By Demons Be Driven - K'rrik

Commander / EDH* Demons Mono-Black Reanimator

Syncharmony

Creature (25)

• 1x Abhorrent Overlord
• 1x Archfiend of Despair
• 1x Blood Artist
• 1x Bloodghast
• 1x Carrion Feeder
• 1x Chainer, Dementia Master
• 1x Crypt Ghast
• 1x Disciple of Bolas
• 1x Disciple of Griselbrand
• 1x Doom Whisperer
• 1x Gray Merchant of Asphodel
• 1x Kokusho, the Evening Star
• 1x Meteor Golem
• 1x Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
• 1x Mindslicer
• 1x Nirkana Revenant
• 1x Noxious Gearhulk
• 1x Razaketh, the Foulblooded
• 1x Rune-Scarred Demon
• 1x Sangromancer
• 1x Sidisi, Undead Vizier
• 1x Vilis, Broker of Blood
• 1x Viscera Seer
• 1x Wurmcoil Engine
• 1x Yawgmoth, Thran Physician

Instant (5)

• 1x Cabal Ritual
• 1x Culling the Weak
• 1x Dark Ritual
• 1x Entomb
• 1x Vampiric Tutor

Planeswalker (1)

• 1x Liliana of the Dark Realms

Land (34)

• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Buried Ruin
• 1x Cabal Coffers
• 1x Cabal Stronghold
• 1x Emergence Zone
• 1x High Market
• 1x Lake of the Dead
• 1x Myriad Landscape
• 1x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
• 1x Phyrexian Tower
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 1x Strip Mine
• 17x Swamp
• 1x Thespian's Stage
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

Sorcery (12)

• 1x Bubbling Muck
• 1x Buried Alive
• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Exsanguinate
• 1x Final Parting
• 1x Living Death
• 1x Mutilate
• 1x Reanimate
• 1x Sign in Blood
• 1x Torment of Hailfire
• 1x Toxic Deluge
• 1x Yawgmoth's Will

Commander (1)

Artifact (17)

• 1x Aetherflux Reservoir
• 1x Bolas's Citadel
• 1x Bontu's Monument
• 1x Chrome Mox
• 1x Crucible of Worlds
• 1x Expedition Map
• 1x Grim Monolith
• 1x Jet Medallion
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Mana Vault
• 1x Mirage Mirror
• 1x Mox Diamond
• 1x Phyrexian Altar
• 1x Sensei's Divining Top
• 1x Skullclamp
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Wayfarer's Bauble

Enchantment (5)

• 1x Animate Dead
• 1x Font of Agonies
• 1x Grave Pact
• 1x Necropotence
• 1x Phyrexian Arena

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Maybeboard

Creature (7)

• 1x Blood Celebrant
• 1x Carrion Feeder
• 1x Dregscape Zombie
• 1x Gravecrawler
• 1x Soldevi Adnate
• 1x Twilight Prophet
• 1x Zulaport Cutthroat

Artifact (5)

• 1x Ashnod's Altar
• 1x Chrome Mox
• 1x Helm of Awakening
• 1x Sensei's Divining Top
• 1x Whip of Erebos

Instant (2)

• 1x Culling the Weak
• 1x Sacrifice

Sorcery (1)

• 1x Sign in Blood

Enchantment (1)

• 1x Necromancy

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Here is my version of a Chainer deck with a Demon subtheme. When I was just a youngin' one of my favorite cards was Demonic Tutor. The art was awesome and the effect felt powerful no matter what deck you put it in. I took a 20 something year break from Magic but when I came back and went through my old cards and found my old Demonic Tutor, a burst of nostalgia surged through me. I got into EDH not long after that and one of the first ideas I had was to make a Demon tribal deck. I sketched it out on tappedout but I never purchased the cards in paper. It was always in the back of my mind as something I wanted to do down the line when I had collected the mono-black staples I needed to make it sing.

11 paper decks later I finally felt like it was time to build a deck that was a love song to my favorite color. I still love demons and wanted a lot of demons in the deck, but I didn't necessarily want it to just be a Demon tribal deck anymore. I love the graveyard dance too much to ignore the siren call of reanimation. So I went looking for the mono-black commander who would exemplify everything I love to do with black magic and I found Chainer.

Strategy

Black as a color is all about sacrifice. This deck demands that you sacrifice your life and your creatures for greater power. This see-saw effect in black is what makes it one of the most fun colors since you are forced to toe the line sometimes to achieve your goals. You have to find ways to work the system to mitigate the negative effects or even come out ahead since you have manipulated events to work in your favor.

Chainer's reanimation ability is borderline broken if you are able to soften the blow of his life loss. Being able to reanimate a creature from any graveyard at instant speed for BBB and 3 life is just... it's just incredible. The text box on this card reads well and sounds promising but in practice this is even more fun than it sounds.

This deck wants:

• Creatures in graveyards
• Lots of mana to play with
• A way to gain life
• A sac outlet

In order to facilitate this plan we need a lot of ramp, card draw and tutors to assemble our boardstate in ways that allow us to start to build value and work towards a win. Luckily, it's pretty easy to keep in our Demon subtheme and achieve all of these things.

Notable Cards

I'm not going to go through every single card in the deck but just cherry pick some notable cards. There is a ton of crossover between categories.

Demons Show

What's a demon deck without the Demons? There are other Demon-related cards in the deck but these are the Demonic forces that pile our deck into a car who's only destination is flavor-town.

• Abhorrent Overlord: Great ETB to give us a Harpy army to use as sacrifice fodder, blocks or however we see fit
• Archfiend of Despair: New Demon from Battlebond which is just an absolute house in our deck. Shuts down lifegain strategies and doubles up all lifeloss effects. Turns Fraying Omnipotence into a win condition and makes cycling Gary or Kokusho that much more devastating.
• Demon of Dark Schemes - Weenie board wipe that doesn't kill Chainer and then acts as a back-up Chainer if he's shutoff from you or if you don't want to pay more life
• Demonlord Belzenlok - Draws a pretty decent amount of cards pretty consistently since the average CMC in this deck is on the higher end. Worst case scenario is a 6/6 flying trample cantrip.
• Doom Whisperer - 6/6 Flying Trample for 5cmc is already good value. Except he's a 7/7 since he's a nightmare! However, all of that really pales in comparison to Pay 2: Surveil 2. That is a such an amazing ability for our deck.
• Kagemaro, First to Suffer - Instant speed toxic deluge? A hidden all-star repeatable boardwipe.
• Krav, the Unredeemed - Thanks Battlebond! One of the best sacrifice outlets in the deck as he gains you life, draws you cards and pumps himself.
• Lord of the Void - No ETB effect but ridiculously powerful when he's able to connect with an opponent.
• Razaketh, the Foulblooded - Repeatable instant speed sac outlet who tutors and is also an 8/8 flying trampler. I guess he's alright.
• Rune-Scarred Demon - ETB Tutor stapled to a solid body
• Westvale Abbey - Kind of a long shot card but worst case scenario is that it's a colorless land. Can make sacrifice fodder for you in a pinch. If you can flip it though and bring out Orhemdal, it's absolutely frightening.

Ramp Show

In addition to your standard mana rocks:

• Bontu's Monument: 2 for 1 as it ramps our creature spells and gains us life
• Caged Sun / Crypt Ghast / Nirkana Revenant: Double up that mana. Secondary abilities of these cards are all helpful as well.
• Cabal Coffers / Urborg / Thespian's Stage / Mirage Mirror / Lake of the Dead / Nykthos / Cabal Stronghold: Black has some of the best land based ramp in the format. We run the cards that take advantage of that as well as cards that can copy those effects like Mirage Mirror or Thespian's Stage. Because the only thing better than a Cabal Coffer is 3 of them.

Draw / Tutors Show

• Arguel's Blood Fast: It's greed but better since it can potentially flip into a Diamond Valley to pull your ass out of the fire
• Disciple of Bolas: Gains life, draws cards and puts something else in the graveyard
• Gonti: Kinda sorta card-draw but recurring him for ETB is a lot of fun
• Necropotence: One of my favorite and best cards in the format
• Skullclamp: Make sure your sacrifices die while blinged out with a skullclamp on them
• Liliana's Contract: Draw 4 and lose 4 is already good for 5 mana. Includes a win condition that can be a bit of a stretch to meet but Chainer being able to flash in some dead Demons from your graveyard increases the likelihood of this going off.

Removal / Wipes Show

• Butcher of Malakir / Grave Pact: Our two edict effects. Could be running more but these feel like enough with all the tutoring available to us.
• Meteor Golem: M19 gave mono-black a pretty solid gift in the form of this card. Repeatable removal for pesky enchantments and artifacts mainly but works on creatures too.
• Noxious Gearhulk: Our creature removal spell of choice since it gains us life back and follows it up with an evasive body
• Life's Finale: Wipe the board and get to put your buddies best reanimation targets in his graveyard? Awesome.
• Living Death: A board wipe and win condition all in one.
• Mutilate: Most of the time (in mono black) this is just better than Damnation for a fraction of the cost.

Sacrifice / Lifegain / Discard Show

• Pox / Fraying Omnipotence: Two cards that no one tends to see coming. Pox in particular is great to slow down people who are ramping faster than you are. Both cards get creatures from your hand into your graveyard and perhaps other people's hands as well. Pox is good with Archfiend of Despair out and FO is deadly.
• Gary and Kokusho: Not sure these guys need any introduction.
• Disciple of Griselbrand: Sac outlet and lifegain
• Viscera Seer: Free outlet with scry
• Sangromancer: This card loves the aforementioned Pox and FO. Works wonderfully when the board gets wiped.
• Blood Artist: You know it, you love it
• Wurmcoil Engine: Lifegain, deathtouch, makes tokens when it dies for more sac fodder. So good.
• Mindslicer: Everyone else has to discard their hand while you GET to discard your hand. Good for locking things up before you go for a win.
• Altar of Dementia: Free sac outlet + mill yourself or your opponents
• Mindcrank: Turn those creature beats into more options for Chainer Removed to add land recursion package.
• Oppression: We like to discard, our opponents don't

Win Conditions

Win conditions include:

• Beating people's faces with Demons or whatever your friends best creatures are
• Cycling Gary or Kokusho
• Archfiend + Fraying Omnipotence (Pox gets you 2/3 of the way there as well). Archfiend + any lifeloss effect or damage is going to be very devestating.
• Big mana into Exsanguinate or Torment
• Liliana's Contract

Improvements

Here are cards that could improve this deck. Either for budget reasons or personal reasons I haven't included them (yet)

• Phyrexian Altar: Probably my most glaring omission, I really wish these weren't $80 Added
• Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed: Black Eternal Witness, so good
• Contamination: Left out intentionally as my meta wouldn't be super happy with me but I would run this in a heartbeat otherwise Added... apparently, I don't like my friends as much as I thought
• Bloodghast: Having an auto-recurable creature for sacrifice fodder sounds great
• Vampiric Tutor: A near-future purchase to put in here and other decks Added
• Mana Crypt: Would be here but budget hasn't allowed me to snag one of these yet
• Gauntlet of Power: I feel like there is a limit to how many mana doublers you want but I would probably try and sneak another one in if I could
• Bitterblossom: A future purchase but a little steep in dollar value to offset it's in-game value

Date added	5 years
Last updated	4 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	17 - 0 Mythic Rares 40 - 0 Rares 19 - 0 Uncommons 7 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.33
Tokens	Emblem Liliana of the Dark Realms, Harpy 1/1 B, Wurm 3/3 C w/ Deathtouch, Wurm 3/3 C w/ Lifelink
Folders	Stuff I like, Cool decks, Old Decks, Tapped Out - User Decks
Based on	Belzenlok Blitz Syncharmony BRL