Commander is Magic: the Gathering’s most popular format today, and with access to virtually all cards in the game’s 30+ year history, you can either make a deck really expensive (and uber powerful), or actually spend very little and still make a highly competent and synergized deck.

Today’s deck tech features The Gitrog, Ravenous Tide, a new entrant to the Commander scene, having appeared in 2024’s Outlaws of Thunder Junction. It features the new Saddle mechanic, also introduced in the set, where another Creature can ‘ride’ or ‘mount’ on top of Gitrog for added benefit. A saddled Gitrog that deals combat damage to a player will yield enormous benefit, but also at a cost.

First, you have to Sacrifice a creature that saddled Gitrog. You then get to draw X cards and put X Lands on the Battlefield, where X is the sacrificed creature’s power. Sacrifice a Lovestruck Beast (with power 5) and you’ll get to draw 5 cards and put up to 5 Lands into play. That’s some good value!

To make Gitrog even more effective, it has Trample and Haste that will make it a lot easier to deal combat damage to a player. This Gitrog budget deck is not only relatively cheap, it’s explosive in value thanks to the wild, monster frog horror. Here’s how we built the deck:

Full Deck List (Moxfield)

Colors: black, green | Cost: $166 (TCGplayer) | Power Level: Low / Mid / High / Competitive

Why Did We Pick The Gitrog, Ravenous Tide?

Gitrog is well known among Commander players. The original The Gitrog Monster is often used as a stax Commander. What Gitrog has always been good at is creating value for its controller, and the new The Gitrog, Ravenous Tide follows the tradition well.

More importantly, we picked this version of Gitrog because it features the new Saddle mechanic. On its own, Saddle is pretty lackluster. It is similar to a Vehicle except that Saddle is found only on Creatures and can be only be activated as a Sorcery. Nevertheless, this Gitrog is one of the more powerful creatures with Saddle and with the support of many Landfall focused cards, we figured this deck can hold its own in a mid-tier matchup.

The Gameplan: Saddle Up & Get Lands In

The first priority is to get a saddled The Gitrog, Ravenous Tide to connect with the opponent. Ideally, you’ll want at least a 4-Power Creature to saddle (and subsequently sacrificed) so that you’ll net 4 cards and maybe add 1-2 more Lands onto the playing field. Thankfully in green, you have plenty of high-powered, lost-casting-cost creatures that this deck is filled with. Grim Wanderer, Hunted Bonebrute, Lovestruck Beast and Shakedown Heavy are just a few options that you can cast on turn 3.

On turn 5 (or earlier), when there is a viable target player to hit, that’s when you cast Gitrog, saddle it, and unleash it to an opponent. Once you have triggered Gitrog’s ability, that should put you slightly ahead of the pack. The challenge then becomes to keep Gitrog alive and hit for the 2nd, 3rd and 4th time.

With black and green color cards at your disposal, dealing with threats should be easy. The deck comes with an effective assortment of cheap removal spells such as Doom Blade, Shoot the Sheriff and the recently reprinted (again) Assassin’s Trophy. This list doesn’t come with a catch-all board wipe. Your only option is Golgari Charm to deal with pesky 1/1 token swarms.

Ways to Win

The deck comes with a nice assortment of big creatures, firstly to be sacrifice fodder for Gitrog, but otherwise as very useful beaters in combat. Elder Gargaroth, Yargle and Multani and Ghalta, Primal Hunger are huge threats on their own. Make sure to use Rancor and Garruk’s Uprising as Trample enablers.

The other way to win (with a lot more potency) is to use Landfall triggers to generate incredible value to overwhelm the opponent. There’s [b]Ob Nixilis, the Fallen[/c] that drains a player for 3 life for each land that enters the battlefield. Then there’s Rampaging Baloth and Avenger of Zendikar either making 4/4 beasts or adding +1/+1 counters to plants. Since getting land into play should be easy, there’s also no problem making Crash of Rhino Beetles a 15/15 monster with Trample.

There are a few alternative ways to win too. Torment of Hailfire can end the game if you pay for a high X (not a problem when you have so many lands and Mana available). There’s the Enchantment Retreat to Hagra that pings each opponent for 1 life whenever a land enters, and lastly use Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord to directly make each opponent lose life by sacrificing one of your beefier creatures.

Weaknesses & How to Make Do

Being a creature-heavy deck, there is always that vulnerability to board wipes. There’s only one ‘protection’ spell against that (Heroic Intervention). To compensate, the deck does utilize some of black’s reanimation capabilities. For one-time spells, there’s the classic Reanimate and the increasingly popular Victimize. Diregraf Rebirth serves as a two-for-one thanks to its Flashback ability. Once you have Mana, do cast Virtue of Persistence which can bring back any of your big threats each turn.

Many Commander deck rely on their Commander being alive and healthy, but here it is especially true. Saddle isn’t a strong mechanic by far, so if you’re unable to trigger The Gitrog, Ravenous Tide‘s ability at least once, the deck becomes slow, clunky, and very… ordinary. Try to cast Gitrog only when there is a low chance of interaction from the opponents, or try to have escape tricks such as Not Dead After All and Undying Malice ready in hand to save Gitrog.

Advice from Real Game Experience

With plenty of high-power creatures and ramp spells, it’s not that difficult to saddle Gitrog at least once. When you chain a couple of hits together, you’ll find the value train running at full steam. The challenge then would be how to kill off all your opponents, as everyone will have their sights on you. With The Gitrog, Ravenous Tide, it might be wiser to chip off at players’ defenses while keeping Gitrog in the Command Zone. When the game crosses its halfway point (players have 20 life remaining, for example), unleashing Gitrog at that moment could help you emerge victorious.

Even though you’ll be drawing plenty of cards with Gitrog’s ability, remember not to overcommit too many creatures to the battlefield. A single mass-destruction spell is enough to cripple this deck, hence you need to save cards in your hand in order to rebuild. Even so, if you like offbeat builds while packing a punch, this Gitrog deck might be for you. Mount up and take it for a spin!