How to build Gargantos, the Endbringer

His counters double on your upkeep and the damage he deals reaches everybody, so every slot in this list is spent on landing one hit rather than on fighting through three boards.

The damage that ends the game is not combat damage

The trigger reads that whenever Gargantos deals combat damage to an opponent, he deals that much damage to each other opponent. Only the first half of that sentence is combat damage. The rest is damage from a triggered ability, and two things follow from the difference.

Blocking does nothing about it. An opponent can keep every creature they own at home and still take the full number, because they were never the one being attacked. The usual defence against a huge creature, which is to put something in front of it, only ever protects the player who chooses to.

The twenty one damage rule does not reach it either. Commander damage counts combat damage from a commander and nothing else, so the player you swing at builds a tally and the other two never do, however much the trigger deals them.

What does stop the whole thing is anything that prevents the combat damage in the first place. A fog does it, and so does any block he cannot trample over, because then the damage goes to the blocker instead of a player and the trigger never happens. Deathtouch kills whatever blocked him, and still nobody at the table takes a point. The deck therefore rests on one question per turn, which is whether he connects with somebody. Not with everybody. Somebody.

You attack whoever has the fewest blockers

Every other enormous creature in the format picks its target by threat. This one picks by who is easiest to walk past.

Say one opponent has an empty board, one has a wall of tokens, and one is a turn from winning. You attack the empty board. The damage reaches the other two at full value regardless, so the only thing the choice of defender changes is whether the hit lands. Swinging at the player who can actually block is the single line that can fail, and threat assessment is exactly what would talk you into it.

The other side of it is that nobody at the table is ever safe, and that changes how the game moves around you. A deck that threatens one opponent can trade promises with the other two. This one puts everybody on the same clock from the first connection, so the removal arrives early and from every direction at once. That is why ten of the ninety nine are protection rather than more counters.

Three, six, twelve, twenty four, and the pod is gone on the third connection

He enters with three counters. Your next upkeep doubles them to six, the one after to twelve, and the one after that to twenty four. Cast him on turn four and the swings are six on turn five, twelve on turn six and twenty four on turn seven.

Add those up from an opponent's chair rather than your own. Six, then eighteen, then forty two. Three opponents who each started on forty are all dead on the third connection, and each took the same three numbers, because the trigger does not divide the damage between them. One hit a turn for three turns is the entire kill, and it is why this deck needs no combo.

A single doubler removes a turn from that. Branching Evolution is a replacement effect on counters being put on a creature, and entering with three counters is counters being put on, so he arrives as a 6/6 instead of a 3/3. The first upkeep then takes him to 18 and the second to 54, which is a swing of eighteen followed by a swing of fifty four. Two connections, and the second one is academic.

Corpsejack Menace is the same effect on a body for one more mana. Hardened Scales and Ozolith, the Shattered Spire add one counter to every placement instead of doubling it, and that includes the three he enters with. Hardened Scales costs a single mana, so it is usually down first, and then he arrives as a 4/4 and runs four, nine, nineteen, thirty nine instead of three, six, twelve, twenty four. Kalonian Hydra doubles again when it attacks, on top of whatever the upkeep already did.

Nothing on this card wants haste

A commander who grows this fast reads like he wants to attack the moment he lands. He does not, and the reason is the timing of his own ability. The doubling happens at the beginning of your upkeep, which is before combat on the turn after he arrives, so by the time you could sensibly attack he is already a 6/6 with no help from anything. Haste buys a 3/3 attack on turn four and nothing else.

That frees the slots a deck like this would normally spend on speed. They went to protection and to trample, which are the two things that decide whether the turn five connection happens at all.

There is one case where losing him hurts in a way no amount of speed repairs. Answered at 24 counters, the recast hands you three again and the ladder restarts from the bottom. The Ozolith is the card that addresses it. It catches counters from any creature that leaves the battlefield, a commander heading to the command zone is a creature leaving the battlefield, and so those 24 counters wait on the artifact and move onto him at the beginning of your next combat.

Deathtouch makes a chump block cost exactly one damage

Deathtouch is the quietest line on the card, yet the attack plan leans on it harder than on anything else printed there, because of how it combines with trample. An attacker with trample only has to assign lethal damage to each blocker before the remainder goes to the player, and deathtouch makes one point of damage lethal to anything.

So a 24/24 with both, blocked by a 1/1 token, deals one to the token and twenty three to the player. Blocked by three tokens, three and twenty one. No chump block meaningfully taxes him, which is a different proposition from a plain 24/24 trampler, where a 7/7 in the way eats seven.

Trample comes from Garruk's Uprising, Primal Rage, Tuskguard Captain, Kodama of the West Tree and Shadowspear. Five sources of one keyword looks excessive until you remember that a turn without a connection is a turn the doubling spent for nothing. Rogue's Passage, Trailblazer's Boots and Key to the City cover the case where trample is not enough, and Shizo, Death's Storehouse grants fear, which asks the defender for a black creature or an artifact one.

Whispersilk Cloak looks like the best card in that group and is the worst. Shroud stops you targeting him as well as stopping them, which switches off every protection spell in the list and stops The Ozolith handing his counters back.

He is a 0/0, which flips which removal you fear

His printed stats are zero and zero. Every point of power and toughness he has is a counter, and that inverts the usual reading of two whole classes of card.

Sweepers that subtract from toughness barely touch him. Toxic Deluge for three off a 24/24 leaves a 21/21 that keeps attacking, and the bigger he gets the less it does. A card normally played as insurance sits in this list as an attacking tool, which the next section is about.

The cards that genuinely kill him remove counters instead of reducing stats. Vampire Hexmage sacrifices itself to take every counter off a permanent and Hex Parasite does it for whatever you care to pay, and either one leaves a 0/0 that dies on its own with no removal spell involved. Neither is widely played, which is why the protection here is cheap and at instant speed rather than broad. Snakeskin Veil is the pick of them, because it answers a targeted spell and leaves behind a counter that your next upkeep will double.

The sweeper in this list is there to clear blockers, not to save you

Toxic Deluge is the only mass removal in the ninety nine, and it belongs to the attack plan rather than to the defence.

Pay three life for it on a turn he is a 12/12 and every token, every mana creature and most real creatures on the board die, while he drops to a 9/9 and swings anyway. That is the cleanest answer available to the deck's one hard requirement, which is a single unblocked connection per turn.

Black Sun's Zenith reads like the same card and is the one black sweeper this deck must not play. It works by putting -1/-1 counters on everything, and a -1/-1 counter cancels a +1/+1 counter one for one as a rule of the game. Four of them off a 24/24 leaves a permanent 20/20 rather than a temporary one, so the next upkeep doubles twenty instead of twenty four and every upkeep after that is poorer for it. The difference between the two cards is a line of templating, and it decides whether the sweeper is yours or theirs.

Not one card in this list asks for two black mana

The mana base looks lopsided and it is correct. Gargantos wants one black pip and one green pip, which is the lightest colour requirement a two colour commander can carry, so nothing about casting him strains the lands.

Every double pip in the ninety nine is green, and there are five: Beast Whisperer, Eternal Witness, Kalonian Hydra, Momentous Fall and The Great Henge. Black never asks for two of anything. So the base is built green first and reads thirty three green sources against twenty seven black, across thirty eight lands with ten Forests to seven Swamps.

Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth earns a mention for what it does to that count. It makes every land on the battlefield a Forest in addition to whatever it already was, which turns all seven of those Swamps into green sources. It does the same for your opponents, which is a genuine cost in a pod with another green deck in it, and in a list this green it is still clearly worth the slot.

The Great Henge needs a note of its own, because the curve reports it at mana value nine and nobody playing this deck will ever pay that. Its cost drops by the greatest power among your creatures and the coloured half cannot be reduced, so a 6/6 on the board makes it three mana and anything with seven power or more makes it two. A card that is unplayable in most lists is close to automatic in this one.

A floor of bracket 1 on a deck that ends games on turn seven

The core list runs no Game Changers, no mass land denial, no extra turns and no nonland tutors, so nothing in it sets a bracket floor, which leaves the lowest bracket it can honestly claim at 1. That is a floor and not a description. Nothing in the list forces the number upward, which is a fact about the cards rather than about the deck, and a three turn kill is not a bracket 1 experience by any reading of the table.

Build it as a bracket 3 deck and say so when you sit down. The honest sentence is that it holds nothing off any restricted list and still wins on turn seven, which is the kind of deck the bracket system describes worst.

The number can also move without you touching a card. A commander with this shape is a plausible future addition to the Game Changers list, and that list is redrawn on its own cycle rather than alongside the sets it judges. If he joins it, this floor becomes 3 overnight.

The core list

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The expensive rung buys one connection instead of three

Two rungs come off the core list, and neither touches the four things the deck cannot work without: the commander, a way to connect, a way to protect him, and something that multiplies counters. Everything else is negotiable in one direction or the other.

The budget rung is fifteen swaps and it takes the list from at least $590 to at least $156. What leaves is the expensive half of the mana base and the dearest card in each role. What stays is the engine. Branching Evolution, Corpsejack Menace, Hardened Scales, Ozolith, the Shattered Spire, Innkeeper's Talent and Kalonian Hydra all survive, so the counters still compound at the same rate and the kill still takes the same number of turns. Doubling Season is the one multiplier that goes, and Solidarity of Heroes replaces it with a single use version for two mana.

What the cheap list actually gives up is margin. The Ozolith leaves, so a removal spell on a big Gargantos costs you the whole ladder rather than none of it. Heroic Intervention leaves, so a wrath becomes a real risk instead of a bluff. Urborg, Boseiju, Takenuma, Shizo, Verdant Catacombs and Yavimaya leave, which costs the deck its utility lands and some of its fixing. It still does the thing, on the same clock, with less room for a turn to go wrong. Its card draw even rises on the way, from ten to twelve.

The bracket 4 rung is ten swaps and it changes the kill rather than the deck. Triumph of the Hordes is the card that does it. On a turn he is a 12/12 it makes him a 13/13 with infect, and infect applies to the trigger as well as to the swing, so one connection puts thirteen poison counters on the player he hit and thirteen on each of the others. Ten is lethal. The three turn clock becomes a one turn clock, and it does it without adding a combo or changing a single other thing about how the deck plays.

The rest of that rung is speed and selection. Ancient Tomb, Mana Vault and Chrome Mox make a turn three Gargantos real, which matters more than any individual card, because the whole ladder shifts a turn earlier with it. Demonic Tutor and Vampiric Tutor find whichever half of the plan the opening hand is missing. Those five are the Game Changers that set the floor at 4. Rishkar's Expertise is there for the card draw, and drawing cards equal to the greatest power you control reads rather differently when that number is twenty four.

It is worth being plain about what that rung is not. At a minimum of $1,158 it plays nothing banned, runs no infinite combo, and remains a creature deck that a well timed removal spell beats. What the money buys is the turn the kill lands on, not a different plan.

FAQ

Is Gargantos, the Endbringer legal in Commander?

He is legal in Commander from 9 April 2027, the day Darkhold Destiny Commander ships. Legality is recorded on each card instead of on the product it comes in, so a deck checker fed this list before that date refuses the commander and passes all ninety nine other cards, every one of which is already in print. That refusal is about the calendar and says nothing about the list.

How does Gargantos, the Endbringer deal damage to the whole table?

His last ability reads that whenever he deals combat damage to an opponent, he deals that much damage to each other opponent. Only the first half of that is combat damage. The second half is damage from a triggered ability, so it is never assigned through blockers and holding creatures back does nothing about it. Connect with any one player for twelve and the other two take twelve as well, whatever their board looks like.

How fast does this Gargantos deck kill?

He enters with three counters and doubles them on each of your upkeeps, so he is a three, then a six, then a twelve, then a twenty four. Cast on turn four he swings for six on turn five, twelve on turn six and twenty four on turn seven, and because the trigger does not split the damage every opponent takes all three numbers. Forty two against a starting forty means the pod dies on the third connection. One counter doubler cuts that to two.

How much does this Gargantos deck cost?

The core list comes to at least $590, the budget rung to at least $156 and the bracket 4 rung to at least $1,158. Read all three as minimums, because an unreleased commander has no market price and so each total covers 99 of the 100 cards. Unusually for a page written this early, none of the other 99 comes from the new set either, so no preorder price is propping these figures up.

Does the damage Gargantos spreads count as commander damage?

No. The twenty one damage rule counts combat damage dealt by a commander and nothing else, so only the opponent he actually attacks builds a tally. The others lose the same amount of life without accruing a single point of commander damage. It rarely decides anything either way, because the attacked player crosses twenty one on the same swing that everyone else runs out of life.

What colors is Gargantos, the Endbringer?

Black and green, which is the Golgari pair. He asks for a single black pip and a single green pip at four mana, which is the lightest colour requirement a two colour commander can carry, so casting him is never what strains the lands. This list is built green first at thirty three green sources against twenty seven black, because every double pip it runs is a green one.

Do +1/+1 counter doublers work with Gargantos, the Endbringer?

Yes, and on both of his counter clauses. A replacement effect such as Branching Evolution applies whenever counters would be put on a creature, and entering with three counters and doubling them at upkeep are both counters being put on. So he arrives as a 6/6 rather than a 3/3, the first upkeep takes him to 18 and the second to 54. The card that looks like it belongs and does not is Black Sun's Zenith, because a -1/-1 counter cancels a +1/+1 counter one for one and would strip his stats permanently.