Werewolves 

Nothing unites the Magic: The Gathering community like the excitement ahead of a new Innistrad set, and Innistrad - Midnight Hunt is on its way in just a few short weeks. To celebrate, we're continuing our series looking at some of the most iconic horror tribes in the game and where they can fit in your Commander decks. You can check out our take on the best of the best vampires here. 

This week, we're looking at werewolves. Wizards took a real risk with their design in the original Innistrad, introducing double-sided modal flip cards specifically to capture the flavour of werewolves transforming under a full moon. It was a huge flavour win, and while it does involve a lot of messing around with sleeves in paper magic, we think it was a perfect way to capture the transformation and offer totally distinct effects for each half of the card. 

Almost all werewolves transform according to the number of spells cast in a turn, with any turn where no spells are cast representing the 'quiet of the night' and causing them to transform into their wolf forms. When the bustle of daytime comes (i.e. a player casting two or more spells) they transform back into humans again. It's great fun to watch, and it gives them a unique rythmn to their play. The fact that they allow your opponents to have some control over transformations can make them a challenge to play with, but that just adds to the fun of deckbuilding to ensure that you get to leverage all those transformations to your advantage. Cards like Moonmist are one obvious path, but as we'll see in our list, there are other werewolves that you'll actively want to transform back and forth as much as possible.

It’s tricky to get to that ultimate, but Arlinn has great flexibility with the ability to create synergistic creatures and destroy creatures to protect herself, as well as threatening a lot of trampling damage or some nasty surprise haste creatures if you’re ahead. 

The Werewolf side is where the more reliable action is. Nightfall Predator can fight for a deliciously cheap one red mana, and is big enough to eat utility creatures for breakfast. Quite literally. Of course there will often be bigger targets that won’t make quite such an easy meal, but you can always slap a Basilisk Collar on this thing to make sure it takes down its target with it no matter how outclassed the Predator is. The Collar is an even better fit with Daybreak Ranger since it simply deals damage without taking any in return, meaning any means of giving it deathtouch allows it to snipe the biggest fliers out of the sky with impunity.  

The ability is actually even better than it looks at first glance, given that the Werewolf still enters the battlefield on its human side, meaning that with, say, a Huntmaster of the Fells played while Vildin-Pack Alpha is in play, you get to create the wolf from its human side, then immediately transform it to do two damage to a creature and two damage to an opponent. That’s a lot of impact delivered very quickly, and it makes this card one of the best possible Werewolves for a dedicated Werewolf theme deck. 

Howlpack Alpha’s upkeep ability is what really makes him shine in Commander given that it triggers not just on your upkeep but on each upkeep, meaning that he can potentially generate you four wolf tokens each and every turn cycle. Don’t expect your opponents to let that happen too often, but there will certainly be times when this card can generate you a wolf army all on its own, all while buffing them to 3/3s into the bargain.  

When Afflicted Deserter transforms into Werewolf Ransacker, it can destroy any artifact in play while growing to a decently threatening 5/4. Then, just to rub salt in the wound, it does 3 direct damage to that artifact’s controller. Needless to say, you’ll want to be transforming this back and forth for as long as there are artifacts to target. Luckily, this is a great candidate for what you might call a ‘politics werewolf’ in that you can do deals with opponents to let you flip this back and forth by tailoring the number of spells they cast if you promise to deal with particular artifacts controlled by their rivals. This card is a great threat to hang over your opponents, and should find a place in any werewolf themed deck in Commander. 

The real reason though that this card tops our list is because of some very important wording on its Werewolf side. Werewolf of Ancient Hunger counts all the cards in all players’ hands to determine its power and toughness. In a full Commander game with four opponents, that could very easily make it a 20/20 or bigger if played in the midgame, and that’s in games where no player has stacked 15 cards in their hand with a Reliquary Tower.  Given that this thing has both Vigilance and Trample, you get to aim this at someone every single turn and threaten to chunk off around half their starting life total, all while still leaving it back for blocks. Yes it’s a big dumb beater, but that's what Werewolves do best, and it hits harder than any other Werewolf printed.