After a bit of a slump in EDH deckbuilding I discovered a Commander that does everything I ever wanted and immediately fell in love. I always liked Reanimator strategies, but the kind of decks I played in EDH usually felt more like the aristocrats variety, which i enjoy too, but not anywhere near as much.
When I discovered Chainer, Dementia Master I immediately knew he was the commander for me. I started theory-crafting and deck building and ended up with a list that looked quite a bit different from what it looks like today. It was as much fun to play as I thought and from there the deck went through a few upgrade cycles leading to this list here.
When I initially talked to one of my friends about building Chainer, Dementia Master he told my "Why don't you just play The Scarab God instead, it lets you play Blue and is much better". Initially I froze, because I thought I had made an elementary blunder, but it turns out those two decks play very very differently and Chainer is much much better suited for reanimation shenanigans. The big difference between the two is, that Chainer can reanimate the same thing more than once, which lends itself to some very powerful loops.
Anyway, lets get into the actual deck for now. I sorted the cards by role in the deck:
The deck plays in a realtively straight forward manner, we try to get impactful things into a graveyard, wether that's one of our own reanimation targets or an opponents big creature. Then we reanimate things and gain an advantage off of that. Keep in mind, that if Chainer dies, all our reanimated creatures will be exiled, unless we sac them first, which is why sac outlets are very important in this deck. We would want to play them anyway, since they enable us to spam powerful etb abilities over and over, so this isn't even that bad of a downside.
Here are some of my thoughts on the specific cards in the deck:
Skullclamp: While this deck doesn’t run all that many small creatures that can simply be turned into cards with Skullclamp, it does plan on sacreficing a lot of sligtly bigger ones. Might aswell draw some cards while we’re at it, right?
Night's Whisper: People tend to sleep on these 2 mana draw spells, they are very very good at any point in the game and never a dead draw. There’s a reason why this card finds it’s way in pretty much every black cEDH deck.
Sign in Blood: Basically Night’s Whisper with a harsher color requirements, but it can be aimed at an opponent at 2 life to kill them, so i guess that’s an upside.
Read the Bones: This costs a mana more than the other two, but it does let us scry first. Not a bad deal, but perhaps a tiny bit worse imo. Still well worth a slot.
Phyrexian Arena: My meta is pretty fast, so I consider this to be my worst draw spell. However, if landed early Phyrexian Arena still has the potential to completely take over a game basically all by itself, so I keep it around.
Necropotence: Necropotence is among the most powerful black cards ever printed. It would be a mistake not to run it. It draws us all the cards. Just be careful when discarding into exile, don’t be that one guy who exiles his reanimation target by accident…
Disciple of Bolas: This helps to offset the life loss caused by Chainer and draws us some cards at the same time. Don’t be afraid to sac a big guy to this, we can bring it right back with Chainer afterwards. Also don’t forget that this is a creature, so we can use this at instant speed from our graveyard if we need a backup sac outlet.
Demonic Tutor: It’s the best tutor in the game. Very useful to get whatever card we might need to solve an apparent problem.
Beseech the Queen: Usually I despise the mana intensive „buget“ tutor choices, but we’re playing mono black, so I think including this is justified. It can fetch many of our important engine pieces and we should never have to pay more than BBB for it. The downside is that we need to reveal the tutored card.
Dimir House Guard: A lot of important cards can be found at the 4cmc slot in this deck. Pitiless Plunderer enables combos, Sangromancer gains life, Nev Disk deals with problematic permanent types, Crypt Ghast gives us tons of mana, These 4 will be the main targets, but it can also fetch up removal in Ravenous Chupacabra if we really need that.
Sidisi, Undead Vizier: This turns Chainers ability into a Grim Tutor for as long as this is in our graveyard. If we have enough mana we can assemble an entire combo, since Sidisi can sac herself to her ability, just tob e brought back again and again.
Expedition Map: This will tutor up a Cabal Coffers 99% of the time. In that sense it’s actually one of our strongest ramp pieces in the deck.
Dark Ritual: Many people have told me that this would be bad in EDH, as it’S card disadvantage etc. etc. However, I actually decided to try it and it turns out the hivemind was wrong on this one. This card is very very good. I guess it depends on the deck and the speed of ones meta, but everytime I draw this I’m happy about a temporary mana boost.
It needs to be mentioned, that it goes particularly well with Chainers ability, as you can fake out opponents by keeping only one land untapped and then surprise reanimating.
Wayfarer's Bauble: Seems weak on paper, but it gets us an extra Swamp, which this deck really cares about. It’s also a great early play which helps speed things up a bit.
Bubbling Muck: Much like Dark Ritual this can enable big plays on early turns. However, this one is much better used late to create insane ammounts of mana out of nowhere. It goes particularly well with Yawgmoth’s Will.
Soldevi Adnate: Unfortunatley this can’t ramp you well in the eraly game. However, in the late game this can be very scary with Chainer, as we bring back a big creature, sac it to Adnate immediately and generate a ton of black mana to reanimate even more things.
Extraplanar Lens: It’s essentially a mana doubler. We lose a land on the turn we play this, but it makes up for that big time. The big advantage this has over other mana doublers ist hat it’s so cheap mana wise.
We can circumvent our opponents benefiting from this effect by playing snow-covered lands.
Bog Witch: Remember when I said Dark Ritual was great in this deck? This basically gives you one each turn.
It can also discard a reanimation target, while simultainiously providing the mana to bring it back right away.
Solemn Simulacrum: A great creature based ramp card. It gets us Swamps, which is great and can even draw us some cards.
In a slow grindy game recurring this with Chainer over and over can be a nice tactic to stay ahead on resources.
Crypt Ghast: A mana doubler on a creature, which means it can be reanimated over and over again after our opponents will inevitably try to kill this card as soon as it hits the table.
It can also gain us tiny bits of life in need, which is suprisingly useful.
Gilded Lotus: A bit expensive as a mana rock for my taste, but it does produce BBB, which goes a long way in this deck.
Caged Sun: This is another mana doubler. Unfortunately it’s not a creature, but the effect is still very strong.
Nirkana Revenant: Also a mana doubler. This one comes on a 6 mana creature, so we can simply reanimate it and play it for so much cheaper. If we have already assembeled a ton of mana, this can become a game ending threat aswell.
Viscera Seer: A free sac outlet on a creature. It even lets us scry. What’s particularly nice about this is, that we can bring it back with Chainer in times of need. The downside ist hat our opponents will have an easier time dealing with this than the rest of our sac outlets.
Altar of Dementia: A free sac outlet that mills. We can either try to mill an opponent out or mill ourselves if we’re starved for reanimation targets o rare close to casting Yawgmoth's Will.
Spawning Pit: A free sac outlet. The upside on this is negligable. Still worth it imo.
Phyrexian Altar: This is what I believe to be our best sac outlet. This deck is so starved for colored mana, that getting it in return for our creatures is actually a great deal. It also enables a few combos.
Ashnod's Altar: It makes colorless mana, wich makes it significantly worse than Phyrexian Altar, overall the card is still definitly worth it though.
Reanimate: The archtype we’re playing is named after this card. It’s really really good and I see no reason not to play it. Sometimes reanimating something for just B but more life is even better than Chainer.
Try to time the use of this card right for backbreaking effect.
Myr Retriever: Chainer gets us back all the creatures we’ll ever need, but this allows us to replay our crucial artifacts from the grave. Very very useful. Also since it’s a creature, we can reuse this effect with Chainer.
Yawgmoth's Will: Probably the single best black card ever printed. Timed right, this just wins the game on the spot. Sometimes we can also simply use it as a value card to get things back from the grave.
Bloodchief Ascension: A card with a reputation, but it’s one oft he best ways to gain life in mono black and this deck uses up its life total very quickly.
Blood Artist: Gains us life and enables a few combos
Exsanguinate: In mono black we can create quite the amount of mana. These spells are known to end games, so they can serve as additionaly wincons. Sometimes casting a smaller Exsanguinate just to gain life can be the right decision too.
Sangromancer: This has the potential to gain us a ton of life, which is very nice in a deck that uses it up like ours. Very strong in combination with Mindslicer and Boardclears.
Gray Merchant of Asphodel: Big drain effect for the whole table. If this is recurred enough times, we win eventually.
Kokusho, the Evening Star: Big drain effect fort he whole table. Not reliant on devotion, wins if recurred often enough.
Entomb: One of the strongest cards in the deck. This allows us to get whatever creature we need into our graveyard to bring it back right away.
Altar of the Brood: Even if we run a lot of desirable ranimation targets ourselves, taking over smoe big threat from an opponents graveyard goes a long way. Especially creatures with etb effects that can’t be found in mono black are nice.
Mindcrank: Another way to get our opponents to put juicy reanimation targets in their graveyards. This can also go infinite with Bloodchief Ascension.
Buried Alive: Much like Entomb this fills our graveyard with whatever creatures we want. While more expensive mana wise, this can help assemble combos very very quickly.
Mindslicer: Won’t create any new friends, but it can stop deckst hat go out of control and draw 10000 cards. It can also be used at instant speed with Chainer and a sac outlet to get rid of all hands when an opponent just tutored for a combo piece.
Corpse Connoisseur: A high casting cost, but he gets us specific things into the graveyard. Don’t underestimate the fact that with BBBBBB we can reanimate this guy and any card from our deck right after throwing it in the bin with his etb effect. This gets even cheaper with Rings of Brighthearth out.
Phyrexian Revoker: A Pithing Needle on a stick. I like this card quite a bit in the deck, because we can bring this back from our graveyard at instant speed to react to whatever threat needs tob e stopped right now.
Later on if a bigger threat is made apparent, we can sacrifice this to one of our sac outlets and bring it back naming the new thing we want answered.
Withering Boon: Since black removal is actually somewhat lackluster in EDH, I really like running this as an answer to creatures. It gets rid of things before they resolve, which can be very relevant at times.
This can also be searched up in response to a creature on the stack by reanimating a Sidisi, so keep that in mind.
Imp's Mischief: The 2nd one of our oh so great black counterspells. This will mostly be used to protect Chainer from removal, but sometimes you can sieze the opportunity do do other hilarious stuff with this card.
Just like Withering Boon this can be searched up in need by reanimating a Sidisi with Chainer while the target spell is on the stack.
Sudden Spoiling: A very useful card to interrupt big attacks or to stop other problematic boardstates for a turn. This gets an added bonus inthe deck due to it’s syngery with Massacre Wurm.
Plaguecrafter: A very powerful way to get rid of creatures/planeswalkers if recurred over and over again.
Ravenous Chupacabra: Sometimes a certain creature needs to die. This is targeted, unconditional removal on a creature that can be recurred over and over again. Not fancy, but it gets the job done.
Meteor Golem: This can kill enchantments and artifacts. It’s also a creature, so we can repeat the effect by reanimating it. I wish we had better ways to deal with those kind of cards, but for now we’ll have to make do with this.
Toxic Deluge: Probably one of, if not the best creature boardwipe in the game. It gets arround indestructibility and has a convinient cmc.
Nevinyrral's Disk: One of our ways to deal with artifacts and enchantments. It’s unfortunate that this comes into play tapped, but it is an important piece for the deck.
Living Death: We play a Reanimator deck, our graveyard is going tob e completely filled with value and game ending threats. This is not only a boardclear, but also a wincon.
Massacre Wurm: This deals with boards full of tokens very easily. It can also kill opponents with ist 2nd ability. This also allows it to disrupt infinite sac+etb chains like Karmic Guide & Reveillark.
If you’ve never used a Massacre Wurm, try it! It’s one oft he most powerful reanimation targets we could ever hope for.
Torment of Hailfire: Just like Exsanguinate this is an additional wincon. While this can’t be used to gain life, it has the potential to cripple opponents at lowish life totals if cast for non lethal amounts.
Rings of Brighthearth: This card singlehandedly gives the deck a big power-up. It allows us to duble up on Chainers ability, whice saving us 1 mana and 3 life. It also lets us use colorless mana, which is super useful.
Pitiless Plunderer: A recurrable creature, that turns every sac outlet into a Phyrexian Altar.
Wurmcoil Engine: One oft he best creatures to clog up the board. It can also gain us life and enables an infinite loop.
Abhorrent Overlord: A big reanimation target, that can enable an infinite loop. Can also serve as a backup sac outlet if necesary.
Cabal Coffers: Insanely powerful card. This gives us all the mana we need and is the reason why we value Swamps so highly.
Cabal Stronghold: This is a much much worse version of Coffers. It's probably still worth it in mono blaack, but I'm not entirely sure on this one yet.
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth: A way to make all of our utility land produce black. This is very nice to have and makes Cabal Coffers even more insane than it already is.
Thespians Stage: It's in the deck to copy Cabal Coffers, because like i repeatedly said already, that card is insanely good.
Deserted Temple: A way to untap Coffers or Nykthos for more mana. It also can generate infinite mana with Rings of Brighthearth and one of those two lands and enough Swamps/Devotion.
Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx: If we end up with a somewhat sizable boardstate, this will usually be very much worth it and generate lots of mana for us.
Phyrexian Tower: A Sac Outlet on a land. It also produces black mana, what's not to love.
Bojuka Bog: A little bit of graveyard hate for a very small price. A super solid card that should be in every mono black deck ever. We can even fetch it up with Expedition Map in times of need.
Geier Reach Sanitarium: One of my favorite lands. It digs deeper into our deck and forces a discard on our opponents. If they discard a useful creature, that's Chainer fodder and an additional resource for us.
Buried Ruin: Artifact Recursion on a land. It's not super efficient, so I might end up replacing this with a Swamp.
Oh boy, this is right in my wheelhouse! I've had a Chainer deck for several years, and I loved it so much that I built a nearly-identical Scarab God deck in a very similar vein.
- You're definitely on the right track with using someone else's graveyard. Few things in this format are as satisfying as watching one opponent nuke another one's graveyard just to keep you from abusing it. Also, few things are as devastating as having multiple people digging up their Bojuka Bogs.
- You're also on the right track of putting lots of sac outlets in. Make sure that the cost to activate them is always zero, or as close to zero as possible so you can use it whenever and however you like.
- Do not underestimate the 3 life lost as part of the cost to activate Chainer. You will often find yourself activating him several times per turn, which adds up very quickly.
- I wouldn't run any of the Rituals. They either last for only one turn (Bubbling Muck), or you have to pay to use them every time (Bog Witch). Either way, that's not very effective.
I've noticed that the life total does go down quite rapidly during my testing. I do run quite a few lifegain cards, but there are times when this might end up being a problem.
The issue with lifegain cards is that imo they also need to do something else in order to be worth it (the exception to that rule being Sangromancer for now, since she can gain such huge amounts).
Some people's lists include Disciple of Griselbrand, which I guess doesn't look terrible, but I really dislike the idea of having to pay mana for my sac outlets.
On the ritual side of things I have to disagree with you. They have been actually great in my testing games. I was surprised by this, as I originally thought that 1-of mana gain effects would be really bad in EDH. Maybe it's my meta, we have an Azusa, Lost but Seeking deck running around that keeps things nice and fast.
However whenever I tested the deck online the rituals were also pretty good. Sometimes it's enough to simply ramp out an early mana doubler or Gilded Lotus to turn that -1 card into a lasting advantage.
Maybe it's the fact that we can't really run out of resources with Chainer, since there will always be some creatures in a graveyard somewhere and the short term card disadvantage of the rituals ends up not mattering as much in the long run?
I like this list a lot. It's hard for me to suggest changes since the list already looks really tight. Shout out to my boy Dimir House Guard who is the bee's knees in this list, being a tutor and sac outlet in one.
Have Myr Retriever/Junk Diver been pulling their weight? Obviously, some of your combo pieces are artifacts and there's always Caged Sun, but I think both might be a little too redundant, especially with Yawgmoth's Will and Buried Ruin. I've never had much success with Imp's Mischief in Erebos but the ability to Sidisi it up in response to something juicy like Time Stretch seems good here.
I don't have any Vampiric Tutors or Damnations atm, but they are obvious inclusions that I will add to the deck once I get them
Imp's Mischief can be a bit strange at times. There are games where it's one of the best cards and there are games where it sits dead in my hand. Overall I think the effect is still desirable to have, since mono black doesn't really get many effects like that. That being said, I might end up replacing it with smoething else eventually.
We could actually take things even further in that direction by adding Rune-Scarred Demon, which gives us another card to tutor up Imp's Mischief at instant speed. I've currently cut him from the deck bc I tried to streamline my mana curve, but I feel like he might make it back in sooner rather than later.
Myr Retriever and Junk Diver are actually the newest addition to the deck, so I don't have much data yet to tell you how good the've actually been. I agree that they might be kinda redundant, but I think the fact that I can reuse them with Chainer and a Sac Outlet makes them pretty decent. I might end up cutting Buried Ruinfor something else if they end up being as good as I hope they are.
Imp's Mischief can be a bit strange at times. There are games where it's one of the best cards and there are games where it sits dead in my hand. Overall I think the effect is still desirable to have, since mono black doesn't really get many effects like that. That being said, I might end up replacing it with smoething else eventually.
Yeah, it's a very niche card that is either going to save you when nothing else will or it will do nothing because the situation didn't come up. I've gone back and forth on it a bit, but currently don't run it since I'm trying more discard.
Myr Retriever and Junk Diver are actually the newest addition to the deck, so I don't have much data yet to tell you how good the've actually been. I agree that they might be kinda redundant, but I think the fact that I can reuse them with Chainer and a Sac Outlet makes them pretty decent. I might end up cutting Buried Ruinfor something else if they end up being as good as I hope they are.
You could probably test just one of Junk Diver/Myr Retriever. I recently re-added Myr Retriever to mine to see if at any point I think, "I wish this had flying". If that happens I'll change it to Diver. I would keep Buried Ruins, though. It's good to have multiple ways, I think.
And if you ever add Crucible of Worlds, it makes fetches better since you already run Rings. It also gives another type of card you can pitch to Bog Witch without actually losing anything.
Maybe it's the fact that we can't really run out of resources with Chainer, since there will always be some creatures in a graveyard somewhere and the short term card disadvantage of the rituals ends up not mattering as much in the long run?
I wouldn't say that's always true, depending on the decks in your meta. How would you deal with a spellslinger deck like Mizzix, for example? Mindslicer and creature removal seem your best tools there, but I think you could use one more piece of graveyard removal such as Agent of Erebos or Withered Wretch. Anyway, some other tech to consider:
If you ever have to Unearth Corpse Connoisseur, anything that exiles it and returns it to the battlefield gets around the last part of Unearth that cares about it leaving the battlefield. Any flicker effect will do, even if you're stealing somebody else's Flickerwisp.
I might end up cutting Imp's Mischief if it ends up being too inconsistent, for now though I'll keep it in for a little while longer.
Sure, with Crucible of Worlds, Buried Ruin does get quite a bit better, but I think it might be harder to assemble that than to get out one of the two creatures, a sac outlet (since there are many in the deck) and Chainer, since he's in the command zone anyway. I've found that people like to blow up my mana rocks/artifact doublers etc., which is why I decided to try this artifact recursion "engine". Definitly needs to be tuned still.
Duplicant and Noxious Gearhulk were both considerations at times. I even ran the Gearhulk in the first iteration of the deck. I ended up not keeping it, because I wanted to lower my mana curve. It felt like even with the discard options in the deck things happened to get stuck in my hand and I would rather use my mana to activate Chainer than to cast something from my hand for an expensive mana cost.
I even went so far as to cut Rune-Scarred Demon and Razaketh, the Foulblooded, which tbh should probably be in this deck for sure. I might add them back in at a later time.
I don't really have a spellslinger deck in my meta. That might change of course, but for now cards that exclusively hate on graveyards seem a bit weak to me.
I'm big fan of Chainer and have played him for quite a while now. Don't have much time to write up anything in detail, but here's a few suggestions:
I'll start with the ridiculous: Chains of Mephistopheles is pretty damn sweet when everyone's graveyards are basically a second (and third, fourth and fifth) hand for you. Plus, well Chains, Chainer, it just fits. But unless you've got one lying around spare, you're probably not going to be adding it to the deck....
Still not cheap money wise, but Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed is very solid addition to the recursion package, letting you get back any black card for BBB and 3 life.
If you want some more removal, Shriekmaw and Bone Shredder fit pretty well, being both cheap and self sacrificing. They do have conditions on what they can kill, so you do want other unconditional options, but as part of a larger removal package, they're worth considering (I currently only run the Shredder out of these). Faceless Butcher is another one to consider - you really need a sac outlet to be able to fully take advantage of it, but it's a fair bit cheaper than things like Duplicant, plus using in on your own stuff can sometimes be useful (e.g. in the face of board wipes)
Life's Finale is on the expensive side for a symmetrical wrath, but Buried Aliveing an opponent as an extra can be pretty good (even if all you do is target the green player for his Reclamation Sage...), and mono-B can make plenty of mana.
I've found Dark Deal to be solid for similar reasons to Chains - it disrupts your opponents plays while filling yards. Normally, I think it's a pretty bad card as it leaves you one down on your opponents (itself), but in Chainer, that's not really the case. Also silly with Sangromancer. And Chains....
Chains of Mephistopheles would be a great fit, unfortunately I don't own a copy and I don't think I'll be able to get one in the forseeable future
Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed on the other hand is on my list of cards I definitly want to get for this deck. I just need to find a somewhat affordabe copy somewhere. (the judge foils seems to be cheaper, so probably that). He seems like a great fit for the deck. Also Living Death looks like it would work pretty well in combination with him.
Personally I don't like the conditional removal on the Shriekmaw variety of cards. There are quite a few relevant black creatures in my meta, which makes me prefer unconditional removal on my creatures.
Faceless Butcher on the other hand seems great. It might just be a better version of Ravenous Chupacabra in this deck. Having a sac outlet on the board shouldn't be a problem here after all.
Life's Finale could work. I've considered it before. Ultimately I decedied not to run too many wrath effects, since I don't want to end up killing my own Chainer too often. If I ever add more, this one is definitly one of the first I'll test. Alongside the obvious clean and efficient Damnation and the probably a bit too mana heavy Decree of Pain.
Dark Deal seems like it could be sweet. Looks like it's only a few cents, so I might just end up getting one to try it, the next time I order some cards for the deck.
Thanks for the great responses btw guys! I'm glad that there seems to be a good amount of interest in the deck
The mono back crowd is exactly who I want in this thread though, since presumably you guys know what works and what doesn't
I figure that can be somewhat playgroup dependent. Like how much stax they can tolerate, hahaha. Mine's a little bit more off the beaten path since I've set some restrictions for myself. The decklist database has the list of other Chainer threads if you ever want to dig through other perspectives on it.
I think Chainer can be built in quite a few different ways. It can be slow and controlish or a fast reanimator deck. it can include stax elements, it can focus a bit on mill to reanimate more of the opponents creatures, or it can focus on reanimating combo pieces from our own graveyard.
I feel like I might need to focus my list on one of these aspects, as it can feel a tiny bit all over the place at times.
I feel like I might need to focus my list on one of these aspects, as it can feel a tiny bit all over the place at times.
I don't think it's spread thin. I don't know exactly why you feel like it can be a bit all over the place — it could just be having cards for A and B in hand when you want cards for C. You might feel better about it after tweaks to the balance of these effects, but I don't think you need to focus any of those effects out of the deck to favor one because you could find yourself holding a glass cannon.
MBC has a need for certain effects because it has weaknesses and has to hustle on multiple fronts to make up for them. Card draw (among other things) is painful, so we need life and often have to leech it. We can't rely on counterspells to protect our own bombs save for one so we rely on surgical/wholesale removals from hand and library. We don't have good land ramp so we have to lean on more vulnerable options like mana rocks and ritual lands, and we slow down the other players with various kinds of stax. You have hardly any stax, really — Mindslicer is probably the biggest but that's more of a bomb you save for protecting an attempt to win than something you loop a lot.
Chainer needs 3 things: mana, life, and targets. Your ramp and rituals to race things out satisfies mana, almost all of your sources of life support are themselves win conditions, and milling may sometimes feel like a side act but the sooner you get that rolling the sooner you might have good targets for instant-speed support of your goals (not to mention also being a win condition itself). But you know this stuff.
From my point of view, #1 here feels like the last choice. Your list feels like it's focused on #2, #3, and #4 such that #1 probably won't come up unless there's a target of opportunity that ends things sooner because the main three aren't online yet (like, Craterhoofing a bunch of harpies, or somebody elses Gary/Koko). Personally, I love these sort of grab-bag, what-toys-have-my-opponents-brought-me wins. With a sac outlet and enough devotion for Overlord or both Phyrexian Altar and Pitiless Plunderer for Wurmcoil Engine — and enough life, of course — you can make armies of your own already, too. Your life support pieces for looping this indefinitely probably kill your opponents before a token army can, though.
However, #5 now feels like a fifth wheel to me. I think this is mostly because all of your methods for turning either of them on are themselves win conditions. Gary and Koko turn it on really easy, but at that point you should be winning with them probably. Blood Artist or Zulaport Cutthroat can whittle at opponent life to help gradually turn Bloodchief Ascension on or make Mindcrank mill, but the former seems to require more work on your part repeated over three separate turns to make sure a couple creatures die each of those turns as there doesn't seem to be anything else whittling at opponent life passively, or things passively knocking down opponent creatures to keep Blood Artist/Cutthroat buzzing, in order to get those quest counters. That's not terribly hard with a Chainer deck just as you do your thing, but it's still possibly three trips around the table. Maybe your opponents help turn it on pretty consistently. If I'm wrong about this, I'd like to hear how this usually plays out for you.
Yes, I run basically no stax pieces at all. Instead I tried to speed the deck up a little by running a lot of ramp instead. I'm not sure if this approach is working as intened, as it does leave me open to being hated out of the game early.
On the other hand I really don't want to be the guy who locks up the table with all the stax. Something like Contamination would probably be too much for my playgroup. I am willing to try out some less degenerate ways to slow down the game tho.
In regards to the wincons, you're definitly correct. I've found I only really go to my opponent's graveyards if there are answers there to things I couldn't deal with otherwise. Say a Reclamation Sage or something along those lines. Winning off of a big reanimated threat has not been the norm. That much is true.
This is actually part of the reason, why I'm thinking it might be better to just focus on my own graveyard and maybe even forgo the pure mill efects like Altar of the Brood and Mindcrank.
Bloodchief Ascension feels like it might be on the chopping block. You're definitly right that it takes a lot of time to activate in a deck like this.
I originally added it as another way to gain life, also thinking "Hey, this combos with Mindcrank anyway, it has to be good here". Turns out it doesn't actually do a great job at gaining life at all. It takes too long to activate to really help with a life shortage in the short term and forces the table to sort of team up on me, which I can't deal with all that well, since like we said, I don't play stax pieces.
You actually hit the nail right on the head with this. I don't think my list is terribly unfocused, but these are the exact things I meant. Ultimately I think I might have to accept that I can't speed the deck up enough to where I might not need any stax at all. Especially at a table with Azusa, Lost but Seeking and Oona, Queen of the Fae setting the speed level of my meta to "actually pretty damn fast"
Yes, I run basically no stax pieces at all. Instead I tried to speed the deck up a little by running a lot of ramp instead. I'm not sure if this approach is working as intened, as it does leave me open to being hated out of the game early.
On the other hand I really don't want to be the guy who locks up the table with all the stax. Something like Contamination would probably be too much for my playgroup. I am willing to try out some less degenerate ways to slow down the game tho.
Yeah, you don't have to lock the table, just put some speed bumps in their way. Some examples of 'softer' stax: Tangle Wire/Storage Matrix/Orb of Dreams instead of Winter Orb; Defense Grid/Conqueror's Flail/Mana Web instead of Contamination. I don't like locking out the table, either, but things like Contamination can also be held until you're ready to win just to mitigate interference for that turn (although that does make it a dead card the rest of the time). I actually have a pile of disruption among my deckbuilding stuff that do various things to fork with my opponents in case I want to try any out. For example, after a game with Chainer that involved an opponent running a Kozilek deck with Storage Matrix on the table, I found I did fairly well just choosing to untap lands most of the time since I could reanimate for blockers. And anything that makes spellscostmore usually isn't going to hurt us much.
And then you've got interactions, too. Mana Web might encourage your opponents to overextend their board state by tapping out each turn and not wanting to waste the mana — right into a board wipe. Noetic Scales is friends with discard. Oppression or Defense Grid might cause your opponents to slow down their pace if they don't want to lose cards or want to leave the extra 3 mana open (which ends up telegraphing louder than just leaving UU open). There's a lot of experimenting with your friends' psychology and how they react to different incentives/penalties.
And of course there's negotiation. And there are harmless things like Crawlspace and annoying speedbumps like Silent Arbiter.
Some, of course, won't work well with Chainer or are more niche:
Damping Sphere — Unfortunately undercuts most black ramp. This and Trinisphere could be good against storm decks, and I've heard Trinisphere has the curious effect of hampering tuned/competitive decks more than it hampers lower-powered decks.
In regards to the wincons, you're definitly correct. I've found I only really go to my opponent's graveyards if there are answers there to things I couldn't deal with otherwise. Say a Reclamation Sage or something along those lines. Winning off of a big reanimated threat has not been the norm. That much is true.
This is actually part of the reason, why I'm thinking it might be better to just focus on my own graveyard and maybe even forgo the pure mill efects like Altar of the Brood and Mindcrank.
There's other passive mill, too, such as Mesmeric Orb that will affect you, too (which is still a test card for me since I haven't used it yet). Dark Deal can sortof be thought of as mill, as well as Memory Jar (which plays well with Myr Retriever and Rings). Rings can also double-up both Chainer's activation and Altar of Dementia and you can always aim that at yourself to self-mill, even using opponents' large creatures to do the work (which are also good subjects for Disciple of Griselbrand).
Bloodchief Ascension feels like it might be on the chopping block. You're definitly right that it takes a lot of time to activate in a deck like this.
I originally added it as another way to gain life, also thinking "Hey, this combos with Mindcrank anyway, it has to be good here". Turns out it doesn't actually do a great job at gaining life at all. It takes too long to activate to really help with a life shortage in the short term and forces the table to sort of team up on me, which I can't deal with all that well, since like we said, I don't play stax pieces.
You actually hit the nail right on the head with this. I don't think my list is terribly unfocused, but these are the exact things I meant. Ultimately I think I might have to accept that I can't speed the deck up enough to where I might not need any stax at all. Especially at a table with Azusa, Lost but Seeking and Oona, Queen of the Fae setting the speed level of my meta to "actually pretty damn fast"
Yeah, they know the combo and it paints a target on you. That's possibly good enough reason not to run Mindcrank by itself, either.
It's a more casual card, but Profane Memento could help with life in coordination with the mill (and other things since "from anywhere") if it's a creature-heavy meta. Then there's other death-trigger lifegain like Falkenrath Noble (Blood Artist #3), Deathgreeter, and Dross Harvester. You already know about Disciple of Griselbrand, but there's also Loxodon Warhammer and Whip of Erebos which make yet another good use of opponents' creatures that aren't game-enders.
Stuff like Polluted Bonds cold be handy against Azusa. Might not stop or slow her but it might give you fuel. Maybe Orbs of Warding against Oona. I figure your goal will be to slow them down enough you have a decent shot if you play well. Another boardwipe or two might not hurt, either, and buy you some time (Kagemaro, First to Suffer is a favorite), but you may also have to dip into a pact effect or two more than just Plaguecrafter. One bit of advice I remember reading regarding Chainer is that, if you want to cast him then activate, you have to think of the curve like he's 8-CMC — so wipes like Life's Finale can be considered on-curve with that approach.
Edit: Almost forgot Torpor Orb in the disruption kit.
I agree that Crank Chief seems superfluous and could be replaced. I would recommend stuff like Attrition, Oppression, and even Infernal Darkness to slow the game down until you have more resources with which to go "off."
Azusa and Oona tend to be commander-centric so playing more spot removal like Hero's Downfall and Go for the Throat would help those matchups. Ravenous Chupacabra is good, but you lose the element of surprise with it in your graveyard.
Also, obligatory Thoughtseize recommendation. If you know your meta well enough and have decent predictive skills, you can get a lot of mileage out of it. Chainer is much better against countermagic than Erebos but sometimes you're going for a Torment of Hailfire win and need to push it through. Alternatively, you can go after the guy with spot removal to make sure Chainer hangs around.
And the more you get into sacrifice outlets like Attrition that have a controlling effect (or if you use any pacts), the more you might consider self-returning creatures like Bloodghast, Reassembling Skeleton, or Nether Traitor as enablers, or reusable recursion that's cheaper than Chainer like Phyrexian Reclamation, Oversold Cemetery. In my case I haven't had much of a problem with rattlesnaking removal creatures in my graveyard. If my friends start running more graveyard removal I will likely have to adapt to some hidden instant removal like Hero's Downfall. I have to consider that part of the reason they haven't is that I tend not to destroy everything I can, but rather to use my removal creatures when something comes at me or to dodge graveyard removal and target something belonging to whoever pointed graveyard removal my way.
I wouldn't be surprised if your meta is more aggressive about taking a little punishment to get rid of a known threat sitting in your graveyard, but you know them better.
Yes, I run basically no stax pieces at all. Instead I tried to speed the deck up a little by running a lot of ramp instead. I'm not sure if this approach is working as intened, as it does leave me open to being hated out of the game early.
On the other hand I really don't want to be the guy who locks up the table with all the stax. Something like Contamination would probably be too much for my playgroup. I am willing to try out some less degenerate ways to slow down the game tho.
Yeah, you don't have to lock the table, just put some speed bumps in their way. Some examples of 'softer' stax: Tangle Wire/Storage Matrix/Orb of Dreams instead of Winter Orb; Defense Grid/Conqueror's Flail/Mana Web instead of Contamination. I don't like locking out the table, either, but things like Contamination can also be held until you're ready to win just to mitigate interference for that turn (although that does make it a dead card the rest of the time). I actually have a pile of disruption among my deckbuilding stuff that do various things to fork with my opponents in case I want to try any out. For example, after a game with Chainer that involved an opponent running a Kozilek deck with Storage Matrix on the table, I found I did fairly well just choosing to untap lands most of the time since I could reanimate for blockers. And anything that makes spellscostmore usually isn't going to hurt us much.
And then you've got interactions, too. Mana Web might encourage your opponents to overextend their board state by tapping out each turn and not wanting to waste the mana — right into a board wipe. Noetic Scales is friends with discard. Oppression or Defense Grid might cause your opponents to slow down their pace if they don't want to lose cards or want to leave the extra 3 mana open (which ends up telegraphing louder than just leaving UU open). There's a lot of experimenting with your friends' psychology and how they react to different incentives/penalties.
And of course there's negotiation. And there are harmless things like Crawlspace and annoying speedbumps like Silent Arbiter.
I'm unsure about the stax cards tbh, they feel like they do nothing else but slow the game down. I know that's what we want to accomplish, but I just wish there was another way to do this without playing some of those cards.
Silent Arbiter could be cute tho. Might have saved me last night, when I was run over by a horde of tokens from Beacon of Creation. Turns out that card is pretty decent when you have 30 lands on the table
I agree that Crank Chief seems superfluous and could be replaced. I would recommend stuff like Attrition, Oppression, and even Infernal Darkness to slow the game down until you have more resources with which to go "off."
Azusa and Oona tend to be commander-centric so playing more spot removal like Hero's Downfall and Go for the Throat would help those matchups. Ravenous Chupacabra is good, but you lose the element of surprise with it in your graveyard.
Also, obligatory Thoughtseize recommendation. If you know your meta well enough and have decent predictive skills, you can get a lot of mileage out of it. Chainer is much better against countermagic than Erebos but sometimes you're going for a Torment of Hailfire win and need to push it through. Alternatively, you can go after the guy with spot removal to make sure Chainer hangs around.
I like the idea of more discard a lot. Why take my opponents resources from their deck, when I can take them from their hand.
Hero's Downfall is something I think I might try. It's not a fancy card, but it gets the job done. Also there has been quite a bit of graveyard hate recently. No Rest in Peace or anything like it, but Scavenger Grounds tends to find its way onto the board most games...
On that note, what do you guys think are the removal creatures that I should run anyway? Plaguecrafter is a given ofc, but do I want more of the same? Fleshbag Marauder and Merciless Executioner would be easy additions, but I'm not sure how many times I want that kind of effect.
Same with the Ravenous Chupacabra type. Do I run Faceless Butcher in addition to it, do I replace it?
Something I've noticed is that no matter what you reanimate you draw tons of hate. Last night I reanimated a Meteor Golem a couple of times. I got rid of some stuff, but ultimately it left me low on life and vulnerable. I kinda feel like I would've done better that game if I just tried to get bigger threats and not care as much about reanimating removal.
In regards to Thoughtseize I'm a bit unsure. Spending a card to force a single discrad feels weird to me in EDH, but it might work. Have have a set of those, so I can just try it, which I might do.
And the more you get into sacrifice outlets like Attrition that have a controlling effect (or if you use any pacts), the more you might consider self-returning creatures like Bloodghast, Reassembling Skeleton, or Nether Traitor as enablers, or reusable recursion that's cheaper than Chainer like Phyrexian Reclamation, Oversold Cemetery. In my case I haven't had much of a problem with rattlesnaking removal creatures in my graveyard. If my friends start running more graveyard removal I will likely have to adapt to some hidden instant removal like Hero's Downfall. I have to consider that part of the reason they haven't is that I tend not to destroy everything I can, but rather to use my removal creatures when something comes at me or to dodge graveyard removal and target something belonging to whoever pointed graveyard removal my way.
I wouldn't be surprised if your meta is more aggressive about taking a little punishment to get rid of a known threat sitting in your graveyard, but you know them better.
Attrition seems like it could be great if I do end up taking the deck in a slower direction.
The thing with the removal creatures in my meta is that I'm unsure wether I have enough time/life to actually recur a whole bunch of those and still have enough time/life left to then go on to win the game.
Maybe replacing some of my removal with instants would help me put less of a toll on my life total. The creatures do seem a lot better tho, since they're reusable.
5 is a lot, but at least it has a guarenteed trigger if someone tries to cast a removal spell, and imo it's one of the better pieces of disruption one can justify paying 5 mana for. It's one of the better forms of discard out there as its still very good once their hand is gone.
Others are:
-Oppression - A cheaper but worse Painful Quandary effect
-Awaken the Erstwhile - can backfire if you don't have some way to deal with multiple armies of 2/2's
-Mind Twist - Doesn't piss the whole table off which is kinda nice.
-Delerium Skeins - a lot of discard for 3 mana
-Larceny - With a heavy creature/token build this can do a lot of work.
-Sadistic Hypnotist Same as Larceny.
Its hard to go wrong with PQ, Opression or Mind Twist. The rest are debatable. There are also things like Bottomless Pit, Necrogen Mists, Liliana of the Veil and Liliana, Heretical Healer but they too slow imo. Bottomless pit is the best of these as it's random, but I still find its too slow.
Worst case just play PQ, it only makes opponent's discard and its still good when hands are gone.
Edit: Oh also, Myojin of Night's Reach is neat but probably too expensive. Mono B does have some very good ramp though so maybe.
Some of those seem like very nice options, thank you!
In your experience, does it happen that players choose to take 5 instead of discarding with Painful Quandary? Since the end goal is to get their cards into the graveyard after all.
I like Oppression quite a bit, so that might make it into the deck.
Myojin of Night's Reach is cool, but since it needs to be cast from the hand to get it's ability, I'm not sure it's the best fit for a Reanimator strategy like this.
Some of those seem like very nice options, thank you!
In your experience, does it happen that players choose to take 5 instead of discarding with Painful Quandary? Since the end goal is to get their cards into the graveyard after all.
I like Oppression quite a bit, so that might make it into the deck.
Myojin of Night's Reach is cool, but since it needs to be cast from the hand to get it's ability, I'm not sure it's the best fit for a Reanimator strategy like this.
Oh ya, If they have lots of extra health or they really don't want lose anything than they'll take 5.
It def sux you can't reanimate Myojin. You have to think of him more like a 8 mana sorcery that mass discards and makes a creature token. At least the discard part has synergy with Reaninator but I agree its not an auto-include.
Sadistic Hypnotist is also nice, since he doubles as a sac outlet, which is desirbale for the deck anyway. It's another 5 cmc thing tho, so I'm not sure about him
When I discovered Chainer, Dementia Master I immediately knew he was the commander for me. I started theory-crafting and deck building and ended up with a list that looked quite a bit different from what it looks like today. It was as much fun to play as I thought and from there the deck went through a few upgrade cycles leading to this list here.
When I initially talked to one of my friends about building Chainer, Dementia Master he told my "Why don't you just play The Scarab God instead, it lets you play Blue and is much better". Initially I froze, because I thought I had made an elementary blunder, but it turns out those two decks play very very differently and Chainer is much much better suited for reanimation shenanigans. The big difference between the two is, that Chainer can reanimate the same thing more than once, which lends itself to some very powerful loops.
Anyway, lets get into the actual deck for now. I sorted the cards by role in the deck:
1x Chainer, Dementia Master
Card Draw (7):
1x Skullclamp
1x Night's Whisper
1x Sign in Blood
1x Read the Bones
1x Phyrexian Arena
1x Necropotence
1x Disciple of Bolas
Tutors (4):
1x Demonic Tutor
1x Beseech the Queen
1x Dimir House Guard
1x Sidisi, Undead Vizier
Ramp (13):
1x Sol Ring
1x Expedition Map
1x Wayfarer's Bauble
1x Dark Ritual
1x Bubbling Muck
1x Soldevi Adnate
1x Extraplanar Lens
1x Bog Witch
1x Solemn Simulacrum
1x Crypt Ghast
1x Gilded Lotus
1x Caged Sun
1x Nirkana Revenant
1x Viscera Seer
1x Spawning Pit
1x Altar of Dementia
1x Phyrexian Altar
1x Ashnod's Altar
Alternate Recursion (4):
1x Reanimate
1x Myr Retriever
1x Junk Diver
1x Yawgmoth's Will
Lifegain/Lifedrain (7):
1x Bloodchief Ascension
1x Blood Artist
1x Zulaport Cutthroat
1x Exsanguinate
1x Sangromancer
1x Gray Merchant of Asphodel
1x Kokusho, the Evening Star
Grave Fuel (6):
1x Altar of the Brood
1x Entomb
1x Mindcrank
1x Buried Alive
1x Mindslicer
1x Corpse Connoisseur
Removal and Permission (7):
1x Withering Boon
1x Imp's Mischief
1x Phyrexian Revoker
1x Plaguecrafter
1x Sudden Spoiling
1x Ravenous Chupacabra
1x Meteor Golem
1x Toxic Deluge
1x Nevinyrral's Disk
1x Living Death
1x Massacre Wurm
Utility/Other (5)
1x Torment of Hailfire
1x Rings of Brighthearth
1x Pitiless Plunderer
1x Wurmcoil Engine
1x Abhorrent Overlord
Lands (37):
1x Cabal Coffers
1x Cabal Stronghold
1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1x Thespian's Stage
1x Deserted Temple
1x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
1x Phyrexian Tower
1x Bojuka Bog
1x Ghost Quarter
1x Geier Reach Sanitarium
1x Buried Ruin
26x Snow-Covered Swamp
The deck plays in a realtively straight forward manner, we try to get impactful things into a graveyard, wether that's one of our own reanimation targets or an opponents big creature. Then we reanimate things and gain an advantage off of that. Keep in mind, that if Chainer dies, all our reanimated creatures will be exiled, unless we sac them first, which is why sac outlets are very important in this deck. We would want to play them anyway, since they enable us to spam powerful etb abilities over and over, so this isn't even that bad of a downside.
We can win in many ways with this deck:
1.) We can reanimate a big game ending threat from one of our opponents graveyards
2.) We can loop reanimate a creature like Gray Merchant of Asphodel or Kokusho, the Evening Star over and over and drain our oponens out.
3.) We can assemble an infinite sac/rez loop with Chainer, Dementia Master, Abhorrent Overlord or Wurmcoil Engine and Phyrexian Altar or another sac outlet with Pitiless Plunderer on the board. These win with Blood Artist or Zulaport Cutthroat.
4.) We can cast a big Exsanguinate or Torment of Hailfire
5.) We can assemble an activated Bloodchief Ascension and Mindcrank
Here are some of my thoughts on the specific cards in the deck:
Skullclamp: While this deck doesn’t run all that many small creatures that can simply be turned into cards with Skullclamp, it does plan on sacreficing a lot of sligtly bigger ones. Might aswell draw some cards while we’re at it, right?
Night's Whisper: People tend to sleep on these 2 mana draw spells, they are very very good at any point in the game and never a dead draw. There’s a reason why this card finds it’s way in pretty much every black cEDH deck.
Sign in Blood: Basically Night’s Whisper with a harsher color requirements, but it can be aimed at an opponent at 2 life to kill them, so i guess that’s an upside.
Read the Bones: This costs a mana more than the other two, but it does let us scry first. Not a bad deal, but perhaps a tiny bit worse imo. Still well worth a slot.
Phyrexian Arena: My meta is pretty fast, so I consider this to be my worst draw spell. However, if landed early Phyrexian Arena still has the potential to completely take over a game basically all by itself, so I keep it around.
Necropotence: Necropotence is among the most powerful black cards ever printed. It would be a mistake not to run it. It draws us all the cards. Just be careful when discarding into exile, don’t be that one guy who exiles his reanimation target by accident…
Disciple of Bolas: This helps to offset the life loss caused by Chainer and draws us some cards at the same time. Don’t be afraid to sac a big guy to this, we can bring it right back with Chainer afterwards. Also don’t forget that this is a creature, so we can use this at instant speed from our graveyard if we need a backup sac outlet.
Demonic Tutor: It’s the best tutor in the game. Very useful to get whatever card we might need to solve an apparent problem.
Beseech the Queen: Usually I despise the mana intensive „buget“ tutor choices, but we’re playing mono black, so I think including this is justified. It can fetch many of our important engine pieces and we should never have to pay more than BBB for it. The downside is that we need to reveal the tutored card.
Dimir House Guard: A lot of important cards can be found at the 4cmc slot in this deck. Pitiless Plunderer enables combos, Sangromancer gains life, Nev Disk deals with problematic permanent types, Crypt Ghast gives us tons of mana, These 4 will be the main targets, but it can also fetch up removal in Ravenous Chupacabra if we really need that.
Sidisi, Undead Vizier: This turns Chainers ability into a Grim Tutor for as long as this is in our graveyard. If we have enough mana we can assemble an entire combo, since Sidisi can sac herself to her ability, just tob e brought back again and again.
Sol Ring: EDH is a 98 card format. Deal with it.
Expedition Map: This will tutor up a Cabal Coffers 99% of the time. In that sense it’s actually one of our strongest ramp pieces in the deck.
Dark Ritual: Many people have told me that this would be bad in EDH, as it’S card disadvantage etc. etc. However, I actually decided to try it and it turns out the hivemind was wrong on this one. This card is very very good. I guess it depends on the deck and the speed of ones meta, but everytime I draw this I’m happy about a temporary mana boost.
It needs to be mentioned, that it goes particularly well with Chainers ability, as you can fake out opponents by keeping only one land untapped and then surprise reanimating.
Wayfarer's Bauble: Seems weak on paper, but it gets us an extra Swamp, which this deck really cares about. It’s also a great early play which helps speed things up a bit.
Bubbling Muck: Much like Dark Ritual this can enable big plays on early turns. However, this one is much better used late to create insane ammounts of mana out of nowhere. It goes particularly well with Yawgmoth’s Will.
Soldevi Adnate: Unfortunatley this can’t ramp you well in the eraly game. However, in the late game this can be very scary with Chainer, as we bring back a big creature, sac it to Adnate immediately and generate a ton of black mana to reanimate even more things.
Extraplanar Lens: It’s essentially a mana doubler. We lose a land on the turn we play this, but it makes up for that big time. The big advantage this has over other mana doublers ist hat it’s so cheap mana wise.
We can circumvent our opponents benefiting from this effect by playing snow-covered lands.
Bog Witch: Remember when I said Dark Ritual was great in this deck? This basically gives you one each turn.
It can also discard a reanimation target, while simultainiously providing the mana to bring it back right away.
Solemn Simulacrum: A great creature based ramp card. It gets us Swamps, which is great and can even draw us some cards.
In a slow grindy game recurring this with Chainer over and over can be a nice tactic to stay ahead on resources.
Crypt Ghast: A mana doubler on a creature, which means it can be reanimated over and over again after our opponents will inevitably try to kill this card as soon as it hits the table.
It can also gain us tiny bits of life in need, which is suprisingly useful.
Gilded Lotus: A bit expensive as a mana rock for my taste, but it does produce BBB, which goes a long way in this deck.
Caged Sun: This is another mana doubler. Unfortunately it’s not a creature, but the effect is still very strong.
Nirkana Revenant: Also a mana doubler. This one comes on a 6 mana creature, so we can simply reanimate it and play it for so much cheaper. If we have already assembeled a ton of mana, this can become a game ending threat aswell.
Viscera Seer: A free sac outlet on a creature. It even lets us scry. What’s particularly nice about this is, that we can bring it back with Chainer in times of need. The downside ist hat our opponents will have an easier time dealing with this than the rest of our sac outlets.
Altar of Dementia: A free sac outlet that mills. We can either try to mill an opponent out or mill ourselves if we’re starved for reanimation targets o rare close to casting Yawgmoth's Will.
Spawning Pit: A free sac outlet. The upside on this is negligable. Still worth it imo.
Phyrexian Altar: This is what I believe to be our best sac outlet. This deck is so starved for colored mana, that getting it in return for our creatures is actually a great deal. It also enables a few combos.
Ashnod's Altar: It makes colorless mana, wich makes it significantly worse than Phyrexian Altar, overall the card is still definitly worth it though.
Reanimate: The archtype we’re playing is named after this card. It’s really really good and I see no reason not to play it. Sometimes reanimating something for just B but more life is even better than Chainer.
Try to time the use of this card right for backbreaking effect.
Myr Retriever: Chainer gets us back all the creatures we’ll ever need, but this allows us to replay our crucial artifacts from the grave. Very very useful. Also since it’s a creature, we can reuse this effect with Chainer.
Junk Diver: Just like Myr Retriever to get us back our important artifact cards.
Yawgmoth's Will: Probably the single best black card ever printed. Timed right, this just wins the game on the spot. Sometimes we can also simply use it as a value card to get things back from the grave.
Bloodchief Ascension: A card with a reputation, but it’s one oft he best ways to gain life in mono black and this deck uses up its life total very quickly.
Blood Artist: Gains us life and enables a few combos
Zulaport Cutthroat: Gains us life and enables a few combos
Exsanguinate: In mono black we can create quite the amount of mana. These spells are known to end games, so they can serve as additionaly wincons. Sometimes casting a smaller Exsanguinate just to gain life can be the right decision too.
Sangromancer: This has the potential to gain us a ton of life, which is very nice in a deck that uses it up like ours. Very strong in combination with Mindslicer and Boardclears.
Gray Merchant of Asphodel: Big drain effect for the whole table. If this is recurred enough times, we win eventually.
Kokusho, the Evening Star: Big drain effect fort he whole table. Not reliant on devotion, wins if recurred often enough.
Entomb: One of the strongest cards in the deck. This allows us to get whatever creature we need into our graveyard to bring it back right away.
Altar of the Brood: Even if we run a lot of desirable ranimation targets ourselves, taking over smoe big threat from an opponents graveyard goes a long way. Especially creatures with etb effects that can’t be found in mono black are nice.
Mindcrank: Another way to get our opponents to put juicy reanimation targets in their graveyards. This can also go infinite with Bloodchief Ascension.
Buried Alive: Much like Entomb this fills our graveyard with whatever creatures we want. While more expensive mana wise, this can help assemble combos very very quickly.
Mindslicer: Won’t create any new friends, but it can stop deckst hat go out of control and draw 10000 cards. It can also be used at instant speed with Chainer and a sac outlet to get rid of all hands when an opponent just tutored for a combo piece.
Corpse Connoisseur: A high casting cost, but he gets us specific things into the graveyard. Don’t underestimate the fact that with BBBBBB we can reanimate this guy and any card from our deck right after throwing it in the bin with his etb effect. This gets even cheaper with Rings of Brighthearth out.
Phyrexian Revoker: A Pithing Needle on a stick. I like this card quite a bit in the deck, because we can bring this back from our graveyard at instant speed to react to whatever threat needs tob e stopped right now.
Later on if a bigger threat is made apparent, we can sacrifice this to one of our sac outlets and bring it back naming the new thing we want answered.
Withering Boon: Since black removal is actually somewhat lackluster in EDH, I really like running this as an answer to creatures. It gets rid of things before they resolve, which can be very relevant at times.
This can also be searched up in response to a creature on the stack by reanimating a Sidisi, so keep that in mind.
Imp's Mischief: The 2nd one of our oh so great black counterspells. This will mostly be used to protect Chainer from removal, but sometimes you can sieze the opportunity do do other hilarious stuff with this card.
Just like Withering Boon this can be searched up in need by reanimating a Sidisi with Chainer while the target spell is on the stack.
Sudden Spoiling: A very useful card to interrupt big attacks or to stop other problematic boardstates for a turn. This gets an added bonus inthe deck due to it’s syngery with Massacre Wurm.
Plaguecrafter: A very powerful way to get rid of creatures/planeswalkers if recurred over and over again.
Ravenous Chupacabra: Sometimes a certain creature needs to die. This is targeted, unconditional removal on a creature that can be recurred over and over again. Not fancy, but it gets the job done.
Meteor Golem: This can kill enchantments and artifacts. It’s also a creature, so we can repeat the effect by reanimating it. I wish we had better ways to deal with those kind of cards, but for now we’ll have to make do with this.
Toxic Deluge: Probably one of, if not the best creature boardwipe in the game. It gets arround indestructibility and has a convinient cmc.
Nevinyrral's Disk: One of our ways to deal with artifacts and enchantments. It’s unfortunate that this comes into play tapped, but it is an important piece for the deck.
Living Death: We play a Reanimator deck, our graveyard is going tob e completely filled with value and game ending threats. This is not only a boardclear, but also a wincon.
Massacre Wurm: This deals with boards full of tokens very easily. It can also kill opponents with ist 2nd ability. This also allows it to disrupt infinite sac+etb chains like Karmic Guide & Reveillark.
If you’ve never used a Massacre Wurm, try it! It’s one oft he most powerful reanimation targets we could ever hope for.
Torment of Hailfire: Just like Exsanguinate this is an additional wincon. While this can’t be used to gain life, it has the potential to cripple opponents at lowish life totals if cast for non lethal amounts.
Rings of Brighthearth: This card singlehandedly gives the deck a big power-up. It allows us to duble up on Chainers ability, whice saving us 1 mana and 3 life. It also lets us use colorless mana, which is super useful.
Pitiless Plunderer: A recurrable creature, that turns every sac outlet into a Phyrexian Altar.
Wurmcoil Engine: One oft he best creatures to clog up the board. It can also gain us life and enables an infinite loop.
Abhorrent Overlord: A big reanimation target, that can enable an infinite loop. Can also serve as a backup sac outlet if necesary.
Cabal Coffers: Insanely powerful card. This gives us all the mana we need and is the reason why we value Swamps so highly.
Cabal Stronghold: This is a much much worse version of Coffers. It's probably still worth it in mono blaack, but I'm not entirely sure on this one yet.
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth: A way to make all of our utility land produce black. This is very nice to have and makes Cabal Coffers even more insane than it already is.
Thespians Stage: It's in the deck to copy Cabal Coffers, because like i repeatedly said already, that card is insanely good.
Deserted Temple: A way to untap Coffers or Nykthos for more mana. It also can generate infinite mana with Rings of Brighthearth and one of those two lands and enough Swamps/Devotion.
Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx: If we end up with a somewhat sizable boardstate, this will usually be very much worth it and generate lots of mana for us.
Phyrexian Tower: A Sac Outlet on a land. It also produces black mana, what's not to love.
Bojuka Bog: A little bit of graveyard hate for a very small price. A super solid card that should be in every mono black deck ever. We can even fetch it up with Expedition Map in times of need.
Ghost Quarter: A buget Strip Mine replacement. It does its job pretty well.
Geier Reach Sanitarium: One of my favorite lands. It digs deeper into our deck and forces a discard on our opponents. If they discard a useful creature, that's Chainer fodder and an additional resource for us.
Buried Ruin: Artifact Recursion on a land. It's not super efficient, so I might end up replacing this with a Swamp.
Snow-Covered Swamp: Snow lands so that Extraplanar Lens doesn't buff our opponents in black. No other reason.
Let me know what you think about the list and what you would change. I'm looking forward to your replies
BWB/W Tokens
Pauper:
RUGAffinity
EDH:
BWAyli, Eternal Pilgrim
- You're definitely on the right track with using someone else's graveyard. Few things in this format are as satisfying as watching one opponent nuke another one's graveyard just to keep you from abusing it. Also, few things are as devastating as having multiple people digging up their Bojuka Bogs.
- You're also on the right track of putting lots of sac outlets in. Make sure that the cost to activate them is always zero, or as close to zero as possible so you can use it whenever and however you like.
- Do not underestimate the 3 life lost as part of the cost to activate Chainer. You will often find yourself activating him several times per turn, which adds up very quickly.
- I wouldn't run any of the Rituals. They either last for only one turn (Bubbling Muck), or you have to pay to use them every time (Bog Witch). Either way, that's not very effective.
Yeva (88/92 foils)
Raff
Scarab
Rakdos
Wort ($50 budget, 94/97 foils)
Trostani
The issue with lifegain cards is that imo they also need to do something else in order to be worth it (the exception to that rule being Sangromancer for now, since she can gain such huge amounts).
Some people's lists include Disciple of Griselbrand, which I guess doesn't look terrible, but I really dislike the idea of having to pay mana for my sac outlets.
On the ritual side of things I have to disagree with you. They have been actually great in my testing games. I was surprised by this, as I originally thought that 1-of mana gain effects would be really bad in EDH. Maybe it's my meta, we have an Azusa, Lost but Seeking deck running around that keeps things nice and fast.
However whenever I tested the deck online the rituals were also pretty good. Sometimes it's enough to simply ramp out an early mana doubler or Gilded Lotus to turn that -1 card into a lasting advantage.
Maybe it's the fact that we can't really run out of resources with Chainer, since there will always be some creatures in a graveyard somewhere and the short term card disadvantage of the rituals ends up not mattering as much in the long run?
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Pauper:
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Where's Vampiric Tutor? Seems like an obvious inclusion. Same story with Damnation.
Have Myr Retriever/Junk Diver been pulling their weight? Obviously, some of your combo pieces are artifacts and there's always Caged Sun, but I think both might be a little too redundant, especially with Yawgmoth's Will and Buried Ruin. I've never had much success with Imp's Mischief in Erebos but the ability to Sidisi it up in response to something juicy like Time Stretch seems good here.
[Primer] Erebos, God of the Dead
HONK HONK
I don't have any Vampiric Tutors or Damnations atm, but they are obvious inclusions that I will add to the deck once I get them
Imp's Mischief can be a bit strange at times. There are games where it's one of the best cards and there are games where it sits dead in my hand. Overall I think the effect is still desirable to have, since mono black doesn't really get many effects like that. That being said, I might end up replacing it with smoething else eventually.
We could actually take things even further in that direction by adding Rune-Scarred Demon, which gives us another card to tutor up Imp's Mischief at instant speed. I've currently cut him from the deck bc I tried to streamline my mana curve, but I feel like he might make it back in sooner rather than later.
Myr Retriever and Junk Diver are actually the newest addition to the deck, so I don't have much data yet to tell you how good the've actually been. I agree that they might be kinda redundant, but I think the fact that I can reuse them with Chainer and a Sac Outlet makes them pretty decent. I might end up cutting Buried Ruinfor something else if they end up being as good as I hope they are.
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Pauper:
RUGAffinity
EDH:
BWAyli, Eternal Pilgrim
Yeah, it's a very niche card that is either going to save you when nothing else will or it will do nothing because the situation didn't come up. I've gone back and forth on it a bit, but currently don't run it since I'm trying more discard.
You could probably test just one of Junk Diver/Myr Retriever. I recently re-added Myr Retriever to mine to see if at any point I think, "I wish this had flying". If that happens I'll change it to Diver. I would keep Buried Ruins, though. It's good to have multiple ways, I think.
And if you ever add Crucible of Worlds, it makes fetches better since you already run Rings. It also gives another type of card you can pitch to Bog Witch without actually losing anything.
I wouldn't say that's always true, depending on the decks in your meta. How would you deal with a spellslinger deck like Mizzix, for example? Mindslicer and creature removal seem your best tools there, but I think you could use one more piece of graveyard removal such as Agent of Erebos or Withered Wretch.
Anyway, some other tech to consider:
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R Zada Arcane Storm
RBU Marchesa
GWU Estrid
GWR Samut?
URB Kess
(R/W)(U/B) Akiri & Silas
BWR Alesha
R Neheb Dragons
G Nylea Wurms
W Darien
U Tetsuko
Sure, with Crucible of Worlds, Buried Ruin does get quite a bit better, but I think it might be harder to assemble that than to get out one of the two creatures, a sac outlet (since there are many in the deck) and Chainer, since he's in the command zone anyway. I've found that people like to blow up my mana rocks/artifact doublers etc., which is why I decided to try this artifact recursion "engine". Definitly needs to be tuned still.
Duplicant and Noxious Gearhulk were both considerations at times. I even ran the Gearhulk in the first iteration of the deck. I ended up not keeping it, because I wanted to lower my mana curve. It felt like even with the discard options in the deck things happened to get stuck in my hand and I would rather use my mana to activate Chainer than to cast something from my hand for an expensive mana cost.
I even went so far as to cut Rune-Scarred Demon and Razaketh, the Foulblooded, which tbh should probably be in this deck for sure. I might add them back in at a later time.
I don't really have a spellslinger deck in my meta. That might change of course, but for now cards that exclusively hate on graveyards seem a bit weak to me.
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Pauper:
RUGAffinity
EDH:
BWAyli, Eternal Pilgrim
I'll start with the ridiculous: Chains of Mephistopheles is pretty damn sweet when everyone's graveyards are basically a second (and third, fourth and fifth) hand for you. Plus, well Chains, Chainer, it just fits. But unless you've got one lying around spare, you're probably not going to be adding it to the deck....
Still not cheap money wise, but Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed is very solid addition to the recursion package, letting you get back any black card for BBB and 3 life.
If you want some more removal, Shriekmaw and Bone Shredder fit pretty well, being both cheap and self sacrificing. They do have conditions on what they can kill, so you do want other unconditional options, but as part of a larger removal package, they're worth considering (I currently only run the Shredder out of these). Faceless Butcher is another one to consider - you really need a sac outlet to be able to fully take advantage of it, but it's a fair bit cheaper than things like Duplicant, plus using in on your own stuff can sometimes be useful (e.g. in the face of board wipes)
Life's Finale is on the expensive side for a symmetrical wrath, but Buried Aliveing an opponent as an extra can be pretty good (even if all you do is target the green player for his Reclamation Sage...), and mono-B can make plenty of mana.
I've found Dark Deal to be solid for similar reasons to Chains - it disrupts your opponents plays while filling yards. Normally, I think it's a pretty bad card as it leaves you one down on your opponents (itself), but in Chainer, that's not really the case. Also silly with Sangromancer. And Chains....
Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed on the other hand is on my list of cards I definitly want to get for this deck. I just need to find a somewhat affordabe copy somewhere. (the judge foils seems to be cheaper, so probably that). He seems like a great fit for the deck. Also Living Death looks like it would work pretty well in combination with him.
Personally I don't like the conditional removal on the Shriekmaw variety of cards. There are quite a few relevant black creatures in my meta, which makes me prefer unconditional removal on my creatures.
Faceless Butcher on the other hand seems great. It might just be a better version of Ravenous Chupacabra in this deck. Having a sac outlet on the board shouldn't be a problem here after all.
Life's Finale could work. I've considered it before. Ultimately I decedied not to run too many wrath effects, since I don't want to end up killing my own Chainer too often. If I ever add more, this one is definitly one of the first I'll test. Alongside the obvious clean and efficient Damnation and the probably a bit too mana heavy Decree of Pain.
Dark Deal seems like it could be sweet. Looks like it's only a few cents, so I might just end up getting one to try it, the next time I order some cards for the deck.
Thanks for the great responses btw guys! I'm glad that there seems to be a good amount of interest in the deck
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Pauper:
RUGAffinity
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Well, at least from the handful of MBC fans. LOL
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R Zada Arcane Storm
RBU Marchesa
GWU Estrid
GWR Samut?
URB Kess
(R/W)(U/B) Akiri & Silas
BWR Alesha
R Neheb Dragons
G Nylea Wurms
W Darien
U Tetsuko
BWB/W Tokens
Pauper:
RUGAffinity
EDH:
BWAyli, Eternal Pilgrim
old thread
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R Zada Arcane Storm
RBU Marchesa
GWU Estrid
GWR Samut?
URB Kess
(R/W)(U/B) Akiri & Silas
BWR Alesha
R Neheb Dragons
G Nylea Wurms
W Darien
U Tetsuko
I think Chainer can be built in quite a few different ways. It can be slow and controlish or a fast reanimator deck. it can include stax elements, it can focus a bit on mill to reanimate more of the opponents creatures, or it can focus on reanimating combo pieces from our own graveyard.
I feel like I might need to focus my list on one of these aspects, as it can feel a tiny bit all over the place at times.
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Pauper:
RUGAffinity
EDH:
BWAyli, Eternal Pilgrim
MBC has a need for certain effects because it has weaknesses and has to hustle on multiple fronts to make up for them. Card draw (among other things) is painful, so we need life and often have to leech it. We can't rely on counterspells to protect our own bombs save for one so we rely on surgical/wholesale removals from hand and library. We don't have good land ramp so we have to lean on more vulnerable options like mana rocks and ritual lands, and we slow down the other players with various kinds of stax. You have hardly any stax, really — Mindslicer is probably the biggest but that's more of a bomb you save for protecting an attempt to win than something you loop a lot.
I'd like to visit your list of wincons, actually: Chainer needs 3 things: mana, life, and targets. Your ramp and rituals to race things out satisfies mana, almost all of your sources of life support are themselves win conditions, and milling may sometimes feel like a side act but the sooner you get that rolling the sooner you might have good targets for instant-speed support of your goals (not to mention also being a win condition itself). But you know this stuff.
From my point of view, #1 here feels like the last choice. Your list feels like it's focused on #2, #3, and #4 such that #1 probably won't come up unless there's a target of opportunity that ends things sooner because the main three aren't online yet (like, Craterhoofing a bunch of harpies, or somebody elses Gary/Koko). Personally, I love these sort of grab-bag, what-toys-have-my-opponents-brought-me wins. With a sac outlet and enough devotion for Overlord or both Phyrexian Altar and Pitiless Plunderer for Wurmcoil Engine — and enough life, of course — you can make armies of your own already, too. Your life support pieces for looping this indefinitely probably kill your opponents before a token army can, though.
However, #5 now feels like a fifth wheel to me. I think this is mostly because all of your methods for turning either of them on are themselves win conditions. Gary and Koko turn it on really easy, but at that point you should be winning with them probably. Blood Artist or Zulaport Cutthroat can whittle at opponent life to help gradually turn Bloodchief Ascension on or make Mindcrank mill, but the former seems to require more work on your part repeated over three separate turns to make sure a couple creatures die each of those turns as there doesn't seem to be anything else whittling at opponent life passively, or things passively knocking down opponent creatures to keep Blood Artist/Cutthroat buzzing, in order to get those quest counters. That's not terribly hard with a Chainer deck just as you do your thing, but it's still possibly three trips around the table. Maybe your opponents help turn it on pretty consistently. If I'm wrong about this, I'd like to hear how this usually plays out for you.
old thread
old thread
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R Zada Arcane Storm
RBU Marchesa
GWU Estrid
GWR Samut?
URB Kess
(R/W)(U/B) Akiri & Silas
BWR Alesha
R Neheb Dragons
G Nylea Wurms
W Darien
U Tetsuko
On the other hand I really don't want to be the guy who locks up the table with all the stax. Something like Contamination would probably be too much for my playgroup. I am willing to try out some less degenerate ways to slow down the game tho.
In regards to the wincons, you're definitly correct. I've found I only really go to my opponent's graveyards if there are answers there to things I couldn't deal with otherwise. Say a Reclamation Sage or something along those lines. Winning off of a big reanimated threat has not been the norm. That much is true.
This is actually part of the reason, why I'm thinking it might be better to just focus on my own graveyard and maybe even forgo the pure mill efects like Altar of the Brood and Mindcrank.
Bloodchief Ascension feels like it might be on the chopping block. You're definitly right that it takes a lot of time to activate in a deck like this.
I originally added it as another way to gain life, also thinking "Hey, this combos with Mindcrank anyway, it has to be good here". Turns out it doesn't actually do a great job at gaining life at all. It takes too long to activate to really help with a life shortage in the short term and forces the table to sort of team up on me, which I can't deal with all that well, since like we said, I don't play stax pieces.
You actually hit the nail right on the head with this. I don't think my list is terribly unfocused, but these are the exact things I meant. Ultimately I think I might have to accept that I can't speed the deck up enough to where I might not need any stax at all. Especially at a table with Azusa, Lost but Seeking and Oona, Queen of the Fae setting the speed level of my meta to "actually pretty damn fast"
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Pauper:
RUGAffinity
EDH:
BWAyli, Eternal Pilgrim
And then you've got interactions, too. Mana Web might encourage your opponents to overextend their board state by tapping out each turn and not wanting to waste the mana — right into a board wipe. Noetic Scales is friends with discard. Oppression or Defense Grid might cause your opponents to slow down their pace if they don't want to lose cards or want to leave the extra 3 mana open (which ends up telegraphing louder than just leaving UU open). There's a lot of experimenting with your friends' psychology and how they react to different incentives/penalties.
And of course there's negotiation. And there are harmless things like Crawlspace and annoying speedbumps like Silent Arbiter.
There's other passive mill, too, such as Mesmeric Orb that will affect you, too (which is still a test card for me since I haven't used it yet). Dark Deal can sortof be thought of as mill, as well as Memory Jar (which plays well with Myr Retriever and Rings). Rings can also double-up both Chainer's activation and Altar of Dementia and you can always aim that at yourself to self-mill, even using opponents' large creatures to do the work (which are also good subjects for Disciple of Griselbrand).
Yeah, they know the combo and it paints a target on you. That's possibly good enough reason not to run Mindcrank by itself, either.
It's a more casual card, but Profane Memento could help with life in coordination with the mill (and other things since "from anywhere") if it's a creature-heavy meta. Then there's other death-trigger lifegain like Falkenrath Noble (Blood Artist #3), Deathgreeter, and Dross Harvester. You already know about Disciple of Griselbrand, but there's also Loxodon Warhammer and Whip of Erebos which make yet another good use of opponents' creatures that aren't game-enders.
Stuff like Polluted Bonds cold be handy against Azusa. Might not stop or slow her but it might give you fuel. Maybe Orbs of Warding against Oona. I figure your goal will be to slow them down enough you have a decent shot if you play well. Another boardwipe or two might not hurt, either, and buy you some time (Kagemaro, First to Suffer is a favorite), but you may also have to dip into a pact effect or two more than just Plaguecrafter. One bit of advice I remember reading regarding Chainer is that, if you want to cast him then activate, you have to think of the curve like he's 8-CMC — so wipes like Life's Finale can be considered on-curve with that approach.
Edit: Almost forgot Torpor Orb in the disruption kit.
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old thread
old thread
R Zada Arcane Storm
RBU Marchesa
GWU Estrid
GWR Samut?
URB Kess
(R/W)(U/B) Akiri & Silas
BWR Alesha
R Neheb Dragons
G Nylea Wurms
W Darien
U Tetsuko
Azusa and Oona tend to be commander-centric so playing more spot removal like Hero's Downfall and Go for the Throat would help those matchups. Ravenous Chupacabra is good, but you lose the element of surprise with it in your graveyard.
Also, obligatory Thoughtseize recommendation. If you know your meta well enough and have decent predictive skills, you can get a lot of mileage out of it. Chainer is much better against countermagic than Erebos but sometimes you're going for a Torment of Hailfire win and need to push it through. Alternatively, you can go after the guy with spot removal to make sure Chainer hangs around.
[Primer] Erebos, God of the Dead
HONK HONK
Have you tried Painful Quandary and the other great discard spells?
BChainer, Dementia Master(Big Mana/Reanimator)
BRRakdos, The Showstopper (Mass Life Loss/Ramp)
BUThe Scarab God (Zombie Tribal/Control)
BWKarlov of the Ghost Council (Life Gain)
BGJarad, Golgari Lich Lord (Stompy/Dredge)
BRGProssh, Skyraider of Kher (Tokens/Non-infinite Combo)
And the more you get into sacrifice outlets like Attrition that have a controlling effect (or if you use any pacts), the more you might consider self-returning creatures like Bloodghast, Reassembling Skeleton, or Nether Traitor as enablers, or reusable recursion that's cheaper than Chainer like Phyrexian Reclamation, Oversold Cemetery.
In my case I haven't had much of a problem with rattlesnaking removal creatures in my graveyard. If my friends start running more graveyard removal I will likely have to adapt to some hidden instant removal like Hero's Downfall. I have to consider that part of the reason they haven't is that I tend not to destroy everything I can, but rather to use my removal creatures when something comes at me or to dodge graveyard removal and target something belonging to whoever pointed graveyard removal my way.
I wouldn't be surprised if your meta is more aggressive about taking a little punishment to get rid of a known threat sitting in your graveyard, but you know them better.
old thread
old thread
old thread
R Zada Arcane Storm
RBU Marchesa
GWU Estrid
GWR Samut?
URB Kess
(R/W)(U/B) Akiri & Silas
BWR Alesha
R Neheb Dragons
G Nylea Wurms
W Darien
U Tetsuko
I'm unsure about the stax cards tbh, they feel like they do nothing else but slow the game down. I know that's what we want to accomplish, but I just wish there was another way to do this without playing some of those cards.
Silent Arbiter could be cute tho. Might have saved me last night, when I was run over by a horde of tokens from Beacon of Creation. Turns out that card is pretty decent when you have 30 lands on the table
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna cut Bloodchief Ascension from the deck together with Mindcrank and Altar of the Brood.
I like the idea of more discard a lot. Why take my opponents resources from their deck, when I can take them from their hand.
Hero's Downfall is something I think I might try. It's not a fancy card, but it gets the job done. Also there has been quite a bit of graveyard hate recently. No Rest in Peace or anything like it, but Scavenger Grounds tends to find its way onto the board most games...
On that note, what do you guys think are the removal creatures that I should run anyway? Plaguecrafter is a given ofc, but do I want more of the same? Fleshbag Marauder and Merciless Executioner would be easy additions, but I'm not sure how many times I want that kind of effect.
Same with the Ravenous Chupacabra type. Do I run Faceless Butcher in addition to it, do I replace it?
Something I've noticed is that no matter what you reanimate you draw tons of hate. Last night I reanimated a Meteor Golem a couple of times. I got rid of some stuff, but ultimately it left me low on life and vulnerable. I kinda feel like I would've done better that game if I just tried to get bigger threats and not care as much about reanimating removal.
In regards to Thoughtseize I'm a bit unsure. Spending a card to force a single discrad feels weird to me in EDH, but it might work. Have have a set of those, so I can just try it, which I might do.
No, I haven't tried Painful Quandary. At 5 mana it always felt a it expensive to me. Maybe I'm wrong on that.
Since I'm trying to add more discard to the deck anyways, what are some other pieces of discard you'd suggest?
Attrition seems like it could be great if I do end up taking the deck in a slower direction.
The thing with the removal creatures in my meta is that I'm unsure wether I have enough time/life to actually recur a whole bunch of those and still have enough time/life left to then go on to win the game.
Maybe replacing some of my removal with instants would help me put less of a toll on my life total. The creatures do seem a lot better tho, since they're reusable.
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Pauper:
RUGAffinity
EDH:
BWAyli, Eternal Pilgrim
Others are:
-Oppression - A cheaper but worse Painful Quandary effect
-Awaken the Erstwhile - can backfire if you don't have some way to deal with multiple armies of 2/2's
-Mind Twist - Doesn't piss the whole table off which is kinda nice.
-Delerium Skeins - a lot of discard for 3 mana
-Larceny - With a heavy creature/token build this can do a lot of work.
-Sadistic Hypnotist Same as Larceny.
Its hard to go wrong with PQ, Opression or Mind Twist. The rest are debatable. There are also things like Bottomless Pit, Necrogen Mists, Liliana of the Veil and Liliana, Heretical Healer but they too slow imo. Bottomless pit is the best of these as it's random, but I still find its too slow.
Worst case just play PQ, it only makes opponent's discard and its still good when hands are gone.
Edit: Oh also, Myojin of Night's Reach is neat but probably too expensive. Mono B does have some very good ramp though so maybe.
BChainer, Dementia Master(Big Mana/Reanimator)
BRRakdos, The Showstopper (Mass Life Loss/Ramp)
BUThe Scarab God (Zombie Tribal/Control)
BWKarlov of the Ghost Council (Life Gain)
BGJarad, Golgari Lich Lord (Stompy/Dredge)
BRGProssh, Skyraider of Kher (Tokens/Non-infinite Combo)
In your experience, does it happen that players choose to take 5 instead of discarding with Painful Quandary? Since the end goal is to get their cards into the graveyard after all.
I like Oppression quite a bit, so that might make it into the deck.
Myojin of Night's Reach is cool, but since it needs to be cast from the hand to get it's ability, I'm not sure it's the best fit for a Reanimator strategy like this.
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Pauper:
RUGAffinity
EDH:
BWAyli, Eternal Pilgrim
It def sux you can't reanimate Myojin. You have to think of him more like a 8 mana sorcery that mass discards and makes a creature token. At least the discard part has synergy with Reaninator but I agree its not an auto-include.
BChainer, Dementia Master(Big Mana/Reanimator)
BRRakdos, The Showstopper (Mass Life Loss/Ramp)
BUThe Scarab God (Zombie Tribal/Control)
BWKarlov of the Ghost Council (Life Gain)
BGJarad, Golgari Lich Lord (Stompy/Dredge)
BRGProssh, Skyraider of Kher (Tokens/Non-infinite Combo)
Sadistic Hypnotist is also nice, since he doubles as a sac outlet, which is desirbale for the deck anyway. It's another 5 cmc thing tho, so I'm not sure about him
BWB/W Tokens
Pauper:
RUGAffinity
EDH:
BWAyli, Eternal Pilgrim
BChainer, Dementia Master(Big Mana/Reanimator)
BRRakdos, The Showstopper (Mass Life Loss/Ramp)
BUThe Scarab God (Zombie Tribal/Control)
BWKarlov of the Ghost Council (Life Gain)
BGJarad, Golgari Lich Lord (Stompy/Dredge)
BRGProssh, Skyraider of Kher (Tokens/Non-infinite Combo)