Severed Strands
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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
Pauper Legal
Pauper Duel Commander Legal
Pauper EDH Legal
Pioneer Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Severed Strands

Sorcery

As an additional cost to cast this spell, sacrifice a creature.

You gain life equal to the sacrificed creature's toughness. Destroy target creature an opponent controls.

legendofa on Coulfner's Urn

11 months ago

Welcome to the club, shellsh0ckn0w!

As wallisface and Caerwyn have mentioned, knowing how much money you're willing to spend and if you're aiming for a certain format are important. I'm also going to ask if there are any colors you want to use or avoid.

Looking at creatures with Evoke, there are seven with a toughness 4 or greater, and just two have an Evoke cost under 4 mana. If you include Evoke cards with a toughness of 3, there are many more useful options, but you're going to need an additional Glorious Anthem, +1/+1 counters, or similar effects to bring their toughness up to 4.

Cheap, high toughness creatures like Wall of Omens and Aegis Turtle can provide a strong defense as you build to a different win condition, or you can turn their toughness into offense with cards like Assault Formation and High Alert.

Another potential angle is to build around Righteous Valkyrie, Bishop of Wings, and Kor Celebrant, using high-toughness Angels and Clerics to build an army.

The card is definitely slow, probably too slow for any tournament-level Constructed format, but a solid control shell will mitigate that, and it can be sped up a little with sacrifice effects. Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim, Severed Strands, Korozda Guildmage (which is a pet card of mine), and other effects that give resources based on a creature toughness can help, as well as more general sacrifice effects like Village Rites.

Above all, have fun!

Jackfrost23 on The Black Sacrament

2 years ago

Cards you should consider: Bone Shards, Bontu the Glorified, Bloodthrone Vampire, Plumb the Forbidden, Inquisition of Kozilek, Priest of Forgotten Gods, Severed Strands, Rankle, Master of Pranks, Fatal Push, Malakir Rebirth  Flip, Callous Bloodmage, Sedgemoor Witch, Hunt for Specimens/Cram Session with Necrotic Fumes/Pest Summoning, Pestilent Cauldron  Flip, Shamble Back, Valentin, Dean of the Vein  Flip, Westvale Abbey  Flip, Vampire of the Dire Moon

Spirits on Undying Persistence

3 years ago

Forgot my friend Erebos, Bleak-Hearted , definitely one of my fav's and fits your indestructible/god theme too. Phyrexian Arena is a good 6 power draw.

Last couple topics,

I made an assumption and grouped Draw above Damage, and Deathtouch above Token.

Deathtouch 16%, Control 16%, Damage/Life 15%, Recursion 8%, Token 6%, Draw 6%, Discard 2%, Ramp 2%, Land 29%

Further on Card Advantage (which includes draw):

I know why your doing it and the thought process behind it, but here's an alternative perspective.

Your cards like Blood Divination , Costly Plunder , Pitiless Pontiff , Bone Splinters , Final Payment , Severed Strands , Spark Harvest are usually paired with LTB effect (like your damage/life and afterlife abilities), more along lines of Grave Pact (Also Dictate of Erebos , Butcher of Malakir , Dark Prophecy , Nightmare Shepherd , Etc.) or Reveillark / Academy Rector types.

The issue is Blood Divination why not Necropotence ( Greed ) for CMC1 less, and no sacrifice, let's you refill your hand anytime, Grim Haruspex /Etc. Why Spark Harvest / Bone Splinters over Swords to Plowshares or Path to Exile or Mortify or even Bloodchief's Thirst / Generous Gift if your after planeswalkers.

So how are creatures getting into the graveyard, if your not sacrificing them along with other effects, a value engine!! Skullclamp is a necessity, Viscera Seer is strong, Phyrexian Altar (this card is cEDH level though), more things like Priest of Forgotten Gods & Ayara, First of Locthwain . Why sacrifice a deathtouch creature to LTB damage/life when you can Corpse Knight instead and get the value up front? Yahenni, Undying Partisan , Village Rites is ok because its CMC1 and Instant, you don't need tutor in battlecruiser/low (up to power 5), but cards like Diabolic Intent which also feed into things like Mausoleum Secrets are value. Ashnod's Altar , Doom Foretold , Razaketh, the Foulblooded , etc.

Key is value in / value out. Don't waste the value out just to enable your recursion. Value-in, Value-out, then recur. More Immortal Servitude (battlefield), less Soul Salvage (hand). Reanimate / Animate Dead (anyone's graveyards), Unburial Rites , Victimize , Agadeem's Awakening  Flip, Revival / Revenge , Command the Dreadhorde , Blood for Bones .

Luminous Broodmoth / Lurrus of the Dream-Den could be some cool interaction with the graveyard.

Topic Interaction:

Kinda touched on it, in previous. Control 16% is quite a bit, inline with power level. If you replace Ashen Rider , Bone Splinters , Final Payment , Severed Strands , Spark Harvest . Some should become the "sac outlets", like Skullclamp / Viscera Seer and some just better interactions (Instant speed whenever possible). Anguished Unmaking , Utter End , Swords to Plowshares , Merciless Eviction , Plaguecrafter / Demon's Disciple (Better Fleshbag Marauder unless your utilizing the Zombie part), Shriekmaw , Path to Exile , Generous Gift , Deadly Rollick , Dire Tactics , Hagra Mauling  Flip, Unmake there's lots.

Burglar Rat : If you like him! Elderfang Disciple , Yarok's Fenlurker , Rotting Rats (with Unearth).

If you want to jump on a teams chat or anything when you have some time happy to help, just discord chat me, hopefully something that helps you focus this deck to a 4-5

multimedia on Treasure Hungry Korvold

3 years ago

Hey, sure, consider cutting cards that are single effects such as sorceries for cards that have repeatable effects? It's not just Priest that's good with repeatable token sources also Korvold, Pitiless Plunderer / Ruthless Knave , Butcher of Malakir , etc. therefore expanding on tokens helps all these cards.

Some cards to consider cutting:

Some cards that are okay, but could be upgraded with budget options:

Some budget land changes to consider:

loricatuslupus on

3 years ago

I am confused by this deck, for I do not understand its purpose. To start with, you have some some demons - big, expensive demons - and a small amount of ramp to help get them out eventually but I don't see any real synergy or payoff beyond Liliana's Contract. Many of these, as well as cards like Severed Strands, have abilities that require sacrificing other creatures but you have almost no token producers to make fodder and your other creatures seem to have been chosen to be useful when they're still alive. I would think about adding in more cheap things, preferably with a death trigger (low CMC is good for Citadel too) and maybe even Grave Pact effects if you take this further. These could replace things like Gifted Aetherborn (you have no vampire synergy and if you just want Deathtouch Foulmire Knight does that and more). Might be worth checking out some of the Rakdos Sacrifice staples such as Demon's Disciple, Village Rites and Archfiend's Vessel. Not having Rune-Scarred Demon is pretty strange too. Finally I think some of your other spells can just be upgraded: for the same price as Murder you could have Hero's Downfall/Murderous Rider or one more gives you the excellent Eat to Extinction; In Garruk's Wake is so expensive you'll usually wish you had a straight Damnation or Kindred Dominance while Beacon of Unrest gives you some more options and is reusable when compared to other spells. I wouldn't bother with Desecrated Tomb at all - design is great but at the end of the day it costs three and the return on it is a singular 1/1 when you resurrect something. This will not win you a game of commander. On the subject of reanimation, if that's one of your main lines then graveyard stockers such as Buried Alive are vital. While I quite like the look of the deck I would think about which aspects you like about it most (controlling opponents, value sacrifice, reanimation, casting big demons etc) and focus on just two or three of these. This will make your deck increasingly consistent and harder to disrupt as you'll have more redundancy. Hope that helps!

Oh and don't play Karn. You need him in the 99 to access that sideboard (which doesn't exist in EDH, so check with playgroup before you play that btw) and even then you'll probably only ever get one activation. If those cards are strong enough to be in your deck, and I see none which combo with with the rest of it beyond being good like the swords, then make room for them there. Do you honestly think that any opponent will allow you to untap with a Karn after they see you fetch Mycosynth Lattice? No, they'll kill him and leave you with a card that does absolutely nothing for you as you have no "artifacts matters" strategies and in fact might benefit them by being able to tap lands for other colours, something of no use to you in mono-black. I run him in a Karn, Silver Golem deck that is specifically focussed on artifacts but even there it's all about the static and I only play him when I think he'll survive. The "sideboard" he can fetch is the set of Kaldra pieces and Argentum Armor for flavour which I mainly keep on hand to swap out for the harsher stax cards.

EldraziOfRavnica on

3 years ago

Spark Harvest is probably better than Severed Strands. Crashing Centaur is a little slow for a discard outlet at six mana. The shroud is nice, but you might want to consider Bog Witch. Costly Plunder is strictly better than Altar's Reap. Talisman of Resilience is good ramp, and a wrath or two lie Crux of Fate or Damnation might be good, depending on your budget. Stitcher's Supplier is very good self mill, as is Satyr Wayfinder. Cut Windgrace Acolyte for one of those, or some other, cheaper self mill if you can't find those two. Deathgreeter does Sultai Flayer's role better than the Flayer.

Requillias on Korvold Commander

4 years ago

Deck Upgrades:

Creature Upgrade

To remove: Aggressive Mammoth, Byway Courier Chittering Witch, Footlight Fiend,Gluttonous Troll,Gruul Spellbreaker, Judith, the Scourge Diva,Keeper of Fables, Ogre Siegebreaker, Primordial Wurm, Rapacious Dragon, Rubblebelt Rioters, Sengir Vampire, Spark Reaper, Sphinx of the Guildpact, Spikewheel Acrobat, Vindictive Vampire, Woodland Champion, Zhur-Taa Goblin

To add: Eternal Witness,Squee, the Immortal,Zulaport Cutthroat, Vexing Shusher, Goblin Matron, Munitions Expert, Krenko, Mob Boss, Warteye Witch, Sling-Gang Lieutenant, Goblin Trashmaster, Putrid Goblin, Dockside Extortionist, Arasta of the Endless Web, Creakwood Liege,Dragonlair Spider, Viscera Seer, Ayara, First of Locthwain, Pitiless Plunderer, Poison-Tip Archer, Sidisi, Undead Vizier, Sheoldred, Whispering One, Deathrite Shaman

Artefact Upgrade

To Remove: Thaumatic Compass  Flip, Witch's Oven, Bloodsoaked Altar, Golden Egg, Mask of Immolation, Rhonas's Monument

To add: Sol Ring, Arcane Signet,Lightning Greaves, Ashnod's Altar, Haunted Cloak, Skullclamp

Enchantment Upgrade:

To remove: Gift of Paradise, Warbriar Blessing, Wolfwillow Haven

To Add: Necrogenesis,Cindervines, Grave Pact, Grave Betrayal, Attrition

Sorcery Upgrade:

To Remove: Severed Strands, Taste of Death, Victimize

To Add: Unearth, Reanimate, Blood for Bones, Return from ExtinctionTerminate, Dreadbore, Hull Breach, Diabolic Intent

Instant Upgrade:

To Remove: Bake into a Pie, Heartfire, Murder, Return to Nature, Shock

To Add: Artifact Mutation, Putrefy, Guttural Response, Veil of Summer, Abrupt Decay, Assassin's Trophy

Greetings, Brian

Barbarian_Sun_Pope on Budget White/Black Lifegain

4 years ago

Hellos and welcome back to Magic. Charming Prince and Consecrate / Consume could add some nice flexibility. Dawn of Hope can add some nice card draw for you. Gideon Blackblade and Linden, the Steadfast Queen could do some work here. Kaya's Wrath feels like a board wipe that would fit this deck. Severed Strands could also work as some decent removal here. Vampire of the Dire Moon will probably work better as a blocker than Daybreak Chaplain . Hope this helps.

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