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Xenagos's Big Bash

Commander / EDH* Aggro Goodstuff Ramp RG (Gruul) Stompy Trample

CaptCreek

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Creature (30)

Artifact (3)

Land (34)

Instant (12)

Commander (1)

Commander: Xenagos, God of Revels

Sorcery (14)

Enchantment (6)

Let's Get This Party Started!

Greetings, fellow party animals! This is my all-time favorite deck to bust out. The basic idea is to ramp Xenagos out quickly and start swinging with huge creatures to crush opponents.

Discussion is always welcome!

If you like to party, kick back, relax, and summon giant monsters to stomp your enemies flat, then Xenagos, God of Revels is the primo party host. He likes to party, and appreciates those that can go with the flow and dance the night away on top of the fallen.

This deck also has the potential to quickly recover from board wipes, since you're usually not committing too much to the board. Optimal play in my experience has been to play one or two big threats at a time (Unless you're 100% sure you're going to win that turn or not otherwise be punished), and hold back other big creatures to play after a board wipe or other removal to effectively be in the same spot you were before.

As far as budget goes, this deck can function effectively on a low budget compared to a lot of other decks simply because there are a LOT of big, inexpensive creatures you can use in place of the more expensive ones in here. Really, all you need is Xenagos, and any rowdy party guests and you'll be ready to rock and roll all night!

A party is only as good as the guests you invite, and luckily for us, there are a ton of them for you to choose from. Creatures, especially big and scary creatures, are relatively cheap and easy to come by, and Xenagos makes all of them better by doubling their power and giving them haste. This is another reason that this deck is so flexible since really all you need are big threats (Of which there are plenty, and a ton of them are worth pennies!) to make the dance floor start booming!

Malignus is one of the best creatures in the deck, being a massive threat if it comes out early, and even more of a threat when boosted by Xenagos. Being potentially a 40/40 makes him super scary, and Gods help your opponents if you can give him unblockable or trample. OUCH. Phyrexian Hydra is essentially just another malignus, and is very much a huge threat to anyone without blockers.

An over-performer at my parties so far would have to be Atarka, World Render. Not only does she have some great stats and some of the best evasion in the game with Flying AND Trample which makes her extremely hard to avoid, but she also gives all attacking dragons you control (Including herself!) Double Strike, which makes her even more back-breaking. Essentially, for 7 mana, when Xenagos is out you're playing a 12/10 Flying Trample Double Strike Haste that swings for 24 into someone's face the turn she's played. If that didn't sell you on this dragon queen, then you must be insane.

Moraug, Fury of Akoum is a new card that I'm toying around with. Extra combats always gets me foaming at the mouth, and doing it on a creature is even better. He makes late game ramp spells actually worthwhile, and if you give him trample, he can easily kill multiple people very quickly.

Ilharg, the Raze-Boar Is a unique card, allowing us to sneak attack people with creatures that are returned to our hand after attacking. This can get very out of hand with the right creatures attacking. Also the fact that it gets put back into the library after it dies is also a nice touch.

Quartzwood Crasher is basically Kill-On-Sight, because it can easily become out of control. The best part about it is that it adds bodies to the board without adding to your devotion, which means that you can still commit a ton of creatures to the board without putting Xenagos in a vulnerable position. If this is left unchecked, it's gonna be a bad time for your opponents.

Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma is a ramp effect and another way to give trample, so she's a welcome addition to this deck. Trample is so important, and she ensures that we can play our big beaters quickly.

Old Gnawbone and Klauth, Unrivaled Ancient are incredible sources of mana acceleration, and can create a silly amount of mana for us to chain into powerful haymakers.

The quicker we can get our guests through the door and into a partying mood, the better! To do this, we have a few ways to help get the party started early, and make sure we're not wasting too much time with the party prep.

Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx is a great land in this deck that can generate a lot of mana. It's not as good as in a mono colored deck, but it's still more than worth running here.

We have our obligatory ramp from cards like Farseek, Three Visits, Nature's Lore, Cultivate and Kodama's Reach to put lands on the battlefield and help get Xenagos out quickly (ideally around turn 3-4.) so we can get the beatdown conga line rolling.

Selvala, Heart of the Wilds is a phenomenal creature in this deck, as she provides us with mana ramp and card draw, two of the best things you can do in commander. Since we're most likely going to have the biggest creatures on the board, she can enable a ton of huge plays for us. She can also go infinite with Aggravated Assault, assuming we have a big enough creature.

Sol Ring is Sol Ring. Enough said.

Wild Growth is a fast accelerant that will survive most board wipes.

While mana dorks are generally more fragile than land ramp, Joraga Treespeaker is too good to pass up. Just by itself, it ensures a turn 3 Xenagos, which is exactly where we want to be. Somberwald Sage is also high-impact and can help us get Xenagos out early to start smashing our opponents even faster. We're also gonna run Elvish Mystic, Arbor Elf and Birds of Paradise to make sure we can get Xenagos out quickly and start threatening our opponents.

I'm trying out Goblin Anarchomancer to see if it's any good. You could just use a mana dork, but we'll se how it goes.

Any host worth his salt knows that if your guests are hungry, they're not having fun. To combat this, we have to make sure we keep a steady supply of snacks rolling to keep our party running smoothly, and so that we always have access to our best goodies.

Hands-down, our best form of card draw/selection comes from Sylvan Library. Extra cards are amazing, and the loss of life is negligible (But it does add up so don't be too greedy!) Even if you don't draw any extra cards, being able to manipulate your draws and the top 3 cards of your library is still amazing and an almost completely unique effect for green.

Jeska's Will is amazing, especially in a deck that will have its commander out almost 100% of the time. It ramps us and provides much needed card advantage, so it was a no-brainer to slot it in here.

Our best bang-for-your-buck card draw in the deck is from Greater Good. This is repeatable card draw that can net us a ton of cards since our deck mostly consists of huge creatures. It can also be a good way to get value out of a board wipe or removal spell that is targeting one of your big threats, turning them into card draw and potentially making an opponent use some removal. This is an all-star in this deck!

Rishkar's Expertise is similar to greater good (And incidentally an amazing card), but is not repeatable. It allows you to draw cards equal to target creature's power, which in this deck means that you can reliably draw anywhere between 8-40+ cards, depending on how desperate you are. On top of that, Expertise allows you to play one of those cards you just drew for free (As long as its cost is 5 or less), and playing things for free is often good.

Momentous Fall and Life's Legacy also let us exchange a big creature for a bunch of cards. Momentous Fall being an instant also makes it great insurance against removal.

Return of the Wildspeaker is another great draw spell that will give us lots of cards. In a pinch, it can also be a decent buff to our creatures, so it's flexible. Being at instant speed basically seals that this is a strictly better Soul's Majesty.

Garruk's Uprising is a new card from M21, and it is a home-run all star in this deck. It does everything you'd want for a Xenagos deck. Draws you a card for having big creatures? Yup. Gives your big creatures trample? Mhm. Continues to draw you cards for playing big creatures? Heck yeah! for 3 mana, this card is insanely useful at any stage in the game.

Escape to the Wilds is a decent card, providing card advantage and an extra land drop. As far as 5 drops go, it's not the worst.

Neheb, Dreadhorde Champion is an excellent source of filtering away bad cards and producing mana. It gives us new cards, makes mana and hits for good trample damage. One of the best 4 drop beaters we have.

Another great value card for any creature based deck, especially ones with big creatures, is The Great Henge. The best thing about this card is that it fills the role of both a ramp card and a card draw card! I've put it into the draw category simply because there is a chance that you'll be casting this during the mid or late game if you don't have a big enough creature (Even though that's unlikely since the deck is all about huge beaters.)

Elder Gargaroth is a slam dunk in this deck. Not only is it a big body with trample for 5 mana, but with vigilance and Xenagos giving it a power up with haste, you can immediately start taking advantage of its abilities the turn you play it. The fact that it can also trigger when you block is useful, especially to deter attacks from your opponents in fear of you drawing a big threat or developing your board.

Bonders' Enclave is another good way to draw some extra cards along the way when you have some mana left over. Not amazing, but any bit of card draw is welcome in an aggro deck so we can prevent running out of steam.

Dragonborn Champion is another slam dunk for this deck! Turning all of your big creatures into mini draw spells when they make contact is really good, and it's almost a guarantee that every creature we have will be doing at least 5 damage to someone.

All good parties really start when something gets broken, and we're the kings of breaking things. Our parties can get rowdy, so there's a really high chance that something (Or more likely multiple things) is gonna get smashed. Don't worry, we'll pay for the damages afterwards. Probably.

Our best options for removal are Beast Within and Chaos Warp. They're the most flexible since they hit any permanent, and deal with the widest variety of cards compared to our other removal.

Kazuul's Fury   is a great, flexible card that does a lot for us. It can be pinpoint removal at instant speed for a creature or planeswalker that is causing problems, or, more likely, it will let us smash an opponent for huge damage! It's also a great way to get some extra value out of a creature getting targeted by a removal spell. All that, AND it's a land? Yes please.

Ghost Quarter and Tectonic Edge are both great ways to get rid of pesky lands that our opponents control. Two really big problem lands for us are Maze of Ith and Glacial Chasm, so being able to deal with them and push our damage through is really important.

Graveyard strategies are very common in commander, so I've thrown in a Scavenger Grounds to help us deal with graveyard players that want to abuse it.

In terms of board wipes, we have Blasphemous Act and Chandra's Ignition. Blasphemous act gets easier to cast the more creatures are on the board, and in a 4 player game this can pretty regularly be a board wipe for just 1 mana. Chandra's ignition is also VERY good, and is both a board wipe, and potentially an "I win the game right now" card, since you could easily kill all 3 opponents at once if you have a big enough creature.

Balefire Dragon is the bane of token decks, and is a one-opponent board wipe that can neuter your opponents' board states.

Nature's Claim only hits artifacts and enchantments, but that's not an issue because they are, fortunately, some of the best card types in the format. Gaining your opponents life is a negligible downside for being able to stop your opponent's big combo for one mana.

Force of Vigor is cheap and efficient, and will let us destroy pesky artifacts and enchantments even if we tap out.

Kogla, the Titan Ape Is a beater with a bunch of utility stacked on him. With Xenagos out, he hits the board, fights someone, swings for 14 and blows something else up. Not bad for 6 mana!

Since we're here to get the party started, our neighbors may start getting upset about the noise. In the likely event they try to mess with our fun, we need to include some ways to protect our party goers.

Heroic Intervention is an efficient way to protect our guests, and can really swing a game into our favor on the spot.

Bolt Bend is a cheap alternative to Deflecting Swat, and works about just as well. Use it if you have it, but this is an awesome card too.

Tibalt's Trickery will often surprise opponents that get overconfident about playing against an aggro deck. A straight up counter in red is a nice surprise gut punch that can disrupt game winning plays, and at worst you can even use it on yourself to hopefully get something big.

The reason they aren't invited is because of our bouncer, Ruric Thar, the Unbowed. They have a staunch distaste for anything cerebral, aside from using their heads to smash things, so it's only natural that anything that doesn't allow them to smash things would make them angry. When Ruric Thar comes to party, you'd better hide all of your fancy tricks, cause they're going to know, and they're going to hurt you for trying to outsmart them.

Any good host knows the proper time to end the evening. We've basically been talking about winning the game this whole time, but here are the most reliable ways to close out a game and ensure that our party will be the talk of the town!

We added in the Godo, Bandit Warlord + Embercleave combo to really slice up our opponents, and it's very effective at taking out a player quickly.

Malignus + Xenagos Trigger + Chandra's Ignition is a funny way to end the game early, but it is kind of reliant on having enough mana to pull off, and hoping that Malignus isn't dealt with. Even so, Chandra's ignition can win the game by itself if you have a big enough creature.

Kessig Wolf Run is one of the best lands in the deck. It buffs our creatures and gives them trample, which is insane in a deck that wants to double the power of your creatures. Dump your extra mana into this thing before combat and you're gonna have a real threat on your hands.

Pathbreaker Ibex essentially allows us to get another Xenagos trigger, easily giving our whole board 10+ power and Trample to make them bigger and harder to deal with. This card is extremely brutal and can end games very quickly.

We also have cards to give us extra combats. Savage Ventmaw or Old Gnawbone + Aggravated Assault can win us the game through infinite combat steps, and infinite Xenagos triggers!

Seize the Day is 2 extra combats in one card, and means triple the damage if we can flash it back immediately! Pair it with any big beater and people will die.

Combat Celebrant is a cheap way to get extra combats, and it's welcome in this deck to start bashing people with huge fatties

Relentless Assault is another extra combat card, and another haymaker to chain into with Old Gnawbone and Klauth

Scourge of the Throne is another of the most dangerous cards in this deck. Extra combat steps are always good, and it can single-handedly win you games.

This deck has kind of turned into my baby, and Xenagos is by far my favorite commander. I'd love to hear any suggestions or get a discussion going on your favorite cards to run, or what potentially could be added to make the deck stronger.

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