Caller of the Claw Gives Beorn Decks a Powerful Board-Wipe Recovery

Focus: Caller of the Claw Beorn deck protection

Beorn the Fierce is built to lead a huge bear army, but a single board wipe can remove the entire strategy at once. One older green creature offers a clever way to rebuild immediately after the destruction.

Why Beorn the Fierce is so effective

Beorn the Fierce is among the most popular commanders from Magic: The Gathering’s latest The Hobbit crossover set, with 4,410 decks listed on EDHREC at the time of writing.

The five-mana 6/6 has trample and gives every other Bear you control +2/+2. At the beginning of combat, Beorn also gives a creature a trample counter that makes it a Bear. If you control at least three Bears afterwards, you draw two cards.

That combination of combat pressure, tribal support and card draw makes Beorn an especially strong commander for a Bear typal deck. His weakness is protection: the more creatures you develop, the more painful a mass removal spell becomes.

How Caller of the Claw rebuilds the battlefield

Caller of the Claw first appeared in 2003’s Legions. It costs three mana and is a 2/2 Elf with flash. When it enters the battlefield, it creates a 2/2 green Bear creature token for each nontoken creature put into your graveyard from the battlefield that turn.

Consider a board with Beorn and five other nontoken creatures when an opponent casts Blasphemous Act. The spell deals 13 damage to every creature, destroying your army. Once the wipe resolves, you can cast Caller of the Claw and receive six 2/2 Bear tokens. Beorn is included because commanders technically enter the graveyard before their owners can move them to the command zone.

That leaves Caller of the Claw and six Bears on the battlefield while opponents may have nothing left. After you recast Beorn, the six tokens become 4/4 creatures. Beorn can then turn Caller into another Bear at the beginning of combat, give it the same +2/+2 bonus and trample, and trigger the two-card draw. The result is seven 4/4 trampling Bears alongside Beorn, a 6/6 trampling commander.

With Doubling Season already in play, the same sequence produces twelve Bear tokens. If Yedora, Grave Gardener is on the battlefield when your creatures die, every other nontoken creature can instead return as a Forest.

The limits of the trick

Caller of the Claw does not replace creature tokens, so previously created Bear tokens do not increase its count. You also need the card in hand and three untapped mana available when the board wipe occurs. Exile-based removal is another problem, because creatures that never reach the graveyard cannot be counted.

Traditional protection such as Heroic Intervention prevents many destroy effects and targeted threats, but it does not serve the same purpose. Caller of the Claw is strongest when your nontoken creatures actually die.

That makes it particularly useful against Toxic Deluge. The spell gives creatures negative power and toughness rather than destroying them. Indestructible and hexproof cannot save creatures reduced to zero toughness, but those creatures still go to the graveyard and can be converted into Bears by Caller.

Why ordinary Bears matter

Simple Bear creatures gain an important role in this strategy because they are nontoken creatures. Cards such as Alpine Grizzly, Balduvian Bears, Bear Cub, Forest Bear, Golden Bear, Grizzly Bears, Ordinary Bear and Runeclaw Bear all receive Beorn’s +2/+2 bonus and can effectively return as 2/2 replacements through Caller of the Claw. Existing Bear tokens cannot do that.

Ruxa, Patient Professor is another interesting inclusion. It gives creatures with no abilities +1/+1 and lets them assign combat damage as though they were not blocked. Ruxa is also a Bear. Muraganda Petroglyphs can add another +2/+2 to creatures with no abilities, although it also buffs opposing creatures. With the right combination, a 2/2 replacement token could theoretically become a 7/7.

Beorn demand pushed up Caller of the Claw prices

Caller of the Claw appears in 29% of Beorn decks listed on EDHREC. Every printing has risen sharply since The Hobbit arrived in August. The card had spent years below $1.50, but TCG Player data put its price at $15 or more, up from $6 two weeks earlier.

The Commander 2015 version rose from about $3.22 to $9.88, an increase of more than 200%. Other Bear staples, including Bearscape and Ayula, Queen Among Bears, have also been affected by interest in Beorn decks.

This movement does not necessarily represent a huge number of new players buying the card. Caller of the Claw is an older card with limited supply, so a relatively small number of sales can shift its market price. Around 80 copies of the Commander 2015 printing reportedly sold across three months as demand grew.

A smart recovery card for creature-heavy Commander decks

Caller of the Claw has long been useful in green decks that commit heavily to creatures. Beorn makes the effect considerably more threatening by turning the replacement army into a group of oversized trampling Bears while restoring access to card draw.

It is not a complete answer to every board wipe: you need the card, the mana and a graveyard-based result. When those conditions line up, however, an opponent’s attempt to reset the table can leave Beorn with the strongest battlefield after the dust settles.

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