The Pride of Hull Clade Commander Deck Guide

Last updated on March 19, 2024

The Pride of Hull Clade | Illustration by Ivan Shavrin

Creature-based decks in Magic typically care about the power of the creatures they play to kill their opponents quicker. But some legendary creatures such as Arcades, the Strategist prioritize running defenders with high toughness because they can convert those big butts into combat power. But it might be time for that Elder Dragon to move aside.

There’s a new Commander in town that turns defenders into an aggressive force and still delivers tons of card draw: The Pride of Hull Clade. Today, I’m focusing on the toughness of our creatures to draw the most cards possible. Come with me to navigate the trove of walls, plants, and other creatures in this defender arsenal to discover more about this unique Commander.

Let’s build a fortress!

The Deck

Bedrock Tortoise | Illustration by Maxime Minard

This Simic deck focuses on creatures with defender so that you have various targets for The Pride of Hull Clade’s ability. Flooding the board with creatures also helps us land our commander as quickly as we can and even impacts the commander tax. As long as you have enough toughness to cover the extra , you can recast The Pride of Hull Clade for like you did the first time!. 

The Commander: The Pride of Hull Clade

The Pride of Hull Clade combines an aggro tactic of utilizing your creatures withhigh toughness during combat with a grindy card draw trigger that benefits you in the mid to late game. We aren’t talking about drawing just one card from Opt or two cards from a Consecrated Sphinx trigger. This deck can draw over 10 cards if you deal combat damage with the right creature after activating The Pride of Hull Clade’s ability. Let’s find out how!

Creatures With Beefy Toughness

Besides The Pride of Hull Clade, the creatures with the beefiest toughness are Charix, the Raging Isle and Tree of Redemption. Now, Charix, the Raging Isle isn’t a defender, but you still have to activate The Pride of Hull Clade’s ability before landing combat damage with it if you want to draw cards.

You can attack with this beefy crab and change its power based on the number of Islands you control, letting it deal combat damage and allowing you to control how many cards you draw from Hull Clade's damage trigger. Say that you have three Islands in play. This turns Charix into a 3/14 after activating its ability. Landing combat damage with it will draw you 14 cards thanks to The Pride of Hull Clade’s ability.

Card Draw

The Pride of Hull Clade provides plenty of card draw if you connect with high-toughness defenders. Attacking with the commander alone can net you 15 cards.

Rhystic Study has been included for the reasons we all know. Rhystic Study’s card draw is situational since your opponents can pay to deny you card draw—but they need to pay it every time they cast a spell. This enchantment usually draws cards earlier in the game, when your opponents haven’t developed a board and don’t have the mana to pay your tax.

Body of Knowledge acts as a dual-purpose card: You get card draw and ditch the maximum hand size. This creature’s power and toughness gets out of control fast since you draw cards if your opponents block it during combat or deal damage to it via other means like board wipes.

No Maximum Hand Size Cards

In this deck list, we have four no maximum hand size cards: Body of Knowledge, Wizard Class, Triskaidekaphile, and Reliquary Tower.

Body of Knowledge may become a kill-on-sight target depending on how many cards you have in your hand. Protect it with a totem armor auras like Bear Umbra, Crab Umbra, and Treefolk Umbra.

Wizard Class provides you with no maximum hand size even after you’ve reached the final level. As you build up more cards in your hand, creatures like Body of Knowledge and Psychosis Crawler can become your most powerful threats since their power and toughness equal the number of cards in your hand.

Winning with Triskaidekaphile takes time and careful planning to get your hand size to exactly 13 cards on your upkeep. While the cost on the activated ability is rather steep, utilizing the deck’s other ways to draw cards gets you on track to potentially claiming victory with Triskaidekaphile.

Reliquary Tower is one of the main utility lands in the deck that’s not only part of your mana base, but also an infinite hand size resource so you don’t discard all the cards you're drawing with your commander.

Self-Mill Alternate Win Condition

Drawing so many cards with The Pride of Hull Clade’s activated ability opens the door to achieving a self-mill alternate win condition.

Coral Colony and Doorkeeper both have activated abilities that can mill a player a number of cards equal to the number of defenders you control. Including our commander, the deck has 18 creatures with defender. Targeting yourself with these activated abilities alongside The Pride of Hull Clade’s card draw expedites your alternative win conditions.

Tutors

This deck has several tutors to help find your win conditions quicker and more consistently. For example, Drift of Phantasms can get transmuted into Laboratory Maniac.

Tolaria West can find one of your no maximum hand size cards to begin your card draw engine. You can transmute Tolaria West to search your library for Spellbook or Reliquary Tower and draw cards to your heart’s content!

Creature Support

Tetsuko Umezawa, Fugitive is a great addition to a mainly defender creature deck since many of them have 0 or 1 power. It’s a great way to sneak defenders through blockers after activating The Pride of Hull Clade’s ability.

Rather than paying 4 mana to activate The Pride of Hull Clade, Training Grounds reduces that cost to just to save tons of mana. This discount helps you deploy extra creatures or activate your utility lands.

Even if you don’t find Training Grounds, Biomancer's Familiar provides the same discount. Either card reduces the cost of activated abilities on key pieces like Charix, the Raging Isle and Suspicious Bookcase.

Suspicious Bookcase makes creatures unblockable to guarantee you card draw from The Pride of Hull Clade’s ability.

Playing Crashing Drawbridge early in the game before bringing out The Pride of Hull Clade can pay off to give the commander haste right as it hits the battlefield.

Unnatural Growth pretty much doubles how much card draw you can get off defenders attacking with our commander’s buff. Unnatural Growth paired with The Pride of Hull Clade could even draw you 30 cards!

Heroic Intervention can save your hide from a board wipe or protect one of your best permanents from spot removal. You should always keep up mana for this card to prepare for the unexpected!

Tower Defense is best saved as an ace in the hole in case you don’t have any flying creatures and need reach to fend off an opponent’s aerial assault. After all, your creatures are already defenders with a beefy toughness, so the value of Tower Defense is mostly in the reach.

Last March of the Ents acts as a massive card draw resource that unloads all your creature cards from your hand without having to cast them. If you control Charix, the Raging Isle, which is the creature with the highest toughness in the deck, you can draw 17 cards!

Towering Titan is a great late-game spell that scales with the number of defenders you control. Plus, all your creatures can gain trample at instant speed if you sacrifice another creature.

Combat Damage Assigned by Toughness

Assault Formation allows your creatures to deal combat damage with their toughness rather than their power. Bedrock Tortoise lets most of your creatures assign combat damage via toughness if their toughness is higher than their power. Most defenders in the deck fit this bill, so having either of these cards on the battlefield lets you deal tons of combat damage. 

If you don’t have either of these cards, there’s always Walking Bulwark. You just have to activate its ability for each defender you want to send into battle.

Counterspells

Admiral's Order is great to have in the deck because of the strategy’s overall aggro tactics. This 3-drop counterspell can turn into a 1-drop if you attack with a creature on your turn. This is a great ace in the hole to have if an opponent is attempting targeted removal during or after your combat phase.

An Offer You Can't Refuse can save you from noncreatures spells, which could get you out of a pickle if someone casts a board wipe. Sure, your opponent gets two Treasure tokens, but at least that annoying spell won’t resolve.

Players solidify their board state mainly with creatures and sometimes planeswalkers, so casting Anticognition when the opponent doesn’t have counters their spell and nets you a scry if they have a full graveyard.

You can’t run a blue deck without including Counterspell.

While your opponent gets extra cards after countering their spell with Arcane Denial, you also get a card on the next turn’s upkeep.

Creature Removal

Board wipes are more popular in white, but we are running a Simic deck here. We take advantage of fight-based creature removal to gradually whittle away opposing forces. Since we're running a creature matters deck, Thorn Mammoth easily removes 1-2 creatures per turn depending on how many creature spells you cast.

Since many of your defenders have a high toughness, Primal Might is a great addition to the deck list. Just pour enough mana into the X cost to kill off an opponent’s best creature, then make a massive attack! If your opponent has mana up, maybe pour in a few more mana to make it stronger in case the opponent has a Giant Growth or Ferocious Charge.

The Phasing of Zhalfir is this deck’s main board wipe for when your opponents go too wide with their best creatures and it’s time to bring it down to a simmer. The read ahead mechanic on this saga can make it an automatic board wipe so you don’t have to wait three turns to destroy everything. While everyone gets a 2/2 Phyrexian token for each of their destroyed creatures, it still levels the playing field as everyone’s best creatures are now in the graveyard—provided no opponents protect their board.

The Mana Base

Since the deck is mainly made of defenders, it’s easy to activate Access Tunnel’s ability to make a creature with power 3 or less unblockable. You can say hello to crazy hordes of card draw depending on the creature’s toughness!

In response to an opponent’s attack, you can activate Alchemist's Refuge to give your spells flash until the end of the turn. Hence, you can cast creature spells to act as blockers when you don’t have enough up at the time.

Breeding Pool, Botanical Sanctum, Command Tower, Dreamroot Cascade, Flooded Grove, Hedge Maze, and other lands in the deck help with blue and green mana fixing. Of course, we can’t forget Reliquary Tower as not only part of the mana base, but also as a no maximum hand size resource.

Glasspool Shore acts as a hidden 39th land in the build if you need the mana. Otherwise, you can copy any of your best defender creatures by casting Glasspool Mimic instead.

Arixmethes, Slumbering Isle acts as another extra land while it still has slumber counters on it. Once there are no more slumber counters, it’s a beefy 12/12 that can also act as Simic mana dork when needed.

Birds of Paradise is a quintessential mana dork for decks including green, plus it protects against opponents with flying creatures.

Overgrown Battlement and Axebane Guardian are the most thematic mana dorks that give you mana equivalent to however many defender creatures you control. The main difference is that Overgrown Battlement gives you all green mana while Axebane Guardian lets you tap for any combination of colored mana.

The Strategy

The strategy for playing a The Pride of Hull Clade commander deck includes playing defenders with beefy toughness, turning them into attackers, and benefitting from card draw equivalent to their toughness. Your opening hand should consist of mainly low mana value defenders. As long as you have control creatures  with collective toughness 10 or higher, you can cast The Pride of Hull Clade for only .

For example, having an Overgrown Battlement (toughness 4) and a Hover Barrier on the battlefield (toughness 6) is one way to get The Pride of Hull Clade onto the battlefield for the cheapest cost. Targeting the commander with its own ability or targeting another creature with high toughness like Charix, the Raging Isle and Tree of Redemption provides plenty of card draw each time you deal combat damage.

Combos and Interactions

While I could have incorporated Grolnok, the Omnivore, Cephalid Illusionist, Lightning Greaves, and Thassa's Oracle for an infinite self-mill combo, I wanted to take a more unique approach to a self-mill win condition to keep your opponents in suspense. Many players have love/hate relationships with Thassa's Oracle, hence why I didn't include it in today’s Commander deck build.

Teferi's Ageless Insight makes the card draw from The Pride of Hull Clade’s ability go absolutely bonkers. If you deal combat damage with The Pride of Hull Clade after activating its ability, you'll draw 30 cards instead because of Teferi's Ageless Insight’s replacement effect.

Jace, Wielder of Mysteries helps you win the game if you mill yourself out. With the planeswalker’s plus ability, you can choose to mill yourself and draw a card or mill an opponent and still benefit from card draw. Mill yourself for the best results so you can get closer to the self-mill alternate win condition.

Laboratory Maniac has the same ability as Jace, Wielder of Mysteries in that you win the game if you go to draw a card when your library has no cards in it. Try to play these self-mill cards towards the end of the game to solidify your win condition with less chance of removal. Make sure to keep some mana up to protect these cards with spells like Heroic Intervention or Counterspell in case your opponents have removal.

Rule 0 Violations Check

Considering the prevalent no maximum hand size theme for this deck build, this could be a Rule 0 conversation to have with your playgroup. Some players prefer to have equal advantage with one another throughout the game and only keep the standard hand size of seven cards. Pulling out your no maximum hand size resources could cause an issue with certain players. 

While your goal is not to mill others to win, you are sneakily attempting to self-mill with Laboratory Maniac and Jace, Wielder of Mysteries as your key factors for this alternate win condition. Certain players may not agree with this tactic as a fair way to win either. Hence, share the The Pride of Hull Clade decklist with your playgroup so that everybody has a good time.

Budget Options

This deck has a market price of about $205, so there aren’t many high-priced cards over $10 except for Last March of the Ents and Heroic Intervention. Last March of the Ents clocks in at $17, so opting for activating The Pride of Hull Clade’s ability will at least cover the card draw aspect for a fraction of the cost.

Other card draw spells like Archmage's Charm and Arcanis the Omnipotent can accelerate your card draw throughout the game.

Heroic Intervention is about $11, but giving all your permanents hexproof and indestructible until the end of the turn makes it so worth it. However, you can at least give one creature hexproof and indestructible until the end of the turn by running Tyvar's Stand ($2) or Gaea's Gift ($0.50) instead. Any permanent can get this kind of protection with Tamiyo's Safekeeping ($1.50).

Other Builds

While the original build is mainly for defender creatures, you can also use creatures with power and toughness equal to each other and still achieve the same effect. Ghalta, Primal Hunger, Ghalta, Stampede Tyrant, and Impervious Greatwurm share a high power and toughness that still get you a ton of card draw when you utilize The Pride of Hull Clade’s ability. However, running these expensive, higher-powered creatures would mean you need more ramp resources like mana rocks or mana dorks.

Defenders Assemble!

Assault Formation | Illustration by Kieran Yanner

I hope you enjoyed this The Pride of Hull Clade EDH guide. I’d like to hear more about how you would build this Commander deck. Would you use different defender creatures? Maybe you prefer using the beefier powered creatures suggested in the other builds section. Let us know your strategy to share it with other Magic players interested in building this deck.

Are you ready for more Commander deck building fun? Visit the Draftsim blog to read up on the latest EDH guides we have for you. Discover updates on the latest content on the blog by following the Draftsim Facebook page. Until then, assemble your defenders for this deck and draw hordes of cards with The Pride of Hull Clade.

Stay safe, and keep those defenses up!