Commander Magic Deck Of The Week: The Tarrasque

It’s been a wild ride over the years for Commander fans.  When Wizards of the Coast (WotC) started designing cards specifically for Commander, a lot of those early designs pushed the format in a direction that was more about efficiency and multiplayer power than it was big, goofy, expensive spells that you’d never play in any other format.  I mean, the very first iteration of Commander—Elder Dragon Highlanders, or EDH—was based on the original Elder Dragon cards from Legends that each cost a whopping eight mana to cast, and had three-mana upkeep costs.

Thankfully, WotC has made adjustments recently to focus their designs away from power and more towards fun. The Tarrasque from Adventures in the Forgotten Realms definitely gave me that old-school EDH vibe as well as sweet Dungeons & Dragons nostalgia.

A Rocky Start

I have to admit, when I first saw this card, I was a touch disappointed.  In D&D lore, The Tarrasque is basically the End Boss to end all End Bosses, so a 10/10 for nine mana didn’t feel like it was pushing the envelope.  One of my all-time favorite Commander decks is built around Grothama, the All-Devouring, which presents ten power for just five mana.

But then I started playing it in Brawl on Arena and had so much fun that my opinion began to turn. Having haste and ward 10 is surprisingly good, and being able to fight a creature when it attacks is also quite good. Sure, it can technically be chump blocked by Squirrel tokens forever, but it’s pretty easy to give your creatures trample in green, so I went ahead and built a Commander deck around it and have been pleased with the results.

The Tarrasque’s Mini-Quest

Yes, it is slow to get onto the battlefield compared to most other commanders, but green has no shortage of ways to ramp mana, and this gives the deck a built-in mini-quest that divides any game into two parts.  Part one is Getting to Nine Mana. Part two is The Tarrasque is Loose!  Your opponents also tend to be quite invested in this mini-quest as well; ward 10 is a lot, and dealing with The Tarrasque tends to mean a battlefield sweeper.

How To Win Every Game Of Commander You Play In 2022 And Beyond

Adding commander tax on a legendary creature with mana value nine to start is tough, but it basically means your mana ramp is gas throughout the entire game. The trick, of course, is not to completely overload on ramp spells that don’t do anything but ramp. You want to make sure you’re able to establish a battlefield presence in part one of the gameplan so that you don’t just get run over.

Let’s dig into the decklist!

Mana Ramp

Not surprisingly, I’ve got a ton of mana ramp spells and include many of green’s usual suspects.  Gwenna, Eyes of Gaea from The Brothers’ War is a solid new addition; even though it won’t help to cast noncreature spells, it’s exactly the sort of battlefield presence I want in a ramp spell. I’ve got plenty of creatures that cost five or more mana, so I can make use of Gwenna for mana and then untap and use her for attacking or blocking if needed. Titania’s Command is another excellent new addition that’s primarily going to search up two awesome nonbasic lands, but then you’ve got one more benefit from among three choices.

I also love Yedora, Grave Gardener as a way to turn an early battlefield sweeper that kills a few of my creatures into mana ramp to cast The Tarrasque earlier.  I’ve included a few ways to return lands to my hand from the battlefield so that I can turn those Forests back into creatures in the late-game if needed.

Reshape the Earth costs a whopping nine mana, but seriously—that’s the magic number we’re aiming for to cast The Tarrasque, so yeah, that’s a card in the deck. And once we cast it, we can pretty much pay five more instances of commander tax on our commander, which should be plenty!

Lands Matter

I had more landfall and other “lands matter” cards in the earliest versions of the deck, but over time I’ve trimmed them down. These are the remains. Kazandu Mammoth has stuck around because it counts as a land drop early on, and if I draw it late-game, it makes my subsequent land ramp spells into a threat.  Multani, Yavimaya’s Avatar will often be more threatening than The Tarrasque itself, and I like that it can pretty easily come back over and over again. Sometimes, that ability means you can retrieve a creature that Yedora turned into a Forest.

Trample

Here are the ways I have in the deck to give The Tarrasque some much-needed trample.  Rancor is a classic, and it should come back for reuse again and again if The Tarrasque dies. I love that Garruk’s Uprising also is a source of card draw, as is Glorious Sunrise and its multitude of abilities. The tricky thing about Glorious Sunrise is that its ramp doesn’t really work all that well for powering out The Tarrasque, since that extra mana can only be used after your attack step.

Gaea’s Gift is another sweet gem from The Brothers’ War that packs a ton of power into a two-mana instant. It gives The Tarrasque trample, but also gives it indestructible in case it’s blocked by something with deathtouch or in response to a battlefield sweeper.  Giving a blocker surprise reach can occasionally be clutch, as will that extra +1/+1 boost.  Now imagine if an opponent pays the ten mana for The Tarrasque in order to target it with cheap removal like Swords to Plowshares, and you give it hexproof with Gaea’s Gift. Talk about a blowout! It truly is the Swiss Army knife of green instants.

Card Draw

I’ve got a solid amount of green card draw to keep my gameplan moving along. I particularly love the late-game potential of Eternal Witness and Shigeki, Jukai Visionary, making use of all the extra mana to refuel with the most powerful cards that are in my graveyard.

I consider Hormagaunt Horde a nice form of card draw through its recursion ability and its ravenous ability when played for five or more +1/+1 counters. With all the land ramp in the deck, it’s pretty reliable to get back from the graveyard later in the game.

Majestic Genesis was designed exactly for a deck like this with a high-cost commander!  I’ve yet to play it, but I’m looking forward to at least ramping with two or three lands and putting a couple of creatures onto the battlefield for free.

Removal

I’ve included a fair amount of removal spells, and particularly love Liquimetal Torque, since it can make a problematic creature into an artifact that I can destroy with a lot of my other spells. Glissa Sunseeker can snipe an artifact whenever I’m floating mana to cast a spell.  I recently received a reminder of the spell Ezuri’s Predation and how awesome it is in a deck that can reliably cast it, so I made room for it.

Interaction

I’ve added other ways to interact with my opponents too.  You’ve got to keep graveyard decks honest, so I’m running cards like Soul-Guide Lantern and the new Warhammer 40,000 Commander card Canoptek Scarab Swarm.  Questing Beast lets my combat-oriented commander punch through Fog effects.

Tower of the Magistrate is crucial in mono-color decks for defense against some of the various Equipment cards like Sword of Feast and Famine that otherwise provide protection from green.  It now has even more utility in the wake of some really potent artifacts from The Brothers’ War such as Cityscape Leveler, The Mightstone and Weakstone, and Rootwire Amalgam.

Other Utility Lands

One of the advantages of playing a mono-color deck is being able to use more utility lands since you don’t have to worry about color-fixing, and I’ve got some of my favorites here.  Mirrorpool always overperforms for me and I love it, but it’s a little less good in this deck, since if I copy The Tarrasque (in case my commander is dying somehow), the copy won’t have haste or ward 10. Conversely, The Tarrasque is an excellent target for Tyrite Sanctum; I can’t wait to one day get an indestructible The Tarrasque God Dinosaur!

Lair of the Hydra is my least-favorite of the creature-lands from Adventures in the Forgotten Realms. Still, given how many lands this deck can put onto the battlefield and the potential of making a lethally huge Hydra with it, it has earned its slot.

The Deck

Okay, here is the full decklist:

Here are the deck stats from our friends at Archidekt:

What must-have cards might I have missed including in The Tarrasque deck?  Any nice tech cards that can round out the list?

Talk to Me

Do me a solid and follow me on Twitter!  I run polls and start conversations about Commander all the time, so get in on the fun!  You can also find my LinkTree on my profile page there with links to all my content.

I’d also love it if you followed my Twitch channel TheCompleteCommander, where I do Commander, Brawl and sometimes other Magic-related streams when I can.  If you can’t join me live, the videos are available on demand for a few weeks on Twitch, but I also upload them to my YouTube channel.  You can also find the lists for my paper decks over on Archidekt if you want to dig into how I put together my own decks and brews. 

And lastly, I just want to say: let us love each other and stay healthy and happy.