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Teneb's Wurm Harvest

Commander / EDH* BGW (Abzan, Junk)

TinOmen

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Lands (37)

Wipes (9)

Tribal (4)

Gravehate (3)

Rise From Your Graves (16)

Wurms (14)

STR (11)

CombatProtect (3)

Lifegain (3)

Commander (1)

Commander: Teneb, the Harvester

Ramp (14)

Draw (12)

These Are Grave Matters (7)

Shadow P -> Ouroboroid Read the Bones -> Worldspine Wurm Anguished Unmaking -> Oric Loremage

Teneb's Wurm Harvest

Do you like... wurms? Well, you're out of luck because they have no tribal support. Unless, of course, we think of tribal support as something a bit more... vague. What supports a wurm tribe? Well, lots of strength. And what also supports a wurm tribe? Well casting them for less than their cost. How can we do that? Ah, that's the easy part - put them in the ground, where wurms love to be.

Gameplan

This is a very "fair" deck, although it can crush budget decks that are also "fair". We aren't running any combos, and our wincon is simply turn wurms sideways and send them at our opponents' faces. If they get infinite life, we can always put a turn 4 clock on with our commander. The deck wants to burst out huge beaters early via cheating them out of the grave, and then grind out a longer slow game with control and wipes that we come back from easy. If you want to make the deck a bit more "unfair", add Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord to nuke multiple players.

We are running 11 wurms in the deck: Armada Wurm, Bookwurm, Engulfing Slagwurm, Impervious Greatwurm, Massacre Wurm, Novablast Wurm, Pelakka Wurm, Penumbra Wurm, Sifter Wurm, Worldspine Wurm, Defiler of Vigor, and Wurmcoil Engine. Our old buddies Garruk, Primal Hunter and Baru, Wurmspeaker then produce more slurmy wurmys too. We then make our wurms more terrifying through tribal effects like Cover of Darkness, Kindred Summons (good fun with Baru), and Steely Resolve, or by slapping a Blade of Selves onto them.

So because we sometimes will draw our wurms and our commander costs 6, we need a LOT of mana. Early game, you're basically going to be ramping, and maybe casting a wipe in the process if things get out of hand. We have cards we can ramp with by turn three: Cultivate, Farseek, Nature's Lore, Rampant Growth, Sakura-Tribe Elder, Sol Ring, Three Visits and Wood Elves. These mostly search for non-basic forests, so be sure to fetch the colors you need. Solemn Simulacrum is then a turn 4 ramp card, which is a bit slow but never bad, and draws for 3 if we pitch it to Disciple of Bolas or Shadowheart, Dark Justiciar. Then Culling Ritual is wipe and ramp all in one, and is probably our best turn four play for getting ahead in the game.

After ramping out, you're going to want to toss things into the bin with cards like Buried Alive, Entomb, Fauna Shaman, Oriq Loremage and his faster but less value over time buddy Gravebreaker Lamia, and Unmarked Grave. Our demon friends Burning-Rune Demon, the best five dollar mythic your playgroup overlooks, and Doom Whisperer are then also great. Nothing like finding the card you want and a Eternal Witness with Burning-Rune... a win-win either way. Finally, Geier Reach Sanitarium is a great land for binning something right at a player's end-step and then getting it into play the next turn with something in our hand, or, heart of the cards, something we just drew.

To get the wurms OUT of the graveyard we are then using... our commander! Well, not just that, but never forget that Teneb is a Necromancy on a stick. We are running Necromancy though, as well as Back for More, Sheoldred, Whispering One, The Eldest Reborn, and Elspeth Conquers Death all of which double as removal, as well as Eerie Ultimatum, Karmic Guide, Priest of Fell Rites, and Reanimate. Cards like Agadeem's Awakening   and Eternal Witness can then get back our smaller stuff.

Anyway, getting big worms out fast is game plan one! In lower power metas, this should be all you need, but if the game goes long...

Not all players fold just to a 16/16 Impervious Greatwurm. Sometimes, you have to actually get rid of their stuff too! We can't have 1/1 Saproling tokens ruining our day. So we've got a suite of removal. As mentioned, Sheoldred, Whispering One, The Eldest Reborn, and Elspeth Conquers Death all work as removal while helping our recursion plans. Anguished Unmaking, Assassin's Trophy, Path to Exile and Back for More then work at instant speed.

For wipes, we first have our wurms: Massacre Wurm and Novablast Wurm. Massacre Wurm is especially fun with Blade of Selves if you hate token decks, and Novablast Wurm is a wipe on a stick. Damn is STR and a wipe, Cleansing Nova can deal with artifacts and enchantments (we have few, most are Sun Titan-able), and Ondo Inversion is there in a pinch. Finally, Cataclysmic Gearhulk is easy to tutor and recur, which can help us stall over and over again.

We don't want to run out of gas though. Most of our draw relies on how strong wurms are, and that we don't care if ours die. Sure, Bookwurm and Pelakka Wurm draw us one card, but Disciple of Bolas, Garruk, Primal Hunter, Rishkar's Expertise, Greater Good, and Shadowheart, Dark Justiciar can all draw us way more than that. Don't hesitate to tutor Disciple of Bolas especially if you are running out of gas, as sometimes drawing 8-16 cards and then binning half to hand size is just what we want to do! This is the Greater Good plan too: draw a bunch, bin the cards we want to recur.

This deck absolutely could be stronger by makign it anything other than wurm tribal, but if you like wurms, like I do, it certainly does what it needs to do.

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Revision 113 See all

(2 weeks ago)

-1 Pelakka Wurm main
+1 Persist main
+1 Unmarked Grave main
-1 Vile Entomber main