Agatha of the Vile Cauldron Commander Deck Guide

Last updated on February 13, 2024

Agatha of the Vile Cauldron | Illustration by Jason A. Engle

New sets herald a deluge of new legendary creatures, but it’s always fun to see what they do with characters that played a role in the set’s lore. Agatha of the Vile Cauldron is an early villain taking after the wicked witch in Hansel and Gretel stories, the cackling cannibal dooming travelers lured into her abode.

While the heroes made quick work of her, Agatha is an intriguing commander who can pose a significant threat to your LGS. Interacting with activated abilities is always interesting design space, especially within the Gruul color identity, a color pair often defined by its quality creatures.

The Deck

Agatha's Soul Cauldron | Illustration by Jason A. Engle

This is a casual creature-based deck and not intended for competitive Commander. We don’t have any explosive combos or stax pieces to shut down our opponents. We want to curve out with creatures with activated abilities that get cheaper with Agatha’s passive ability.

Since Agatha rewards us for making them larger, we have a +1/+1 counter theme in the deck. Counters are our primary means of making Agatha massive and netting a fantastic discount. They also help to make the rest of our team large enough to really benefit from Agatha’s activated ability giving them trample.

In true Gruul fashion, the deck comes together with a couple of powerful, expensive creatures that don’t just synergize with our commander but can swing games themselves. A little ramp helps us get to these beaters well ahead of schedule.

The Commander

Agatha of the Vile Cauldron is this deck's crowning jewel, so we heavily built around it. We can function without Agatha in play, but it makes things clunky. We rely on the effect to cheapen expensive abilities, like those on Captivating Crew or Orthion, Hero of Lavabrink, to extract tons of cheap value from creatures with abilities that wouldn’t be spammable without the discount. In this sense, Agatha’s primary role in the deck is to function as a mana accelerant – just for activated abilities rather than casting spells.

They also fulfill the role of a finisher. Agatha doesn’t get buffed by its own activated ability, but the cost can be reduced. for an Overrun is pretty fair, and we can often activate it several more times. This deck floods the board with small creatures and piles them high with +1/+1 counters. It’s the perfect deck to leverage a repeated buff like this.

Agatha’s a powerful commander because it helps bridge our mid and late-game. We’ll play and buff them early to spam our activated abilities, then use them to close the game. That’s a lot of versatility for a 2-mana commander!

+1/+1 Counter Synergies

The cards that spread +1/+1 counters are important, both at bulking up our cheap creatures for finishers and extracting the most impact from Agatha’s discount.

Rhythm of the Wild doubles as counter synergy and anti-counterspell tech. It’s also effective at giving some of our bigger creatures haste.

Forgotten Ancient thrives in a multiplayer format. Assuming this survives the turn cycle, you’ll almost always have three or four counters to redistribute in your upkeep.

Fight Rigging lets our creatures punch above their weight while netting us a free spell. It’s important to note that the 7-power creature that casts your spell doesn’t need to be the same creature getting the +1/+1 counter.

Silkguard and Snakeskin Veil are primarily here as defensive pieces, but their counters can provide lethal in a pinch.

Court of Garenbrig is a new monarch card. A 3-mana monarch enchantment gives you a chance to take the crown before anybody can pressure you, and the counter distribution and doubling gives us tons of board presence to go alongside the card draw.

Tribute to the World Tree has a very color-intensive cost, but it’s one of our best ways to get counters on our small creatures. Even if this enchantment isn’t giving away counters, it’s drawing us cards.

Drillworks Mole can only put counters on Agatha, but paying 1 mana to add two counters every turn is a fine rate when we want our commander to get swole.

Biophagus is an immensely powerful mana dork that gives us acceleration and a power boost.

Ozolith, the Shattered Spire is the only card in the deck that stacks our counters higher, but it distributes them as well. It also has cycling in case we draw it too late to be useful.

Agatha's Soul Cauldron has been making waves as a powerhouse in Modern, and it’s a flavorful fit here. We’re not running any sneaky combos, but this offers a ton of versatility, lets us use the abilities of dead creatures, and provides some incidental graveyard hate for an incredibly low investment.

Arwen, Weaver of Hope distributes plenty of free counters and scales well with the other cards here; the more counters they have, the bigger our creatures get. Halana and Alena, Partners benefits similarly from getting counters stack on it.

Activated Abilities

Now that we’ve established how we’ll buff Agatha to reduce the costs of our creatures, let's look at the creatures we’re making cheaper.

Captivating Crew is a fantastic way to win the game once its ability costs 1 or 2 mana instead of 4. Getting to repurpose our opponent’s blockers as our attackers makes it hard for our opponents to mount a defense against our board.

Soulbright Flamekin is another card that ramps us with its discounted ability, turning 3 mana into a whopping (). We’ll often pour this into other activated abilities, but it can also just let us play Etali, Primal Conqueror, or Cityscape Leveler ridiculously early.

Frontier Guide is our last ramp piece with a spammable Rampant Growth stapled to it. It’s a tap ability so you can only activate once per turn, but it’s also a great way to utilize a spare mana or 2.

Duskwatch Recruiter turns our spare mana into more creatures instead of more mana sources, and it can cast spells at a discount should it ever flip into Krallenhorde Howler.

Bhaal's Invoker and Flamewave Invoker give us the reach we need to close out a game with a flurry of damage. Even though we won’t always get Agatha large enough for these abilities to cost 1-3 mana, they distribute a ton of damage when you get them cheap enough. Wildheart Invoker provides similar pressure in combat.

Rhonas the Indomitable can provide “ramp.” Once Agatha’s at 2 power, every 1 mana you use on Rhonas’s ability discounts your next ability by 2 if you target Agatha. Aside from that, +2/+0 and trample basically gives this deck a spammable Shock once we’re in combat.

Orthion, Hero of Lavabrink provides fantastic value by copying some of our biggest creatures. An army of Quartzwood Crasher unleashes a menagerie of tokens, and five Cityscape Levelers is practically your personal Rumbling on the table.

Soul of New Phyrexia gives us some cheap protection so our opponents can’t sweep our board away.

Walking Ballista might be the strongest card to benefit from Agatha’s cost reduction. Once we’re paying to add counters, we have a machine gun that takes players out of the game and controls the board. It’s so important that we’re basically only playing Imperial Recruiter to have access to a second copy.

Card Advantage

Gruul isn’t known for card draw, but keeping your hand full of cards is important when you’re trying to pressure your opponents. You don’t want to be the aggressor and then flood out, messing up your advantage. This deck focuses on draw engines that draw cards slowly over the course of the game.

Sylvan Library is a classic that reminds you your life total is a resource to get spent often and aggressively. I almost always pay 8 life the first time, then let the game dictate how many cards I draw after.

Valakut Exploration lets us draw extra cards if we make land drops. It’s pretty good as an anti-flood tool since every extra land sees an additional card, and it’s only bad if we’re drawing nothing but spells. The incidental damage adds up.

Guardian Project makes all our creatures cantrip. It’s got great card draw potential in a 34-creature deck.

Escape to the Wilds and Rishkar's Expertise both draw a large burst of cards to refuel towards the end of a long game. We’ll often have large cards for Expertise thanks to the counters, and we have a decently low curve to capitalize on Escape’s temporary card draw.

The Mana Base

We’re a Gruul deck playing big creatures and looking to activate a ton of abilities, so we have plenty of ramp to support that game plan. We have the staples – 2-mana artifacts, Sol Ring, and so on, with cards specific to our deck.

Incubation Druid plays incredibly well with various ways to add counters to our creatures and benefits from Agatha’s cost reduction.

Goblin Anarchomancer is a highly underrated cost reducer that often generates multiple mana a turn with its cost reduction.

As far as value lands, we have quite a few. First and foremost, a few modal double-faced cards from Zendikar Rising give us a couple of spells that double as lands when necessary. We also have Bushwhack. I’m considering this a tapped land that sometimes functions as a removal spell.

Oran-Rief, the Vastwood, Forge of Heroes, and Llanowar Reborn use our lands to get counters on our creatures. Llanowar Reborn is especially useful to let us play Agatha as a 2/2 on turn two.

Boseiju, Who Endures and Bonders' Enclave add a bit of interaction and card draw, respectively, to our mana base that’s practically impossible to interact with as activated abilities.

Beyond that, we have a healthy combination of basic lands and duals to help fix our mana.

The Strategy

GRUUL SMASH. That is all.

Well, there are a few other angles. When picking your opening hand, ramp is one of the most important things you can find. Between the big creatures and the desire to activate abilities multiple times in a turn, this deck hungers for mana. Ways to grow our creatures, especially Agatha, are also important.

Speaking of Agatha, they’re often best sandbagged for a few turns instead of casting them on turn two as a 1/1. I like holding Agatha until I can buff them or immediately activate an ability with their discount, preferably both. This keeps them out of range for cards like Orcish Bowmasters and ensures you get some value before somebody at the table tries to remove your commander.

The early turns of the game should be spent on ramp, with the mid game’s goal activating as many abilities as you can. This deck extracts its value from activating abilities rather than casting spells; things like using Captivating Crew to pressure planeswalkers, Frontier Guide to build a mana advantage, or Duskwatch Recruiter for card advantage. While we’re doing this, our value engines like Halana and Alena, Partners and Guardian Project should help to bulk our creatures and keep our hand full.

Once we’ve found some of the creatures we need to end the game, we have a finisher in the command zone thanks to Agatha’s last ability. Overrun might be old, but it’s still a perfectly fine finisher for green decks, and Agatha often adds more power. Should Agatha fail to fulfill their duties, Overwhelming Stampede and Nissa, Ascended Animist can fill in to finish things off.

Combos and Interactions

Since I built this as a casual list, we’re not running infinite loops. There are a couple of powerful interactions to look out for.

Magus of the Candelabra turns Agatha’s discount into a potent ramp piece but works exceptionally well with some of our value lands, most notably Oran-Rief, the Vastwood or other lands that tap to distribute counters, and Gruul Turf.

We can’t go infinite with Walking Ballista, but it’s a fantastic card. If we get ahold of Agatha's Soul Cauldron, we can kill the Ballista (or cast it through effects like Fight Rigging), then exile it to turn all our creatures into machine guns.

Orthion, Hero of Lavabrink has plenty of strong targets to copy in the deck, but Etali, Primal Conqueror is the best by a mile. We don’t keep the copies because of the legend rule, but we’ll still get five ETB triggers to cast 20 spells. Even just copying it once is insane value.

Invigorate and Berserk let us win the game from nowhere. With so many pump effects, Berserk can one-shot a player from nowhere and function as removal for opposing attacking creatures. Both spells help give Agatha a huge power boost for little mana, so our Invokers shine alongside these spells.

Rule 0 Violations Check

This deck passes most Rule 0 conversations. We don’t have infinite combos and play a fair game plan centered around combat. While the goal of the deck is generally to produce a massive mana advantage, it does so through ramp and Agatha without fast mana, excluding the omnipresent Sol Ring. This is a casual deck that you can bring to most tables.

Budget Options

The mana base can comfortably shift around to keep your Commander budget low. Boseiju, Who Endures and the MDFCs are the most expensive lands that can become color-appropriate basics. Any expensive duals can get replaced with basics or tapped duals like Gruul Guildgate.

Walking Ballista is powerful with Agatha and our counter theme. Triskelion can fulfill the machine-gun role and works with Cauldron.

Agatha's Soul Cauldron has a high price tag to match its impact on Modern. Another way to spread counters such as Loyal Guardian is a fine replacement.

Sylvan Library and Guardian Project offer steady card draw, but Outpost Siege and Vance's Blasting Cannons make fine replacements for consistent impulse draws.

Berserk offers a huge bump in power and flexibility, but Aspect of Hydra can do it in a pinch.

Heroic Intervention protects our creatures, but Wrap in Vigor can fill a similar role.

Other Builds

One other build path you could take Agatha of the Vile Cauldron is a more combo-oriented EDH deck. Many of these cards, such as Walking Ballista and Bhaal's Invoker, work well with infinite mana. A free-cost reducer can create all sorts of combos.

You could also lean really hard into the flavor of Agatha. She’s the witch waiting in the gingerbread cabin to eat the children; a sacrifice subtheme could suit this commander well for flavor and a unique take on Gruul. Discounting creatures like Ardoz, Cobbler of War can feed the deck a stream of tokens to sacrifice to cards like Phyrexian Altar or Ashnod's Altar.

Commander Conclusion

Wildheart Invoker | Illustration by Erica Yang

Building with new commanders is a treat we get with every new set. Wilds of Eldraine has brought a collection of powerful legends that offer interesting build-around potential. Agatha of the Vile Cauldron embodies a classic fairy tale archetype with an exciting ability.

2-mana commanders that offer a mana advantage are always worth looking at, especially when that mana advantage isn’t limited to tapping them once a turn. Which commander from Wilds of Eldraine do you want to build? Do you think Agatha provides an interesting take on Gruul? Let me know in the comments or on the Draftsim Discord!

Stay safe, and keep cooking.