Howlin' With the Pack

Commander / EDH loricatuslupus

SCORE: 54 | 11 COMMENTS | 4852 VIEWS | IN 51 FOLDERS


FINALLY —Sept. 11, 2021

Well, it took so long that I was seriously considering retiring this deck but we finally have a legendary werewolf that doesn't suck. For too long Ulrich was the only choice, and a poor one at that - he has no text that references his tribe, little value beyond being a big beater and a mana cost that quickly becomes prohibitive for a deck without much ramp. Enter Tovolar, Dire Overlord  Flip. First up, costing three instead of five is huge: it means he can be cast early enough to start having an impact AND even recasting him with commander tax is easy enough. Then there's him flipping our werewolves at the start of the turn - provides we meet an easy condition, that is - an ability that mitigates one of the deck's greatest weaknesses. The "old school" werewolf rules suck for commander, and all too often you can take a whole turn off only for this to be completely wasted when the person after you casts two spells (spoiler: in EDH, people often cast more than one spell per turn). Tovolar stops that being such a downside, and in fact means that creatures which have a bonus when they flip will activate more often. Finally, he comes with the three words everyone wants on their commander: "draw a card". Oh, it's conditional? I bet that'll really mess with our game plan of...battering people with wolves. Oh wait, no it won't. Worth mentioning that Midnight Hunt also brings enough other good werewolves for me to finally cut some of the poor ones. Sure, we're still lacking the prevalence of lords that say, elves have but frankly it'll be nice not being forced to pad out the deck with draft chaff simply due to lack of other options. Tovolar's Huntmaster  Flip and Kessig Naturalist  Flip seem the most exciting but several others are actively good.

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/budget-commander-werewolf-tribal The guy in this article has some pretty good tips for building werewolf tribal. His guidelines helped with most of my deck. I highly reccommend his content, and this seems like a place where it can get some use.

May 12, 2020 9:54 a.m.

loricatuslupus says... #2

On yeah I know of Tomer, wouldn't be one of his articles without the suggestion of Vedalken Orrery! Not really seeing much suggested that I don't already have or want though apart from some non-wolves like Foe-Razer Regent, Magus of the Arena and Norwood Priestess - which I'm deliberately avoiding to stay in theme (as I say in the description, this is just a casual deck so I'm not too concerned about optimisation. But thanks anyway!

May 13, 2020 5:10 a.m.

If you care more about the theme, then his article isn't great, but I thought you'd enjoy it. But remember... Even though it's not much of a casual card, Blood Moon is very on-theme for Werewolves and also is very synergistic.

May 13, 2020 9:01 a.m.