The Commander
: Draw a card. You may put a land card from your hand onto the battlefield.
Guide
Gameplan
Gretchen turns surplus mana into cards and extra land drops, snowballing into a value engine that outpaces the table. You ramp early, deploy Gretchen on turn two or three, then sink mana into her each turn to refill your hand and ramp simultaneously. Eventually you generate so much mana and so many cards that you win with a big payoff spell, landfall engine, or sheer card advantage.
Strengths
- Repeatable card draw AND ramp on a 2-mana commander, an exceptional rate
- Activated ability dodges sorcery-speed restrictions and works at instant speed
- Pairs perfectly with mana doublers and untap effects for explosive turns
- Hard to keep down — even after a wrath she keeps refueling your hand
- Enables landfall and extra-land-drop synergies naturally
Weaknesses
- Needs lots of mana to abuse, so she's slow without ramp support
- Ability draws and ramps but provides no board presence or protection
- Vulnerable to graveyard/hand attack and counterspell-heavy control
- No built-in way to close games — relies on payoff cards
- Repeated activations can paint a target as the table's value engine
Key Cards
- Nyxbloom Ancient — Triples mana so each Gretchen activation costs a fraction of your pool, enabling many draws per turn.
- Seedborn Muse — Untaps your lands every turn so you can activate Gretchen on every opponent's turn.
- Crucible of Worlds — Lets you replay fetched and discarded lands, multiplying Gretchen's extra land drops.
- Tatyova, Benthic Druid — Turns every extra land Gretchen drops into another card and a life gain trigger.
- Cultivate — Cheap ramp that fixes mana and stocks your hand with lands to put down via Gretchen.
- Burgeoning — Cheaply lets you slam the extra lands Gretchen feeds you for explosive ramp.
Upgrade Path
Add mana doublers (Mana Reflection, Mirari's Wake) and untap effects (Seedborn Muse, Wilderness Reclamation) so each turn yields many activations. Lean into landfall finishers (Avenger of Zendikar, Scute Swarm, Roil Elemental) and protection like Heroic Intervention or Lightning Greaves to keep her alive. To push toward cEDH, build toward infinite mana/untap loops that let Gretchen draw your entire deck and win via Thassa's Oracle or Laboratory Maniac.
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
- ▸Landfall payoffs like Avenger of Zendikar or Scute Swarm overwhelming the board
- ▸Drawing into and casting an X-spell or finisher with massive ramp
- ▸Combo loops with untappers and mana doublers to deck or burn the table
- ▸Simply out-resourcing opponents and grinding them out with bigger threats
Archetypes
- Landfall/Lands — Her extra land drops trigger landfall payoffs and fuel land-based value engines.
- Ramp Value — She converts excess mana into a steady stream of cards while accelerating your mana base.
- Combo — With mana doublers and untappers she generates near-infinite draws and mana to assemble win conditions.
- Simic Goodstuff — Card advantage plus ramp makes her a perfect engine commander for a big-creature midrange shell.
Combos
No combos found for this commander on Commander Spellbook.
Related Commanders
Same color identity (GU), by popularity.
