Withered Wretch

Creature — Zombie Cleric

{{1}}: Exile target card from a graveyard.

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
Planechase	Legal
Premodern	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (50)

legendofa on Aragorn human tribal

9 months ago

Gotta ask about the Withered Wretch in here. It's off color and doesn't have any significant interaction with anything that I can see. If you want the graveyard removal, there's nothing quite as efficient, but Apostle of Purifying Light has the same effect, and there are quite a few white and colorless cards that prevent graveyard interaction.

ajensen6 on Ebb and Flow (Seizan EDH)

2 years ago

Suggestions Punish people for playing spells: Painful Quandary,

Lifegain: Noticed you'll be paying lots of life for card draw and some other effects. Having a few ways to recoup the life might extend your mid-long game. Shadowspear, Whip of Erebos

Ramp: Crypt Ghast (will go in every black deck you make, worth the $10)

Graveyard Hate: Especially important in control decks where you'll be blowing up the board and wheeling people's hands. Leyline of the Void, Tymaret, Chosen from Death, Withered Wretch, Soul-Guide Lantern

Generic removal: Feed the Swarm, Oubliette If you want to be really mean: Infernal Darkness

Waste Not

wallisface on Merchant of Death (Modern Mono-Black)

2 years ago

StoryArcher to answer your specific questions:

• Phyrexian Crusader would be a very odd sideboard choice. I think your sideboard in general needs a lot of work, over half of it is just graveyard hate which feels really excessive. I think you need to diversify your sideboard to better cope with devotions numerous bad matchups. Specifically, you have no answer for Torpor Orb, and very little to do versus control decks. Combo decks are also likely to give you grief. And you probably want some cards to help you versus burn. At the moment the sideboard feels really lacking.

• Cry of the Carnarium is a fine card, but really it should only exist in the sideboard. Its only real purpose will be to cope with Mirran Crusader when you’re playing against taxes.

• Bad Moon doesn’t offer you anything particularly special (trying to race aggro feels like a bad plan?), but Blood Moon should defo be an auto-include as 2-of in the sideboard - all the more established black-devotion decks i’ve seen seem to be including these to have a fighting chance versus a lot of the greedier meta.

• Withered Wretch is probably a fine alternate to Relic, though might be a bit slow. Most of the time shutting down a graveyard deck equals an easy win anyway, so i think you just want Relic as its faster. In any case, as mentioned before, 8 grave-hate cards in the sideboard is overkill, unless your meta is entirely dredge.

On the Sign in Blood topic, the issue with it is that it often consumes valuable devotion points. Playing it turn-2 gives you nothing (board-state-wise), and nobody wants to be playing a single 1cmc creature on turn-3. Playing it will almost always put your opponent ahead in board state, and as you’re effectively a sorcery-speed-creature-deck, having a full hand isn’t particularly helpful for securing a win.

StoryArcher on Merchant of Death (Modern Mono-Black)

2 years ago

wallisface

Any thoughts about the various quandaries I'm entertaining above? Does Phyrexian Crusader warrant inclusion in the sideboard? Is Cry of the Carnarium the best use of that lone card slot? Is Bad Moon worthy of serious consideration? How much will a lack of land destruction ultimately hurt me? Is Withered Wretch a better option than Relic of Progenitus om this particular deck?

Ramosian on

2 years ago

In: 1) Angel of Destiny , 2) Ancestor's Prophet , 3) Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim , 4) Eight-and-a-Half-Tails , 5) Sanguine Bond , 6) Sol Ring , 7) Taborax, Hope's Demise , 8) Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose ,

Out: 1) Children of Korlis , 2) Congregate , 3) Disciple of the Vault , 4) Expedition Healer , 5) Impassioned Orator , 6) Scion of the Swarm , 7) Orzhov Locket , 8) Withered Wretch

Apollo_Paladin on Ultra-Budget Speed Dredge (2x 5-Card "Gold Hands")

2 years ago

@ darkbuff

Yeah, if you read up in the comments I talk about vulnerabilities with this build (with ANY M:tG build really) in that if you've got a deck centered around countering your win strategy, it will no doubt throw off win/loss records.

If you're playtesting a speed dredge deck against a deck that's just loaded with cheap creature removals and GY exile...then I have no surprise whatsoever that you're having issues and swapping in Entomb will not help you.

In practice, I've found 1 or 2 decks that can give this deck a run for its money by slowing it down, but if you've got a deck that can not only A) Keep annihilators off the board, B) Offer cheap repeatable GY exile options, and C) Do both A and B while STILL having enough firepower left to mount a sufficient attack to win (not just slow the Dredge strategy down by a few turns), then you're likely playing a Budget Deck vs a Power Deck - and yeah sometimes that'll happen.

This build did remarkably well for me in FNM games at the card shop before the pandemic. When you're dealing with lots of other builds, against opponents who aren't necessarily familiar with the build, then it fares pretty amazingly I've found.

You mention a bad starting hand and I can't help but wonder if you're just not using the strategies properly. For one, with 5-card "Gold Hands", your odds of having NOTHING (like not even a step) towards your combo are exceedingly low. Beyond that, any creature removal that isn't direct Exile (like Swords to Plowshares or w/e) is only slowing the build down. I agree that forced creature sacrifice can be annoying, but this build also has loads of cards to return things out (also Not of This World for anything that targets an annihilator).

It sounds like you're either playing against one of the few deck types that can actually contend with this deck's strategy (more just by lucking into early board/GY control rather than by applying its own combos) or that you simply haven't run enough test games to get an effective baseline.

It's difficult for me to say which is the case w/o looking at the Deck you're referring to giving it problems, but even with 4x Withered Wretch in a build, my construction has statistically a much larger chance of being able to pull off the combo since I have multiple versions of each card that can be used to achieve it (3 different annihilator creatures, all 4x; and 2 different GY-to-Play options, Dread Return at 3x (which can be re-used for free from GY using weenie discard creatures) and Exhume at 4x.

I'm not trying to call you out or anything like that, but I really struggle to see how a deck not specifically designed to counter this one's combo can regularly keep up game after game.

ConsumingKiribo on Merchant of Death (Modern Mono-Black)

3 years ago

Your sideboard is typically meta-dependant, as you can't have answers to everything.

You should probably have multiple cards you can swap in and out for your sideboard and sometimes your main since sideboards are meta dependant.

Damping Sphere is a really good counter against Storm decks and big-mana decks like Tron and Amulet Titan which place down lands that can sometimes generate 2 or even 3 mana.

You should have some forms of mass graveyard hate. Withered Wretch might be decent or slightly better than Surgical Extraction , but there are other cards that at a tap of a card can make a graveyard vanish. Or maybe just move a die around. Ashiok, Dream Render is an example.

Cry of the Carnarium is a suggestion over Drown in Sorrow . However, this is mostly "what do you value: Scry or Exile creatures"

Feed the Swarm might be a decent suggestion if you want to go after enchantments, or if there are too many problematic enchantments in your meta. Blood Moon is not something you should be too careful about since you're in mono-colors with 2 non-basics. You should be fine without enchantment removal, but this is something that's meta-dependant.

Murderous Rider is a pretty decent removal card, granting you both a chump-blocker/attacker and getting you removal as long as you have enough mana. However, modern is a turn-4 format, and it values having 3 or fewer CMC/MV cards. A 4 mana card had better win the game, and anything that's at 5 or above will either be placed into a commander/standard deck or a control deck. I recommend Fatal Push as a better piece of removal, but you can keep Murderous Rider in it since it's basically a Hero's Downfall .

StoryArcher on Merchant of Death (Modern Mono-Black)

3 years ago

Flooremoji,

Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to respond. I hadn't been aware of Vampire of the Dire Moon, I consider that an immediate upgrade!

Raven's Crime has proven very effective for me in the mid-game at times, catching opponents off-guard when I double or triple-cast it to empty their hand (especially in the second or third game of a match when they've boarded out all their graveyard hate). It's worth a one-of imo. I detailed my reasons for Leechridden Swamp above, but I'm open to dropping it. Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx ramps into a hand full of cards from a Phyrexian Arena or two.

I'll definitely try Bloodchief's Thirst in the sideboard over Victim of Night for its value against Planeswalkers but I really like the instant speed of the latter. Contaminated Ground is intended to interfere with land strategies like Tron while Withered Wretch allows me to cycle multiple cards out of a graveyard AND gives me a body that increases my Devotion.