MTG Salvation

Liliana is an interesting commander in my backlog. She's a fairly complicated build because of the many things she requires - first she needs a creature to die, which requires a creature and, ideally, a sac outlet. Then, once flipped, as a walker she needs protection. And if you want to get her more counters, you'd better either be prepared to play hellbent, or draw extra cards so you'll have enough spares to discard. And once that's all taken care of, she's got several ways to pay you off - the discard enables some stax, the minus ability can be effective with cheap, high-impact creatures, and her ult is, imo, among the most, if not THE most, absurd ult in the game.

So I think there's a lot of ways to build her. This version is aiming to do exactly one thing: ult her. Happily, the pieces that make that possible are also among the best options for taking advantage of it - board wipes that protect her also turn into mass-mind-control once she's ulted. Flipping her is a little trickier, but creatures with removal etb effects work perfectly for both protecting her and for value after she's ulted by coming back again and again.

I like the idea, I used to play Liliana, Heretical Healer and it was a fun deck. What frustrated me at the time was there was a player that would literally counterpick and pilot Animar, Soul of Elements when he realized I wanted to play Liliana, Heretical Healer, so mean and unfun.

I don't think you are running enough creatures. The way your list is now, you could easily get stuck in a game without drawing into any creatures for several turns. I recommend running small creatures with a CMC of 1 or 2 that you can sacrifice. Good ones for Liliana, Heretical Healer include Cabal Trainee, Fume Spitter, Heap Doll and Vampire Hexmage.

I also recommend you run Cabal Ritual, Culling the Weak and of course Dark Ritual. Early game they enable outrageous plays and later in the game they can help you cast bigger spells or recast Liliana, Heretical Healer.

Liliana is an amazing commander, but she's most powerful when you don't rely on her. She can just be an amazing engine to power an existing deck.
My point is, you are depending too heavily on Liliana. Someone plays Nevermore on her and you don't have a game plan except for removing everyone's stuff... Eventually you will run out and become irrelevant or dead.

Instead, run cards like Crypt Ghast, Rune-Scarred Demon, Chainer, Dementia Master, draw a ton of cards with Night's Whisper, Read the Bones, Ancient Craving. Black can play the value game very well. Lili can be the cherry on top that dominates the deck, but doesn't have to be the one critical card you always need to have.

Quote from shermanido37 »

Liliana is an amazing commander, but she's most powerful when you don't rely on her. She can just be an amazing engine to power an existing deck.
My point is, you are depending too heavily on Liliana. Someone plays Nevermore on her and you don't have a game plan except for removing everyone's stuff... Eventually you will run out and become irrelevant or dead.

Instead, run cards like Crypt Ghast, Rune-Scarred Demon, Chainer, Dementia Master, draw a ton of cards with Night's Whisper, Read the Bones, Ancient Craving. Black can play the value game very well. Lili can be the cherry on top that dominates the deck, but doesn't have to be the one critical card you always need to have.

Meh, I know how to build MBC. I've built more mono-black decks than any other color combination I think. It's fun, but I'm more interested in finding something new. Her ult is really interesting (and by interesting I mostly mean absurd) so it seemed like the most worthwhile thing to builds toward, to try to make something cool happen. Does that open up weaknesses? Sure, but such is the price of having fun. Anyway I could always tutor for o-stone or disk, between the pair + tutors, that's like 8 ways to kill nevermore/pithing needle/etc.

In reality I think the ult is more of an "I win" button than anything, which is always the downside of these sorts of things. Sure, the deck is strong, but it's either on or it's off. When it works, no one sticks around through constant triggers. I played a couple games, two wins against mostly inferior decks (and one ezuri deck that did NOT see that board wipe coming) and a loss. The loss was actually the most interesting game because I ended up ulting but at very low life (after the first ult got stifled!), and made a critical misplay that cost me the game a few turns later, though I'm fairly confident I could have won if I'd been paying more attention. Still, even that game, it was an all-v-one situation, which is not really what makes for fun games imo. If I can just straight up fight 3v1 and win (at least if I don't screw up), the deck is too strong, and I think if I go weaker it'll be much harder to defend liliana for ulting since the goal is basically to keep the board clear at all times. So, I don't know if there's a power level where this deck isn't either too strong or too weak, or too not-focused-on-liliana, and the nature of all the wipes sort of makes it archenemy by default.

If I was going to revamp for more power, I'd probably consider the obvious grave pact shenanigans, and some of the proliferate cards I forgot about. Could also completely retool and use liliana more for her + and - abilities, but frankly I don't think she's worth the effort if that's all the benefit you're getting out of her, compared to something like XHD or Geth or Toshiro.