Introduction
Malfegor is a fairly nontraditional commander, and I can't say I've had the pleasure of meeting with someone who also runs Malfegor as a commander. I can kind of understand why - a commander that has the text "discard your hand" on it in a format where card advantage is king is quite daunting. That's a big disadvantage, but the deck is constructed around leveraging / mitigating this "downside". However, I feel that Malfegor is one of the more skill-intensive, interesting, rewarding, and maybe even competitive Commanders out there.
Conflux was also, in my opinion, a highly underrated set in an underrated block. Good to get someone representing out there. If you're a sucker for foil promos, prerelease Malfegor retails for less than $2 US.
Why play this commander?
Malfegor might be for you if you like:
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You enjoy light reanimator strategies
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You thought madness was a cool mechanic
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You like playing out of the graveyard
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You like rummaging and looting - a lot!
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You want to counter spells (Null Brooch) and destroy Rhystic Study (Jaya Ballard) in red/black colors
You might not like this deck if:
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You live in constant fear of graveyard hate
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You don't like being in topdeck mode, even if you are drawing 2+ cards a turn
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You have a very straightforward play style
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You get stressed out with no cards in hand
But before we get to how we compensate for and ultimately capitalize on an empty hand, we can quickly examine Malefgor's silver linings:
"When Malfegor enters the battlefield, discard your hand."
- This may not seem like an advantage for Malfegor, but it's worth mentioning that this is not a cost to cast Malfegor, it's a triggered ability, meaning that if an opponent counters Malfegor when you cast him, you don't discard your hand.
"For each card discarded this way, each opponent sacrifices a creature"
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Essentially, this turns all the cards in your hand into Diabolic Edicts. The effect is significantly better in reality, as it specifies _each _opponent and therefore A) doesn't need to target players and B) shines brighter in multiplayer
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The effect is great for getting around indestructible, hexproof/shroud, and regeneration - many an Eldrazi titan or Theros god has fallen to the might of Malfegor
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This is not good against token decks who have plenty of spare creatures to sacrifice. This makes mass -X/-X effects valuable for clearing out smaller creatures before forcing the sacrifice of the larger threats, allowing Malfegor's side to survive
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The downside is that since your mana, your command zone, and the number of cards in your hand are all public information, it's easy for others to play around an incoming sacrifice effect - it's impossible to surprise an alert opponent with Malfegor's ability
6/6
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At 6 power, Malfegor falls short of the magic 7 power that gets us to a 3-turn commander damage clock, but still gets in for a beating, and 4 turns isn't the worst clock
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6 toughness does let Malfegor survive some significant mass -X/-X effects
Flying
- Malfegor is evasive! Once he hits the field and blesses us with hellbent-ness his usefulness is limited. Why not keep the pressure up by swinging in the air?
So, about that hand you had…
What's this deck about?
Graveyard Abilities
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Examples: Anger, Dreamstealer, Soul of Innistrad, Drownyard Temple, Increasing Ambition
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Cards with abilities in the graveyard still represent options even after we discard them. This includes abilities like flashback, unearth, embalm, and eternalize. These synergize well when Malfegor dumps them and lets us get a net benefit if we loot/rummage/wheel them away with other effects.
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This is how we gain virtual card advantage - while looting, rummaging, and other-self discard effects only maintain or hurt our card advantage, being able to gain a benefit from the cards we pitch in the graveyard expands our options beyond what's in our hand (if anything at all)
Looting/Rummaging
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Examples: Faithless Looting, Mad Prophet, Tormenting Voice, Cathartic Reunion
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Looting/Rummaging effects greatly improves our consistency and lets us trade situationally useless cards for useful cards. It's a good idea to leverage these effects to pitch excess lands, expensive spells in the early game, and cards with situationally useful effects like Boil and Vandalblast when they aren't useful.
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This synergizes well with cards that have graveyard abilities as it's an easy, free way to get them into your graveyard.
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Some of the cheaper/free looting and rummaging effects are often the best place to cast spells for the madness costs.
Discard Triggers
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Examples: Archfiend of Depravity, Faith of the Devoted
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These permanents have powerful effects that trigger when we do what we're already doing - discarding. Note that these effects trigger for each card that gets discarded - For example, discarding 7 cards to Malfegor puts 7 -1/-1 counters on all of the surviving creatures with Archfiend of Depravity.
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These also include cards you are cycling, because cycling is technically discarding.
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These also trigger off of cards you may be casting for their madness, since the card was still technically discarded before it was cast.
Reanimation
Situational Cards
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Examples: Boil, Vandalblast
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Since sideboards aren't used in EDH, many situationally narrow cards don't see as much play as you'd expect. Malfegor is in a unique position to take advantage of many of the most situationally powerful cards available in EDH. While in a normal deck, a card like Boil would sit in your hand as a dead card against opponents who don't play any Islands, in Malfegor that same Boil can be looted/rummaged away for another card or used to fuel Malfegor's forced sacrifice effect. Of course, when these do become effective, it's often unexpected and quite the blowout!
Spellshapers
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Examples: Pack Rat, Jaya Ballard, card:Task Mage, Hazoret the Fervent, Tortured Existence
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Although only some of these permanents actually have the subtype Spellshaper, most players are familiar with the functionality. Spellshapers and their "kin" make their controller discard cards as a cost to activate a relatively powerful ability. These are another great outlet for excess lands, expensive cards in the early game, cards that have abilities the graveyard, madness cards, situational cards and reanimation targets.
Wheel Effects
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Examples: Wheel of Fortune, Magus of the Wheel, Wheel of Fate
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The biggest downside to using wheel effects is providing your opponents with better card selection and possibly card advantage, but Malfegor lives to mitigate this. Wheels are best cast right after casting Malefgor, whereby drawing 7 cards and discarding 0 means you gained that much more than your opponents hopefully did. In addition, the benefits of looting and rummaging apply to wheel effects - madness cards can still be cast and cards with graveyard abilities still go to the graveyard.
Hellbent Topdeck Engine (H.T.E.)
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Examples: Asylum Visitor, Avaricious Dragon, Mindstorm Crown, Ghirapur Orrery, Grafted Skullcap
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The "Hellbent Topdeck Engine" is a nickname I've given a gamestate that Malfegor frequently achieves. This happens when we amass effects that let us draw extra cards while discarding our hand at the end of the turn. The end result is drawing 2+ cards every turn, with a "use it or lose it" caveat.
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H.T.E. can be very powerful despite the fact that many of your cards will end up getting pitched; You'll see a high % of your deck, continually fill the graveyard with tons of reanimation targets and cards with graveyard abilities, activate triggered abilities based on discard, and have plenty of fuel for your spellshapers each turn.
The Approach
I believe that there are some fundamental misunderstandings and poor approaches when it comes to the Malfegor lists I see online and that I purposefully do not employ in my list.
Making opponents discard
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The main threat of most EDH decks, the commander, can't be taken out via discard barring some type of bounce effect - you'll never completely deprive an opponent of threats with a discard strategy.
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The very best cards that cause discard, like Duress and card:Thoughtsieze, outside of an extremely dedicated deck, are a waste of time. You're trading resources 1-for-1 without even making your opponents use their mana and can only hit one opponent at a time, with a strong chance of missing each time you do it.
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Discard effects that hit all opponents such as Syphon Flesh and Syphon Mind have a better argument behind them, but these cards are few in number.
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Finally, discard strategies become useless in the late game (in EDH this means 70% of the game) against opponents in topdeck mode, opponents with the sense to hang on to extra lands, or simply opponents who draw more cards than you can make them discard.
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It's easy to forget, but when an opponent discards, it has no synergy with Malfegor - Malfegor doesn't make opponents discard cards, nor does he directly benefit from them discarding.
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Some lists run cards that are good at making your opponents discard via a symmetrical discard effect a la card:Delirium Skiens, with the logic being that the Malfegor player don't experience any downside since they theoretically don't have those cards to discard anyways. These effects have a small window to be truly effective I'm only capitalizing on Delirum Skeins if it's the only card in my hand as I cast it. Otherwise, I've probably already discarded it to Malfegor.
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Note: I do break this rule three times in my list with Sire Of Insanity, Oppression, and Dreamstealer
Madness Theme (Heavy)
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Madness has a place in this deck, but it is not as prominent as people tend to think
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The biggest issue is that Madness costs need to be paid AS the card is being discarded, and our most reliable discard outlet costs 6
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This means that I need MORE than 6 mana to cast Malfegor + Madness
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That being said:
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It's not uncommon to hold off on casting Malfegor past turn 6
- There are many other discard effects run in this list that are cheaper or even free
The bottom line: like life-gain effects, Madness needs to be attached to a card you'd already want to play without the ability
Hellbent (Frequent)
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Despite the fact that we like to dump our hand, we're also highly interested in refilling it as soon as possible, which is why the bulk of our "hellbent" cards simply draw us more cards.
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Outside of the components of the H.T.E. like Asylum Visitor/Mindstorm Crown/Blood Scrivener, there are simply no great hellbent payoff cards. Despite the incredible synergy, the most that the original Rakdos keyword provides is a useful term to describe having no hand.
I'm currently working on justifying each of the card choices and explaining some notable exclusions, but I welcome suggestions and secret tech!
