MTG Salvation

I love stax. Slowing the game down to a crawl while you gain advantage into wins is my bread and butter. I always loved Abzan in stax but since Partners came out I slowly drifted into playing those cards. Most of the partners by themselves are fairly underwhelming, except Thrasios and also Tyama. Having multiple draws a turn in the command zone helps a ton. Tana also helps give us tokens to fuel stax cards but also fuel Tyama as well.
I did a bit of research and found that using Tyama/Tana for stax into combo has been the way to go. Basically, make the game unplayable for everyone except you. If this sounds like fun to you then hold on to your butts as we delve into combostax.





COMBOS!
Once the board state is a mess and your opponents beg for death you can win via any of these
Buried alive gets Karmic guide, Felidar guardian, and Kiki-jiki, mirror breaker. Reanimate/Animate dead the karmic guide, gets the guardian which blinks the guide to get Kiki, turn him sideways and make another guardian, blink Kiki and repeat for infinite guardians and infinite damage.

Play Yisan, wandering bard
If you can make 6 mana get Qurion ranger and then Bloom tender by bouncing a forest. Play Tyama (Or don't if tender already taps for 3+ mana) the next turn and tap Tender and Yisan to get Village bell-ringer who untaps everyone, tap Tender and Yisan to get Felidar guardian to blink the ringers. Untap everyone and search up Kiki and make infinite cats.


Birthing pod away any 3 drop (Like any of the million we have or Tyama and get Guardian and then blink the pod to get Kiki.












MOAR COMING SOON

-Necropotence
-Renegade railer
-Mentor of the meeker
-Tarnished citadel


+Forest
+Loyal retainers
+Iona, Sheild of Emeria
+Crop rotation


Cut necro due to mana constrictions
Railer and mentor just were not good in here
Need more basics for Moon effects
Added retainers/Iona package since there are a good amount of legendaries and I have had little issue hard casting Elesh Norn so far
Crop rotation gets Cradle...and sometimes strip mine

Hi Dies, glad to see another list put up. I've followed your reanimator list for a long time, and I've played my Tasigur Reanimator deck to great success. I've been converted back to my original Memnarch list online and Teferi Stax in paper, but your Primer was most useful in streamlining my list. I've recently rebuilt Kaalia for my wife, and I've realized that adding a hatebear suite alongside the mass land destruction that's currently in the deck is most effective. I do have a couple of questions for you:

• How do the Blood Moon effects work for you? Being a 4-color deck, it seems that you would have to time the effect pretty carefully since it disables your mana base entirely. Or do the mana dorks make up for the effect?
• Which hatebear effects do you find most effective again the decks you play? I'm currently tuning my wife's deck and I want to add the best hate-bears/stax effects/MLD effects I can find since Kaalia circumvents mana restrictions so absurdly. I'm going to suggest Eidolon of Rhetoric, Aven Mindcensor, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Linvala, Keeper of Silence, Cursed Totem, and Rule of Law. Of these, or the ones you currently run including the Blood Moon effects, which have you found the most success with (sans the Totem effects)?

Quote from benjameenbear »

Hi Dies, glad to see another list put up. I've followed your reanimator list for a long time, and I've played my Tasigur Reanimator deck to great success. I've been converted back to my original Memnarch list online and Teferi Stax in paper, but your Primer was most useful in streamlining my list. I've recently rebuilt Kaalia for my wife, and I've realized that adding a hatebear suite alongside the mass land destruction that's currently in the deck is most effective. I do have a couple of questions for you:

• How do the Blood Moon effects work for you? Being a 4-color deck, it seems that you would have to time the effect pretty carefully since it disables your mana base entirely. Or do the mana dorks make up for the effect?
• Which hatebear effects do you find most effective again the decks you play? I'm currently tuning my wife's deck and I want to add the best hate-bears/stax effects/MLD effects I can find since Kaalia circumvents mana restrictions so absurdly. I'm going to suggest Eidolon of Rhetoric, Aven Mindcensor, Thalia, Guardian of Thraben, Linvala, Keeper of Silence, Cursed Totem, and Rule of Law. Of these, or the ones you currently run including the Blood Moon effects, which have you found the most success with (sans the Totem effects)?

Blood moon scales well against high powered decks since there are often very few basics on the field. I may add another forest or two in the future but right now it's been fine since I run every one drop possible and tutor up Bloom Tender early and often.

Null rod/Stony silence has been great against Artifact heavy decks and the three rule of law effects work well to shut down storm. Since Stax and storm are likely the best archtypes in commander they have served very well. Thalia, Linaval, Teeg, Sanctum prelate (Often on 2 or 3), and manglehorn have been all stars so far.

Well two of those changes sucked...


-Loyal retainers
-Iona, sheild of Emeria

+Ulvenwald Tracker
+Grand Abolisher


Abolsiher to protect combo and make messing with me harder. Tracker to kill things over and over and clear the way for more creatures. Real good with Titan or Norn.

Retainers only gets back 3 relevant cards in the deck and Iona wasn't relevant. At least with Norn if she dies right away her damage is done and she killed a bunch of things. Iona names a a color and dies to another

I have been very interested in this deck since I heard about it (I have heard it called blood sisters or blood pod) and I wanted to ask you a few questions about it Dies_to_Doom_Blade.

1. Can the deck run on a cheaper mana base ($$$ wise) I do not have all the og dual lands would shocks and pain lands be enough? Or would the life loss add up to much?
2.Is the deck hard to pilot? I know most stax decks take a bit more work than normal as you have to generally know what plays would be the best for your opponents to make and then cut them off of that but does this play a smooth game or is it a scramble to get it working most games?
3.Would this be a good starting point to get into CEDH or should someone (me) start with a different deck?
4.Not really a question but just wanted to throw this out I read your EDH blog and I find it very entertaining (your card reviews crack me up). Keep up the great work there.

Quote from muffins1001 »

I have been very interested in this deck since I heard about it (I have heard it called blood sisters or blood pod) and I wanted to ask you a few questions about it Dies_to_Doom_Blade.

1. Can the deck run on a cheaper mana base ($$$ wise) I do not have all the og dual lands would shocks and pain lands be enough? Or would the life loss add up to much?
2.Is the deck hard to pilot? I know most stax decks take a bit more work than normal as you have to generally know what plays would be the best for your opponents to make and then cut them off of that but does this play a smooth game or is it a scramble to get it working most games?
3.Would this be a good starting point to get into CEDH or should someone (me) start with a different deck?
4.Not really a question but just wanted to throw this out I read your EDH blog and I find it very entertaining (your card reviews crack me up). Keep up the great work there.

1. Gaea's Cradle is one of the best lands in the deck, the manabase does help a ton but I think budget is possible.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveEDH/comments/6g3omj/budget_deck_series_blood_pod/ This should help a ton

2. I've only been playing it for two weeks max at this point and the deck is a little difficult right now, I may not be the best person to ask this since I'm still a little fresh. I know the combos very well and which cards destroy certain decks but I believe I can do better right now

3. I REALLY like this deck for myself but it really depends on what you're wanting to do. Is budget an option? Do you want stax? Combo? Hatebears? It really depends on what you want to do. Playing it online with Cockatrice or whatever can give you a good answer.

4. Thanks, I've been super lazy lately but hoping to make more soon

Quote from Dies_to_Doom_Blade »

1. Gaea's Cradle is one of the best lands in the deck, the manabase does help a ton but I think budget is possible.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveEDH/comments/6g3omj/budget_deck_series_blood_pod/ This should help a ton

2. I've only been playing it for two weeks max at this point and the deck is a little difficult right now, I may not be the best person to ask this since I'm still a little fresh. I know the combos very well and which cards destroy certain decks but I believe I can do better right now

3. I REALLY like this deck for myself but it really depends on what you're wanting to do. Is budget an option? Do you want stax? Combo? Hatebears? It really depends on what you want to do. Playing it online with Cockatrice or whatever can give you a good answer.

4. Thanks, I've been super lazy lately but hoping to make more soon

Well for budget reasons currently I want to have just one CEDH deck for myself and I want to start off at 400-500 price point and I can work it into more powerful version from then on. As for play style I really enjoy Stax and Combo (its the only way to play control in EDH)hatebears just tend to help both of those strategies. Its hard to pick a place to start at (maybe you could write something about it) as there doesn't seem to be a good guide/place to show where to jump into CEDH from EDH.

Quote from muffins1001 »

Quote from Dies_to_Doom_Blade »

1. Gaea's Cradle is one of the best lands in the deck, the manabase does help a ton but I think budget is possible.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CompetitiveEDH/comments/6g3omj/budget_deck_series_blood_pod/ This should help a ton

2. I've only been playing it for two weeks max at this point and the deck is a little difficult right now, I may not be the best person to ask this since I'm still a little fresh. I know the combos very well and which cards destroy certain decks but I believe I can do better right now

3. I REALLY like this deck for myself but it really depends on what you're wanting to do. Is budget an option? Do you want stax? Combo? Hatebears? It really depends on what you want to do. Playing it online with Cockatrice or whatever can give you a good answer.

4. Thanks, I've been super lazy lately but hoping to make more soon

Well for budget reasons currently I want to have just one CEDH deck for myself and I want to start off at 400-500 price point and I can work it into more powerful version from then on. As for play style I really enjoy Stax and Combo (its the only way to play control in EDH)hatebears just tend to help both of those strategies. Its hard to pick a place to start at (maybe you could write something about it) as there doesn't seem to be a good guide/place to show where to jump into CEDH from EDH.

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/1500-blood-pod-copy/



http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/800-blood-pod-copy/




That's a 700 and 350 dollar blood pod deck that should help a bunch with getting started. Getting into competitive from regular is just slightly upgrading cards over time. Start with a deck and when you have a chance to make something better, do that, keep doing that until you have your optimized 99. I've been doing that over the years with Mimeoplasm -> Tasigur -> Thrasios

Update

-Qurion ranger
-Alesha, who smiles at death
-Buried alive

+Serra Ascendant
+Anafenza, the foremost
+Arbor elf


Cut ranger because it was meh outside of combo and not really needed
Same for buried alive
Alesha didn't really do much in here.

Ascendant does a lot of damage and gains a ton of life for more abuse
Anafenza to hose graveyard decks
Arbor elf I forgot about and should have been in here.