from us.
• Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle: No reason not to include this in a monored deck.

Date added	8 years
Last updated	2 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	9 - 0 Mythic Rares 42 - 4 Rares 19 - 2 Uncommons 3 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.12
Tokens	Eldrazi Scion 1/1 C, Goblin 1/1 R, Gold, Human 1/1 R, Ragavan, Monarch Emblem, Thopter 1/1 C, Treasure
Folders	EDH, Inspiratoin
Based on	Krenko $10 EDH ihmnp EDH