Call to the Netherworld

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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Archenemy Legal
Block Constructed 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
Modern Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Pauper Legal
Pauper Duel Commander Legal
Pauper EDH Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Call to the Netherworld

Sorcery

Return target black creature card from your graveyard to your hand.

Madness (If you discard this card, you may cast it for its madness cost instead of putting it into your graveyard.)

berryjon on Hellbent for Madness

1 year ago

Call to the Netherworld for recursion, while Gathan Raiders has some synergy.

ellie-is on Ellie's Rats

3 years ago

HalbrechtHalbrecht: Thank you for the upvote and comment!!

Rats are great. Feel free to borrow as much as you'd like from this!

I still think Marrow Gnawer is a little slow, mainly because it can't tap when you play it. Best case scenario, I'll have five mana by T5 (39%/29% chance with my 19 lands depending whether or not I'm on the draw), and then tap it on T6 to double my rats. That's already too slow for a Modern wincon if you're not playing control, but in actuality it's going to take way longer than T5 to play it on most games due to the land count. So bringing it in would require me to change up the mana base as well and that'd change the strategy way too much.

In addition to that, I really dislike the Nezumi, hahahaha. I'll run one if I absolutely need to, but if they can be avoided I will. One of my least favorite tribes of animal people, and just do not look right next to all the cute little rats in the deck. (I also purposefully avoid diseased or zombie looking rats, haha. Just realized the art for Typhoid Rats up there was that horrible Khans of Takir one, but I just fixed it to the MB1/M15/Innistrad art I actually own, haha). That said, I do allow changelings, because they're one of my favorite tribes and I just love the idea of this amorphous person stumbling upon a pack of rats and deciding to live as one of them.

Those black counterspells seem like a really fun idea! I don't know if I can make room for them but I'll definitely think about it. Way back in the day I ran Avoid Fate on a monogreen deck and it always caught people off guard, it was wonderful.

Unearth rocks! Definitely the addition to this version of the deck that I'm most happy with, it just does so much work. If you want even more recursion for your deck, Claim is great as well. I actually ran Call to the Netherworld in the very first of version of this deck that included Pack Rat and while on a good day it worked exactly as you described, overall it was a bit of a risky gimmick choice—it only works with Pack Rat (here at least, in that deck I had some rats that caused mass discard but even then a lot of the time it wasn't doing that much work), while Unearth can bring back removed Rat Colonys too. In addition to that there's the Cycling as you said! Unearth is never a dead card while Call is almost always one.

I really like Fiend Artisan out of those sac outlets you suggested! I like how it goes to the battlefield instead of the hand and can be repeated every turn. I used to run Shred Memory just to search for pack rats haha, but that was before Rat Colony and now I'm way more likely to have -something- to attack with, at least. Sadly it's far from being budget friendly, but I might playtest it and see how I feel about bringing it in in the future!

As for the Time Spiral cards! I live in Brazil. It's easy to find older pre-modern cards in Portuguese, and everything after Time Spiral is easy to find in Portuguese and relatively easy to find in English (I prefer English cards to keep my decks all in one language, plus I'm not always happy with how they translate some things haha), but for some reason all the stores have a VERY small amount of Time Spiral cards in either language, when they have them at all. And most of the time they're in horrible condition. I have absolutely no idea why this happens! I'll probably have to get my Swarmyards overseas eventually, but waiting months for cards to arrive (or paying for them in dollars right now) sucks haha. My best hope is that they'll reprint it at some point soon, maybe in a Commander set or something like that!

HalbrechtHalbrecht on Ellie's Rats

3 years ago

Thanks for your help on my deck; I thought I'd return the favor!

First of all, +1 from me for rats! I've been working on a rats deck off and on for a while now, and I'll be taking some notes from your deck. ;)

So I know you said you're avoiding the high-CMC dudes like Ogre Slumlord in this version... but are you suuuuuure you don't want 1x Marrow-Gnawer??? I just think in a deck like this that's dropping so many rats, it makes for a great late-game play. In the right matchups, just dropping it and giving your rats Fear might win the game (though obviously side it out against opponents playing black / lots of artifact creatures). But if it can stick around one turn and get back to you, man, that tap ability will seal your victory. Obviously the issue with that is it'll be a major target for removal (assuming they haven't already used up their removal on your Pack Rats / Pipers), but on that note, consider....

Counter magic. Yep, in black. I've been playing around with both Imp's Mischief and Dash Hopes, but I think in the case of protecting specific threats like Pack Rat or Gnawer, I'd go with the former. No one sees it coming in black, so it can make for great game 1 blowouts.

Now, I love your Unearth find, and I'm thinking of trying it in my deck, but have you considered Call to the Netherworld as a discard target for Pack Rat? I know returning to play is better than to hand, usually, but hear me out:

  • With Unearth: You discard creature 1 to Pack Rat, pay 1 mana for Unearth, then discard creature 2 for another Pack Rat.
  • With Netherworld: You discard creature 1 to Pack Rat, discard Netherworld for another Pack Rat which you cast for free to return creature 1, and then you play creature 1 for 1-2 mana (you still have creature 2 in your hand).

The net result is that you pay the same or one more mana (depending on which creature you bring back), but you only use 2 cards to achieve two activations of Pack Rat plus an extra rat in play, rather than 3 cards. In other words, you have creature 1 in play and creature 2 in hand rather than creature 1 in play and creature 2 in the yard. I wouldn't recommend it if you had a lot of 3-CMC rats, but in your case, I think it's actually marginally better.

What I'm completely ignoring in that comparison is the Cycling on Unearth. Count how many times you actually cycle it instead of cast it, and consider that as well. Guess it might be matchup dependent.

In my deck, I haven't been keeping it format specific, so as my sac outlet, I'm using Diabolic Intent. It's perfect for getting the Pack Rat engine going, grabbing a late-game Merrow-Gnawer, searching up a removal spell, or just going for a big mana turn by tutoring a Cabal Coffers. Sadly, it's not Modern-legal!

Instead, I looked through all the free sac effects (either as an activation on a permanent or as an additional cost on a spell), and the best one I think is Village Rites. It's only 1 mana, it turns on BOTH Tragic Slip's Morbid and Fatal Push's Revolt, it's instant-speed so it pairs nicely with that removal, and it adds card draw to your deck, which is great in a deck where you empty out your hand quickly due to a low curve and discard effects.

The only other option I found is Fiend Artisan. Not a rat, unfortunately, but it's the closest thing to Diabolic Intent you can get in Modern. It not only provides a sac outlet, but it also tutors straight to the battlefield, and because of your low curve, you'll only ever be paying 2-3 mana.

Well, that about does it for me. I ended up writing quite a lot more than I originally thought I would, hence adding the accordion, so I hope at least something in all that rambling helped!


P.S. If you don't mind me prying, where do you live that Time Spiral cards are hard to come by? Feel free to ignore entirely if you'd rather keep your location private. :)

oshus96 on

3 years ago

Nightblad3 Thanks for the input! Big Game Hunter and Call to the Netherworld have been in and out of the deck a couple of times each, but aside from those, I'm not too excited about the other madness cards. I'm really just looking to discard reanimate targets for the most part anyway.

RambIe on Help me foolproof this infinite …

3 years ago

I can vision this in jund

I would add card mechanics like
Call to the Netherworld, Shadow of the Grave, Garna, the Bloodflame, Creeping Renaissance to reload your hand
Liliana, Dreadhorde General, Erebos, Bleak-Hearted,Moldervine Reclamation,Fecundity, Korvold, Fae-Cursed King. to improve the draw

This could help you get past the lands.
plenty of ways in these colors to make this combo go lethal or as pointed out fetch win (IMO do both)

the true challenge is making it consistent
I hate to say it but tutor for a tutor Diabolic Revelation

I hope this is enough suggestions to get you started on your journey, Good luck

Magnanimous on 8 Rack Twist

3 years ago

I've worked with some madness cards before and the conclusion I've come to almost every time is that it's just too expensive. Playing a 2 mana or 3 mana card and then casting a 2 mana Asylum Visitor or From Under the Floorboards is impossible for much of the game, especially if you're even thinking of retracing Raven's Crime or if you decide to discard a few lands to your Mind Rake.

I also don't like Asylum Visitor as it only provides card advantage once you're already in the game state you want to be in (clear board, no cards in hands, both top-decking). One of my pet cards is Cryptbreaker, which I think would work better as a one man army and engine in that board state anyway and is also harder to clean up, unfortunately it's also more expensive. A Gurmag Angler could also work well given the amount of cards you're going to put into the graveyard and has the added benefit of recurring your Nether Spirits if a Call to the Netherworld isn't enough. I've also been very impressed by Knight of the Ebon Legion in Modern Cube, but it is a bit expensive.

multimedia on Merciless rage needs upgrading

4 years ago

Hey, you can do a lot with a $60 budget for upgrades. For non madness, do you still want to play the Worldgorger combo? Again this combo will be at least $20 of the $60 budget. Without the combo you could make plenty of other upgrades for $20, but the combo makes your deck much more competitive.

For multicolored decks I always start with allocating enough of the budget for the manabase, to add some playable lands. I figure I need to have a good manabase otherwise what's the point in making the deck if I can't consistently cast cards. For your deck I would start with adding these lands:

If playing non madness, still play some madness cards that become better when you discard them with Anje. There's really reason to not take some advantage of playable madness cards with Anje as Commander.

Other advice I can give will be determined on if you want to play the Worldgorger combo. I'm basing it on the combo because your deck can look quite a bit different if not playing the combo.

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