I started playing Magic as a kid, right when Kamigawa was released. Back then, I only played casual, kitchen-table magic and my go-to decks were a RWG Samurai deck and a UB mill deck that I built during original Ravnica. I stopped playing around Time Spiral and took a long break until I got to college. There, I met some friends who played Magic and it was two things in particular that got me to come back to the game: A) Return to Ravnica had just been released, and I loved old Ravnica and B) they told me about this great new format EDH.
Immediately, I was pulled back into the game. Since all I had were the cards leftover from my childhood, plus some stuff my friends traded me, my very first EDH deck was made by taking my old Samurai deck, getting it up to 100 cards, and throwing Johan in the command zone. Needless to say, it wasn’t very good. Soon after that, I did the same thing with my old UB deck, using Lazav, Dimir Mastermind as my commander. Unlike Johan, Lazav stuck around for some time. I built better decks, but Lazav was a long-time favorite. As I got better, I realized that mill wasn’t the best strategy, and I started to build up the control side of the deck. However over time, I found myself playing it less and less. I was reluctant to take it apart, though, since I’d had it for so long. So instead, I changed the commander, kept a lot of the Dimir Control shell, removed the remaining mill components, and this deck was born. I could immediately tell that Dralnu, Lich Lord worked a lot better than Lazav. It was fun when Lazav got to become something like Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre, but he didn’t really help the control angle; he just fit the copy and steal theme. Even though only a handful of cards remain from my childhood UB deck, it was from those cards that this deck was (indirectly) born, so I like to say that this is my oldest deck.
As far as the meta environment I play this deck in, it’s primarily a weekly league at my LGS. The people and decks that show up changes from week to week but some of the regulars include: Krenko, Mob Boss; Purphoros, God of the Forge; Oloro, Ageless Ascetic; Freyalise, Llanowar’s Fury; Nekusar the Mindrazer; Karador, Ghost Chieftain; Edric, Spymaster of Trest; and Derevi, Empyrial Tactician.
“You have to sacrifice how many permanents?!” That’s often what I hear when I pull out my Dralnu deck. There’s no denying that his drawback looks scary:
If damage would be dealt to Dralnu, sacrifice that many permanents instead.
However, I’m here to convince you that the drawback looks much scarier than it actually is, and hugely outweighed by the next few lines of text:
:Target instant or sorcery card in your graveyard has flashback until end of turn.
Now that’s something! Give any instant or sorcery in your graveyard flashback? You mean like the ETB ability of Snapcaster Mage? One of the major cards in Modern?! And it’s repeatable? Sign me up! There’s no doubting that being able to cast instants and sorceries from your graveyard at any time is a powerful ability and, after playing many games with Dralnu, I’ve found it more than makes up for the downside. Honestly, I could probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve actually had to sacrifice something to Dralnu. There just isn’t a lot of targeted burn in EDH; unless you’re playing against fight.dec, you can avoid sending Dralnu into combat; and there are easy ways to work around this downside. I’ll go into the specifics of how we mitigate this risk when I talk about the specific cards in the deck, but the best tools to protect him involve lands that let you sacrifice him. (Also, you’re playing blue, use those counterspells!) That being said, it is something you must be aware of while playing Dralnu. Also, if your meta consists of a lot of R decks, or your friends like to play fight.dec, you might have a harder time with Dralnu.
Another plus to Dralnu is something that isn't actually apparent when you look at the card. Dralnu's creature type has been errata'd to be a "Zombie Wizard." Now, I don't really take advantage of him being a Wizard, but it is a very relevant creature type (certainly more relevant than "Lord"). So Wizard tribal is another direction you could take your deck if you're building Dralnu.
What I love about Dralnu is his versatility. While he doesn't scream "build around me!" like some commanders, he definitely lends himself to a strategy with more instants and sorceries. At the core, this deck is a control deck that could probably run any UB commander and still be successful. However, with his ability to get maximum value out of all of your instants and sorceries, Dralnu pushes the deck to 11. Once the game is under our control, we have two paths to victory: reanimation or semi-combo. Dralnu helps more with the latter than the former, as you'll see in the strategy section. Flavor-wise, I really like playing him with a reanimator theme because it means almost everything in my graveyard is reusable, not just creatures alone, or instants and sorceries alone. What is gone will rise again.
You might like playing Dralnu, Lich Lord if...
...you like a deck-building challenge.
...you like playing all sorts of cards from your graveyard.
...you don’t like having lots of creatures on the field.
...you like to play a controlling game.
...you like playing commanders that not many people have seen.
...you like playing decks that have multiple paths to victory.
You might not like playing Dralnu, Lich Lord if...
...you like playing creature-heavy strategies.
...you like to win with combo. (Dralnu can be built as a combo commander, but that’s not what this list is.)
Dragonlord Silumgar: It’s hard to argue against a commander that’s an Elder Dragon for a format called ‘Elder Dragon Highlander.’ The dragon with the Tasigur-bling is often seen at the head of copy and steal theme decks, though I’ve also seen UB-control builds with him. His ability can be helpful, but Dralnu just gets some much more value out of our instants and sorceries and has better potential for a drawn-out control game.
Oona, Queen of the Fae: A very good option for UB-control. However, since she provides an outlet for infinite mana in the command zone, she usually plays a dedicated combo/control style. When I set out to build Dralnu, I knew I didn’t want a dedicated combo deck.
Phenax, God of Deception: I like big butts and I cannot lie… Another UB commander that lends himself to a theme. I guess you could run him as a control commander, but he himself doesn’t bring much himself to that strategy.
Sygg, River Cutthroat: One of the better alternatives to Dralnu. He comes down early and can generate a ton of card advantage over the course of the game. He just doesn’t scream “sling spells!” like Dralnu does.
Wydwen, the Biting Gale: If this were Duel Commander, we’d probably consider her more closely. From what I’ve heard, she makes a pretty great UB-control commander in that format. But this is multiplayer commander.
Other Reanimator Commanders
Karador, Ghost Chieftain: Arguably the king (chieftain?) of reanimator strategies in EDH. I mean, come on, he never gets expensive and lets you cast creatures from your graveyard, what’s not to love? No blue in his color identity, that’s what not to love.
Sedris, the Traitor King: Ah, look at that U in the top-left corner. Much better. Another great reanimator option. However, he lends himself to a very creature-heavy strategy and we want to sling some spells, too, dammit! Also, the fact that Unearth exiles the creature means that it’s harder to abuse a single creature.
Tasigur, the Golden Fang: This is probably the closest deck to Dralnu. He gives both U and B, as well as G. Tasigur’s activated ability allows all card types to be recycled, just like Dralnu (in fact, Tasigur can recur more than us). I think the biggest reason to run Dralnu over Tasigur is personal prefence. However, I think there can be an advantage to only playing two colors, and I like that Dralnu allows you to cast any instant or sorcery from your graveyard, whereas Tasigur’s recursion is dependant on your opponents.
“But jenncertainty, if you want to sling spells, why not play an Izzet commander instead?” Because that’s not why we’re here! Well, sort of. The reason I believe Dralnu is best for this deck is that this deck is trying to do a lot of things. We want to be pulling instants and sorceries as well as creatures from the graveyard, so we’re not playing a “traditional” reanimator general. And we want to be able to reuse or spells once they hit the graveyard, so we aren’t playing UR-spell slinger.
As with most UB decks, if a troublesome artifact or enchantment resolves,
there’s not much we can do about it. This makes Rest in Peace
hit particularly hard.
The deck runs very few creatures and, while there are plenty of
board wipes, very fast, creature-based aggro decks can sometimes
take us out before we’ve even gotten started.
The drawback does exist. Hopefully I’ve convinced you
it’s not as scary as it looks, but it’s there.
Early Game
The primary goal of this deck is to establish control of the board and start reanimating our major targets. Our games will often end with repeated triggers from Kokusho, the Evening Star, getting miles ahead of our opponents with Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur, beating face with Void Winnower, or Paradox Engine shenanigans. We also have a few instant and sorcery-based win-cons, most notably Rite of Replication and Exsanguinate. Unfortunately, we can’t do all of this right away, so we’ll need to set up.
When choosing an opening hand, I usually look for at least three lands, though some hands can start with two. As well as lands, I like to see a mana rock and some form of card draw (Read the Bones is one of my favorite early game cards). As is usually the case, how I end up playing is largely based on my opponents. If I’m sitting across from creature-based strategies, I’ll want to get my defensive cards out as quickly as possible. Super fast aggro-style decks are probably the biggest threat in the early game. I’m also not afraid to wipe the board frequently. There are a couple different board wipes in the deck and remember, we can start reusing our instants and sorceries once Dralnu comes out. It’s important to remember that the only life point that matters is the last one, and that a lot of our mid-to-late game plays will gain us plenty of life (Kokusho and Exsanguinate), but the faster you can stop someone like Krenko, Mob Boss, the better.
Reading our opponents will also help to decide which path to victory we are going to choose. Really, this deck want to win in one of two ways. Either we will reanimate one of our game-changing creatures like Void Winnower or Jin-Gitaxias and out value our opponents that way. Or, we will land a couple of mana rocks along with Paradox Engine and win with this semi-combo. Which path is best for any given game depends on which permanents you think your opponent can more easily deal with. For example, if you are sitting across from a lot of artifact destruction, take the reanimation route.
Two cards we love to see side-by-side in our opening hand are Entomb and either Reanimate or Animate Dead. Given these cards, we can entomb for one of our major reanimation targets on turn 1 (usually Jin-Gitaxias or Void Winnower for control of the early game) and bring them back turn 2. This can be a very powerful play that can set you far ahead of the competition so, if you see these in your first seven, I'd highly recommend thinking about keeping them.
In the early game, watch your counterspells carefully. In a multiplayer game of EDH, there are going to be a lot more potential counter targets than you have counterspells (even if the amount of counters in the deck is effectively doubled by Dralnu). In the early game, counters should be used to slow down your opponents and make sure that you stay ahead of them while setting up. I’d also rather use something like Lim-Dul’s Vault over a tutor in the early game because it can allow us to dig for what we need while also finding other support cards to get our game plan going.
An important part of playing this deck is figuring out when to play Dralnu. As a rule of thumb, he should basically never come out in the early game, for two reasons: A) you probably won’t have enough cards to flashback to make him worth it and B) you want to either have some way to protect Dralnu, or know that your opponents have wasted most of their resources that may trigger Dralnu’s drawback.
Mid Game
So you’ve cleared the board and have a reanimation target in the graveyard. This is the earliest that I’d play Dralnu. If I have a counterspell in hand, or a High Market or Phyrexian Tower on the field, I’ll be more willing to cast Dralnu at this stage. As we enter the mid game, which reanimation target we go for depends on where we are in the game. I like to bring out something like Jin-Gitaxias or Void Winnower earlier in the game because they slow down my opponents greatly. Kokusho usually comes later, when we have the spells to get repeated activations and have drained our opponents of resources.
However, as with any graveyard-based deck, our plan can be blown to pieces by a well-timed piece of graveyard-hate. How much of it you’ll encounter is largely meta-dependant, so sometimes you won’t see a lot. Other times, everyone and their mother is running Bojuka Bog and Rest in Peace. The key here is knowing your meta, and not over-extending. If you have Kokusho, Jin-Gitaxias, and Void Winnower all in your graveyard without an active plan to bring them back, you’re just asking for trouble.
A note on politics: it has its place in EDH, but this deck isn’t very good at it. Most of our big effects are symmetric, hitting all of our opponents equally. If you do want to play more politically, counterspells are probably your best option because they can be used to “make deals” (i.e. “Hey. green player, I’ll counter this spell you don’t like if you deal with that enchantment that’s bothering me.”) But again, politics is not a good strategy to lean on.
The biggest threat at this point is probably combo decks. This is usually when they start going off (unless they’re lightning fast and have already won), and we don’t have our own combo we can race them with. We’re usually playing the long game so, if you find yourself against a combo deck, focus your counters on making sure they can’t combo off. Also, going for a reanimation target like Jin-Gitaxias or Void Winnower can be crucial here, as they both throw a wrench in the gears of a combo deck.
Late Game
As I said when outlining the deck’s strengths, late game is where this deck shines. If the game isn’t already over, by this point you probably have the most resources at the table. And if everything’s in your GY, just cast Dralnu. Thus is the beauty of recursion! At this point, your biggest threat is other control decks that have a strong late game. However, every deck has a limited number of counterspells. Why Dralnu truly shines in the late game is he doesn’t run out of steam when other control decks might, thanks to his ability to basically cast all of his instants and sorceries twice. I usually don’t like using his ability on sorceries (except maybe a tutor or for a game-ending Exsanguinate) because then Dralnu is a sitting duck, unable to activate again (unless you’re playing something like Thousand-Year Elixir). And don’t forget my motto, “everything’s better at instant speed.”
This deck has a couple of ways to close out the game. The primary win-cons are Kokusho loops, Exsanguinate cast for a high value of X, Void Winnower, Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur, Rite of Replication, and Paradox Engine. For Kokusho, you’ll need a sac outlet, most likely one or both of the sac lands. An Exsanguinate win comes when you have tons of mana and tap out (possibly leaving up a little mana for a counterspell if you think you’ll need it) for X > 10, and then just repeat by giving Exsanguinate flashback on your next turn. Void Winnower and Jin Gitaxias both win by locking your opponents out of the game. Once you start drawing a ton of cards and your opponents discard down to zero with Jin, you should be close to winning. Rite of Replication has a couple of good targets. Though having multiples of the "can't even" ability does nothing, targeting Void Winnower and having 6 11/9s is nothing to scoff at. My favorite target is Kokusho, since the legend rule will trigger, draining your opponents for 25 life each.
Paradox Engine is a fairly new addition to the deck, but when it was released, it totally changed the late game of this deck. I've built this deck to be explicitly combo-free, and though Paradox Engine isn't exactly an infinite combo, it can definitely feel like one. In order to get full value from the Engine, you need to set up a bit. An "Engine board state" - if you will - includes Dralnu, PE, and a few mana rocks. Once this is all in place, the result is not unlike Yawgmoth's Will + Omniscience. Since your mana rocks untap on cast, all of your spells basically cost X less, where X is the mana you can make with mana rocks. And any spells that cost less than X will end up leaving you with extra mana. Add to this the fact that Dralnu keeps untapping himself, and pretty soon you'll be closing out the game. Often this means generating enough mana for a game-ending Exsanguinate, but it can also just be out-valuing your opponents so much that there's no way for them to turn back the tide.
Protecting Dralnu
Here we are, talking about the downside again. I don’t mean to scare you because, again, I don’t think it’s that bad. However, you’re here for a comprehensive guide on playing Dralnu, right? So this is something you’ll need to keep in mind. The key to playing around the downside is identifying what type of opponents you need to worry about. If everyone else at the table is playing blue or black, you don’t need to worry about it as much as you would with a bunch of red and green decks. Obviously, you get to choose (most of the time) whether Dralnu attacks or blocks, so combat damage usually isn’t a concern. I don’t think I’ve ever attacked or blocked with Dralnu in my time playing him. The main things you have to worry about are as follows:
Burn, whether targeted or mass
Thankfully, we don’t see a lot of this in EDH. Whereas a modern player with Dralnu on the field (has that ever happened?) has to worry about Lightning Bolts, we probably won’t be seeing many of them. Usually when we do, it’s in the form of damage-to-all-creatures effects, like Blasphemous Act, or big-mana-X spells, like Fireball. Here’s where it helps to know your opponents a little bit. Always try to play conservatively against red players. Only bring out Dralnu if you have a way to protect him, whether that be a counter spell, a sac outlet, or something else. There’s nothing like responding to someone’s Blasphemous Act with Reins of Power and saying, “ok, you sac 13 permanents.” Giving him protection from red also effectively prevent this, as 9 out of 10 damage effects are in red. Also, remember that Dralnu’s downside replaces the damage, so he’s never actually killed by damage.
Forced combat
I think this one is a little trickier to play around but, like burn, is fairly uncommon in EDH. Usually, you will see these sorts of effects in green (“X fights target creature”) or white (“target creature must attack or block”). Dealing with fight is similar to burn: sac outlets, counter spells, or making Dralnu untargetable. If someone is trying to force Dralnu to attack (such as with Gideon’s ability) the best way to deal with it is usually by just using his flashback ability so that he can’t attack. It means you’re forced to use it when maybe you didn’t want to, but it’s better than swinging into a 5+ power blocker.
Commanders with direct damage abilities
This is one of the bigger threats to Dralnu's downside but thankfully, it's also the one that can't really take you by surprise. Commanders like Omnath, Locus of Rage, Borborygmos Enraged, and Marath, Will of the Wild have constant access to ways to trigger Dralnu's downside. Obviously, if you see one of these decks at the table, you'll need to be a lot more careful with how you play. It's these matchups where Lightning Greaves and Sword of War and Peace are key because they protect Dralnu from these types of abilities. We also have a lot of tools for keeping creatures off the board, so we'll just need to focus those resources on keeping Marath off the field.
As with most EDH decks, if we ran every card worth running, this deck would probably come in at nearly 200 hundred cards. Unfortunately, we are limited to a measly 99. In this section, I will discuss both the cards that I run in the deck, as well as cards worth considering but that didn’t make my list. Card names in bold are run in my deck.
Creatures
This list runs very few creatures, as Dralnu wants to have a lot of instants and sorceries to flashback. Most of the creatures that I do run are reanimation targets with a big impact upon hitting the board. However, there are a few utility dudes, as well.
Baral, Chief of Compliance: A good early game creature whose cost-reduction is effectively ramp, allowing us to cast more spells earlier. He also just allows more spells per turn for the later game. The loot-on-counter is also very relevant because it draws us cards and lets us put things in our graveyard.
Clever Impersonator: In my opinion, this is the best clone ever printed. Look closely at that text box: “...as a copy of any nonland permanent...” The ability to copy an opponent’s powerful planeswalker, artifact, or even enchantment makes this a great piece of utility. And of course, you can always just copy an important creature, too. An added bonus to clones in this deck (though this doesn’t apply to the other clone, Sakashima the Imposter) is it can also act as a sac outlet for Kokusho, the Evening Star if you need to drain some life. Just clone Kokusho, and sac either copy to the legend rule.
Consecrated Sphinx: Not much I can say about this card that hasn’t already been said. I understand why some people and playgroups frown on this card but, if you have no qualms running it, it should probably be in every blue deck. Even better if you can clone your own.
Curious Humonculus: I really believe this guy deserves a lot more attention than he gets. First of all, he’s a mana dork in blue. Sure, the mana can only be used on instants and sorceries, but in this deck, that doesn’t really matter. Then when he flips (and he’s easy to flip here) he reduces the cost of all your instants and sorceries while also having a decent body with Prowess.
Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur: Now we’re getting to the big reanimation targets. Like all of the praetors, he’s got a nasty reputation, and for good reason. If he sticks (which, granted, can be tough), he turns the tides drastically in your favor. Not only are you drawing seven cards each turn (hope you have your Reliquary Tower...) your opponents are probably also stuck in topdeck mode. This is usually my reanimation target if I can set it up early (i.e. with a Entomb in the first few turns).
Kederekt Leviathan: A nice reanimator target in that he has a big body and wipes the board for you. Though the effect is symmetrical, sometimes you just need to get everything off the field and this is the card to do it. As an added bonus, he can even reanimate himself, though once you do that, you can't recur him anymore since he self-exiles. A neat interaction with this guys you need to be aware of is how we works with enchantment-based reanimation like Animate Dead: when you bring back the Leviathan with an enchantment, his ETB trigger bounces the enchantment, causing the leviathan to go back to the graveyard so that you can reanimate him again.
Kokusho, the Evening Star: Another great reanimation target. In a four-player game, this gives you a 20-point swing in life totals. Also, except against decks big on lifegain, this card can be a wincon in and of itself once you start recurring it over and over again…
Massacre Wurm: Big reanimator number three. The wurm’s a psedu-boardwipe and a great target for clone effects, as you can stack both the wipe (if they come down on the same turn) and the life loss. This card also makes token decks cry. “Oh, Krenko, you have 30 goblins? Lose 60 life.”
River Kelpie: Since this deck is both bringing creatures back from the graveyard and casting spells from the grave, this creature has the potential to generate a lot of card advantage, and he definitely fits into some lists. I've omitted him because I feel like the list as is doesn't have any trouble drawing cards, and the cmc of 5 feels a little steep.
Rune-Scarred Demon: Worth considering in any reanimator deck as it gives you repeatable tutors. I’ve decided not to run it as there are better tutors on instants and sorceries, which we can also recur a lot in this deck with Dralnu.
Tidespout Tyrant: Another game-changing reanimation target. With this guy on the field, your opponents will have a lot of trouble keeping any worth-while permanents on the battlefield. While the Tyrant's effect is particularly devastating if you can get him out early (goodbye, lands!), he's a solid reanimation target at any stage of the game. Most notably, he can help deal with otherwise problematic permanents, like artifacts and enchantments.
Various Eldrazi Titans: Something to consider as they are big beefy creatures that can have a big effect on the board. However, I’ve chosen not to run them for two reasons: for one, they get the most value out of being cast, which doesn’t happen very often as we’re usually aiming to reanimate. Also, I like my reanimation targets to have an immediate effect on the board. Kozilek 2.0 does have his counter ability, but most of them have to wait before he can start swinging and exiling your opponents’ libraries.
Void Winnower: Now this is immediate impact. I ran Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger in an earlier version of the deck, but ended up swapping him out for this guy. Not only does VW have a big body, with a whopping 11 power, he also stops a lot of decks cold as your opponents struggle because they “can’t even.” There are a lot of EDH staples with even mana costs and this guy stops them all. An important thing to remember is that though the overload cost of Cyclonic Rift is 7, it’s CMC is still even, so an overload Rift won’t get rid of this guy.
Instants
Ancient Excavation: While the power of this card in the deck was apparent as soon as it was spoiled, it took me just a single use of this card to fall head over heels. This card can draw a ton of cards since we never have trouble keeping our hand full and then we get to drop a bunch of cards into our graveyard. You have Jin-Gitaxias and Animate Dead in hand with four other cards? How about draw 6 at instant speed and then throw Jin-Gitaxias in the grave while holding Animate Dead to bring him back? Great! I guess it also has Basic Landcycling, but I don't see that being used much.
Counterspell: The OG counter. Not much to say here besides, as a control deck, we want some counters, and it doesn’t get much better than the original.
Countersquall: A Negate that, at the cost of trading 1 for B, also causes your opponent to lose 2 life. The 2 life is fairly inconsequential in EDH but, hey, you never know… One reason I like this life drain is it can help you activate Bloodchief Ascension. A good option if you need more counter magic.
Cryptic Command: Another control staple and again, what can I say? This card does everything. I think I’ve probably used every combination of nodes on this spell at least once each though, more often than not, it’s “counter and draw” or “counter and bounce.”
Cyclonic Rift: List of instants? More like, list of blue staples! But really, this was another obvious choice. The only downside (and an important rules interaction to be aware of) is that when giving it flashback with Dralnu, you cannot overload from the graveyard.
Dig Through Time: On to the next blue staple. There’s a reason why this card is banned in Legacy. Grabbing the best two cards from the top seven, often for just UU is insane. Sometimes delving for this card can be tricky, since we want to be able to use our graveyard a lot in this deck, but I think this card is still worth it.
Disallow: An all around solid counter spell. Finally, Wizards has given us a Voidslime in mono-blue. Being able to hit things like Bojuka Bog is crucial. This used to be Summary Dismissal but I think this is an objectively better replacement.
Dissipate: A big part of perfecting any U or Ux control deck for me is finding the right balance of counterspells. While they aren’t always as big of an impact in multiplayer formats, they are still very important in making sure our opponents don’t get to the finish line before us. What usually happens when I building a blue deck is I cram it full of a bunch of counters, only to whittle it down to a few to make room for other card. It’s partially a meta call, as the number of graveyard-abusers in my meta makes exile effects especially important, but Dissipate and/or its colorless cousin Void Shatter almost always make it to my final list of counters. As I made cuts, only the blue version made it into my list and, to be honest, that was largely because I have the promo version
Entomb: An important card in any reanimation strategy. It allows you to put any card into your graveyard from your library, at instant speed, for only one mana. It doesn’t get much better than that. An important thing to note is that Entomb allows you to put any card into your graveyard, not just creatures, and since Dralnu can give your cards flashback, this card is almost a Vampiric Tutor that doesn’t cost life.
Fact or Fiction/Forbidden Alchemy: I put these cards together because they serve a similar purpose: instant-speed draw that also puts some cards into our graveyard. FoF is great in most blue decks but with Dralnu, it’s even better. The fact that there is so much recursion in this deck makes forming piles a more complicated decision for our opponent. Forbidden Alchemy has the added bonus that we have complete control of what ends up in our hand and what ends up in the graveyard. Another interaction to point out: if you target Forbidden Alchemy with Dralnu’s ability, you can flash it back for its original 2U instead of the printed, and much more expensive, 6B.
Frantic Search: While this doesn’t really give us pure card advantage since it’s draw two, discard two, there are a lot of advantages that make it worth running. First of all, it’s an instant, which is a huge plus. Also, like Rewind, it’s almost free, since it leave mana up to use later. And finally, we don’t mind if things go into our graveyard, so this basically just lets us draw two, for free, at instant speed, with no downside.
Hero’s Downfall/Pongify: Sometimes you just need something to die. Despite what some people may say, I think spot removal definitely has its place in EDH, it’s just not as important as it is in other formats. I like Downfall because it can hit planeswalkers and Pongify because it’s super cheap. Go For the Throat is another option if you think costing [mana]b[/card] less is worth not being able to hit planeswalkers or artifact creatures.
Lim-Dul’s Vault: I sometimes call this my “favorite card in EDH” and, you know, it’s only a slight exaggeration. First of all, it’s an instant, and everything is better at instant speed. And for the low cost of [mana]ub[/card], you get to pick the five cards you want on top of your library! (Well, sort of…) Early game, it can help you set up a stronger start and late game, it can help you find that crucial card to finish out the game. In my opinion, this card is worth considering in any deck that has access to these colors.
Muddle the Mixture: A counter worth considering because a) it’s cheap and b) it’s a tutor. There are a lot of good targets in this list at 2 mana. Black Sun’s Zenith and Curse of the Swine for mass removal, Animate Dead to start reanimation shenanigans, Exsanguinate for a late-game kill, Lightning Greaves to protect Dralnu, and that’s only naming a few. All in all, there are currently over 15 targets for transmute. Dralnu makes this even better because we can transmute it from our hand, and then use it as a counter once it’s in the graveyard. Who needs to make a difficult decision when you can just have both!
Mystic Confluence: I’ve heard this called Cryptic Command’s little brother and you know, there’s some truth to that. While it’s just Mana Leak and not a hard counter, you can always target the same spell with the counter mode more than once.
Reins of Power: This is one of the non-land forms of protections that’s managed to stick around in my list. It’s the perfect response to someone casting Blasphemous Act while Dralnu is out because not only do you not have to sacrifice anything, your opponent does the sacrificing instead. As well as working around Dralnu’s drawback, it’s also a nice combat trick in colors that don’t usually have combat tricks. Steal an opponent’s army for the win, stop an opponent’s army from running you over, get some value out of an opponent’s utility creature, there are a lot of situations where this card is useful. And, because we don’t run a lot of creatures, we’re usually getting the better end of the deal.
Rewind: A counterspell that, while not technically free, leaves up mana once it resolves. Not much to complain about there.
Scour the Laboratory: A very solid draw spell. At worst, it’s a Blue Sun’s Zenith for 3 that doesn’t take as much color-investment. At best, it’s an instant-speed draw spell that’s cheaper than Jace’s Ingenuity. Plus, delirium is very easy to get going in this deck. Worth considering if you need more draw power in the deck.
Swan Song: A one mana counterspell that helps win counter wars? I’m sold. So your opponent gets a bird. Who cares? I’d rather them have a bird than counter my counter against an entwined Tooth and Nail.
Time Stop: While it’s a little expensive at 4UU, this card just does so much. It can serve as a counter that exiles. It can effectively counter activated and triggered abilities. And, if you cast it during someone’s upkeep, they skip their turn altogether. The only downside is the spell exiles itself, so we can’t get multiple uses out of it with Dralnu.
Wretched Confluence: While not as useful as its blue counterpart, still a strong spell. When I ran it in the deck, I usually cast it for some combination of the first two nodes, since we have more efficient ways to bring creatures back from the graveyard. I sometimes see this compared with Profane Command but I greatly prefer confluence, largely because command doesn’t draw you cards and is only a sorcery, not an instant. And, say it with me class, “everything is better at instant speed.” This was eventually dropped from my list as it’s a little expensive for my tastes.
Sorceries
All is Dust: A very solid board wipe because it can help us deal with problematic enchantments, something this deck has issue with otherwise. Plus, because it’s sacrifice, it gets around indestructible. The downside is it doesn’t hit most artifacts or big colorless creatures like Kozilek, Butcher of Truth.
Army of the Damned: A good option if you're looking for another win-con. I ended up cutting this from my list because it is a little slow for my tastes, as your opponents get a turn cycle to deal with the zombies. As I pointed out with Forbidden Alchemy, Dralnu allows you to flash this back for its original CMC instead of the more expensive, printed flashback cost.
Beacon of Unrest: One of the many reanimation spells in the deck. I like this one because it can grab artifacts too, can grab things out of our opponents’ graveyards, and recurs itself by shuffling back into our library. Unfortunately, if it does end up in our graveyard, giving it flashback still exiles it. It will not be shuffled back into the library.
Black Sun’s Zenith/Deadly Tempest/Toxic Deluge/Decree of Pain/Damnation: Board wipes are important in this deck, since we don’t have a lot of creatures and risk getting overrun by token-heavy decks. Deluge and BSZ have the added bonus of hitting indestructible creatures and Tempest is nice in that it drains our opponents a little bit. The only reason Damnation isn’t in my list is I only own one and it’s in another deck. Down the road, I’ll probably give in and buy another.
Buried Alive: I thought long and hard about this card. Like Entomb, it’s a reanimation staple, so it seems like it could be a good fit. However, I chose not to run it in my list for a few reasons. First of all, it’s a sorcery, not an instant, and a more expensive one at that. Second of all, it only grabs creatures, and sometimes we want to dump an instant or sorcery into our graveyard. And finally, since we only run a few big reanimation targets, we don’t really ever want to drop more than one creature into our graveyard at once. That’s just asking for a Bojuka Bog. If you want more redundancy, or if you have more reanimation targets, this is the card for you.
Capture of Jingzhou/Temporal Manipulation/Time Warp/etc…: The extra turn spells that don’t exile themselves are great in Dralnu, as you can double their value and stretch them out into a lot of turns. The only reason I don’t include them is my meta frowns on taking lots of turns. Though I’m considering adding just one.
Compulsive Research: A strong draw spell in any deck, but especially with Dralnu. I usually don’t like running sorcery-speed draw spells, but this one is worth it. Three cards for just 2U is very powerful, and the discard ends up being helpful because we can just discard a reanimation target or an instant or sorcery to flashback later. I think it’s only worth running one of this or Frantic Search, and I’ve opted for the instant.
Curse of the Swine: Another card that I think deserves more attention. A one-sided board wipe that also exiles isn’t something you see very often. Sure, your opponents get boars but I’d rather they have that than a recurring Yosei, the Morning Star or something else equally as sinister.
Dark Petition/Demonic Tutor/Diabolic Tutor/etc...: Tutors. Do they go against the spirit of EDH? I don’t think so. If you want to tutor up the same cards every game, who am I to judge? And even if you don’t always grab the same thing, it’s just nice to be able to grab whatever you need at the time. Spell Mastery is easy to turn on in this deck, so Petition is almost always better than Diabolic Tutor.
Exsanguinate: Another potential finisher in the deck. Though this card is often used alongside infinite mana combos (of which I run none), it still has value here. Drained everyone with Kokusho a couple of times? Use this to kick them while they’re down. Especially in the late game, when we have a lot of mana and with Dralnu’s flashback, this card can usually be enough to finish off at least one player.
Extract from Darkness: Another reanimation spell and another one that can grab something from anyone’s graveyard. I like this card with Dralnu, since we don’t care about cards being in our graveyard, so the mill two is just an added bonus.
Ponder/Preordain: Nice cantrips, especially for setting up our early game. I decided not to run these, choosing to run Read the Bones instead, but if you want a faster early game, these are what you want.
Read the Bones: Another nice cantrip, similar to Preordain. I chose to run this over the other as, though it costs 2 more, it’s worth it to draw an extra card.
Reanimate: Costing only a single black mana, this is arguably one of the best reanimation spells available. While most our targets will cost a large sum of life, there’s enough life gain in things like Kokusho and Exsanguinate that it usually isn’t a problem.
Rite of Replication: An all around solid win-con. The biggest impact targets in our deck are Massacre Wurm and Kokusho. Massacre Wurm gives all your opponents' creatures -10/-10 and causes your opponents to lose a lot of life per creature death. A kicked rite on Kokusho trigger the legend rule, draining all of your opponents 25 life.
Treasure Cruise: A great card and, like Dig Through Time it’s easy to see why this has gotten the ban hammer in other formats. However, as I said with Dig Through Time, delving can be tough in this deck. With this in mind, I only want to run one of the two big delve cards and, of the two, I prefer Dig.
Whispering Madness/Windfall: Wheels are strong in any deck as a way to draw more cards, while also messing with your opponents’ hands. They are especially strong with Dralnu, since we’ll just pull the cards we discard back out of our graveyard. I’ve chosen to run only Whispering Madness because I felt there was only room for one in the list and I like that it can be repeated more than once if we have a creature to put it on. An important interaction to remember is, if you give this flashback with Dralnu, you still get to Cipher it, since cipher sends it to exile and flashback doesn’t replace that (since it also sends it to exile).
Zombify: One of our less efficient reanimation spells, but having reanimation on a sorcery is particularly strong with Dralnu and I wanted some redundancy. There are two reasons I run this over Rise from the Grave: a) costing 1 less is worth only being able to grab things from my graveyard and b) I have a full art promo that I really like...
Enchantments
Animate Dead: Sometimes I consider cutting this card, since it’s better in this deck to have reanimation effects on instants and sorceries that we can flashback with Dralnu. However, this card is just too efficient and so, I haven’t brought myself to cut it.
Freed From the Real/Pemmin’s Aura: These allow us to get multiple activations of Dralnu in one turn cycle though, there aren’t really many situations when Thousand-Year Elixir isn’t as good or better, as we usually only need to untap Dralnu once, and the Elixir effectively gives Dralnu haste. Pemmin’s Aura has the added advantage of protecting Dralnu, but the reason I’ve left both out of my list is I just didn’t like the card disadvantage that comes with the auras. The elixir sticks around even if Dralnu is destroyed, unlike auras, which is especially relevant when I need to flashback a board wipe.
Jace’s Sanctum: We’re going to be casting a lot of instants and sorceries in this deck, so it’s nice to make them cheaper. The added benefit of the scry triggers allowing us to filter our draws makes this card that much better. This was in my list for a long time and got cut because it was weak compared to everything else, not because of any faults of its own. Worth considering if you want more cost reduction and/or card filtering.
Leyline of Anticipation: If you’ve been reading from the beginning, by now you should know my motto: “everything’s better at instant speed.” Well, this card makes sure everything is at instant speed.
Metallurgic Summonings: A great value card in a deck with as many instants and sorceries as this one. It can help us get blockers, which can be important since our creature count is low, or it can be a win-con in and of itself by making a lot of medium-to-big constructs in the late game. Of course, the activated ability, if we have the necessary artifacts, is a huge effect, too, though we already have enough recursion that it may just be better to keep churning out constructs. I ended up cutting this, but it is still worth considering if you are looking for more end game cards.
Night of Souls’ Betrayal/Propaganda: I put these two cards together because they serve similar purposes: slowing down our opponents’ creatures. As I’ve said before, we don’t have too many creatures of our own, so these help protect us. I also see a lot of token decks in my meta and Night of Souls’ Betrayal can really shut down a lot of token strategies.
Phyrexian Arena: Not much to say about this beyond it’s a staple for a reason. One life is a small price to pay for an extra card every turn.
Search for Azcanta: The newest card advantage powerhouse of the deck. On the enchantment side, we get card filtering, as well as a way to put reanimation targets into the graveyard. Once it flips, it gives us an extra land and a way to generate real card advantage. This card is more than worth its slot.
Secrets of the Dead: A potential addition if you need more card draw. The synergy with Dralnu is strong, but I've chosen not to run it because I feel like I have plenty of card draw and this is a terrible early game card, as Dralnu usually doesn't come out until later in the game.
Artifacts
Darksteel Ingot/Dimir Signet/Mind Stone/Sol Ring/Thought Vessel/Thran Dynamo/Talisman of Dominance: Our mana rocks. Not much to say about these except that we run quite a few since we don’t have other sources of ramp. I like the Ingot because it’s indestructible. Mind Stone can be cycled for another card if you have enough mana. Sol Ring and Thran Dynamo are Sol Ring and Thran Dynamo. And Thought Vessel gives us an infinite hand size, which is often relevant in this deck.
Elixir of Immortality: This might seem counter-intuitive since we get much more value from things in our graveyard than in our library. However, the reason to run this is purely protection. If you can land it somewhat early, then you can wait and activate when someone drops Rest in Peace or another piece of graveyard hate. I don’t run this, but it’s worth considering if you have a lot of GY hate in your meta.
Expedition Map: This card is great in most decks as a way to find the lands you need, especially in the early game. In this deck, it’s even more important, as there are some lands we really want to see hit the field during the game. Specifically, this card almost always wants to grab a Phyrexian Tower or High Market, as these sac-outlet lands give us a way to get around Dralnu’s downside if someone casts Blasphemous Act and we don’t have a counterspell.
Lightning Greaves: This serves as both protection for Dralnu, as well as a way to give him haste so that we can activate him right away. Swiftfoot Boots is an option if you’re more budget conscious, but I believe Greaves are almost always better in this deck.
Magebane Armor: An often-suggested card for Dralnu as it protects him from things like Blasphemous Act (and, since we almost always get to avoid sending him into combat, effectively nullifies the drawback). However, I just don’t think it’s worth cutting another card, since all this does is protect Dralnu, there are better ways to do that (see: Lands), and unlike the pro-red swords, it doesn’t provide much of a win-con. However, this is easier on the budget than the swords.
Paradox Engine: This card is very, very broken. That was obvious to pretty much everyone when this card was spoiled. I was more excited to run it in my storm-combo deck, but thought I'd try it out here, too. My initial thought was that it wouldn't end up being super broken in this deck. I was very, very wrong. This card can easily close out games. We have plenty of mana rocks, so with the right set-up this is just Omniscience that also makes Dralnu's ability repeatable.
Sword of War and Peace/Sword of Fire and Ice: By giving Dralnu protection from red, these two swords effectively prevent our opponents from hitting Dralnu with non-combat sources of damage. Also, these provide us with a win-con, as well. These aren’t exactly budget options though, and I’ve included W&P over F&I because I already owned the former, but not the latter.
Thousand-Year Elixir: This both allows for a second Dralnu activation, and effectively gives Dralnu haste (because it’s not like we’re ever going to attack with him…). I really wanted this card to work in earlier versions of the list because it looked like a good fit for the deck. However, I found that the psedu-haste was rarely game changing and I almost never had the mana up to make the untap ability relevant. Still worth considering if you have a slot.
Lands
Most of the non-basic lands in here are your typical choices for color fixing: Command Tower, Drowned Catacomb, Temple of Deceit (the scry is always nice), Watery Grave, Choked Estuary. I personally like the tango lands because I usually find myself with at least two basics on the field. And, if you can afford a Underground Sea, I don’t need to tell you it’s worth including. A few other lands are worth extra attention:
Blast Zone: One of the newest additions to the deck and a card that is quickly becoming an EDH-control staple. It's not secret that UB has trouble dealing with resolved, non-creature permenants. Well, here's your answer. And on a land, just to make it that much sweeter.
Boseiju, Who Shelters All: Allows us to get game-winning instants and sorceries through counter magic. Plus, alongside Urborg, we don't have to worry about paying life to use it when we don't need the no-counters clause.
Fetid Pools: Fetchable duals are nice. Fetchable duals that we can cycle away for another card in the late game are even better.
Geier Reach Sanitarium: Having a draw trigger on a land is always nice. Sure, it gives everyone a card, but it also forces them to discard, so it doesn’t actually generate card advantage, and doesn’t give our opponents anything if they are top-decking. This discard is an added bonus in our deck, as it allows us to throw reanimation targets into the GY.
Nephalia Drownyard: Given how much we use our graveyard, this land's second ability might as well read "1UB, : Draw 3 cards," which is not too shabby, especially on a land, meaning it's easy to find room for in your deck.
Strip Mine: An important utility land because there's always going to be some important land worth taking out. Whether it's hitting Cabal Coffers, Gaea's Cradle, Maze of Ith, or something else, this card can win games.
Reliquary Tower: There aren’t many decks that can’t use this card and when you’re drawing as many cards as this deck often does, that’s especially true.
High Market/Phyrexian Tower: Now, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to convince people that Dralnu’s drawback isn’t as scary as it seems, and is more than worth getting access to his ability. Hopefully I’ve convinced you by now. However, the drawback does exist, and sometimes you need a way around that. That’s where these two lands come into play. As long as I have at least one of these out, I can always feel safe playing Dralnu because they provide the “oh, *****” button in case you find yourself looking at a Blasphemous Act on the stack without a counterspell in hand.
Riptide Laboratory: Another way to protect Dralnu, but this one sends him to your hand instead of the command zone (or graveyard). Draln has been errata'd to be a Wizard, so the Laboratory can be used to bounce Dralnu in response to any burn spells.
Tolaria West: High Market and Phyrexian Tower and pretty important cards to have on the field. This is another way to ensure we see them during our games.
Winding Canyons: This land serves only one purpose, and that’s allowing us to cast Dralnu at instant speed when the turn is passed to us. This way, you can have Dralnu ready to start flashing back spells without needing him to sit out for a turn cycle during which he’s a big target. It’s a little pricey, effectively increasing Dralnu’s cost by 3 mana, but for the first or second casting of him, it’s more than worth it.
Kozilek, the Great Distortion: A possible reanimation target. Though we don't get the cast trigger when he is reanimated, he has some evasion which means he can deal some damage more easily, and his activated ability allows us to control the game a bit/put things in the graveyard.
Many Dralnu lists I see run a lot of the non-exiling extra turn spells for super value. That particular route might not win you a lot of friends though
Phyrexian Tower could be another sac outlet that fits into your colors on the off chance you get to cast a spell the turn you need to sacrifice Dralnu.
As with a lot of commanders with activated abilities, Illusionist's Bracers could be kind of fun as well.
I've never really played Dralnu myself, but I've always found him to be really interesting and powerful so I'm excited to see him get more attention.
Those are all great suggestions, thanks! I'm probably going to pass on the extra turn cards, though, as my main playgroup frowns on taking more than one extra turn in a row (I guess just because I can give it flashback doesn't mean I have to use it right away...) Phyrexian Tower would be a good card to try if it weren't for that $25 price tag, though that's not outrageous. Probably an investment for down the road. I'm definitely going to try the bracers. I'm sort of surprised that I forgot about them.
And yeah, he's been a ton of fun and I agree, I'm surprised he doesn't get more attention. I guess some people are turned off by his drawback but really, it hasn't been too hard to work around. Plus, I love a deck-building challenge!
The only reason Zombify is in the deck is I have a full-art version that's been in the deck for a long time (since it was Lazav). Down the road I'll probably swap it out for a more efficient card. Most likely Reanimate.
Haha, yeah. "Budget" means I have an extra Cryptic Command, but only one Demonic Tutor and that's already in another deck. But again, it's near the top of my acquire list. Right now, the mana base is still fairly "budget" as well, but you're right that it could use some fetches and Creeping Tar Pit (my Evolving Wilds wants to be a Polluted Delta so badly...)
I don't think I'll add any more reanimation at this point. However, after I've tested the deck in its current form, I might add in more reanimation down the road, notably Entomb and another big reanimation target, probably Jin-Gitaxis. The thing about Necromancy in this deck is Dralnu wants effects put on instants and sorceries so that he can flash them back later.
As is, I lean much more heavily on mana rocks than ramp (in that there really isn't any ramp at all). So far that's worked out for me, though I might try out Sad Robot.
Army of the Damned has worked out pretty well for me. It's not the most efficient win-con, since people have a turn cycle to deal with the army, but the few times I've cast it, it's had a big effect on the game. I also like that Dralnu effectively lowers the flashback cost. And as for Freed from the Real, I haven't actually drawn it yet, so I'm not sure if it's worth it. To be honest, I totally forgot about 1000-Year Elixir and you're right that that works a lot better. I think I'll find a copy and make that change.
Reason that Necromancy is fun is a blue creature called Kederekt Leviathan :cthulhu:.
A great way to dump some creatures in your graveyard is Buried Alive, which is an auto-include in a lot of reanimation strategies.
Oh wow, I run Kederekt Leviathan in my Sidisi list, but I hadn't even thought about the interaction with Necromancy (and Animate Dead, for that matter). I might have to try that out, either in this list or Sidisi...
Buried Alive is definitely on the list of cards I'll add if I decide to make the list more reanimator focused.
OUT
-Wrexial, the Risen Deep
-1 Swamp
-Evil Twin
-Freed from the Real
IN
+Night of Souls' Betrayal
+Thousand-Year Elixir
+Phyrexian Tower
+Notion Thief
This deck runs a low creature count, and the deck needs ways to deal with aggro and other creature-based strategies. Propaganda might be better here, but I decided to test Night of Souls' Betrayal. I might end up swapping in Propaganda, or even including both. I cut Wrexial because he's just too slow and not what I want to be doing with 6 mana. As OwnDemon pointed out 1000-Year Elixir is just a better Freed from the Real. Evil Twin was sort of a relic from when this was still Lazav copy and steal and I already have two better clones in Sakashima and Clever Impersonator. I think Notion Thief will be better in this slot. And finally, there might have been a better card to get for a $20 investment for this deck, but having a sac effect has proven crucial many times already, so I decided to buy a Phyrexian Tower. Definitely an auto-include for Dralnu if you can find room in your budget.
Totally forgot about No Mercy. I think I even have a copy of that somewhere...
I do like Night of Souls, though. Last night it proved crucial against a tokens deck, as they were basically stopped in their tracks until they could find a disenchant or anthem. I think I'm going to try running Propaganda along side Night, probably in the place of Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver.
How has the reanimation theme been working out for you? Your build seems to be pretty creature-lite, and i remember my Toshiro deck requiring about 16 or so creatures before they were no longer dead cards during certain games. If you are looking to delve deeper into the flashback and reanimation themes, that deck might be able to give you some ideas.
As for cards like Night of the Souls' Betrayal, you may want to consider Echoing Decay or Bile Blight to handle token heavy metas. You'd be able to get double use out of them if needed with Dralnu.
What issues are you facing at the moment? It would be easier to give suggestions once we know what problems need to be solved.
Right now what I'm trying to do is find a balance with control and reanimator. I agree that the deck seems light on creatures, but I also don't want to add in so many creatures that my instants and sorceries get diluted, since that's what Dralnu does so well. I think I want to find room for at least one or two more big reanimation targets (Jin Gitaxias is definitely on my radar) as well as reanimator staples like Entomb and Buried Alive, which have already been suggested here.
As far as issues, it's hard for me to identify exactly what the issues are, exactly, largely because the list has gone through a lot of changes recently. Since the deck is pretty creature light, I see issue with fast, creature-heavy strategies though, thankfully, I don't run into a ton of those in my meta. I've added some board wipes and maybe the list could use some more. As I mentioned in an earlier comment, I'm also going to test Propaganda alongside Night of Souls' Betrayal (though I haven't actually played any games yet since deciding to test that).
Eldritch Moon is right around the corner and the full set has been spoiled. There are a few cards in the set that I think are worth considering for the deck, so I thought I'd talk about them here.
Contingency Plan: This is probably just a worse Lim-Dul's Vault, but it might still warrant some testing. This deck doesn't mind things hitting the graveyard, so this provides us with a good way to sculpt the top of our library while possibly also giving reanimation or flashback targets. It's really too bad it isn't an instant...
Imprisoned in the Moon: I love Song of the Dryads, so I'm glad blue is getting its own version. Sometimes this deck has issues with planeswalkers, plus this can hit utility lands, so there's a lot of potential value in the card. I think this card is worth testing in most blue decks.
Summary Dismissal: A counter that hits multiple spells? A counter that hits uncounterable spells? A counter that hits abilities, too?! A little expensive at 4 mana but worth testing.
Tree of Perdition: This might be more cute than effective, but I like the fact it can hose life-gain decks, which is something this deck has struggled with a bit. (Though, match ups against life-gain decks usually just end up with me beating them in card advantage and then inevitably setting up my one combo).
Curious Homunculus: Easy to flip in this deck and a mana dork. On the backside, a cost-reducer for our instants and sorceries. This deck isn't really looking to add lower-impact creatures but, like all of these, worth testing.
Scour the Laboratory: I've been thinking about cutting Blue Sun's Zenith and this might be the replacement. Without delirium, it's just a worse Jace's Ingenuity, but delirium should be easy to turn on in this deck. 3 cards for 2UU at instant speed? I'm like it.
Nephalia Academy: I mentioned this in my set review with another deck, but this card belongs in most decks. It's low-risk and very high reward.
I really like where this deck is going. It's been working better and better for me, and I'm having a lot of fun with it. Here's my most recent round of changes:
Out
-Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
-Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
-Desertion
-Talisman of Dominance
In
+Propaganda
+Void Winnower
+Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
+Thought Vessel
As has been touched on in this thread already, protection against creature-based strategies is important. I still like Night of Souls' Betrayal, so I decided to run both that and Propaganda. I really like Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver, but it wasn't really doing much for the game plan, so that's out. Desertion can sometimes be nice, especially when I can grab someone else's commander. However, 5 mana makes it not worth it and too often, it was a dead card in hand. I added both Void Winnower and Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur as reanimation targets. Ulamog 2.0 is good, but he just didn't have immediate enough of an impact like Void Winnower does, especially since I almost never cast him, so I didn't get the exile trigger. Finally, I never really needed the extra access to color, but this deck has a tendency to draw a lot of cards, so an infinite hand size is nice to have. With that in mind, Thought Vessel fits better than Talisman of Dominance.
Have you tested Magebane Armor at all? It seems like it would be a great card for protecting Dralnu.
Honestly, I just don't think I need that many ways to protect Dralnu. Right now I'm running two sac lands, High Market and Phyrexian Tower, and I think those are enough. Plus I also have counter spells which can stop things like Blasphemous Act while also helping out in other situations. Magebane Armor doesn't really do anything else except protect Dralnu.
I'm actually working on making this a more in depth write up about Dralnu, and you reminded me that I should add something about Magebane, since I see it talked about a lot as a suggestion for Dralnu. Thanks!
That makes sense. Looking over your list, you're right, there definitely isn't anything worth cutting for the Armor. Maybe try to find room for Expedition Map, since those two lands are so important.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
W.A.S.T.E
EDH Decks: GRUlasht, the Hate SeedGR BRRakdos, Lord of RiotsBR
The Map might be worth considering. Other than those two lands though, I don't really have any other big targets for it. Would having just two main targets for Expedition Map make it worth cutting something for it? And on that note, suggestions for cuts?
Good point about Thousand-Year Elixir. It seems like it would be great with Dralnu, but in reality, I don't think it's ever been game changing. Casting Dralnu at instant speed right before my turn serves a similar purpose, since he's not a sitting duck for a whole turn cycle and can (basically) be activated right away. I already have Vedalken Orrery (which should really be a Leyline of Anticipation...) and it couldn't hurt having the effect on a land, too, especially with the Map. Thanks!
Another card i would consider is Crystal Shard. Gives all your creatures a little protection and in rare cases when opponents tap out you can bounce their creatures. I'm probably going to try building a deck similar to this but with a little more jank to it haha. Things like Westvale Abbey seem like decent cards to close out a game.
I'm not totally sold on Crystal Shard, as I don't have any ETB abilities to abuse, and it's not really dependable enough for getting rid of my opponents' creatures. I was actually considering Westvale Abbey recently. My concern with running it is it seems like it would be tough to get it to flip, since there are so few creatures in the deck.
I mainly recommend Crystal Shard as it protects your commander from any burn or board wipes. Also I plan on running a list with a few more token generators like Dark Salvation & Cryptbreaker, So westvale might work better for me. Bitterblossom is an expensive card but is pretty amazing at making chump blockers and dying to skull clam's if you are looking to survive the early game more.
I started playing Magic as a kid, right when Kamigawa was released. Back then, I only played casual, kitchen-table magic and my go-to decks were a RWG Samurai deck and a UB mill deck that I built during original Ravnica. I stopped playing around Time Spiral and took a long break until I got to college. There, I met some friends who played Magic and it was two things in particular that got me to come back to the game: A) Return to Ravnica had just been released, and I loved old Ravnica and B) they told me about this great new format EDH.
Immediately, I was pulled back into the game. Since all I had were the cards leftover from my childhood, plus some stuff my friends traded me, my very first EDH deck was made by taking my old Samurai deck, getting it up to 100 cards, and throwing Johan in the command zone. Needless to say, it wasn’t very good. Soon after that, I did the same thing with my old UB deck, using Lazav, Dimir Mastermind as my commander. Unlike Johan, Lazav stuck around for some time. I built better decks, but Lazav was a long-time favorite. As I got better, I realized that mill wasn’t the best strategy, and I started to build up the control side of the deck. However over time, I found myself playing it less and less. I was reluctant to take it apart, though, since I’d had it for so long. So instead, I changed the commander, kept a lot of the Dimir Control shell, removed the remaining mill components, and this deck was born. I could immediately tell that Dralnu, Lich Lord worked a lot better than Lazav. It was fun when Lazav got to become something like Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre, but he didn’t really help the control angle; he just fit the copy and steal theme. Even though only a handful of cards remain from my childhood UB deck, it was from those cards that this deck was (indirectly) born, so I like to say that this is my oldest deck.
As far as the meta environment I play this deck in, it’s primarily a weekly league at my LGS. The people and decks that show up changes from week to week but some of the regulars include: Krenko, Mob Boss; Purphoros, God of the Forge; Oloro, Ageless Ascetic; Freyalise, Llanowar’s Fury; Nekusar the Mindrazer; Karador, Ghost Chieftain; Edric, Spymaster of Trest; and Derevi, Empyrial Tactician.
“You have to sacrifice how many permanents?!” That’s often what I hear when I pull out my Dralnu deck. There’s no denying that his drawback looks scary:
However, I’m here to convince you that the drawback looks much scarier than it actually is, and hugely outweighed by the next few lines of text:
Now that’s something! Give any instant or sorcery in your graveyard flashback? You mean like the ETB ability of Snapcaster Mage? One of the major cards in Modern?! And it’s repeatable? Sign me up! There’s no doubting that being able to cast instants and sorceries from your graveyard at any time is a powerful ability and, after playing many games with Dralnu, I’ve found it more than makes up for the downside. Honestly, I could probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve actually had to sacrifice something to Dralnu. There just isn’t a lot of targeted burn in EDH; unless you’re playing against fight.dec, you can avoid sending Dralnu into combat; and there are easy ways to work around this downside. I’ll go into the specifics of how we mitigate this risk when I talk about the specific cards in the deck, but the best tools to protect him involve lands that let you sacrifice him. (Also, you’re playing blue, use those counterspells!) That being said, it is something you must be aware of while playing Dralnu. Also, if your meta consists of a lot of R decks, or your friends like to play fight.dec, you might have a harder time with Dralnu.
Another plus to Dralnu is something that isn't actually apparent when you look at the card. Dralnu's creature type has been errata'd to be a "Zombie Wizard." Now, I don't really take advantage of him being a Wizard, but it is a very relevant creature type (certainly more relevant than "Lord"). So Wizard tribal is another direction you could take your deck if you're building Dralnu.
What I love about Dralnu is his versatility. While he doesn't scream "build around me!" like some commanders, he definitely lends himself to a strategy with more instants and sorceries. At the core, this deck is a control deck that could probably run any UB commander and still be successful. However, with his ability to get maximum value out of all of your instants and sorceries, Dralnu pushes the deck to 11. Once the game is under our control, we have two paths to victory: reanimation or semi-combo. Dralnu helps more with the latter than the former, as you'll see in the strategy section. Flavor-wise, I really like playing him with a reanimator theme because it means almost everything in my graveyard is reusable, not just creatures alone, or instants and sorceries alone. What is gone will rise again.
You might like playing Dralnu, Lich Lord if...
You might not like playing Dralnu, Lich Lord if...
“But jenncertainty, if you want to sling spells, why not play an Izzet commander instead?” Because that’s not why we’re here! Well, sort of. The reason I believe Dralnu is best for this deck is that this deck is trying to do a lot of things. We want to be pulling instants and sorceries as well as creatures from the graveyard, so we’re not playing a “traditional” reanimator general. And we want to be able to reuse or spells once they hit the graveyard, so we aren’t playing UR-spell slinger.
Also, B > R.
1 Ancient Excavation
1 Brainstorm
1 Counterspell
1 Cryptic Command
1 Cyclonic Rift
1 Dig Through Time
1 Disallow
1 Dissipate
1 Entomb
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Forbidden Alchemy
1 Frantic Search
1 Hero's Downfall
1 Impulse
1 Lim-Dul's Vault
1 Muddle the Mixture
1 Mystic Confluence
1 Pongify
1 Reins of Power
1 Rewind
1 Swan Song
Sorcery
1 All is Dust
1 Beacon of Unrest
1 Black Sun's Zenith
1 Curse of the Swine
1 Dark Petition
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Exsanguinate
1 Extract from Darkness
1 Gitaxian Probe
1 Read the Bones
1 Reanimate
1 Rite of Replication
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Whispering Madness
1 Zombify
1 Baral, Chief of Compliance
1 Clever Impersonator
1 Consecrated Sphinx
1 Curious Homunculus
1 Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
1 Kederekt Leviathan
1 Massacre Wurm
1 Tidespout Tyrant
1 Void Winnower
Enchantment
1 Animate Dead
1 Leyline of Anticipation
1 Night of Souls' Betrayal
1 Phyrexian Arena
1 Propaganda
1 Search for Azcanta
Artifact
1 Chromatic Lantern
1 Darksteel Ingot
1 Dimir Signet
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Mind Stone
1 Paradox Engine
1 Sol Ring
1 Sword of War and Peace
1 Talisman of Dominance
1 Thran Dynamo
Planeswalker
1 Jace, Unraveler of Secrets
1 Liliana, Death's Majesty
Land
1 Blast Zone
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
1 Choked Estuary
1 Command Tower
1 Dreadship Reef
1 Drowned Catacomb
1 Fetid Pools
1 Flooded Strand
1 Geier Reach Sanitarium
1 High Market
4 Island
1 Maze of Ith
1 Minamo, School at Water's Edge
1 Myriad Landscape
1 Phyrexian Tower
1 Polluted Delta
1 Reliquary Tower
1 Riptide Laboratory
1 Strip Mine
1 Sunken Hollow
1 Sunken Ruins
4 Swamp
1 Tainted Isle
1 Temple of Deceit
1 Tolaria West
1 Underground River
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Watery Grave
Early Game
The primary goal of this deck is to establish control of the board and start reanimating our major targets. Our games will often end with repeated triggers from Kokusho, the Evening Star, getting miles ahead of our opponents with Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur, beating face with Void Winnower, or Paradox Engine shenanigans. We also have a few instant and sorcery-based win-cons, most notably Rite of Replication and Exsanguinate. Unfortunately, we can’t do all of this right away, so we’ll need to set up.
When choosing an opening hand, I usually look for at least three lands, though some hands can start with two. As well as lands, I like to see a mana rock and some form of card draw (Read the Bones is one of my favorite early game cards). As is usually the case, how I end up playing is largely based on my opponents. If I’m sitting across from creature-based strategies, I’ll want to get my defensive cards out as quickly as possible. Super fast aggro-style decks are probably the biggest threat in the early game. I’m also not afraid to wipe the board frequently. There are a couple different board wipes in the deck and remember, we can start reusing our instants and sorceries once Dralnu comes out. It’s important to remember that the only life point that matters is the last one, and that a lot of our mid-to-late game plays will gain us plenty of life (Kokusho and Exsanguinate), but the faster you can stop someone like Krenko, Mob Boss, the better.
Reading our opponents will also help to decide which path to victory we are going to choose. Really, this deck want to win in one of two ways. Either we will reanimate one of our game-changing creatures like Void Winnower or Jin-Gitaxias and out value our opponents that way. Or, we will land a couple of mana rocks along with Paradox Engine and win with this semi-combo. Which path is best for any given game depends on which permanents you think your opponent can more easily deal with. For example, if you are sitting across from a lot of artifact destruction, take the reanimation route.
Two cards we love to see side-by-side in our opening hand are Entomb and either Reanimate or Animate Dead. Given these cards, we can entomb for one of our major reanimation targets on turn 1 (usually Jin-Gitaxias or Void Winnower for control of the early game) and bring them back turn 2. This can be a very powerful play that can set you far ahead of the competition so, if you see these in your first seven, I'd highly recommend thinking about keeping them.
In the early game, watch your counterspells carefully. In a multiplayer game of EDH, there are going to be a lot more potential counter targets than you have counterspells (even if the amount of counters in the deck is effectively doubled by Dralnu). In the early game, counters should be used to slow down your opponents and make sure that you stay ahead of them while setting up. I’d also rather use something like Lim-Dul’s Vault over a tutor in the early game because it can allow us to dig for what we need while also finding other support cards to get our game plan going.
An important part of playing this deck is figuring out when to play Dralnu. As a rule of thumb, he should basically never come out in the early game, for two reasons: A) you probably won’t have enough cards to flashback to make him worth it and B) you want to either have some way to protect Dralnu, or know that your opponents have wasted most of their resources that may trigger Dralnu’s drawback.
Mid Game
So you’ve cleared the board and have a reanimation target in the graveyard. This is the earliest that I’d play Dralnu. If I have a counterspell in hand, or a High Market or Phyrexian Tower on the field, I’ll be more willing to cast Dralnu at this stage. As we enter the mid game, which reanimation target we go for depends on where we are in the game. I like to bring out something like Jin-Gitaxias or Void Winnower earlier in the game because they slow down my opponents greatly. Kokusho usually comes later, when we have the spells to get repeated activations and have drained our opponents of resources.
However, as with any graveyard-based deck, our plan can be blown to pieces by a well-timed piece of graveyard-hate. How much of it you’ll encounter is largely meta-dependant, so sometimes you won’t see a lot. Other times, everyone and their mother is running Bojuka Bog and Rest in Peace. The key here is knowing your meta, and not over-extending. If you have Kokusho, Jin-Gitaxias, and Void Winnower all in your graveyard without an active plan to bring them back, you’re just asking for trouble.
A note on politics: it has its place in EDH, but this deck isn’t very good at it. Most of our big effects are symmetric, hitting all of our opponents equally. If you do want to play more politically, counterspells are probably your best option because they can be used to “make deals” (i.e. “Hey. green player, I’ll counter this spell you don’t like if you deal with that enchantment that’s bothering me.”) But again, politics is not a good strategy to lean on.
The biggest threat at this point is probably combo decks. This is usually when they start going off (unless they’re lightning fast and have already won), and we don’t have our own combo we can race them with. We’re usually playing the long game so, if you find yourself against a combo deck, focus your counters on making sure they can’t combo off. Also, going for a reanimation target like Jin-Gitaxias or Void Winnower can be crucial here, as they both throw a wrench in the gears of a combo deck.
Late Game
As I said when outlining the deck’s strengths, late game is where this deck shines. If the game isn’t already over, by this point you probably have the most resources at the table. And if everything’s in your GY, just cast Dralnu. Thus is the beauty of recursion! At this point, your biggest threat is other control decks that have a strong late game. However, every deck has a limited number of counterspells. Why Dralnu truly shines in the late game is he doesn’t run out of steam when other control decks might, thanks to his ability to basically cast all of his instants and sorceries twice. I usually don’t like using his ability on sorceries (except maybe a tutor or for a game-ending Exsanguinate) because then Dralnu is a sitting duck, unable to activate again (unless you’re playing something like Thousand-Year Elixir). And don’t forget my motto, “everything’s better at instant speed.”
This deck has a couple of ways to close out the game. The primary win-cons are Kokusho loops, Exsanguinate cast for a high value of X, Void Winnower, Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur, Rite of Replication, and Paradox Engine. For Kokusho, you’ll need a sac outlet, most likely one or both of the sac lands. An Exsanguinate win comes when you have tons of mana and tap out (possibly leaving up a little mana for a counterspell if you think you’ll need it) for X > 10, and then just repeat by giving Exsanguinate flashback on your next turn. Void Winnower and Jin Gitaxias both win by locking your opponents out of the game. Once you start drawing a ton of cards and your opponents discard down to zero with Jin, you should be close to winning. Rite of Replication has a couple of good targets. Though having multiples of the "can't even" ability does nothing, targeting Void Winnower and having 6 11/9s is nothing to scoff at. My favorite target is Kokusho, since the legend rule will trigger, draining your opponents for 25 life each.
Paradox Engine is a fairly new addition to the deck, but when it was released, it totally changed the late game of this deck. I've built this deck to be explicitly combo-free, and though Paradox Engine isn't exactly an infinite combo, it can definitely feel like one. In order to get full value from the Engine, you need to set up a bit. An "Engine board state" - if you will - includes Dralnu, PE, and a few mana rocks. Once this is all in place, the result is not unlike Yawgmoth's Will + Omniscience. Since your mana rocks untap on cast, all of your spells basically cost X less, where X is the mana you can make with mana rocks. And any spells that cost less than X will end up leaving you with extra mana. Add to this the fact that Dralnu keeps untapping himself, and pretty soon you'll be closing out the game. Often this means generating enough mana for a game-ending Exsanguinate, but it can also just be out-valuing your opponents so much that there's no way for them to turn back the tide.
Protecting Dralnu
Here we are, talking about the downside again. I don’t mean to scare you because, again, I don’t think it’s that bad. However, you’re here for a comprehensive guide on playing Dralnu, right? So this is something you’ll need to keep in mind. The key to playing around the downside is identifying what type of opponents you need to worry about. If everyone else at the table is playing blue or black, you don’t need to worry about it as much as you would with a bunch of red and green decks. Obviously, you get to choose (most of the time) whether Dralnu attacks or blocks, so combat damage usually isn’t a concern. I don’t think I’ve ever attacked or blocked with Dralnu in my time playing him. The main things you have to worry about are as follows:
As with most EDH decks, if we ran every card worth running, this deck would probably come in at nearly 200 hundred cards. Unfortunately, we are limited to a measly 99. In this section, I will discuss both the cards that I run in the deck, as well as cards worth considering but that didn’t make my list. Card names in bold are run in my deck.
This list runs very few creatures, as Dralnu wants to have a lot of instants and sorceries to flashback. Most of the creatures that I do run are reanimation targets with a big impact upon hitting the board. However, there are a few utility dudes, as well.
Most of the non-basic lands in here are your typical choices for color fixing: Command Tower, Drowned Catacomb, Temple of Deceit (the scry is always nice), Watery Grave, Choked Estuary. I personally like the tango lands because I usually find myself with at least two basics on the field. And, if you can afford a Underground Sea, I don’t need to tell you it’s worth including. A few other lands are worth extra attention:
Added: Phyrexian Tower, Thousand-Year Elixir, Night of Souls' Betrayal, and Notion Thief
Added: Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur, Void Winnower, Propaganda, and Thought Vessel
Added: Compulsive Research, Summary Dismissal, Entomb, All is Dust, Geier Reach Sanitarium, and Nephalia Academy
Added: Frantic Search, Curious Humonculus, Reanimate, Sword of War and Peace
Added: Metallurgic Summonings, Talisman of Dominance, Strip Mine, Choked Estuary, Tolaria West, Sunken Ruins
Added: Maze of Ith, Ancient Excavation, Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, Dreadship Reef
Added: Disallow, Rite of Replication, Baral, Chief of Compliance, Kederekt Leviathan, Paradox Engine
Added: Polluted Delta, Bloodstained Mire, Flooded Strand, Riptide Laboratory, Tainted Isle, Nephalia Drownyard
Added: Tidespout Tyrant
Added: Liliana, Death's Majesty
Added: Search for Azcanta, Boseiju, Who Shelters All
Added: Brainstorm, Impulse, Chromatic Lantern, Minamo, School at Water's Edge, Underground River, Gitaxian Probe
[Primer] Dralnu Control/Reanimator BU
[Primer] Jolrael, Empress of Beasts GG
Nath Stax BG | Borborygmos Enraged RG | Ladies of Magic UGW | Aminatou Control UWB | Enduring Ideal Zedruu UWR | Momir Vig Combo UG
Modern
Restore Balance RWUG
Kiki Chord RWG
Phyrexian Tower could be another sac outlet that fits into your colors on the off chance you get to cast a spell the turn you need to sacrifice Dralnu.
As with a lot of commanders with activated abilities, Illusionist's Bracers could be kind of fun as well.
I've never really played Dralnu myself, but I've always found him to be really interesting and powerful so I'm excited to see him get more attention.
U Azami, Lady of Scrolls - Knowledge is Power U [Primer]
R Heartless Hidetsugu - The Art of Ending Games R
GB Ishkanah, Grafwidow - The Cluster HungersBG
And yeah, he's been a ton of fun and I agree, I'm surprised he doesn't get more attention. I guess some people are turned off by his drawback but really, it hasn't been too hard to work around. Plus, I love a deck-building challenge!
[Primer] Dralnu Control/Reanimator BU
[Primer] Jolrael, Empress of Beasts GG
Nath Stax BG | Borborygmos Enraged RG | Ladies of Magic UGW | Aminatou Control UWB | Enduring Ideal Zedruu UWR | Momir Vig Combo UG
Modern
Restore Balance RWUG
Kiki Chord RWG
Neheb
Marath
Yidris
Sharuum
Yidris
[Primer] Dralnu Control/Reanimator BU
[Primer] Jolrael, Empress of Beasts GG
Nath Stax BG | Borborygmos Enraged RG | Ladies of Magic UGW | Aminatou Control UWB | Enduring Ideal Zedruu UWR | Momir Vig Combo UG
Modern
Restore Balance RWUG
Kiki Chord RWG
Neheb
Marath
Yidris
Sharuum
Yidris
[Primer] Dralnu Control/Reanimator BU
[Primer] Jolrael, Empress of Beasts GG
Nath Stax BG | Borborygmos Enraged RG | Ladies of Magic UGW | Aminatou Control UWB | Enduring Ideal Zedruu UWR | Momir Vig Combo UG
Modern
Restore Balance RWUG
Kiki Chord RWG
For the mana base you could add Polluted Delta and Creeping Tar Pit.
They're pricey but a good mana investment is always worth it.
If you wanna add more reanimation Necromancy is another good card.
Wayfarer's Bauble for more mana ramp, also you can't go wrong with a Solemn Simulacrum.
What's your experience with Army of the Damned and Freed from the Real?
Thousand-Year Elixir is better if you're looking for that effect.
Neheb
Marath
Yidris
Sharuum
Yidris
I don't think I'll add any more reanimation at this point. However, after I've tested the deck in its current form, I might add in more reanimation down the road, notably Entomb and another big reanimation target, probably Jin-Gitaxis. The thing about Necromancy in this deck is Dralnu wants effects put on instants and sorceries so that he can flash them back later.
As is, I lean much more heavily on mana rocks than ramp (in that there really isn't any ramp at all). So far that's worked out for me, though I might try out Sad Robot.
Army of the Damned has worked out pretty well for me. It's not the most efficient win-con, since people have a turn cycle to deal with the army, but the few times I've cast it, it's had a big effect on the game. I also like that Dralnu effectively lowers the flashback cost. And as for Freed from the Real, I haven't actually drawn it yet, so I'm not sure if it's worth it. To be honest, I totally forgot about 1000-Year Elixir and you're right that that works a lot better. I think I'll find a copy and make that change.
[Primer] Dralnu Control/Reanimator BU
[Primer] Jolrael, Empress of Beasts GG
Nath Stax BG | Borborygmos Enraged RG | Ladies of Magic UGW | Aminatou Control UWB | Enduring Ideal Zedruu UWR | Momir Vig Combo UG
Modern
Restore Balance RWUG
Kiki Chord RWG
A great way to dump some creatures in your graveyard is Buried Alive, which is an auto-include in a lot of reanimation strategies.
Neheb
Marath
Yidris
Sharuum
Yidris
Buried Alive is definitely on the list of cards I'll add if I decide to make the list more reanimator focused.
[Primer] Dralnu Control/Reanimator BU
[Primer] Jolrael, Empress of Beasts GG
Nath Stax BG | Borborygmos Enraged RG | Ladies of Magic UGW | Aminatou Control UWB | Enduring Ideal Zedruu UWR | Momir Vig Combo UG
Modern
Restore Balance RWUG
Kiki Chord RWG
OUT
-Wrexial, the Risen Deep
-1 Swamp
-Evil Twin
-Freed from the Real
IN
+Night of Souls' Betrayal
+Thousand-Year Elixir
+Phyrexian Tower
+Notion Thief
This deck runs a low creature count, and the deck needs ways to deal with aggro and other creature-based strategies. Propaganda might be better here, but I decided to test Night of Souls' Betrayal. I might end up swapping in Propaganda, or even including both. I cut Wrexial because he's just too slow and not what I want to be doing with 6 mana. As OwnDemon pointed out 1000-Year Elixir is just a better Freed from the Real. Evil Twin was sort of a relic from when this was still Lazav copy and steal and I already have two better clones in Sakashima and Clever Impersonator. I think Notion Thief will be better in this slot. And finally, there might have been a better card to get for a $20 investment for this deck, but having a sac effect has proven crucial many times already, so I decided to buy a Phyrexian Tower. Definitely an auto-include for Dralnu if you can find room in your budget.
[Primer] Dralnu Control/Reanimator BU
[Primer] Jolrael, Empress of Beasts GG
Nath Stax BG | Borborygmos Enraged RG | Ladies of Magic UGW | Aminatou Control UWB | Enduring Ideal Zedruu UWR | Momir Vig Combo UG
Modern
Restore Balance RWUG
Kiki Chord RWG
If you're looking for other effects: No Mercy, Crawlspace should help you out as well.
Neheb
Marath
Yidris
Sharuum
Yidris
I do like Night of Souls, though. Last night it proved crucial against a tokens deck, as they were basically stopped in their tracks until they could find a disenchant or anthem. I think I'm going to try running Propaganda along side Night, probably in the place of Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver.
[Primer] Dralnu Control/Reanimator BU
[Primer] Jolrael, Empress of Beasts GG
Nath Stax BG | Borborygmos Enraged RG | Ladies of Magic UGW | Aminatou Control UWB | Enduring Ideal Zedruu UWR | Momir Vig Combo UG
Modern
Restore Balance RWUG
Kiki Chord RWG
As for cards like Night of the Souls' Betrayal, you may want to consider Echoing Decay or Bile Blight to handle token heavy metas. You'd be able to get double use out of them if needed with Dralnu.
What issues are you facing at the moment? It would be easier to give suggestions once we know what problems need to be solved.
Norin the Wary (BRB) R
Blind Seer (Hose Everything) U
Mishra, Artificer Prodigy (Double Dipping) UBR
Borborygmos Enraged (Crush Mountains, Eat Forests) GR
Kresh the Bloodbraided (Get Wild) GRB
Derevi, Empyrial Tactician (Test Your Math) WUR
Toshiro Umezawa (Instant Reanimation) B
Dralnu, Lich Lord (Mill then Will) UB
Rakdos the Defiler (Death at any Cost) BR
Iwamori of the Open Fist (Wheel and Deal) G
Crovax, Ascendant Hero (Balancing Eggs) W
As far as issues, it's hard for me to identify exactly what the issues are, exactly, largely because the list has gone through a lot of changes recently. Since the deck is pretty creature light, I see issue with fast, creature-heavy strategies though, thankfully, I don't run into a ton of those in my meta. I've added some board wipes and maybe the list could use some more. As I mentioned in an earlier comment, I'm also going to test Propaganda alongside Night of Souls' Betrayal (though I haven't actually played any games yet since deciding to test that).
[Primer] Dralnu Control/Reanimator BU
[Primer] Jolrael, Empress of Beasts GG
Nath Stax BG | Borborygmos Enraged RG | Ladies of Magic UGW | Aminatou Control UWB | Enduring Ideal Zedruu UWR | Momir Vig Combo UG
Modern
Restore Balance RWUG
Kiki Chord RWG
[Primer] Dralnu Control/Reanimator BU
[Primer] Jolrael, Empress of Beasts GG
Nath Stax BG | Borborygmos Enraged RG | Ladies of Magic UGW | Aminatou Control UWB | Enduring Ideal Zedruu UWR | Momir Vig Combo UG
Modern
Restore Balance RWUG
Kiki Chord RWG
EDH Decks:
GRUlasht, the Hate SeedGR
BRRakdos, Lord of RiotsBR
Modern:
BWEldrazi & TaxesBW
I really like where this deck is going. It's been working better and better for me, and I'm having a lot of fun with it. Here's my most recent round of changes:
Out
-Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
-Ulamog, the Ceaseless Hunger
-Desertion
-Talisman of Dominance
In
+Propaganda
+Void Winnower
+Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
+Thought Vessel
As has been touched on in this thread already, protection against creature-based strategies is important. I still like Night of Souls' Betrayal, so I decided to run both that and Propaganda. I really like Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver, but it wasn't really doing much for the game plan, so that's out. Desertion can sometimes be nice, especially when I can grab someone else's commander. However, 5 mana makes it not worth it and too often, it was a dead card in hand. I added both Void Winnower and Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur as reanimation targets. Ulamog 2.0 is good, but he just didn't have immediate enough of an impact like Void Winnower does, especially since I almost never cast him, so I didn't get the exile trigger. Finally, I never really needed the extra access to color, but this deck has a tendency to draw a lot of cards, so an infinite hand size is nice to have. With that in mind, Thought Vessel fits better than Talisman of Dominance.
Honestly, I just don't think I need that many ways to protect Dralnu. Right now I'm running two sac lands, High Market and Phyrexian Tower, and I think those are enough. Plus I also have counter spells which can stop things like Blasphemous Act while also helping out in other situations. Magebane Armor doesn't really do anything else except protect Dralnu.
I'm actually working on making this a more in depth write up about Dralnu, and you reminded me that I should add something about Magebane, since I see it talked about a lot as a suggestion for Dralnu. Thanks!
[Primer] Dralnu Control/Reanimator BU
[Primer] Jolrael, Empress of Beasts GG
Nath Stax BG | Borborygmos Enraged RG | Ladies of Magic UGW | Aminatou Control UWB | Enduring Ideal Zedruu UWR | Momir Vig Combo UG
Modern
Restore Balance RWUG
Kiki Chord RWG
EDH Decks:
GRUlasht, the Hate SeedGR
BRRakdos, Lord of RiotsBR
Modern:
BWEldrazi & TaxesBW
[Primer] Dralnu Control/Reanimator BU
[Primer] Jolrael, Empress of Beasts GG
Nath Stax BG | Borborygmos Enraged RG | Ladies of Magic UGW | Aminatou Control UWB | Enduring Ideal Zedruu UWR | Momir Vig Combo UG
Modern
Restore Balance RWUG
Kiki Chord RWG
[Primer] Dralnu Control/Reanimator BU
[Primer] Jolrael, Empress of Beasts GG
Nath Stax BG | Borborygmos Enraged RG | Ladies of Magic UGW | Aminatou Control UWB | Enduring Ideal Zedruu UWR | Momir Vig Combo UG
Modern
Restore Balance RWUG
Kiki Chord RWG
[Primer] Dralnu Control/Reanimator BU
[Primer] Jolrael, Empress of Beasts GG
Nath Stax BG | Borborygmos Enraged RG | Ladies of Magic UGW | Aminatou Control UWB | Enduring Ideal Zedruu UWR | Momir Vig Combo UG
Modern
Restore Balance RWUG
Kiki Chord RWG