my Devotion to Ghalta is Formidable (EDH / Commander) [Revision 72]

The basics of this deck

Ghalta is a massive dinosaur, and we need to feed him. A few themes came together when I was building this deck, and it resulted in two things: Power Matters via Ferocious and Formidable triggers (Surrak, the Hunt Caller or Whisperer of the Wilds as examples, as well as all the Rhonas gods we have around) and Devotion. (Nyx Lotus, Karametra's Acolyte)

So in jamming all this stuff together, we get to play hilariously green cards like Gigantosaurus and Khalni Hydra - these are two awesome examples that keep power up for cheap Ghaltas and high devotion for Primalcrux, who is the only instance of a chroma effect in this deck. This dedication to green mana also means we won't be playing any big Eldrazi.

So it plays very straight forward. Try to get enough mana together through ramp and mana dorks and summon Timmy, and then capitalize on it with a huge draw effect like Return of the Wildspeaker or Traverse the Outlands. And in a pinch, put that Colossification on our Elvish Piper for the Overwhelming Stampede...

This deck usually kills someone on the table, as Ghalta bites really damn hard and preys on whomever is falling behind or simply can't handle such massive creatures. If the whole table wants to, though, we are mono-green and they can easily stop us from winning. We can also become pawns pretty easily, if someone wants to let us go haywire on other opponents and then clear us out once we've feasted. Be sure to tell any opponents who try to reason with you and curry favor by responding that they are attempting diplomacy with a dinosaur.

My spin on it and how it's different than what I see:

The devotion and power matters angle! You can slam much more powerful cards into this deck like Defense of the Heart or Concordant Crossroads or City of Solitude or Hall of Gemstone. I have a thing called shame though, so I feel bad proxying those. I'm more casual than competitive. No Triumph of the Hordes here, that would make for easy mega big boy trample poison wins.

As of 7/16/22, I went nuts with Greater Good and was within range to deck myself. I added four cards to help with maximum card size: thought vessel, reliquary tower, decanter of endless water, and praetor's counsel.

I honestly didn't look at other people's Ghalta decks, this is my first deck that I ever built totally from scratch on my own. You have to start somewhere.

Spicy Fun:

Man they made Unnatural Growth? Thanks for making our big stuff even bigger. There isn't too much secret spice in this deck, it wins by massive beatdowns - usually our big creatures targets someone, and Ghalta targets another for commander damage. Be sure to Berserk an opponent at a cool time for a critical hit and removal in one. One cute thing I did when I updated this deck and wrote the description was replacing Wilt with Seal of Primordium. It helps our devotion stuff out! No real combos and pretty clear synergies ahead, captain.

I will say that Drop of Honey is a super weird / cool card from ye olden days. It would seem like it's perfect for the deck because all our stuff is huge, but we do still have a few weak mana dorks, and it's only one per turn - enough of my meta has wimpy tokens sitting around that it isn't a powerful enough effect. That's why we replace Ghalta's tongue with a Fireshrieker and trample through them.

Bellowing Tanglewurm was a cool one to find.

Majestic Genesis is a new card that will surely put your board state in a threatening position.

Concerns:

There's no Heroic Intervention, don't ask my why, put it in your deck though. As of 7/16/22 I replaced cultivate and kodama's reach with thought vessel and decanter of endless water to help hold on to our big card draw while retaining some kind of mana help, I don't know if that's the stupidest thing of all time to do or not. We never needed mana fixing, they very well could have been a 2 mana ramp spell and had the same effect - if this deck ever gets to take advantage of its huge card draw or power, it never seems to care whether or not we hit a ramp spell on time.

Sidequests:

Cast Colossification on another player's commander and have them take someone out.

Cast Exponential Growth on one of our standard tramplers and oneshot someone from at least 30 health.

Berserk an opponent's creature so it kills another player.

Hardcast the worldspine wurm and kill someone with it. (Sidequest completed, date not recorded, Kevin was very pissed off)

Why 102 cards?

Because dragon shield sleeves often come with 102 sleeves, and I won't tell my friends I have two extra cards if you don't. This lets us play Colossification and Exponential Growth.