MTG Salvation

Iname, Life Aspect is begging to be included. Patron of the Orochi is another fun spirit.

I feel like you could use more ramp. I don't really like the mana elves unless you're running equipment for them to carry late game. I would take them out for additional ramp, even if it's just Rampant Growth. Green has a ton of ramp options that will help you out especially if you're feeling slow.

Saproling Symbiosis doesn't seem to fit. Also, are you purposely avoiding Earthcraft?

Nice to see this Kodama getting used.

Here's my old sphinx themed deck, although Hallucigenia has a lot of good ideas too

http://puremtgo.com/articles/conqueror-commander-vol-cxxxii-sharuum-hegemon

Quote from batdown »

can you activate marrow bats an arbitrary number of times?

Yes you can. There are some other similar cards that didn't make the cut, like Minion of the Wastes (really wanted this guy), Unspeakable Symbol, Necrologia, Plague of Vermin and Wall of Blood. There are more, but like I said it just turned out to be too many.

As for Kuro, he would be perfect if he didn't cost a billion mana. Even with all the mana doublers in the deck it isn't easy to get that much mana out.

Quote from Wildfire393 »

I think the best way to do "suicide black" with life-swapping effects is WB with Selenia, Dark Angel. White gives you Near-death Experience and Reverse the Sands as extra wincons, and Selenia lets you arbitrarily lower your life at will.

Yeah, I agree. I even made a Selenia deck like that a long time ago. It's just so unsatisfying that I couldn't get it going in mono-Black. However Morinfen never stayed on the table long enough for his cumulative upkeep to matter.

The one cool thing about the deck is that when I build it, I was so concerned about removing the upkeep counters from Morinfen that I added every way I could think of to remove them: Aether Snap, Vampire Hexmage, Hex Parasite. With the inclusion of Thespian's Stage, I was able to get out Marit Lage through Dark Depths a bunch of different times. So the deck had that going for it at least.

So I wanted to try something a little outside the box. However, it didn't work out how I planned.



Ok, so the original plan was to go suicide black. I would include all the stuff that could hurt myself, then screw people with the Mirror Universe effects. Then, in order to make Morinfen scarier, I could voltron him up with a bunch of equipment.

Unfortunately my initial version had way too much self damaging stuff to be able to survive multiplayer games. As such, I added a bunch of life gain until I felt that I could actually, you know, live long enough to win. However that essentially makes the Soul Conduit stuff more useless. And the voltron part didn't feel all that great to me as well.

I dunno, the deck is sort of good, I guess, in that it can win games. But it's not great, and I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Have people made suicide Black work in multiplayer? What do you guys think?

Check out my article about the deck and vids of it in action here: http://puremtgo.com/articles/conqueror-commander-vol-cl-morinfen

I could see using Thassa as the Commander, but then it wouldn't feel quite as "Cthulhu-y" to me. I like having the big tentacle monster at the head of the deck. Plus, if you ramp out to him he really has a huge board presence, plus he's a 3 hit killer. Lorthos worked well here.

Considered Quest for Ula's Temple, but I didn't think I really had enough of the required creatures for it (only 8 creatures in the deck qualify) and I am not really running any ways to stack the top of your deck, which is required with the Quest I think. So it didn't make the cut.

Ok, so it's not really Cthulhu, but I needed to come up with something for Worship Week over at PureMTGO.com, and I thought that building around everyone's favorite elder god would be interesting.



So basically big scary tentacle monsters, with some land based tentacle monsters thrown in. Originally I wanted to add goofy stuff like Polar Kraken and Leviathan, but there was no way that I could make that competitive. Still, with modern power creep I did manage to find some undersea creatures that fit the bill.

After that it was a matter of cramming the deck with as much ramp as possible, plus some counterspells to protect my dudes. The deck is honestly a little light on card draw, but I guess you can take out Inundate for Blue Sun's Zenith.

So sometimes you can ramp out into a back breaking fattie early and just crush people, and other times you sit there twiddling your thumbs as people ping away at you and you wait for that 8th source of mana to do anything. But the deck was fun to play.

For more on the deck and the deck building process, plus videos of game play, go here: http://puremtgo.com/articles/conqueror-commander-vol-cxlix-cthulhu

Comments or suggestions, let me know!

Quote from Dutch253

Any leads on people that are posting good quality edh games in paper? Mtgo just doesn't do it for me. Topandgoproductions used to nail it but have faded away lately.

Basically Top and Go, Matt Holden, Tristan Simpson and Starcity (although they only do 1v1) are your only options at this point. They're all linked in the first post, and all of them put out high quality stuff.

I've actually heard this comment a couple of times before, and I think that the best thing is for people that want live game plays to actually start doing some and posting their own. More content is always better obviously, and there are more than a few people who want it. However the difficulty of getting quality live game play is really high, which is why you see MTGO recordings.

Thanks, I'll add it to the list in the first post!

I haven't been able to post new vids recently due to real life getting in the way, but I'm hoping to get back on it soon!

Thanks man! I did play a few more games that were better with less concessions, but unfortunately MTGO hates me and the replays weren't working. I even played against another Xenagos guy who had a deck that was very similar to mine. He took the first 4 player game, but I took the second. Unfortunately neither of those replays worked

Thanks man! It was definitely fun to play.

Article went up last week, forgot to post the list:



Lots of large fun stompy stuff and sneaking into play.

How does it do in action? Check it out here: http://puremtgo.com/articles/conqueror-commander-vol-cxlvii-xenagos-god-revels

Comments, suggestions? Let me know!

Couple quick things:

Your land count is way too low. You need to bump it up to at least 35. You're probably going to be frustrated getting stuck at 3 lands game after game. One of the cards should be Emeria, the Sky Ruin, so that you can repeatedly fling stuff.

Adarkar Valkyrie is a good card that can get you back the things you fling. Hamletback Goliath and Malignus are also dudes that can get huge and good for tossing. Also, Phyrexian Processor works really well in Brion decks since you can almost immediately get back whatever life you pay into it. Stalking Vengeance likes it when you kill off your own dudes.

I think you have a few too many Threaten effects. They don't do nearly as much if you don't have Brion or another sac outlet out there. To that effect, other sac outlets to consider include Diamond Valley, Miren, the Moaning Well, and Helm of Possession.

Just some ideas.

I think Jusstice is pretty much spot on. Pretty much you just gotta roll with the punches and play in there.

I've talked to plenty of people about setting up a "regular group" of "like minded" Commander players online, but 1) what if there are only 2 of you on when you want to play? And 2) even "like minded" people will have difference of opinion as to what is acceptable.

Sometimes you're going to play with a bunch of newbies, other times you're going to play with a bunch of sharks. Just play what you like. However if you look at my sig and think what I'm playing is fine, feel free to look me up.

I think generally indestructible is better. I think that a lot of people are still averse to 1v1 removal, which means that they don't play stuff like Swords to Plowshares. Typically people like to use Wrath of God type of effects, or Blaspehmous Act, for creature control.

Hexproof and shroud are cool and all, but I'm guessing you will get more mileage out of indestructible.

In your scenerio I'd go with the Ooze.