Magic’s Witherbloom Pestilence Commander deck gets a brutal $2 upgrade

Magic: The Gathering‘s Secrets of Strixhaven precons are all incredibly strong, but some rise above even their peers to be genuinely fantastic.

One of those is Witherbloom Pestilence, the Golgari (black-green) deck helmed by Dina, Essence Brewer. It’s a deck that can be built in a number of ways, leaning into sacrifice for card draw, lifelink synergies, and making creatures bigger.

Among the more enjoyable cards to plug into the deck is Wall of Blood. It’s a 0/2 defender with the text “Pay 1 life: Wall of Blood gets +1/+1 until end of turn.” It’s not immediately obvious why you’d want a massive wall that can’t attack, but Dina’s abilities make things pretty clear.

image: Wizards of the Coast

Essentially, you can pay a bunch of life at the start of your turn to add dozens of +1/+1 counters to the Wall of Blood. Then you can pay 2 mana and tap Dina to sacrifice the Wall to gain back your life and put +1/+1 counters on another target creature you control.

Of course, dropping a ton of life into a card opens up a whole series of risks, like someone using spot removal to destroy the Wall of Blood right at the point you’re about to do anything with it. An opponent could simply remove Dina from the board so you’re left with, a lot less life and a 30/32 wall that will shrink at the end of your turn.

With that in mind, it’s not as broken as some other combos we’ve seen with Secrets of Strixhaven cards (and with Dina, no less), but it’s certainly yet another reason to invest in Golgari this set (Witherbloom, the Balancer springs to mind).

For more on Magic: The Gathering, be sure to check out our rundown of the upcoming mono-color Foundations precons arriving alongside Reality Fracture this year, as well as our preview of Mood Swings, Mark Rosewater’s new game.