The Year of Brew

Week 4: Ruhan Says Play All Giants All The Time

Julian Leal

31 Jan 2021 - 5 min read

It’s week four of the Year of Brew and I’m already rehashing strategies… This is a tribal deck, similar to week 1, but now we’re going from one of the wimpiest tribes to one of the most MIGHTY. Kaldheim brought back giants in a big way (pun intended), reviving their tribal support for the first time in 13 years and expanding their color indentity into blue. And with Ruhan of the Fomori foretelling (yes, once again, pun inteded) Jeskai Giants all the way back in the original Commander product, how could I refuse the call?!

Deck 4: Jeskai

This deck is all about going big and hitting hard. No gimmicks, no politicking like last week. Just pure unadulterated combat phase.

Our deck is (nearly) all giants. They all cost a lot of mana and reward us accordingly with splashy effects and a whole lot of power and toughness. Of course, since our average creature CMC is roughly a billion, and we aren’t in a green color combo to provide for traditional ramp, we had to get a little clever. Yes, all the normal mana rocks are included, but we also have things like Stinkdrinker Daredevil and Urza’s Incubator to give us discounts on all our large and lumbering friends. Two new finds that absolutely need to see more play in tribal decks are Cryptic Gateway and Belbe’s Portal . This is exactly the sort of cheating we’re looking for and I’ll be including them in most tribal decks I brew from now on.

Once we build up our mana, we can drop a ton (literally) of heaters. Quakebringer is a new and powerful source of recurring damage, and it prevents any lifegain shenanigans. None of that’s allowed. Cyclone Summoner and Realm-Cloaked Giant can evacuate the dancefloor so only giants are allowed to party. And then Sunrise Sovereign is a great way to bust down the door on our opponents.

Lastly, I want to mention our honorary giants, Purphoros, Bronze-Blooded and Urabrask the Hidden because they give all our big and beefy boys haste. Giants are intimidating, but imagine how much scarier they are if they emerge from the mountains running at mach speeds and looking really angry.