Grothama is a weird case. I know players who have been looking forward to a Wurm commander for ages, but I don’t think this is going to be it, although with the general quality of Wurms (looking at you, [scryfall]Craw Wurm[/scryfall], although I can’t be mad at that card…), you don’t really mind throwing them at this thing.

I don’t really know what I’m doing here. I have ideas, but setting them up is just so complicated compared to the upside that you should never try to use this. Well, of course, you really, really should just to make your opponents wonder what’s going on.

So, what needs to happen here is that you need to play a bunch of creatures, play this, and kill this, losing all those creatures. Doesn’t seem very good. Yes, you get to draw a bunch of cards, but you lose so much tempo in this exchange and now you are looking quite dangerous with all your cards in hand, that you will just die next turn.

Worse yet, you do the setup and get ready to attack and because your opponents were expecting this, you just get [scryfall]Aetherize[/scryfall]d. There goes all your setup and now the next player in line can deal with your Commander and draw a bunch of cards.

Still, some cards are made to be brewed with. I guess this one is more about having fun with and using with various creatures I wouldn’t otherwise play.

I thought I might want to put in some instants that give Grothama indestructible to blow out your opponents, but the problem is the ‘may’ part of the ability. You choose that as the ability resolves, so it wouldn’t work. I do hope they would have worded that differently.

First, we want creatures with 8 power, so we don’t have to get rid of more than one to gain the draw. And some Wurms. Here’s the Wurms I’d like to play…

Funnily enough, you wouldn’t mind your [scryfall]Worldspine Wurm[/scryfall] dying, but it won’t.

We might want some big indestructible creatures as well.

[scryfall]Stonehoof Chieftain[/scryfall] is an unbelievably good card here. Assuming we have creatures that don’t come with indestructible in-built.

I guess we want some of the usual suspects of big creatures.

Okay, that might not be exactly “usual suspects”, but along those lines… sort of. That’s 17 fatties. I do think we need some more. It’s just hard to say what else we should be playing. First I thought I would like creatures with deathtouch, but that’s a bit problematic, because the first one of them would kill Grothama and that would mean we can’t hit it more. However, that did get me thinking. How about [scryfall]Rhonas the Indomnitable[/scryfall]? It does have deathtouch, but we’re interested in the pumping here. So, why not [scryfall]Nylea, God of the Hunt[/scryfall] as well?

They can make any random creature strong enough to kill Grothama and Rhonas can also finish it off, if there wasn’t enough power to do it otherwise. Drawing five is still pretty good.

Otherwise, I think we’d just like various utility creatures and ramp. The latter in form of creatures as well, since we can sort of cantrip them with Grothama.

If our goal is to draw plenty of cards, I don’t mind playing more lands, so I would gladly play more than the 43 lands I have room for, but gladly we do have plenty of ramp in the deck.

Round that off with 31 Forests and you’re good to go. (Not really.)