Welcome back to another week of the Commander Corner! This week, we’ll be taking a look at the most aggressive color in all of MTG: red. And no better way to highlight how powerful it is than Krenko, Mob Boss, the most beloved mono-red Commander in the format.

The most beautiful thing about this Commander is that its ability is next to impossible to defeat. Once he gets going, the number of 1/1 Goblin creatures you have multiplies exponentially, and I have won games with over 150 creatures on the board at once.

Reading a bit closer into the card, Krenko’s only ability is that he taps to double the number of Goblin creatures on the battlefield. Seeing as he himself counts as a Goblin, from the very moment you put him on the battlefield he can tap to spawn one Goblin. Next turn he taps to make two, then four, and so on until your opponent is totally overwhelmed. The beauty of Krenko is that he can basically take on any opponent’s Commander without any real backup of his own. As long as you have four mana and enough cheap instants to hold the opposition at bay, Krenko can fill the battlefield with weaklings to let you punch through any defense.

However, since this is a Commander deck, you can never be sure that you’ll have what you need when you need it. After all, out of 99 cards plus Krenko there’s no easy way to make sure you’ll have drawn a Lightning Bolt and a Snap to hold off the enemy while Krenko does his stuff. So we’ll need to pad the other 99 with enough useful instants and sorceries to buffer your Goblin factory while making sure it’ll be ready to punch through to the other player when it’s ready.

Let’s start with the essentials. Krenko being out there all by himself isn’t terribly safe, since he’s relatively weak and there’s a huge list of spells that can kill him right away. So let’s bulk up the battlefield with a few more Goblins so that he has something to work behind (and to start with). In that case, let’s bring in Krenko’s Command.

This spell is a great way to start the game with Krenko. I personally love when I get this (or Dragon Fodder, which does the same exact thing but under a different name so you can have both in the deck at once) at the start of a match, as it only costs 2 mana and gets me 2 creatures right away. With this on the field, Krenko can go from only creating one other Goblin on his first tap to making 3, bringing your total up to 6 almost right away.

Another great manipulation of Krenko’s ability is another small creature called Warren Instigator.

This little guy is nasty as all hell. His first ability, Double Strike, allows him to hit whatever his target is two times. That means that his damage is dealt to a blocking creature twice while the blocker’s is only done once to him, or that he deals 2 damage to a player rather than 1. The other special trick he has up his sleeves is that each of those hits counts as separate damage, which leads into his second ability. If he can get through the opponent’s blockers and hits the player directly, you can put two Goblin cards from your hand right onto the battlefield. This is unbelievably awesome for the Krenko deck, since you’ll definitely need a lot of mana on the backburner at the end of every turn. Warren Instigator helps you by giving you creatures without having to spend mana for them.

But the nastiest of tricks that Krenko’s got is yet to come.

This card is a little on the pricey side, but that’s fine: it does its most work during the latter half of the game. Once you have a ton of Goblins out thanks to Krenko, you can drop this little bomb on the opponent to finish the game outright. Even if you’ve done absolutely no damage to the opponent, as long as you have roughly fifteen Goblins (which sounds like a lot, but remember that you’ll have 16 within 4 turns thanks to Krenko) you can actually deal lethal damage in one hit. In case the sheer power that this card grants you doesn’t translate from text in a blog post, most Commander games can take around 20-25 turns. With this up your sleeve, it’s not far-fetched to think the game will end within 8.

There’s only one more card I wanted to bring up in this week’s post, and it really comes through clutch if Krenko is killed early on and you don’t have enough mana to pay the extra on his cost.

Since every Goblin on the battlefield shares a creature type with every other Goblin, they all get a +1/+1 counter. This means that both their power and toughness are increased by 1 point. Moreover, if any of the non-token Goblins you’ve cast (like Warren Instigator) has a secondary creature type (for example, Instigator is a Goblin and a Berserker), they get +1/+1 for both types as long as there’s another Berserker on the field. This gives you a serious leg up over the opposing forces and stacks as you cast more Goblins.

Well, that’s all for this week! Krenko is one of the fastest-acting Commanders I have: he wins even quicker than Horobi! But next week I’ll be showing you a deck that’s a touch slower, but no less devious. Next week we turn the thing players love most about the game against them. Get ready for Nekusar, the Mindrazer!

See you next week!