Ghired, Conclave Exile

Leo De Jesus
Aug 4, 2023
5 min read

Updated: 2 days ago

Rhinos on Rhinos on Rhinos on Rhinos on Rhi....

Hello there! As always thank you for clicking around and reading on the site!

Intro

The third Precon Playground deck is going to be the Primal Genesis preconstructed deck from 2019! This is the oldest of the decks I’m reviewing and is amazingly still floating around markets for between 30 - 40 dollars! In a world where precons are being sold for $80+, getting a pile of cards this good and synergistic is fantastic at that price point. The awesome thing about this deck is that it came with 3 commanders all of which pilot the deck pretty well!

Marisi, Breaker of the Coil, is a goading commander which snowballs quickly. As long as you have a wide enough army and/or some large enough trampling creatures, you can make sure the field is wide open when it comes around to your turn again. If I was focusing on Marisi I’d make it a trample-typal kind of deck ensuring that the whole board stays tapped down as much as possible.

Atla Palani, Nest Tender was almost the commander that we built the deck around. The only reason why we didn’t is that it is very much a glass cannon build. If for any reason you can’t keep Atla Palani around, the deck just gets clunky with a ton of giant mana creatures that are impractical to cast later on. When Atla gets removed for the second or third time, you can just cast the large bombs that you're stuck drawing. It’s more of a combo deck than a synergized stack of cards. It makes for a great addition to the deck but not what we want our deck to be focused around.

Deck Outline

And this brings us to Ghired, Conclave Exile or as I like to call it, Ghired, the Selesnya Dropout. (It actually is his lore and reason for his color identity as he leaves Selesnya (GW) and goes to the Gruul (RG)) At 5 mana it is on the upper end of mana costs that we want to be paying for a commander. Having to pay for it twice is painful and having to pay 9 mana near impossible if you haven’t ramped. We really only want to be swinging with Ghired when we have a giant token worth copying with the populate ability. If the only option is to populate a 4/4 rhino you just made, it’s actually better to just hold off on attacking and use the plethora of options the deck has to populate instead with the deck right out of the box.

The general game plan of this deck is to ramp, make some meaty tokens, use populate to get more of them, and then turn ‘em all sideways for damage. This deck is actually one of the better precons right out of the box compared to the others I’m reviewing on the website. As always we’ll deep dive into some of the “signature to this deck” options and for a full breakdown of the deck by tag you can check out the link to this deck on Moxfield.

Signature to This Deck
1. Token Makers (34 total)
  1. Actual Token Makers [22]
  2. Populators [12]
2. Clear the Way [3]
3. Pump/Anthems [2]
Usual Deck Utility
1. Removal [8]
2. Ramp [7]
3. Card Draw [10]
4. Protection [5]
5. Lands [39]

Token Makers [34]

So this is a weird division as there are a ton of cards that can populate, but not make tokens by themselves. In the face of a board wipe or your tokens getting taken out, you can have a grip populate cards that don’t do anything. So 22 cards in the deck actually make tokens and 12 have the text populate on them to make more when you already have at least one token.

Actual Token Makers [22]

Some of the all stars in the token creating half are Dragon Master Outcast and Rampaging Baloths. They have completely different mana costs but are the best token makers in the deck. Rampaging Baloths gives you sizable tokens just for playing your lands and the Dragon Master Outcast gives you even bigger dragons just for staying alive to turn 5! I highly recommend delaying these cards until you can make immediate use of them. This means waiting until you hit your fifth land for the Outcast and waiting until you can cast the Baloths and make a land drop in the same turn. If you’re not hurting for blockers, the wait is definitely worth it.

Populators [12]

Song of the Worldsoul & Growing Ranks are the best populate cards for one very obvious reason. They let you populate a lot more than just once! Song of the Wordsoul may be really expensive to cast but even casting only one card after it's out generates a ton of value. Same goes for Growing Ranks even if it is just once per turn for two less mana.

Clear the Way [3]

I wasn’t sure how to categorize these cards after tagging everything else in the deck. The only thing tying them together is that they clear the way for other attackers and make the battlefield difficult to navigate. There’s not much else to say except that I’m going to cut these cards IMMEDIATELY. I mention it later in the wrap up but the deck runs so much smoother with these cards not in the deck at all. I'm very happy to cut Tectonic Hellion & Tahngarth, First Mate.

Pump/Anthems [2]

Commander's Insignia & Intangible Virtue are straightforward and just serve as great tools for making the army even bigger.

Goldfishing, Deck List, & Conclusions

This deck does have a lot of ramping options but there is just way too much top end on this deck. It also needs a very specific hand to go off. You need to ramp, make tokens, and populate them all. It takes a very specific hand to be able to make this game plan work. More times than not, you’re missing one of the crucial pieces during the goldfishing. If you’re missing token makers, your ramped up mana and populate cards have nothing to do. If you’re missing populate cards, you are really restricted to how much of a board presence you can make. And of course, if you’re missing ramp pieces with the stock deck as is, you aren’t making any impactful plays. The deck is a lot of fun when it works but that can be said about almost any deck. We really want a deck that works all the time, even when it’s struggling.

It’s always a good time when you can amass a board of 4 to 5 4/4 tokens and sit pretty with more than 20 power on the board. Of all of the token makers, Ghired is the most consistent for being in the command zone. His 2/5 stat line also makes him great for making more than just one rhino at a time. This is why the new strategy for this deck is to make it a blinking deck. We are going to focus on blinking Ghired as much as possible. Waiting to attack with him is a little unreliable so we are going to focus on getting the most value out of that first ability. We will be able to keep some of the populate cards and along side some repeatable blinkers, this deck is going to be a ton more fun to pilot.