Hello!
For almost as long as I have been playing commander, I have been trying to make a graveyard deck. I've tinkered around with many commanders and many variants of graveyard decks, from reanimator to recursion. However, I cant ever seem to get it to work right. The decks always seem to have alot of setting up to do for very little payoff, and feels very fragile, like one bojuka bog or relic of p. shuts down the whole deck. It also feels like I get run over by any aggressive commander like animar or purphoros.
Is there maybe a card or a key piece of the strategy that I am missing? Or am I not playing the right commander? Or is this kind of the consession when playing graveyard decks? Any help is greatly appreciated.
My graveyard decks have been:
Mimeoplasm
Tasigur, the golden fang
Sedris, the traitor king
Marchesa, the black rose
Gitrog monster
Karador, ghost chieftain
The decks all play very differently, so I cannot answer your question. I have experience with several of those commanders and understand how I would build the others.
What kind of graveyard deck do you want to play? Do you want your graveyard to be part of your hand? Do you want to cheat big things into play? Do you want to focus on creatures or on other kinds of cards?
Do you want to be the aggressor or do you want to be the control player?
Do you want to combo?
Regarding graveyard hate... some decks can protect against it. For example, Aegis of the Gods and True Believer are fine inclusions in Karador. I stopped playing them though, and just made sure that my deck has redundancy and many ways to blow up a Rest in Peace. If my graveyard is exiled, it slows me down a little, but I am always ready to bounce back. I don't go all in on my graveyard.
My Marchesa deck would be hurt by Rest in Peace, but is fine with one-time exile effects. Everything comes back on my own turn usually, so I only need to worry about instant-speed graveyard hate. I have a few bounce effects to deal with RIP, but it is a tough card for Grixis to deal with. I would probably just forget about sacrificing creatures and try to beat face.
Mimeoplasm and Sedris only need a couple big creatures in the graveyard, so you should be able to come back from hate quickly. Force your opponent to blow up the Relic and go again next turn. Or, these decks have blue - you can counter the hate!
Tasigur and Gitrog can refill the graveyard pretty quickly. Gitrog should keep a fetchland available in case you need to dredge Life from the Loam in response to graveyard hate.
So yeah... maybe the way to do this is for you to better explain what you want to do with the graveyard and we can help you shore up your defenses against hate and aggro.
For almost as long as I have been playing commander, I have been trying to make a graveyard deck. I've tinkered around with many commanders and many variants of graveyard decks, from reanimator to recursion. However, I cant ever seem to get it to work right. The decks always seem to have alot of setting up to do for very little payoff, and feels very fragile, like one bojuka bog or relic of p. shuts down the whole deck. It also feels like I get run over by any aggressive commander like animar or purphoros.
Is there maybe a card or a key piece of the strategy that I am missing? Or am I not playing the right commander? Or is this kind of the consession when playing graveyard decks? Any help is greatly appreciated.
My graveyard decks have been:
Mimeoplasm
Tasigur, the golden fang
Sedris, the traitor king
Marchesa, the black rose
Gitrog monster
Karador, ghost chieftain
One of the MVPs is Siren Stormtamer, which blanks a large amount of graveyard hate.
What kind of graveyard deck do you want to play? Do you want your graveyard to be part of your hand? Do you want to cheat big things into play? Do you want to focus on creatures or on other kinds of cards?
Do you want to be the aggressor or do you want to be the control player?
Do you want to combo?
Regarding graveyard hate... some decks can protect against it. For example, Aegis of the Gods and True Believer are fine inclusions in Karador. I stopped playing them though, and just made sure that my deck has redundancy and many ways to blow up a Rest in Peace. If my graveyard is exiled, it slows me down a little, but I am always ready to bounce back. I don't go all in on my graveyard.
My Marchesa deck would be hurt by Rest in Peace, but is fine with one-time exile effects. Everything comes back on my own turn usually, so I only need to worry about instant-speed graveyard hate. I have a few bounce effects to deal with RIP, but it is a tough card for Grixis to deal with. I would probably just forget about sacrificing creatures and try to beat face.
Mimeoplasm and Sedris only need a couple big creatures in the graveyard, so you should be able to come back from hate quickly. Force your opponent to blow up the Relic and go again next turn. Or, these decks have blue - you can counter the hate!
Tasigur and Gitrog can refill the graveyard pretty quickly. Gitrog should keep a fetchland available in case you need to dredge Life from the Loam in response to graveyard hate.
So yeah... maybe the way to do this is for you to better explain what you want to do with the graveyard and we can help you shore up your defenses against hate and aggro.
8.RG Green Devotion Ramp/Combo 9.UR Draw Triggers 10.WUR Group stalling 11.WUR Voltron Spellslinger 12.WB Sacrificial Shenanigans
13.BR Creatureless Panharmonicon 14.BR Pingers and Eldrazi 15.URG Untapped Cascading
16.Reyhan, last of the Abzan's WUBG +1/+1 Counter Craziness 17.WUBRG Dragons aka Why did I make this?
Building: The Gitrog Monster lands, Glissa the Traitor stax, Muldrotha, the Gravetide Planeswalker Combo, Kydele, Chosen of Kruphix + Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa Clues, and Tribal Scarecrow Planeswalkers