I Accidentally Broke the Witherbloom Precon with a Silly Little Guy and $10
Friends, we finally get to the last of my Secrets of Strixhaven Commander precon upgrade guides, and it's the one I'm personally enjoying the most: Witherbloom Pestilence!
You can find the previous upgrade guides here:
Soooo I accidentally broke the Witherbloom Pestilence precon with a $10 upgrade. Oops.
I did something incredibly dumb for this article: I took this precon, with an amazing face commander who was literally designed to lead the deck, and with a playstyle that I'm keenly familiar with, and swapped it out for this weirdo, Gorma, the Gullet. I didn't know if Gorma was a suitable leader for the deck or what the upgrade path for him leading it would look like, so I'd have to spend more time researching for this video.
Why is this dumb? Well, I'm flying out to the United States tomorrow. I have to figure out the upgrade guide, write this article, shoot and edit the video, all before I travel. I also have other work that still needs to be done, and of course, I haven't packed for this 2-week trip either. So obviously I should've stuck with what I know, knocked out a quick video upgrading with Dina, and moved on.
But I couldn't do it. I had to switch over to Gorma, the Gullet. It's a Pest Frog! Look at him! It's so cute!!! How do you say no to that face?!?
So that's what I did. I took what would've been a very quick and straightforward upgrade guide and made myself a ton of extra work swapping to Gorma, because he's just too dang adorable. And you know what? This lil' bean is low-key actually way scarier than Dina! I'm going to show you why in the upgrades, but first, let's look at the precon.
Witherbloom Pestilence is a Green / Black deck focused on Sacrifice and Lifegain, merging the two archetypes together seamlessly. The game plan is to sacrifice our creatures for fun and profit, drawing cards off Moldervine Reclamation, draining life with Blood Artist, or blowing up stuff with Immoral Bargain. The stuff we're sacrificing is a mix of classic sac fodder like Bloodghast but the best are the pests like Pest Rescuer, the signature creature token of Witherbloom, which gain us life when they die. Then we take advantage of this incidental lifegain for really sweet payoffs, like the "Craterhoof for Lifegain" Blossoming Bogbeast!
I honestly really like this precon, it's taking the Sacrifice archetype which is one of the most beloved and popular archetypes in the format and adding a Lifegain twist to it to make it more interesting, and the end result works really well.
Let's take a closer look at the precon:
For the Sacrifice theme I count:
- 20 cards that sacrifice stuff: 16 sacrifice outlets (Viscera Seer) and 4 sacrifice themselves (Sakura-Tribe Elder)
- 17 sacrifice fodder, stuff that can repeatedly be sacrificed (Pest Rescuer)
- 12 sacrifice payoffs, either specifically caring about sacrifice (Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest) or generic death triggers (Morbid Opportunist)
That's a strong focus on Sacrificing!
And the Lifegain theme is almost as strong:
- 21 cards that gain life, mostly through pest tokens (Blight Mound) but some other random lifegain sources (Stensian Sanguinist)
- 9 lifegain payoffs, most of them really strong like Witch of the Moors
Also there's a ton of overlap between the two themes: I'd say 17 cards support both the Sacrifice and Lifegain themes by gaining you life while sacrificing, again pests being great sac fodder while gaining life a great bridge between both themes but also there's classic drain cards like Zulaport Cutthroat here too.
There aren't any other mini-themes here, or anything that feels out of place. It's very much a focused Sacrifice + Lifegain deck.
The Good
Because Witherbloom Pestilence is laser-focused on Sacrifice + Lifegain and the card choices naturally overlap with each other, the good news is that the deck is very consistent. Rarely will you need to cast Mortality Spear for the full price, for example.
The card quality is generally quite high. Pretty much all the new cards are great (Eccentric Pestfinder). There's a lot of great reprints too (Smothering Abomination).
The Bad
I didn't think it was possible in Green, but the manabase here kind of sucks?
37 lands is a tad too low, not sure why they decided 37 was the new default for this set but yeah not a fan. There's about 8 ramp spells that aren't reliant on other cards to ramp (Elvish Mystic) and then 1 cracked ramp engine that is board-dependent (Pawn of Ulamog). This precon is so good at drawing cards, but the fairly weak manabase means it will be slow at actually deploying your hand.
Embracing The Silly Little Guy
The face commander, Dina, Essence Brewer, is absurdly strong, a powerful sac outlet that gains life AND rewards you for sac'ing with tons of easy card draw. She supports both themes, she's both setup and payoff, draws tons of cards, files your taxes, whatever you need she's getting it done. All on a 3-drop. It's an ultra-consistent, reliable value engine.
That's cool and all, but like I said, we're changing to Team Gorma now!
So! What does our new commander, the chonky boi Gorma, the Gullet, bring to the command zone?! Well, it rewards you for sacrificing by getting BIG, and makes your other creatures BIG! It also has lifelink so it can potentially gain a big chunk of life each time it swings out too! Gorma doesn't offer consistent value like Dina does, he doesn't draw cards, but the amount of counters he can toss around is absolutely wild.
What can we do with all these counters? A lot of cool stuff, actually!
There's a ton of cards that get stronger the higher the power of our creatures: sac fodder like Nested Shambler make way more squirrels, Rampant Rejuvenator land ramps a ton, we draw and ramp more off The Gitrog, Ravenous Ride, and we can drain our opponents by sac'ing a big enough creature to Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord.
Gorma also has lifelink and grows really fast, so cards that care about the amount of life we gain are particularly good with it too, like Ezzaroot Channeler can be a huge mana discount or Enduring Tenacity can drain out opponents.
And Gorma grows creatures via +1/+1 counters which opens the doors to counter synergies, either fairly chill synergies like Inspiring Call to protect our board and draw cards, or just win the game with infinite combos!
Oops! Yeah, turns out Gorma sets up infinite combos with persist creatures: all you need is Gorma, the Gullet + any persist creature like Putrid Goblin + any free sac outlet like Viscera Seer (it's in the precon) for an infinite sacrifice combo. From there you just need a card that makes the combo lethal like Blood Artist. Easy!
With that in mind, let's move to upgrades:
$10 Upgrades
I'm going to provide two upgrade paths: the first including infinite combos and the second excluding infinites. The combo path is more powerful, but I know that some people would prefer avoiding them, so I wanted to give you the option of using them or not.
$10 Combo Upgrades
First let's add our persist creatures. Any of these plus + Gorma, the Gullet + any free sac outlet is infinite.
- Putrid Goblin is the best one available since it's the cheapest and has no drawbacks. Also tossing in Rendclaw Trow
- Puppeteer Clique and Woodfall Primus are more expensive but also more exciting. Primus is essentially a wincon when you wipe out your opponents' lands, and Clique can sometimes end games too depending on what's in the graveyards
Next let's toss in one of the most important cards in the deck, Sifter of Skulls. It pumps out creature tokens that sacrifice themselves for mana! Literally the best thing the deck could ask for!
Then I'm adding two more great finishers for the deck:
- Feral Ghoul grows huge fast here even without combo'ing, to the point that we can sac it to put lethal amounts of rad counters on our opponents
- Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord is also incredible, it costs more mana to get going but we can sac something huge like Gorma to drain out our opponents, and it can recur itself
Next I want to speed up the deck's game plan by adding more powerful ramp and draw that takes advantage of Gorma:
- The Gitrog, Ravenous Ride is in my opinion the single best source of draw and ramp for this type of deck, we sac Gorma or whatever else and are set for the rest of the game
- Rampant Rejuvenator and Gyre Sage are the other two big ramp upgrades, the former is fantastic especially when you play it after Gorma, and the Sage is great before or after doing Gorma things
- Garruk's Uprising and Foot Chopper enhance our draw package, once Gorma is dropping down huge creatures both of these draw tons of cards and give evasion!
Next up, a bit of interaction plus recursion:
- Rise of the Witch-King and Desperate Plea pick off opposing creatures while getting some of ours back, also are sac outlets
- Find // Finality clears the board of smaller creatures or recurs two creatures, love the flexibility
I'm adding another great sac outlet and pest generator with Tend the Pests, scales up in power great for Gorma.
And finally, 3 Forest and 3 Swamps! It's so strange to me that the precons are filled with terrible lands that are worse than simply running more basics. Think of the reprint equity, WOTC!
The combo upgrades:
If you want to avoid combos, replace all the persist creatures with: Nested Shambler, Timeline Culler, Accomplished Alchemist, Victimize
Cut These
Honestly aside from some terrible land choices, the precon doesn't have any horrendous cards that are super easy cuts. I'm simply cutting the weakest or slowest cards for better options.
Upgraded List (Combo)
Here's how the deck looks like with the changes made. I'm using the combo upgrade path, if you don't want to combo just replace the 4 persist cards with the other 4.
10 More Adds
Want more? Alright, here's 10 more cards to run, higher budget now:
- Big splashy ramp Fanatic of Rhonas, Selvala, Heart of the Wilds, Pitiless Plunderer, Traverse the Outlands
- Big splashy draw Jenova, Ancient Calamity, Greater Good
- Amazing new recursion plus drain Cauldron of Essence
- Top-tier removal Vicious Rivalry, Butcher of Malakir
10 More Cuts
10 More Upgraded
And the list with all the changes made:
Bling Upgrades
Look I have a plane to catch but if you need more goodies: Warren Soultrader, Ashnod's Altar, Phyrexian Altar, Grave Pact, SEPHIROTH! There have at it!
Finally Done!
All 5 precons are now done! Let me know what you think, I make changes based on feedback. Thanks for reading!
