Introduction Dralnu, Lich Lord is primarily a combo deck. The first part of the combo involves dumping a significant portion of our library into the graveyard. Then we proceed to reanimate all our creatures and play as many spells as we wish from the yard to secure the win on that turn. The enabler that ties the two parts together is none other than Dralnu's ability to flashback instants and sorceries. The deck also runs an extensive Necrotic Ooze package which benefits from flipping the deck as well.
The Flips
The core of the build involves self-milling a large portion or even the entire library into the graveyard to fuel the many shenanigans available. This can be achieved through cards such as Morality Shift, Traumatize and Tunnel Vision. Mirror-Mad Phantasm paired with a clone effect or Necrotic Ooze when in the GY can also self-mill the entire library. At worst there are the traditional options of using standard mill spells and wheel effects like Jace's Archivist These are the cards you want to be looking for in your starting hand, and dont be afraid to mulligan aggressively to find something viable. Starting with 4 cards isn't a big deal when you're about to gain access to every card in your library in short order.
The Lib
The graveyard(which is pretty much your entire library at this point) is where you are gonna find your fun toys to play with. But before we can play with them, we need an enabler. And who better than Lord Dralnu himself to start the chain of craziness?
Flashback Yawgmoth's Will and gain access to every card in the yard. Play Songs of the Damned to generate 20+ mana. Rise of the Dark Realms to get every creature from every yard onto the board...under your control! Why stop there, play Akroma's Memorial for some sweet hasteeyness and swing for victory.
Not enough punch? Play Amulet of Vigor and Empty the Pits to exile the remainder of your yard and generate a horde of untapped zombies ready to bite into some juicy player brains.
Not interested in combat damage? You can always use Mikaeus and Carnifex Demon to repeatedly trigger Gray Merchant of Asphodel and drain everyone at the table to death. (If this is somehow an infinite combo, do let me know so that i can remove it from the deck. I'm too dense to think it through)
We can also just leave the creatures in the yard and instead reanimateNecrotic Ooze. We now have a creature able to do just about anything including destroying or gaining control of other creatures, flashing back any instants or sorceries in the yard, generating mana, saccing creatures and even untapping itself.
Need it to be simpler? With just Phyrexian Devourer and Triskelion in the yard, you can exile any remaining cards in the library to add counters to Necrotic Ooze and remove those counters to ping anything till it dies, players included.
If all else fails, just have Laboratory Maniac out on the field and draw into your last remaining cards in the library if any.
The decklist right now is pretty bare to test the main concept of the build. As of such, there isn't any removal or much disruption in there yet, they will be added in once i've concluded whether the build is doable or not. I'll be building the deck over the coming weeks as i dismantle my Lazav to switch over to Dralnu.
As always, feedback is welcome. I'll do a proper writeup for the build once i'm confident that it works.
Got a decent primary list up. Removed some superfluous cards out which were detracting from the base function of the deck. Decided to add in a couple of mana accel creatures such as Soldevi Adnate, Basal Thrull, Blood Vassal and Deranged Assistant to speed up the deck and add additional functions to Necrotic Ooze.
The land base is still a work a progress. Whether i decide to keep Amulet of Vigor or not might influence whether i might be in favor of adding more utility cipt lands such as the scry land in the future. The ratio of islands and swamps will also have to be worked out with more experience with the deck.
I'm also debating about adding in a few removal spells like Damnation. Currently they do not seem too necessary and might even detract away from the build, but potentially not having an answer when you are in the appropriate colors of U/B could be bad as well. I'm also unsure of the 2 current counterspells in the deck. They are mainly there to protect the combo somehow, but the double U cost is unlikely to be tenable early game. I might want to replace them with 1U counter effects or even just remove them altogether.
I'm glad to see Dralnu get some more love. My list is more control/reanimator but he has a ton of combo potential. He's one of my favorite commanders and I'm surprised more people don't play him. I think people get turned off by his downside. I've found that it's not as bad as it sounds since there's so little burn in commander. However, it does look like you intend to keep Dralnu on the table so you might want some protection. I've seen some people run things like Magebane Armor and lots of sac outlets but since you're a dedicated combo list, you might not want to find room for those. I don't run Magebane, but I have had a lot of success with land-based sac outlets, specifically High Market and Phyrexian Tower. Being lands, it should be easy to find room for them and it's nice knowing you have an out if someone casts Blasphemous Act.
I'm glad to see Dralnu get some more love. My list is more control/reanimator but he has a ton of combo potential. He's one of my favorite commanders and I'm surprised more people don't play him. I think people get turned off by his downside. I've found that it's not as bad as it sounds since there's so little burn in commander. However, it does look like you intend to keep Dralnu on the table so you might want some protection. I've seen some people run things like Magebane Armor and lots of sac outlets but since you're a dedicated combo list, you might not want to find room for those. I don't run Magebane, but I have had a lot of success with land-based sac outlets, specifically High Market and Phyrexian Tower. Being lands, it should be easy to find room for them and it's nice knowing you have an out if someone casts Blasphemous Act.
I'm not thinking much about protection nor disruption at the moment. I'll need to square away the main focus of the deck before i sweat at the smaller stuff. The downside dosen't seem too bad in all honesty. Saccing 1-4 permanents to some random burn every few games dosen't seem like the end of the world. More often than not i'll be happy to sac Dralnu himself so that i can abuse his ability with Necrotic Ooze instead without any downside. Dralnu is usually played the turn before i combo off, so the window of opportunity to take advantage of his downside is fairly limited. And on the off chance that someone gets a Blasphemous Act out when i have Dralnu on the board without counterspell support, it seems like a genuinely fun moment at the EDH table that i shouldn't be shying against. I'll consider some protection if the downside becomes a bigger issue than i'm anticipating.
The land suggestions are solid. I'll keep them in mind for when i start to tweak the mana base.
I feel a little silly that I didn't even think about Necrotic Ooze gaining Dralnu's ability...
But yeah, I agree with all of those sentiments on the downside. That's why the only protection (aside from counterspells) in my list are those two lands. It's just not worth finding room for things like Magebane Armor. And though my list is not a dedicated combo, I'm the same way in that Dralnu is a late game finisher. The only time I play him is when I'm ready to bring the game to a close, or if I need some utility from my graveyard and have some very easy protection on board.
Ah yeah, Necrotic Ooze is just an all-round amazing card. I've been looking for a home for this card for a really long time, but simply couldn't fit it into any of my other decks and that was a big part of the reason for creating a Dralnu build. It so happens to have excellent synergy with Dralnu and Morality Shift which were the initial brainstorming point for the eventual deck. Necrotic Ooze also has the potential to be possibly the most obscene non-infinite combos in EDH.
Turn 1:
Land -> Dark Ritual -> Sol Ring -> Buried Alive (Necrotic Ooze/Phyrexian Devourer/Triskelion) -> Reanimate the Ooze
Ooze gets the Phyrexian Devourer's ability to exile cards from the library to add +1/+1 counters equal to each card's cmc to itself with no downside.
Triskelion allows it to remove those counters to for 1 damage per +1/+1 counter. With the decks avg cmc of 3.77, that comes out to a potential total damage of over 350+ damage.
I'm not sure if your list is able to support it, but it certainly gets my recommendation. Even excluding the combo, it oozes of fun with all the quirky activation effects you can find in U/B.
This is the list I'm currently running. As that post says, it started (and still is, for the most part) mostly a control list with just a little bit of reanimator. But I'm slowly realizing the efficiency of the reanimator side of things, so I think as I tweak the deck I'm going to focus more on that. You're right that Necrotic Ooze has so much potential. I might try to find room for him (and other pieces to abuse him). At the very least, I'm looking to add Jin-Gitaxias, and I'm also testing Void Winnower in place of Newlamog.
Just looked through the EMN Spoilers.
Only one card seems like it could be decent in the deck as it is currently.
Curious Homunculus/Voracious Reader: Early on it could function as a mana accel card specific to instants/sorceries. If we flip if before the combo finish, it could possibly save us quite abit of mana on the blowout turn as well. I'm gonna just keep it in mind whenever i draw one of the other mana accel creatures to see if this could be a better fit.
1 Dralnu, Lich Lord
Creatures - 34
1 Mirror-Mad Phantasm
1 Necrotic Ooze
1 Phyrexian Devourer
1 Triskelion
1 Disciple of the Ring
1 Laboratory Maniac
1 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
1 Phyrexian Metamorph
1 Phantasmal Image
1 Cloud of Faeries
1 Great Whale
1 Snapcaster Mage
1 Avatar of Woe
1 Chainer, Dementia Master
1 Erebos, God of the Dead
1 Mogis's Marauder
1 Dimir House Guard
1 Grimgrin, Corpse-Born
1 Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon
1 Cinderhaze Wretch
1 Infernal Denizen
1 Havengul Lich
1 Abhorrent Overlord
1 Phenax, God of Deception
1 Jace's Archivist
1 Soldevi Adnate
1 Su-Chi
1 Cathodion
1 Basal Thrull
1 Blood Vassal
1 Priest of Gix
1 Deranged Assistant
1 Carnifex Demon
1 Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
1 Amulet of Vigor
1 Akroma's Memorial
1 Sol Ring
1 Expedition Map
1 Wayfarer's Bauble
1 Dimir Signet
1 Talisman of Dominance
Instants and Sorceries - 24
1 Traumatize
1 Morality Shift
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Songs of the Damned
1 Empty the Pits
1 Living Death
1 Twilight's Call
1 Rise of the Dark Realms
1 Entomb
1 Buried Alive
1 Increasing Ambition
1 Increasing Confusion
1 Tunnel Vision
1 Frantic Search
1 Intuition
1 Dread Summons
1 Windfall
1 Reanimate
1 Dark Ritual
1 Cabal Ritual
1 Counterspell
1 Mana Drain
1 Turnabout
1 Bubbling Muck
1 Crypt of Agadeem
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Watery Grave
1 Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
1 Choked Estuary
1 Polluted Delta
1 Dimir Aqueduct
1 Darkslick Shores
1 Tolaria West
1 Minamo, School at Water's Edge
1 Command Tower
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Shizo, Death's Storehouse
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Volrath's Stronghold
10 Swamp
9 Island
Introduction
Dralnu, Lich Lord is primarily a combo deck. The first part of the combo involves dumping a significant portion of our library into the graveyard. Then we proceed to reanimate all our creatures and play as many spells as we wish from the yard to secure the win on that turn. The enabler that ties the two parts together is none other than Dralnu's ability to flashback instants and sorceries. The deck also runs an extensive Necrotic Ooze package which benefits from flipping the deck as well.
The Flips
The core of the build involves self-milling a large portion or even the entire library into the graveyard to fuel the many shenanigans available. This can be achieved through cards such as Morality Shift, Traumatize and Tunnel Vision. Mirror-Mad Phantasm paired with a clone effect or Necrotic Ooze when in the GY can also self-mill the entire library. At worst there are the traditional options of using standard mill spells and wheel effects like Jace's Archivist These are the cards you want to be looking for in your starting hand, and dont be afraid to mulligan aggressively to find something viable. Starting with 4 cards isn't a big deal when you're about to gain access to every card in your library in short order.
The Lib
The graveyard(which is pretty much your entire library at this point) is where you are gonna find your fun toys to play with. But before we can play with them, we need an enabler. And who better than Lord Dralnu himself to start the chain of craziness?
Flashback Yawgmoth's Will and gain access to every card in the yard. Play Songs of the Damned to generate 20+ mana. Rise of the Dark Realms to get every creature from every yard onto the board...under your control! Why stop there, play Akroma's Memorial for some sweet hasteeyness and swing for victory.
Not enough punch? Play Amulet of Vigor and Empty the Pits to exile the remainder of your yard and generate a horde of untapped zombies ready to bite into some juicy player brains.
Not interested in combat damage? You can always use Mikaeus and Carnifex Demon to repeatedly trigger Gray Merchant of Asphodel and drain everyone at the table to death. (If this is somehow an infinite combo, do let me know so that i can remove it from the deck. I'm too dense to think it through)
We can also just leave the creatures in the yard and instead reanimate Necrotic Ooze. We now have a creature able to do just about anything including destroying or gaining control of other creatures, flashing back any instants or sorceries in the yard, generating mana, saccing creatures and even untapping itself.
Need it to be simpler? With just Phyrexian Devourer and Triskelion in the yard, you can exile any remaining cards in the library to add counters to Necrotic Ooze and remove those counters to ping anything till it dies, players included.
If all else fails, just have Laboratory Maniac out on the field and draw into your last remaining cards in the library if any.
The decklist right now is pretty bare to test the main concept of the build. As of such, there isn't any removal or much disruption in there yet, they will be added in once i've concluded whether the build is doable or not. I'll be building the deck over the coming weeks as i dismantle my Lazav to switch over to Dralnu.
As always, feedback is welcome. I'll do a proper writeup for the build once i'm confident that it works.
Blood Celebrant
Dark Petition
Skirge Familiar
Exsanguinate
Norin the Wary (BRB) R
Blind Seer (Hose Everything) U
Mishra, Artificer Prodigy (Double Dipping) UBR
Borborygmos Enraged (Crush Mountains, Eat Forests) GR
Kresh the Bloodbraided (Get Wild) GRB
Derevi, Empyrial Tactician (Test Your Math) WUR
Toshiro Umezawa (Instant Reanimation) B
Dralnu, Lich Lord (Mill then Will) UB
Rakdos the Defiler (Death at any Cost) BR
Iwamori of the Open Fist (Wheel and Deal) G
Crovax, Ascendant Hero (Balancing Eggs) W
The land base is still a work a progress. Whether i decide to keep Amulet of Vigor or not might influence whether i might be in favor of adding more utility cipt lands such as the scry land in the future. The ratio of islands and swamps will also have to be worked out with more experience with the deck.
I'm also debating about adding in a few removal spells like Damnation. Currently they do not seem too necessary and might even detract away from the build, but potentially not having an answer when you are in the appropriate colors of U/B could be bad as well. I'm also unsure of the 2 current counterspells in the deck. They are mainly there to protect the combo somehow, but the double U cost is unlikely to be tenable early game. I might want to replace them with 1U counter effects or even just remove them altogether.
Norin the Wary (BRB) R
Blind Seer (Hose Everything) U
Mishra, Artificer Prodigy (Double Dipping) UBR
Borborygmos Enraged (Crush Mountains, Eat Forests) GR
Kresh the Bloodbraided (Get Wild) GRB
Derevi, Empyrial Tactician (Test Your Math) WUR
Toshiro Umezawa (Instant Reanimation) B
Dralnu, Lich Lord (Mill then Will) UB
Rakdos the Defiler (Death at any Cost) BR
Iwamori of the Open Fist (Wheel and Deal) G
Crovax, Ascendant Hero (Balancing Eggs) W
[Primer] Dralnu Control/Reanimator BU
[Primer] Jolrael, Empress of Beasts GG
Nath Stax BG | Borborygmos Enraged RG | Ladies of Magic UGW | Aminatou Control UWB | Enduring Ideal Zedruu UWR | Momir Vig Combo UG
Modern
Restore Balance RWUG
Kiki Chord RWG
I'm not thinking much about protection nor disruption at the moment. I'll need to square away the main focus of the deck before i sweat at the smaller stuff. The downside dosen't seem too bad in all honesty. Saccing 1-4 permanents to some random burn every few games dosen't seem like the end of the world. More often than not i'll be happy to sac Dralnu himself so that i can abuse his ability with Necrotic Ooze instead without any downside. Dralnu is usually played the turn before i combo off, so the window of opportunity to take advantage of his downside is fairly limited. And on the off chance that someone gets a Blasphemous Act out when i have Dralnu on the board without counterspell support, it seems like a genuinely fun moment at the EDH table that i shouldn't be shying against. I'll consider some protection if the downside becomes a bigger issue than i'm anticipating.
The land suggestions are solid. I'll keep them in mind for when i start to tweak the mana base.
Norin the Wary (BRB) R
Blind Seer (Hose Everything) U
Mishra, Artificer Prodigy (Double Dipping) UBR
Borborygmos Enraged (Crush Mountains, Eat Forests) GR
Kresh the Bloodbraided (Get Wild) GRB
Derevi, Empyrial Tactician (Test Your Math) WUR
Toshiro Umezawa (Instant Reanimation) B
Dralnu, Lich Lord (Mill then Will) UB
Rakdos the Defiler (Death at any Cost) BR
Iwamori of the Open Fist (Wheel and Deal) G
Crovax, Ascendant Hero (Balancing Eggs) W
But yeah, I agree with all of those sentiments on the downside. That's why the only protection (aside from counterspells) in my list are those two lands. It's just not worth finding room for things like Magebane Armor. And though my list is not a dedicated combo, I'm the same way in that Dralnu is a late game finisher. The only time I play him is when I'm ready to bring the game to a close, or if I need some utility from my graveyard and have some very easy protection on board.
[Primer] Dralnu Control/Reanimator BU
[Primer] Jolrael, Empress of Beasts GG
Nath Stax BG | Borborygmos Enraged RG | Ladies of Magic UGW | Aminatou Control UWB | Enduring Ideal Zedruu UWR | Momir Vig Combo UG
Modern
Restore Balance RWUG
Kiki Chord RWG
Turn 1:
Land -> Dark Ritual -> Sol Ring -> Buried Alive (Necrotic Ooze/Phyrexian Devourer/Triskelion) -> Reanimate the Ooze
Ooze gets the Phyrexian Devourer's ability to exile cards from the library to add +1/+1 counters equal to each card's cmc to itself with no downside.
Triskelion allows it to remove those counters to for 1 damage per +1/+1 counter. With the decks avg cmc of 3.77, that comes out to a potential total damage of over 350+ damage.
I'm not sure if your list is able to support it, but it certainly gets my recommendation. Even excluding the combo, it oozes of fun with all the quirky activation effects you can find in U/B.
Norin the Wary (BRB) R
Blind Seer (Hose Everything) U
Mishra, Artificer Prodigy (Double Dipping) UBR
Borborygmos Enraged (Crush Mountains, Eat Forests) GR
Kresh the Bloodbraided (Get Wild) GRB
Derevi, Empyrial Tactician (Test Your Math) WUR
Toshiro Umezawa (Instant Reanimation) B
Dralnu, Lich Lord (Mill then Will) UB
Rakdos the Defiler (Death at any Cost) BR
Iwamori of the Open Fist (Wheel and Deal) G
Crovax, Ascendant Hero (Balancing Eggs) W
[Primer] Dralnu Control/Reanimator BU
[Primer] Jolrael, Empress of Beasts GG
Nath Stax BG | Borborygmos Enraged RG | Ladies of Magic UGW | Aminatou Control UWB | Enduring Ideal Zedruu UWR | Momir Vig Combo UG
Modern
Restore Balance RWUG
Kiki Chord RWG
Only one card seems like it could be decent in the deck as it is currently.
Curious Homunculus/Voracious Reader: Early on it could function as a mana accel card specific to instants/sorceries. If we flip if before the combo finish, it could possibly save us quite abit of mana on the blowout turn as well. I'm gonna just keep it in mind whenever i draw one of the other mana accel creatures to see if this could be a better fit.
Norin the Wary (BRB) R
Blind Seer (Hose Everything) U
Mishra, Artificer Prodigy (Double Dipping) UBR
Borborygmos Enraged (Crush Mountains, Eat Forests) GR
Kresh the Bloodbraided (Get Wild) GRB
Derevi, Empyrial Tactician (Test Your Math) WUR
Toshiro Umezawa (Instant Reanimation) B
Dralnu, Lich Lord (Mill then Will) UB
Rakdos the Defiler (Death at any Cost) BR
Iwamori of the Open Fist (Wheel and Deal) G
Crovax, Ascendant Hero (Balancing Eggs) W