I.  Introduction

In my last deck that I presented, I played Esper colors.  The deck was based around dealing specifically with Eldrazi, so it was very reactionary.  Not really my style at all.  Although Dakkon himself is pretty cool in that he's a beatdown Commander, the rest of the deck left me with a slightly sour taste in my mouth.  So when trying to think of the deck to come up with next, I asked myself, "What is the opposite of Esper?"  Why Gruul, of course! 

I like the enthusiasm, but you're supposed to work together!

So I had my color combination, and I knew that I wanted to smash face.  That really only left two legends to build with:  Borborygmos and Stonebrow.  By the title, I'm sure that you can guess which one I picked.

II.  The Deck:  Grrrrr.....

So let's take a closer look at Stonebrow.

I think that if I could swing around a battle axe that big, I would probably be a hero too.  Obviously, Stonebrow likes tramplers.  He's not bad for his stats, either, as he is a 6/6 when he attacks.  We can beat down with Stonebrow, as well as his cohorts.

So when people first see this guy, they want to stuff their deck with tramplers.  This may work out well in your playgroup at home where you know what to expect from your opponents, but on MTGO, you're going to be facing a variety of stuff, a lot of it powerful.  I actually did start out with a deck like this.  However, after getting close to killing one of the opponents, I would typically run out of gas, and everyone else would gang up on me because I was so aggro.  I don't think I won a game like this.  As such, we have to go for a more utility based approach, and leave a lot of the more fun tramplers behind, either because we don't have room or they just don't do enough.

I like you guys, but you didn't quite make the cut.

So using this utility based approach, I re-tooled by deck.  Let's look at what I did came up with. 

Stonebrow, Krosan Hero

A Commander Deck

Creatures 1 Acidic Slime 1 Akroma, Angel of Fury 1 Anger 1 Boartusk Liege 1 Brawn 1 Chameleon Colossus 1 Deus of Calamity 1 Duplicant 1 Eternal Witness 1 Garruk's Packleader 1 Genesis 1 Hellkite Charger 1 Hystrodon 1 Indrik Stomphowler 1 Kamahl, Fist of Krosa 1 Kavu Predator 1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker 1 Oracle of Mul Daya 1 Penumbra Wurm 1 Rampaging Baloths 1 Shivan Wurm 1 Spawnwrithe 1 Spearbreaker Behemoth 1 Squee, Goblin Nabob 1 Stonebrow, Krosan Hero 1 Sylvan Ranger 1 Tornado Elemental 1 Vigor 1 Vithian Renegades 1 Woodfall Primus 1 Yavimaya Elder 31 cards Other Spells Artifacts 1 Damping Matrix 1 Gruul War Plow 1 Mind's Eye 1 Seer's Sundial 1 Skullclamp 1 Weatherseed Totem Planeswalker 1 Garruk Wildspeaker Enchantments 1 Aggravated Assault 1 Bear Umbra 1 City of Solitude 1 Greater Good 1 Hibernation's End 1 Rage Reflection 1 Rancor 1 Survival of the Fittest 1 Sylvan Library Instants 1 Comet Storm 1 Krosan Grip 1 Momentous Fall 1 Savage Beating 1 Starstorm Sorceries 1 Cultivate 1 Decimate 1 Explosive Vegetation 1 Harmonize 1 Hull Breach 1 Kodama's Reach 1 Primal Command 1 Recollect 1 Tooth and Nail 1 World at War  31 cards

Lands 1 Evolving Wilds 1 Fire-Lit Thicket 1 Forgotten Cave 1 Fungal Reaches 1 Gruul Turf 1 Highland Weald 1 Karplusan Forest 1 Kazandu Refuge 1 Kher Keep 1 Miren, the Moaning Well 1 Mosswort Bridge 1 Mouth of Ronom 1 Oran-Rief, the Vastwood 1 Reliquary Tower 1 Scrying Sheets 1 Skarrg, the Rage Pits 9 Snow-Covered Forest 5 Snow-Covered Mountain 1 Spinerock Knoll 1 Stomping Ground 1 Strip Mine 1 Temple of the False God 1 Terramorphic Expanse 1 Tranquil Thicket 1 Treetop Village 1 Wooded Foothills 38 cards

Let's take a closer look at what we have going on here.

Trample Enablers

Gruul War Plow, Rancor, Brawn, Kamahl, Fist of Krosa, Garruk Wildspeaker:  Obviously, looking through the list you can see that many of the creatures in this deck don't trample.  However, if we want them to benefit from Stonebrow, we have to give it to them!  Kamahl and Garruk, are just good cards.  Rancor is re-usable, and Gruul War Plow doubles as a creature when you need it.  Brawn is the only iffy card.  There's a lot of graveyard hate running around out there.  However, enchantments still manage to last a long time.  If you want, you can remove Brawn for Primal Rage.

Disruption

City of Solitude, Damping Matrix:  This color combination generally has weaknesses against blue decks, as they run a lot of activated abilities and play a lot of instants.  Luckily, most of the cards in this deck deal with triggered abilities and enters the battlefield stuff.  Damping Matrix cuts down on things like Arcanis drawing a bunch of cards, or Mayeal pulling out a big guy out of nowhere.  We use City of Solitude to make sure that we can cast our spells unimpeded, and not have to worry about opponent's combat tricks.  Keep in mind, however, that with the City out, you can only play your instants during your turn as well.  If you want to go this route, you can also add Defense Grid and Dosan the Falling Leaf.

Mana Help
	Weatherseed Totem, Yavimaya Elder, Oracle of Mul Daya, Sylvan Ranger, Kodama's Reach, Cultivate, Explosive Vegetation: For some reason I was consistently drawing all these cards.  I would copy Yavimaya Elder with Kiki-Jiki a couple times and be swimming in mana.  I actually had to up the basic land count from what I was originally playing as I had games where I ran out of basics to search up.

Targeted Removal

Acidic Slime, Duplicant, Indrik Stomphowler, Vithian Renegades, Woodfall Primus, Hull Breach, Decimate, Krosan Grip:  As you are playing green, you have some good creatures to work with here.  Each of the creatures obviously work well with Kiki-Jiki.  Decimate is a forgotten card that I rarely see played anymore.  Whenever I played it, there was a least one opponent who hadn't ever seen it before and wanted one for themselves.  Keep in mind that you need all of those targets when you cast it, so sometimes you have to blow up one of your own artifacts or enchantments to get rid of any annoying creature on the other side.

 

Tutors

Primal Command, Survival of the Fittest, Tooth and Nail, Hibernation's End:  Sometimes you need to get that removal, and you need it now.  Hibernation's End is good long term card advantage.  I know there are no creatures in the deck that cost 1 mana, so if you really want to, you can add Elvish Herder or Defiant Elf.  Otherwise, you have to wait two turns for the End to come into effect.  But it's generally worth the wait. I know that Survival is out of the price range of most of you guys, so if you want, you can take it and Squee out, and replace them with Worldly Tutor and something like Fierce Empath.  But if you do have Survival, definitely use it.

Extra Attacks

Hellkite Charger, World at War, Aggravated Assault, Savage Beating:  Stonebrow's effect is cumulative, meaning that if you have more than one combat phase, on the first one your tramplers get +2/+2, and on the second one they get and additional +2/+2.  That's called "bringing the pain!"  World at War has come in very handy in this case, and Savage Beating is exactly as the name implies.  To go with Hellkite Charger and Aggravated Assault, I added Bear Umbra for the infinite attacks combo.  Keep in mind that this combo is pretty easy to disrupt, so it's not really an instant win every time.  The Umbra also goes well with Kamahl.

Mass Removal

Starstorm, Tornado Elemental:  Yes, that's right, only two mass removal spells.  That's known as living dangerously!  Honestly, you could probably add Oblivion Stone or All is Dust.  However, the deck is already feeling more controllish than the beatdown I was going for, and I like living dangerously.  Tornado Elemental is one of your two lines of defense against fliers (the other being Red Akroma), so use him wisely.

Card Draw

Skullclamp, Garruk's Packleader, Hystrodon, Momentous Fall, Mind's Eye, Greater Good, Seer's Sundial, Sylvan Library, Harmonize:  I found that a lot of times I was ramping up mana, and then I would only have 2 or 3 cards in hand.  You want to have options, and card draw gives them to you.  Most of the time you won't use Sylvan Library to draw, but sometimes you have to dig for an answer.  Momentous Fall and Greater Good are probably among my favorite two cards in the deck.  As for the Sundial, the game below was the only time I drew it, and I didn't get a chance to play it.

III.  The Game:  Fight!

Let's take a look at our opponents:

Indrik Stomphowler, Vigor, Strip Mine, Tooth and Nail, Vithian Renegades, Temple of the False God, Tranquil Thicket

Spawnwrithe, Gruul Turf, Snow-Covered Forest, Sylvan Ranger, Mind's Eye, Acidic Slime, Fungal Reaches

Everyone likes the fast boots!
 

Great for getting back those specialty lands.

Great at shutting down Commanders and other creatures.

Scary.

Bye bye flyers!

Not as powerful as when it was played in Standard, but still good.
 

Double strike on big creatures is not good when your opponent is playing it.

Spinerock Knoll, Snow-Covered Forest, Rage Reflection, Rancor, Seer's Sundial, Woodfall Primus

Great with token decks.

IV.  Conclusion

So you'll find that a lot of the games you play with this deck will be similar to this one, where everything is pretty close and things can change based on one decision.  If the Razia player had attacked me instead of the Teysa player in the 15th round, he could have knocked me down to (3), and Teysa would have been able to finish us off shortly after.  But that's not how things went down, and I was able to pull off the win here.

I've run into a few people online who ask me for the costs of these decks and how to purchase them.  Therefore, I've uploaded this bad boy up on the MTGOTraders deck database.  You can find the decklist HERE.  From there, you are one more click away from buying the whole thing from MTGOTraders.  Looks like this deck comes out to around $150, but $50 of that is Strip Mine and Survival.  I already talked about replacing Survival, and Strip Mine can be replaced with Ghost Quarter.  Just remember, these decks are good starting points for you to change and make them fit your play style better, so feel free to mess around with them.