Secrets of Strixhaven (SOS) will be hitting shelves later this month and I'm excited to pivot away from the Universes Beyond Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Set to something that feels a little more like Magic: The Gathering.

It's going to be impossible to avoid UB sets, as they now represent roughly two thirds of new Legendary Creatures being introduced into our format. Fortunately, Commander is big enough for all that nonsense, and all the nonsense we'll be getting out of Strixhaven this month.

When I say we're getting nonsense, I'm mostly kidding, but some of the new cards we're getting are very pushed.

Today, I'll be looking at a new version of a powerful Golgari () Elder Dragon first seen a few years ago in 2021's Strixhaven: School of Mages.

Witherbloom, the Balancer is a 5/5 Elder Dragon with Flying and Deathtouch. It costs a whopping but it has Affinity for Creatures, reducing its cost by for each Creature I control. That on its own would be decent, but the real nonsense is found in the last line of this card's textbox: Instant and Sorcery spells I cast will have Affinity for Creatures.

Repeatable cost reduction is one of the most powerful things in Magic short of drawing cards. The fact that this cost reduction is not limited to one spell per turn seems crazy, but it positions Witherbloom, the Balancer as one of the most powerful Golgari legends I've seen in quite a while.

Today, I'm going to be brewing up an SOS Witherbloom deck with as much pop as I can manage while avoiding Game Changers and tutors.

I've been playing a lot of Bracket 2, but I expect this will be a Bracket 3 deck that still has room to be upgraded if you are truly looking to push the envelope and make this as efficient and deadly as possible.

Setting the Stage

The Balancer needs plenty of setup in order to really pop off and threaten a win. That's nothing out of the ordinary - lots of Commanders need a certain boardstate to truly reach their potential.

In Witherbloom's case, not only do I need plenty of Lands, I also want plenty of Creatures so that I can get a hefty cost reduction on my Instants and Sorceries.

My ramp package has a mix of cheap mana dorks and ramp spells. My cost reduction only shows up when I'm able to get my Commander into play, so it's crucial for me to be able to play cards like Rampant Growth, Llanowar Elves, and other early game staples to get the train rolling.

Cards like Bitterblossom and Bitterbloom Bearer are perfect for this deck. Each will cost me one life at the beginning of my upkeep but will create a 1/1 Blue and Black Faerie token with Flying. Bitterblossom is an Enchantment, but the Bearer is a Creature, so it will also help with my Commander's cost reduction.

Generating token Creatures is Witherbloom, the Balancer's bread and butter, so a Sorcery like Sylvan Offering will play well at any stage of the game. Even if I'm casting it with a low investment for X, it will still help me set up for a bigger turn later on.

Many of the deck's X spells have heavier color requirements, but Sylvan Offering could be cast as early as turn two or three if I were concerned with having early blockers.

My removal package is mostly at Instant speed, but Pest Infestation is a notable exception. This spell costs and will let me destroy up to X target Artifacts and/or Enchantments. I'll then create double X 1/1 Black and Green Pest tokens that can gain me life when they die.

I may not have every spell in my library generate Creature tokens, but I've tried to lean in that direction. I'm even running Khalni Garden, a Land that enters tapped and creates a 0/1 Green Plant token.

Gathering Momentum

Once I've got Witherbloom, the Balancer in play, I'll be looking to play big X spells and generate a decent army of token Creatures.

Fungal Sprouting is cheap enough that I could cast it without Witherbloom in play, but I'll get the biggest bang for my buck if she is out. I'll create X Green Saproling tokens where X is the greatest power among Creatures I control.

With a modest boardstate I could easily be casting this for mana, and my next Instant or Sorcery spell will cost five less with those five Saprolings in play.

I'm running Skullclamp in this list, though I don't really want to be losing Creatures as my cost reduction depends on having as many as possible. I ended up leaning on a few four-mana Black spells for some supplemental card draw.

Ambition's Cost and Ancient Craving both have me lose three life and draw three cards. If I'm able to cast those spells for just then I'll be happy to pay that life to try to draw into something impactful.

8 mana might seem like an insane amount to play for a Sorcery speed removal spell that is limited to targeting only non-Black Creatures, but Death Mutation is a card I'm going to try out. It's in this list because I might be able to cast it for as little as and it will create X 1/1 Green Saprolings where X is the targeted Creature's mana cost.

Skittering Invasion is a seven-mana Kindred Sorcery with a Creature type of Eldrazi. It will create five 0/1 colorless Eldrazi Spawn tokens that can each be sacrificed to generate . This card shows up because there will probably be times when I have seven Creatures in play and can cast it for free.

I'm unlikely to cash in those Spawn tokens, as cost reduction will apply to every Instant or Sorcery I cast, but their colorless mana can only be used once.

The biggest factor in getting to my wincons is card draw, and this deck should be able to draw a lot of cards if things go well.

I'm running a few spells that draw cards equal to the greatest power among Creatures I control, but that's unlikely to be more than five. When you consider Witherbloom's cost reduction, paying one or 2 mana for five cards is a pretty good rate.

Rishkar's Expertise and Return of the Wildspeaker both give me this type of card draw. The former will also let me cast a spell with a mana cost of five or less from my hand without paying. The Wildspeaker is modal and can instead be used to give non-Human Creatures I control +3/+3 until end of turn.

The biggest bang for my buck is likely to be from Shamanic Revelation and Collective Unconscious, each of which will have me draw cards equal to the number of Creatures under my control. Shamanic Revelation will also have me gain four life for each Creature I control with power four or greater, though that may well just be my Commander.

A spell like Collective Unconscious is not considered playable in EDH these days, as it costs , but I should be able to reliably play it for just fairly often.

Peer into the Abyss is a bit of a gamble, as it costs 7 mana, but three must be Black.

If it resolves I can have target player draw cards equal to half of their library and lose half of their life, rounding up each time. If I'm able to pay to draw half of my library, there's a very good chance I'll pull into something that can either help me win that turn or help me set up a win for the next turn.

How We Win

This deck has two ways to try to win games. The first is the old-fashioned way, winning by combat. If I've been making my Land drops and have enough Creatures in play already, a simple Tooth and Nail will do the trick. This is very old school, but I think it fits well.

Tooth and Nail into Craterhoof Behemoth and Avenger of Zendikar is a classic Green stompy wincon that I've never played because I tend to avoid tutors. Witherbloom, the Balancer could easily have me casting this for , so it seems like an appropriate way to launch an alpha strike.

Avenger of Zendikar will generate a 0/1 Green Plant token for each Land I control, so it's great here even without Craterhoof. It also has a landfall trigger that will put a +1/+1 counter on each Plant Creature I control whenever I play a Land. Craterhoof has Haste and will give my Creatures Trample and +X/+X until end of turn where X is the number of Creatures I control.

My Plant tokens won't be able to attack, but these two should let me swing lethal at most tables. I do need to order my triggers correctly so that I make the Plant tokens first and then give my Creatures +X/+X and Trample, but that's a minor issue.

If you're playing casual EDH with the kind of person who will try to trick you into getting the order of those triggers wrong, you might want to look at finding better tablemates.

Outrageous Robbery is the kind of spell that could give you some great options or not much at all, but it will always be fun (for you) to see what you'll get. For you'll exile the top X cards of target opponent's library face down. You get to look at them and play them for as long as they remain exiled.

If you cast them you can spend mana of any type, and you can use your Witherbloom cost reduction on any Instant and Sorcery spells you're casting from those exiled spells. You might want to pick someone likely to be playing lots of Instants and Sorceries, but Outrageous Robbery is an Instant, so you might wait to pick someone who tutored a card to the top of their deck.

If you don't find a way to win by stealing someone else's cards, there are a few powerful X spells that can turn a lot of mana and a lot of cost reduction into a problem for your tablemates.

Exsanguinate will have each opponent lose X life and you'll gain life equal to the life lost this way. Torment of Hailfire is even nastier, forcing each opponent to lose three life unless they sacrifice a nonland permanent or discard a card X times.

In my (possibly overactive) imagination, I can see this deck combining early game ramp and mid-game token generation into some pretty big values for X. In reality, I probably won't be killing a table with an Exsanguinate for 50. I might be able to combine a more modest one with a big attack to finish off a table and give me enough life to survive a bit longer than my opponents would like.

If I'm not able to hit Tooth and Nail and none of my Black finishers are showing up, I do have a Finale of Devastation in the list that could help me finish off a table. I probably wouldn't want to use it to tutor up Avenger of Zendikar unless I've got another X spell in hand.

Craterhoof Behemoth is always a nice target, but if I've got enough Creatures in play, I could tutor up Birds of Paradise and still be able to swing for the win. That might be pretty amusing, to be honest.

Witherbloom the Lynchpin

It's hard to argue that Witherbloom, the Balancer won't be a lynchpin Commander in many people's decks, but my hope is that this list has enough ramp, early game mana dorks, and token generators to be able to get Witherbloom out in a reasonable time.

I'm not sure yet how well this deck will be able to bounce back from boardwipes, but lots of Creature decks struggle with that. If you play in a meta with lots of boardwipes and removal, WItherbloom's high casting cost could become an issue.

This list is a starting point. It's a first draft and it will absolutely need to be tweaked to match your playstyle, your meta, and the weaknesses you find when playing it. I could see adding in Mask of Avacyn, Snakeskin Veil, Beastmaster Ascension, and more Creatures that help put Lands into play or even just into my hand.

Hitting Land drops and ramping are always going to be important with a high-cost Commander even if it does have cost reduction built into it.

Witherbloom, the Balancer | Commander | Stephen Johnson

• Commander (1)
• 1 Witherbloom, the Balancer

• Creatures (12)
• 1 Arbor Elf
• 1 Avenger of Zendikar
• 1 Birds of Paradise
• 1 Bitterbloom Bearer
• 1 Craterhoof Behemoth
• 1 Delighted Halfling
• 1 Elves of Deep Shadow
• 1 Elvish Mystic
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 1 Fyndhorn Elves
• 1 Jaheira, Friend of the Forest
• 1 Llanowar Elves

• Instants (16)
• 1 Abrupt Decay
• 1 Arachnogenesis
• 1 Assassin's Trophy
• 1 Beast Within
• 1 Curious Herd
• 1 Empty the Pits
• 1 Galadhrim Ambush
• 1 Harrow
• 1 Heroic Intervention
• 1 Krosan Grip
• 1 Outrageous Robbery
• 1 Overprotect
• 1 Putrefy
• 1 Return of the Wildspeaker
• 1 Second Harvest
• 1 Tamiyo's Safekeeping

• Sorceries (28)
• 1 Ambition's Cost
• 1 Ancient Craving
• 1 Animist's Awakening
• 1 Army of the Damned
• 1 Awaken the Woods
• 1 Collective Unconscious
• 1 Corpsehatch
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Death Mutation
• 1 Exsanguinate
• 1 Ezuri's Predation
• 1 Finale of Devastation
• 1 Fungal Sprouting
• 1 Gelatinous Genesis
• 1 Genesis Wave
• 1 In Garruk's Wake
• 1 Kodama's Reach
• 1 Nature's Lore
• 1 Peer into the Abyss
• 1 Pest Infestation
• 1 Rampant Growth
• 1 Rishkar's Expertise
• 1 Shamanic Revelation
• 1 Skittering Invasion
• 1 Sylvan Offering
• 1 Three Visits
• 1 Tooth and Nail
• 1 Torment of Hailfire

• Enchantments (2)
• 1 Bitterblossom
• 1 Phyrexian Arena

• Artifacts (4)
• 1 Idol of Oblivion
• 1 Lightning Greaves
• 1 Skullclamp
• 1 Swiftfoot Boots

• Lands (37)
• 13 Forest
• 13 Swamp
• 1 Blighted Woodland
• 1 Blinkmoth Nexus
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 1 Command Tower
• 1 Deathcap Glade
• 1 Exotic Orchard
• 1 Khalni Garden
• 1 Mishra's Factory
• 1 Tainted Wood
• 1 Undergrowth Stadium
• 1 Woodland Cemetery

Buy This Deck Export text

If you wanted to tune this list down, you could drop out some of the finishers and try to play more of a token swarm strategy. That's already what this list is trying to do, but if cards like Craterhoof Behemoth and Torment of Hailfire are too much for the tables you're playing at, they can be dropped out in favor of cheaper or just less impactful cards.

To tune this list up, you'll want to look at tutors and Game Changers, and you might consider throwing in some combo wincons. Your win rate will go up a lot just by throwing in a few Black tutors to go get Tooth and Nail. With Witherbloom's cost reduction you could easily find yourself casting a Diabolic Tutor for just mana.

I'm not playing combo as much these days but we can't not talk about the little Green elephant in the room in regards to Witherbloom, the Balancer.

You might also just want to run Sprout Swarm, a two-mana Instant with Convoke and Buyback. Affinity for Creatures will reduce the overall cost, including additional costs like Buyback, so if you can cast this for one mana and buy it back, you can then tap the Saproling you just created to cast it and buy it back as many times as you like.

Sprout Swarm recently went from being a 70-cent card to being over $5.00, so you know it's going to be seeing play with Witherbloom, the Balancer. If you make a zillion Saprolings your Exsanguinate or Torment of Hailfire will definitely end the game.

Final Thoughts

It might seem strange but my favorite thing about this brew might be a pair of Lands - Blinkmoth Nexus and Mishra's Factory. I could have included Inkmoth Nexus as well but decided to leave it out because it has Infect and that can spook your tablemates.

These Lands can be tapped to make one colorless, and for that 1 mana they can be turned into a Creature. The Nexus turns into a 1/1 Blinkmoth Artifact Creature with Flying and the Factory turns into a 2/2 Assembly-Worker Artifact Creature. That effect only lasts until end of turn, and they both remain Lands in addition to becoming Creatures.

The reason I love those two cards is that they make me feel clever. If I'm poised in the late game to be able to play more than one Instant or Sorcery in a single turn, I can pay to have an additional Creature. That extra body will save me mana on every spell I cast that turn that has affinity for Creatures.

It's not exactly an overwhelming advantage, but sometimes little things can add up, and if one or two extra bodies open up the chance to play both a token generator like Curious Herd, and then the one-sided boardwipe In Garruk's Wake, it will be well worth it.

More likely, I'll just get an extra mana worth of X in one of my X spells, but it's still fun to find little ways to squeeze more value out of whatever weird thing your Commander brings to the game.

My first reaction to these new Secrets of Strixhaven Elder Dragons was that they were very pushed and are going to be a real headache to deal with in casual EDH. Power creep is real, and I guess I'm just grateful that these new cards are Elder Dragons and not Powerpuff Girls, or characters from the Simpsons.

I'm waiting for my SOS preorders already so I'll be building a bunch of new decks in the coming month.

While I may not go so far as to play Sprout Swarm in Witherbloom, the Balancer, I am looking forward to seeing how many fun new decks I'll be able to cobble together around these new Legendary Creatures.

That's all I've got for today. Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!