Our latest and totally greatest Naya commander is here! Time to rustle up your best token generators and get them out on the range, cuz now we bout to make the greatest stampede ya ever did see!
Howdy ya'll, welcome to what I am hoping will become a primer for our boy Ghired, Mirror of the Wilds. In this guide I will be presenting you with a lot of information, from the deck's strengths and weaknesses to notable cards to terrible match ups. Basically any thing and every thing you'll need I hope to slap into this puppy. For you early birds though just keep in mind that the primer is gonna have to be built up over time so if it seems bare bones for now fret not! We will be shaping it up as we go.
So first off, what is Ghired, Mirror of the Wilds all about? Tokens. Creature tokens? Yes, but so much more than that! Using his ability we can create a copy of any token we control that etb'd this turn. Creatures are mostly small potatoes. Treasures. Bloods. Clues. Foods. Even token copies of things! His ability is only limited to your imagination! (and unfortunately our cards *womp womp*)
But to make more tokens we need to have creatures who can be tapped. Thankfully Ghired our good ol' boy already has haste, so no need to worry about him. But a couple haste enablers would go a long way to make our others guys be more useful to make more tokens or to allow our tokens to be even nastier in combat. Preferably we want to have a decent number of lower cost dorks to be ready on the turn we drop Ghired to maximize our token gains.
What kind of effects does Ghired want? Well he synergizes with any thing that goes wide or benefits from it. Craterhoof is a no brainer obviously, Jetmir is pretty strong, and other effects like
Rite of Harmony are definite includes. But what else could we do here? Well, red has a few ways to generate tokens of creatures already in play so we could utilize powerful creatures like Terror of the Peaks and turn it into TWELVE Terror of the Peaks. Or you could make a copy of
Outcaster Trailblazer , start pumping out an army of it, make a buncha mana and get a buncha cards! Or maybe you just wanna dump half your deck into play by creating a buttload of Trumpeting Carnosaurs? Basically, if it has a strong effect and you could copy it you might wanna consider it.
How about ramp though? Most G/x decks rely on their ramp and mana fixing to come from
Rampant Growth effects. Us though? Nah pardner, Ghired is more interested in making treasures to ramp with. Not only can treasure just explode in one turn, but if you don't have any thing else to play during that turn you could just bank it up instead. Of course, there's two downsides to treasure ramp to keep in mind. Once you spend it well it's just gone. And secondly, they're prone to artifact hate. In most playgroups I would say go with the treasures over the land ramp, but just make sure you adjust your own ramp packages according to your meta.
In addition to the treasures Ghired does enjoy having some low cost mana dorks laying around. In the early turns they do their job of getting you where you need to be then performing later as token makers. So a few of these are always appreciated.
Lastly for your ramp package you should think about adding in a few creatures that can generate mana without the need of tapping. Things like Wild Cantor or Burning-Tree Emissary are really good once you can start making a full ranch out of them.
Aight so, we got cool splashy effects, down, a win con or two and our ramp figured out. What's next? We need gas right? As a lot of other commanders enjoy their card advantage being tied to a creature body so does Ghired. Any creature that gives us any kind of advantage also has the ability to make more tokens so we prefer having an extra hand on this ranch rather than resorting to non-creatures to find more gas. Things like Outcaster Trailblazer, Imperial Recruiter, Professional Face-Breaker. Oh yeah, each of these cowboys put in the work but there's so many more you could utilize. And don't forget, we can always make more of these card advantage guys if we find a copier! Just make sure that what ever cards you're using for gas could be used in more than one way.
What about protection? We're obviously gonna get blown up and since we're mostly a token deck that hurts us even more than your average commander. So we can play things like Selfless Spirit. Bodyguard effects are going to be your best choices since like I said before any body can also be used to generate more tokens. But of course never forget about Clever Concealment. You should have plenty of creatures out to cast this thing for free and just ask your opponents "what board are you gonna wipe again?" Also, don't forget about effects like Grand Abolisher or our favorite Ranger Captain!
Next we come to removal. Sure, you can run your standard suite of Swords or Path or what have you. But the smart ones are going to make sure they have a number of creatures they could make tokens of to increase our removal numbers further. Flametongue Kavu, Wicked Wolf, Reclamation Sage. Some of our win conditions like Terror of the Peaks and Roxanne can be used as removal if we just can't muster the win that turn as well. So keep cards like this in mind when you're building your package of annihilation!
Ghired also has room for a few....well utility cards. Things such as Vitalize, Seedborn Muse, Ertha Jo, Frontier Mentor. Ya know, the kinds of grease that just makes your gears turn all the easier. Or make them wheels fly right off the wagon! There's various ways to untap your creatures, double up on triggers and activations, give our team haste, or pick things back up from the graveyard.
Now let's get into the real meat of the deck: TOKENS! We're gonna be making a bunch of them and we need some good ones. Take your pick from dorks to monsters, make a fistful of blood (please don't do this literally), or drown your opponents in card advantage with clues!
But that's not enough! We really need things that make sure we're making tokens each and every turn! You don't wanna play one token maker but run out of steam on the next turn. We gotta keep that train a rolling!
One last subsection of tokens that every deck needs is the army in a can. One card that by itself can just generate a TON of tokens. For us they generate so much resource value that you definitely need a few of these in your deck.
Oh wait...yeah no we got two more subsection of tokens to go over! How the heck could I forget about doublers! Yeah, the competitive players might think these are over kill, but hey it's commander. We're here to go big right?
And now I hear you say "but brawlguy, what about these token copiers I keep hearing about?" After looking through list upon list of these things I really gotta say I wish Ghired was Temur instead of Naya, but hey trust me, we still got some amazing offers in these colors. Jaxis, the Troublemaker and Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker are the darn tootinest of the tootin', able to give you tokens of your best pardners at a moment's notice. Jaxis might even be better in some situations as she's so much cheaper than Kiki if all you need is just one turn. Molten Duplication allows us to generate some value, but again just for that one turn. It's fine as long as you have enough hands to make it worth it. Nexus of Becoming and Bramble Sovereign even give us ways to do it turn after turn!
All righty folks, we're almost at the end of the this list of nifty cards, but what kinda token deck would be complete without anthems? We're gonna be making lots of creatures so having ways to buff them is gonna go a long way. You'll get a lot of value out of cards like Jetmir, Warleader's Call, and Beastmaster's Ascencion!
Lastly....the section that will fill you with utter joy or make you turn away in digsust: COMBOS! So yeah, Ghired allows for some pretty easy infinite combos with the likes of Village Bell-Ringer, Battered Golem, or Hyrax Tower Scout. As far as Ghired specific combos there's quite a lot of them, but these three seem to be the prime culprits so far in these lists.
All of that stuff up there? That was just a load of words to get ya brewin' juices flowing. I'd love for you take a look at those notes and just cook up ya own list....but I know that's not for every one. Or heck, maybe ya just wanna look at my own list so you can criticize me! Is all good, I don't mind a spit war with ya at all heh. So, without further ado, here's what I'm running at the moment:
So, a better looking decklist can be found
here!
You can keep up with my current decklist better with this link. I will edit the deck on this post time to time when I feel like more changes won't happen often. Also, I will never cut any thing completely from my list, just move it over to my maybe board. So if you just wanna look and see what I've toyed around with that could also make for some good discussion, too!
As this post here is getting a bit long, I'll go ahead and save the break down and ideas behind the list in the next one, as well as continue on with the rest of the guide itself from there!
Zacama
