How to build Cleveland Booker, Empath

Every land that enters with Cleveland Booker on the battlefield makes a 2/2 Worm that is not allowed to block, so this list gives an army with no defence a job on every turn, including the turns its newest Worms are too fresh to attack.

None of the Worms block, so the defence comes from the other tokens

The restriction is on the token, not on Booker. Each Worm says it can't block, and a copy of one says so too, so nothing in the deck can talk a Worm into standing in front of an attacker. Twenty Worms on the battlefield are twenty attackers and not a single point of defence.

That is the fact the rest of the build hangs on. A go-wide deck usually gets its defence free from the same tokens it attacks with, and the table thinks twice about swinging into a wall of 2/2s. Here the wall is not a wall. If Worms were the only tokens you made, every opponent could attack you every turn at no risk, and holding the Worms back would not help, because at home they do nothing at all.

So six of the other token makers in the list are partly there as blockers. Avenger of Zendikar puts a 0/1 Plant onto the battlefield for every land you control and grows all of them on each landfall after that. Rampaging Baloths leaves a 4/4 Beast per land, Omnath, Locus of Rage a 5/5 Elemental, Scute Swarm an Insect or a copy of itself, and Field of the Dead a 2/2 Zombie once seven of your lands have different names. Esika's Chariot brings two 2/2 Cats. Every one of those tokens blocks, and that settles how the deck is played: the Worms go to combat every turn and the Plants, Beasts and Elementals stay home.

Goblin Bombardment covers what is left over. A Worm you are not going to attack with is a point of damage to any target at instant speed, so a creature swinging at you can be killed by the army that is not allowed to block it.

Crack the fetch land at the end of the turn before yours

A Worm is summoning sick when it arrives, like any other creature. Made on your own turn with no haste around, it waits until your next turn to attack. Made on somebody else's turn, it has been under your control since your turn began by the time you get there, and it attacks at once.

Fifteen cards in the core list can put a land onto the battlefield when it is not your turn. Nine of them are fetch lands, and every fetch land is two Worms: one when it enters, one when the land it finds enters. Myriad Landscape and Blighted Woodland each find two basics, so with the land itself each one is three. Thawing Glaciers finds a basic at instant speed, returns to your hand at the end of that turn and comes back down on yours as another trigger. Sakura-Tribe Elder and Harrow do it as a sacrifice and as an instant, and Burgeoning puts a land from your hand onto the battlefield every time an opponent plays one.

The habit to build is holding the fetch lands and cracking them in the end step of the player who sits before you. The lands they find are untapped for your turn and the Worms they made are ready to attack. Crack the same fetch land during your own main phase and it makes the same two Worms, and both of them sit out the attack.

Four cards give the tokens haste, and Rhythm of the Wild is not one of them

The other half of the timing problem is every Worm you make on your own turn, which is most of them, because that is when you play lands. Hit It!, Fires of Yavimaya and Hammer of Purphoros give every creature you control haste for as long as they stay on the battlefield. Ogre Battledriver hands it out one arrival at a time and adds +2/+0, so a Worm made with the Ogre out attacks as a 4/2 on the turn it appears.

Rhythm of the Wild looks like a fifth and is not. Its riot only goes to nontoken creatures, so it does nothing for a Worm or for any other token in this list. It is the first card most people reach for in a red and green haste deck, and in this one it is a blank.

Hit It! is the best of the four for a reason beyond the haste. When it enters it looks at the top five cards of your library, puts a land from among them onto the battlefield, which is a Worm on the turn you cast it, and puts the other four into your graveyard. Lands binned that way are not lost. Ramunap Excavator and Ancient Greenwarden both let you play lands from your graveyard, and with either of them out a cracked fetch land in the graveyard is a land drop again too.

Moraug, Fury of Akoum is why haste matters more than once a turn. While he is on the battlefield, every land that enters during one of your main phases adds a combat after that phase and untaps all your creatures at the start of it. Play a land and attack, play another in the main phase after combat, and attack again with everything, including the Worm the second land just made, provided one of the haste cards is down.

A Worm too new to attack can still crew, station and convoke

Summoning sickness is narrower than it feels. It stops a creature attacking and stops it using one of its own abilities that has the tap symbol in its cost. It does not stop a different card tapping that creature to pay a cost of its own. Crew, station and convoke all work that way, so a Worm that arrived this turn can pay for any of them.

Esika's Chariot crews for 4, which is two fresh Worms, and every time it attacks it makes a copy of a token you control. Copy a Beast or an Elemental rather than a Worm, because the copy of a Worm keeps the line that says it can't block. U.S.S. Discovery, at Black Alert becomes a 5/5 flier at six charge counters, which is three Worms tapped to station it, and it discovers 5 when it enters and again every time it attacks. Starship Enterprise needs sixteen counters, but it puts four on itself whenever a land enters, so four lands get it there without tapping anything, and each time it connects you draw that many cards.

Convoke uses the Worms' colours as well as their bodies. Each one is red and green, so it can pay a coloured pip on either side. Chord of Calling at instant speed, Stoke the Flames for 4 damage and Ancient Imperiosaur, which enters with two +1/+1 counters for each creature that convoked it, all get cheaper on a turn you made a pile of Worms. Seven Worms paying for the whole of the Imperiosaur is a 20/20 with trample and ward. Natural Order asks you to sacrifice a green creature, and a Worm is one.

Cryptolith Rite is the card this rule keeps out. It gives each of your creatures a tap ability that adds a mana, and because that ability belongs to the creature, a Worm that arrived this turn cannot use it.

Eight mana for +2/+0 is a kill once seven Worms are attacking

The second ability is easy to skip because it costs eight. Read it per attacker instead. Each activation gives every creature you control +2/+0, so with seven Worms in the attack it is fourteen extra damage, and nothing on the card stops you activating it again. Do it after blockers have been declared. The table decides what to block while the Worms are still 2/2s and the damage arrives afterwards.

Thirty-eight lands make eight mana a mid-game number in this list rather than a late one. Castle Garenbrig speeds it up a little more. Its six green can only be spent on creature spells and abilities of creatures, and the pump is an ability of a creature, so the castle turns five of your lands into six mana for it.

The rest of the top end works the same arithmetic in other places. Shared Animosity gives each attacking Worm +1/+0 for every other attacking Worm, so six of them attack as six 7/2s. Beastmaster Ascension needs seven attacks to fill and then gives everything you control +5/+5. Craterhoof Behemoth counts every creature you control, Worm or otherwise, and both it and End-Raze Forerunners have haste, so they join the attack they pump. Return of the Wildspeaker gives every non-Human +3/+3 at instant speed, and a Worm is not a Human.

Three cards turn each land into damage before anything attacks

Combat is one way to spend a Worm and entering the battlefield is another. Impact Tremors deals 1 damage to each opponent whenever a creature enters under your control, and Purphoros, God of the Forge deals 2. Captain Michael Burnham, from Star Trek itself, skips the creature and deals 1 to each opponent whenever a land enters, then takes a +1/+1 counter the second time that happens in a turn.

Put all three out and count a single fetch land. Two lands enter, so two Worms enter. That is 3 damage per Worm from the enchantment and the god and 1 per land from Burnham, which comes to 8 to each opponent and 24 around the table before anybody attacks. Ancient Greenwarden makes every landfall trigger twice, which doubles all of it, and Parallel Lives doubles the Worms while leaving Burnham's share as it was.

This is also the answer to a table that has walled itself up against 2/2s. None of that damage cares what is standing on the other side.

Janeway turns every Worm into a look for the next land

Captain Kathryn Janeway gives you an extra land drop each turn, and then makes every creature that enters under your control explore. A Worm is a creature entering. So each one reveals the top card of your library: a land goes into your hand, and anything else puts a +1/+1 counter on the Worm, with the option to bin the card.

The first result is the engine. A land played with Janeway out makes a Worm, the Worm explores, and if it turns up a land you can play that one with her extra drop, which makes another Worm that explores in turn. It stops when you run out of land drops, since she adds one a turn rather than infinitely many, but it means the second land drop is one you rarely needed to draw. The second result is a 3/3 that still can't block.

Captain Pike, Fullness of Time and Courser of Kruphix come at the same problem from the top of the library. Both let you play lands from there, so a land on top is a land drop that cost no card from your hand, and Pike's power and toughness are the number of differently named lands you control. Twenty-four of the thirty-eight lands are nonbasics with names of their own, which is also what Field of the Dead counts.

Answer Booker and the lands keep paying

He is a 2/2 for four with no protection of his own, and he will be answered. The list is built so that losing him costs the Worms and not the deck. Twelve other cards in it carry landfall, from Lotus Cobra's mana and Tireless Tracker's Clues to Avenger of Zendikar's Plants and Starship Enterprise's counters, and Field of the Dead triggers on lands too. A turn without Booker still turns its land into something.

Swiftfoot Boots is the only card here that protects him alone, and it is in the list because the second cast costs six. Heroic Intervention covers the other way to lose: a sweeper is the one answer that clears a board of Worms in one go, and Intervention makes everything you control indestructible in response.

The core list

All hundred cards, each priced at its cheapest paper printing. Hovering a name shows that printing, so the card you see is the card the price belongs to.

Load into the deck builder Copy decklist

“Load into the deck builder” opens this list in your account, ready to edit or save. “Copy decklist” gives you plain text for Moxfield, Archidekt or Arena, with no account needed.

The hybrid cost is easy and the double green three drops are not

Each of Booker's hybrid pips takes either colour, so any land in this list that makes red or green pays for both of them, and he is the easiest four-mana card in the deck to cast on time.

The strain is somewhere else. On the play, at 90 per cent, two pips of one colour by turn three want 36 sources of that colour, and the list has 29 green and 30 red. Courser of Kruphix and Captain Pike are the three-mana cards that want two green, and on those numbers each is castable on turn three in about four games out of five. Hammer of Purphoros has the same problem in red. All three are fine a turn late, and none of them is the card you have to cast on curve.

Bracket 2 keeps all nine fetch lands, and pays for the saving in time

The budget rung costs at least $184 against at least $516 for the core list, and most of the saving is in the land base. Five of the fetch lands, Prismatic Vista, Thawing Glaciers and Field of the Dead come out, and what goes in still fetches. Mountain Valley, Grasslands and Rocky Tar Pit are the old Mirage fetch lands, which enter tapped and then sacrifice for a Forest or a Mountain that comes in untapped. Escape Tunnel, Terminal Moraine and Warped Landscape each find a basic that enters tapped, and Field of Ruin trades itself for a basic while destroying one of an opponent's nonbasic lands, though every player gets a basic out of it.

So the rung still runs nine fetch lands, the same number as the core list, and every one of them is still two Worms. What changes is when. The three Mirage lands cannot be cracked on the turn they come down, Terminal Moraine and Warped Landscape charge two mana to crack, and only Escape Tunnel is as quick as the lands it replaces, although its basic arrives tapped. A tapped basic costs a Worm nothing and costs your mana a turn. The Worms are the same and the end-step timing from earlier gets harder to set up.

The spells are where this rung really gives ground. Parallel Lives becomes Second Harvest, which copies every token you control once rather than doubling every token you make for the rest of the game. Purphoros becomes Witty Roastmaster, which deals 1 a creature instead of 2. Burgeoning and Exploration become Explore and Wayward Swordtooth, and Sylvan Library becomes Harmonize. Natural Order becomes Splendid Reclamation, which puts every land in your graveyard back onto the battlefield at once and so makes a Worm for each of them. Half a dozen cracked fetch lands in the graveyard is half a dozen Worms off one spell. Field of the Dead and Natural Order were the core list's two Game Changers, so this rung has none, and nothing in it holds the deck above bracket 2.

Bracket 4 makes a Worm worth four damage and spends the new ones on the pump

The bracket 4 rung costs at least $1,049 and buys three things. The first is damage. Ojer Axonil, Deepest Might raises any noncombat damage a red source of yours would deal to an opponent up to his power, which is 4. Impact Tremors, Purphoros, Goblin Bombardment and Hellrider's attack trigger all deal less than that, so with him out every Worm that enters is 8 damage to each opponent off the two enchantments alone, and every attacking creature is 4 more from Hellrider to the player it attacks. Terror of the Peaks adds damage equal to each new creature's power, 2 for a Worm, to any target you like.

The second is mana for the pump, paid for by the Worms that cannot attack yet. Earthcraft taps a creature to untap a basic land, and tapping a creature for Earthcraft's cost is not that creature's own ability, so a Worm made this turn can do it. Each Worm too new to attack becomes a mana toward the eight for the Worms that can. Jeska's Will adds a red for each card in an opponent's hand and exiles three cards for you to play.

The third is more lands entering. Doubling Season doubles the Worms and the counters on Avenger's Plants. Scapeshift sacrifices as many lands as you like and fetches as many again, which is that many Worms off one sorcery. Crucible of Worlds lets you replay a fetch land from the graveyard every turn, Crop Rotation is a land at instant speed for one mana, and Green Sun's Zenith and Worldly Tutor find whichever creature the turn calls for. To make room it cuts two of the Star Trek cards, two of the pump cards, two narrow removal spells, the Boots, Tireless Provisioner, Chord of Calling and a slow fetch land. Five Game Changers put the floor at 4.

What it leaves out on purpose is Gaea's Cradle. A land that taps for a green mana per creature is the best land this deck could play, and it sells for more than all ten of this rung's additions put together, so it is the one upgrade not on the list.

FAQ

Can the Worm tokens from Cleveland Booker ever block?

No. The line saying it can't block is printed on the token itself, so nothing you do to Booker changes it, and a copy of a Worm carries the same line. The other tokens in this list are different. The Plants, Beasts, Elementals, Insects, Zombies and Cats all block normally, which is a large part of why they are in it.

Does Rhythm of the Wild give Cleveland Booker's Worms haste?

No. Rhythm of the Wild gives riot to nontoken creatures only, so a Worm never gets the choice. Hit It!, Fires of Yavimaya, Hammer of Purphoros and Ogre Battledriver all work on tokens, and those four are how this list gives its tokens haste.

What bracket is this Cleveland Booker deck?

Bracket 3. It runs two Game Changers, Field of the Dead and Natural Order, and bracket 3 allows up to three. Treat the 3 as a floor. No Star Trek card is on the Game Changers list yet, and that list changes when the brackets are updated rather than when a set comes out.

Can you activate Cleveland Booker's eight-mana ability more than once a turn?

Yes. Nothing on the card limits it, and each activation gives every creature you control another +2/+0 until end of turn. Activate it after blockers are declared, so your opponents decide their blocks against 2/2 Worms and take the damage from bigger ones.

How much does this Cleveland Booker, Empath deck cost?

At least $516 for the core list, taking the cheapest paper printing of every card. The budget rung is at least $184 and the bracket 4 rung at least $1,049. All three are floors until Star Trek releases, because Booker and eight other cards in the list have no price yet.

When is Cleveland Booker, Empath legal in Commander?

From 13 November 2026, the day Star Trek is released. A legality check run before that date marks him as unreleased, and the other eight Star Trek cards in this list join the format on the same day.

What colors is Cleveland Booker, Empath?

Red and green. Both coloured pips in his cost are hybrid, so he can be cast with red mana, green mana or one of each, but his colour identity holds both colours, so the deck around him can play any red or green card.