The official debut of preview season for Outlaws of Thunder Junction kicks off tomorrow, but before we leave Fallout Commander behind, I wanted to shine a spotlight on the mono-green legends from that set.
I’m a big fan of building mono-color decks in Commander since the manabases are much easier and cheaper to pull together, and running fewer colors allows you access to more cool, colorless utility lands. Green already has a ton of really powerful Commander spells, so not having access to other colors isn’t as much as a liability as playing some of the other colors.
Let’s take a look at what we might want to consider when building around these three!
Strong, the Brutish Thespian
Of the three, I think Strong offers up the most interesting commander to build around. For a very castable six mana (in green), you’ve got a large body that will grow each time it takes damage. You’ll also get rad counters each time it happens, which means self-milling, though Strong has you gain life from the resolution of the rad counters rather than having you lose life. Green has a lot of ways to use the graveyard as a resource, so self-milling can act as a nice payoff without necessarily being a dedicated graveyard deck. Let’s dig in!
Fight Effects
Green has been pushing out some really, really good “bite” spells lately — cards like Ram Through, Legolas’s Quick Reflexes, and Archdruid’s Charm — but for Strong, we want to go back to the fight spells that were green’s method of creature control. In addition to classics like Arena and Ulvenwald Tracker, there are cool newer versions like Prizefight and Bushwhack. Golden Guardian is pretty cool here since it can easily fight Strong to give it three +1/+1 counters, and then transform into a land that taps for two mana or can act as a mana sink to churn out 4/4 Golem creature tokens.
Then of course is one of my all-time favorite cards, Grothama, All-Devouring. Once you’ve grown Strong higher than ten power and toughness (which only requires two packets of damage), you can drop Grothama, attack with Strong, and have Strong fight and kill Grothama to draw a ton of cards!
Other Damage Effects
One thing I love about new Magic cards is how they can have you reevaluate old Magic cards that might otherwise be languishing in dusty boxes in the back of your closet. Strong has me thinking about Splintering Wind, an enchantment you can use to ping any creature for a point of damage – like Strong! Then you get a 1/1 green Splinter token with flying and cumulative upkeep, and when it dies, it deals one damage to you and each creature you control—like Strong!
Then there’s Cyclone, another enchantment that has a form of cumulative upkeep with wind counters that deal damage to each creature and each player, which, if it sticks around, is an awesome way to clean up small token creatures so that Strong can crash in. And how about Hail Storm, which can again keep you from getting swarmed by a bunch of small creatures, while also growing Strong with that residual damage to you and your creatures. Note, you can cast Hail Storm no matter who’s being attacked, so if one opponent is attacking another opponent, you can toss out Hail Storm and grow your commander.
There are ways to just ping a target for damage, like Staff of Nin and Acorn Catapult, but probably the best for this is Endbringer since it untaps during each other player’s untap step, letting you ping Strong up to four times each turn cycle in a typical pod.
There are also some cards in green that force an opponent to block, which will help Strong grow; I like You Look Upon the Tarrasque for this, especially if you’ve got a way to give it trample too.
Self-Milling Payoffs
Fallout gives us a nice self-milling payoff with Tato Farmer, helping to ramp our mana to ensure we can cast and recast our six-mana commander. A nice twist to this card is that you can actually use its ability to nab lands that your opponents might mill into their graveyard.
I’m a huge fan of The Mending of Dominaria is this sort of deck; it’s a permanent, so it can be nabbed from the graveyard with green more easily than non-permanents, and if Strong has milled enough cards this will let you tutor out the best two creatures from the graveyard and then bring all those milled lands onto the battlefield, pretty much eliminating your mana concerns for the rest of the game. Cards like Timeless Witness, Genesis, Dryad’s Revival, and Creeping Renaissance are sweet since they can pay you off even if they get milled into the graveyard.
Lifegain Payoffs
Strong’s rad counters let you gain life so long as Strong is on the battlefield, so we might consider some lifegain payoffs too. Blossoming Bogbeast is awesome here since it can also give Strong the trample that you need to push damage from that large body through. Sproutback Trudge is neat here because it can be accessed from the graveyard if it gets milled.
Trample
Strong’s large and growing body desperately needs some form of evasion to push damage through to opponents’ life totals, and green has a ton of ways to give it trample. Rancor is an oldie and a goodie, and I also really love Garruk’s Uprising. Brawn is a strong consideration too since it can be milled into the graveyard – or die in combat – and provide trample for the rest of the game.
If you’re going to play with +1/+1 counters more broadly in the deck, Kodama of the West Tree becomes a strong choice.
High Power Matters
Green has excellent cards that care about high-power creatures, especially card-drawing spells like Return of the Wildspeaker, Rishkar’s Expertise, and Greater Good. I’m a big fan of another Fallout card here with Bighorn Rancher, which can generate two green mana all on its own to potentially cast Strong, or you can use it the turn you cast Strong to then tap for a whopping seven, letting you have a huge double-spell turn. And you can even sacrifice it to gain a bunch of life at any point when it’s helpful… perhaps right before you attack with Blossoming Bogbeast?
Finally, for flavor reasons, you might want to include Thespian’s Stage in the deck since Strong is a Thespian and reads Mack Beth!
Harold and Bob, First Numens
So, what if you could run Overgrowth as your commander?
That’s the real power of this card, I think. It basically lets you ramp for two mana when it dies and comes back as an Aura enchantment. I mean, green likes to ramp to big things, so you can use this as a card in the command zone that will let you bridge into the big spells you love. Of course, it needs to die first, but its abilities make it uniquely set up for that—you can attack each turn regardless of what blockers your opponents have; if they don’t block it, they take three commander damage; and since it has vigilance and reach, it’s perfectly capable of blocking anything threatening that’s coming at you. You’ll want to have cards like Toski, Bearer of Secrets that makes it even more of a downside for not blocking it than simply damage.
Sacrifice for Profit
Green has access to a fair number of cards that can sacrifice your creatures for profit, so I’d imagine you’d want to use a few of these in the deck. I’m always looking for a cool use for Magus of the Order, and this seems perfect. If you sacrifice Harold and Bob to The Golden Throne, that’s going to be a big bump of mana for your turn!
Untap Lands
Since Harold and Bob turn into a powerful Aura for your Forest, you will probably want a few ways to untap lands to get even more mana!
Treefolk
Harold and Bob is a Treefolk creature, so maybe you could have some amount of Treefolk typal stuff going on? Timber Protector making Harold and Bob indestructible runs counter to plans for having your commander die and start generating extra mana, but maybe you just want to suit up Harold and Bob with Blackblade Reforged and Rancor and smash face in combat!
One last thought: since tapping Harold and Bob for mana gives you rad counters, you’ll likely want some ways to leverage your graveyard as a resource, like I mentioned for Strong above.
Lily Bowen, Raging Grandma
As someone who feels that Wizards of the Coast (WotC) has gone way overboard on +1/+1 counter synergies over the years, I’m not particularly motivated to build a Lily Bowen deck, but I do think it’s a cool spin on the card how it doubles its counters each upkeep. Without help, it will take three upkeeps to get Lily up to sixteen power, but there is no shortage of cards that can help with that. I won’t go into that, because it’s pretty easy to find those cards in search engines, or you can check it out on EDHREC.
You’ll want to include ways to give Lily trample, and since Lily eventually shrinks back down to size and gives you a rush of life, you might want lifegain payoffs too, so be sure to check out those sections under Strong above.
What other cool cards would work great with these mono-green commanders? What is your favorite mono-color commander from the Fallout set?
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