Domri Brings the Chaos

Today's deck is based off of Reddit user u/Skullsbreaker52's extremely sweet Domri, Chaos Bringer deck, with a few adjustments I decided on after playing a couple more games with the deck. I'm not saying my version is better, as he has played this deck a lot more than I have, these are just changes I made based on cards I liked and the playstyle I preferred for what the deck had to offer. By all means, go check out his original decklist here.

This is a pretty powerful midrange deck that aims to ramp early, play large creatures sooner than supposed to, and snowball from there with Domri, Chaos Bringer giving us card advantage or Embercleave to just finish them off. We run 27 creatures, that is 1 more than needed to hit the 1.5 average creature per Domri activation as per Frank Karsten's math. So yeah, let's just try to steamroll the competition in this very cool Gruul deck!

The Ramp:

This deck runs a lot of small accelerants, and these cards are definitely what we want to be playing on turns 1 and 2. We have all of the little dorks, starting with Arboreal Grazer who helps us put more lands in play and doubles as a decent blocker against aggro. Gilded Goose is still the best manadork in Standard so of course we are running it, and we run all 4 of Incubation Druid, Leafkin Druid, Paradise Druid, and Woodland Mystic to help us accelerate to our large threats earlier. We also run Once Upon a Time, a card we want early on in the game to help smooth out our lands or accelerators  for free. We of course run an Arcane Signet because the person who built the original deck is very smart, and one Domri, Anarch of Bolas to make our creatures uncounterable or help us remove early threats from the board. Play these cards early, and follow them up with a few of the following bad boys:

Early Aggression:

Kraul Harpooner is an excellent piece of interaction against all the gesse flying around early on, while also being able to pack quite a punch if we give it riot. We run Bonecrusher Giant as a piece of removal that can be found with our commander, as well as being quite the powerful beater, and Gruul Spellbreaker to get very aggressive or to set up powerful Embercleave turns later. Grumgully, the Generous makes all our other creatures larger when they enter the battlefield, and Legion Warboss presents a consistent amount of board presence and damage if played against more controlling strategies. We also run one Lovestruck Beast because it's a 5/5 for 3 that can help fill out the curve with its adventure as well as being a pretty powerful blocker even without the 1/1.

Snowballing from there:

   Viracious Hydra

After establishing board dominance early in the game, we can take advantage of our great stats to either get more value or continue to push for damage on our opponent's face. Rhythm of the Wild brings the deck to a whole new level if it lands on the board, and Beast Whisperer alongside Guardian Project will keep us from running completely out of steam once we played out most our threats. Questing Beast and Shifting Ceratops are powerful cards against control decks, while curving any of our 3 drops into Vivin, Champion of the Wilds puts our opponent in a very difficult spot to get our from. We run one Wicked Wolf for early interaction to deal with small threats, and Ilharg, the Raze-Boar to cheat out our bigger creatures from our hand for big beats. Cavalier of Thorns gets us more lands on the battlefield as well as being a huge creature to deal with, and Thorn Mammoth just allows us to have complete board control if it stays alive for one turn. We run modular big boys and to help us keep control of the board or any pesky Enchantments or Artifacts that our opponents might have to bother us.

Finishing it off:

This deck runs a lot of hasty, dangerous, damage-dealing finishers, making for extremely satisfying victories. I'm not saying it wins all the time, but when it wins it feels extremely good. We run Cavalier of Flame to pump our creatures and give them haste, Skarrgan Hellkite as a powerful flying beater and possible source of removal, and God-Eternal Rhonas to pump all our smaller aggressive creatures for extreme damage when he enters the battlefield. Ravager Wurm gives us a lot of flexibility, dealing with Castles or just being a piece of interaction for our opponent's board, and End-Raze Forerunners tends to win the game if it hits the board with a few creatures to buff. I've already mentioned the power of Embercleave before, but I really can't stress enough just how great this card becomes in this deck. As a final bit of excessive decadence, almost like a rich chocolate dessert, the deck runs Drakuseth, Maw of Flames. Is it necessary? Absolutely not. Do we run it just because we can give it haste? You betcha. Does it feel good? It feels pretty terrific, if you ask me.

Lands:

The deck runs a pretty simple mana base, with 9 forests and 7 mountains. We run all dual lands available to us, as well as both Fabled Passage and Evolving Wilds on top of our Command Tower as sources of both red and green. The deck also runs one Castle Embereth to pump up our creatures on big swing turns and one Castle Garenbrig as yet another source of generating more mana than we should. We run green 'utility' land Gingerbread Cabin because it's pretty consistently untapped with 9 other forests, giving us more food to feed to both our Gilded Goose and Wicked Wolf.

The deck is really satisfying, and even though it has a planeswalker commander, it feels like a real Gruul deck through and through. If you want something a little more consistent thatn the Nikya deck I built quite a while ago, do check this one out.