For Whom the Wolf Howls

Commander / EDH Aggro Casual RG (Gruul) Theme/Gimmick

gildan_bladeborn

Creature (38)

• 1x Avabruck Caretaker  ^Flip
• 1x Ballista Watcher  ^Flip
• 1x Bird Admirer  ^Flip
• 1x Breakneck Rider  ^Flip
• 1x Burly Breaker  ^Flip
• 1x Child of the Pack  ^Flip
• 1x Daybreak Ranger  ^Flip
• 1x Duskwatch Recruiter  ^Flip
• 1x Fangblade Brigand  ^Flip
• 1x Geier Reach Bandit  ^Flip
• 1x Harvesttide Infiltrator  ^Flip
• 1x Hollowhenge Overlord
• 1x Hound Tamer  ^Flip
• 1x Howlpack Piper  ^Flip
• 1x Huntmaster of the Fells  ^Flip
• 1x Ill-Tempered Loner  ^Flip
• 1x Immerwolf
• 1x Infestation Expert  ^Flip
• 1x Instigator Gang  ^Flip
• 1x Kessig Naturalist  ^Flip
• 1x Kruin Outlaw  ^Flip
• 1x Mayor of Avabruck  ^Flip
• 1x Mondronen Shaman  ^Flip
• 1x Nightpack Ambusher
• 1x Outland Liberator  ^Flip
• 1x Purphoros, God of the Forge
• 1x Realmwalker
• 1x Reckless Stormseeker  ^Flip
• 1x Sage of Ancient Lore  ^Flip
• 1x Scorned Villager  ^Flip
• 1x Tireless Hauler  ^Flip
• 1x Tovolar's Huntmaster  ^Flip
• 1x Ulrich of the Krallenhorde  ^Flip
• 1x Village Watch  ^Flip
• 1x Volatile Arsonist  ^Flip
• 1x Weaver of Blossoms  ^Flip
• 1x Werewolf Pack Leader
• 1x Wolfkin Outcast  ^Flip

Land (35)

• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Cavern of Souls
• 1x Cinder Glade
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Commercial District
• 1x Copperline Gorge
• 1x Cragcrown Pathway  ^Flip
• 1x Fabled Passage
• 1x Fire-Lit Thicket
• 1x Forest
• 1x Forest
• 1x Forest
• 1x Forest
• 1x Forest
• 1x Forest
• 1x Forest
• 1x Forest
• 1x Grove of the Burnwillows
• 1x Highland Forest
• 1x Karplusan Forest
• 1x Kessig Wolf Run
• 1x Mountain
• 1x Mountain
• 1x Mountain
• 1x Mountain
• 1x Path of Ancestry
• 1x Prismatic Vista
• 1x Rockfall Vale
• 1x Rootbound Crag
• 1x Sheltered Thicket
• 1x Spire Garden
• 1x Stomping Ground
• 1x Terramorphic Expanse
• 1x Winding Canyons
• 1x Wooded Foothills

Instant (1)

• 1x Moonmist

Commander (1)

 ^Flip

Enchantment (9)

• 1x Beastmaster Ascension
• 1x Doubling Season
• 1x Full Moon's Rise
• 1x Growing Rites of Itlimoc  ^Flip
• 1x Howling Moon
• 1x Howlpack Resurgence
• 1x Ranger Class
• 1x Rhythm of the Wild
• 1x Unnatural Growth

Sorcery (7)

• 1x Dire-Strain Rampage
• 1x Overwhelming Stampede
• 1x Red Sun's Zenith
• 1x Shatterskull Smashing  ^Flip
• 1x Storm the Festival
• 1x Turntimber Symbiosis  ^Flip
• 1x Unnatural Moonrise

Artifact (6)

• 1x Bow of Nylea
• 1x Embercleave
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Sword of Body and Mind
• 1x The Celestus
• 1x Vedalken Orrery

Planeswalker (3)

• 1x Arlinn Kord *f-pre*  ^Flip
• 1x Arlinn, the Pack's Hope  ^Flip
• 1x Vivien, Champion of the Wilds

---

"Ask not for whom the wolf howls, it howls for you." - not actually a quote by anyone.

Double-faced cards are neat, and I love playing Gruul: something about {RG} just resonates with me on an instinctual level (Golgari and Selesnya on the other hand are the flip side, as I'm instinctively repelled by both those combinations; my brain has decided those are wrong and won't brook any arguments on the subject), which is why I love the fact that when Wotc decided to bring back the tribe for Innistrad and finally do them justice, they made them Gruul, instead of putting them in black like the original 3 (extremely terrible) non-transforming sort (now of course we also have the transforming sort in all 5 colors, but they're still almost all Gruul).

One of the first things I did when I jumped into actually collecting/playing Magic was to track down all the Innistrad and Dark Ascension werewolves and throw them all into a 60-card deck together, which I didn't get to play with nearly as often as I'd like because A) at that point it was very much not a standard deck anymore (not that I care about Standard) so the pool of possible opponents was limited and B) if I'm playing Magic it's probably a game of Commander, because Commander is the best format (science fact).

So I decided to combine my affection for werewolves with my love of Commander, and turn that deck into this one, a Wolf/Werewolf Tribal Commander deck, or "Wolfmander" deck as I prefer, which was originally comprised of things I already had in that 60-card werewolf deck and stuff I didn't that seemed "on message" (or just useful) that also wouldn't cost me an arm and a leg to acquire; I believe the first version of the deck could be built for $75 at the extreme high end. Since then I've sunk a bit more into tuning it so the off-tribe stuff mostly also interacts with wolves, along with upgrading various support elements (and with successive return trips to Innistrad, adding a bunch more werewolves to the mix and swapping out the worst ones I'd been playing for lack of options), but there are still only a handful of cards on the list that go for more than $5, with the vast majority priced somewhere under a dollar (non-foil versions of course, I got it into my head to make my Commander decks shiny some while back).

Tovolar, Dire Overlord   is the commander now because of course he is; Ulrich was only ever the commander previously because he was literally the only "on tribe" option, not because he was particularly good in that role (he really wasn't).

As for how the deck performs, well... it's werewolves: there probably still aren't enough genuinely playable members of the tribe even now after 3 trips to Innistrad (at least, not enough for a 100-card singleton format), so like any deck that's running bad cards on purpose, there are glaring weaknesses that often come up (that I'll never ever fix because that would defeat the purpose), not the least of which is that the tribe's central gimmick intrinsically gives opponents the ability to mess with my board state, without even needing to be actively going for that. If the wolf train gets rolling early and nobody has an answer at hand, things can quickly get degenerate fast (but in a fun way), but to say that it "wins infrequently" would be a massive understatement, because of course it doesn't win much: I'm playing werewolves, in Commander.

Date added	10 years
Last updated	6 months
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	21 - 0 Mythic Rares 39 - 0 Rares 18 - 0 Uncommons 9 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.62
Tokens	Day, Emblem Arlinn Kord, Human 2/2 G, Insect 1/1 G, Night, Wolf 2/2 G
Folders	Commander decks that exist, EDH, considered decks, cool but not going to get, Deck Ideas, Decks I play, Favorite EDH, favorite decks, EDH Idea Folder, werewolf for sam