Commander Overview
Gornog, the Red Reaper is a very interesting commander who focuses on a creature type that is very present in the format but doesn’t have a lot of decks focused around it, while building this deck I was shocked to see how many different cards were warriors that I never noticed like Combat Celebrant and Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs. Gornog is not in a support role in our deck and is a huge part of our overall strategy. Not only do they provide a buff, but they also help to make our board unblockable by making our opponents’ creatures cowards. Sadly, outside of a few cards and Gornog, the coward support is limited, but being able to take out an opponent’s best blocker is extremely strong and helpful for our deck. Gornog is some good old mono-red fun and has been an absolute gem of a commander. It has many of the same problems as typical mono-red decks do, but when it works, it really works!
Creature 29
Instant 8
Sorcery 13
Artifact 8
Enchantment 6
Land 35
EDH BRACKET
Beyond the strength of an average precon deck.
- Late Game 2-Card Infinite Combos
- No Mass Land Denial
- Up to 3 Game Changers
- No Chaining Extra Turns
How to Play the Deck
Playing the deck is as simple as playing any mono-red deck. We truly go full goblin mode and swing hard and swing fast. That’s really the whole principle of the deck and the main thing that we do in the deck. This deck is perfect for a player of any skill level and could be a great way to teach a newer or new player a lot about the mechanics of combat. This isn’t a complicated deck at all to play.
Synergy’s in the deck
We have one main synergy in the deck and its warriors, its the reason we are running cards like Banner of Kinship and Chronicle of Victory which can allow us to get huge very quickly, I also got a ton of usage out of Boldwyr Intimidator which is an expensive card but has a great effect that synergizes directly with Gornog and can make us near unblockable depending on how much mana we have. I also got a lot of great usage out of Frenzied Saddlebrute and Disrupt Decorum, which can cause chaos on the table that doesn’t affect us. While these aren’t directly warrior cards, they certainly feel like it!
Phases of the Game
Early-Game: We are quite aggressive at all stages of the game, but we aren’t super aggressive at the start of the game. We do have a decent amount of cheap creatures and will take free attacks if they are open, but we mostly spend our early game establishing helpful cards and playing Gornog. Gornog is priority one in the early game.
Mid-Game: The mid-game is where we start getting bigger and better and more importantly can play out a lot more of our warriors. We have warriors that are crazy strong, like Chaos Terminator Lord, which makes the creature we are attacking a nightmare for our opponents to deal with. I also loved Flamerush Rider. We have a full board quite often, so we are able to copy a great creature like Professional Face-Breaker and net more treasure tokens.
Late-Game: The late-game can be a little rough for us, we typically attack with everything and opponents who have a big board can hit us back pretty hard, because of this we need to be very cautious in the late-game and that can slow us down overall, since opponents can also hit hard we need to be worried about the swing back.
Card Breakdowns
Ramp
We are as good at ramp as really any mono-red deck can be. We don’t have a lot of options when it comes to ramp, but we do have Extraplanar Lens, which is a cheap and easy way for us to accelerate our overall game plan and ramp out our bigger and more expensive cards. We also have Ruby Medallion and Herald's Horn, which provide a consistent source of cost reduction for the deck and are great at making nearly the whole deck cheaper. We don’t really ramp in the traditional sense, but we can still accelerate our game plan.
Card Draw/Card Advantage
We have a complicated relationship with card draw as most mono-red decks tend to, we do have some sources of card draw in the deck like Big Score, Unexpected Windfall and Seize the Spoils which do have the drawback of discarding a card but the card draw and treasure card production is worth it, we don’t have a ton of sources of card draw in the deck but we make do with what we can.
Removal
Our best way to remove opponents stuff is through combat, we have decently big creatures on top of damage doublers and we are easily able to be a lot bigger than our opponents in combat, beyond that traditional removal is hard to come by but we do have Chaos Warp which is an extremely red removal spell but can be a great way to remove a problematic permanent immediately. While not amazing removal spells, we do have Abrade and Untimely Malfunction, which can be great to remove small creatures or, in the case of Untimely Malfunction, redirect a spell, perfect for our opponents’ removal that targets us!
Protection
This is an extremely weak part of our deck, as I’ve said previously this is just one of the tradeoffs we have for being in mono-red and truthfully we don’t care that much if any of our stuff dies, yes it slows us down a bit and hurts but there isn’t very much we can do about it and we have to roll with it.
Utility / Support
Let’s go over some of my favorite cards in the deck! Bloodmark Mentor is a cheap and amazing piece of utility for the deck and already makes our greatness in combat that much better, and truly makes us a nightmare to deal with. While it is a little expensive I love Boldwyr Intimidator as when we have a lot of extra mana from something like Extraplanar Lens we can easily make all of our opponents creatures cowards and they are unable to block us allowing us to truly hit like a truck especially if we have Collective Inferno or Gratuitous Violence on the field. We are not amazing at blocking in this deck so Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs can be a great way for us to generate a ton of chump blockers or possibly even attackers, if we are at a high life total we are perfectly ok with simply taking the damage and swinging back even harder with our extra 3/3’s, a true slam-dunk for the deck for only five mana.
Mana Base
We have quite a few interesting non-basics in the deck like Arena of Glory which can be a nice way to accelerate out a creature or commander and give them haste, we are a creature-type focused deck so we cant forget Three Tree City which can provide a ludicrous amount of mana production for the deck and if we need just a little extra damage on our combat step activating Castle Embereth can be helpful for us, we have mostly mountains in our landbase but the non-basics we do have are extremely impactful.
Win Conditions
Our only win condition is combat; we are greatly aided by cards like Berserkers' Onslaught and Gratuitous Violence, allowing us to output a lot more damage, and we are helped by Gornog, making our opponents’ creatures cowards.
Strengths of the Deck
We are quite good at combat and can put a ton of pressure on our opponents quickly.
We have many different ways to stop our opponents from blocking in addition to Gornog, because of this we can be a nightmare to deal with in combat.
Weaknesses of the Deck
We have the same problems that a lot of mono-red decks have, we can struggle to rebuild after being stopped.
We are low on removal and protection, while we mostly run what is available there is not a ton in mono-red.
Deck Testing/Matchups
I tested this deck against three different decks
Game 1: Vs Adeline, Resplendent Cathar. Matchup Record: 2-3
This was a tough matchup. At the same time, we are bigger than they are in combat, but we can struggle to compete with their go-wide strategy. The best option here is to keep Adeline off the board and limit them as much as we can. While this is the overall goal, we really don’t have enough removal, which makes it quite tough.
Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Blasphemous Act, Chaos Terminator Lord and Bloodmark Mentor.
Game 2: Vs MacCready, Lamplight Mayor. Matchup Record: 3-1
This is a matchup that is all about speed. We can’t really block any of their creatures, and if our game plan goes well, they can’t block any of ours. Keeping an aggressive hand is very important in this matchup. We do need to be aware of their removal as well, since they have a lot more than we do. This is a good matchup for us, but it can go bad.
Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Chaos Warp, Untimely Malfunction and Collective Inferno.
Game 3: Vs Lovisa Coldeyes. Matchup Record: 2-2
A split matchup that was a lot of fun, even though we split games and like most creature type based mirror matches we just hit into each other a lot, they do try to keep our commander off of the field as much as they can since Gornog’s attack trigger can be quite problematic for them and take away a blocker, this is another matchup that is all about speed, just hit hard and be aggressive.
Cards that worked really well in this matchup:
Chronicle of Victory, Molten Echoes and Shared Animosity.
Conclusion
Thanks so much for reading to the end! I hope you all enjoyed this one. This has been a blast to play, and while Warriors aren’t the strongest creature type, they are really fun to play. This deck reminds me of when I first started playing, and I fell in love with any Aggro deck I could find. It’s always nice to have a callback to a previous time! While this deck won’t change the world, it can be strong at bracket two tables and combat-heavy tables.