I finally came up with a list for the shiny copy of The Scarab God that I obtained back before it became an overpriced Standard bomb. It's super rough and will be going through its first live action tomorrow. Here's what I came up with:
Definitely going for the generic control theme here, with Scarab acting like a cross between Chainer and Scavenging Ooze. For now, there's a random smattering of mana, draw, spot removal, and sweepers. I tried to emphasize creatures who affected the board and left behind seemingly useless bodies (i.e. Mulldrifter), Looter-effects, and purposefully left out spells that would exile potential reanimation targets (i.e. Reality Shift).
The following cards deserve to be tested at some point:
- Spellskite: Protects your board, comes back better with Scarab, and it's a Muddle target.
- Gleaming Overseer: The best part about this is probably just the "hexproof" part for all the tokens I worked so hard to create.
- Kira, Great Glass-Spinner: Protects the whole board very well.
- Dimir House Guard: Tutor, sac outlet, and a body. Currently lighter on four-drops or this would move up the ladder.
- Lazav, Dimir Mastermind: Another clone variant. Hexproof is nice, not hitting ETBs or non-creatures is keeping it out.
- Rune-Scarred Demon: Costs a little too much and comes back smaller, but the effect on a body is valuable.
- Kasmina, Enigmatic Mentor: Two loots, two creatures, and protects the board. Unfortunately, a lot of actual creature spells that loot with upside have been recently spoiled.
- Liliana, Death's Majesty: Not quite as great as the bigger Dreadhorde General, and I'd rather mill opponents than myself.
- Liliana, Dreadhorde General: Any black deck can probably make great use of all the modes, and this is no exception.
What about Jace's Archivist as another Windfall effect? Since it is repeatable you can keep doing it to further fuel The Scarab God.
I see you are running Dreamborn Muse. Why not Graveborn Muse to go with all those zombies you are creating?
You also have a lot of mana rocks or a lot of lands (or both). With 9-10 mana rocks (depending on if you consider the Bauble a mana rock) 40 lands seems really high, I would think about cutting either 3-4 lands or 2-3 mana rocks (probably the two Diamonds).
River Kelpie seems like an odd inclusion as it doesn't seem like it is usually very relevant. I mean, you have Snapcaster Mage and Gearhulk that can help trigger it (and itself cf course) but that is about it.
You also have a lot of mana rocks or a lot of lands (or both). With 9-10 mana rocks (depending on if you consider the Bauble a mana rock) 40 lands seems really high, I would think about cutting either 3-4 lands or 2-3 mana rocks (probably the two Diamonds).
My local meta is very green-based. So much so that we're looking into ways of letting Prime-Time and friends back into the format (as a house rule). Therefore, every deck I make has to have a lot of mana rocks, just to keep up. Also, I have a feeling that I'm gonna want to activate Scarab's ability more than once at a time.
River Kelpie seems like an odd inclusion as it doesn't seem like it is usually very relevant. I mean, you have Snapcaster Mage and Gearhulk that can help trigger it (and itself cf course) but that is about it.
Played a couple of games with this deck over the long holiday weekend. Highlights below:
- Training Grounds might just be the best thing to ever happen to this deck. Unfortunately, I can't think of a way to get it back after it dies other than find someone else's Eternal Witness or the like.
- Altar of the Brood is a close second, and it works with both Trinket Mage and Academy Ruins. I'm actually considering a Mesmeric Orb as a result.
- There was one point in the first game where I got the Golgari player to Bog his own yard for fear of what I might do with it. That kind of threat might just be the kind of thing I want to do going forward, even if it does mean setting long-time favorite Chainer aside because it's functionally too similar in strategy.
I made a few changes in between games.
- Swapped in the Exquisite Blood/Sanguine Bond combo for a couple of bounce spells that ended up being too beneficial to all of the Simic players at the table.
- Added in a couple older goodies in Vile Consumption and Pendrell Mists as fun ways to continually kill stuff. We'll see if they are better than traditional one-time sweepers.
Given the direction I want to take with this list, it's likely that the edict package of Grave Pact/Dictate of Erebos/Butcher of Malakir will be making an appearance in the near future.
pucatrade
big receipts
alpha mox emerald
beta time walk
4 goyfs received
3 liliana of the veil
4 karn liberated
3 force of will
4 grove of the burnwillows
snapcaster mage
3 horizon canopy
2 full art damnation
Hello there OC Punisher. I took a look at your list after seeing you comment on Grimoir's List. Have you updated your list at all? I'd love to see it if you have.
I recently removed Phyrexian Arena after hearing some people talk about it. It actually takes too long to gain card advantage in a commander game late game. Compare it to Read the Bones and Concentrate. We have to wait a long time for our turn to come around again before Arena gives us benefit. Also Arena will draw the hate when you play it out early. It's likely to get blown up before you draw over 3 cards off of it. Late game, it's too slow. These other cards provide immediate value early game, and are better late game. Compare concentrate on turn 4 to arena turn 3. Arena needs stay around until turn 5 to get us three cards. Concentrate provides those three cards immediately, and is less likely to get blown up or countered.
I added in arena, then took it out again.
I updated my list, found in my signature. It's grown quite a bit, would love to see what you think about it now.
Updated my list that I ended up playing a couple times last night. Some takeaways:
- The Grave Pact package went in, and as usual it did not disappoint. My meta is still very green, so there are a lot of lands and creatures hitting the table, and this package really helps a non-green deck keep up with the pace.
- Mass removals were also incredible. In one instance, I cast a Black Sun's Zenith for 4 to neuter a Woodfall Primus, let SG survive, and kill off two Scavenging Oozes.
- Clone effects were also solid throughout the evening.
- Unfortunately, due to the number of Avenger of Zendikars, bounce effects were not all that impressive. Riftwing Cloudskate is on the bubble right now, and even Cyclonic Rift was subpar.
- The cost of using the ability of the Scarab God was also a very real detriment. When the rest of the table is playing multiple lands per turn, it's not easy to leave four mana up to bring something back.
- Removing non-creatures proved to be difficult. I had no response for an opposing Rhystic Study until I found a Meteor Golem, and even that was pretty inefficient.
- Finally, there was actually a bit too much card draw in the deck. I often found myself with more spells to cast than mana to cast them. I don't think I'll go so far as to cut an all-timer like Phyrexian Arena, but draw spells will certainly get a hard look.
The Charcoal Diamond and sky diamond seem weak. I prefer Mindstone to one of these. Maybe thought vessel instead. Also, why no thran dynamo? Worn powerstone? I find having a couple of 2 ramp cards in my deck helps me hit that 8 mana 2 God activations in one turn faster. I love the double resurrection power.
The Charcoal Diamond and sky diamond seem weak. I prefer Mindstone to one of these. Maybe thought vessel instead. Also, why no thran dynamo? Worn powerstone? I find having a couple of 2 ramp cards in my deck helps me hit that 8 mana 2 God activations in one turn faster. I love the double resurrection power.
I might be wrong here, but I value cheaper ramp spells over more expensive ones like Thran Dynamo, and I value colored ramp over colorless ramp like Thought Vessel. Coldsteel Heart is on my watch list.
I can see that now as you play quite a few more colorless lands than me (2 vs. your 6.) I tend to find myself better served by including a couple more dual color lands instead. If you find yourself constantly using nephalia drownyard for instance, your deck could be optimized better than spending 4 mana at a time to mill 3 cards. The Arch could would probably serve you better as a basic land or dual tapped land. Do you really need arch of orazca, Folly of Genius, Blighted cataract, and geier reach santitarium? I'd say, turn 2 or 3 of those into basic lands, and just switch out mindstone for charcoal diamond. You will color fixed earlier in the game without relying on mana rocks. You won't run into problems where you're color screwed early in the game as much. My thinking is, if you regularly have nothing better to do than pay a significant amount of mana to activate these lands, and literally wouldn't mind having 2 on the field at a time, you deck could be doing something better with those slots. You should put another great cheap blue card draw spell to help you color fix with lands instead of relying on tapped mana rampers.
Personally, I like hedging my deck in the direction of not needing to rely on mana rocks to color fix so much. You don't want to mulligan hands away because 2 of the land in them are colorless. It's also much more convenient to just sac. a mind stone than use a blighted cataract for instance. Mindstone will get you much further in the early game than charcoal diamond if your mana is fixed by land. Diamonds come into play tapped, mindstone doesn't. This is often significant, especially when you get used to planning your hand to take advantage of it.
I also didn't notice the Gilded Lotus in your list on my previous post. I can see why you might not want Thran dynamo with that bad boy in there. I think worn powerstone is extremely underrated however. If you decide to go that route of more color fixing through mana, I think you'll come to love it. Personally, I feel my deck wins in the late game, after I've controlled the board, have a ton of creatures in the 'yard, and have 8 mana to resurrect two creatures at once.
Looter il-kor is the best looter card. It comes back as a 4/4 unblockable (basically) with built in loot ability. The downside is that he basically can't block either. I feel the trade off to be well worth it though. This guy is the best of the looters for our deck.
Hope that's helpful/something to consider. Would love to here your defense of the multiple colorless lands if you feel they are warranted, I just can't see it from the outside looking in.
First off, I appreciate the different perspective as it's caused me to rethink how I approach this build.
This list is mostly converted from my Chainer deck, where the goal was simply to make a pile of colored mana, cast the commander, and then hold up as many sets of three black mana as possible to yank the good stuff out of someone else's yard.
- This strategy was appealing for two reasons: if I focused on other yards and not my own, opposing grave-hate wouldn't hurt me as much, and it allowed me to steal things at instant-speed, and that speed is my favorite part of this game.
- The life loss was a real thing at times, but I could usually offset it with any number of blackdrain spells.
I decided to make Scarab because mono-black was a little too narrow and over-done in my group, and blue had a lot of value to offer.
- However, I still approached it with the same mindset as Chainer: make a pile of colored mana, cast the commander, and hold up as many sets of mana as possible.
- The differences so far are that I have more flexible things to reanimate from my yard (clones), Scarab is infinitely less fragile and susceptible to commander tax than Chainer, and the fringe benefit of Scarab's scry/damage is a lot more impactful than Chainer's +1/+1 bonus.
In all fairness, I've yet to actually determine if colorlessrocks are better for this particular build than coloredrocks. My first thought was that Scarab is less fragile, so I can just run him out there as soon as possible, so getting cheaper rocks to power him out early would be better.
As for the colorless lands, I also figured I would be holding up mana a lot of the time in case a high priority target hit the yard, so having one or more ways to use that unused mana if something doesn't hit the yard seemed like a good fail-safe. Nephalia Drownyard and Geier Reach Sanitarium happen to further my plan of loading up other yards, and the rest just keep my hand full, which is never a bad thing.
Finally, I'm trying to cut back on ETB-tapped lands as they tend to be a little slow for my taste. That probably means I need a few more basics, but any multi-color deck can say that.
Thanks for the comments. I really do appreciate the alternate way of thinking about this type of deck. I've been trying to keep up to date with all of the great Scarab threads at once for new ideas.
Played one game over the weekend, and the motto I kept saying over and over as it went on was "more kill, less mill". The opponents were Jhoira value, group hug, and Tuvasa enchantments. Unfortunately, this was probably not the best table for a Scarab God that wants to feast on dead value creatures, but things got really out of hand when the group hug player cast a Fractured Identity on my Consuming Aberration. Then, the Jhoira player managed to find a Shimmer Myr and a whole bunch of cheap artifact spells to cast on his upkeep before he died to decking to make sure that Tuvasa and myself also got milled out and died.
Looking back, most of the mill effects that I had were pretty lame, and really didn't do much except bother the recipients. Specifically, Consuming Aberration and Altar of the Brood were pretty lame. I thought that Phenax, God of Deception would be an exception because it was free and mostly incidental, but even that just didn't feel like what I wanted. I didn't get to cast Altar of Dementia, and free sac outlets are among the more underrated effects in this format, so that one will probably escape the cuts for next time.
Conversely, more kill spells were definitely in order. Specifically, I could have used a wider variety of removal. For example, a Gilded Drake to steal an opposing Wurmcoil Engine or someone else's commander would have been great. I recently became aware of how good Torment of Hailfire can be, and though I don't think this deck has quite enough mana to really abuse it, it's still capable of removing a lot of things that would otherwise be tough to handle. Kagemaro, First to Suffer and some sort of counterspell creature (Wizard Replica, or one of the Spiketails) are still at the top of my list of things to test out.
I agree with the mill conclusion, it's generally underwhelming. I recently traded altar of the brood for altar of dementia in my list. The sac. outlet is more crucial than the mill aspect.
Had benjameenbear post a cool theoretical list on my thread in my signature. He was saying we can avoid mill cards by really putting in a maximum number of creatures. Currently, I'm cutting some of my non-creature tutors for creature tutors. (Sidisi, undead vizier and runescarred demon) Lately, I've been trying to up my creature count as much as possible.
When it comes to mill, it can be bad with the wrong opponents. It doesn't develop our boardstate in the short term.
Conversely, creatures help develop our board state, and can serve the same function as mill if we can get them into the 'yard early enough.
As to not enough creature kill spells, I'd recommend another boardwipe. This counts as a "mill" card if opponents have creatures out besides their commanders. Counts as a spot removal for creatures too. Also, we have natural boardwipe resistance thanks to our commander. Even though most boardwipes kill all creatures, that benefits our deck more than others.
Also, buried alive has been great for me lately. Usually I choose mulldrifter, a removal on a stick, and whatever else looks like the best creature at the time. It's a regular swiss army knife of a card when you have the commander out.
Updated the list after several months of updates and a few test games. Highlights include:
- Cutting almost all of the mill spells. Altar of the Brood is constantly on/off the hot seat because my group generally finds it obnoxious to have to mill one card over and over again, even when I try to bunch the triggers together to make it "easier" on them. Altar of Dementia is the only one that's locked in, and that's largely because it's a free sac outlet and it can target the one player who is likely to have good reanimation targets for a larger chunk. The rest of the mill cards were in fact garbage, as others pointed out.
- Adding a bunch of counters. All of them had three things in common: they needed to be very cheap (most were 2 mana or less), the main purpose was to keep Scarab on the table, and they only needed to counter non-creature spells (since the majority of the rest of the deck was already designed to get rid of creatures).
- Adding a few more bounce effects for non-creature permanents, largely due to the addition of the counters mentioned above. I've already documented my past trouble with non-creature permanents, so this was a natural progression.
EDIT: going forward, two things still need to be fleshed out:
- Global discard effects. Currently, I have only Liliana's Specter in that role, and I'm considering swapping it out for Rotting Rats, which can unearth itself in a pinch and allows me to setup my own yard as well.
- Some sort of life-gain. The two top options are Gray Merchant of Asphodel, which is normally the gold standard but might suffer from a lack of devotion (since I don't think that Scarab tokens carry any color pips), and Exquisite Blood, which works very well with the upkeep trigger on Scarab. More to follow on this.
Finally, two other potential cards to test:
- Crystal Shard: functions as protection for the important stuff and a way to re-use the many ETB guys I naturally have.
- Spellskite: A cheap body that takes a bullet for Scarab, messes with a few random targeted spells, and potentially comes back to take another bullet. Also a target for Muddle.
Nice! Glad to hear it. I'm going to get my first EDH game in for a few months now. The Scarab God will definitely be coming out.
The tokens made by the Scarab God DO in fact come down with their same mana cost on the card as usual. So any card that had black in it's casting cost will still add black devotion when resurrected as a token. The difference is just that anything that is resurrected by the God will also have black as part of it's color identity, even if it didn't originally have black in it's cost.
Nice! Glad to hear it. I'm going to get my first EDH game in for a few months now. The Scarab God will definitely be coming out.
The tokens made by the Scarab God DO in fact come down with their same mana cost on the card as usual. So any card that had black in it's casting cost will still add black devotion when resurrected as a token. The difference is just that anything that is resurrected by the God will also have black as part of it's color identity, even if it didn't originally have black in it's cost.
In that case, guess it's time to move Gary up a few notches...
Managed to get one game in with SG last weekend, and although it didn't work out too well (due to an assault on my Sol Ring and the one I stole with Hostage Taker to replace it), I was able to see a few of the newer cards in action. Long story short, they did not perform very well. But, silver lining: there's now more room for new cards.
- Jace, Vryn's Prodigy: summoning sickness prevented this from being a thing, and the flip side offers very little value since I don't run very many instants/sorceries.
- Lazav, the Multifarious: somehow it never occurred to me how many of my creatures are just ETB bodies.
So now there are two free spots in the list before War of the Spark comes in and blows everything up. The top five choices to replace them are as follows:
- Massacre Wurm or Demon of Dark Schemes: at least one of these is the front-runner, but which one? The Wurm provides some nice reach, while the Demon provides another way to resurrect creatures. This choice probably deserves its own thread/poll somewhere.
- Gray Merchant of Asphodel: Speaking of reach, Gary does that better than most.
- Kira, Great Glass-Spinner: I used to be a lot higher on this card, but it basically just gives my team hexproof, and as I learned in the Ojutai experiment, that doesn't really count for much in my local meta.
- Dimir House Guard: does a little bit of everything. Only question is whether or not there are enough 4s in the deck.
- Lazav, Dimir Mastermind: A different kind of clone, that I finally got around to picking up.
There are quite a few possible additions to the deck to be had in this set. Not sure about the choice between Massacre Wurm and Demon of Dark Schemes. Flying is nice, but the wurm could end up doing a whole lot of damage over the course of a few turns...
I really like the look of Liliana, Dreadhorde Master Extra card draw, more zombies, and make everyone sac. 2 creatures? I'm in, once the price drops.
Ashiok Dream Render this card does too much to not look at. The opponents can't search their library part is well worth it. I'm always wanting cards that exile graveyards but also does other things.
Gleaming Overseer not sure about this guy, but adding 2 zombie bodies for 3 mana is nice. You can start the draining of life away early. Giving your zombies tokens menace is also really nice too. I find we want our tokens to have evasion on them otherwise they are usually too small to attack with.
Finale of Eternity are we going to be reaching the 12 mana to make this spell really worth it though? Probably not too often. Probably doesn't go in, but worth looking at.
Those all look great! I haven't been focusing on this list for updates lately. I got the God pretty much where I wanted it and am currently updating other decks. However, there have been many juicy things that go with the god released in the last few sets. Let me know how those go and if you find anything else!
I think I like Champion of Wits better than Bazaar Trademage though. Wits does a better version of mage's ability the first go around. When resurrected with the god, you draw 4 and discard 2. I don't think the 3/4 flying body justifies the loss of 2 cards over the course of his entering vs. netting 2 cards with champion. The list might want both? Not sure.
***Further Edit*** Looks like you still need to replace sky diamond with coldsteel heart it's an all around better card. Pretty cheap to buy last time I looked.
I finally came up with a list for the shiny copy of The Scarab God that I obtained back before it became an overpriced Standard bomb. It's super rough and will be going through its first live action tomorrow. Here's what I came up with:
1 Viscera Seer
2 Baleful Strix
2 Deranged Assistant
2 Gilded Drake
2 Phantasmal Image
2 Rotting Rats
2 Watcher for Tomorrow
3 Champion of Wits
3 Fleshbag Marauder
3 Plaguecrafter
3 Spellseeker
3 Spiketail Hatchling
3 Tomebound Lich
4 Clever Impersonator
4 Hostage Taker
4 Phyrexian Metamorph
4 Ravenous Chupacabra
4 Sakashima the Impostor
4 Solemn Simulacrum
4 Venser, Shaper Savant
5 Body Double
5 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
5 Kagemaro, First to Suffer
5 Massacre Girl
5 Mulldrifter
5 Oracle of Dust
5 Shriekmaw
5 Sidisi, Undead Vizier
6 Dragonlord Silumgar
6 Dream Eater
6 Massacre Wurm
6 Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
7 Butcher of Malakir
7 Diluvian Primordial
7 Meteor Golem
6 Liliana, Dreadhorde General
Artifacts (9):
1 Sol Ring
1 Wayfarer's Bauble
2 Altar of Dementia
2 Charcoal Diamond
2 Dimir Signet
2 Sky Diamond
2 Talisman of Dominance
3 Crystal Shard
3 Heartstone
Enchantments (3):
1 Training Grounds
4 Grave Pact
5 Dictate of Erebos
Instants (9):
1 Entomb
1 Stubborn Denial
2 Arcane Denial
2 Counterspell
2 Cyclonic Rift
2 Disdainful Stroke
2 Pull from Tomorrow
3 Unwind
5 Mystic Confluence
Sorceries (4):
2 Demonic Tutor
2 Dread Summons
3 Toxic Deluge
7 All Is Dust
Lands (38):
1 Blighted Cataract
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Command Tower
1 Dreadship Reef
1 Drowned Catacomb
1 Fetid Pools
1 Memorial to Folly
1 Memorial to Genius
1 Morphic Pool
1 Nephalia Drownyard
1 Path of Ancestry
1 Polluted Delta
1 Reliquary Tower
1 Sunken Hollow
1 Sunken Ruins
1 Tainted Isle
1 Temple of Deceit
1 Temple of the False God
1 Underground River
1 Underground Sea
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Watery Grave
8 Island
8 Swamp
- Spellskite: Protects your board, comes back better with Scarab, and it's a Muddle target.
- Gleaming Overseer: The best part about this is probably just the "hexproof" part for all the tokens I worked so hard to create.
- Kira, Great Glass-Spinner: Protects the whole board very well.
- Dimir House Guard: Tutor, sac outlet, and a body. Currently lighter on four-drops or this would move up the ladder.
- Lazav, Dimir Mastermind: Another clone variant. Hexproof is nice, not hitting ETBs or non-creatures is keeping it out.
- Rune-Scarred Demon: Costs a little too much and comes back smaller, but the effect on a body is valuable.
- Kasmina, Enigmatic Mentor: Two loots, two creatures, and protects the board. Unfortunately, a lot of actual creature spells that loot with upside have been recently spoiled.
- Liliana, Death's Majesty: Not quite as great as the bigger Dreadhorde General, and I'd rather mill opponents than myself.
- Liliana, Dreadhorde General: Any black deck can probably make great use of all the modes, and this is no exception.
- Jace, Vryn's Prodigy -> Massacre Wurm
- Lazav, the Multifarious -> Gray Merchant of Asphodel
- Liliana's Specter -> Rotting Rats
- Jace and Lazav sucked, added some classic good stuffs.
2019-06-28:
- Aetherspouts -> Massacre Girl
- Swapped a non-creature wrath for a creature wrath.
2019-07-02:
- Altar of the Brood -> Dread Summons
- While Altar can be good sometimes, it always makes the table groan. Trying out a cool commander-only card I've not used before.
- Dimir Locket -> Watcher for Tomorrow
- Disciple of Bolas -> Tomebound Lich
- Added some cool new looter creatures with more upside.
2019-07-06:
- Muddle the Mixture -> Liliana, Dreadhorde General
- Bad River -> Island
- Dimir Aqueduct -> Swamp
- Added a couple more basics and made room for the biggest, baddest Liliana.
Yeva (88/92 foils)
Raff
Scarab
Rakdos
Wort ($50 budget, 94/97 foils)
Trostani
I see you are running Dreamborn Muse. Why not Graveborn Muse to go with all those zombies you are creating?
You also have a lot of mana rocks or a lot of lands (or both). With 9-10 mana rocks (depending on if you consider the Bauble a mana rock) 40 lands seems really high, I would think about cutting either 3-4 lands or 2-3 mana rocks (probably the two Diamonds).
River Kelpie seems like an odd inclusion as it doesn't seem like it is usually very relevant. I mean, you have Snapcaster Mage and Gearhulk that can help trigger it (and itself cf course) but that is about it.
It's on my watch-list, but I'm already pretty heavy on four-drops and draw power, so it didn't make the first cut.
My local meta is very green-based. So much so that we're looking into ways of letting Prime-Time and friends back into the format (as a house rule). Therefore, every deck I make has to have a lot of mana rocks, just to keep up. Also, I have a feeling that I'm gonna want to activate Scarab's ability more than once at a time.
Woops, RTFC me! I'll fix that shortly.
Yeva (88/92 foils)
Raff
Scarab
Rakdos
Wort ($50 budget, 94/97 foils)
Trostani
- Training Grounds might just be the best thing to ever happen to this deck. Unfortunately, I can't think of a way to get it back after it dies other than find someone else's Eternal Witness or the like.
- Altar of the Brood is a close second, and it works with both Trinket Mage and Academy Ruins. I'm actually considering a Mesmeric Orb as a result.
- There was one point in the first game where I got the Golgari player to Bog his own yard for fear of what I might do with it. That kind of threat might just be the kind of thing I want to do going forward, even if it does mean setting long-time favorite Chainer aside because it's functionally too similar in strategy.
I made a few changes in between games.
- Swapped in the Exquisite Blood/Sanguine Bond combo for a couple of bounce spells that ended up being too beneficial to all of the Simic players at the table.
- Added in a couple older goodies in Vile Consumption and Pendrell Mists as fun ways to continually kill stuff. We'll see if they are better than traditional one-time sweepers.
Given the direction I want to take with this list, it's likely that the edict package of Grave Pact/Dictate of Erebos/Butcher of Malakir will be making an appearance in the near future.
Yeva (88/92 foils)
Raff
Scarab
Rakdos
Wort ($50 budget, 94/97 foils)
Trostani
pucatrade
big receipts
alpha mox emerald
beta time walk
4 goyfs received
3 liliana of the veil
4 karn liberated
3 force of will
4 grove of the burnwillows
snapcaster mage
3 horizon canopy
2 full art damnation
I recently removed Phyrexian Arena after hearing some people talk about it. It actually takes too long to gain card advantage in a commander game late game. Compare it to Read the Bones and Concentrate. We have to wait a long time for our turn to come around again before Arena gives us benefit. Also Arena will draw the hate when you play it out early. It's likely to get blown up before you draw over 3 cards off of it. Late game, it's too slow. These other cards provide immediate value early game, and are better late game. Compare concentrate on turn 4 to arena turn 3. Arena needs stay around until turn 5 to get us three cards. Concentrate provides those three cards immediately, and is less likely to get blown up or countered.
I added in arena, then took it out again.
I updated my list, found in my signature. It's grown quite a bit, would love to see what you think about it now.
- The Grave Pact package went in, and as usual it did not disappoint. My meta is still very green, so there are a lot of lands and creatures hitting the table, and this package really helps a non-green deck keep up with the pace.
- Mass removals were also incredible. In one instance, I cast a Black Sun's Zenith for 4 to neuter a Woodfall Primus, let SG survive, and kill off two Scavenging Oozes.
- Clone effects were also solid throughout the evening.
- Unfortunately, due to the number of Avenger of Zendikars, bounce effects were not all that impressive. Riftwing Cloudskate is on the bubble right now, and even Cyclonic Rift was subpar.
- The cost of using the ability of the Scarab God was also a very real detriment. When the rest of the table is playing multiple lands per turn, it's not easy to leave four mana up to bring something back.
- Removing non-creatures proved to be difficult. I had no response for an opposing Rhystic Study until I found a Meteor Golem, and even that was pretty inefficient.
- Finally, there was actually a bit too much card draw in the deck. I often found myself with more spells to cast than mana to cast them. I don't think I'll go so far as to cut an all-timer like Phyrexian Arena, but draw spells will certainly get a hard look.
More changes to follow...
Yeva (88/92 foils)
Raff
Scarab
Rakdos
Wort ($50 budget, 94/97 foils)
Trostani
Thanks for the update.
I might be wrong here, but I value cheaper ramp spells over more expensive ones like Thran Dynamo, and I value colored ramp over colorless ramp like Thought Vessel. Coldsteel Heart is on my watch list.
Yeva (88/92 foils)
Raff
Scarab
Rakdos
Wort ($50 budget, 94/97 foils)
Trostani
Personally, I like hedging my deck in the direction of not needing to rely on mana rocks to color fix so much. You don't want to mulligan hands away because 2 of the land in them are colorless. It's also much more convenient to just sac. a mind stone than use a blighted cataract for instance. Mindstone will get you much further in the early game than charcoal diamond if your mana is fixed by land. Diamonds come into play tapped, mindstone doesn't. This is often significant, especially when you get used to planning your hand to take advantage of it.
I also didn't notice the Gilded Lotus in your list on my previous post. I can see why you might not want Thran dynamo with that bad boy in there. I think worn powerstone is extremely underrated however. If you decide to go that route of more color fixing through mana, I think you'll come to love it. Personally, I feel my deck wins in the late game, after I've controlled the board, have a ton of creatures in the 'yard, and have 8 mana to resurrect two creatures at once.
Looter il-kor is the best looter card. It comes back as a 4/4 unblockable (basically) with built in loot ability. The downside is that he basically can't block either. I feel the trade off to be well worth it though. This guy is the best of the looters for our deck.
Hope that's helpful/something to consider. Would love to here your defense of the multiple colorless lands if you feel they are warranted, I just can't see it from the outside looking in.
This list is mostly converted from my Chainer deck, where the goal was simply to make a pile of colored mana, cast the commander, and then hold up as many sets of three black mana as possible to yank the good stuff out of someone else's yard.
- This strategy was appealing for two reasons: if I focused on other yards and not my own, opposing grave-hate wouldn't hurt me as much, and it allowed me to steal things at instant-speed, and that speed is my favorite part of this game.
- The life loss was a real thing at times, but I could usually offset it with any number of black drain spells.
I decided to make Scarab because mono-black was a little too narrow and over-done in my group, and blue had a lot of value to offer.
- However, I still approached it with the same mindset as Chainer: make a pile of colored mana, cast the commander, and hold up as many sets of mana as possible.
- The differences so far are that I have more flexible things to reanimate from my yard (clones), Scarab is infinitely less fragile and susceptible to commander tax than Chainer, and the fringe benefit of Scarab's scry/damage is a lot more impactful than Chainer's +1/+1 bonus.
In all fairness, I've yet to actually determine if colorless rocks are better for this particular build than colored rocks. My first thought was that Scarab is less fragile, so I can just run him out there as soon as possible, so getting cheaper rocks to power him out early would be better.
As for the colorless lands, I also figured I would be holding up mana a lot of the time in case a high priority target hit the yard, so having one or more ways to use that unused mana if something doesn't hit the yard seemed like a good fail-safe. Nephalia Drownyard and Geier Reach Sanitarium happen to further my plan of loading up other yards, and the rest just keep my hand full, which is never a bad thing.
Finally, I'm trying to cut back on ETB-tapped lands as they tend to be a little slow for my taste. That probably means I need a few more basics, but any multi-color deck can say that.
Thanks for the comments. I really do appreciate the alternate way of thinking about this type of deck. I've been trying to keep up to date with all of the great Scarab threads at once for new ideas.
Yeva (88/92 foils)
Raff
Scarab
Rakdos
Wort ($50 budget, 94/97 foils)
Trostani
Looking back, most of the mill effects that I had were pretty lame, and really didn't do much except bother the recipients. Specifically, Consuming Aberration and Altar of the Brood were pretty lame. I thought that Phenax, God of Deception would be an exception because it was free and mostly incidental, but even that just didn't feel like what I wanted. I didn't get to cast Altar of Dementia, and free sac outlets are among the more underrated effects in this format, so that one will probably escape the cuts for next time.
Conversely, more kill spells were definitely in order. Specifically, I could have used a wider variety of removal. For example, a Gilded Drake to steal an opposing Wurmcoil Engine or someone else's commander would have been great. I recently became aware of how good Torment of Hailfire can be, and though I don't think this deck has quite enough mana to really abuse it, it's still capable of removing a lot of things that would otherwise be tough to handle. Kagemaro, First to Suffer and some sort of counterspell creature (Wizard Replica, or one of the Spiketails) are still at the top of my list of things to test out.
Yeva (88/92 foils)
Raff
Scarab
Rakdos
Wort ($50 budget, 94/97 foils)
Trostani
Had benjameenbear post a cool theoretical list on my thread in my signature. He was saying we can avoid mill cards by really putting in a maximum number of creatures. Currently, I'm cutting some of my non-creature tutors for creature tutors. (Sidisi, undead vizier and runescarred demon) Lately, I've been trying to up my creature count as much as possible.
When it comes to mill, it can be bad with the wrong opponents. It doesn't develop our boardstate in the short term.
Conversely, creatures help develop our board state, and can serve the same function as mill if we can get them into the 'yard early enough.
As to not enough creature kill spells, I'd recommend another boardwipe. This counts as a "mill" card if opponents have creatures out besides their commanders. Counts as a spot removal for creatures too. Also, we have natural boardwipe resistance thanks to our commander. Even though most boardwipes kill all creatures, that benefits our deck more than others.
Also, buried alive has been great for me lately. Usually I choose mulldrifter, a removal on a stick, and whatever else looks like the best creature at the time. It's a regular swiss army knife of a card when you have the commander out.
Good luck with your future games!
- Cutting almost all of the mill spells. Altar of the Brood is constantly on/off the hot seat because my group generally finds it obnoxious to have to mill one card over and over again, even when I try to bunch the triggers together to make it "easier" on them. Altar of Dementia is the only one that's locked in, and that's largely because it's a free sac outlet and it can target the one player who is likely to have good reanimation targets for a larger chunk. The rest of the mill cards were in fact garbage, as others pointed out.
- Adding a bunch of counters. All of them had three things in common: they needed to be very cheap (most were 2 mana or less), the main purpose was to keep Scarab on the table, and they only needed to counter non-creature spells (since the majority of the rest of the deck was already designed to get rid of creatures).
- Adding a few more bounce effects for non-creature permanents, largely due to the addition of the counters mentioned above. I've already documented my past trouble with non-creature permanents, so this was a natural progression.
EDIT: going forward, two things still need to be fleshed out:
- Global discard effects. Currently, I have only Liliana's Specter in that role, and I'm considering swapping it out for Rotting Rats, which can unearth itself in a pinch and allows me to setup my own yard as well.
- Some sort of life-gain. The two top options are Gray Merchant of Asphodel, which is normally the gold standard but might suffer from a lack of devotion (since I don't think that Scarab tokens carry any color pips), and Exquisite Blood, which works very well with the upkeep trigger on Scarab. More to follow on this.
Finally, two other potential cards to test:
- Crystal Shard: functions as protection for the important stuff and a way to re-use the many ETB guys I naturally have.
- Spellskite: A cheap body that takes a bullet for Scarab, messes with a few random targeted spells, and potentially comes back to take another bullet. Also a target for Muddle.
Yeva (88/92 foils)
Raff
Scarab
Rakdos
Wort ($50 budget, 94/97 foils)
Trostani
The tokens made by the Scarab God DO in fact come down with their same mana cost on the card as usual. So any card that had black in it's casting cost will still add black devotion when resurrected as a token. The difference is just that anything that is resurrected by the God will also have black as part of it's color identity, even if it didn't originally have black in it's cost.
In that case, guess it's time to move Gary up a few notches...
Yeva (88/92 foils)
Raff
Scarab
Rakdos
Wort ($50 budget, 94/97 foils)
Trostani
- Jace, Vryn's Prodigy: summoning sickness prevented this from being a thing, and the flip side offers very little value since I don't run very many instants/sorceries.
- Lazav, the Multifarious: somehow it never occurred to me how many of my creatures are just ETB bodies.
So now there are two free spots in the list before War of the Spark comes in and blows everything up. The top five choices to replace them are as follows:
- Massacre Wurm or Demon of Dark Schemes: at least one of these is the front-runner, but which one? The Wurm provides some nice reach, while the Demon provides another way to resurrect creatures. This choice probably deserves its own thread/poll somewhere.
- Gray Merchant of Asphodel: Speaking of reach, Gary does that better than most.
- Kira, Great Glass-Spinner: I used to be a lot higher on this card, but it basically just gives my team hexproof, and as I learned in the Ojutai experiment, that doesn't really count for much in my local meta.
- Dimir House Guard: does a little bit of everything. Only question is whether or not there are enough 4s in the deck.
- Lazav, Dimir Mastermind: A different kind of clone, that I finally got around to picking up.
Yeva (88/92 foils)
Raff
Scarab
Rakdos
Wort ($50 budget, 94/97 foils)
Trostani
I really like the look of Liliana, Dreadhorde Master Extra card draw, more zombies, and make everyone sac. 2 creatures? I'm in, once the price drops.
Ashiok Dream Render this card does too much to not look at. The opponents can't search their library part is well worth it. I'm always wanting cards that exile graveyards but also does other things.
Gleaming Overseer not sure about this guy, but adding 2 zombie bodies for 3 mana is nice. You can start the draining of life away early. Giving your zombies tokens menace is also really nice too. I find we want our tokens to have evasion on them otherwise they are usually too small to attack with.
Finale of Eternity are we going to be reaching the 12 mana to make this spell really worth it though? Probably not too often. Probably doesn't go in, but worth looking at.
Yeva (88/92 foils)
Raff
Scarab
Rakdos
Wort ($50 budget, 94/97 foils)
Trostani
Also Yarok's Fenlurker looks great.
***Further Edit*** Looks like you still need to replace sky diamond with coldsteel heart it's an all around better card. Pretty cheap to buy last time I looked.