Runadi, Caller of Timmys and Tammys

Posted on January 11, 2023

No matter who you are as a player, I'd be willing to bet that I know what your first Magic deck was like. It was probably mainly Green, probably with some White or Red in the mix, and was a bunch of big old creatures that had no business being in a big, janky pile like that. That might be a little less true nowadays in a world of Commander precons and MTG Arena, but for many players like myself, almost everyone had their Timmy/Tammy phase. Some outgrew it, some stuck with it, but no matter who you were, you were always playing some janky build of large creatures in your early days.

I remember the days when I was mind blown by the original Legends elder dragons, Scaled Wurm ("It's a 7/6 at COMMON?!"), and Multani, Maro-Sorcerer. I had a massive five-color build with 150 cards of pure nonsense that made no sense. It was good fun, though, and I loved it. I hear similar stories often, such as my best friend from college who first built a deck during the era of Time Spiral out of Mirrodin-era cards topping out with a Living Hive. These stories are a dime a dozen, and it's not hard to see why. Who doesn't love casting some big dumb dorks and just beating your opponents' faces in? That's what made my face light up a bit when I saw Runadi, Behemoth Caller.

Seeing Runadi was almost like a breath of fresh air. It's different from the kinds of things that would pass for a Timmy/Tammy deck these days. Decks that focus around dragons, making big tokens, or just doing ramp nonsense. No, this was a commander that specifically demanded you play the biggest creatures possible! We used to get a lot of this with Shards of Alara and the couple years that followed with various Commander releases, but it's been a bit rarer in recent years. This, though, felt like I was seeing a bit of that old feeling as a kid and I couldn't help but want to build something and just jam as many big creatures as possible!

Runadi's Monsters | Commander | Paige Smith

Commander (1)
1 Runadi, Behemoth Caller

Building this deck was a lot of fun. Usually when putting lists together, I find myself looking for the best ways to get the most value possible out of the cards I'm pulling. That was definitely still a thing here, but it felt far more along the lines of just wanting to make it as much "haha big creature go brrrr" as I could possibly make it. To that end, I think I've largely succeeded.

I don't know how much I've really talked about my process for making my decks, but I usually start by firing up Magic Online and tweaking the search settings. From there, I can easily look over the vast majority of the game's card pool and pull together a large collection of cards that I can then size down. For this list, I started by searching every Green and Colorless creature I could find with a mana value of five or greater. From there, I shoved as many cool and interesting ones as I could into one big pile. One thing that surprised me going through here is that there were not quite as many options as I'd have thought, and so that made putting this together a bit on the easier side.

A lot of the usual suspects make a showing here. It's hard to have a Mono-Green Ramp deck and not feature cards like Avenger of Zendikar, End-Raze Forerunners, and Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre. There were a number of neat creatures I included that I feel don't make the usually make the cut. Cards like Ancient Stone Idol, Ghalta, Primal Hunger; and Thrasta, Tempest's Roar are all great cards in their own right, but they don't often feel like the best Commander cards. They feel like casual favorites but just using big semi-vanilla cards to beat down opponents doesn't seem like the most exciting thing. Their size only goes so far and they often just get blocked easily. In a deck like this, though, they get absolutely monstrous, which makes them easy inclusions as they become far harder to deal with and hit so much harder.

I also looked for some cards that had some cool synergy to them. Herd Baloth and Mycoloth can easily spit out creatures just by getting +1/+1 counters put on them. That means you play them, get counters, and start making tokens fast. That number only increases as you put more counters on them from things like proliferate or Defiler of Vigor. You might recall how I mentioned my college friend starting out with a bad deck featuring Living Hive. Well, funny enough, Living Hive makes an appearance here! Normally, a 6/6 trampler for eight mana is really underwhelming - even if it makes tokens when it deals combat damage. Here, though, it comes down as a 10/10, making it far more enticing as a way to swarm your board.

You can fill up your board not just with tokens, but by using cards like Garruk's Horde and Soul of the Harvest to draw you more and more cards. Once you've swarmed enough, you can use cards like End-Raze Forerunners, the two Kamahls, Earthshaker Giant, or Baru, Fist of Krosa to easily land a finishing blow on your opponents. If you need to clear the board out a little first, that's extra easy thanks to cards fighters like Thorn Mammoth, Apex Altisaur, and Kogla, the Titan Ape - all of which come down stronger than ever thanks to Runadi. You can even use Silklash Spider to take out fliers or Steelbane Hydra and Silverback Elder to wipe out artifact and enchantment creatures that may be lurking about.

The main plan may be to play big creatures out, but you need to be able to actually play them. You can't just shove a ton of massive monsters into a deck and leave it at that! No, you need some ramp to help get you there! If you can think of some good ramp, odds are good it's in here. Your usual mana dorks like Llanowar Elves, Elvish Mystic, and Joraga Treespeaker all make appearances. So too do ramp spells like Nature's Lore, Cultivate, and Migration Path. Rishkar, Peema Renegade provides a neat solution, making all of your big creatures into mana dorks as well if you cast them with Runadi on the board. The new Gwenna, Eyes of Gaea synergizes excellently with this deck as well and can help you machine gun out your behemoths fast while getting bigger herself.

To round things out, we've got some additional value spells. Cards like Evolution Sage, Hardened Scales, and Karn's Bastion make for great ways to get additional counters onto your creatures. Inspiring Call turns them into a great draw outlet, as well as saving your board in the process - making for a much better and more accessible Heroic Intervention for this kind of list. Speaking of card draw, Garruk's Uprising fuels your card draw and gives all of your creatures trample at the same time. Lastly, Genesis not only works as a great beefy creature to get pumped by Runadi, but it also helps ensure you never run out of creatures to be able to play.

The result is a fun and simple deck. It's easy to build and simple to pick up and play. Best of all, unlike many Green ramp decks, it's not likely to play the same way every time. Many of the creatures are similar and a little simplistic, but there's enough variety and not enough ways to chain through your deck fast. That means unlike, say, an Elfball list that plays the same way every time, you're bound to get a ton of different and unique experiences. That's sure to make it a blast for any Commander night! Runadi is the kind of card that makes me want to play like I'm nine years old again, and you know what? I'm ready to have a ton of fun embracing my inner Tammy. I hope you are too!

Paige Smith

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TAGS articles, casual, edh, commander, decklist, mono-green, paige smith, commander hq, jumpstart 2022, jmp22, 01112023, runadi behemoth caller