MTG Salvation

Yeah, I'm pretty much right in line with you on a lot of these, especially K'rrik. I'm planning on getting the deck he's in, so I'll probably at least try him out with Original Flavor Chainer, but it feels like either a trap or win-more, neither of which I'm super interested in right now.

Thieving Amalgam seems great, but overall not a great set for the way I want my deck to run. Although, honestly, getting just one good card per set is probably an OK thing, as fast as they put out new sets right now...

Thrilling Encore is great, and requires a couple fewer hoops than Living Death - I'll probably actually skip Living End and use Encore instead. Good call.

I'm torn on how to best use the haste. Tapping abilities can be strong, but is it just stronger to reanimate everything and swing? IDK

Doomed Necromancer will be killer early game, though, so I think it's a pretty clear include. I'm also looking real hard at Hell's Caretaker and Coffin Queen. I'm also wondering if there are some cheap creatures with really powerful tap effects that could be looped with his ability.

Basically, does this deck want ETB triggers (to take advantage of the reanimation - though this will be probably too much overlap with my regular Chainer deck), activated abilities (to take advantage of the haste), or attack triggers (to take advantage of the haste)?

And do I want to lean farther to the Red side of this deck, so it differentiates itself a bit more?

I think that's the main reason I want to play with the precon a bit first, and see which direction the deck pulls me.

CHAINER, NIGHTMARE ADEPT

I've been running the original Chainer for years now, and I've become incredibly attached to the deck both for its playstyle and what it means to me on a personal level (it was a creative outlet to help get me through a time of pretty intense grief). So, when the new version of Chainer was announced last week, I immediately began brewing, excited about a new legend for the first time in a long time.

I have no plans to take apart my old Chainer deck - I considered it, but I just can't make myself do it - more likely I'll scavenge cards from my Kiki-Jiki deck for this one. So, I'm going to attempt to build a deck with this Chainer that is similarly exciting, but also feels different in the way it works.

Both obviously will use the graveyard a lot, but I'm hoping that using the new Chainer's discard ability will open up some different, interesting space, as well as the addition of R to the deck.

The way I'm planning on doing this though is pretty simple. Buy the precon, play it a few times with Chainer, Nightmare Adept at the helm, learn what parts of the deck work or not, and tinker with it from there (I suspect the mana base will be the first thing I switch out, as I happen to already have what I need there). It will be kind of a long term experiment, but I'm excited to do it.

Anyone else who's planning on running new Chainer? Please join me!


So that's the stock decklist. Like all of these, there's a lot to tinker with.

My first instinct is that I'd like to have more spells that discard on their own ala Cathartic Reunion and Faithless Looting. Maybe add some wheels like Wheel of Fortune, Reforge the Soul, and Dark Deal. If I've got wheels, Waste Not would be killer, as would Geth's Grimoire or Liliana's Caress. Yawgmoth's Will, aside from being a very good spell on its own would be absolutely devastating late game with this deck.

Also, Living Death, Living End, and spells like that seem very good for this deck, especially with a sac outlet for Chainer, so you can bring him back with the rest of your graveyard, giving everything haste.

I'm imagining a very fun loop with Phyrexian Altar, Anarchist, and Living Death which is making the lizard part of my brain very excited.

So what do you guys think? Anyone else planning on building Chainer, Nightmare Adept? I'm sure some of you are doing a more "from scratch" build and I'd love to see those, too!

Oops, if you can afford to get ahold of one, Yawgmoth's Will is amazing, too.

I'm definitely planning to build this deck as well, and my first two big-money cards will be that and Wheel of Fortune.

Doomed Necromancer is going to be killer in this deck as a way to cheat in big creatures pretty early. Sheoldred, Whispering One is expensive, but late game she'll completely control the game, if you can protect her. One off spells like Reanimate will be good, especially with creatures like Anarchist to reuse it.

Also something like Corpse Dance will be really, really good late game. Also Entreat the Dead.

If you want to play around with artifact creatures, Goblin Welder and Daretti, Scrap Savant will be amazing.

One more that I love. Ever After + Rune-Scarred Demon.

If you want to win, and win fast, Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker is still amazing. He'll get hated off the table, but when he sticks he gets you so much value you can hardly help but win the game. I love my Kiki-Jiki deck.

For Green, I'm partial to Kamahl, Fist of Krosa. Having an overrun, a mana sink, and board wipe protection on the same creature, in your command zone no less, is pretty great.

Quote from schweinefett »

I've not been able to get it to work in EDH, but sandstone oracle is colourless and can work wonders for decks with bad card draw (emphasis on CAN).

I've had luck with it only in decks where I'm not really paying for it, if that makes sense? In Kiki-Jiki, it can be amazing (if taken out of the graveyard with Daretti). In Chainer, it worked OK if it came out of the 'yard. Lot's of ifs there...

I like Bontu a lot! I already love Abhorrent Overlord, and this makes it even better! And there's almost always something on the table I don't mind getting rid of and bringing back with Chainer. I'll definitely be trying him out.

With the spoilers today, I think there are already a few cards I'd love to try out! I've linked these to mythicspoiler, but if that's not the right thing to do, I can come back and edit that. Also, lyonhaert, if you want me to hold off posting about new cards, I definitely can in the future, I'm just excited to talk about them (and also procrastinate the paper I'm supposed to be writing...) I'll also put them in a spoiler tag, just to be safe

Quote from tstorm823 »

Tapping Pristine Talisman for Well of Lost Dreams.

Pristine Talisman is also a very fun card to have on board with Archangel of Thune. No one expects that pump!

This Trostani, Selesnya's Voice deck is one that I've been working on for a few years now. As you can see, it's based loosely on the Soul Sisters archetype, making use of cards like Soul Warden, Soul's Attendant, Essence Warden, and Auriok Champion to gain small amounts of incremental lifegain throughout the game and flooding the board with tokens to outlast and trample my opponents.

Of course, Trostani itself is an honorary Soul Sister that I get to keep in the Command Zone.

I cannot really stress enough how casual of a deck this is. Lifegain is not a good strategy in EDH, but it's something I enjoy. This is a deck that is great if it never gets disrupted at all, but it creates a very target-rich environment for my opponents. There are several pretty obvious cards that aren't in the deck (Craterhoof Behemoth, Aetherflux Reservoir, or Aura Shards immediately come to mind) that I have sort of chosen to stay away from, as they don't really gel with what I'm trying to do here, just to get out ahead of those suggestions.

I love Trostani, and I love Selesnya as a guild, and I love playing this deck while I sit at a table with good friends and have a few cold ones.


That's the deck. It ain't perfect, but I love it, and I'm always looking for good suggestions that will fit with the way the deck wants to play.

I'll come back and probably add more to this later, but for now that's where the deck is at.

Yeah, thanks! You talked me out of spending an extra $40

I do have a timing question you might be able to answer. I have Homeward Path in the deck, and I've seen you mention it a few times in the thread. Does the following work, timing-wise?

Player A attacks Player B with a big beater, like a supercharged Managorger Hydra or something. It doesn't really matter.

B is dead on board with no blockers, but has creatures in his graveyard. So I can pay to reanimate a creature with Chainer, and then Homeward Path the reanimation target (let's say, since this is all an imagination exercise, it's something like Sidisi, Undead Vizier so I'll also get a bonus for its ETB, and has deathtouch for some insult to injury to A) to give B the blocker he needs to stay alive?

All in response to A's declared attack.

Have you ever tried out Hellfire? It seems awesome for us, especially with a Blood Artist/Zulaport Cutthroat/Falkenrath Noble/Deathgreeter on the board.

It's also just a freaking cool card.

Honestly, I'm there with you on Gary/Koko/Exsanguinate. They're great a couple times, but they do tend to make the way I play the deck too linear. I'm working on other, more interesting finishers as well. I haven't run Gonti yet, but he's high on my list.

I'll be running it again Tuesday night so I'll see how I feel about it. It's honestly been a while since I've played.

As a fellow Chainer guy I'd love to get in on this discussion!

I started building mine back in about 2014, during a pretty tough time in my life, so this deck is really special to me. I was actually kind of surprised how little overlap there was in our decks, and I'm still reading through the (excellent) OP to see where our philosophies differ, but I'm always happy to find someone to gush over my precious child with

Here's my decklist (and here's the tappedout link). It's built to last through long, grinding games and I want to be able to reuse everything in the deck as often as possible. It's pretty artifact heavy, so I've had to find a few different ways to recur artifacts (and the means to recur those means of recurrance...)

Once I'm more caught up on the thread, I'll hopefully have more interesting insight.