Origins of Garruk, Primal Hunter in Worldwake

In TCG ·

Garruk, Primal Hunter card art depicting a primal green planeswalker among beasts

Image courtesy of Scryfall.com

Garruk’s Primal Call: A Green Path Through Worldwake's Wilds

If you’ve ever cracked open a green deck and felt a primal whisper rise from the cards, you’ve felt Garruk’s echo. The original Garruk stories hinge on a hunter’s creed: to test the limits of his own power by bending nature to his will, all while trying to keep the wild from spiraling out of control. In the Commander 2021 frame, Garruk, Primal Hunter becomes a distilled embodiment of that instinct—bold, relentless, and dangerously efficient in the right green-heavy metagame 🧙‍♂️🔥. The Worldwake-era mood—lush jungles, waking beasts, and the raw scent of growth after the storm—still hums in his green aura, even as this version lands as a modern reprint designed to shine in EDH where throne-room board states can spiral from mild to mythic in a single turn ⚔️🎲.

With a mana cost of {2}{G}{G}{G}, Garruk arrives as a formidable 5-cost engine that starts the game with a modest loyalty of 3. That’s a green signal flare: you’re in for a board-wide, beast-hearted ascent. His +1 is a classic green gambit: create a 3/3 green Beast token. The moment you drop Garruk, you’re not just playing a card—you’re awakening an army. Beasts are the bread and butter of green’s competitive identity: flexible in combat, valuable as chump-blocks and late-game thumpers, and, most importantly, a living resource that compounds as the battlefield grows 🐉. In Commander, that token-creation tempo can swing a race into your favor as your board swells with bodies that threaten to overwhelm opponents who underestimated the green tide.

Garruk’s −3 ability turns the table on the classic card-draw engine by tying it to your own battlefield power. Draw cards equal to the greatest power among creatures you control. That’s a clever symmetry: your token army can become a natural fuel line for your card advantage. It’s a reminder that Garruk is not merely about raw numbers; he’s about reading the battlefield and turning every strongest creature into insight—an echo of the hunter’s mind that values leverage as much as raw force 🧠💎.

The real crescendo comes with the −6: create a 6/6 green Wurm creature token for each land you control. In a board state that stabilizes into multiple land drops per turn—think fetches into shock lands, or those majestic, land-dense green strategies—the ultimatum writes itself: your side begins to flood the board with enormous wurms, each a thundering expression of your growth. The Wurm token is green’s bruiser myth—a visual and mechanical symbol of pushing past the plateau and roaring into a late-game dominion. When you cascade your way into Garruk with a healthy mana base, the number of wurms you summon can become not just a win condition but a spectacle—the kind of moment players pause to appreciate as the crowd roars ⚔️💥.

The card’s lore-friendly design isn’t accidental. Garruk’s identity as the primal hunter—centered on beasts, forested wilds, and a willingness to bend the very land into his service—meshes seamlessly with the Worldwake-era sensibility of Zendikar’s untamed wilds. The imagery of Garruk standing at the edge of a green, roaring mass of beasts captures the essence of what makes green so iconic: nature as ally, engine, and weapon all at once. The artwork by D. Alexander Gregory presents a primal, kinetic energy that fans recognize from Garruk’s extended mythos, a reminder that even a planeswalker can feel like a force of nature when he’s backed by a legion of Beasts and, eventually, a sprawling Wurm army 🧙‍♂️🎨.

From a strategic perspective, Garruk, Primal Hunter shines brightest in EDH where the stacking of green’s acceleration and token themes pays off in dramatic ways. Early ramp to hit the 4–5 mana range lets you cast Garruk ahead of schedule and begin churning tokens while you plan your big finish. The +1 token production gives you a safety rail—three bodies can soak damage, advance your board state, and provide fodder for your card-draw engine. The −3’s power-scaling draw is a practical engine in any deck that can swarm the battlefield with increasingly large creatures, letting you refill your hand as your threat footprint grows. And that −6, well, it’s the payoff: a single attack can become a blizzard of wurms, each cutting into life totals and threatening a board-wide swing that opponents may not be able to answer in a single turn 🧭🪄.

As a mythic reprint from Commander 2021, Garruk’s presence in the stock list signals a deliberate nod to casual and semi-competitive play. The card’s value isn’t just in its raw power; it’s in how it reinvigorates a green strategy that many players adore: beasts, big bodies, and a command-ready army that scales with every land drop. The market numbers on Scryfall hint at a modest, approachable price point for collectors who want the full mythic aura without the ultra-premium sticker shock, with USD values floating around the low-to-mid dollar range for nonfoil prints. It’s a reminder that great commander cards can be both nostalgic and practical, offering players a path to re-create the wild, awe-inspiring moments that drew them to MTG in the first place 🧙‍♂️💎.

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Garruk, Primal Hunter

Garruk, Primal Hunter

{2}{G}{G}{G}
Legendary Planeswalker — Garruk

+1: Create a 3/3 green Beast creature token.

−3: Draw cards equal to the greatest power among creatures you control.

−6: Create a 6/6 green Wurm creature token for each land you control.

ID: 79cfc0d7-fccb-47fb-87b6-08dd32528be6

Oracle ID: 298a7e1a-b254-442e-bc1d-2a3e5296d849

Multiverse IDs: 519225

TCGPlayer ID: 236307

Cardmarket ID: 559101

Colors: G

Color Identity: G

Keywords:

Rarity: Mythic

Released: 2021-04-23

Artist: D. Alexander Gregory

Frame: 2015

Border: black

EDHRec Rank: 1689

Penny Rank: 1675

Set: Commander 2021 (c21)

Collector #: 190

Legalities

  • Standard — not_legal
  • Future — not_legal
  • Historic — not_legal
  • Timeless — not_legal
  • Gladiator — not_legal
  • Pioneer — not_legal
  • Modern — legal
  • Legacy — legal
  • Pauper — not_legal
  • Vintage — legal
  • Penny — legal
  • Commander — legal
  • Oathbreaker — legal
  • Standardbrawl — not_legal
  • Brawl — not_legal
  • Alchemy — not_legal
  • Paupercommander — not_legal
  • Duel — legal
  • Oldschool — not_legal
  • Premodern — not_legal
  • Predh — not_legal

Prices

  • USD: 1.66
  • EUR: 1.59
  • TIX: 0.22
Last updated: 2025-11-14