GruulLegendary Creature — Elder Dinosaur // Legendary Creature — Phyrexian Elder DinosaurEtali, Primal Conqueror // Etali, Primal Sickness
Mana value7Rank#752
The Commander
Trample
When Etali enters, each player exiles cards from the top of their library until they exile a nonland card. You may cast any number of spells from among the nonland cards exiled this way without paying their mana costs.
: Transform Etali. Activate only as a sorcery.
Trample, indestructible
Whenever Etali deals combat damage to a player, they get that many poison counters. (A player with ten or more poison counters loses the game.)
Guide
Gameplan
Ramp hard into a turn 4-6 Etali, swing the board state with a massive free-spell cascade off every player's library, then snowball into more big threats or transform into the indestructible poison-payoff side to close games. Each turn you want Etali on the battlefield connecting or re-entering for repeated value, leveraging the explosive randomness to bury opponents in card and mana advantage.
Strengths
- Generates enormous, multi-player card and mana advantage every time it enters or attacks-adjacent triggers fire
- Naturally fits a Big Mana strategy that Gruul does best, snowballing fast
- The back side gives an inevitable, indestructible alternate win via poison that's hard to interact with
- Blink/reanimation/flicker effects multiply the already-busted ETB
Weaknesses
- Cast trigger is random-you can whiff or even gift opponents' bombs back to themselves
- Seven mana and removal-bait; gets chump-blocked or bounced before it pays off
- No card advantage or board presence in colors without Etali resolving
- Spot removal in response to the ETB (or just killing it) blanks your investment if you can't recast
Key Cards
- Cloudstone Curio — Lets you bounce and replay Etali to repeat the exile-and-cast trigger for an explosive loop.
- Temur Sabertooth — Protects Etali from removal and enables repeatable ETB recasting at instant speed.
- Conduit of Worlds — Helps you keep replaying lands and permanents to fuel ramp into and around Etali.
- Dockside Extortionist — Generates a pile of Treasures to hard-cast Etali ahead of curve and recast it.
- Greaves and Boots effects like Lightning Greaves — Haste lets Etali attack immediately and protects it for the transform plan.
- Kogla, the Titan Ape — Another beefy recurring ETB body that pairs with blink to control the board.
Upgrade Path
Add consistency and protection: Lightning Greaves, Heroic Intervention, and Temur Sabertooth keep Etali alive, while Cloudstone Curio and additional flicker enable game-winning loops. Stack your top-end with high-impact, board-dominating bombs (Apex Devastator, Worldspine Wurm, Craterhoof Behemoth) so random hits are always devastating, and accelerate with fast mana like Dockside Extortionist, Jeska's Will, and mana doublers to deploy Etali multiple times per game.
Core Cards
The most-played cards for this commander, built from aggregated deck data (the Mythic Graph). Build public decks to seed it.
Win Conditions
- ▸Transform into Etali, Primal Sickness and connect for lethal poison counters
- ▸Cheat out an overwhelming board of bombs via repeated ETB triggers
- ▸Loop Etali with blink/bounce to generate game-ending mana and spells
- ▸Trample beats backed by free haymakers and Craterhoof-style finishers
Archetypes
- Big Mana / Ramp — Etali rewards flooding the board with mana to cast it early and recast it often.
- Blink / Flicker — Repeating the ETB cast trigger with flicker effects multiplies free spells exponentially.
- Beatdown / Stompy — Trample plus the transformed poison side make raw combat damage a real win path.
- Goodstuff Midrange — The random free spells favor a deck packed with high-impact bombs to cheat out.
Combos
- Etali, Primal Conqueror // Etali, Primal Sickness + Mortuary + Viscera Seer
→ Cast any number of spells from opponents' libraries, Exile each opponent's library, Infinite ETB
- Etali, Primal Conqueror // Etali, Primal Sickness + Mortuary + Phyrexian Altar
→ Cast any number of spells from opponents' libraries, Exile each opponent's library, Infinite colored mana
- Etali, Primal Conqueror // Etali, Primal Sickness + Haunted Crossroads + Phyrexian Altar
→ Cast any number of spells from opponents' libraries, Exile each opponent's library, Infinite death triggers
- Etali, Primal Conqueror // Etali, Primal Sickness + Mortuary + Ashnod's Altar
→ Cast any number of spells from opponents' libraries, Exile each opponent's library, Infinite colorless mana
- Etali, Primal Conqueror // Etali, Primal Sickness + Mortuary + Altar of Dementia
→ Cast any number of spells from opponents' libraries, Exile each opponent's library, Infinite ETB
Combos via Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (GR), by popularity.
