Garruk Wildspeaker is both straightforward and powerful. As a green planeswalker his abilities revolve around creatures and extra mana. The key to his power is that you can use his third ability the turn after you cast him, which is unusual in a planeswalker.

Garruk Wildspeaker costs four mana to cast, two of which must be green. He has three abilities and enters the battlefield with three loyalty counters.

The first ability adds a loyalty counter and allows you to untap up to two target lands. This is a powerful and surprisingly useful ability. The simplest use is to untap two of the lands you just used to cast Garruk, effectively making him cost two mana. Other uses involving lands which have other tap abilities come after this. Importantly, four loyalty is what Garruk needs for his third ability, covered below.

The second ability costs one loyalty counter and puts a 3/3 green beast token onto the battlefield. This is useful too, since if you are facing down some attackers to your right, Garruk can immediately provide a blocker to protect himself and you from attack. In some decks, you might simply alternate between this and Garruk’s first ability, creating more and more creatures for yourself.

The third ability grants +3/+3 and trample to all of your creatures until the end of turn, at a cost of four loyalty counters. This is the same effect as the five mana green sorcery Overrun, except there is no mana cost here. Combined with Garruk’s first ability, you can use this the turn after you cast Garruk. This ability usually spells doom for the player to your left. You can even combine this ability with Overrun to gain double the effect!

Garruk is one of the strongest planeswalkers, in part because his uses are quite straightforward. He does a few things and he does them very well. At the melee table his third ability is most dangerous to the player on your left, but this ability is most likely to be stopped by the actions of the player to your right. But will it be in that player’s interests to stop Garruk?

Verdict: Strong. A deck built around Garruk Wildspeaker will do well at the melee table, and in addition this card can be used to strengthen other decks that can cast this planeswalker.

Connections: Like Garruk Wildspeaker? You may also like [Sarkhan Vol] [Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas] [Garruk Relentless]
Don’t like Garruk Wildspeaker? You may prefer [Ral Zarek] [Chandra Nalaar] [Nissa Revane]

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