Tolsimir Likes his Doggies

Today we take a good hard look at yet another woefully underrepresented tribe in MTGA: wolves. There are 12 cards that make or are wolves in Standard, and most of them are barely playable. If we look at Historic we get two more, and neither of them really seem to push the 'archetype' any forward. But we are going to try anyways, because Tolsimir likes his friends, and Selesnya needs a bit more love.

Today we ask what happens when we take a decent Selesnya midrange list and replace a lot of the win conditions with WOLVES! That's right, wolves. There's not many of them, but we are playing a few, and we're going to see how much we can squeeze out of our commander here.

Wolves:

Awooo, wolves! We run most of them, from the bad to the mediocre to the surprisingly good. Arlinn's Wolf and Ferocious Pup aren't much to wrote home about, but they're wolves! Fierce Witchstalker is subpar, but it works nicely with our other 4 drops of Wicked Wolf and Nightpack Ambusher. We run Arlinn, Voice of the Pack to make our wolves bigger and scarier, and Howling Giant is a funny addition as a way to try to bring the game to a close. We run wolves, folks! That's it. That's kinda the deck.

Ramp:

Wolves are so lucky to be in green, because we get to run all of the above cards! We have a bunch of the early mana dorks to get these wolves down as early as possible, and Arcane Signet and Selesnya Locket to provide us even more mana, and even some card draw later. The rest is the normal ramp package, and I decided to give Woodland Mystic a shot at being in more decks.

Tokens:

A very small subtheme of this deck is token-making, as it is surprising just how many wolves either make tokens or are tokens. We also have some puny humans and soldiers to befriend them and carry us along the way. Dawn of Hope is a powerful card that synergizes with our commander to get us cards, as well as making us tokens. Emmara, Soul of the Accord lets us get aggressive early and make a bunch of lifelinkers along the way. Lovestruck Beast and Ironroot Warlord are just very powerful 3 drops that happen to make tokens along the way, so that makes them kinda like a wolf... And finally Trostani Discordant is an amazing card that I love with all my heart for screwing with blue control magic and just being a powerful board stabilizer.

Good Midrange Threats:

We run a little bit extra oomph with our green to carry these wolves a bit. Questing Beast is kinda like a wolf, Vivien, Arkbow Ranger is a friend of the animals and makes our wolves embiggne, and God-Eternal Rhonas is an excellent card when you are playing a lot of high power creatures as your win condition. Finally, we have Ajani, the Greathearted to give all those wolves a big cat hug and put to bed the whole cats vs. dogs things with love and friendship.

Extra Value:

We gotta make sure we don't fully stall out, and we run a few card draw and extra value spells to help us stay in it. Flower // Flourish can be used to find us lands early on or to create a big swinging opportunity late in the game. Vivien's Arkbow lets us grab a creature from the top of our deck and shoot it onto the battlefield, even at instant speed, helping with flood. We run Guardian Project to get cards every time we have creatures come into play, and Return of the Wildspeaker and The Great Henge to get a payoff from running quite a few creatures with power 4 or greater.

Stopping the opponent:

Selesnya doesn't have much in terms of denial, but they still have plenty of annoyance potential. Knight of Autumn can ruin the fun of someone playing a sweet artifact or enchantment, Prison Realm and Conclave Tribunal can deal with our opponent's threats on the board, and Realm-Cloaked Giant is an emergency board clear in case we get overwhelmed by Goblins or the like. Voracious Hydra can be a curve filler or a piece of removal if necessary, and Steelbane Hydra can be a threat to any fancy artifact or enchantment on the board. All in all, the deck is a bit of a midrange mess, but it's trying its best.

Lands:

The deck runs 9 forests and 4 plains, a Castle Ardenvale and a Castle Garenbrig. We don't run many special lands other than Blast Zone and Mobilized District, as I don't know where wolves would be allowed to roam freely. We run these two even though they probably should be nowhere need a blast zone or populous city district. But who am I to say what they can or cannot do?