I am working on a Grimgrin deck as I wanted to make a deck that won through synergy as opposed to trying to brute force my way to a win by running UB good stuff. The overall strategy is to sacrifice my creatures in a profitable manner, thus allowing me to win. Grimgrin is both a sacrifice outlet and a potentially huge beater.
One caveat to recommendations, infinite combos are forbidden in the "meta" I play within so please do not point any of them out to me as I can assure you they were probably intentionally avoided.
Cards On Chopping Block:
SOLS
SOFI
Gloomdrifter
Geth
Cards I considered but did not run:
One mana cantrips like ponder - I went with higher impact draws
Board wipe sorceries like damnation - I want asymmetry
Life Link Equipment like batterskull - I went with card advantage equipment Bloodghast - Can not be recurred more than once per turn
Black's 2 versions of fling - Ran out of room
Graveyard Hate especially withered wretch - Ran out of Room Hatred - Doesn't feel like it provides enough impact for a slot
The mana base:
7 fetches
UG Sea
Watery Grave
Tainted Isle
Phyrexian Tower
Urborg
Coffers
Vesuva
Temple
Miren
High Market
Bojuka Bog
Ruins
Stronghold
Strip
Waste
15 or so basics.
The manabase is in progress but it's nothing unusual. I have pretty much every good land for this kind of deck except for diamond valley which I passed on when it was affordable since it can't tap for mana sans urborg.
Strategy:
This deck wants to lay low during the early game and try to get a land engine up via Liliana or CoW + Fetch in order to make sure it hits all of its land drops. Ideally you appear to be a relatively uninteresting target as your deck does not necessarily do much until the synergies start to coalesce.
Mid and late game the goal is to get some of the more explosive mana effects up and running. Caged Sun (copied for profit), a Liliana Token, and Coffers-Tron help make the deck hum as it starts to flip crawler, skeleton, etc in and out of play as many times as possible each turn. This enables black market to swell up and compound your mana development and ability to fuel the engine. The goal is to either attack with a giant Grimgrin/ghoul or sacrifice your way through so many creatures that vengeful, artist, and/or vela put people into easy pick off life totals. The extra turn sorceries are intended to be game enders once the engines are up and running.
In addition, this deck can also wipe opponents out with the extremely brutal Vela + Rite of Replication or a huge Exsanguinate, there is also the ability to Rite of Replication on Massacre Wurm, which sets up 12 life lost per dead creature.
Problems:
I went relatively light on answers to crank up the redundancy. My goal is to get my recursion engines up and running as my primary defense against creature based strategies. Since I do not have to worry about infinite combos I can go light on library hate (e.g.Sadistic Sacrament) and I went relatively light on GY hate since the deck has ways to utilize opposing GYs. If I had to force in one card though it would probably be Withered Wretch. The deck also could run into issues with life totals. While there are several ways to gain life I will not know until I get some heavy testing in if I have enough. In a nutshell though this deck's biggest weakness is graveyard hate.
Alternative Strategies:
I could have made this deck more zombie-centric and gone aggro.
I could have tried for a reanimator deck.
I could have gone lighter on redundancies and ran more answers.
Where You Can Help:
I am always looking for new tech and recommendations.
I love Ashes to Ashes and Hellfire in black decks, although if you have difficulty managing your life total these might not help. Disciple of Griselbrand is a reasonable sac outlet that gains you some life.
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You would never guess, at the terrifying sight of the man, that Hunding was as charming a companion as one could wish for.
It doesn't work that way; when Gravedigger enters the battlefield, you have to choose a target for its ability before you get a chance to sacrifice it.
You may want to reconsider Batterskull, since it covers Grimgrin's drawbacks almost perfectly (a free creature and vigilance). The reasons its included in many other decks - being a recurrable beater - are secondary here.
It doesn't work that way; when Gravedigger enters the battlefield, you have to choose a target for its ability before you get a chance to sacrifice it.
You may want to reconsider Batterskull, since it covers Grimgrin's drawbacks almost perfectly (a free creature and vigilance). The reasons its included in many other decks - being a recurrable beater - are secondary here.
You make an excellent case for B-Skull too. What's a good cut? I'm actually thinking SOFI may be a better cut than SOLS. The slight boost to recursion and pro-BW may come in handy. The worst thing that SOFI could stop is Chaos Warp.
SOFI is usually just a crutch for decks that don't have very good draw to lean on, but all the good draw spells in EDH that aren't Black are Blue, so... SOLS definitely has the better protection colours, and returning a creature every turn lets you loop EtB guys.
Had a really good testing session last night.
Nim Devourer - Useless
Corpse Con - Useless
Non-Haste equipment Useless
I am going to fiddle with ~5 slots, probably add some mana artifacts or cantrips to smooth the deck out a bit. I also need to work AiD back in even though I was trying to broaden my horizons on selection.
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"I think EDH would be more fun for the majority of participants if players just showed eachother their decks rather than actually playing games out."
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One caveat to recommendations, infinite combos are forbidden in the "meta" I play within so please do not point any of them out to me as I can assure you they were probably intentionally avoided.
The General:
Grimgrin, Corpse-Born
Ramp and Explosiveness:
Card Advantage: (for me "card advantage" refers to drawing and tutoring)
Counter Suite:
Self-Reanimators:
Sacrifice Outlets:
Sacrifice Profitably:
Misc. Enablers/Enhancers:
Creature Based Removal:
Misc. Bombs:
Equipment:
Cards On Chopping Block:
SOLS
SOFI
Gloomdrifter
Geth
Cards I considered but did not run:
One mana cantrips like ponder - I went with higher impact draws
Board wipe sorceries like damnation - I want asymmetry
Life Link Equipment like batterskull - I went with card advantage equipment
Bloodghast - Can not be recurred more than once per turn
Black's 2 versions of fling - Ran out of room
Graveyard Hate especially withered wretch - Ran out of Room
Hatred - Doesn't feel like it provides enough impact for a slot
The mana base:
7 fetches
UG Sea
Watery Grave
Tainted Isle
Phyrexian Tower
Urborg
Coffers
Vesuva
Temple
Miren
High Market
Bojuka Bog
Ruins
Stronghold
Strip
Waste
15 or so basics.
The manabase is in progress but it's nothing unusual. I have pretty much every good land for this kind of deck except for diamond valley which I passed on when it was affordable since it can't tap for mana sans urborg.
Strategy:
This deck wants to lay low during the early game and try to get a land engine up via Liliana or CoW + Fetch in order to make sure it hits all of its land drops. Ideally you appear to be a relatively uninteresting target as your deck does not necessarily do much until the synergies start to coalesce.
Mid and late game the goal is to get some of the more explosive mana effects up and running. Caged Sun (copied for profit), a Liliana Token, and Coffers-Tron help make the deck hum as it starts to flip crawler, skeleton, etc in and out of play as many times as possible each turn. This enables black market to swell up and compound your mana development and ability to fuel the engine. The goal is to either attack with a giant Grimgrin/ghoul or sacrifice your way through so many creatures that vengeful, artist, and/or vela put people into easy pick off life totals. The extra turn sorceries are intended to be game enders once the engines are up and running.
In addition, this deck can also wipe opponents out with the extremely brutal Vela + Rite of Replication or a huge Exsanguinate, there is also the ability to Rite of Replication on Massacre Wurm, which sets up 12 life lost per dead creature.
Problems:
I went relatively light on answers to crank up the redundancy. My goal is to get my recursion engines up and running as my primary defense against creature based strategies. Since I do not have to worry about infinite combos I can go light on library hate (e.g.Sadistic Sacrament) and I went relatively light on GY hate since the deck has ways to utilize opposing GYs. If I had to force in one card though it would probably be Withered Wretch. The deck also could run into issues with life totals. While there are several ways to gain life I will not know until I get some heavy testing in if I have enough. In a nutshell though this deck's biggest weakness is graveyard hate.
Alternative Strategies:
I could have made this deck more zombie-centric and gone aggro.
I could have tried for a reanimator deck.
I could have gone lighter on redundancies and ran more answers.
Where You Can Help:
I am always looking for new tech and recommendations.
also if you wanted to go with more of a zombie theme, i would suggest Rooftop Storm.
Storm opens up infinite combo potential which is a taboo, otherwise I like it.
Does digger really work like that? That's amazing if so. Would delver work (albeit painfully)?
You may want to reconsider Batterskull, since it covers Grimgrin's drawbacks almost perfectly (a free creature and vigilance). The reasons its included in many other decks - being a recurrable beater - are secondary here.
On the subject of working with Grimgrin's drawbacks, both Arena of the Ancients and Minamo, School at Water's Edge line up well. You might want an Academy Ruins to go with Volrath's Stronghold, too.
Erebos B | Ghost Council WB | Grimgrin UB | Jhoira UR
Jor Kadeen RW | Melek UR | Mimeoplasm GUB | Rasputin WU
Savra BG | Sisay GW | Teneb BGW | Thada Adel U | Wort BR
I draft and play EDH. If a Standard player can't understand who a card is for, it's probably for me.
I also write things about good films.
That is what I was afraid of, thanks.
You make an excellent case for B-Skull too. What's a good cut? I'm actually thinking SOFI may be a better cut than SOLS. The slight boost to recursion and pro-BW may come in handy. The worst thing that SOFI could stop is Chaos Warp.
Erebos B | Ghost Council WB | Grimgrin UB | Jhoira UR
Jor Kadeen RW | Melek UR | Mimeoplasm GUB | Rasputin WU
Savra BG | Sisay GW | Teneb BGW | Thada Adel U | Wort BR
I draft and play EDH. If a Standard player can't understand who a card is for, it's probably for me.
I also write things about good films.
Nim Devourer - Useless
Corpse Con - Useless
Non-Haste equipment Useless
I am going to fiddle with ~5 slots, probably add some mana artifacts or cantrips to smooth the deck out a bit. I also need to work AiD back in even though I was trying to broaden my horizons on selection.