Secrets of Strixhaven Witherbloom Pestilence Commander Deck Upgrade Guide

Secrets of Strixhaven is an intriguing prospect for Commander players, especially the preconstructed decks.

This second visit to Arcavios is the fastest Magic has ever returned to a new plane, with the original Strixhaven: School of Mages debuting just five years ago. Like Secrets, that set got its own accompanying release of Commander precons, which were also themed around the five Strixhaven colleges.

Witherbloom Pestilence and the other new decks releasing with Secrets of Strixhaven are as close as we’ve seen to giving existing Commander decks a sequel. I’m very curious to see how the designers can expand and improve on mechanics and identity established for each college the first time around.

MEET THE COMMANDERS

The “default commander” for Witherbloom Pestilence is the sassy dryad herbalist Dina, having leveled up somewhat from her student version in original Strixhaven. 

I think it’s nice that her new abilities are superficially similar to that original version, while still presenting a new value equation. Dina uses parts from dead creatures to brew tea which can infuse others with their lifeforce. The new, mature Dina is slightly more deliberate about this process, with her trigger limited to once each turn and her activated ability requiring a tap cost. But she now draws cards, gains a lot more life, and the infusion of strength is permanent (taking the form of +1/+1 counters) and can now target creatures other than herself.

The switch to granting +1/+1 counters instead of a one-turn buff is easily the most important, unlocking a deep pool of counter-related synergies AND creating the opportunity to “carry over” a growing pile of counters from one sacrificed creature to another. It’s very flavorful and in line with classic green-black gameplay – although I admit I was hoping to see something more unique to Witherbloom, like the “life total manipulation” theme from their 2021 precon deck 

Dina is cheap and immediate value for any deck built around sacrifice engines, with her triggered ability quite likely to draw multiple cards per turn cycle. That combined with a situational activated ability positions her as a strong value piece for her casting cost. But it does make her feel a little “generic” as a commander compared to some other options: that’s a very subjective judgment, and at power brackets 1-3 you could choose to heavily build around her activated ability and do just fine.

Witherbloom Pestilence also offers us a second new full-art legendary option in Gorma, the Gullet. While this delightfully grisly critter might seem to be cooking with the same basic ingredients as Dina (sacrifice, lifegain, +1/+1 counters), the resulting dish is going to be something completely different if you choose to swap in Gorma as your commander.

Specifically, building around this Pest Frog gives us easy access to powerful, consistent combo wins, thanks to Gorma’s interaction with the persist keyword. When a persist creature dies and returns to the battlefield, the +1/+1 counters granted by Gorma’s second ability will immediately “cancel out” the -1/-1 counter from persist, meaning the creature will be eligible to die and return again potentially infinite times.

Gorma is far from the first card to enable this kind of sacrifice loop, but it’s extremely valuable to have one piece of your three-card combo in the command zone. It’s also important that Gorma’s second ability is a replacement effect rather than a trigger: because the creature “enters with” the +1/+1 counters, there is no window to act before it’s ready to persist again. Since you almost always sacrifice creatures as the cost of an effect rather than the resolution, this makes the combo very resilient unless opponents are bringing graveyard hate.

Obviously this sort of combo is not all the Gullet does, or the only thing you might use it for. This set of abilities is also very strong when used in a fair way, and I’m sure more than a few people will be using Gorma to lead a totally innocuous Pest or Frog typal deck. Basically any build of Witherbloom Pestilence will have Gorma as one of its best cards, regardless of whether it lives in the command zone or the 99. The choice just comes down to what speed you feel is right for you, and whether you like your commander to be a key part of your win condition or an incidental value adder.

NEW CARD REVIEW

Even if I’m excited about playing the precon as-built, it’s always important that these reviews consider the perspective of players who don’t need a whole new deck – but who could definitely be in the market for some powerful new spells if the synergy is right!

Ribtruss Roaster

Not every new card printed in a precon deck is going to perfectly complement that deck’s commander, but Ribtruss Roaster does indeed seem designed specifically for Dina – right down to its ability creating Witherbloom’s signature Pest tokens. The casting cost is hefty, but GB is very good at overcoming that drawback through either ramp or reanimation.

Roaster is an extremely efficient token generator if it stays alive for just a couple of turns, and it gets even better when you have better ways to boost its output besides the initial devour trigger. Dina herself gives us an easy way to stack extra +1/+1 counters on the Roasters quickly, and building around her ability means we’re probably going to include other similar effects and synergies. 

Defiling Daemogoth

Another fairly expensive creature which seems to do enough to justify that asking price – at least in the right kind of deck. In a dedicated lifegain deck Defiling Daemogoth is both enabler and payoff in one beefy package. The first ability generates lifegain in many smaller instances, which is usually the most efficient way to maximize “whenever you gain life” triggers.

The second ability harkens back to the previous Witherbloom precon and its theme of gaining and losing big chunks of life. The ceiling on this ability is sky-high:you could conceivably cast this in second main and then kill the table on that same end step, providing you’d gained enough life. But even if you can’t quite hit that high benchmark, this Daemogoth is stll a very effective choice for putting a fast clock your opponents that may not rely on physical combat.

Eccentric Pestfinder

Turns out I was dead wrong about how the Prepare mechanic was going to work when I wrote my SoS mechanics predictions, but I’m not too upset – the mechanic we got is really cool and distinctive in its own right. Eccentric Pestfinder is a role-player at most, but it is probably the best Prepare included in Witherbloom Pesitlence. 

The initial four mana investment buys a 5/5 trample which (essentially) allows us to pay an additional GB each of our turns to spawn a bunch of free Pests. If you needed an official benchmark for “good enough” in this kind of Commander deck, you could do worse than the Pestfinder.

Ominous Harvest

Woah! This is not a drill: Magic has another new Gravestorm spell! This tweaked version of the infamous Storm mechanic is just as powerful as its more common namesake. You just build around different things to synergize with it: specifically, sacrifice engines. Tokens that die still add to the Gravestorm count, so what better use can you imagine for all the Pest tokens Witherbloom Pestilence will leave lying around?

As for the actual effects of Ominous Harvest, it’s the perfect example of a modern combo piece: flexible despite its simple text box, and explosive power that starts strong and scales hard with the game length. I especially love that while you’ll usually be pointing it at yourself, once you start looping sacrifices and stacking Gravestorm up you unlock the option to use it as a clean one-shot kill by having target opponent draw their library!

Immoral Bargain

I can’t reveal any hidden depths to this one, but Immoral Bargain is definitely worth acknowledging as a potential new benchmark for one-sided board wipes. Yes, I do consider this one-sided despite the fact you’re presumably sacrificing a handful of creatures to be calling this a “board wipe”. Trading in your Pest tokens in payment for nuking your opponents back to the Blood Age is definitely not an even exchange, and having such a powerful, scalable removal spell for just three mana is very, very significant.

$50 UPGRADE GUIDE

As with most modern Commander precons, Witherbloom Pestilence is pretty excellent right out of the box. The commanders themselves are definitely on par, and there’s a full range of removal, card draw, mana ramp and other tools included – most of which are chosen to synergize with the central theme of creature sacrifice. It’s potentially worth playing a couple of games with the unmodified precon to get an idea of what aspects you’d like to change.

That said, if we’re going to start making upgrades we’ll need to commit to one of our two featured commanders. If you want to keep the deck fair, play Dina, Essence Brewer and find cards which generate a lot of temporary power so you can convert that into permanent benefits. There are some niche cards like Berserk and Hatred which can be exploited very effectively when you only need a creature to have high power for one turn!

Equipment cards like Bonehoard, Lashwrithe and Crown of Gondor are also great for this, since they can can be re-equipped every time you plan to activate Dina to contribute their bonus again. Another easy source of Dina synergy is to favor modular creatures and other +1/+1 counter synergies like Reyhan, Last of the Abzan or Kami of Whispered Hopes to give you free additional value with every sacrifice.

However, I think for this guide we’ll take the opposite path: a choice to upgrade towards an increasingly focused combo deck playing around Gorma and persist creatures the way I described earlier. We don’t need to be completely one-dimensional in our gameplan – one strength of green-black creature combo is how easily we can move creatures between library, graveyard and battlefield so the right tool for a situation is always at hand. 

It’s also a natural advantage that our deck can feasibly win by combat damage, effectively forcing opponents to defend against us on two completely different fronts. But if you’re looking for the smartest, highest impact cards on which to spend your money and game changer slots, fast mana and tutors will always be the most meaningful contributors to executing a combo kill.

First, let’s take a look at the deck to see how many (if any) more obviously weak or out-of-place cards there are for us to cut for space:

• Defiling Daemogoth
• Eccentric Pestfinder
• Stensian Sanguinist
• Bloodghast
• Jadar, Ghoulcaller of Nephalia
• Nether Traitor
• Witch of the Moors
• Creakwood Liege
• Blossoming Bogbeast
• Teacher’s Pest
• Dina, Soul Steeper
• Casualties of War
• Awakening Zone
• Trudge Garden
• Merchant of Venom

Most of these cards are trimmed for lack of synergy rather than power level, presumably having been included because they work well with Dina in the command zone. Since we’re altering the gameplan and streamlining it a fair bit, we only want to keep the best value-generating type cards from the stock list. 

Specifically, I’m preferring to keep the token generators that trigger multiple times per turn cycle, anything that draws cards on creature death, and effects which can gain life to keep us afloat in the game while setting up a big Gorma play. The value engines here are simply dregs that don’t quite compare to the others in the stock precon deck.

As for inclusions, we’re filling out our newly-vacant card slots with a few categories of effect. First, we’re going reasonably deep on Persist creatures as a key component of our combo. Gorma will always be accessible from our command zone and the deck has a lot of good sac outlets already, so this special sacrifice fodder is what we need redundant copies of. Six of the “best” persist creatures in our colors (regardless of whether they’re actually good creatures) should be enough.

We want to access those creatures (and potentially other effects) more consistently. We’ve got solid card draw already, but we can also try tutoring them directly from our library, or milling them over followed by reanimation. Greater Good, Syr Konrad, Lively Dirge, Chord of Calling and Nature’s Rhythm are gonna see the most cards we can in the course of a game. 

Emperor of Bones is a modern-day staple that goes even better in a deck that can place counters on it with Dina or Mazirek. Dread Return provides the classic insurance of reanimating a combo piece even after running out of mana or milling our whole library. With our final slot, Sylvan Safekeeper is a tutor-able, re-animatable source of repeated removal blocking, slotting in nicely besides Gyome from the stock list as protection for Gorma.

Check out the full upgraded decklist on Moxfield here!

I normally avoid adding Game Changers to these upgrade guides because of the consequences for your deck’s official power bracket. But if you’re interested in playing at bracket three, I would recommend Survival of the Fittest as a clear standout among the GC list. Our deck is also quite good at gaining life to fuel the mighty Necropotence, and you can never go wrong with Demonic Tutor when playing a toolbox deck with a combo wincon!

MORE LIKE WITHERBLOOM PERSISTENCE

I hope that this walkthrough of the new Witherbloom precon has you as excited about Secrets of Strixhaven as I am! 

The plane of Arcavios is Magic’s strongest lore invention in recent memory, and as a fan of Dina and the other students who debuted in Strixhaven: School of Mages it put a smile on my face to see her all grown up and giving back to Witherbloom College in this deck.

Let me know how you go with your upgrades in the comments or on CK socials. I’ll see you all next week with our review of Prismari Artistry!