Four Weeks of Lorwyn PreDH: Wort

Posted on December 17, 2025

Last week, I talked pretty extensively about Elves and how it's come to be a signature playstyle of mine. I love playing with the little Green forest-folk in just about every format, and pretty much everyone knows it. This stems from my early days playing the game where Elves became a sort of formative strategy for me. Typal strategies really spoke to me and I strongly gravitated toward playing them.

What you may not realize, however, is that while I adored these typal strategies, Elves was hardly my first love here! When I first started with Urza's Legacy, Tempest Block was still legal, and I got hooked onto Slivers pretty early. They seemed so weird and unique. Not to mention that Sliver Queen looked like the sickest badass I'd ever seen!

Funny enough, though, the first true typal-ish deck I'd ever played with was Goblins! This was thanks to two things in particular. One was this sweet preconstructed deck I got early on from Urza's Destiny called Battle Surge:

If you're curious as to what the list looked like, here it is:

Urza's Destiny Battle Surge Preconstructed Deck

Instants (4)
1 Parch
1 Trumpet Blast
2 Curfew

Enchantments (3)
1 Aether Sting
1 Ghitu War Cry
1 Mark of Fury

Artifacts (1)
1 Urza's Incubator

Lands (23)
9 Island
14 Mountain

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Not really a lot going on here in terms of goblins, but Goblin Berserker, Goblin Marshal, and Goblin War Buggy all proved to be cards that I had a lot of fun playing with! Couple that with the bizarre inclusion of the typal-focused artifact Urza's Incubator and it made for quite a bit of fun.

The other element that made such a cool deck were the other goblins I acquired from opening packs. I've got fond memories of opening Goblin Settlers and Goblin Generals in packs of Starter 99 or Goblin Medics, Goblin Matron, and Goblin Gardener in my Urza Block packs. If you can't tell from this assortment of cards, though, it's hardly enough to make a cohesive deck that can reliably win games of Magic. So it would be a few years until a really good Goblins deck would come around.

That would all change as Onslaught rolled around. If this story trajectory sounds a little familiar, that's probably because it does! My time with Elves had a similar path, with the deck not really having enough juice to take it to a playable level until the release of Onslaught. While I may have become a huge fan of Elves this way, though, I didn't really take to Goblins in quite the same way.

Nevertheless, they proved to be an absolute powerhouse thanks to the block, to the point that I was frequently enamored with them. I simply didn't have the means to acquire the cards. I mean, just look at these cards:

Tell me you wouldn't want to play with those! Of these, Goblin Goon might look rather silly by today's standards. Remember, though, that this was over 20 years ago now (good lord I hate putting that to words) and times were different then. Goblins was a premier deck of that particular Standard era and popularized the archetype on a grand scale for years to come.

Just about every Standard release for roughly a decade had goblins in it. No, seriously, they were so frequent that it was really weird when there suddenly weren't any at all in the Innistrad Block! But thankfully, we had the opportunity for them to peak a bit with Lorwyn-Shadowmoor Block.

These two blocks heavily featured a major typal theme with several kinds of creatures at the forefront. One of the major ones was - you guessed it - goblins! These little Red monstrosities were bolstered by the sweet legendary creature Wort, Boggart Auntie, as well as a host of excellent support spells.

With Lorwyn Eclipsed right around the corner, I'm continuing - and finishing - my series of PreDH articles based on the set. We're closing it out with a bang with a look at Wort and making some sweet decks out of her!

Let's jump right into our first list now:

Wort Goblins | PreDH | Paige Smith

Commander (1)
1 Wort, Boggart Auntie

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You may not know it, but goblins are quite literally one of the most prevalent creature types in Magic. If you've been playing for some time, that probably seems obvious. Did you know, though, that the most used first word for cards throughout the game (excluding "The") is "Goblin," though? Yeah, that's just how many goblins exist throughout the game's history.

There were tons of options to pull from for the purposes of this list. In total, there were 232 goblins legal in PreDH. That's quite a few! Make no mistake, however - many are quite bad. For example, the majority of the Akki that you might find in the Kamigawa Block are all pretty awful, with a few outliers of course. Obviously, Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker is an all-star, but the only card I can tell whose name begins with "Akki" that has the potential is Akki Coalflinger, and even there you can do quite a bit better with Bloodmark Mentor.

That's just a small smattering of the lower end of these gobbish folk. Can you imagine looking through the dregs of Fallen Empires for more goblins? Yikes! Though, in reality, there are actually a few solid goblin-related cards from that set. This brings me to the key point of this deck: despite the low end, there is still a remarkable amount of excellent cards that can be pulled from for a deck like this.

In fact, there were so many it became a chore to try whittling them down! As with Elves last week, there's a surprising amount of quality that I had to leave on the cutting room floor. Things like Boggart Harbinger, Frogtosser Banneret, and Fallen Empires all-star Goblin Chirurgeon. There's quite a number of excellent choices to pull from so even if you don't like my choices, don't be afraid to swap some around!

The ones I did leave in are a pretty big who's-who of the era, though, at least in terms of goblins. I don't know about you, but whenever I think about classic goblins, I immediately think of cards like Goblin Lackey, Goblin Warchief, Goblin Ringleader, Goblin Sharpshooter, Murderous Redcap, and Siege-Gang Commander - just to name a few. Many of these are excellent utilitarian goblins that you've likely seen in competitive and casual decks alike over the years, making for a real plethora of solid creatures to build around.

One thing I like about building with Wort specifically, though, is how her ability allows you to take advantage of how expendable goblins tend to be. In some cases this has to do with your goblins being sacrificed. Skirk Prospector and the aforementioned Siege-Gang Commander are great examples of this. However, you also have access to some lesser known options like Weirding Shaman and Arms Dealer to turn your small gobbos into oodles of value.

There's also some goblins that you're perfectly happy just tossing away as well. For example, it's almost better if you don't pay the echo costs on Mogg War Marshal or Stingscourger since you can just bring them back and accumulate even more value. Similarly, it makes things like attacking with a Goblin Bushwhacker or cycling a Gempalm Incinerator. You want these cards in your graveyard so that you can eventually buy them back to use once again.

That's mostly how this deck plays out. Given how small the creatures are, though, I've also peppered in an unusually higher amount of special enchantments and artifacts as well. For example, cards like Coat of Arms, Door of Destinies, and Shared Animosity are great ways to ensure you push through tons of damage. That gets even more hard-hitting if you throw an Eldrazi Monument into the mix. Cover of Darkness can even give you evasion for your goblins as well.

Oh, and there's one other thing worth mentioning about the deck as well that might look a bit odd. I included both Dragon's Claw and Demon's Horn in this deck. Those might not seem like typical Commander fodder, but there's a method to the madness here. Several cards in your deck such as Sparksmith, Phyrexian Reclamation, and Phyrexian Arena all deal damage to you in exchange for their benefits. Red goblins aren't exactly known for their life gain, so tossing in one or two of these can go a long way.

Are there better ways to gain some life? Maybe, but I liked throwing these in for once as a nod to the goblins' Constructed history.

With that, though, it's time to look to the darker night iteration of Shadowmoor and with it a different form of Wort: Wort, the Raidmother.

This Wort takes on a much different approach in terms of how you go about building her. Here, she's not really all that concerned about specifically goblins. Make no mistake, you can build her out with goblins if you like, but I feel like there are several other ways to go about it instead. This makes for a much more interesting deck to build around and something I had a surprisingly more enjoyable time putting together.

Let's have a look at the list:

Wort Conspire | PreDH | Paige Smith

Commander (1)
1 Wort, the Raidmother

Planeswalkers (1)
1 Sarkhan Vol

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Back in my original PreDH days, I never had a Wort, the Raidmother Commander deck. I did, however, have an Ulasht, the Hate Seed deck once upon a time and I enjoyed playing with Wort in it. Wort did a couple cool things for that deck. First, she provided six counters to Ulasht by providing three Red and three Green bodies on one card. Second, she could incidentally double up on whatever powerful spells you happen to cast out of your deck.

This made her extremely formidable whenever she hit the battlefield and made me fall in love with her. Yet despite me seeing obvious versatility in her, I never actually built a deck around her. That's something I'd wanted to rectify for some time but never got around to it. Well, now seems as good a time as any!

There were two big things I wanted to do with this: find enough creatures to make conspiring easy and then find enough spells worth conspiring. The first was easiest so I started there. This was achievable by working on two different axes: playing with creatures that are both colors and making lots of tokens.

The first was pretty straightforward. Simply go through all the creatures that were both Red and Green and find the ones that seemed coolest. This way you could guarantee that you'd be able to conspire any spell with ease regardless of the situation. Some of these were easier than others with Bloodbraid Elf, Boartusk Liege, and Vexing Shusher being prime candidates.

There were, however, a couple oddballs that stood out to me along the way. The biggest was undoubtedly Yavimaya Kavu. Weirdly I felt like I'd never seen this card before, but wow can that thing get huge at the right pod! Even without it, if you have a good density of creatures who are both Red and Green, it can get big just from your own stuff! Another oddball was Rosheen Meanderer. It doesn't seem like much but we'll come back to her.

Next up was tokens. Naturally, this is somewhat of an extension of what Wort herself is doing, but it helps. After all, the more tokens you have, the more opportunities you get to conspire! This is why I used cards like Mogg War Marshal and Siege-Gang Commander again since they worked so well. However, so too does the old standby Avenger of Zendikar and Predatory Advantage for Green tokens. Or, hey, why not go for both with the aid of a Dragon Broodmother?

Oh, yeah, and there's also spells that make tokens too. Yeah, remember that little aspect of a Wort, the Raidmother deck? What about casting a big Goblin Offensive or Gelatinous Genesis and getting a ton of tokens? Maybe doubling up on Sprout Swarm tokens? That's a ton of tokens, and only some of the options for what you can double up on spell-wise!

The real element I wanted to go in on when doubling spells were X cost spells. The kind of thing where you could ramp a bunch and then double up on some huge game ending spells. Comet Storm is an obvious one, but then you also have classics like Rolling Thunder and Banefire at your disposal. Lots of great ways to dish out the beats. These kinds of spells are what make Rosheen Meanderer such a solid pick. The card's not super great if you don't have these, but the stats aren't nothing either!

Best of all, though, there are plenty of other powerful spells you can double up on. What about doubling up on a Chord of Calling to tutor twice? Or a copy of Harmonize or Momentous Fall to draw lots of cards? Copying a Rampant Growth or Cultivate helps a ton with the aforementioned ramp strategy, and lord help you if you copy an Overrun effect.

Best of all these are simply what your options are in terms of PreDH. It's great fun getting to build these decks for such a classic time capsule format, but as a result your card choices can be a bit limited in scope. If you want to take these decks and flesh them out for modern day Commander play, then your options grow exponentially!

I highly recommend you try messing around with both versions of these Wort decks. There's a lot of fun to be had here despite two very distinct playstyles. As a result, there's tons of ways to customize it. Build them out and have fun at your next Commander night.

It's been a fun couple of weeks doing a little PreDH look back at some old Lorwyn/Shadowmoor classics. Now comes Lorwyn Eclipsed right around the corner and we get to revisit the beloved world again. Previews start in just a few weeks so get ready, get hyped, and prepare to make some all new Commander decks all your own!

Paige Smith

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