(Slinza, the Spiked Stampede | Art by Ishikawa Kenta)

Why Was There No Beast Secret Lair?

It turns out that there are 333 legal creatures with the Beast type in Gruul. If Wizards had made a secret lair designed around the X-Men Beast, it would still be weaker than Storm, Force of Nature. All this is to say that some of your favorite creatures might secretly be a Beast. The best way to find out is to play Slinza, the Spiked Stampede, and show all of your opponents the beast within.

My name is Nick, and welcome to a deck tech for Foundations Jumpstart, a set filled with anime art, fascinating new legendary creatures, and fun reprints!

Fight or Fight Response

In this deck, the only running we will do is run over our opponents to reduce their life totals to zero. Slinza, the Spiked Stampede, is another legendary creature in the ever-growing world of "Gruul Fight Club." The de facto leader up until now was Neyith of the Dire Hunt, but Slinza wants to bring a new martial arts style to the fight club.

Almost everything about Slinza, the Spiked Stampede, is perfect for a Beast Typal Commander deck. We get a mana reduction to all our Beasts; they all enter with a +1/+1 counter, and the fighting is optional. The single downside is that we have to pay to cast our commander. It's good that we're green, so having enough mana will quickly become an afterthought.

Fixing the Fight

We don't want to lose once we start fighting in this deck. So, what cards do we have at our disposal to help make sure we win?

Regenerate is an older keyword in the game, and Krosan Warchief allows us to have a fight we are guaranteed to win thanks to its protection. Anara, Wolvid Familiar, and Spearbreaker Behemoth can give our commander indestructible, and the pump from Thunderfoot Baloth should be enough to get over most creatures.

While we don't always have to use our commander to fight when our other Beasts come in, we want to avoid having Slinza, the Spiked Stampede die repeatedly.

Another +1/+1

The middle ability on Slinza grants all of our other Beasts an extra counter when they come into play, but what about getting Slinza some counters? As a matter of fact, what about getting all of our creatures more and more +1/+1 counters?

One of the staple cards in a counters deck is The Ozolith. While this card doesn't add counters to anything at the start, someone will eventually want to kill the creatures we have out. When that happens, we want a place for our counters to go, and that is where The Ozolith comes into play. And this works for any counter that we can get onto a creature. If we find ourselves with a Beast that doesn't have a trample, hopefully, we have already cycled our Titanoth Rex, allowing us to reuse the trample counter.

If one spire-shaped artifact is good, the broken version is even better. Ozolith, the Shattered Spire gives our creatures a bonus counter and can even give bonus counters to the counters placed on the original The Ozolith. If that was not good enough for you, what about adding a way to give a creature a counter, which is secretly two counters, and cycling if, for some reason, you ever wanted to throw this card into the bin in an ill-fated attempt to find something better?

More Counters

Green is one of the best colors in Magic for +1/+1 counters. From creatures, instants, sorceries, and enchantments, we have many ways to pump up our board.

Fangren Firstborn is one of the best Beasts I found when putting this deck together. It might have in the cost preventing people from including it, but not us. Our deck is heavy green, and this Beast growing our team when we turn everything sideways adds fuel to our fire. Ivy Lane Denizen pairs perfectly with our commander, even without an infinite combo involved, which might be a first for the denizen. Every time we have a Beast with power four or greater enter, we can have the denizen give Slinza a counter, allowing it to fight something bigger every time.

An underrated across-the-color pie set of cards, the Loyal creatures. Each of these cards should, on average, see more play. Loyal Guardian fits perfectly for our needs. Another creature that can add counters to our entire team and being a 4/4 with trample itself means the guardian will get into the red zone along with the team.

Our good offense needs just as good of a defense, and in Magic, there is no better defense than preventing a board wipe. Inspiring Call is one of the more niche protection cards you will see in Commander. While this deck also runs Heroic Intervention, most people will have forgotten that the call even exists, and there is never anything wrong with a backup plan to the backup plan.

Lastly, a very recent card, Season of Gathering, does everything that a green deck wants to do. It can put counters on up to five of our creatures, giving them vigilance and trample till the end of the turn, wipe the board of all artifacts and/or all enchantments, or draw us a massive amount of cards.

Enchanting

The enchantments in this deck might be the most crucial part outside of the Beasts themselves.

The wild and the unrest allow all of our creatures to riot. The choice is adding another +1/+1 counter or our creatures having haste, which lets them wait for friends, or jumping into the Donnybrook themselves. Bonus points to Uncivil Unrest doubling the damage almost every creature in our deck will dish out.

Court of Garenbrig can draw us cards, give us counters, and even double up all the counters we have already made. Innkeeper's Talent has no level we cannot take advantage of; giving our creatures protection in the form of ward and having another effect that doubles up our counters all rolled into one. A prerequisite for this deck is having a lot of dice on hand, especially if you enter the court or witness Innkeeper's Talent firsthand.

Primeval Bounty acts as this deck's Swiss army knife, and while we most likely get a 3/3 Beast with this card on the field, the times we trigger the other two effects shouldn't be slept on. The silliest card to be found in a Slinza, the Spiked Stampede deck, is Aether Charge: every beast now becomes four damage to our least favorite opponent's face.

Biggest Baddest Beasts

I have talked about many cards that help our beasts and help our commander, but what about the beasts themselves? Craterhoof Behemoth, a card that needs one ever to say how good it is ever again, just so happens to be a beast. Siege Behemoth is nowhere near as good of a card, but with Hexproof, it will not die easily, and its ability makes it so that even if an opponent has infinite blockers, we can still win the game.

Rampaging Baloths and Thragtusk both act as a familiar song to a player's ears, but I, for one, have never focused on their creature type of Beast. Blossoming Bogbeast is not going to pump our team to the moon since we do not have steady life gain, but giving our board trample pairs perfectly with the addition of a Quartzwood Crasher.

Finally, there are some other surprisingly good Beast creatures.

Down With the Sickness

A lot of green and a splash of red is just as good of a way to build a Commander deck as any other strategy. Slinza, the Spiked Stampede, spoke to me when I looked through the Foundations Jumpstart card list. I was explicitly wrong in my thinking that there would be a small number of Beasts for the deck, and I was pleasantly surprised to see some creatures I have fond memories of playing that just so happened to be Beasts themselves.

A significant omission from this deck is a card like Doubling Season or any of its slightly worse enchantment variations. Obviously, it would be fine in the deck, and if the deck's main focus was strictly +1/+1 counters, then I would definitely be included. I decided to focus on the Beast creature type in the deck and use counters and fighting as subthemes in the deck, leaving it out of the list.

I think Slinza, the Spiked Stampede, is a commander who can bring a new player into the game and one that a seasoned veteran can fine-tune and have a blast with. If you want to see any of the other decks I have teched for Foundations or any previous sets, along with my series on Planeswalkers or anything else that other brilliant people have written, find it here on EDHREC or Commanders Herald. The rest of the deck list can be found below!

Deck List

Nicholas Lucchesi

Player and lover of all Magic the Gathering formats. Forged in the fires of Oath of the Gatewatch expeditions. Always down to jam games with anyone and everyone. When not playing Magic I am doing something else equally, if not more nerdy.