The Commander
When Ghired enters, create a 4/4 green Rhino creature token with trample.
Whenever Ghired attacks, populate. The token enters tapped and attacking. (To populate, create a token that's a copy of a creature token you control.)
Guide
Gameplan
Ghired pumps out a 4/4 Rhino on cast, then snowballs the board every combat by populating your best token and adding it tapped and attacking. You build a wide, threatening board through token doublers and big tokens, protect Ghired, and swing for lethal damage over a couple of turns. The deck wants to attack relentlessly and convert each combat into more bodies.
Strengths
- Free value every attack via populate, generating immediate attacking bodies
- Naabundant token synergies in GRW (doublers, anthems, sacrifice payoffs)
- Can copy huge or utility tokens for explosive board states
- Aggressive but flexible—pivots between go-wide and copying a single bomb
Weaknesses
- Heavily reliant on having a good token to populate; a bare board makes Ghired mediocre
- Board wipes are devastating and reset all your work
- Ghired must attack to trigger populate, exposing him to removal and pillow-fort
- No card draw or ramp built in—colors must supply it
Key Cards
- Wurmcoil Engine — A token-maker whose 6/6 lifelink-deathtouch halves are populate fodder, and copying Wurmcoil itself with effects is huge.
- Rampaging Baloths — Generates 4/4 Beast tokens off landfall, giving Ghired premium tokens to populate.
- Doubling Season — Doubles every token you make, supercharging Ghired's ETB and populate triggers.
- Parallel Lives — Cheaper token doubler that turns each populate and Rhino into two bodies.
- Trostani, Selesnya's Voice — Offers a second populate engine and gains life equal to your biggest creature's toughness.
- Mycoloth — As a token with devour, copying it via populate creates a snowballing counter monster.
- Tribute to the Wild — Cheap interaction; more importantly, run protection like Heroic Intervention to survive wraths.
Upgrade Path
Add more token doublers (Doubling Season, Anointed Procession, Parallel Lives) and ways to copy non-token creatures so populate has elite targets. Prioritize ramp, card advantage (Beast Whisperer, Garruk's Uprising), and protection like Heroic Intervention and Teferi's Protection to survive wraths. Tighten the curve with efficient token generators and consider an aristocrats package (Blood Artist, Zulaport Cutthroat, sac outlets) for a resilient secondary win.
Core Cards
- Fresh Meat
- Ohran Frostfang
- Cinder Glade
- Druid's Deliverance
- Slice in Twain
- Sakura-Tribe Elder
- Voice of Many
- Explore
- Selesnya Sanctuary
- Angel of Sanctions
- Sungrass Prairie
- Thragtusk
Seeded from a single deck — rates appear once more public decks exist.
Win Conditions
- ▸Swinging wide with a populated army backed by anthems like Beastmaster Ascension
- ▸Copying a large token (Wurmcoil, Baloth, Hornet Queen) to overwhelm via combat
- ▸Aristocrats drain with Blood Artist effects sacrificing surplus tokens
- ▸One-shotting players with trample-heavy buffed Rhinos and pump spells
Archetypes
- Tokens — Ghired creates and copies tokens every turn, the core of a go-wide swarm strategy.
- Aristocrats — Spare token bodies feed sacrifice outlets and drain effects for an alternate win path.
- Aggro/Combat — Tapped-and-attacking tokens push relentless damage backed by anthems and trample.
- Combo — Populating tokens with counters or ETBs (e.g., devour or sac loops) enables explosive turns.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (GRW), by popularity.
