Commander Deck Tech: Tovolar, Dire Overlord
Well another month, another set! The Innistrad Midnight Hunt prereleases are this weekend and the set looks fantastic! To me it looks like it has all the mechanics from Innistrad and some higher power level cards. This set will make a big splash in Standard, which is exactly what it needs. However, I'm really excited for some new commander themes. I think both the Coven Counters and Undead Unleashed preconstructed Commander decks look great! I did not want to make an article on either as I'm sure there'll be plenty of upgrade and modification articles to make them better. I wanted to build a pure beatdown deck. One of the Legendary Creatures in the set that got my attention was Tolovar, Dire Overlord. I just love pups and a tribal Wolf / Werewolf themed deck seemed like fun. The deck utilizes 16 cards from Innistrad Midnight Hunt so it shouldn't be too hard to throw something similar together after opening a box or two.
We are making a converted mana cost efficient Creature deck with mainly higher side power / toughness for the mana. The Wolves have a ton of midrange Creatures between three and five casting cost. We want to get in at least one 2 drop before playing Tolovar. This is so we can utilize the first turn to draw a card from the other Creature not getting blocked. The deck will rely heavily on this type of card advantage, so try and plan out when you cast Tolovar. Even if Tolovar dies during the next turn, as long as we efficiently use other Creatures to draw one or two cards it will be hard to get behind. What is really nice about the Wolves is that we have several that will have Menace, Unblockable, Trample, First Strike, or the ability to Fight. This will allow more Wolves to get in combat damage to draw cards from Tolovar.
One area that may need to be slightly modified after test play is the ability to protect your Creatures and or Tolovar. This is reluctantly one deck that I opted not to include Heroic Intervention. I really wanted to stick to the Wolf / Werewolf theme and flavor. I used some cards that benefited the tribal theme of the deck vs. high end playability. After some test play I plan to change anywhere between 10 to 20 cards to make the deck more efficient and resilient. This deck isn't foolproof because most of the cards are not even out yet, but this list can be used as a template to build your own Tolovar deck.
The new Wolves / Werewolves I decided to use in the deck are: Outland Liberator, Hound Tamer, Reckless Stormseeker, Tolovar's Huntmaster, Primal Adversary, Bounding Wolf, Harvesttide Infiltrator, and Kessig Naturalist.
The card I am most excited to play with is Unnatural Growth. The ability is insane as it triggers during your combat, and everyone else's combats as well. It makes your attacks twice as big, and your blockers twice as big. I love the artwork of the card and the theme and flavor fit Innistrad very well. I also wanted to play with Storm the Festival, but it did not make the final list mainly due to casting cost and the ability to draw extra cards off of Tolovar.
The deck is fairly simple, play Wolves and attack. We have several Creatures in the deck that give your Wolves +1/+1 or some kind of ability, and some that even stack. This will make your 3 converted mana cost 3/3's easily 4/4's or 5/5's. The deck should be really efficient with how much mana you pay to get a lot of power on the board. We also have several wolf Creatures with Flash so you can even play this deck defensively if need be. It is also nice to have a Flash Creature up when you know a wrath effect or Cyclonic Rift is coming.
Overall this should be fun to play for many of us. It will bring back some nostalgia from the Innistrad and Shadows Over Innistrad blocks. I hope you are able to take some of this away and build your own Tolovar deck. If you have any suggestions on cards that were not included in this build please post a reply below.
Stay safe and have fun at your Innistrad Midnight Hunt prereleases this weekend!
