My mission: to create a deck based around each planeswalker in the game. Not all will be original, not all will be tournament worthy, but all will hopefully be fun and interesting. I call it my "Walk The Walk" series.
So far we've covered Venser (WtW 1: Sojourning Savant), Nicol Bolas (WtW 2: Respect Your Elder), Ajani Goldmane (WtW 3: Heart (& Soul) of Gold), Chandra Nalaar (WtW 4: She'll Bring The Heat), and most recently Liliana Vess (WtW 5: This Might Hurt...A Lot). Now we're going to shift to another planeswalker with ties to Liliana: like her, this 'walker is one of the "original five" introduced in Lorwyn and, surprisingly for being such a major character, especially for his color, has only one oft-reprinted card so far. He also has ties to Liliana in more sinister ways...just read Wizard's online comics "The Hunter and the Veil" and "The Veil's Curse" if you don't already know what I mean. We're talking about green's first (and still its indisputably best) planeswalker: Garruk Wildspeaker.
So far, our planeswalker's motivations have been pretty easy to pin down: Nicol Bolas and Liliana are all about destroying everyone that stands in the way of their respective quests for power, Ajani is all about his quest for justice, Chandra is about bucking authority in her quest for a simple thrill. In short, they all have their motivations rooted in various levels of selfishness. Garruk is much more simple than that. He cares not so much for himself as he does for preserving what's around him: nature. At least, that's what HE would tell you. Really, he has his own selfish ambitions, albeit simple ones: the quest for the ultimate hunt, the ultimate prey. He still hasn't really found it, but he throws himself at the toughest beasts he can find looking for that satisfaction.
And thus we get to his deck, which is all about the beasts he hunts...and that do plenty of hunting on their own.
As you may have noticed in my other decks, I don't very much care for older cards. Pretty much everything I use is from Mirrodin and later. Not so with this deck. Much like Garruk, this deck goes "back to nature", reaching back to old-school sets to make a real tribal beast deck. We've got old beastie favorites that boost other beasts' stats (Fangren Firstborn and Berserk Murlodont), spot other beasts to boost their OWN stats (Canopy Crawler and Feral Throwback), provide some emergency lifegain (Ravenous Baloth), pass out trample (Krosan Groundshaker), and perhaps most imporantly, make all these expensive beasties cheaper (Krosan Warchief). Newer beasts are either just cheap fillers (Garruk's Companion and Leatherback Baloth), relatively inexpensive massive beasties that shrug off counterspells (Terra Stomper and Kalonian Behemoth, or have a bit of a tribal ability of their own by drawing cards whenever other 3+ power beasts enter play (Garruk's Packleader).
And don't forget about the man himself. Garruk can help with beastie production by indirectly generating mana with his first ability and actually creating beasts with his second ability (which works with Garruk's Packleader or can basically be turned into 4 life with Ravenous Baloth), and then can turn them all into true rampaging behemoths with his "ultimate" ability: a built-in Overrun.
Since you lack any other permanents besides lands, Back to Nature, Creeping Corrosion, and Fracturing Gust obliterate pesky enchantments and artifacts that might get in your way.
Classic green: force a battle of strength vs. strength, and just run over anything in your way. Garruk and his beasties do it SO well.
Good hunting!
