MTG Salvation

Everybody needs "that deck". A deck that's reasonably strong and can win games with some degree of reliability. In comparison to Patron of the Orochi and Daxos the Returned, Sheoldred, Whispering One is a powerhouse. Constant sacrifice/reanimation value on the commander, plus a game plan of board state/mana/card denial makes this a bit of a painful deck to play against. As such, it's often neglected in favour of decks which are better received, but it sits menacingly in the background for when it's needed.

You should really consider Sidisi, Undead Vizier as the general. I've said this in a few other friends, but I helped a buddy put together a Sidisi deck, very similar to this one with a lot of the cards, and it's really, really good.

The biggest issue I see with this one is that it seems like it would be kind of slow/do-nothing.

Sidisi is a cool thing to have in the 99, but I think that Sheoldred offers more impact for this style of play. It screws with the opponents more and effortlessly turns on abuse of all things morbid/exploit/ETB. Just a strong goodstuffy shell with a few tutors. Sidisi would probably turn into Ad Nauseam or infinite abuse in my hands.

So how do I combat the slow/do-nothing? There isn't all that much interesting stuff to do in black before the 3 mana mark that isn't removal. As such, I run some removal and early sac and ramp, hoping to get into the comfort zone of having decent mana to work with, but I'm aware this could use some work.

I think you're mistaken about Sidisi vs Sheoldred. Sheoldred is much better being 1 of 99. Sidisi comes down and always has an immediate impact on the board. The majority of the time you play Sheoldred she's just going to eat a removal spell before ever even doing anything, and her cost is way too prohibitive for consecutive recasts being viable.

You don't need to run a combo deck with Sidisi for her to be incredibly powerful. You play a ton of ways to ramp into her by turn 3 (Sol Ring, Mana Crypt, Mana Vault, etc), and you can start abusing her. A fantastic line of play that I've described in a few other threads is to play her, sac her to herself and let her go to the yard to go find Dawn of the Dead/Sheoldred/etc, to allow for bringing her back every turn and sacrificing to herself. Gives you a tutor every upkeep, and lets you get way, way ahead. Like I said, the Sidisi list I put together is very similar to what you already have here, with a few extra things to take advantage of Sidisi.

Well yeah. Saccing Sidisi/other exploiters to themselves is pretty obvious. It's a simple difference of design - you have one piece of the engine as the commander, I have the other. I'll keep your insight in mind if I find Sheoldred underperforming. So far I haven't. Additionally, OP describes my woes with my playgroup, I'm pretty sure having a recurrable tutor on a stick always in my command zone would piss them off more. For crying out loud, I managed to make a Tromokratis that they're moaning about. It's not even that good.

Yeah, whilst I don't NEED a combo deck, there's no real point to building a deck in a suboptimal manner. Ad Nauseam routinely kills the table turn three. It's sort of like the times when you see a Narset and the Narset's trying to do a pillow fort or superfriends or some other needless jank when the turn/combat step lock is 100x better.

This deck will probably be more like my Patron of the Orochi list, in that it seems to be reasonably close to an equilibrium right off the bat, and just some fine-tuning will be needed.



There's three separate lumps of changes - slightly tweaking the mana base, slightly tweaking the mana rocks, and slightly tweaking the business cards.

Land-wise, Arcane Lighthouse is good for stripping things of hexproof, but you know what else strips things of hexproof? Getting them sacrificed or wrathed out. It's a decent utility land, but for now it'll wait on the sidelines. Thespian's Stage is a great, versatile utility land that can double as just about anything on the field. Most often it'll double as coffers, which should come as no surprise. Speaking of coffers, Petrified Field is here for you in case of Strip Mine et al. A swamp gets nixed to even out the land count.

Rock-wise, a sage on Cockatrice enlightened me that I'm not quite as colour-hungry as I thought I was, and untap-rocks are the way to go. As such, the three 2-drop tap-rocks get swapped out for three 2-drop untap-rocks with a far greater degree of flexibility.

Business-wise, the deck felt a bit clunky. All of the goodstuff business spells went under scrutiny, and a number of the high-end cards got slashed. Archfiend of Depravity is situational and a bit winmore, Geth, Lord of the Vault is conditional and mana-hungry, Grave Betrayal is winmore at its finest, Phyrexian Delver is the most narrow of the reanimation spells and Slum Reaper follows the fate of Dictate of Erebos in being the clunkiest in his class of effects. Wayfarer's Bauble gets slid in to help with the clunkiness a bit (plus it combos with coffers, never a bad thing), Pestilence Demon does everything the archfiend wanted to do and more, Mindslicer is likely to screw your foes over quite a bit more than he'll screw over you, Augur of Skulls is an early game regenerating chump who then transforms into a repeatable Mind Rot, and Mimic Vat is just busted beyond belief.

Still tweaking bits and pieces to hit the sweet spot, I think this set of changes will help the deck out quite a bit.



The changes are roughly one-for-one, so here goes:

Augur of Skulls was supposed to be good early game stuff, a regenerating chump that could then turn into repeated discard. He is quite mana intensive to keep alive in the early game though, and you'd preferably want to devote said mana to actually progressing your game state. You know what attacking, especially in the early game, tends to usually involve? Tapping the creature. Royal Assassin is a fantastic rattlesnake card, making attacking you a risky option. There's also nothing stopping you from occasionally sticking your leg out and tripping someone up by killing some creature not coming your way either, or a mana chicken or something. Good times.

Shadowborn Demon is a relict from a time when I didn't really understand the exact mechanics of Sheoldred's ways, and thought I could sac him off first and immediately bring him back to dome another creature. Nope, it's every other turn, unless you get a sac effect going. As such, tossing in one extra mana and slotting in Visara the Dreadful, a card I really wanted to make room for for a while now. I've loved Avatar of Woe every single time it came out, in spite of never getting the reduction, so she's going to fit right in. This deck's in for a bit more of a long haul, and this offers better value.

Speaking of better value, what's better than paying 2 life and mana for a card? Paying 1 life and no mana for a card. Necropotence replaces Greed and Erebos, God of the Dead. I was never particularly psyched to see either of them, there was one game where Greed helped me dig really deep and get things done, but on the whole I think that this is going to be a stronger choice. Lowers the cost a bit, too! The other opened up slot went to Mind Slash - nothing like targeted hand attack and a sac outlet rolled into one. This was Sadistic Hypnotist for a while, due to the ease of recursion, but the lowered casting cost, targeted nature and wonderful symmetry with Attrition satisfied my slight OCD more.

Kokusho, the Evening Star is just plain stupid, especially given the slight increase in sac outlets and potential need for mad life with Necropotence. Is Gary better? Yes. Gary is better, in just about every way. But having a second copy of a similar effect, especially with a general that makes recurring said copy a breeze, seems like a good idea. In Kokusho's very first game, an opponent was forced to -6 a pristine Ugin, ironically enough kingmaking me a bit in the process. Oh yes. Needed to make room, so cut Dance of the Dead, which felt like one of the weaker cards left in the 99.

And now, for what may actually be the most glaring omission in this list - Skullclamp. This thing synergises with just about every single thing in the deck. Setting up a Burnished Hart force-sac in an opponent's turn with Butcher of Malakir? Put on the 'clamp to get some cards out of it too. Need to leave a guy for a possibly disadvantageous blocking scenario? Slap on the 'clamp and the potential of drawing cards if you chump may just keep people off your backs. Reassembling Skeleton turns into Divination on a stick. Got a body you don't exactly need, a Fleshbag Marauder variant on hand and need some cards? Put on the 'clamp on the expendable, sac it off with the marauder, and then 'clamp the marauder! Four cards! Mad value! Wow! *winks* I could go on, it also turns Sheoldred into a three turn clock. What doesn't this do really? Needed to make room, Ambition's Cost got offed as the most mediocre of the remaining draw choices. Stuck somewhere in limbo between Night's Whisper and Promise of Power, not as good as either. Plus hey, having SOME draw in the list that doesn't involve me paying life sounds like a good time.

Mini-tweak season is now officially open.



Whilst Reaper from the Abyss is a fantastic card and a lovely design, the board state window where he gets to properly spread his wings is surprisingly minute. There have been times where he actively hindered my own board state. With the influx of targeted creature destruction in the recent updates, a more reliable source of havoc comes in Steel Hellkite. A neat mana sink in its firebreathing, likely to connect thanks to all the saccing/destruction going on, and the second ability is wonderfully flexible removal. A way to deal with enchantments that isn't a one-shot, on the potentially third fattest body in the deck. What can possibly go wrong?

great list. quite similar to my sheoldred deck

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/29-03-15-sheoldred/

Got to say I enjoyed that list, I just forgot to reply to the thread. Inspired by it, I ran a little experiment where I went even more goodstuff heavy to see how that would work, it turned out a bit clunky and I didn't have the patience to doctor it into shape. Went back to the prior version, which now got another set of mini-tweaks.



Why the hell would I swap pact for dictate? Simple - flash. People don't know it's there, people do stupid stuff like run a fat creature into my obviously disposable blocker. And then suddenly it appears. I drew it in the first game after the change, and the fact it was hidden and I could sneak it in at the most beneficial time probably won me the game.

As for the latter swap... there's a lot of removal in the list already, even in the form of the commander. It became a toss-up between Malicious Affliction and Shriekmaw for the cut, and a number of contenders for the slot. After disqualifying some expensive goodstuff synergistic creatures, I settled on Soldevi Adnate - ramp when needed, recycling of ETB triggers/instantly triggering pact sacrifices when needed. Unsurprisingly, all of the creatures in the deck are artifacts or black. Plus hey, another fun level of synergy from exploiters and Reassembling Skeleton. Also, the Shriekmaw synergy, albeit tiny, is another chunk of incremental interaction value, so it made sense to keep it and chuck the instant.

I know at some point I was mulling over some other changes, I remember Avatar of Woe was on the chopping block, but I can't for the life of me recall what I was going to put in. If I do recall, I will probably make the change. As is, I'm quite happy with the effect she offers.

I would highly recommend It that Betrays. Sure, it's mana cost is steep, but with so much forced-sac going on, you'll end up with a lot of creatures. Gate to Phyrexia is great for destroying artifacts that might ruin your day, like Torpor Orb or Grafdigger's Cage.

I'd rather run Grave Betrayal, which costs less and steals creatures far more efficiently. Still, I'm currently not running that as it felt heavily winmore in early builds. The eldrazi has the benefit of occasional early reanimation shenanigans, but it's usually far, far more back-breaking for the table to sneak in something like Pestilence Demon (or Nirkana Revenant to speed things up a notch, bam!).

True, Gate to Phyrexia is a solid choice. My current "hit things black shouldn't hit" removal suite includes Karn, Silver Golem, Steel Hellkite and Unstable Obelisk. You'd be surprised how little either of the hate cards you brought up harsh this deck's mellow. Heck, this deck doesn't give much of a crap about Rest in Peace either. The main thing is that I get to build up a board state whilst the opponents have to constantly sacrifice, and even if I don't get to have the upkeep return or a trigger gets nerfed I come out ahead. Torpor Orb would have been problematic to some heavily commander-reliant trigger-happy builds, but since then I've shifted off a bit to a more value-centric approach.

You wanna know what really harshes this deck's mellow though? Dedicated reanimation strategies. Chainer, Dementia Master and Geth, Lord of the Vault are both kingmakered to hell and back by how this deck operates, and there's not all that much I can do to stop them.

A quick flip in the mana rock department - Jet Medallion comes in earlier and is likely to provide more value over the course of a game when compared to Coalition Relic. I drew the medallion in the first game after putting it in, and it performed wonderfully, helping me power out a massive board state while drawing 4+ cards a turn. True, it doesn't help much when it comes to making ramp chains happen, as the vast majority of the ramp is artifact, but this turned out to be somewhat secondary.

Mana Vault is fantastic for explosive plays out of nowhere, helping land Sheoldred way ahead of her time and potentially really harshing the rest of the table's mellow. Fellwar Stone was the most unremarkable of the mana rocks remaining in the list, so it got the axe. I'm actually surprised why I didn't have the vault in earlier - I run it in my red and blue lists already.

The deck's been in a nitpicking/fine-tuning phase for a while now, and every now and then I look at the 99 and ponder what the weakest links are. Gisa's synergy as a sac outlet dropping bodies isn't really that hugely relevant - most of the things that would allow you to go wide are things you'd like to keep around, and the Christmas land end of turn Nirkana Revenant multiplication just doesn't tend to happen, leaving Gisa as a 3/4 body for 5 that doesn't really do anything baffling. Cue Helm of Possession - you can never have too many ways to wrench an opponent's plays on their turn, and this doubles as a vanilla sac outlet when not stealing things. Plus hey, sometimes just "borrowing" the creature in the middle of a turn is sufficient - just untap it in your untap step and give them the thing back so they can sac it in their upkeep. This is of particular relevance when staring down hasty beaters, think Xenagos, God of Revels decks... no clue whatsoever why I might have considered this in my design, it's not like everybody who I've ever met has a Xenagos deck, is it...

Also, what's better than drawing a card and losing a life on a 5 mana body? As in usually better? Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed. Becomes incredibly stupid with the commander out as you can repeatedly recur whatever utility spells you need, holding up a Hero's Downfall always and forever to further disincentivise people doing things, sneaking in that Contamination lock again that got noped, recurring Vampiric Tutor in your upkeep, you know, just value things. True, him being absolutely stupid does rely on Sheoldred, as mentioned, but even without her he can get some stuff done. I got him online in the three games after I put him in, and he felt like the stupidest card I ever played with. Solid gold. I'll have to stomach a foil in my deck, but I think it's worth it for what this bugger does.

Some more tweaks!



This one's been mulling in the back of my head for a few days. Thanks to insightful feedback from MrCoupon, I realised I'm running a bit too much spot removal (especially as the board tends to get cleaned up very quickly and stays that way) and not quite enough draw. Murder and Tragic Slip merged into Withering Boon - stops ETB ugliness, deals with all sorts of disgusting things like Sigarda. Some of the obnoxious things that Tragic Slip was good at disposing of can now become "borrowed" with Helm of Possession, so that helps too.

That opened up a bit of room to improve the draw suite. I'm still not partial of Ancient Craving and Ambition's Cost, but I was short of Sign in Blood and Promise of Power, with both being reputable and solid draw power. Sliced out Graveborn Muse to make room, dropping my creature count to 24, which my OCD didn't like. On top of that, the recent changes pushed the list even further down suicide black lane, and at some point you have to say enough's enough. When does Promise of Power shine? Mid to late game, when you have an empty grip, but probably some bodies you can spare. What's better than losing life? Gaining life, so you can pay for all the other life loss. At the low cost of a body (something's bound to be at least somewhat disposable), Disciple of Bolas gains life, draws cards, is perfectly clampable or sits around as a chump, and brings up the creature count to 25 Sure, there can be cases when I don't have disposable bodies, but then I'm probably reasonably toast anyway.

Took the deck out for a walk in an online simulation of my favourite paper meta, it wasn't pretty. Actually I got absolutely freaking screwed on draws in both games and still managed to stabilise in one of them and win and I'd have probably stabilised in the other one had I not gotten greedy with a clamped Burnished Hart. So I guess it wasn't as bad as it felt. Still, the balls-to-the-wall aggro player did a fine job of showing me that my early game is still a bit imperfect. Tweak time!



Disciple of Bolas is lovely, but is also quite late game'y. Graveborn Muse has been a fantastic way to get over that awkward early/mid-game hump, so it's callback season! It's not the best thing in the 99, but it's a body and it draws cards, so can't complain too much.

Withering Boon didn't even get drawn, but I'm doing away with it because reasons. The reasons being that EDHD kicked in and I swapped it out for Moriok Replica as the Burnished Hart of black card draw. Then I cut that for No Mercy as a fantastic pillow fort card to help me survive the early game a bit. Hey, you know what's better than soaking up a hit and costing 4 mana? Ophiomancer. True, it only gets rid of one attacker per turn and gets hosed by evasion and indestructibility. But it costs one mana less, comes back from the dead with Sheoldred value land, and the tokens combo like crazy with everything: Contamination, Skullclamp, Attrition (add Karn, Silver Golem for bonus ducks), Mind Slash, Pestilence Demon + Grave Pact variants, Helm of Possession... yeah. Just value, huge value. In it goes. I need to find a 1/1 black deathtouch snake, which apparently doesn't exist. Bugger! No Mercy is totally on my radar though (as it has been previously, but now moreso). I might try to find a slot for it.

I'm a bit distraught that I'm down to running three instants, with only one of them being a kill spell, but what can you do. A lot of my creature destruction ability comes from value on permanents on the board - Sheoldred saccing, Visara the Dreadful turning sideways, Attrition firing bullets, Pestilence Demon cleanup and so on and so forth. If I miss the instant single-target kill spells (Murder, Tragic Slip), I can try to work them back in somehow.

Have you thought about Skinrender? It works well with Shoeldred and can get rid of indestructible shenanigans and beat persist problems (Glen Elendra Archmage, Puppeteer Clique). Although, with Pact effects you can circumvent Indo stuff.

That's an interesting suggestion, and it does get around persist shenanigans quite nicely. Unfortunately, it only dumps three counters on the target, which probably won't be enough to get rid of a proper EDH-sized threat. I've got Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief to do similar business (albeit without the persist hosing), and the deck is really good at sacrifice attrition - just look at Sheoldred, Whispering One herself. It's not uncommon for me to be the only guy with a proper board, hence an attempt at shifting away some of the card slots dedicated to further creature disruption into other things.

Fair point. Have you thought about Black Market at all? It seems like it would get pretty high after a full circle around the table. When Sheoldred is out of course.

Black Market's a card that I've had in orbit for a while, and the problem is that it's too slow for what the deck sets out to do. At 5 mana, ramp should offer immediate value to help get Sheoldred out ASAP (think Gilded Lotus - you cast this thing, you have 3 mana back to work with immediately and a guaranteed Sheoldred cast next turn). The deck is quite mana hungry, but by the time Black Market comes down and charges up you're more-less in cruise control. I really like the card, though, and might find a home for it some day.

Yeah, a buddy of mine runs it pretty well in a Karador deck, usually it gets one big mana dump before being removed. In most cases, cards that have that "at the beginning of upkeep" text get dealt with if the effect is good in any way. I've always been a fan of Gilded Lotus just because non-ramp colours(anything that isn't green) it is definitely needed.

It all depends on how mana hungry you are, really. I wouldn't cram it everywhere on principle, but this deck has a 7-drop commander and the 99 itself can burn through just about any amount of mana you throw at it.

Immediately after putting Ophiomancer in, I drew a starting hand of Skullclamp, Demonic Tutor, Contamination and four swamps. Needless to say, snap keep. The game got stupid really fast. It's a pity the snakes don't reach, but the card is still unbelievable amounts of value even without it. Since then, Ophiomancer shined in a few more test games, with the funniest value application so far being as a buffer against a fellow black player's Grave Pact (needless to say, he was saccing from Sheoldred). I feel awkward with only having three instants in the deck, and I do miss my olden time instant speed removal, but this dude is worth it. In fact, his smashing success has me considering finding room for Vampire Nighthawk. There's also No Mercy in the queue, and only so much room I should be devoting to this sort of stuff (probably less than I'm devoting at the moment, actually). Maybe lose Royal Assassin? But he's such value too...

I'm toying with the idea of turning this into a primer. My Patron of the Orochi thread is more less a ghost town, but this has broader goodstuff applications. The deck's main strength is that it offers a balanced game without going overly all in on any particular aspect, and as such doesn't get annihilated by any single dedicated piece of hate. It may get hosed by dedicated reanimator decks feeding off all the creature death, but unlike those builds it doesn't get wrenched anywhere near as bad by a Rest in Peace.

Yeah Royal Assassin is an odd card. I'm not huge on the tapped requirement of the creature's. He seems redundant next to Avatar of Woe, which I think, is a better utility destroy outlet.

Contamination seems pretty nut bars in this deck. Nice soft lock, seems hard to get around, unless they're running mana dorks and green stuff lol.

There's one crucial bit of difference between the two, and that difference is the CMC. Setting down a turn 2-3 Royal Assassin serves as a fantastic attack deterrent, and the bugger also scales decently into the late game as most creature based activity does involve tapping. Had a few games with him recently where he reminded me why I put him in. He actually baited a Swords to Plowshares.

Contamination is the freaking nuts, yes. Absolutely disgusting card, I love it to bits. Note the natural synergy with Sheoldred, assuming you have anything in your 'yard - true, you won't be rebuilding your board state, but you can effortlessly keep everybody off most of their functionality. Reassembling Skeleton and Ophiomancer allow for stupid premature locks though. Who doesn't love those?

I think that the recent perceived dip in performance stemmed from some poor draws on my end coupled with some great draws on my opponents' end. An increase in sample size shows all is well. Still, I noticed I'm not getting enough mileage out of Victimize, as it wants to come down in the mid-late game, and the 3 CMC isn't a hugely influential thing by then. I'm likely to have 8 mana available by then. As such, a curve-bumping change, but in fact not much of a hinderance to how the deck plays.



Multiple sources advocate Myojin of Night's Reach all over this board. Seemed a bit excessive with all the mana needed to make it work, especially with Mindslicer doing decent lifting for half the cost. Put him in for a test run. Promptly god handed with Myojin, Soldevi Adnate and Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed. Needless to say, the opposition was not amused, and the game was over promptly. Drew him a few times since then, always absolutely game-warping. Who'd have thought that actually keeping your hand would matter?

Also, Sigarda, Host of Herons made her appearance in the meta, tipping the hexproof/shroud scales into "need to deal with this" territory. There's only eight ways of targeting creatures in the deck at this point, but it'd be nice to be able to aim them at the Sigarda or whatever other Xenagodded Siege Behemoth happens. As such, Arcane Lighthouse makes its triumphant return in place of a swamp. Hopefully the mana base can take one more for the team here.

Heh. I built a Ghoulcaller Gisa list based around the same line of thought. Play a goodstuff list that can also swarm quickly if the option is there. However, I play multiple sub-themes. I do not contribute many cards purely to the "plan A" of generating a ton of zombies in a single activation, mostly because if you're dropping an Army of the Damned per activation you don't need a huge amount of help to be threatening. I supplement it by carrying a sacrifice theme with fodder that can self-recur and my beef I prefer to have evasion when possible. The reason for this is because the theme that unites all of mine are equipment pieces like Lashwrithe, Bonehoard, and Nightmare Lash. They give me the option to make metric tons of zombies or just suit up an evader and start hitting people.

And then the plan C is drain everyone with Gary/Koko.

I actually try not to play broken tutors or necro, because like your meta, they hate me for big plays, but mostly for the "I have a boardstate that will start killing everyone in short order" plays. I could optimize the list further but I'm gonna hold off of it for quite a while.