Grafdigger's Cage

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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
Gladiator Legal
Highlander Legal
Historic Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Modern Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Pioneer Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Grafdigger's Cage

Artifact

Creature cards in graveyards or libraries can't enter the battlefield.

Players can't cast spells from graveyards or libraries.

ASalesman on Unesh, Ultimate Guide (Tribal)

6 months ago

BIG REVISION + SIDEBOARD

I will post this comment then make the changes as specified in the list.

I have been studying a lot of cEDH meta, and found a lot of cards that I haven’t been using that are really great in Unesh. After a lot of consideration I have decided to pull the trigger on this revision.

  • Replace Mystic Sanctuary with Otawara, Soaring City. Mystic Sanctuary is used to retrieve interaction and put it on the top of your deck. This is anti-deck thinning which feels really bad in this deck. Instead, lets have the interaction printed on the land itself. What is great about Otawara is that this interaction is an ability, not a spell. So it can be used even while cards like Grand Abolisher are on the field. You can remove the abolisher and then interact with your opponent.
  • Replace Extraplanar Lens with Urza's Saga. The lens feels clunky. Sure it combos with Palinchron, but this combo requires lands to be on the field. Sacrificing a land has anti synergy with this. If the lens gets removed, you are out the double mana AND a land. It feels bad too often which is why it is getting cut. There are still 5 other combo pieces in the deck that you WILL see. You can even tutor for High Tide if you have to. Urza’s Saga is one of the best lands in the format and it isn’t hard to see why. More deck thinning. If its in your opening hand you guarantee Unesh by turn 3. Moonsilver Key seems to perform really well, so keeping this in as redundancy for this effect will turn out well I think.
  • Replace 2 Islands with Mox Opal and Mox Amber. This deck has a lot of lands in it for cEDH. Although Unesh doesn’t mind being mana flooded usually, the count is still a bit high especially after adding Urza’s Saga. Fast mana in these spots feels nice. They aren’t necessarily going to get Unesh on the table faster, BUT they can effectively make your Thassa's Oracle win con cheaper. While you are rolling through your deck after Rite of Replication resolves, you can pick up these pieces to gain mana to cast Thassa’s Oracle.
  • Replace Island with Gemstone Caverns. I goldfished this change a lot and found that Unesh will almost always prefer this in your opening hand over an Island. It makes early Unesh more likely, which is the primary goal of this deck.
  • Replaced Trickbind with Mental Misstep. Mental Misstep is too good in the format. There are a lot of awesome 1 cmc cards. Sol ring, carpet of flowers, swords to plowshares, mental misstep, other 1 cmc counters, mystic remora, and more. Trickbind is a great card against the right opponent(ie Kinnan), so for me this goes in the sideboard.

Sideboard revision 0

This is my first stab at a sideboard. So constructive criticism is very welcomed. The main goals of the sideboard is to change out the interaction package to fit the pod better, and to shift to more of a midrange strat than turbo if necessary.

  • Trickbind. Great interaction with other ability centered decks.
  • Grafdigger's Cage. Unesh can play this card without consequence pretty much, and it is an effective stax piece in the meta. This card might even weasel its way in to the main board.
  • Tormod's Crypt. More graveyard hate, nothing else to explain here.
  • Flusterstorm for a spell heavy pod.
  • An Offer You Can't Refuse also for a spell heavy pod.
  • Pongify for a more creature heavy pod.
  • Lotus Petal for better odds to cast Unesh first, making the deck more turbo. I think this card is possibly better than 1 or more of the mox’s, but I will leave it in sideboard for now.
  • Perplexing Chimera. If you need to grind in the midrange more this guy can be a great option. Combining him with Homeward Path can be a good combo to soft lock your opponents in the mid game while you get to the bottom of your deck.
  • Homeward Path for the above card.
  • Ledger Shredder for making the deck more midrange with another card draw engine, allowing you to more likely get the interaction you need.

onlyjoking on Weak Sauce Graveyard

8 months ago

Apologies for the misunderstanding. Since your deck is already at the ideal size of 60 cards, that's a good starting point. Here are some specific suggestions to improve your deck and enhance its graveyard mechanics:

Add more efficient creatures: Look for creatures that provide value when they enter or leave the battlefield. Cards like Bloodghast, Stitcher's Supplier, or Glowspore Shaman can help you fill your graveyard and provide additional creatures for Lumberknot's growth.

Include recursion: Adding cards that allow you to retrieve creatures from your graveyard can be beneficial. Consider cards like Eternal Witness, Gravecrawler, or Phyrexian Reclamation to bring back key creatures from your graveyard.

Enhance graveyard filling: In addition to the mentioned Grisly Salvage and Mulch, you can also consider cards like Grisly Salvage, Satyr Wayfinder, or Glowspore Shaman. These cards will help you fill your graveyard while providing additional benefits.

Consider a sacrifice theme: Adding cards that allow you to sacrifice creatures can provide additional value and fuel your graveyard strategy. Consider cards like Viscera Seer, Altar's Reap, or Carrion Feeder to sacrifice creatures and gain advantages.

Improve removal options: It's essential to have efficient removal spells in your deck. Consider cards like Assassin's Trophy, Abrupt Decay, or Victim of Night to deal with problematic creatures or other threats.

Include graveyard hate: Since you're relying on graveyard mechanics, it's a good idea to include cards that can disrupt your opponents' graveyard strategies. Consider adding cards like Grafdigger's Cage, Tormod's Crypt, or Scavenging Ooze to prevent opponents from utilizing their graveyards.

onlyjoking on Weak Sauce Graveyard

8 months ago

Apologies for the misunderstanding. Since your deck is already at the ideal size of 60 cards, that's a good starting point. Here are some specific suggestions to improve your deck and enhance its graveyard mechanics:

Add more efficient creatures: Look for creatures that provide value when they enter or leave the battlefield. Cards like Bloodghast, Stitcher's Supplier, or Glowspore Shaman can help you fill your graveyard and provide additional creatures for Lumberknot's growth.

Include recursion: Adding cards that allow you to retrieve creatures from your graveyard can be beneficial. Consider cards like Eternal Witness, Gravecrawler, or Phyrexian Reclamation to bring back key creatures from your graveyard.

Enhance graveyard filling: In addition to the mentioned Grisly Salvage and Mulch, you can also consider cards like Grisly Salvage, Satyr Wayfinder, or Glowspore Shaman. These cards will help you fill your graveyard while providing additional benefits.

Consider a sacrifice theme: Adding cards that allow you to sacrifice creatures can provide additional value and fuel your graveyard strategy. Consider cards like Viscera Seer, Altar's Reap, or Carrion Feeder to sacrifice creatures and gain advantages.

Improve removal options: It's essential to have efficient removal spells in your deck. Consider cards like Assassin's Trophy, Abrupt Decay, or Victim of Night to deal with problematic creatures or other threats.

Include graveyard hate: Since you're relying on graveyard mechanics, it's a good idea to include cards that can disrupt your opponents' graveyard strategies. Consider adding cards like Grafdigger's Cage, Tormod's Crypt, or Scavenging Ooze to prevent opponents from utilizing their graveyards.

Azoth2099 on Narset's Work Out Plan

8 months ago

Bkotz

This version of Narset looks so fun, man!

One thing that I feel is fundamental when remembering Narset, Enlightened Exile's function as a Commander is that her ability gives you Graveyard hate as well as pseudo card draw by giving you access to your opponent's Graveyards as well as your own, meaning that you will always have card advantage as long as you protect your Commander.

That being said, I would definitely find room for Lightning Greaves, Swiftfoot Boots, Mother of Runes, Giver of Runes, & an abundance of Counterspells. Personally, I don't like spending more than 1 Mana for a Counterspell these days. Red Elemental Blast, Pyroblast, Dispel, Swan Song & An Offer You Can't Refuse provide a crazy ceiling of value for a single Mana. If you wanted to roll with 2-drops for budget reasons, though, Delay, Arcane Denial, Dovin's Veto & Negate are all easy to cast, & throw a wide net. Misdirection & Bolt Bend are also options here.

Secondly, Narset, Enlightened Exile can only trigger on your own turn, & you need to ensure that everything is going to go as planned. Grand Abolisher & Conqueror's Flail will lock your opponents out of your turn without giving your opponents the same utility like cards like Teferi, Time Raveler & Defense Grid notoriously do. Silence, Revel in Silence  Flip, Abeyance & Orim's Chant can do something similar for 1-2 Mana.

Speaking of Stax, there are a few concise, utilitarian pieces that you may want to consider. Drannith Magistrate, Sanctum Prelate, Archon of Emeria, Lavinia, Azorious Renegade, Boromir, Warden of the Tower, Aven Mindcensor & Containment Priest shut down a LOT of strategies. You'd be surprised how little most decks can do once you take away their ability to cheat stuff in, Tutor and/or cast things for free. Personally, every deck I have is heavily handicapped by all of those pieces. I wouldn't even be able to target them with removal if you played your cards right.

For noncreature Stax, you've got Chalice of the Void, Cursed Totem, Thorn of Amethyst, Deafening Silence, Grafdigger's Cage (which your Commander's ability gets around btw, very strong here), & Rule of Law as a few solid options.

You do need quite a bit more card draw, though. Scroll Rack & Sensei's Divining Top are obviously great, but the level of toolbox utility they actually give you in practice is even better than it seems! Archivist of Oghma, Faerie Mastermind & Ledger Shredder all give you card draw that scales with what your opponents are doing, which is fantastic. Other things like Deep Gnome Terramancer & Wandering Archaic  Flip do the same thing, though they technically aren't card draw. Hell, might as well throw Monologue Tax out there too since I'm talking about scaling.

There's also Careful Study, Frantic Search, Tolarian Winds, Faithless Looting, Cathartic Reunion, Burning Inquiry, Thrill of Possibility & Dragon's Rage Channeler, which are great synergy here!

Speaking of synergy, let's get into that! The foremost synergies for Narset, Enlightened Exile imho is Underworld Breach + Lion's Eye Diamond + Brain Freeze & Intuition, and much of the deck should be geared towards maximizing on that. They're all very easy to Tutor up via cards like Enlightened Tutor, Mystical Tutor, Idyllic Tutor, Solve the Equation, Fabricate, Reshape, Transmute Artifact, Reckless Handling, Goblin Engineer & Gamble, in addition to being easy to recur via your Commander's ability. It's actually absurd, truly busted. I wouldn't recommend throwing Wheels like Wheel of Fortune or Windfall into the mix, though. They're very overrated, & you can just run Brain Freeze for the combo instead. No need to give all of your opponents a bunch of cards for free if you don't have to! Queen Kayla bin-Kroog is for sure worth consideration, though, if you choose to run Artifact Stax.

Maximizing on Underworld Breach, however, means running Storm. I'd recommend Birgi, God of Storytelling  Flip, Storm-Kiln Artist, Urabrask  Flip, Desperate Ritual, Pyretic Ritual & Seething Song to keep your Storm engine from shutting off. I personally don't condone Runaway Steam-Kin, as it's just too freaking slow & conditional compared to other options.

Additional Combat Phases would also be of great use here as opposed to trigger doublers like Strionic Resonator or something. Aggravated Assault, Waves of Aggression, World at War & Seize the Day are the only ones I'd consider running, though. You don't wanna load up on too many synergy effects when you can just Tutor for the best of them when the time's right, ya know?

Since you're running Dockside Extortionist, I'd also consider Cloudstone Curio. With one other Creature (like Spellseeker for example), you can produce infinite Treasures & ETBs with little effort, which is usually more than enough to get you to the finish line.

Your ramp package is looking solid enough, but I'd include 2 more Rocks as well as the rituals I named previously. Fellwar Stone is, functionally, a 5-color Rock for 2 Mana, which is absurd. I tend to not condone 3-drop rocks, with the exception of Chromatic Lantern, which was just reprinted recently and is currently super cheap.

Oh man, now that I think of it Isochron Scepter + Dramatic Reversal gives your whole team infinite power and toughness via your Commander, as well as giving you infinite Mana if you have enough Rocks on the field. Maybe consider it lol.

Monastery Mentor seems to fit like glove here as well, offering some much needed redundancy and a surprising amount of board presence. It's kind of like Deep Gnome Terramancer or Wandering Archaic  Flip in the sense that it just provides waaaay more value while playtesting than you thought it was going to!

Also, consider giving yourself Hexproof with stuff like Witchbane Orb to protect your own Graveyard.

To summarize, I really think your best bet with this one is building a system that gets to either an Underworld Breach + Lion's Eye Diamond + Brain Freeze combo win or an Intuition win as quickly as possible, with other combos like Dramatic Reversal + Isochron Scepter being strong potentialities on the way.

Cheers!

Krugz on The Inevitable Annihilation

9 months ago

Profet93 What I gather from a lot of playtesting was this deck is terrible against aggro, go-wide and flying creatures during early turns. Presenting a lot of mana with nothing to spend to also invites enemies. I found out that a few staxx pieces like Karn, the Great Creator, Cursed Totem, Grafdigger's Cage help drag the game a little bit longer in order for me to get going, so I might update the deck with less ramp and more staxx.

What I like about Scour from Existence is I get to interract at instant speed. But maybe I'll consider Spine of Ish Sah if I ever decided to go to Grinding Station and/or Krark-Clan Ironworks route.

You're right, Eye of Vecna is better than Spare Supplies. Thanks, I'll look for one.

inuredbass on Maddening Mill Weaver

11 months ago

TheoryCrafter I took your Planar Void suggestion and wound up going with Grafdigger's Cage since that also hits creatures that ETB from your library with cards like Genesis Wave, and I can tutor for it with Urza's Saga. But the 1 mana graveyard hate suggestion was needed, thank you!

nbarry223 on Shifty Crabs!

1 year ago

Well, if you were going a third color, the obvious choice is . Drown in the Loch is so powerful in a mill deck as a denial card, as it can counter a threat or be removal, and it scales, all for 2 mana. also has a lot of gravehate options, many of which gain life, so they help against both aggro and graveyard oriented decks, which may help to free up some slots in the sideboard, by consolidating your hate a bit.

Jace, the Perfected Mind is also a pretty powerful potential tool if able to be enabled, main enabler is usually Archive Trap (would suggest Field of Ruin if you went that route). Tasha's Hideous Laughter is another option if just going for the mill since most modern decks are very low curves.

I'm also a little surprised you don't have much in the way of gravehate in your sideboard. What do you do against decks where your mill strategy enables them? Bojuka Bog and Grafdigger's Cage just seem suboptimal. If removing threats already in the graveyard, I'd consider something like Surgical Extraction or Ashiok, Dream Render. If doing something preventative, replacement effects are the way to go instead of narrow denial strategies like Grafdigger's Cage since a lot of strategies like Living End get around it. Dauthi Voidwalker or Rest in Peace are the two main cards that come to mind. Honestly though, I think your best option in your current colors is Relic of Progenitus, since it lets you slowly chip away at graveyard strategies or is a cantrip that can be used in response to their graveyard strategy.

DawnsRayofLight on Breya in the Sky with Thopters

1 year ago

Given the Mana curve, you can probably get away with 33-34 lands.

Might as well run Urza, Lord Protector  Meld as well

I know you were talking about adding Mycosynth Lattice to use with Vandalblast and Karn, the Great Creator (it is not official, but at some point they're going to need to create wishboard in the EDH rules to use with fetching cards outside the game, 10 is what I usually see allowed--> you could use this to add some artifacts to board that could act in a more stax capacity.

Maybe:

Ethersworn Canonist

Sen Triplets

Grafdigger's Cage

Void Mirror

Silent Arbiter

Lion Sash

Phyrexian Revoker

Defense Grid

Mana Web

--Flex slot--

Some cards I am not big on, i.e. I think you can drop these:

Impact Tremors: I get it works with a combo but I feel like there are better cards to use

Fable of the Mirror-Breaker  Flip: a pretty good card, it could fit in here, but you may need to run more reanimating cards, I don't feel it exactly fits too much with the goblin token and the mini-kiki

Pitiless Plunderer: excels in decks with lots of creature sacs but I don't see as much in this list, I feel at a glance, that it is more of a dead card more often than not.

That should give you some spots for Karn, Mycosynth, Urza, and maybe some artifact recursion like Tameshi, Reality Architect and/or Mishra, Tamer of Mak Fawa

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