Dawntreader Elk

Creature — Elk

{G}, Sacrifice Dawntreader Elk: Search your library for a basic land card, put it onto the battlefield tapped, then shuffle your library.

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Arena	Legal
Block Constructed	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Freeform	Legal
Gladiator	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Historic	Legal
Historic Brawl	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Modern Beyond Horizons	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pauper	Legal
Pauper Duel Commander	Legal
Pauper EDH	Legal
Planar Constructed	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (49)

DreadKhan on Meren Sacrifice Shenanigans

2 months ago

I see that you are taking a pretty different angle than I did here, but there might be a few cards that I can suggest from my own Meren and the Golgari Queens. Would Savra, Queen of the Golgari make sense in your list? It's a slightly different Grave Pact, but at 4 mana and easy to cast she can come out earlier, the life gain is a lot less important other than offsetting the payment for the effect.

I think they're about as fun as an untreatable toothache, but Grave Pact effects in my experience like you to run several of the Merciless Executioner type creatures that exist, Accursed Marauder is a great start, but I think Plaguecrafter and Demon's Disciple might fit. I don't know exactly how many you'd 'want', but I'd run 3-5 creatures that exist almost purely to make everyone sacrifice a creature. IMHO if you only run one or the other the Executioners are probably the better include since you can get them out sooner, they stand alone (Grave Pact does nothing if you don't have a creature), and you can recur them with your Commander, but both are INCREDIBLY nasty when combined. In the decks I have that use edicts you really want to reach 'critical mass', so that you both have access to an Edict when it's necessary, but also have enough to continuously pare back the opponent's board.

This is a personal preference more than anything, but when I play Meren my fondest hope is usually to have a creature that ramps me that also kills itself; Sakura Tribe Elder is the 'gold standard' of the effect, but I think you could benefit from Diligent Farmhand and Dawntreader Elk, and maybe Yavimaya Granger. I even run Fertilid and Burnished Hart, but I don't think I'd recommend them to anyone else at this point! Anyways, the idea is you juggle one of these to both gain XP for Meren while ramping yourself, and when you draw something better to reanimate just reanimate that. The ramp is usually very useful to cast either Protean Hulk or Razaketh.

Speaking of Razaketh, I found it VERY useful to have mass untap effect to go with Life/Death, once Life/Death makes all your lands into weenies you can untap them with something like Vitalize or Benefactor's Draught. I also threw in a Songs of the Damned and Dark Ritual to help generate mana when I'm short. Lotus Petal is also a very good Razaketh card if you don't want to spring for Lion's Eye DiamondGC.

Just a little tip I stumbled upon, most Meren decks have very high Black devotion, but they rely heavily on early Green ramp; I really wanted to shave lands for creatures in my list, but since I can find Swamps with Forests via ramp, I ended up running WAY less Black sources than Green. I used 7 Basic Swamps and 2 Swamp/Forest duals, and I find I have very few fixing issues, even with a very low land count, since I almost never need more than 2 lands early on, and I found the deck absolutely hated drawing into them (Meren is a deck where I feel like you're supposed to run all the creature ramp you can, because Meren cares so much about Creatures and so little about non-creature spells, lands are dead draws).

I guess that brings me to the last point, I feel like you should really try to get more creatures into this list; your Commander does absolutely nothing if you don't have creatures in the graveyard. I have 57 in the 99 atm, I feel like having less than 40 in a Meren deck is too few. The nice thing about creatures is that Golgari has a LOT of creature synergies, I love using Lurking Predators or Heartwood Storyteller.

If you want more specific help feel free to ask!

Rasaru on Sek'Kuar's Hasty Mob Ball of Death | V-FND

10 months ago

I had an opportunity to look at each individual card in this list and have a few questions :)

As you mentioned above, you're taking advantage of ETB creatures and creatures that sac themselves. Totally makes sense. You also have the majority of your ramp in creatures, which I understand, because you can sac them to provide additional value (a 3/1 token, as well as a land). Those creatures are Dawntreader Elk, Diligent Farmhand (had to Google "Muscle Burst"), Insidious Fungus, Sakura-Tribe Elder, Solemn Simulacrum, Springbloom Druid, Viridian Emissary, as well as your more "huggy" cards like Veteran Explorer and Avatar of Growth. Then you have Wight of the Reliquary to fetch any land.

1. With all of those lands potentially coming into play, how often are you just sitting with waaaay more mana than you actually have cards to play?
2. Has 11 basics been sufficient? Most of those effects grab basics. (And I didn't even mention your land fetch cards - e.g. Myriad Landscape I love playing Field of the Dead, but struggle to play more than the original 6 basics (non-snow and snow) because I want to trigger FotD more often.
3. I only see 1 landfall effect in the entire deck. Is this intentional to keep the power level of the deck lower?

DreadKhan on Muldrotha Mill

11 months ago

Any reason you're not running land ramp effects? This is the most resilient form of ramp in Commander, very few decks target lands. There are permanents you can recast, like Wayfarer's Bauble, Sakura-Tribe Elder, Dawntreader Elk, Diligent Farmhand, Wight of the Reliquary, maybe Path of Annihilation? There is always Wood Elves and it's ilk. I feel like you could shave a few lands for land ramp effects, it's a good way to test them out and see if you enjoy the acceleration vs drawing so many lands.

You should also look at cards that help 'grease the wheels' of the deck, things like Llanowar Visionary and Elvish Visionary offer a body while drawing a card, and fwiw later on if you have nothing better to do you can just draw a card via Muldrotha. On that note, you might like small permanents that draw, there is trusty old Urza's Bauble, as well as Mishra's Bauble, if you don't run many artifacts then you should use these as good recast targets. Technically the info can be useful, but you mostly want them for free card draw.

I don't know if they're strong enough for your meta, but I used to love the old Seal of Removal family cards when I wanted small Enchantments. The others that might apply are Seal of Primordium and Seal of Doom, Doom is a lot of mana, but repeatable Artifact/Enchantment hate can be pretty helpful.

If you want to mill yourself you might like Altar of Dementia. This Altar can also be a wincon with a big enough creature, like Lord of Extinction or Consuming Aberration, or if you have a big enough board of smaller stuff. It's especially useful if people are going to hit you with a Farewell, this can let your creatures go to the graveyard for recursion while also milling someone (maybe you, maybe an opponent).

Goldberserkerdragon on Golgari Anime Girl

1 year ago

ACapo18 Been looking for a groovy golgari aristocrats deck, seems good! I would swap Naturalize for Foundation Breaker or Haywire Mite. A lot of the land fetching ramp is slow as well, swapping in mana dorks or things like Dawntreader Elk and Diligent Farmhand will increase creature count. :) Cheers!

DreadKhan on Meren

1 year ago

I suspect you've probably got enough creatures to look at Lurking Predators, it's ramp and card draw rolled into one package, you just need to run a lot of creatures. If you like big reanimation effects their is Grave Betrayal, this loves your various forced sacrifice effects. Coffin Queen and Hell's Caretaker are some lower to the ground reanimators that might be interesting, Queen can also reanimate your opponent's stuff. Demon of Dark Schemes is a weird recursion option, though it can go infinite, usually with creatures that make tokens via ETB. I've always loved having stuff like Dawntreader Elk and Diligent Farmhand in my Meren deck, they find a land without further input and end up in the graveyard when they do it, so you can recur them if that's the best option. I like Silverglade Pathfinder as both a clunky source of ramp that lets you discard creatures, it might not be powerful enough for your build though!

DreadKhan on

2 years ago

I could be wrong, but since your deck cares about lands I would make an effort to include more land ramp, artifacts seem to get blown up a lot anyways. I would use Wood Elves over arcane signet (or Dawntreader Elk?), replacing Sol Ring is harder, but there is Crop Rotation. Finding a Coffer or Urborg at the right time is a much bigger effect than Sol Ring. Deserted Temple is a good card in here with Coffers. Since you have Urborg and Coffers in here I wonder about Hour of Promise and/or Tempt with Discovery, if you can cheat out 2 or 3 lands at once you can probably cast your Commander and go off.

Not sure if it's really a 'good' card, but Silverglade Pathfinder can dig lands out repeatedly, your Commander is high enough MV that this might be worth doing.

Ashaya, Soul of the Wild is interesting in here, but especially if you've got something like Selvala, Heart of the Wilds out. Ashaya also works very well with your landfall effects.

I'm not sure if you need to stack up activations, but if you reanimate your Commander you can activate him again, so maybe some of the lower to the ground reanimation effects, stuff like Reanimate, Life / Death, and Animate Dead. They are pretty big ramp if you have a sac outlet and your Commander out.

I'm not sure if it's outside your playgroups boundaries, but Pitiless Plunderer is very good with Chatterfang. It's not a combo, but if you've got lots of Pests kicking around there is Savra, Queen of the Golgari, she's budget compared to Dictate of Erebos and might fit in here.

DreadKhan on Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest

2 years ago

I've always loved Mazirek, such a cool Commander! I think Make an Example would probably do some work in here, and it's little brother Do or Die would probably be decent as well.

Mitotic Slime is a good source of creatures-from-a-creature, the only ones that can compete are cards like Underworld Hermit, which makes an army of squirrels equal to your devotion to Black. There are things like Grismold, the Dreadsower that can make a lot of bodies (it gives them to opponents as well, but if you can force them to sacrifice those tokens both Grismold and Mazirek go nuts), Grismold even offers a backup Commander of a sort for long games when you might not be able to recast Mazirek.

I'm not sure if you're interested in reanimation effects, but Hell's Caretaker is a free sac each upkeep, and he can bring back your best creature in exchange for your worst. Coffin Queen can reanimate from any graveyard, but it's especially useful to reanimate your opponent's stuff because it gets exiled when it dies. If you want a repeatable reanimation effect there is Demon of Dark Schemes, this offers a small wipe and it works very well with Pitiless Plunderer and something like the aforementioned Mitotic Slime.

Since your Commander cares about sacrifice effects, have you thought about using Diligent Farmhand and Dawntreader Elk in here? There is also Burnished Hart, all of these ramp you and can trigger Mazirek if he's out. There is also Ordeal of Nylea that would work with Mazirek later game (or anything that can get in early). I'm not sure if it comes up very much, but I put Forsworn Paladin in my Golgari deck because it had Haakon, but what I noticed was that it's also a useful way to ramp in Black, which importantly can fix your mana (to let you cast Green ramp), it's very low to the ground and can generate triggers for Mazirek or help recast Mazirek later.

Have you ever tried Sadistic Hypnotist? This offers a free and infinite sac outlet, and the effect can be pretty strong if you've got a bunch of creatures to burn through. Another really versatile sac outlet is Infernal Tribute, this lets you sacrifice any non-token permanent (it has to be an actual card) to draw a new card. I'm not 100% on it being a fit, but Savra, Queen of the Golgari is a pretty impressive payoff if you regularly have creatures being sacrificed, it can put a lot of pressure on an opponent's board.

It can get very out of hand with Mazirek, but I feel like I have to mention One with the Kami, it's very good on Mazirek with a free sac outlet. Similarly any creatures you can find with Persist will work very well with Mazirek and sac outlets, though again, this might be more pushed than what you're looking for. I took a gander and Aerie Ouphes might be interesting, and there is always Woodfall Primus, these might help support your Puppeteers!

If you ever want to throw in something pricier, I think Old Gnawbone would be absolutely hilarious in here.

DreadKhan on 100 cards for Meren

2 years ago

I would look into stuff like Diligent Farmhand, Dawntreader Elk, Yavimaya Granger, Burnished Hart and maybe Fertilid, each of these not only finds a land for you, they will die for your Meren, meaning she can recycle them if you still want more mana for some reason. I think these creatures are much more synergistic than your mana artifacts. There are also cards like Wood Elves and Farhaven Elf that will also find a land but these require a sac outlet.

If you want to add a fairly strong card, Sidisi, Undead Vizier is a really good repeatable tutor (I usually sacrifice her to herself and reanimate her). There are flashier cards like Razaketh, the Foulblooded or Protean Hulk, either should win very quickly if they end up in play, but Sidisi is a bit lower to the ground, and the ability to find anything with no real drawback (and the ability to repeat it) makes this worse Diabolic Tutor very strong. If you want a cheaper version that has huge political potential (you can get a desired effect out of someone else's deck) you might like Varragoth, Bloodsky Sire.