commander · The Swarmlord
Tyranid Swarm (40K).
A Temur +1/+1 counter and creature ramp deck led by The Swarmlord, add X counters to creatures whenever you cast them and win through an unstoppable hive of ever-growing Tyranid monsters.
The Commanders
Tyranid Swarm is a Temur Commander deck themed around the Tyranid alien hive of Warhammer 40,000. Its core mechanic is "ravenous," a keyword that gives Tyranid creatures extra +1/+1 counters when you cast them with excess mana. The more mana you pour into a Tyranid spell, the bigger it enters. Pair that with +1/+1 counter synergies and you get a deck that grows faster than opponents can block.
The Swarmlord has a ravenous-enabling triggered ability: whenever a creature with a +1/+1 counter on it enters the battlefield under your control, put a +1/+1 counter on another target creature. Every ravenous creature that enters fires The Swarmlord's trigger, so each creature that comes down big makes another creature bigger. The effect compounds: five creatures entering with counters put five extra counters on five other creatures, and the board spirals out of control.
Magus Lucea Kane is the mana-multiplication alternative. She doubles the X in your X spells, so paying just X gets you 2X. She also taps for colorless mana, and when she untaps she puts a +1/+1 counter on each creature that already has one. Against pods where raw creature power wins, Magus Lucea Kane's mana doubling lets you cast ravenous creatures with far more excess mana than normal, entering dramatically bigger.
Key Cards
Hierophant Bio-Titan
A 10-mana 10/10 Tyranid Insect with trample and hexproof. It has ravenous: when you pay more than its base cost, it enters with +1/+1 counters for each excess mana paid. Pay twelve mana instead of ten and it's a 12/12 hexproof trampler. It attacks as an essentially unanswerable threat that deals twelve or more trample damage through any number of blockers. With Magus Lucea Kane's mana doubling, reach this size much earlier than turn ten.
Tervigon
A legendary Tyranid that creates 1/1 Tyranid Termagant tokens equal to the number of +1/+1 counters on it when it enters the battlefield. If you cast it with excess mana thanks to ravenous, it enters with five or six counters and immediately makes five or six tokens. Each of those tokens triggers The Swarmlord, so each one fires a counter distribution as it enters. Tervigon plus The Swarmlord turns one big mana turn into twelve or more power spread across the board.
Branching Evolution
Whenever one or more +1/+1 counters are put on a creature you control, double that amount instead. It doubles every ravenous trigger, every Swarmlord distribution, and every proliferate effect. A creature entering with five ravenous counters enters with ten. The Swarmlord distributing five counters distributes ten. Branching Evolution is the card that takes the deck from "big creatures" to "comically oversized creatures" and is the highest-priority target for opponents to answer.
Garruk's Uprising
Gives all your creatures with power four or greater trample, and draws a card whenever a creature with power four or greater enters under your control. In a deck where ravenous creatures enter with five, six, or eight power, Garruk's Uprising turns every creature you cast into a card draw and gives your whole board trample. Opponents can't chump block a wall of trampling 8/8s and 10/10s, so the damage bleeds through to their life totals.
Winged Hive Tyrant
A 5/5 flying Tyranid with ravenous. When it enters, if it has counters, put a counter on each other creature you control. It distributes its ravenous counters across your entire board on entry. With Branching Evolution doubling counters and The Swarmlord triggering off each counter placement, the Winged Hive Tyrant entering can add five counters to thirty creatures across several triggers. It's the deck's most explosive single-entry event.
How to Play
Ramp hard in the first three or four turns to enable large ravenous investments. Get The Swarmlord in play before you cast ravenous creatures, since every entry then fires a counter distribution that grows your whole board. Deploy Branching Evolution before a big turn and watch every ravenous creature come down twice as large.
Win through combat damage with creatures that are too large to block profitably and hit through trample. Garruk's Uprising gives the whole team trample and draws cards as they enter. Hierophant Bio-Titan is hexproof and shrugs off spot removal. The deck closes games fast once the counter doubling is online, and opponents get a very small window to interact before the board gets away from them for good.
