Baru, Wurmspeaker Commander Deck Guide

Last updated on March 22, 2024

Baru, Wurmspeaker | Illustration by Andrew Mar

Wurms have captivated Magic players for years. Since the turn of the century, wurm creatures had solidified their place as the top end of green’s mana curve in intro decks and sealed events, and soon after found themselves buried away inside the draft chaff box. Traditionally vanilla creatures with a bad mana-to-power/toughness ratio, wurms could never really take off as their own supported creature type.

But no longer! Baru, Wurmspeaker gives wurm creatures exactly what they’ve always needed; a little extra power, and trample. Let’s dig around in the dirt and uproot some weird wurms for a fully wurm typal deck!

The Deck

Defiler of Vigor | Illustration by Chase Stone

This Baru, Wurmspeaker deck is, you guessed it, entirely focused on playing wurm creatures.  Baru’s +2/+2 and trample anthem is just the boost that most wurms needed. This makes many underpowered wurms, like Vastwood Gorger, suddenly a fair price for their actual stats.

Baru doesn’t necessarily make it any easier to cast those wurms, so there’s a strong subtheme of ramping into those 6- and 7-cost creatures.

Finally, even if we run out of wurms, we can use Baru, Wurmspeaker’s activated ability for some cheap bonus wurms when we’re running low on creatures.

The Commander

Baru, Wurmspeaker is our 4-mana wurmlord commander. Baru’s +2/+2 and trample anthem is great value for its mana cost, especially considering the 3/3 body it comes on. However, our great typal anthem in our command zone is offset by the typically expensive mana costs of most wurms. Using Baru’s activated ability in the same turn that you cast a wurm is important to maintaining a board state.

Wurms

The classic wurm creature is a big body with a big mana cost, and just about nothing else. Vastwood Gorger, Craw Wurm, and Quilled Slagwurm are three big creatures here to beat face and reduce the activation cost of Baru’s ability.

While those three suddenly become playable with Baru’s buff, there are a few other comparatively basic wurms that fit in this category. Soul Swallower isn’t great on its own, and we aren’t counting on hitting that delirium requisite anytime soon, but it’s a fair 5/5 trampler to play alongside Baru.

Argothian Wurm is a mixed bag when it comes to this deck.

Typically, players won’t sacrifice the land to remove it. This is a huge mistake. Sticking the Argothian Wurm brings Baru’s ability into cheap activation range, netting you 8 power on the field from our creature spell, and another 6 from the token Baru creates. Be careful how you play this against another green deck; it’s entirely possible a landfall deck can drop enough lands per turn to sacrifice one each time and lock your draw into Argothian Wurm.

Bellowing Tanglewurm is probably the only wurm-type creature with a lord effect, and it’s a great one. Intimidate across the board means you’re probably swinging that 20 power of wurms uncontested around the board.

Utility Wurms

Our second category of wurms includes those with a bit more utility in addition to being huge scary monsters. Dominaria United’s Defiler cycle peaked with Defiler of Vigor. Our deck loves this card, being entirely green and almost entirely permanents. There’s basically no instance where you see Defiler of Vigor and don’t cast it as soon as possible. At the very least, you’re getting a 6/6 for 5 mana. At the very best, you’re getting an 8/8 with trample for 5 mana, another wurm from your hand with your newfound pseudo-Phyrexian mana, and a +1/+1 counter across the board, plus another wurm off of Baru, Wurmspeaker if you can swing it.

In addition, we’re running Grothama, All-Devouring. Despite being a 10-power wurm, we shouldn’t expect Grothoma to actually connect with an opponent. Instead, we’ll carefully use our combat phase to declare just enough attackers on our 12/10 buffed Grothoma to refill our hand. Trading our sticky wurms with Grothoma for draws is the best way to generate advantage on the field.

Sticky Wurms

All these huge wurms draw a lot of removal, so there are more than a few wurms that are either hard to remove, or replace themselves. Penumbra Wurm and Pelakka Wurm both compensate you for their loss in one way or another, while Plated Slagwurm has an un-keyworded hexproof effect to keep it safe. Tunneler Wurm’s regeneration is a little costly in a deck without many ways to recur cards from the grave, but sometimes the mere threat of regeneration is enough to stall your opponents.

The cycle of “phantom” cards in Judgment works off of losing +1/+1 counters instead of dying, so Phantom Wurm works out pretty well for us so long as we can keep counters coming. Best served alongside Defiler of Vigor and Emergent Woodwurm.

Worldspine Wurm, Wurmcoil Engine, and Impervious Greatwurm do this the best, though. Each is a huge threat in its own right that’ll either stick its power to the board when it’s hit with the inevitable Infernal Grasp, or just straight-up shake off all but the most expensive removal.

In the case of Worldspine Wurm and Wurmcoil Engine, you’ll actually end up with more power on the board once those creatures die and are replaced by their multiple tokens. Baru, Wurmspeaker’s anthem will suddenly be affecting two to three times as many wurms, netting an additional 4-6 power on the field.

Bigger Wurms

Finally, let’s talk about the game-ending wurms. We’ve covered the two biggest wurms in the deck already, Worldspine Wurm and Impervious Greatwurm, but we’ve many more big threats that can win games if left unanswered.

Emergent Woodwurm’s release alongside Baru, Wurmspeaker in the Dominaria United Commander decks was a match made in heaven. Using Emergent Woodwurm as backup for any of our already buffed wurms results in a deep delve into the top of your library with basically nothing out of reach for a free cast. Stick Emergent Woodwurm to the field and soon we’ll have more wurms than we know what to do with.

Helminthologists

A small club of wurm-enthusiast creatures rounds out our Baru, Wurmspeaker deck. Most of these creatures are mana dorks or cost reducers to help us actually play our expensive wurms, while a couple fulfill some utility roles we can’t use wurms for.

The one I want to draw attention to, and probably the most useful non-wurm creature is Scryb Ranger. This 2-drop faerie is here to squeeze an extra activation out of Baru each turn. Remember that you can activate its ability on your opponents’ turns as well. If you’ve got the mana to spare and aren’t concerned about falling behind on subsequent turns, then I encourage you to go nuts. Don’t be afraid to use Scryb Ranger to untap your Llanowar Tribe or Karametra's Acolyte, either.

The Dirt (The Mana Base)

Mono-color decks traditionally have the easiest mana base to build. Where this deck struggles is consistently hitting the 7+ mana it needs to start dropping multiple wurms per turn.

We’re sitting at 34 lands; entirely Forests except for one The Hunter Maze and one Mosswort Bridge.

Early ramp comes from our four mana dorks: Llanowar Elves, Fyndhorn Elves, Llanowar Tribe, and probably the absolute best dork in a mono-green deck, Karametra's Acolyte.

Three more mana rocks make an appearance here: the obligatory Sol Ring and Arcane Signet, plus Moss Diamond for good measure.

Caged Sun is really the best way we’ll be able to deal with our substantial mana costs. Its asymmetrical effect makes it better than Gauntlet of Power in a deck that hits 6 mana at about the same speed it hits 5 mana.

The Strategy

There’s no denying that this is a Timmy deck. Most Baru, Wurmspeaker decks will work similarly to any other mono-green creature deck.

We’ll be looking for an opening hand with at least one piece of ramp in it. This could be Fertile Ground, Rampant Growth, or any of our mana dorks. Try to keep some cheaper 4- or 5-mana wurms as well – there’s no point in rushing Baru out if there’s nothing for it to buff. We’re mainly looking for Soul Swallower, Grothama, All-Devouring, and Defiler of Vigor.

If we can’t find a hand with the right wurms, the next best thing is keeping our wurm-enhancers like Icon of Ancestry or our Lithoform Engine to synergize with Baru, Wurmspeaker once we run it out. Side note: This deck routinely makes enough mana to use the Lithoform Engines third ability to liberally copy those wurm spells.

Early game we’re looking to ramp, ramp, and ramp again. We want to hit 6 mana by turn 4, if possible, and we want one or two wurms on the field without summoning sickness before playing Baru. Play Baru too early and it’ll just die to removal. The same goes for the other wurms with anthems, like Bellowing Tanglewurm.

By turns 5 or 6, we’ll hopefully have played a few big, dumb wurms that our opponents haven’t been interested in destroying. Keep an eye out for your Avoid Fate or Wrap in Vigor if you suspect removal.

Turn 7 onward should be all about combat. You’re doing everything in your power to connect with an opponent each turn with one of your huge wurms, and then using Baru, Wurmspeaker’s ability to refresh your field with wurms. We’ll keep our hand full and pressure on with Shared Summons, Icon of Ancestry and Monster Manual. This is where a surprise Bellowing Tanglewurm shines – suddenly a board with just two or three wurms on the field is a huge threat.

Combos and Interactions

This Baru, Wurmspeaker deck is about as classic Magic as you can get with a Commander from 2022. There are no infinite combos, no juicy rules interactions; just straight-up combat damage from a bunch of big creatures. This deck sings to the Timmy in us all.

Rule 0 Violations Check

Listen, if you describe your goofy wurm deck to someone during your Wizards of the Coast-obligated pregame Rule 0 chat, and they say they think that sounds unfun to play against, I don’t know what to tell you. I can’t think of a more pleasant deck to play against, personally.

Budget Options

Wurms are not a traditionally expensive creature type to build around. In fact, the total cost for this deck is only about $84 – that’s a steal for any Commander deck! However, there are a few cards we could replace to bring that total even lower.

The most expensive card in the deck is Wurmcoil Engine, sitting around $10 for the cheapest printing. Wurmcoil Engine is a great card packed full of value, and sees play in a lot of formats. But it’s sort of just another wurm in our Baru deck. Almost any other wurm creature with a lot of power will do. I suggest Symbiotic Wurm, Elfhame Wurm, or Gravetiller Wurm.

The other card we can swap out is Monster Manual . At just under $10, this card can easily be swapped for Quicksilver Amulet, which has seen a substantial drop in price in the past few years.

Other Builds

Baru, Wurmspeaker is clearly designed as the pinnacle of wurm typal commanders, but it's not the only choice. Baru limits us to just the green wurms, which omits some of my favorites. If we run Mayael the Anima as our commander, we can dig for a free wurm creature each turn and we’ve got access to the great Armada Wurm. Alternatively, Trostani, Selesnya's Voice will gain a lot of life off of those big-butted wurms you’ll be dropping.

Commanding Conclusion

Roaring Slagwurm | Illustration by David Martin

Whenever WotC gives us a leader for a less popular creature type, an angel gets its wings. Or a wurm gets its teeth, in this case. Building out a typal deck using sub-optimal cards is one of the most rewarding experiences in Commander and really lets you zero in on some cards that don’t often see the light of day.

What are your favorite wurms in Magic? Are there any other offbeat creature types you’d like to see support for in the future? And has anyone ever tried to build a Baru, Fist of Krosa deck that actually does anything? Let me know in the comments, or over on Draftsim’s TwXtter.

Thanks for reading! Have fun slithering around in the mud!