During last week’s MagicFest in Philadelphia, Wizards of the Coast (WotC) gave us a first-look tease of the upcoming set, March of the Machine, including a handful of “team up” legendary creatures from across the Multiverse that were quite eye-popping! I’d like to dig into one of them today, the exciting team of Thalia and The Gitrog Monster from Innistrad!
Mash It Up
This is a sweet mash-up of Thalia, Heretic Cathar and the one and only The Gitrog Monster. Thalia gives first strike and Gitrog provides deathtouch, and the two abilities together are pure dynamite (see Glissa, the Traitor if you need more evidence). The two abilities make the mash-up very difficult to interact with in combat, which plays great with the card since it has a very potent attack trigger.
Gitrog brings the “play an additional land” each turn, and Thalia forces your opponents’ creatures and nonbasic lands to enter the battlefield tapped. Assuming you’re running enough lands, getting to play extra lands while many of your opponents’ lands enter the battlefield tapped is quite a mana development imbalance, and blunts the impact of commander tax if your opponents target your commander with removal spells.
Finding Balance
I like that the card-draw ability is tied to an attack trigger, rather than just passively happening whenever a land card is put into your graveyard from anywhere. Once I had a deck built around The Gitrog Monster and have played against it a few times, and it’s really, really powerful and relentless, so I’m happy to see this version takes a lot of the flavor from the original card, yet tones down the raw card draw power. I also like that the attack trigger lets you sacrifice a creature or a land, so you can make use of recursive creatures for the card draw and not have to sacrifice your lands unless it makes sense.
How might one go about building a deck around Thalia and The Gitrog Monster? Let’s dive in!
Deathtouch Matters
Since our commander has deathtouch, we could certainly build in a deathtouch sub-theme and pepper in other deathtouchers. Fynn, the Fangbearer brings poison into play, while Hooded Blightfang adds life drain that would nicely supplement an Aristocrats-style build that this commander could easily helm. Plus, it makes your deathtouchers lethal to any planeswalker, as they should be!
First Strike Matters
One fun element you could add to the deck to take advantage of the first strike is peppering in some Ninjas! After a creature deals first strike damage, there’s an opportunity to use the ninjutsu ability to swap our mash-up commander with a Ninja in time for it to do regular combat damage and get its combat damage trigger. I’ve been looking for a good place to run Spring-Leaf Avenger, and this might be the perfect place for it.
Add Trample
Deathtouch combines well with first strike, but it’s also bonkers with trample, so why not give your commander all three? So long as there are fewer blockers than Thalia and The Gitrog Monster’s power, you can kill each of them and still deal combat damage to your opponent. Which makes a surprise trample ability like cycling Titanoth Rex a potential blowout, but there are plenty of other on-battlefield ways to give trample that simply make choices hard for your opponent. My favorites would be Rancor and Shadowspear!
Add Vigilance
Deathtouch and first strike together make for a heckuva brick wall as a defender, but you want to attack with your commander to get that sweet attack trigger. If we layer in vigilance, we can get the best of both worlds! Brave the Sands is bonkers here. Letting our commander both attack and potentially first strike down two attackers while on defense is almost criminal.
Add Haste
Thalia and The Gitrog Monster generate value when they attack, so we might as well get attacking right away with haste enablers! The recently reprinted Concordant Crossroads is a nice pickup here since your commander causes your opponents’ creatures to enter the battlefield tapped so they don’t get to fully enjoy this enchant world experience. Unless of course they destroy your commander, so buyer beware!
Attack Triggers
Since we’ll want to attack early and often with our commander, something like Tome of Legends is a slam-dunk for even more card drawing. Bear Umbra on our commander layers on some protection and effectively doubles the mana from your lands each turn. But the real gem here is Odric, Lunarch Marshal! Remember how awesome I said deathtouch and first strike are together? With Odric and your commander on the battlefield, all of your creatures get that combo at the beginning of each combat, even combat that happens on your opponents’ turns.
Combat Damage Triggers
If your opponents have creatures they don’t want to block with and instead are just going to take the damage, you can turn up the screws by getting benefit from combat damage triggers too. Sword of Hearth and Home lets you ramp and blink a creature that you own for value, or you can get it back if it’s been stolen. Wand of Orcus and Scepter of Celebration gives you token creatures. Gix, Yawgmoth Praetor bestows even more card draw! Umezawa’s Jitte gets charge counters even if your commander is blocked, and you can use those counters to make combat more difficult, or even gain life in a pinch.
Lands in Hand
Really, the most powerful part of Thalia and The Gitrog Monster’s abilities is being able to play an extra land each turn; mana makes the game, and lands are the most stable form of mana you can have. I would personally run at least 40 lands in this deck, including the bouncelands Golgari Rot Farm, Orzhov Basilica, and Selesnya Sanctuary to ensure multiple turns where I could make two land drops. I might even consider running Guildless Commons, though I’m leery of running lands that tap for colorless in decks that need three or more colors.
Cultivate, Kodama’s Reach, and Yavimaya Elder are more ways to put lands in hand to increase the odds of a double land drop turn. Yasharn, Implacable Earth puts two lands into your hand, but be aware of its drawback; no one can pay life or sacrifice nonland permanents to cast spells or activate abilities, which doesn’t shut down our commander since that’s a combat trigger. If you’re leaning into a more Aristocrats-style deck, you probably wouldn’t run Yasharn, but if not, it sure feels good to have Yasharn on the battlefield hosing people’s Treasure tokens!
Lands from Graveyard
A nice way to help ensure multiple land drops each turn is running cards that let you play lands from the graveyard, like the classic Crucible of Worlds. That way, you could use something like Evolving Wilds and have it in your graveyard to play over and over again. Conduit of Worlds is another great inclusion here, and potentially lets you replay a crucial nonland permanent from your graveyard.
Landfall
A Thalia and The Gitrog Monster deck makes a fantastic shell for landfall shenanigans, with tons of great options for green and black. Felidar Retreat is particularly nice, since one of its modes bestows vigilance to your creatures until the end of the turn. If you’re not scared of math, then stick a Scute Swarm out there and start calculating!
Sacrifice Fodder
Whether or not you’re building an Aristocrats-style deck, you’re going to want fodder to feed Thalia and The Gitrog Monster’s attack trigger. My go-to for this has always been Reassembling Skeletons, though Bloodsoaked Champion is nearly as good since your commander attacking is what you’d sacrifice it to, which means its raid ability can be used the same turn. White gives us access to Luminous Broodmoth, which means you could upgrade another creature without flying to come back with a flying counter.
Dies Triggers
Since we’re planning on sacrificing creatures, leveraging cards that trigger when a creature dies might be a solid element to add to the deck. Grim Haruspex will let us draw another card. Cards like Blood Artist and Zulaport Cutthroat provide life drain. Pitiless Plunderer provides Treasure tokens. The new card Vat of Rebirth can accumulate oil counters that can eventually bring a creature back from the graveyard. World Shaper will bring back all land cards from your graveyard! And then there’s Teysa Karlov, which will let a dies trigger happen again, though you might want to include an element of token creatures in the deck to get her full benefit.
Power Four or Greater
When my commander has power four or greater, I like to take advantage of the various green cards that care about that sort of thing! Of particular interest are Garruk’s Uprising and Goreclaw, Terror of Qal Sisma since they let your commander have trample. Rhonas the Indomitable does too if you activate its ability.
Humans Matter
Even though the creature type includes Frog Horror, it also includes Human, so you could potentially make Thalia and The Gitrog Monster a Human tribal deck if you wanted to. I’m not going to go into all the sorts of cards for such a deck here, but given our commander is a Human, we could make use of that with other cards.
Kogla, the Titan Ape can make itself indestructible by returning a Human to its owner’s hand, and that could double as protection from a removal spell or other dire effect directed at our commander. Rick, Steadfast Leader can do good work even if our commander is the only other Human by choosing vigilance and lifelink to add to Thalia and The Gitrog Monster’s already impressive abilities.
What are you planning on doing with Thalia and The Gitrog Monster once March of the Machine is available? Do you like these mash-up, team-up legendary cards for Commander?
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