How To Build A Surrak, The Hunt Caller Commander Deck In MTG

Surrak, the Hunt Caller is one of the commanders featured in Magic: The Gathering’s Foundation set. This mono green commander was originally released in 2015’s Dragons of Tarkir set, and brought back to the forefront with Foundations. As Foundations is a set heavily aimed at newer players, Surrak, the Hunt Caller is a great choice for a first commander.

Surrak, the Hunt Caller is one that will have you playing a ton of creatures. This is a strategy known as “Stompy,” which is (primarily) mono green decks that focus on ramping out giant creatures with powerful abilities and stats as quickly as possible.

Decklist

The decklist
contains 38 creatures, seven sorceries, four instants, nine artifacts, seven enchantments, and 34 lands
. The deck is focused on creatures, hence them taking up the majority of the deck while the
rest either ramp
or give you a boost in combat for more damage.

Key Cards

Surrak, The Hunt Caller

Surrak, the Hunt Caller is the commander of the deck, and one of the ways to improve yourself in combat. It gives a creature haste as long as you control a combined power total of eight. Surrak already accounts for five, so you only need three more power to make sure Surrak is always active.

With how combat-centric the deck is, the haste that Surrak, the Hunt Caller grants is vital for outbursts of damage quickly. Another usage for Surrak is giving a mana dork (creatures that tap themselves to add mana) haste to help ramp out your larger creatures faster if you’re not in a position to start attacking.

Unnatural Growth

With a Surrak, the Hunt Caller Commander deck, you are going to be attacking nearly every turn you can. This is where Unnatural Growth comes in. It doubles your creatures’ power and toughness at the start of every combat, making them threats with much larger stats to deal massive bursts of damage.

Notably, Unnatural Growth doubles your creatures’ stats every combat, not just your own. This turns your creatures into great blockers for your opponents’ turns, helping to keep your life total safe in the midst of all the combat you’re doing on your turn.

Defiler Of Vigor

Defiler of Vigor is a creature that you want on the battlefield as quickly as possible. It helps you to get large creatures out quicker, as you can opt to pay two life instead of the green mana required in the casting cost of a creature. With 40 starting life, this life loss is minimal and more than worth it.

You can only choose to pay two life once, not multiple times with Defiler of Vigor. This means you can only replace one green mana. For example, for a spell that costs three green mana, you can pay two green mana and two life to cast it, but no more than that.

For every green permanent cast, you get a +1/+1 counter on every creature you control. Creatures are permanent cards, so every creature you cast will continue to grow every other creature you control. The casting cost doesn’t matter, and the effect isn’t once per turn, so multiple creatures will lead to multiple +1/+1 counters.

Surrak And Goreclaw

Surrak has had multiple cards over the years, and Surrak and Goreclaw is a great addition to a Surrak, the Hunt Caller deck. It’ll give all your creature trample, haste, and a +1/+1 counter to a creature when it enters. It’s a great back-up commander, and forces your opponents to have to deal with two haste enablers instead of just one.

Surrak and Goreclaw’s effect only applies to nontoken creatures, so tokens created through cards like Paradox Zone and Elder Gargaroth will not be given haste or a +1/+1 counter. However, they will still be granted trample, as only the triggered ability won’t affect your token creatures.

Surrak and Goreclaw has great stats as well, especially when it gets +1/+1 counters. With the nature of the deck, you want to always be doing damage. This is why the ability that gives trample to all other creatures is so key, it helps to ensure you’re connecting for damage every turn.

How To Play The Deck

A Surrak, the Hunt Caller Commander deck is all about combat. You want to constantly be swinging your creatures and getting your opponents’ life totals to zero as quickly as possible. This is done through its large creature suite, many of which have large stats, trample, or other ways to make it easier to close out games.

There are multiple cards that grow the stats of your creatures (either permanently or temporarily), which you want on the battlefield as quickly as possible. Unnatural Growth and Zopandrel, Hunger Dominus both double your creatures’ power and toughness at the start of each combat, while Defiler of Vigor, Quilled Greatwurm, and Railway Brawler all put +1/+1 counters on your creatures.

Both Unnatural Growth and Zopandrel, Hunger Dominus have the same effect, so if both are on the battlefield you can stack both of them. This makes your creatures’ stats essentially quadruple as one will double the other.

The primary win condition of the deck is through natural combat. With how easy it is to give your creatures giant stats and trample, you can run down someone’s life total with ease, all while keeping yourself safe with your giant creatures.

Alternatively, you can win with Triumph of the Hordes, which gives all your creatures +1/+1 and infect. Infect will have your opponents gain poison counters instead of lose life, so you only need to connect for ten damage as opposed to 40 to take someone out of the game.

The biggest downside of the deck is the heavy reliance on creatures. A board wipe can spell disaster and take you out of the game for multiple turns while you rebuild your board state.

In addition, the cards that make an impact cost a lot of mana, so in the early stages of the game your battlefield is often ineffective. It takes a while to set up, but once you are set up with creatures, it is very easy to start snowballing – especially with Surrak’s ability to give haste.