How To Play The Glarb, Calamity’s Augur Commander Deck In Magic: The Gathering

Glarb, Calamity’s Augur is a very versatile commander in Magic: the Gathering’s Commander format. There are multiple ways to play Glarb, including spells with high mana values, as a Frog commander, or as one that cares about lands. Its effect gives you a lot of options, and this build specifically will be taking advantage of lands.

A Glarb, Calamity’s Augur deck is all about using Glarb’s effect to make the most of the abilities of your other creatures. If you enjoy having an open-ended commander and one with a ton of different options and utility, Glarb is the commander for you.

Decklist

The decklist contains 37 creatures, five sorceries, seven instants, seven artifacts, nine enchantments, and 34 lands. Most of the cards in the deck either care about lands entering the battlefield, you surveilling, or enabling you to play multiple lands in one turn.

Key Cards

Glarb, Calamity’s Augur

The commander of the deck, Glarb, Calamity’s Augur is one of the most important pieces of the deck. The ability to play lands from the top of your library is the main attraction, especially when combined with cards that let you play multiple lands a turn.

If you do get stuck on a card you can’t play at the top of your library, you can use Glarb’s ability to surveil and control the topdeck and make it something you can cast. In addition to all of that, Glarb’s deathtouch makes it a great blocker in combat as well.

You can use Glarb’s surveil ability at any point so long as it isn’t tapped. It is best to use it during the end step before you start your turn to make sure there are cards you want to draw on the top.

Mirko, Obsessive Theorist

Mirko, Obsessive Theorist is one of your payoffs for using your surveil abilities. It slowly grows in stats with +1/+1 counters when you do, making it a threatening attacker and blocker. Since Mirko has vigilance, you can attack with it without needing to tap it to hold it up as a blocker.

Mirko also acts as a reanimator for creatures in your graveyard. In some situations, you’ll need to surveil creatures in the graveyard that you’d rather put on your battlefield. Mirko is the best way to get those back, albeit with a finality counter that’ll exile the creature if it ever leaves the battlefield.

Eye Of Duskmantle

Eye of Duskmantle is one of the most synergetic cards with Glarb’s surveil ability. The Eye lets you use your life total to cast spells you surveilled into the graveyard. This allows you to use life to pay for your expensive spells if you don’t have the mana to cast them normally.

So long as the cards were surveilled into the graveyard, you could cast them the turn they were. The payment of life is also optional, or you can pay mana to cast them if your life totals are on the lower side.

Eye of Duskmantle lets you play more spells in one turn. Life is a resource in Magic, especially for Commander with high starting life totals. Glarb can only cast spells with four or more mana from the top of your library, so by surveilling them into the graveyard you can cast them with Eye of Duskmantle instead.

Aesi, Tyrant Of Gyre Strait

With how many lands you play in the deck, Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait gives you a ton of value. Not only does it let you play an extra land each turn, but draws you a card each time a land enters. This stack with other cards that play multiple lands can lead to a ton of cards being drawn in just one turn.

Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait helps to prevent Glarb from getting stuck on a card you can’t play from the top of your library. You can play cards from the top of your library with Glarb until you get stuck, then play a land to draw the one that stops you in your tracks.

How To Play The Deck

A Glarb, Calamity Augur Commander deck is all about playing lands and surveilling and taking advantage of all the effects that benefit from that. You aren’t going to be short on cards to play with how much mana generation you can get down on the battlefield quickly.

Multiple cards let you play multiple lands in one turn. These include Aesi, Tyrant of Gyre Strait, Dryad of the Illysian Grove, and Loot, Exuberant Explorer to name a few, the last of which also helps you shift around cards on the top of your deck with its ability to put a creature from the top six cards of your library onto the battlefield.

If you have multiple cards that grant an extra land drop on the battlefield, these effects stack. So if there are three of them, you can play an additional three lands a turn on top of your normal land drop.

On the surveil side of things, Mirko, Obsessive Theorist, and Dimir Spybug help to make solid attackers by growing each surveil, Eye of Duskmantle lets you cast extra spells, and Enhanced Surveillance lets you surveil an extra two cards each time you surveil.

The primary win condition of the deck is winning through combat. Multiple cards create creatures when lands enter, such as Rampaging Baloths and Scute Swarm. With how many lands you’re going to be playing, this token generation can very quickly run away with the game. In addition, you have Iridescent Vinelasher to deal burn damage with landfall goes off.

The biggest downside of the deck is its weak early game. It does take a while to set up, but once you have creatures that enable your primary land-based strategies, things quickly start to snowball in your favor. Glarb’s surveil ability helps you get to your key cards quicker, controlling the top deck and putting useless cards for the given game state into the graveyard.