Commander Collection: Barnstormer

Commander / EDH Bracket 3 Burn RG (Gruul) Tokens

Jurrane

Ramp (16)

• 1x Battle Hymn
• 1x Birds of Paradise
• 1x Crop RotationGC
• 1x Cultivate
• 1x Farseek
• 1x Goblin Anarchomancer *f-etch*
• 1x Harrow
• 1x Jeska's WillGC
• 1x Kodama's Reach
• 1x Mana Geyser
• 1x Nature's Lore
• 1x Rampant Growth
• 1x Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Storm-Kiln Artist
• 1x Three Visits

Copying Spells (8)

• 1x Double Vision
• 1x Dualcaster Mage
• 1x Howl of the Horde
• 1x Increasing Vengeance
• 1x Raiding Schemes
• 1x Reiterate
• 1x Reverberate
• 1x Twinferno

Removal (5)

• 1x Beast Within
• 1x Blasphemous Act
• 1x Chaos Warp
• 1x Decimate
• 1x Wild Magic Surge

Tutors (1)

• 1x Eldritch Evolution

Land (35)

• 1x Arid Mesa P
• 1x Bloodstained Mire P
• 1x Fabled Passage P
• 12x Forest
• 1x Gaea's Cradle PGC
• 1x Kher Keep
• 1x Misty Rainforest P
• 12x Mountain
• 1x Prismatic Vista P
• 1x Scalding Tarn P
• 1x Verdant Catacombs P
• 1x Windswept Heath P
• 1x Wooded Foothills P

Card Draw (8)

• 1x Benefactor's Draught
• 1x Collective Unconscious
• 1x Harmonize
• 1x Shamanic Revelation
• 1x Skullclamp
• 1x Sylvan Library P
• 1x Thrill of Possibility
• 1x Tormenting Voice

Direct Damage Sources (6)

• 1x Guttersnipe
• 1x Impact Tremors
• 1x Molten Gatekeeper
• 1x Purphoros, God of the Forge
• 1x Throne of the God-Pharaoh
• 1x Witty Roastmaster

Protection (3)

• 1x Heroic Intervention P
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Swiftfoot Boots

Commander (1)

Token Generators (9)

• 1x Arasta of the Endless Web
• 1x Artifact Mutation
• 1x Awaken the Woods
• 1x Dragonlair Spider
• 1x Krenko, Mob Boss
• 1x Omnath, Locus of Rage
• 1x Scute Swarm
• 1x Xenagos, the Reveler
• 1x Young Pyromancer

Finishers (7)

• 1x Banefire
• 1x Comet Storm
• 1x Crackle with Power
• 1x Crater's Claws
• 1x Fireball
• 1x Jaya's Immolating Inferno
• 1x Price of Progress

Recursion (1)

• 1x Past in Flames

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Introduction

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What started life as a fun budget experiment has become one of my favourite decks. I’ve always been a fan of EDH builds that do unusual things in their colour identity, especially Gruul which tends to go down the creature smash route (although I really want to build Ruric Thar, the Unbowed at some point).

Wort, the Raidmother tears up the Gruul stereotype into tiny pieces, douses them in petrol, sets them on fire and shoots them out of a rocket launcher at the nearest living thing. It fuses together storm, token, combo and spellslinger strategies, chaining together copied spells using Wort’s ability to duplicate instants and sorceries, generating incremental value throughout the game and often finishing off all its opponents at once with a barrage of direct damage.

This is my short overview about how I play the deck. I’m not a particularly good deckbuilder or player, so take everything I say with a pinch of salt. What follows are mostly my early observations from my handful of games so far. I’m not an expert and I’m not pretending to be one. I’d love to learn from other Wort players!

Objective

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As a Wort, the Raidmother player, our job is to burn each of our opponents into a charred smouldering crisp, preferably all at the same time. We do this by quickly developing a board presence early on; gaining value and assembling our key cards during the midgame; and then winning with big burn spells, which will have likely been copied at least once using Wort’s conspire ability and other effects.

Our game ending cards are either big X-powered direct damage instants or sorceries: Banefire, Crackle with Power, Crater's Claws, Fireball, Jaya's Immolating Inferno or Comet Storm, copied with Wort or other spells to hit different targets (or the same targets simulaneously). We also have Price of Progress which can easily take out multiple players, especially if they’ve been greedy with lands. Other than fetches that can be sacrificed when needed, we run almost exclusively basic lands so don’t need to worry about damage from Price of Progress.

If volleys of direct damage spells don’t do the trick, we can also win through incremental damage generated by a series of synergistic cards that support the deck’s token and spellslinger strategies. These cards are also handy in the mid game for chipping away at our opponents’ life totals until they’re within range of our burn spells. Think of them as some of the engine cards of the deck. They include:

- Throne of the God-Pharaoh: One of our most important cards. If things are going to plan, we’ll usually end each of our turns with a bunch of tapped creatures.
- Guttersnipe: Deals damage to each of our opponents when we cast our many non-creature spells.
- Purphoros, God of the Forge // Impact Tremors // Witty Roastmaster // Molten Gatekeeper: We’re going to be making plenty of tokens. With these cards on the board, our opponents will be hurting when that happens.

Early Game Strategy

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During our first few turns, we’re trying to keep our heads down, stay out of trouble and swiftly build up our resources. We do this by ramping up our mana and making tokens.

Let’s start with our opening hand. This is EDH so we never know what we’ll begin with, but we’re ideally looking for 2-3 lands, some form of ramp and possibly something that creates tokens. Don’t be afraid to mulligan aggressively as the deck really needs these early resources, otherwise we’ll get stuck durdling around while our opponents develop their own board presence.

Cards you’ll want to see are the following:

- Mana Dorks: I've generally removed most one-drop dorks in this deck in favour of more ramp spells, as ramp spells put lands directly into play, are less vulnerable to removal and can be copied later on with Wort. I've kept Birds of Paradise though and a couple of two mana creatures:Goblin Anarchomancer and Sakura-Tribe Elder. Any of these are great early plays.

- Ramp: You want to put as many lands in play as quickly as possible, so you can cast Wort, the Raidmother and your other higher mana value spells. Rampant Growth, Farseek, Nature's Lore, Three Visits, Cultivate and Kodama's Reach are your friends here. Avoid using Harrow or Crop RotationGC unless you really have to, as they work much better when they can be conspired with Wort.

- Tokens: Another recent design decision I've made is to remove the one-shot token creation effects like Dragon Fodder or Krenko's Command. Instead I've focused on creatures that have triggered effects that create tokens on a repeatable basis: Scute Swarm Arasta of the Endless Web; Young Pyromancer etc. Awaken the Woods even just for a couple of Forest Dryads can sometimes be worth it, or Artifact Mutation on an enemy Sol Ring or other useful artifact.

Playing in the early game is mostly a case of doing your own thing and not getting distracted by your opponents. It’s usually the right approach to hang back and not get too aggressive, because you don’t want to paint a target on your back. Very few decks can match our late game power, so it’s important we survive until then. Most people don’t want to waste removal on tokens so you’ll usually get left alone. Board wipes can really ruin our day so be mindful of overextending.

It’s generally not worth attacking with creatures early on as you’re probably not going to win by combat damage. You don’t want to be seen as an imminent threat (don’t worry, you’ll be a legitimate threat soon enough), so the right early game strategy is usually to avoid combat in case your tokens are blocked or removed. Similarly, it’s usually unwise to chump block opposing attackers unless you’re facing a lot of damage. We rely on our creatures to copy our spells once Wort hits the table, so do whatever it takes to keep your tokens (or other creatures) around.

We have quite a few removal spells but unless an early threat is really game-breaking, or has the potential to significantly disrupt our late game plans, it’s often best just to leave it for other players to deal with. Our removal cards will have a lot more impact once they’re duplicated with Wort.

Mid Game Strategy

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Once we’re past the first few turns, hopefully we’ll have a decent amount of lands in play and a small number of creatures. Now it’s all about casting Wort, the Raidmother, which is when the fun begins.

The great thing about Wort (apart from the fact that she can easily blow opponents off the face of the earth) is that she creates absolutely insane levels of value by using her conspire ability to make copies. Cards that have a sacrifice cost become a minor annoyance at worst, because you don’t have to pay that sacrifice cost for anything copied with Wort. So Harrow gets you four lands for the small price of sacrificing one (tapped) land; similar principle for Crop RotationGC. Sacrifice a creature to Eldritch Evolution, copy it with Wort’s conspire ability and you get to tutor for two key creatures from your library (sac Dualcaster Mage when he’s done his thing; get Purphoros, God of the Forge and Guttersnipe). Brilliant. All your removals are doubled in potency (Decimate is hilarious), and resource cards like Manamorphose, Harmonize, Collective Unconscious and Shamanic Revelation become truly ridiculous. All for the price of tapping two creatures of the right colours each time.

Your opponents will catch on to this and realise they’re in trouble, so expect Wort to become a target. Swiftfoot Boots, Lightning Greaves are included to protect Wort but you can usually ramp into enough lands so that re-casting her for extra commander tax is less of an issue. We need a lot of land anyway for our big X spells, so playing her repeatedly shouldn’t be a problem (and we get more tokens too).

Overall, the mid game is where we want to be using our resources to generating very high levels of value from our cards. Look for opportunistic ways to use effects like Dualcaster Mage, Reverberate or Reiterate at instant speed to copy whatever shenanigans other players are doing. I once copied another player’s Peer into the Abyss, which immediately gave me enough resources to storm off and kill all three opponents with multiple instances of Price of Progress during someone else’s end step. It was glorious.

One final piece of advice for the midgame: watch your opponents’ life totals like a hawk. As soon as one (or more) of them is in range… get ‘em.

Late Game Strategy

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As the game ebbs and flows, our opponents’ life totals will start to dwindle as players deal damage to each other and we help things along with Throne of the God-Pharaoh, Guttersnipe, Impact Tremors, Witty Roastmaster and our other engine cards. Keep a close eye on the mana you have available, if or how many times you can copy any direct damage spells you draw, and whether any opponents are within range of our game-ending burn.

When a Wort deck shifts through its gears, it can often feel like a storm deck as you chain spells together to build up large amounts of mana and produce a steady stream of tokens to copy multiple spells in a single turn. Here are some key cards to watch for that help you get the most of your resources:

- Benefactor's Draught: This is a little workhorse of a card that untaps your team so they can conspire more spells if needed. It's also an incredible way of drawing lots of cards and can be used on opponents' attack phases instead of your own. Plus it can be copied if needed.
- Jeska's WillGC: An amazing card to target with conspire or other copy effects, generating insane amounts of mana.
- Past in Flames: A key storm component, allowing you to recast your spells (and copy them again) from the graveyard.

Make effective use of these resources and you can generate some very large direct damage spells that can be copied by Wort’s conspire ability and other copy effects, allowing us to instantly take one or more players out of the game. This is when our X-powered burn spells really shine: Banefire, Crackle with Power, Crater's Claws, Fireball, Jaya's Immolating Inferno and Comet Storm should generally be saved until the end of the game when they often mean instant death for unfortunate players. Price of Progress fulfills a similar role and can often be more efficient than X-spells if players have been ramping into plenty of lands.

Although you can only copy a spell once with conspire, don’t forget you can copy spells like Reverberate, Howl of the Horde or Reiterate to make additional copies of the original spell. If you have enough creatures, you can easily make four instances of an X-spell (the original, a conspired copy, a copy spell like Reverberate and a conspired copy of the copy spell). In the immortal words of Tom Jones, it’s not unusual.

If Wort has a weakness, it’s that smart opponents are usually ready for the big X-powered spells with counters and damage prevention effects. While the deck has a couple of ways to overcome blue counterspells, such as Red Elemental Blast and Vexing Shusher; or remove problematic permanents with Chaos Warp, it can be susceptible to heavy control and boardwipes. In these cases, it’s worth remembering two things: (1) conspire and most copy effects are cast triggers so you can still copy countered spells; and (2) you’ll win a surprising amount of games without the big X-spells if you can manage to stick one or more of Throne of the God-Pharaoh, Guttersnipe, Impact Tremors and Purphoros, God of the Forge. In a pinch, you can even attack with waves of tokens and those that survive will be ready for their Throne of the God-Pharaoh trigger at the end of the turn.

Power Level

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I categorise decks in my collection according to four tiers of power, from 1 (most powerful) to 4 (least powerful):

Tier 1: Higher powered decks with fast mana, free spells, and infinite combos or instant wins that are searchable with tutors.
Tier 2: Well tuned decks which may have infinite combos or instant wins that are searchable with tutors, but not many fast mana sources and/or free spells.
Tier 3: Reasonably well tuned casual decks that are capable of powerful plays. May occasionally have infinite combos or instant wins but don't generally use tutors to find them.
Tier 4: Lower powered or linear decks, weak enough to play against other casual decks.

I would classify this as one of my Tier 3 decks. It plays "fair" Magic, albeit is capable of doing some broken things if its game plan works. It doesn't run any tutors, infinite combos or fast mana, which makes it a good choice at most casual tables. But don't be deceived: it's more than capable of holding its own in most mid-power casual pods and can often be underestimated by unwitting opponents.

With that in mind, I'd say this list fits into Bracket 3 of WotC's new EDH power brackets system. It has three game-changer cards in Jeska's WillGC, Crop RotationGC and a proxied Gaea's CradleGC but can do some degenerate things, such as copying Jeska's WillGC and Crop RotationGC multiple times for insane value. It's probably OK to play against pre-cons too so, for now, B3 seems about right.

The Ten Game Take

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After playing ten games with each of my decks I'll share its win percentage over that time, together with feedback and learnings from my experience so far.

This was the third of my 40 decks to reach ten games (I try not to play favourites and ensure each gets an airing fairly regularly). From those 10 games the deck's overall win percentage was 30%, as it won 3/10 matches. That's about average for the typical Commander deck as, assuming 4 players in each pod, statistically each player should be winning about 25% of the time.

This is the sort of deck that kills the whole table at once or gets completely run over - there's no middle ground. But that's the fun of it: it's definitely worth playing for those times when it properly goes off. When it works I have this vision in my head of all these little goblins murmuring and chantin, casting spell after spell, building in volume and intensity until they invoke their final incantation and everything gets engulfed in an enormous ball of flame.

So far my finest hour was in what I'm fairly sure in hindsight was a Bracket 4 pod (before WotC's brackets system) against opponents including K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth and Chulane, Teller of Tales. I won the game with multiple instances of Price of Progress after drawing half the deck by flashing in a Dualcaster Mage in response to a Peer into the Abyss. But with only a couple of wins since, it's been only occasionally succesful as it has quite a few drawbacks.

When we lose, it tends to be when our various deck elements don't line up properly so we're stuck with the wrong pieces at the wrong time (too many finishers early in the game, no ramp or token generators at the appropriate points etc). Or when we're playing against smart opponents who realise our tokens are our key to exponentially scaling and therefore use all their efforts to keep them off the battlefield at all times (it happens). We also struggle with pure aggro: we don't usually want to be blocking with our creatures and don't run enough mass destruction or removal to control the board particularly effectively.

However, after ten games I'd say it's definitely a deck worth persisting with. It does some very un-Gruul things and leads to some fun game states. It's definitely one for lower power levels as it feels at home in Bracket 3 and it the sort of deck that seems fair(ish) against precons too.

Budget

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The great thing about this deck is it's pretty cheap to build. In fact it's the least expensive deck in my collection and makes an excellent budget choice for the power level it offers. Only a handful of cards cost over $10 (Jeska's WillGC, Benefactor's Draught, Awaken the Woods) and the land base is almost exclusively basics (apart from proxied versions of the fetch lands), owing to Price of Progress. At the time of writing this, the full deck is averaging around $250 to buy on Card Kingdom. If you're looking for a budget deck that packs a serious punch, I can totally recommend Wort, the Raidmother.

Upcoming Changes

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I’m planning to add a (proxied) version of Gaea's CradleGC, to increase the number of GC cards to the maximum number of three for a B3 deck. I already have a real printing in another deck and it works well here, especially as it can be tutored for with Crop RotationGC. Otherwise I’m happy with this list in its current form.

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All My EDH Decks

{W} Giada, Font of Hope {W}
S(i)erra Sidewinder: Mono-White Angel Tribal

{U} Orvar, the All-Form {U}
Clone Zone: Mono-Blue Shapeshifters Combo

{B} Sidisi, Undead Vizier {B}
Swamp Thing: Mono-Black Midrange Combo

{B} Ayara, First of Locthwain {B}
Black Diamond: Mono-Black Aristocrats Combo

{R} Torbran, Thane of Red Fell {R}
Red Force: Mono-Red Group Slug

{R} Rionya, Fire Dancer {R}
Firebird: Mono-Red Storm/Tokens

{G} Titania, Protector of Argoth {G}
Timber Terror: Mono-Green Land Sacrifice

{W}{U} Grand Arbiter Augustin IVGC {W}{U}
Control Freak: Azorius Control

{W}{U} Elminster {W}{U}
Crystal Wing: Azorius Skies & Scry

{U}{B} Oona, Queen of the Fae {U}{B}
Dreamcatcher: Dimir Faeries Tribal

{U}{B} Narfi, Betrayer King {U}{B}
Ice Breaker: Dimir Snow/Zombies

{U}{B} Lord of the Nazgul {U}{B}
The Black Gate Opens: Dimir Spellslinger

{B}{R} Rakdos, Lord of Riots {B}{R}
Steamin’ Demon: Rakdos Life Loss

{B}{R} Juri, Master of the Revue {B}{R}
Pandemonium: Rakdos Sacrifice

{R}{G} Wort, the Raidmother {R}{G}
Barnstormer: Gruul Conspire

{W}{G} Sigarda, Font of Blessings {W}{G}
Stampida: Selesnya Humans Tribal

{W}{G} Captain Sisay {W}{G}
Legendia: Selesnya Legendary

{W}{G} Sythis, Harvest's Hand {W}{G}
Diamondback: Selesnya Enchantress

{W}{B} Daxos the Returned {W}{B}
Curse of Novgorod: Orzhov Constellation

{W}{B} Kambal, Consul of Allocation {W}{B}
Oblivion: Orzhov Lifegain & Lifedrain

{W}{B} Eriette of the Charmed Apple {W}{B}
Flight of the Wicked Witch: Orzhov Auras

{U}{R} Firkraag, Cunning Instigator {U}{R}
Dragon’s Fury: Izzet Dragons/Goad

{B}{G} Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons {B}{G}
Scorpion Express: Golgari Deathtouch

{B}{G} Nath of the Gilt-Leaf {B}{G}
Outlaw Run: Golgari Elves/Discard

{W}{R} Bruenor Battlehammer {W}{R}
Steel Force: Boros Equipment

{W}{R} General Ferrous Rokiric {W}{R}
Gatekeeper: Boros Multicoloured

{U}{G} Ezuri, Stalker of Spheres {U}{G}
Toxic Garden: Simic Infect

{W}{U}{B} Tivit, Seller of Secrets {W}{U}{B}
Steel Vengeance: Esper Artifacts

{W}{U}{B} Yennett, Cryptic Sovereign {W}{U}{B}
Riddler’s Revenge: Esper Topdeck

{U}{B}{R} Marchesa, the Black Rose {U}{B}{R}
Revenge of the Mummy: Grixis Dethrone/Combo

{B}{R}{G} Vaevictis Asmadi, the Dire {B}{R}{G}
Dragon Wagon: Jund Dragons Tribal

{W}{R}{G} Pantlaza, Sun-Favored {W}{R}{G}
Raptor Attack: Naya Dinosaurs Tribal

{W}{U}{G} Galadriel, Light of Valinor {W}{U}{G}
Vapour Trail: Bant Flicker

{W}{B}{G} Karador, Ghost Chieftain {W}{B}{G}
Hair Raiser: Abzan Reanimator

{W}{B}{G} Bilbo, Birthday Celebrant {W}{B}{G}
A Long-Expected Party: Abzan Lifegain/Combo

{W}{U}{R} Kykar, Wind's Fury {W}{U}{R}
Storm Runner: Jeskai Tokens

{W}{U}{R} Hinata, Dawn-Crowned {W}{U}{R}
Phantom’s Revenge: Jeskai Control

{U}{B}{G} Yarok, the Desecrated {U}{B}{G}
Boomerang: Sultai ETB Triggers

{W}{B}{R} Kaalia of the Vast {W}{B}{R}
Abyssus: Mardu Angels & Demons

{U}{R}{G} Omnath, Locus of the Roil {U}{R}{G}
Boulder Dash: Temur Landfall

{U}{R}{G} Eshki, Temur's Roar {U}{R}{G}
Thunder Striker: Temur Power Matters

Date added	5 years
Last updated	3 months
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	9 - 0 Mythic Rares 37 - 0 Rares 15 - 0 Uncommons 15 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.91
Tokens	Beast 3/3 G, Copy Clone, Elemental 1/1 R, Elemental 5/5 RG, Forest Dryad 1/1 G, Goblin 1/1 R, Goblin Warrior 1/1 RG, Insect 1/1 G, Kobolds of Kher Keep 0/1 R, Saproling 1/1 G, Satyr 2/2 GR, Spider 1/2 G, Treasure
Folders	Other peoples decks