Foxy
- Aug 9, 2020
- 6 min read

Big Mama Grothama

BIG MAMA GROTHAMA

What She's All About

Ever wanted to draw 30 cards in a turn while playing all your favorite big green beasties? Well welcome to Mama Grothama! This Queen of Wurms will be dying and coming back to help us draw all the cards we could ever want. And to finish off the table we'll be playing all our favorite big stompy creatures for a good ol' fashioned smack down!

Ouch, That Hurts!

This deck is all about dealing massive amounts of damage, to our opponents and our own creatures. We're going to want to take advantage of Grothama's Fight mechanic, so lets add a few cards that create little armies when they take damage. Broodhatch Nantuko and Saber Ants make 1/1 insects for each damage they get dealt. Having them fight Grothama means we're getting 10 insects. That should really bug our opponents. Druid's Call can enchant any of our creatures so that our fights result in 1/1 Squirrels! Pair any of these abilities with anything that gives our creatures indestructible and you've got yourself a repeatable way to make armies of Insects and Squirrels. Our last way to abuse our fights is with Stuffy Doll. This little doll might not deal damage to Grothama to help us draw cards, but it will deal at least 10 damage to your most dangerous opponent every turn. Pretty good pay off if you ask me.

Price of Progress

In order for us to take advantage of Mama Grothama's card draw, shes got to leave the battlefield so we'll be sacrificing her a lot. Let's find some ways to make her sacrifice even more useful to us. Cards like Life's Legacy and Greater Good can easily double the amount of cards we draw in a turn after dealing huge amounts of damage to Grothama. The ability to sacrifice our commander is great because if we make her indestructible we need another way to get her off the field. Birthing Pod might not draw us cards, but it will let us tutor up any creature from our deck for six mana. Pathbreaker Ibex is a great target for this and can help us close out a game pretty quickly. Finally, Temur Sabertooth lets us return Grothama to our hand. This can either save her from removal by our opponents, and we still get her card draw trigger.

Gather the Children!

It's time for battle and Mama Grothama needs lots of ways to gather her children. First we have a few creatures that help find even bigger beasties. Fierce Empath, Fauna Shaman, and Protean Hulk all help us find any answers we may need to close out the game. Since most of our creatures are so big and mana intensive, we will likely have fewer out than our opponents at least in the beginning, so Defense of the Heart can get us out our biggest creatures super early if we're lucky. We've also got a ton of ramp so Finale of Devastation is a fantastic mana sink to not only find us a card, but also make all our creatures big enough to wipe out our opponents.

Can't Touch This

You always have to protect your mom so there's a few ways we're going to be able to give Grothama indestructible. Indestructible allows us to deal more damage than normal to Grothama so we get to draw even more cards. Plus it means our opponents can't take advantage of our Commander's fight ability to draw cards of their own. Mortal's Resolve and Heroic intervention are both instants that can save Grothama in a pinch. Stonehoof Chieftain, and Spearbreaker Behemoth can save all our powerhouse creatures. Darksteel Plate is another fun way to keep our most important things around.

Mama's Return

We've got more ways to keep bringing our creatures back after we've gotten to draw a bunch of cards by fighting Grothama. Cauldron of Souls can target all the creatures fighting Grothama and Grothama herself so that they all return to play, even if our other creatures died fighting her. Beware that the -1/-1 counters don't reset so this ability is only useful once unless you keep the counters off your creatures with Melira, Sylvok Outcast. Scythe of the Wretched can be put on Grothama and bring back all of our creatures that died fighting her, but it won't technically bring her back as well. Finally Helm of the Host is a great addition because we can kill the copy of our commander every combat, and we don't have to worry about recasting her to keep abusing her card draw.

Mana, Who Needs It?

What's better than playing big, powerful creatures? Playing big, powerful creatures without paying for their mana costs! Our first way to cheat stuff into play is Garruk, Caller of Beasts. His plus 1 is great to find you some creatures to fill your hand with, and his minus 3 lets us just drop those new creatures right onto the battle field. Elvish Piper is fantastic and easy to abuse with some untap effects. Finally, a card I think should see a little more play if you've got creature based decks; Lurking Predators. Best case scenario with this card is you will play a ton of free creatures on your opponent's turns. Worst case you can filter stuff you don't want to draw to the bottom of your deck. This typically won't stick around for long, but with this deck you'll likely get three or four creatures out before someone has an answer.

Mana, We Needs It!

So if we can't cheat our creatures into play we've got to play normal fair magic and that's going to require a ton of mana. Our deck will run all the basic mono-green ramp spells to put a bunch of lands into play, and were going to round out or ramp with a little spice. Nissa, Who Shakes the World and Zendikar Resurgent will double the mana we have available to us. Karametra's Acolyte and Selvala, Heart of the Wilds can very reliably generate 10-20 mana each turn (assuming your opponents don't kill them on sight). Patron of the Orochi untaps all our Forests and Green Creatures once each turn, easily game ending. Finally Seedborn Muse and Vivien, Champion of the Wilds makes us a pseudo Prophet of Kruphix which is absolutely broken in this deck.

Let's Get Ready to Rumble!!!

Now the moment you've all been waiting for!! The biggest, baddest creatures you can find in Magic the Gathering. And if that's not exciting for you then you're in the wrong deck my friend. Starting with our two big dinos theres Ghalta, Primal Hunger which we can easily cast for 2-4 mana. Gigantosaurus gives us the benefit of dramatically increasing our green devotion for use with Karametra's Acolyte. Mossbridge Troll gets its +20/+20 pretty easily. Pair this up with Dragon Throne of Tarkir and you can make all your creatures have an additional 25/25. Pathbreaker Ibex and God-Eternal Rhonas can supercharge our team for a big swing. And the Titans! Our deck has Kozilek, Butcher of Truth, Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger, and Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre. These Eldrazi are backbreaking on their own, but in combination with our other creatures they're (mostly) unstoppable!

Dextras!

Here is where we talk about some extra cards we can add into our deck to make it a little more powerful. They also tend to be a little extra expensive. We can add Sylvan Tutor to our tutor package to find us our creatures. Return of the Wildspeaker can also draw us a bunch of cards without making us sacrifice any of our creatures like Life's Legacy does. For game-enders we can add Craterhoof Behemoth. Not too fancy but it does it's job well.

Creature (29)

Sorcery (12)

Instant (4)

Land (37)

Artifact (7)

Enchantment (6)

Planeswalker (4)

Big Mama Grothama