MTG Salvation

Yo people of mtgsalvation!
I come to you all once more to ask an opinion question: Should I change my commander?
I've been running a Chainer Dementia Master deck since I started playing EDH and I'm beginning to second guess that choice. He's expensive and hard to get going on table but he has that instant speed reanimation that I adore. I'm considering Meren of Clan Nel Toth and Karador, Ghost Chieftain as possible replacements. Obviously the benefit of moving to these guys are lowered casting cost and a higher number of cards I have access to but I lose that instant speed reanimation with either of them. I'm curious what you guys have to say! Thank you for opinions!

I think Karador is better than Meren. You can cast the creature right away, it dodges graveyard hate better, and it gives you a whole other colour.
Chainer is different.

For example, Karador wants to play a lot of small creatures. Paying 7 mana to cast Sheoldred, Whispering ONe from your graveyard is not a good deal. Meren needs to see 7 things die before reanimating Sheoldred. These commanders are best with creatures like Sakura-Tribe Elder, Spore Frog, etc, which are easy to recur and which put themselves in the graveyard.

If you are spending 3 mana with Chainer to reanimate a 3 drop, I feel like the deck would be better with Meren or Karador. But, if you are trying to reanimate big things, 3 mana to get a 7 drop is a great rate.

Sorry, but every time my Chainer deck goes up against my friend's Meren deck, his graveyard is mine and not the other way around. That, to me, is the principle asymmetric difference between them.

Anyway, Meren and Karador would be built rather differently than Chainer, if they're to be optimized. It's far more than just a swap of commander and adjusting the manabase.

Chainer for life. In seriousness, Chainer is a great commander. If you are having trouble affording his casting cost, look at your mana base. Enough rocks? Too many non-mana producing lands like Tabernacle or Homeward Path? If your problem is your stuff dies when he does, check out ways to blink your creatures. I think Sundial of the Infinite can get around his trigger, too, but I could very well be wrong. That card has weird interactions. I know it works with Zirilan's exile trigger.

Or use sacrifice outlets to make sure you can dump to your graveyard if Chainer is going to leave the battlefield. Sundial will only work on your turn, which is not when Chainer is likely to get destroyed/exiled/bounced in general, and definitely won't be with Sundial sitting on the battlefield under your control.

kingtuf — Clearly there are a lot of Chainer pilots here. As one of them I acknowledge that Chainer takes a few turns to ramp up enough to do stuff and his ability can be very demanding of resources. That does make me wonder if that setup period is "slow" relative to the rest of your meta.

Try another reanimator mono black commander Balthor the Defiled? He is really scary since the ability reanimates every black/red creature. Geth, Lord of the Vault is also a really good reanimator commander although he only targets opponents' yards.

Uh, I feel like it comes down to your preferred playstyle. Most of the above has already nailed down the differences between each, but I'll add my own tidbit. You notably like the Instant Speed reanimation of Chainer, Dementia Master, and that's something he does amazingly, with The Scarab God making a good impression (being less B intensive, same CMC as Chainer himself, discounts it's own Commander tax. BUT it exiles it's reanimation targets; you can't reuse them unless you get up to some tricky nonsense with Eldrazi Processors).

Most versions of Meren of Clan Nel Toth I've seen are pretty slow burn, but the value is real. I've seen combo and stax versions make tables miserable. I personally had the latter, until I made myself miserable with it and took it apart. I actually tried converting her into a Karador deck, but it didn't last long: Too tempted to start turning it into a combo deck.

Personally, I have the aforementioned Scarab God. If I didn't like playing Blue so much, I'd probably have built Chainer myself.

Chainer is just reanimation at it's most pure, unadulterated easiest level. It's a gamble. But mono black has access to everything you could possibly need to make it a viable, competitive deck.

Meren is a different deck, different tempo. I've played her before, and honestly found her incredibly boring. It's easy to turn her ability on, sure, but there's a lot less control over how/when your reanimations happens, there's no element of surprise, and it honestly just isn't as fun.

My $0.02

Thanks to everyone who threw out their opinions on the matter! Amazed by the number of Chainer pilots here but then again I shouldn't be. After all there's a reason I chose him as my first real general. Honestly it's hard for me to ignore the majority and change Chainer to Meren/Karador and as such I don't think I will but I would love some more opinions on my current deck list/meta.

To start I should mention that I may be considering change because several of the prominent decks I've been playing against are artifact based (a Daretti deck and Glissa deck). I acknowledge that this is a roadblock for Chainer and is most likely my reason for reconsidering him as my general. Because of this I feel like reanimation targeting someone else's graveyard has been less profitable for me and with the stax-y nature of these decks (or at the very least Glissa) I feel it's been difficult to keep Chainer on the field long enough to do something meaningful. I don't want to overhaul aspects of my deck based on the decks in my meta; I feel it silly to change the goal of a deck to "appease" the people in my playgroup but I'd still like to hear how you all handle situations like this.
As for the deck list I have it right here:


I would like to point out that this deck is definitely not optimized, contains a number of pet cards and I am currently working to make it more competitive apart from mtgsalvation. This is just the deck as it stands right now. I'll omit the cards I already plan on cutting so I can hear from all of you what you think I should do first. I will say I have a couple of events coming up that will allow me to make some major renovations to the deck so by all means tear her apart and call me a horrible deck builder. Thanks to all of you who offer advice, I really would love to hear from all your dedicated Chainer pilots out there. (Also pardon my lack of pretty formatting, I'm typing this whole response relatively quickly and don't have a load of time to separate the list into pretty categories :3 )

I would not call that a horrible deck. It'd be easier to read if it were categorized by card type or function rather than alphabetical, but I just copied it into a temporary Deckbox list to help me.

My initial thoughts and some questions:

• You only have three sacrifice outlets that are instant-speed and costless. These are usually better for abusing Chainer's ability (than using him to reanimate a Fleshbag Marauder, for example). Do you find this slows you down?
• You don't have much in the way of combos or high synergy except for Sanguine+Blood. Do you feel like you have to lean on Chainer heavily to get things done?
• You also are playing stax, essentially (Contamination, edict effects, discard). What kind of stax effects are you seeing from everyone else in your meta? If edict effects are what's making it difficult to stick Chainer, perhaps you need more tokens?
• Do you ever play Sanguine Bond or Exquisite Blood individually rather than simultaneously? If so, do either of these or Contamination seem to put a target on you?
• I can see the edict effects making Black Market better. Have you noted whether you do most of your activations and "work" in your main phases, on your turn in general, or on other player's turns?
• Are Kokusho/Gary loops or Exsanguinate your usual wins?
• Tweaking to handle your meta is normal, though!
• Considering what you said about reanimation targets being more scarce, Rise of the Dark Realms and Sepulchral Primordial might not be as valuable.

Cards I'd already recommend: #1 is Phyrexian Altar, as it goes really well with Chainer and Grave Titan/Wurmcoil Engine. Normally I'd also call out Rings of Brighthearth, but you actually don't have many activated abilities to copy here. #2 is Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed, because he's awesome.

Hey guys so I've done some adjusting to the deck list and I'd like to get some feedback but first... acknowledgment.

Quote from lyonhaert »

I would not call that a horrible deck. It'd be easier to read if it were categorized by card type or function rather than alphabetical, but I just copied it into a temporary Deckbox list to help me.

My initial thoughts and some questions:

• You only have three sacrifice outlets that are instant-speed and costless. These are usually better for abusing Chainer's ability (than using him to reanimate a Fleshbag Marauder, for example). Do you find this slows you down?
• You don't have much in the way of combos or high synergy except for Sanguine+Blood. Do you feel like you have to lean on Chainer heavily to get things done?
• You also are playing stax, essentially (Contamination, edict effects, discard). What kind of stax effects are you seeing from everyone else in your meta? If edict effects are what's making it difficult to stick Chainer, perhaps you need more tokens?
• Do you ever play Sanguine Bond or Exquisite Blood individually rather than simultaneously? If so, do either of these or Contamination seem to put a target on you?
• I can see the edict effects making Black Market better. Have you noted whether you do most of your activations and "work" in your main phases, on your turn in general, or on other player's turns?
• Are Kokusho/Gary loops or Exsanguinate your usual wins?
• Tweaking to handle your meta is normal, though!
• Considering what you said about reanimation targets being more scarce, Rise of the Dark Realms and Sepulchral Primordial might not be as valuable.

Cards I'd already recommend: #1 is Phyrexian Altar, as it goes really well with Chainer and Grave Titan/Wurmcoil Engine. Normally I'd also call out Rings of Brighthearth, but you actually don't have many activated abilities to copy here. #2 is Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed, because he's awesome.

To answer your questions:
1) You are correct. I had way too few sac outlets. The new deck list has many more.
2) Yes I have felt that without Chainer doing his thing the deck suffers greatly. I tried adding cards like Smokestack to get some synergy outside of Chainer but I feel like I'm garbage at this for some reason.
3) I'm playing a sort of stax at the moment... I actually decided to cut Grave Pact and Dictate of Erebos and I'm considering the removal of contamination right now. Smokestack definitely pushes it in the direction of stax though and if there are some other cards I can naturally fit into the deck that work with that goal I'd like to. Stax effects in my meta aren't too bad among ALL the decks but, unfortunately, the one I play against most often is heavy stax. So it's not an issue of my edict effects killing Chainer it's more my meta that does it.
4) I have played pieces of the Sanguine Bond/Exquisite Blood combo individually but honestly it's so easily disrupted that the people I play with don't see it as too much of a threat. That is why I've chosen to remove the combo from this deck entirely going into this "MK2" stage of the deck.
5) Black Market is another card I've cut from the deck. It's pretty pricey imo and I feel like the deck has been running ok without it. Plus with the addition of many more mana doublers I don't see a need for it. I'd say I do most of my work during my turn mostly because my old land base was kinda clunky and I wouldn't always have enough mana to do things on other turns. While the mana base is still kinda clunky I feel the addition of Terrain Generator helps pump out black quicker.
6) Kokusho/Gary and Rise of the Dark Realms are my usual wincons. Also Karn but that guy's crazy.
7) Tweaking is normal, yes. But this damn Glissa deck doesn't care what I do. As long as I have creatures she has fuel.
8) I am actually considering removing Sepulchral Primordial from the deck in favor of a better card but Rise of the Dark Realms I feel is just too good. Even if it only pulls stuff out of my graveyard.

Quote from ImperatorDoom »

I'd actually advocate for Sengir Autocrat over Grave Titan. With Phyrexian Altar and Aristocrat such as Blood Artist or Zulaport Cutthroat, you net positive on life and get 1 extra B mana.

Honestly did not know that card existed. Love it and it's been added to my MK2.

Alright now for that deck list...

I've done a pretty good amount of changing to the deck but I still don't feel like it's quite where I want it to be. Biggest complaint is without an early Altar of Dementia or any other form of self mill it's been difficult to get some good resurrection targets online. Obviously when I Entomb or Buried Alive some dudes I feel good going into the late game but too many times while goldfishing I get to big mana and have nothing to do with it. Any advice or help there would be much appreciated! Also I'm considering going further into the stax zone as Smokestack has proven to be great fun for me. If you guys have any recommendations based on that I would love to hear them! Again guys, thank you for any and all criticism I can get. Asking the people I usually play with for help leads to a lot non-constructive comments.

P.S. Sorry for the wall of text with no pretty cards to look at. It's 4 AM where I'm from, this is the only convenient time I get to brew stuff and I really don't feel like linking every card in this ****in NEWSPAPER of a response.

On #1 — I've seen Chainer lists with 20 creatures, I've seen Chainer lists with 28. But yeah, 32 is getting heavy.

On #2 — Agreed. Rocks and/or ramp. Because Chainer is hungry for B you'll probably want to prefer the rocks that make that versus stuff like Thran Dynamo.

On #3 — Agree 100%.

On #4 — Agree 100%. Withering Boon is a good one, too.

On #5 — I agree.

Real quick opinion question: What do you guys think of Dredge options like Golgari Thug or Stinkweed Imp as ways to get more creatures to my graveyard? Should I just leave self mill to altar of dementia and entomb/buried alive?

Quote from kingtuf »

Real quick opinion question: What do you guys think of Dredge options like Golgari Thug or Stinkweed Imp as ways to get more creatures to my graveyard? Should I just leave self mill to altar of dementia and entomb/buried alive?

No, I don't like them at all. It dumps a bunch of information (and probably cards I prefer in my hand) into the graveyard, replaces a card I could have had in my hand with something that I don't. I don't even really like using Buried Alive because getting the full three creatures can telegraph, and so too does sorcery speed unless you're going to be able to use them immediately. They pretty much aren't of any use except to dredge. At least Dakmor Salvage can be used for mana when you don't want to dredge anymore.

Dredge fits really well in some decks. It can work great in Sidisi, Brood Tyrant, and I used to run a Tasigur control/politics deck that used Life from the Loam to get its engine going (always pleasant to see Intuition in my opening hand). But I don't think it suits this one.

Milling can also draw attention. If I had to resort to milling myself I'd either want to: A. trickle it with Bloodghast+Altar of Dementia+landfall and make an appearance like I don't have anything more threatening to do (I'm just fishing); or B. if I'm prepared with a ton of mana to try and take over the board I'll mill myself (or preferably others) a lot with the biggest thing available right before my turn and reanimate an army ready to swing on my turn. Milling isn't usually something I do to myself because the deck isn't creature heavy, and I usually don't want random stuff.

I run Entomb and Corpse Connoisseur and try to save Entomb for answers. Plus it can be recurred with XHD, so I never feel like it's single-use.

What you can do instead of milling yourself is make sure your card draw is strong and selectively overdraw so that you can discard what you want in your graveyard and keep in hand what you want in your hand. Necropotence can be used to do that if it's about to be removed from the battlefield by anything that doesn't have Split Second or if you can sacrifice it. Another option is running a discard outlet to control timing, but you still need good drawing power in the deck.

Don't give your opponents information. Misdirect, misrepresent.

Also, maybe have fun messing with Glissa to alleviate the frustration. Think up silly bucket-list things to try, and make that your primary goal that game, with winning being secondary.

I'm going to second The Scarab God, you can build him in all sorts of ways and he'll be good in any of those versions.

Like Zombie tribal or mill everyone and pick what you want out of graveyards, or simply put a lot of ETB triggers in your deck and abuse those. Heck you can do some combination of all three and it'll still be good.