Hello and welcome to Commander Bites!

Today we are going to be taking a look at Wildsear, Scouring Maw!

Wildsear is a five mana 6/6 with trample and enchantment spells you cast from your hand have cascade.

Game Plan

The idea for Wildsear is very simple, play big enchantments so that we can get our smaller enchantments into play. Luckily for our opponents the cascade trigger is only for enchantments that we cast from our hand, but we do have ways to gain some decent card draw as well as solid utility enchantments on board.

There are a couple of concerns regarding the deck, ideally with how often we can trigger Wildsear’s effect, but there are plenty of ways we can get the deck doing what it wants.

Support

The first thing we need are as many cheap enchantments that ramp us as possible.

For example cards like Wild Growth which let’s the enchanted land add an additional green mana when it is tapped for mana, Utopia Sprawl which has the Forest it enchants add additional mana of a color that we choose when it is tapped, and Fertile Growth which have the enchanted land tap to add an additional one mana of any color are going to be at a premium for our deck.

These cheap enchantments help us get the mana we need to cast Wildsear as soon as possible, but also help fuel cards like Sanctum Weaver, which can add X mana of any one color where X is the number of enchantments we control, and getting these cheap enchantments out really helps get that X bigger, faster.

What’s more, Sanctum Weaver is also an enchantment that can trigger Wildsear, just like Destiny Spinner who would also be very helpful to have because they make it so that creature and enchantment spells we control can’t be countered and can make a land into an X/X Elemental creature with trample and haste where X is the number of enchantments we control.

We also have access to Enchantress’s Presence which draw us a card whenever we cast an enchantment spell, and since cascade counts as casting the spell, if we hit an enchantment then we get an additional card to draw.

It works better for us if we have an Eidolon of Blossoms as well because when it or another enchantment we control enters we draw a card, which can lead to massive amount of card draw if I’m doing the math correctly.

As far as what other enchantments to include, we should have a variety of big mana enchantments that can cascade into medium enchantments which can potentially cascade into smaller enchantments.

One of the big mana ones that can work surprisingly well for us is Sapling Nursery, which has a Landfall ability to make 3/4 Treefolk creature tokens with reach and can give Treefolk and Forests we control indestructible, but the main thing we are looking at is the fact that it has affinity for Forests, which is great because it is an eight mana spell normally and can cast for much cheaper but still count as eight mana for the cascade trigger.

Rain of Riches can keep the cascade train going by entering with two Treasure tokens and the first spell we cast each turn that mana from a Treasure was used to cast it has cascade, or Berserkers’ Onslaught to have attacking creature we control have double strike which pairs really well with Unnatural Growth which doubles the power and toughness of each creature we control at the beginning of each combat.

We can even focus on smaller enchantments that buff up Wildsear like Ancestral Mask which gives the enchanted creature +2/+2 for each other enchantment on the battlefield, or Snake Umbra to give the enchanted creature +1/+1 and let’s us draw a card when the enchanted creature deals damage to an opponent, or Alpha Authority which gives the creature hexproof and makes it so that creature can’t be blocked by more than one creature.

Setbacks

We are focusing a lot of our eggs in the enchantment basket, which means that if someone plays a card that destroys all of our enchantments and we don’t have some way to protect them, we are not going to be doing well.

What’s more, while cascade is a fun mechanic, it is also a random mechanic that makes it difficult to predict which card we are going to cast from the cascade. if we hit an enchantment then that’s all well and good, but if we hit a protection spell that we don’t need at the moment, then we kind of just wasted it.

With us not knowing what will turn up from the cascade, it can be pretty difficult to determine how strong of a position you are in until the cascade resolves, which can dramatically swing the game in either direction, which I know some people don’t enjoy.

We also have to be mindful of the mana value of the spells in our deck, because once Wildsear is in play if we cast a one mana enchantment from our hand and we don’t have a zero mana spell, then all we did was pay one man to shuffle our library.

While it makes sense for balancing reasons for Wildsear to only trigger when we cast an enchantment from our hand, it does make it a bit more difficult to use cards that provide impulse draw or also happen to work well in a cascade type of deck because we don’t get to trigger Wildsear as often.

Bracket Rating: High 2, Low 3

It’s kind of hard for me to definitively put Wildsear in a higher bracket, primarily because of the random element that cascade brings to the table.

Those sort of effects tend to not be ideal unless you have a way to trigger them multiple times for a low mana investment, but Wildsear does have a lot of solid enchantments that work well with their playstyle and can do solidly if the cascades work well.

Which tells me that the deck works best in lower brackets, but has the potential of a higher bracket if built optimally.

Thank you for reading, see you all tomorrow!

Peace,

From, J.M. Casual