Ever watch an 80's-era horror film where, just prior to the hapless teens reaching their cabin/campground/lakehouse, a kooky local warns them of approaching danger? Maybe the cabin was built on a cursed burial ground. Perhaps a masked killer rampaged through the area twenty years ago to the day. And don't get them started on the abandoned aquarium that tried to raise mutant piranha.

The creepy backstory may vary, but the outcome is always the same. Words of caution fall on deaf ears, with only an ominous overtone lingering after the teens press onward to their doom.

Apply that premise to Lorwyn, and you've got Rosheen, Roaring Prophet.

Existing in two phases, the plane of Lorwyn switches from a state of dawn to Shadowmoor's dusk in an event called The Great Aurora. This planar flux lasts for centuries, courtesy of an ever-scheming Oona, Queen of the Fae, altering not only the plane's physical landscape, but also its inhabitants. Memories of sunnier lives are wiped away and replaced with a far more perilous existence. Kithkin go from empathic neighbors (Surge of Thoughtweft) to xenophobic lunatics (Kithkin Rabble). River-fairing Merfolk shift from social (Sygg, River Guide) to savage (Sygg, River Cutthroat). The only folk holding out hope for a better tomorrow are the Elves (Ryhs, the Redeemed, Oracle of Nectars[/card), who were actually the story's vanity-obsessed antagonists in Lorwyn ([card]Nath of the Gilt-Leaf, Gilt-Leaf Winnower).

When The Great Aurora hits, everything you previously knew about the plane is flipped on its head.

Well, almost everything.

Rosheen Meanderer remembers how life once was. She, and a scant handful of others, kept their original identities after The Great Aurora. In fact, as a prophetic sage, she actually saw the whole thing coming. Sadly, despite Rosheen's accuracy predicting disaster, her constant mumbling comes across more as the ravings of a mad person than it does practical warning. Folks seldom listen. However, that need not apply to the Commander table, where if you want to get players' attention, you offer them a card that can make copious mana each turn. Everyone needs ramp in their deck, and when that ramp comes attached to your commander, you can afford to scale up the mana curve considerably.

Rosheen, Roaring Prophet does that very thing, but even better than you might think. The very nature of the cards she fuels means that, even when her ability is offline, we can still develop our board. Most x-cost creatures enter play with a number of +1/+1 counters equal to the mana poured into them (Goldvein Hydra, Mawloc). While creatures with x-costs are often deployed as heavy hitters, they can still be cast early. That flexibility means they'll never be stuck in your hand, even if they'll have to arrive with smaller stats than intended. Fortunately, Gruul has plenty of means to buff even a small handful of +1/+1 counters into a pile (Kalonian Hydra, Unbound Flourishing, Savageborn Hydra).

Of course, all the +1/+1 counters in the world don't mean much without beasties to carry them. So let's load up the menagerie with hydras and see what stomping-power Rosheen, Roaring Prophet brings to the Commander table!

Voracious Hydra by Wayne Reynolds

"Buffet table's open, boys!"

1. Entering Play = Mill + Card Draw: With enough x-spells in our deck, Rosheen, Roaring Prophet acts as a cantrip, 'drawing' us a card upon entering play. We're already incentivized to run many x-cards in the '99, making the odds of hitting one very high. Even better, she'll also mill a bunch of cards into our graveyard. We can make great use of those via recursion outlets (Aftermath Analyst, Wildest Dreams, Worldsoul's Rage).

2. X-cost matters for cards in hand: The extra card is nice, but the real reason we're running Rosheen is for explosive mana generation. With a single tap, Rosheen will generate two colorless mana for each x-cost card we reveal from our hand. This can ramp us into massive threats starting on turn five (Savageborn Hydra, Voracious Hydra, etc.). Especially when we can double-up the tap ability via cards like Seeker of Skybreak, Quirion Ranger, Magewright's Stone, and Thousand-Year Elixir.

I want to give a special nod to the Warhammer 40k Ravenous creatures (Broodlord, Hormagaunt Horde, Termagant Swarm, etc.), as not only do they scale in power with Rosheen's ramp, but will also replace themselves with enough colorless mana invested. This is more important than it appears at first glance. Sure, drawing a card is great, but because Rosheen's ability to make mana depends on keeping a hand stocked full of x-cost spells, creatures that keep our hand full are essential for follow-up plays.

But massive creatures are only the first-half of our equation. Monstrous attackers will take sizeable bites out of enemy life, but it'll be the big spells a la' Crackle with Power, Clan Defiance, and Worldsoul's Rage that'll finish opponents once we're pouring double-digit mana into them.

Worldsoul's Rage also segues us nice into...

3. Even more Ramp!: Mana production is already a talent inherent to Green, and many even contain that vital x-cost (Animist's Awakening, Open the Way, Awaken the Woods). Rosheen's ramp ability allows these spells to double our mana output, making some of the aforementioned burn reach a lethal threshold that much quicker. In true Gruul fashion, most of our ramp comes from non-Artifact sources. Our deck runs a grand total of 7 artifacts, and while they can be helpful for card advantage (The Great Henge), or untapping our general via Patriar's Seal), the loss of a trinket or two will be nothing compared to what destruction we can cause artifact-heavy opponents via cards like Meltdown and Subterranean Tremors. Heck, with all the mana at our disposal, cards like Pest Infestation, By Force, and Rampaging Yao Guai act as one-sided sweepers, anyhow.

Added mana also helps mitigate the Commander tax, making it easier for us to recast Rosheen, Roaring Prophet if she dies. Her tactics aren't subtle, so you can bet opponents will be eager to aim removal her way. Fortunately, not only will added ramp give us the resources needed to cast her all over again, but her return to play will result in another 'bout of card mill and likely draw, helping further restock our hand. Not a bad consolation prize for having to recast our general.

4. Avoid X-Cost Tutors: With all this mana at our disposal, tutors like Finale of Devastation and Green Sun's Zenith appear awfully tempting. But there's an issue: We can pour all the mana we want into these tutors, but much of our army is composed of creatures with x-costs, themselves. A card that tutors a hydra or Ravenous creature directly into play will see its x-cost as zero, causing many to die (Tervigon) or simply be unimpressive (Broodlord) upon arrival.

Fortunately, when almost every creature in our deck can become a massive threat, searching for one hardly matters. This is especially true when Ravenous creatures provide card advantage along the way, helping keep our hand size, and thus mana production, high. As the game goes late and mana flourishes, each newly draw x-spell can spell disaster for opponents and threatens to win the game on its own.

All is all, it's the classic Gruul playbook. Equal parts real estate and skull-bashing.

Prophesizing Doom | Commander | Matthew Lotti

• Commander (1)
• 1 Rosheen, Roaring Prophet

• Creatures (24)
• 1 Aberrant
• 1 Aftermath Analyst
• 1 Broodlord
• 1 Disciple of Freyalise
• 1 Exocrine
• 1 Fanatic of Rhonas
• 1 Goldvein Hydra
• 1 Hormagaunt Horde
• 1 Jadelight Spelunker
• 1 Kalonian Hydra
• 1 Mawloc
• 1 Nexos
• 1 Quirion Ranger
• 1 Rampaging Yao Guai
• 1 Rosheen Meanderer
• 1 Runadi, Behemoth Caller
• 1 Saryth, the Viper's Fang
• 1 Savageborn Hydra
• 1 Scryb Ranger
• 1 Seeker of Skybreak
• 1 Selvala, Heart of the Wilds
• 1 Termagant Swarm
• 1 Tervigon
• 1 Voracious Hydra

• Instants (9)
• 1 Beast Within
• 1 Chaos Warp
• 1 Entish Restoration
• 1 Heroic Intervention
• 1 Klauth's Will
• 1 Legolas's Quick Reflexes
• 1 Return of the Wildspeaker
• 1 Road // Ruin
• 1 Tyvar's Stand

• Sorceries (26)
• 1 Animist's Awakening
• 1 Awaken the Woods
• 1 Bala Ged Recovery
• 1 Bridgeworks Battle
• 1 By Force
• 1 Clan Defiance
• 1 Crackle with Power
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Exponential Growth
• 1 Farseek
• 1 Kodama's Reach
• 1 Meltdown
• 1 Mishra's Command
• 1 Nature's Lore
• 1 Open the Way
• 1 Pest Infestation
• 1 Rampant Growth
• 1 Reap the Past
• 1 Red Sun's Twilight
• 1 Shatterskull Smashing
• 1 Stump Stomp
• 1 Subterranean Tremors
• 1 Sundering Eruption
• 1 Three Visits
• 1 Wildest Dreams
• 1 Worldsoul's Rage

• Enchantments (1)
• 1 Unbound Flourishing

• Artifacts (7)
• 1 Conduit of Worlds
• 1 Elementalist's Palette
• 1 Horizon Stone
• 1 Magewright's Stone
• 1 Patriar's Seal
• 1 The Great Henge
• 1 Thousand-Year Elixir

• Lands (32)
• 9 Forest
• 8 Mountain
• 1 Ancient Tomb
• 1 Blast Zone
• 1 Castle Garenbrig
• 1 Commercial District
• 1 Fire-Lit Thicket
• 1 Karplusan Forest
• 1 Kessig Wolf Run
• 1 Lair of the Hydra
• 1 Rockfall Vale
• 1 Rootbound Crag
• 1 Sheltered Thicket
• 1 Skarrg, the Rage Pits
• 1 Spire Garden
• 1 Stomping Ground
• 1 Wooded Foothills

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Ravenous Rampage: Strangely, some of our best 'hydras' don't even belong to the creature type. Beasties with the Ravenous ability (Mawloc, Exocrine, Hormagaunt Horde) are similar to their multi-headed cousins in how they scale with the mana spent to pay for them. The aspect that makes Ravenous so valuable is the card draw that can come with it. Rosheen enables us to hit that 5-mana x-investment very quickly, ensuring each Ravenous creature will replace itself upon hitting the battlefield. As a creature-based deck, keeping our hand full is essential to ensure we don't run out of gas, and Ravenous creatures are a key piece to that puzzle.

Now sure, we also run a few classic x-cost hydras (Goldvein Hydra, Savageborn Hydra, etc.), but one I'd like to spotlight seems like an oddball at first glance. Kalonian Hydra will always arrive with four +1/+1 counters, providing zero opportunity to pour more mana into. However, because so many other creatures in our deck have power/toughness entirely comprised of +1/+1 counters, Kalonian Hydra can easily double the stats of our entire team with a single attack. And that doubling is exponential, with each subsequent attack building off the stack of counters piled on from the last.

Though our deck is already budget-friendly, additional hydras make great substitutions for our more expensive cards (The Great Henge, Ancient Tomb, Legolas's Quick Reflexes). Apocalypse Hydra, Hungering Hydra, and Mistcutter Hydra hit hard while coming in at under two dollars.

For supporting creatures, we further amplify the ramp machine with powerful mana sources like Rundai, Behemoth Caller, Rosheen Meanderer, Fanatic of Rhonas, and Selvala, Heart of the Wilds, the latter of which also offers card advantage. Untap-engines like Seeker of Skybreak, Scryb Ranger, and Quirion Ranger enable repeated Commander activations, doubling Rosheen's potential. Speaking of mana-doubling, Nexos rewards us for a high basic land count. With all these explosive mana sources alongside our general, threats will often arrive with double-digit stat lines. And should we run out of cards, those double-digits will ensure a timely Disciple of Freyalise more than refills our hand in one mighty burst of card draw. Feel free to discard any number of excess lands so Aftermath Analyst can retrieve them.

Clobberin' Time: Slinging' kaiju is just half of Rosheen's strategy. While our monsters stomp their way through opponents and their armies (Stump Stomp, Tyvar's Stand, Bridgeworks Battle), our general will be readying a devastating burn spell to sweep up what's left. Crackle with Power and our other flamethrowers will roast away those final enemy life points. When Rosheen's already making gigantic hydras, it doesn't take more than a few bites to make flamecraft lethal. All of the above is doubly-true if we drop an Unbound Flourishing beforehand.

Our other x-spells keep our life total safe while we set up for the fireworks. Subterranean Tremors, Shatterskull Smashing // Shatterskull, the Hammer Pass, Meltdown, By Force, Klauth's Will, Red Sun's Twilight, and Pest Infestation clear away swaths of enemy creatures and/or artifacts, stamping out whatever resistance our opponents scamper to amass. Mishra's Command, Reap the Past, and Wildest Dreams help scale mana into 'card draw', furthering ensuring we don't stall in our conquest.

Supporting Spells: As a creature-heavy strategy which relies heavily on its commander, protective spells are a must to keep engines running. We've already discussed some recursive elements, but Conduit of Worlds further bolsters the supply. This artifact not only lets us revive fallen hydras, but also play the lands Rosheen, Roaring Prophet milled away upon arrival. Of course, all this comes into consideration after our permanents have hit the graveyard. To prevent them from ever visiting in the first place, Saryth, the Viper's Fang, Tyvar's Stand, Legolas's Quick Reflexes are included to provide Hexproof.

Though most of our removal is x-based and hits a wide array of targets, we'll occasionally need precision over pummeling to take out threats. Beast Within and Chaos Warp are classics for a reason: they'll hit any permanent type. Our deck already has plenty of ways to deal with enemy creatures and artifacts, but opposing planeswalkers, enchantments, and lands require answers, too.

Ramp and Mana Production: Among traditional forms of Green ramp, there are plenty of x-cost options to be had. Awaken the Woods, Animist's Awakening, and Open the Way go from moderate helpful with a modest mana investment to greatly enhancing real estate with enough Rosheen-mana applied. Though we tend to favor land search (Farseek, Cultivate, etc.) over mana rocks, there are a few exceptions. Patriar's Seal is included for the same reason as Magewright's Stone and Thousand-Year Elixir: Untap Rosheen = Double Mana. Once we start using that mana, Elementalist's Palette and Horizon Stone act as batteries, furthering explosive plays on subsequent turns.

It's easy to get hung up on sheer mana production, but let's not overlook the importance of utility lands. We can have the biggest hydras in the world, but they'll be stopped in their tracks by a lowly 1/1 unless we can Trample damage through (Skarrg, the Rage Pits). Kessig Wolf Run goes a step further, not only helping an attacker bypass chump blockers, but get in extra damage while they're at it. Finally, if a sweeper devastates our team, Lair of the Hydra remains on standby as an easily-overlooked threat than can devour an unsuspecting opponent in the late game.

Crackle with Power by Mark A. Nelson

This is THESE are my Boomsticks!

Her predictions may be foreboding, but once you realize how much mana Rosheen, Roaring Prophet can make in one turn, you realize those worrisome words only apply to your opponents. It's their portent of doom she's talking about as you lay down kaiju after kaiju. Let your opponents use up their precious removal. It'll hardly matter, for each monster that falls will be soon followed up by another. And they'll likely be even bigger.

Thanks for reading, and may your bestiary remain ever full of behemoths!

-Matt-

@Intrepid_Tautog