Animate Dead

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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Archenemy Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Highlander Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Oldschool 93/94 Legal
Planechase Legal
Premodern Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Animate Dead

Enchantment — Aura

Enchant creature card in a graveyard

When Animate Dead enters the battlefield, if it's on the battlefield, it loses "enchant creature card in a graveyard" and gains "enchant creature put onto the battlefield with Animate Dead." Return enchanted creature card to the battlefield under your control and attach Animate Dead to it. When Animate Dead leaves the battlefield, that creature's controller sacrifices it.

Enchanted creature gets -1/-0.

Basshunter on Kill, Kill and Kill some more.

2 weeks ago

its a really nice deck idea, but in my opinion, you got

  1. too much stuff in your deck that doesnt fit to the theme like Squelching Leeches, Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon, Paragon of Open Graves, Infernal Scarring, Grasping Shadows  Flip, Hero's Blade and maybe some others..

  2. you are really high cmc for a sac-deck. maybe upgrade to a lower cmc and faster deck..i.e. change Diabolic Tutor with Diabolic Intent, Death-Priest of Myrkul, Stir the Sands or Palace Siege is expensive too - and they dont even fit very well to the theme. You can change your reanimation-spells to low cmc like Reanimate or Animate Dead aswell

  3. To get rid of the fuel-problem, get some cards like Black Market Connections (awesome here), Blight Mound, Ophiomancer, Grave Titan ...

  4. Upgrade sac-outlets: Phyrexian Altar, Priest of Forgotten Gods, Viscera Seer, Skullclamp

So all together you should fit the theme more, search for cheaper cmc cards that do the same and get some more token-stuff

scottbaker91 on Budget Meren Eldrazi EDH

3 weeks ago

I think Hand of Emrakul, Decimator of the Provinces, Kozilek, the Great Distortion, and Pathrazer of Ulamog are too expensive to cast / commander ability for what they do. Some replacement examples would be: Terastodon, Void Winnower, Fleshbag Marauder, Noxious Gearhulk, Ravenous Chupacabra, Plaguecrafter, Eternal Witness, It That Betrays, Woodfall Primus, Acidic Slime, Ob Nixilis, Unshackled, Sepulchral Primordial, Overseer of the Damned, etc.

cards like Dalek Squadron with a sac outlet will get you a lot of Meren counters quickly. cards like Greater Good are great at filling your graveyard and your hand. cards like Oversold Cemetery are great for your low mana creatures and late game expensive creatures. Tragic Slip isn't a very good card for multiplayer commander, unless you are using something like Isochron Scepter

I think your deck is a little heavy on creature token generators, especially your creatures. I know they are there to build up tokens on Meren and to generate mana, in the early game, but they aren't doing much in the mid to late game. Maybe replace a few with some faster reanimator spells like: Living Death, Lifeline (a personal favorite), Necromancy, Animate Dead, Victimize, Rescue from the Underworld, Beacon of Unrest, etc.

Other cards I would consider cutting: Skullbriar, the Walking Grave (too slow imo unless he is your commander), Blisterpod (needs to die to get the token), Pawn of Ulamog, Vorapede, Village Rites, Gray Merchant of Asphodel (starts to shine with lots of reanimator stuff), Woe Strider, Scion Summoner, Brood Monitor, Deathreap Ritual, Commander's Sphere

It's tough to suggest cards for a budget deck. A card that I might consider to be absolutely necessary could require cheaper options in other parts of the deck to make it fit.

Gidgetimer on Take Control

1 month ago

I'd start with one of the 2 Flicker of Fate seeings as you can only run 1 in Commander :)

Your mana curve is a bit high too, so I'd look at one of the 7 mana cards to cut. Probably Fated Return since you can do the same thing for much less mana. Though I just noticed that you aren't running any of Reanimate, Animate Dead, or Necromancy and the price of the deck is pretty low, so this may be a budget deck and the "same thing for much less mana" argument may not be a good one.

Crow_Umbra on Alesha, Who Blinks at Death EDH

1 month ago

Happy to help luizfpa! Have you had a chance to play your deck irl in its current iteration? Was there anything that felt clunky to you?

I played Alesha for a couple of years in a few different iterations: ETB tokens/Aristocrats, Menace Matters Aggro, and finally more combo-focused. The cool thing about Alesha is that you can take her so many different directions. I don't think I've seen any Alesha builds that look alike. The more you play her, the more you'll be able to tune her toolbox aspects to your playgroup(s).

If you're ever interested in running a more dedicated reanimator package to supplement Alesha, Reanimate, Animate Dead, & Necromancy all were reprinted in the new Revenant Recon Dimir precon.

Crow_Umbra on Murders at Karlov Manor

1 month ago

Holy crap Reanimate, Black Sun's Zenith, Animate Dead, Necromancy, and Toxic Deluge all reprinted in the Dimir precon?

Duskana, the Rage Mother is a fun and cheeky way to do either Bear Typal, or Morph/Mega Morph/Disguise/Cloak/Manifest.

At a quick glance, it seems like the Boros precon has the most underwhelming reprints, besides Jeska's Will. Glad to see it getting reprinted again.

DreadKhan on Sauron, The Dark Lord Commander Deck

2 months ago

I feel like this deck should look pretty hard at Relic of Sauron, it's one of the best mana rocks for a Grixis deck, it also offers card draw and a discard outlet when you don't need the mana. I also feel like you might want more ramp, but I'm not sure I'd shave the land count too much further. I do have much higher average MV decks with similar land counts, they tend to run a lot of ramp though!

I've always liked the idea of evasive Changelings in this deck, the best being Changeling Outcast, but Mistwalker is also good, Mothdust Changeling less so but still interesting, evasion is really good on an Army in here. Taurean Mauler might be worth throwing in too, any of these is infinitely better than trying to use a token as the base for your army. Amoeboid Changeling can make any creature an army (to trigger Sauron). You might even try Maskwood Nexus, you can always choose not to wheel your hand away if you're happy with it (could be an issue if you're getting in with several armies in a turn).

Since Sauron discards your hand before he draws a new one you might want to look into some recursion effects, Black is very good at that kind of thing. Sheoldred, Whispering One is a nice easy-button recursion card that also hassles your opponents, but she is slow and a ton of mana, but you can reanimate her with something like Animate Dead or Reanimate. Since Sauron can make you a new token whenever someone casts a spell (if you don't already have one) you could use sacrifice based recursion effectively, Hell's Caretaker could do some work. These are just a few low hanging fruit, if you need a bunch more (or cheaper ones) I could probably rattle off more.

With this much built in discard you might look at the better Delve cards, Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time come to mind immediately, both are pretty good card draw if you don't have to pay any generic mana in.

Mask of Griselbrand can work well as a draw source, it also gives two useful abilities for an Army. Not sure if this is too out there, but you could try Shinka, the Bloodsoaked Keep and Shizo, Death's Storehouse, if you make an Army your Ringbearer it becomes Legendary, meaning these lands don't just help Sauron (but making Sauron unblockable is inherently good in a deck like this because he has 7 power and he's a 3 hit kill). Fear from Shizo is probably better than First Strike in most metas, but First Strike is a very useful effect. Rogue's Passage is a nice budget card that can let Sauron or an Army get in each turn. I really have enjoyed using Scavenged Brawler, it would be very good with your Commander (if he can get in twice he can kill someone, regardless of their life total), but it'll also be useful with a good sized Army token, those key word abilities are pretty sweet in my experience. Dauthi Embrace is a nifty old card that can be very sneaky, you can use it to help opponents get in, not just to protect your creature from blockers. If you plan to attack and are in Red you might benefit from Berserkers' Onslaught, double strike on your entire board can be a very powerful effect.

If you want a way to protect Sauron from most board wipes, I really love Gift of Doom, this gem of a card can be cast as a Morph for 3 mana, after which you can sacrifice a creature to attach the aura to a creature (note that this method doesn't target the creature it attaches to, so you can get around Shroud on your creature) at literally any time you have priority iirc. It's also not a spell or ability, so you can use it in response to something with Split Second. Indestructible is very good, but if you can get Deathtouch on a creature with trample it only takes 1 point of damage to 'destroy' any creature (regardless of whether or not it dies), the rest goes over, so it has great synergy with Scavenged Brawler (and other Trample sources). You can always cast it for 5 mana, and it's not a terrible card in that form, but the Morph effect is one of the best ways to protect an individual creature (or to turn your opponent's block attempt into a blood bath).

Finally, Mercadian Bazaar, Subterranean Hangar, and Saprazzan Cove are my spiciest ideas for a deck like this, I will take no offense if you laugh at them, but you might be surprised by what they can do in a deck with a 6 mana Commander. I use the first two as well as two Fallen Empires storage lands (which I wouldn't encourage you to use unless you want gray hair) in my Rakdos deck, I play them as ramp cards, and it's openly hilarious how useful they can be if you really want to cheese out a big Commander (or recast them repeatedly).

Hope some of this brainstorming is helpful, Sauron is a pretty strong Commander that attracts a fair bit of attention afaik.

Gidgetimer on "Meta-less" format?

3 months ago

To Illustrate the point system thing maybe give each of the common targets 1 point, Animate Dead, Entomb, and Reanimate 2 points and something format defining like Force of Will 1 point, not based on any particular deck and a point budget of 20. None of the three decks would make that point budget as they have (in the order I mentioned them in my most recent post) 29, 38, and 29 points respectively. They would have to drop at least 1 target and 4 of the "central cards" in order to make the point budget. Points on the main list could be assigned and lowered/raised by some sort of committee on a quarterly basis based on what meta decks look like and how well the list is doing keeping "metaless" decks from looking like meta decks.

Gidgetimer on "Meta-less" format?

3 months ago

Definitely not something I'd be interested in as brewing decks is not something I enjoy. I do however have a couple of opinions on the rules.

For the sake of fairness; I'd be more a proponent of a percentage of non-land cards being the same, than just a percentage of cards. Does this give an advantage to Dark Depths decks in formats that contain it? Yes, but I don't think that it will be as much of a problem as just starting control decks off with a 33% similarity and only allowing 26:25 ratio of "meta cards" compared to the 20-27% of aggro decks and them getting a 30-35:25 ratio.

Meta decks aren't actually a monolith in some older formats. Looking at Legacy Reanimator on MTGtop8 there are only about 10-12 non-land cards and 8 or so lands guaranteed to be in every reanimator deck. Every deck runs 4 of Entomb and 6-8 total between Reanimate and Animate Dead. Other than that the 3% of decks is split between Rakdos, Grixis, and Dimir. With Dimir being the least represented, so I could make an argument for the Legacy Reanimator deck that I borrow from my friend and I have run in tournaments not being a "meta deck" despite having the early, consistent, wins that are a hallmark of what people seem to dislike about "meta decks".

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