by Johnny Cycles, June 14th, 2024
GIANT
TRIBAL!
I started and stopped writing the introductory paragraph for this deck several times before deciding Giant Tribal needs no real introduction. You either immediately sit up in excitement or you keep scrolling. But don’t worry, I’ll still make my case for why Giant Tribal is one of the more fun and powerful tribal decks in Commander. But if the pictures above don’t have you smiling and excited, then you may want to find a lesser tribe to build around…like faeries. Shots fired!
Giants are one of those mythological creatures that have both a rich lore and a dynamic appeal. Whether it’s the Bible with Goliath or Norse mythology with its anti-gods, recently further popularized in the Netflix show, Ragnarok (which is amazing if you haven’t seen it), giants have been a part of human’s zeitgeist long before that word came into common use. There’s something primordially alluring about imagining a extra large human who has powers beyond ours.
Magic hasn’t missed the opportunity to take advantage of our fascination with Giants. According to my latest count, there are 232 Giants in the game, putting this tribe just outside of the top 20 most printed creature types in all of Magic. In fact, Magic’s first set, Alpha, featured three Giants: Stone Giant, Hill Giant, and Two-Headed Giant of Foriys.
The OG Giants of Magic.
And even with these first Giants, Wizards played on the fun and the fury of this mythological beast. Stone Giant may have one of the most appropriate and hilarious abilities in the entire game. It’s spot on in every way, with the flavor text as icing on the cake. Hill Giant has its own fun flavor text, while being appropriately costed for its time (I know, creatures used to be reeeaaalll bad). Finally, Two-Headed Giant of Foriys, like Stone Giant, has abilities that match its name and a flavor text that makes you smile.
As the years and the sets have gone by, Wizards continues to give its Giants powerful and appropriate abilities, even if, unfortunately, they’ve largely strayed from the funny flavor text. Sigh.
Perhaps because they’re supposed to be enormous and enormously powerful creatures, Giants have been granted a wide range of abilities rarely found in a single tribe. They can kill other creatures (duh), enchantments, artifacts, and lands. They can tutor up other giants. They can grow our entire team. They can draw us cards. They can gain us life. They can make our Giants uncounterable. They can attack our opponent’s hand. They can raise an army of zombies. Or they can bring things back from the dead. And, much like one of the first to be printed, they can throw other creatures at our opponent’s face.
What a beautiful, beautiful tribe.
Before we get to the decklist, let me just say a couple of things. First, this deck started out as a budget build. I spent less than $100 on the various Giants I needed and I used all budget friendly lands, like the scry lands. I’ve since upgraded to shock lands and triomes, as well as added a few money cards like The Great Henge. However, it is easy to keep it under $100.
Second, this deck is meant to be a fun, mid-level deck that won’t make you any enemies at the table (unless your opponents hate Esika/The Prismatic Bridge, which I get). We’re playing a fun tribe with a very simple, straightforward game plan. We’re not trying to win unfairly or with crazy combos. We aren’t trying to stop our opponents from playing Magic. Much like the Giants the deck is built around, we want to revel in our superpowered creatures and smash everything in our path to victory.
Deck Tech
Decklist – 5-Color Giant Tribal with Esika, God of the Tree
| Esika, God of the Tree |
Creatures (29)
| Kroxa, Titan of Death’s Hunger | |
| Aegar, the Freezing Flame | |
| Bonecrusher Giant | |
| Stinkdrinker Daredevil | |
| Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath | |
| Brion Stoutarm | |
| Hundred-Handed One | |
| Ruhan of the Fomori | |
| Sunder Shaman |
| Sunrise Sovereign | |
| Borderland Behemoth | |
| Hamletback Goliath | |
| Magma Giant | |
| Realm-Cloaked Giant | |
| Surtland Elementalist |
Artifacts (10)
| Arcane Signet |
| Boros Signet | |
| Golgari Signet | |
| Izzet Signet | |
| Selesnya Signet | |
| Simic Signet | |
| Chromatic Lantern | |
| Urza’s Incubator | |
| Vanquisher’s Banner | |
| The Great Henge |
Enchantments (6)
| Invasion of the Giants | |
| Hidetsugu Consumes All | |
| Fires of Invention | |
| Battle of Frost and Fire | |
| Leyline Binding | |
| Raised by Giants |
Instants (5)
| Crush Underfoot | |
| Despark | |
| Vanishing Verse | |
| Void Rend | |
| Squash |
Sorceries (11)
| Farseek | |
| Nature’s Lore | |
| Sylvan Scrying | |
| Anger of the Gods | |
| Deafening Clarion | |
| Explosive Vegetation | |
| Skyshroud Claim | |
| Casualties of War | |
| Eerie Ultimatum | |
| Emergent Ultimatum | |
| Genesis Ultimatum |
Lands (38)
Blood Crypt
Breeding Pool
Cascading Cataracts
City of Brass
Command Tower
Deathcap Glade
Deserted Beach
Dreamroot Cascade
Godless Shrine
Hall of Storm Giants
Indatha Triome
Jetmir’s Garden
Ketria Triome
Mana Confluence
Overgrown Farmland
Overgrown Tomb
Raffine’s Tower
Raugrin Triome
Rockfall Vale
Sacred Foundry
Savai Triome
Shattered Sanctum
Shipwreck Marsh
Steam Vents
Stormcarved Coast
Sundown Pass
Temple Garden
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Watery Grave
Xander’s Lounge
Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth
Ziatora’s Proving Ground
Forest (2)
Island (1)
Mountain (1)
Plains (1)
Swamp (1)
The Problem with Giant Tribal
We don’t yet have a 5-color Giant commander. There are so many Giants to pick from and there are great ones in each color that this is what we want and need! What this means is that if we want to stay true to our tribe, we have to sacrifice at least two colors to do so. Do we chose Ruhan of the Fomori and lose both and and, with them, Grave Titan and Earthshaker Giant, to name a couple? Or do we go with Oloro, Ageless Ascetic and lose and , and, along with those colors, the large majority of Giants?
Or do we go the changeling route and pick Morophon, the Boundless or something of the sort?
I originally chose Golos, Tireless Pilgrim as my commander. He did it all for the deck, while also sort of looking like a Giant…right? Then he got banned and my Giant deck was left without a captain.
It wasn’t long, though, before I settled on Esika, God of the Tree. Thanks to what I consider a strange rule that feels very suspect, we can play Esika, God of the Tree as the commander of our 5-color deck because it’s back side is a 5-color…enchantment.
I mean, okay.
And, what’s really suspect, is that we can cast our commander, who must be a legendary creature, as a legendary enchantment.
Again…okay.
I’ll be the first to admit that I have no idea of the lore of Kaldheim or of Esika, in particular, so maybe it makes total sense. If I had to guess, I’d say Esika becomes The Prismatic Bridge in the story.
Regardless, she is a great commander for us, with a triggered ability that is far superior than Golos, Tireless Pilgrim‘s activated one. It takes no mana investment on our part to put whatever big fatty happens to be on top of our library into play. And, since we’re playing a tribe defined by its bigness and fattiness, we have a great chance of running away with the game once we untap with The Prismatic Bridge.
Now, let’s talk about the deck!
Primary Game Plan
As you might expect from Giants, we’re not looking to win by finesse. We’re looking to beat face as fast and as often as possible with massive creatures that all help manage the board or synergize with one another surprisingly well. Most of our Giants cost more than 4 mana, so we’re hoping to spend the early turns making land drops and sticking a mana rock or two. In order to catch us back up against the go-wide aggro strategies, we play several conditional sweepers that deal three damage to each creature. These board wipes can be powerful late, as well, since most of our Giants will survive them. Finally, we have a hodgepodge collection of targeted removal to deal with problematic cards, either early or late.
When winning through combat is off the table, our secondary plan is to Fling giant Giants at our opponent’s face. Finally, we play a handful of ultimatums, because, why not? We’re five colors and make a lot of mana. We could add some of the more busted ones if we wanted to make the deck more powerful, but more on this later.
The Talent
Yup…Giants are so powerful, they have their own agent.
Giants Who Go Smash
Giants are good at destroying things, whether those things are creatures, lands, artifacts, or opponents.
Bloodshot Cyclops – first printed in Urza’s Destiny in 1999, both the art and the flavor text should clue you in to its age. This is Hill Giant without the middleman. Rather than send another creature flying through the air to attack our opponent, we get to throw it directly at their face or another creature. Incidentally, Bloodshot Cyclops is one of the cards that make up our aforementioned secondary game plan.
Bonecrusher Giant – Stomp gives us early targeted interaction, while 3 mana is our cheapest Giant (not counting those with escape). Sometimes we just want to put a body on the board in the early turns.
Brion Stoutarm – our second Giant who can Fling creatures at our opponent, this one has lifelink, which means we get to put ourselves out of death’s reach, while pushing our opponent closer to it with each sacrifice.
Helldozer – isn’t easy to come by in our deck, but how can we not play this card!? Look at that art! It has giant metal balls on chains in place of hands. I wonder if this was the inspiration for the war troll, Stumpy, from The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies. Its ability can be game ending, if we’re lucky, though we’d be happy if it just took out a Cabal Coffers or the like.
Inferno Titan – a Firebreathing Giant who kills things again and again? There’s a reason this cycle of Titans is one of the best in the game.
Kalemne’s Captain – a mana-intensive answer to problematic artifacts and enchantments. It’s a bit of a nonbo with our ramp plan, but when you need an answer to an Ensnaring Bridge, we won’t mind losing some signets as a trade off.
Magma Giant – 7 mana is a lot for this effect on this body, but with the right ramp, we can cast it early enough to stabilize against go wide decks. Also, any respectable Giant Tribal deck needs a really good reason not to play a Giant with this name and this art.
Realm-Cloaked Giant – this is our super secret Giant tech that can win us games out of nowhere. A common, albeit sort of boring, line is to tutor Realm-Cloaked Giant up with Giant Harbinger, cast Cast Off for the 1-sided boardwipe, then smash in for the W.
Sunder Shaman – another way we have of dealing with artifacts and enchantments, the 5/5 body for 4 mana is the kind of rate we’ve come to expect from Magic in the 2020s.
Thundercloud Shaman – another potential 1-sided boardwipe, this card is another example of amazing art coupled with a powerful and unique ability.
Giants Who Smash More
We have a variety of Giants who pump our team or increase the damage we do. These are some of our best finishers.
Calamity Bearer – a Giant who doubles up damage done by Giants? More magma in the art, this time as balls of fire it throws? What’s not to like? At 4 mana, Calamity Bearer can come down early as a must-answer threat, or we can save it until the late game and cast it the turn we want to swing out.
Earthshaker Giant – a 6-mana 6/6 that gives all our creatures +3/+3 and trample? A card with a single printing? A card only printed for Game Night 2019? How is this Giant Druid only $6? I think people just don’t know it exists, because when I read this card, I see a slightly worse Craterhoof Behemoth, which, even with its many reprintings, is more than $30.
Sunrise Sovereign – another amped up lord effect for 6 mana.
Giants with a Lighter Touch
Frost Titan – not all Giants smash things. Frost Titan gently taps them down for a turn by freezing them. Its a flavor win that can also be highly relevant, shutting down everything from attack triggers to busted lands.
Giants Who Draw Cards
Tectonic Giant – a Lightning Bolt to each opponent with every attack is sort of meh in Commander, though it technically gives us a way to win outside of dealing combat damage. We’re mostly interested in the card we get from its other trigger. That, and we really can’t play all 5- and 6-drop Giants.
Oloro, Ageless Ascetic – lifegain attached to card draw.
Uro, Titan of Nature’s Wrath – lifegain attached to card draw and ramp…that’s even better. And while Oloro has the added bonus of gaining us life from the command zone, which is one reason it sees a lot of play, we’re obviously not playing it in that spot, making Uro the better card draw engine.
Aegar, the Freezing Flame – our other 3-drop Giant, we can cast him late to make blocking highly problematic for our opponents.
Giants Who Cast Ultimatums
Surtland Elementalist – let’s be honest here…this Giant Wizard is only in the deck so that we can live our dream of casting one of our ultimatums for free when he attacks. I think I should add more ultimatums…
Giants Who Tutor
Giant Harbinger – so, it’s a bad tutor, but still… Also, look at that art!
Giants Who Raise an Army
Grave Titan – Zombies in a Giant Tribal deck? Blasphemy!
Giants Who…Mess with our Opponent’s Plan
Quakebringer – a 5-mana 5/4 isn’t great, but it does fill out our curve, while also being pretty relevant against the right decks. And, technically, that big block of text in the middle gives us an alternate win condition.
Giants Who Mess with our Opponent’s Hand
Kroxa, Titan of Death’s Hunger – it’s not Thoughtseize, but its repeatable, which means we can slowly strip our opponent’s hand on the way to victory. Also another alternate win condition, albeit slow and not very effective.
Giants Against Control
Thryx, the Sudden Storm – decent stats, it’s the last line of text we’re most interested in. The cost reduction of our big fatties plus making them uncounterable is a win-win. Please note that the less to cast part is for all spells, which means our ultimatums can’t be countered either.
The Rest
Borderland Behemoth – one of our finishers, assuming we have other Giants out.
Hamletback Goliath – this card can get out of hand fast with three opponents. It’s also a great target for our Fling effects.
Hundred-Handed One – mostly in the deck to fill out our curve and satisfy the flavor gods, all that text isn’t irrelevant, by any means. However, if we’re blocking a hundred creatures with it, we’re probably not in a good spot.
Ruhan of the Fomori – a 4-mana 7/7 that must attack each turn is okay. However, it synergizes nicely with cards like Hamletback Goliath and Brion Stoutarm.
Support Cards
This group can be divided into ramp, removal, and card draw. The world is your oyster in this section. I won’t detail each card, as most are pretty self-explanatory.
Ramp
We play 15 ramp spells/mana rocks. This may be too many.
Arcane Signet
Boros Signet
Chromatic Lantern
Explosive Vegetation
Farseek
Golgari Signet
Invasion of the Giants – a 1-time cost reduction. Eh, it’s two mana and on flavor.
Izzet Signet
Nature’s Lore
Stinkdrinker Daredevil – the flavor win is too hard to resist, even if this Goblin Rogue dies to our sweepers. The art is amazing, too. So good, in fact, that I’ve included it twice!
Selesnya Signet
Simic Signet
Skyshroud Claim – with triomes, we can get all five of our colors with this sorcery.
Sylvan Scrying
The Great Henge – mostly in here to draw us cards.
Urza’s Incubator
Removal
We play 11 different removal spells, from sweepers to targeted removal to sagas.
Anger of the Gods – this feels pretty on flavor, as well as a way to catch back up against lower to the ground decks. Exiling creatures killed with this spell can be very relevant.
Battle of Frost and Fire – another 1-sided sweeper. Also, what a name!
Crush Underfoot – hey! It’s a Giant instant! I don’t get how tribal spells work, but it’s here for the flavor win.
Deafening Clarion – the flexibility of gaining life instead of doing three damage is why we’re playing this card.
Despark – the first of seemingly random removal spells. I like Despark as an answer to indestructible and recursive permanents.
Hidetsugu Consumes All – an odd one for flavor purposes, we’re mostly interested in having more sweepers against tokens. Exiling all graveyards is nice, even if our opponents will have a turn to play around it.
Invasion of the Giants – calling this removal is a bit of a stretch, but it can technically pick off a Planeswalker. The name alone makes it an auto-include in any Giant Tribal deck that can cast it.
Leyline Binding –I’ve lost enough games of Modern to this card to feel a little dirty including it in my Giant Tribal deck…
Squash – another card that is on flavor in both art and text!
Vanishing Verse – another exile effect.
Void Rend – arguably the second strangest removal spell in the deck. If I were to go through my collection, I’d likely pick a different one, but I have the one pictured above in foil and it’s cool. Otherwise we’re paying an additional mana to prevent this from being countered is how I see it, since we could otherwise find a 2-mana spell that does something similar.
Card Draw
The Prismatic Bridge gives us guaranteed card advantage once a turn, but we play a few other ways of drawing cards.
Battle of Frost and Fire
The Great Henge
Vanquisher’s Banner
With access to all colors, there are plenty of alternatives for card draw, as well. These three feel like flavor wins, each in their own way.
The Rest
Fires of Invention – this one might be a bit of a nonbo with our many signets, but the upside is that in the late game we can cast two of our big Giants in the same turn. The few times I’ve untapped with this enchantment out, I’ve pulled ahead pretty easily.
The Ultimatums
We play three of these. We could play more. We could play more powerful ones. I went with three that are not quite as busted as the most busted.
Eerie Ultimatum – arguably the most powerful of the three, it’s also fairly easy to hose with a bit of timely graveyard hate.
Emergent Ultimatum – we don’t have any kind of combo that will win us the game regardless of which creature our opponent chooses, but this should pull us ahead significantly. We can also use it to get one of our two Giants who Fling creatures at our opponent if that’s what we need.
Genesis Ultimatum – seven mana to play five cards for free can be an exceptional rate, if we hit all Giants. If we find lands and mana rocks in the top five…well, that did happen the one time I cast this spell.
Flex Spots
You may have noticed that I’ve left off two cards from the decklist in my discussion: Casualties of War and Raised by Giants. These are the first two out and currently waiting to be replaced by something bigger and better (like Phlage, Titan of Fire’s Fury from MH3). Beyond these, we do play quite a few mana rocks and ramp spells to go along with our 38 lands. I’d look to trim some of these in favor of cheaper interaction, better sweepers, or more Giants.
Being that we’re in all five colors, there is ample opportunity to upgrade the power level, either through interaction, ramp, tutors, or card draw. The ultimatums are fun but totally unnecessary for the deck to do what it wants. I could see cutting these for cheaper interaction.
Why no Sun Titan? Well, as powerful and flavorful as this Giant is, we don’t really have a lot of targets for its ETB and attack triggers. Sure, we could return some mana rocks to the battlefield if our opponent destroys them, and we do have a handful of 3-mana Giants to target, but the chances are pretty bad that we’ll get much value out of Sun Titan. That leaves this being a 6/6 for six mana that doesn’t tap when it attacks.
If you’re playing fetch lands or mana rocks like Commander’s Sphere, then I would consider finding a spot for this titan.
Ideal Hand and Game Play
Lands, some ramp, and one or two Giants in our opening hand is great. A sweeper or removal is also acceptable, even preferred, if we’re playing against a must-kill commander. Otherwise, we want to start casting our Giants as early as possible, unless they’re one of our finishers.
I wouldn’t hesitate to cast our commander on turn 3 as Esika if we don’t have any other ramp or are missing lands. It’s likely she’ll die at some point and it’s more important that we don’t fall behind on resources than it is to get The Prismatic Bridge online. Furthermore, I wouldn’t rush to cast the 5-mana legendary enchantment, unless there is nothing else to do. It will almost surely draw out a removal spell or a counter. It’s better to play Giants instead and force our opponent to burn through their answers to stop from dying first. Also, as mentioned above, this is meant to be a fun, friendly deck. The Prismatic Bridge is arguably the most unfair card we play, so there’s no need to run it out unless our opponents are significantly ahead on board or doing broken things of their own.
Weaknesses
We’re a 5-color deck looking to cast high-mana-costing creatures. Given that more than half of our deck is either land or ramp, the potential for flooding and durdling is real. The Prismatic Bridge ameliorates this, but we have to untap with it first.
Aggressive, low-to-the-ground strategies can give us problems, as well. Especially in French Commander, we can get run over before we really get going against some decks. We play cheap sweepers for this very reason, trusting that our targeted removal can handle bigger threats or that our Giants will just outclass and outpower anything big.
I’ll repeat what I’ve said a couple of times: we are a mid-level deck playing a fair game. We won’t be able to keep up with unfair combo decks and the like without a great deal of luck.
Conclusion
Giant Tribal is a fun, powerful archetype in Commander that captures a lot of the spirit of the format. We get to play a bunch of big fatties that rarely, if ever, see play in competitive formats. We get the spectrum of cool, fun, crazy, and goofy art and flavor text. And we get some sweet synergies and interactions attached to very large humanoids. If you’re looking for a casual deck that plays a fair game, I’d recommend Giant Tribal. The most controversial card is The Prismatic Bridge and, if your opponents are super salty about you playing a legendary enchantment as your commander, you can always agree during Rule 0 that you’ll only cast it as a creature.
Let me know in the comments what you think of the deck? Is Esika, God of the Tree/The Prismatic Bridge a polarizing commander? What Giants am I overlooking? Who helms your Giant Tribal deck?
As always, thanks for reading!
