Before I dive into the fun process of tearing apart my precon decks and making some new The Lord of the Rings-centric builds, I decided to jump the gun. I already had a bunch of legends from my collector box and prerelease kits. I have managed to get over the mild depression I suffered from not opening a single fancy Elvish, Dwarven or Human Sol Ring. I was really hoping for one of those sweet pulls. I kept coming back to a Green legendary treefolk and wondering how many other Treefolk I had in my collection.

Thinking back on all of the times I had gone through my Green commons and uncommons looking for specific cards, I couldn't recall any specific Treefolk. I knew I had a few and had recently picked up a Scurry Oak for another build, but I couldn't think of a single card. When I cracked open that storage box and went card by card through my Green creatures I ended up with just under two dozen Treefolk! I was stunned. They weren't all good, and some were barely playable, but I took it as a sign. I was going to build Quickbeam, Upstart Ent.

Quickbeam is a 5-power, 6-toughness Legendary Treefolk who costs six and will give up to two target creatures +2/+2 and trample when he or another Treefolk enters the battlefield. I tend to shy away from abilities that only last until end of turn, but this is not aiming to be a high-powered build. It will find a home at lower powered tables where you have the time to play decks with a higher mana curve and less game-breaking strategies.

Before I dive into today's deck, I should mention three possible commanders that I simply hadn't opened. Any of these would be fine and possibly better commanders for an Ent deck. Two of them would add a color, and the third is probably a better Mono-Green commander than Quickbeam. Commander decks are always evolving, so this list will surely change in the coming weeks and might switch to one of these generals.

Treebeard, Gracious Host adds White, creates food tokens, cares about lifegain, and would work well with any card that lets creatures deal damage based on their toughness. It's designed to work with Halfling and can be found in the Food and Fellowshop precon. Old Man Willow adds Black, scales with the number of lands I control, and has a removal ability right on the card! I could see a saproling/plant tokens build work really well. Fangorn gives your treefolk vigilance and adds mana to your mana pool when your Treefolk attack. He also has Omnath, Locus of Mana's ability to let you keep your Green mana when steps and phases end, which really helps when you're trying to cast Treefolk, which generally have high mana costs.

Entvengers Assemble!

The vast majority of Treefolk don't bring much to the table. Reach and trample are common Treefolk abilities, but beyond that there isn't a lot to push Treefolk up into the higher ranks of powerful creature types.

I won't shine a spotlight on all of the Treefolk in this list, but a few are worth a closer look. I am running a few non-Treefolk like Beast Whisperer, Elvish Piper and Sakura-Tribe Elder, but the vast majority of my creatures are Treefolk, or in the parlance of Middle-Earth, Ents.

I like to have some low-mana creatures in my decks so that I've got a chance to have a turn one blocker. Avoiding early chip damage isn't incredibly important, but it's nice to keep that 40-life total for as long as possible. Willow Geist will come down on turn 1 and has the potential to grow. I may not have a game plan built around graveyard recursion, but you never know when someone will exile all graveyards or use a Deathrite Shaman to snipe a creature from my yard.

Heartwood Storyteller is a fantastic 3-drop Treefolk who has consistently exceeded my expectations. Whenever a player plays a noncreature spell, each of that player's opponents may draw a card. This creature will help everyone at the table, but in a casual game it's hard not to enjoy seeing everyone (yourself included) drawing cards at a faster clip than usual. Treefolk Seedlings scales to the number of forests you control. An early Treefolk Seedlings might be a two or three power speedbump, but you could be paying three mana for a much bigger threat in the late game.

Enraged Huorn is a 5-drop with trample and when it enters the battlefield the Ring tempts you. Being tempted by the Ring isn't a focus of this deck, but does give a few benefits. Generous Ent is also in the list. It has reach, creates a Food token when it enters the battlefield and has forestcycling.

Wickerbough Elder enters the battlefield with a -1/-1 counter and I can pay a Green mana to remove a -1/-1 counter to destroy target artifact or enchantment. Treefolk doesn't offer the kind of support creatures you'll find in Elves, Goblins, or a dozen other popular creature types, but it's nice to see one that gives us a way to remove a problem artifact or enchantment.

Great Oak Guardian is in a new precon, but was first printed in Commander 2015. It has both flash and reach and when it enters the battlefield creatures target player controls get +2/+2 until end of turn. He can be used for my own alpha strike, he can be used to help a tablemate's combat, or I can flash him in to untap my tapped creatures so I can block!

Yew Spirit may not have any keywords, but I can pay four mana to give it +X/+X until end of turn where X is its power. If I can get a +2/+2 and trample from Quickbeam he could be a real threat with an activation or two of that ability.

I was tempted to leave Magic: The Gathering Legendary creatures out of the mix, but the dearth of quality Treefolk made me choose to run a few. Yedora, Grave Gardener and Verdeloth the Ancient both found a place in this deck. When I get a copy of Fangorn, Tree Shepherd, I may swap him in for one of them, but maybe not.

Yedora will have my nontoken creatures return to the battlefield face-down as Forests when they die. It can combo with a number of other cards, but not in this list. Yedora is great, but this list isn't aiming to be a combo deck. Verdeloth lets you pay X as a kicker cost when you cast him. That kicker cost will turn into X 1/1 Green Saproling creature tokens.

I could see adding more Saproling tokens, but I steered away from playing Elementals and Avatars that had a Treefolk feel when building this deck. Leaning into a (relatively) weak creature type is a way to make your deck more playable at low powered tables, which is neither a positive or a negative. It's just a fact. I play at an LGS and often find myself wishing I had a deck that better matched the table I was sitting at. Having a few more casual decks will help me match power levels better.

Lost in the Woods

My first step in filling out my deck was to add in non-Treefolkk cards that become or that create Treefolk. I'm all in on theme this week, as I'm not worried about efficiency and power levels.

Awakener Druid will turn a Forest into a 4/5Treefolk for as long as he is on the battlefield. Hidden Ancients will turn into a 5/5 Treefolk whenever an opponent casts an enchantment spell. Lignify and Song of the Dryads are both in my list. The former aura will turn the enchanted creature into a 0/4 Treefolk with no abilities and the latter just turns the enchanted permanent into a Forest, which may not be a Treefolk but which still feels on theme.

This theme of forests and trees pervades my list. I'm running Constant Mists and Moment's Peace but had to include Root Snare, which is a two-mana Fog. I'm not running Fog itself, but I'm happy to pay that extra mana so I can have a slightly more thematic deck.

I'm not running Sol Ring, even though this is a mana intensive list, in favor of more on-theme options. Fertile Ground and Overgrowth are auras that will let the enchanted land tap for more mana. I'm running the usual set of land ramp sorceries, but I'll need to keep an eye on how this deck performs as mana production may well be an issue. Endless Atlas is the only artifact in the list, and should help me draw cards and hopefully not miss too many land drops.

Fruit of the First Tree will have me gain X life and draw X cards where X is the creature's toughness. In a deck that might benefit from dropping a half dozen Treefolk and adding more draw and interaction, this could pull me into a bunch of cards. It's not fantastic, but it's perfectly on theme and fits in well in this build.

Dormant Grove // Gnarled Grovestrider is a flip card from Innistrad: Crimson Vow that puts a counter on target creature I control at the beginning of combat. If that creature has toughness six or greater, Dormant Grove transforms into Gnarled Grovestrider, a Treefolk that gives other creatures I control vigilance.

Lost in the Woods is an enchantment that will have me reveal the top card of my library whenever a creature attacks me or a planeswalker I control. If I reveal a Forest card, that creature is removed from combat and the Forest is put on the bottom of my library. I'm running 26 Forests so I'll have roughly a one in four chance of removing an attacker. That's not great, but Lost in the Woods is so on-theme that it had to go into the deck.

Upstart Ents

This isn't the sort of list you can tune up very much, but I think adding Sol Ring, Emerald Medallion, Sylvan Library would make a lot of sense. Scurry Oak is in the list, so you'd also want to add Ivy Lane Denizen and possibly Herd Baloth and some tutors to make that game plan viable. At that point you'll have a more powerful deck but you'll have strayed away from the Treefolk focus. I might move the deck in that direction over time, but I'm going to start it out as a slower, lower-powered Treefolk deck.

Quickbeam, Upstart Ent | Commander | Stephen Johnson

• Commander (1)
• 1 Quickbeam, Upstart Ent

• Creatures (34)
• 1 Ambassador Oak
• 1 Awakener Druid
• 1 Beast Whisperer
• 1 Burlfist Oak
• 1 Cloudcrown Oak
• 1 Elvish Piper
• 1 Enraged Huorn
• 1 Generous Ent
• 1 Ghastbark Twins
• 1 Gnarled Sage
• 1 Gnarlroot Pallbearer
• 1 Great Oak Guardian
• 1 Heartwood Storyteller
• 1 Lumberknot
• 1 Magnigoth Sentry
• 1 Mossbeard Ancient
• 1 Neverwinter Dryad
• 1 Orchard Strider
• 1 Primordial Sage
• 1 Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1 Scurry Oak
• 1 Sheltering Ancient
• 1 Tanuki Transplanter
• 1 Timberland Ancient
• 1 Treefolk Seedlings
• 1 Tuinvale Treefolk
• 1 Ulvenwald Observer
• 1 Verdeloth the Ancient
• 1 Warden of the Woods
• 1 Weatherseed Treefolk
• 1 Wickerbough Elder
• 1 Willow Geist
• 1 Yedora, Grave Gardener
• 1 Yew Spirit

• Instants (5)
• 1 Constant Mists
• 1 Entish Restoration
• 1 Kindred Summons
• 1 Moment's Peace
• 1 Root Snare

• Sorceries (10)
• 1 Cultivate
• 1 Ent's Fury
• 1 Kodama's Reach
• 1 Last March of the Ents
• 1 Nature's Lore
• 1 Rampant Growth
• 1 Shamanic Revelation
• 1 Skyshroud Claim
• 1 Sylvan Offering
• 1 Traverse the Outlands

• Enchantments (12)
• 1 Colossal Majesty
• 1 Dormant Grove Flip
• 1 Fertile Ground
• 1 Fruit of the First Tree
• 1 Guardian Project
• 1 Hidden Ancients
• 1 Lignify
• 1 Lost in the Woods
• 1 Overgrowth
• 1 Roots
• 1 Song of the Dryads
• 1 Treefolk Umbra

• Artifacts (1)
• 1 Endless Atlas

• Lands (37)
• 26 Forest
• 1 Ash Barrens
• 1 Bonders' Enclave
• 1 Fabled Passage
• 1 Field of Ruin
• 1 Ghost Quarter
• 1 Lotus Field
• 1 Mosswort Bridge
• 1 Myriad Landscape
• 1 Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
• 1 Rogue's Passage
• 1 Tectonic Edge

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Not all of the builds I share here are decks I've made in paper, but this is one I actually sleeved up. I had way too many Green decks so I decided to move my Grothama, All-Devouring back into Multani, Maro-Sorcerer to free up some Green sleeves for this build.

Final Thoughts

I've got a whole bunch of decks to build over the coming weeks. One of the guys at the LGS was kind enough to give me their bundle box so I'll have two more spots to store decks, but I'm still expecting to have to unsleeve a few to make space in my collection. When you have over two dozen commander decks there are always ones that haven't been played and haven't been inspiring enough to keep together. The weakest link will get cut and with any luck that will make room for a new and exciting build to join the collection.

As I write this, I just grabbed the FedEx box with my precons so I think it's time to wrap up and go open up my new goodies. I don't yet know which one I'll be working on first. Aragorn, the Uniter Humans has my attention as I've got a Horn of Gondor and a Horn of the Mark, but I'll see what piques my interest.

Thanks for reading and I'll see you next week!