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Anafenza hates your graveyard! Anafenza is sick of Meren at FNM! Anafenza was a collaborative effort with Sergal and fredsamboyo!

So the lowdown here is first and foremost to stop graveyard shenanigans. Obviously this is aimed at Meren decks which are recently quite popular but it is effective against a large number of commanders including other commander set commanders. These commanders usually use their graveyard as a shortcut to infinite combos and while I run infinite combos in a few decks (see the note at the end for more on that) that I pull out against not so fun opponents I generally prefer to punish people who run them.

To be honest even in a deck that doesn't use its graveyard as a strategy most decks use "When this creature dies" to a lesser or greater extent. Anafenza puts a stop to that as that is short hand for "When this creature is put into a graveyard" which never happens when you're exiling them. If you're playing against green they almost always have some kind of recursion and that just doesn't happen when Rest in Peace or Leyline of the Void are out. You can also use a card like Yixlid Jailer to stop stuff such as Filth . So that's just examples of where you're disrupting people who want to use anything in their graveyard even if it's not a wincon. And disruption is the beginning of how you win.

My experience with people playing competitive is that they can NOT handle rules changes. If they're playing Oloro for example then Tainted Remedy is their undoing. My strategy is a lockdown. In a totally ideal world it begins with Dragonlord Dromoka . Then on my turn I can bring in cards like Tainted Remedy , Painful Quandary and Wound Reflection . Simultaneously I'm looking to drop Avacyn, Angel of Hope and Privileged Position . The ONLY way I know of to deal with this is bouncing my stuff or forcing me to sacrifice it. But all I need to deal with forced sacrifice is Sigarda, Host of Herons (if I swap her in). Of course this is all ideal but I can run multiple tutors for nearly every one of these cards and inevitably I will draw some of them. I guess the final piece is having No Mercy and/or Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts out. Between her and my fliers I can abuse the effects of Wound Reflection and with even half of the above setup people are hard pressed to do anything about me. They will mostly fight each other and hope they can draw into their combo or get the removal they need in the meantime.

I want to move on to say that with the amount of netdecking that goes on people have a really hard time understanding what I'm doing even after multiple encounters with this deck. Now that's not an issue in Modern or Standard but it's a big problem in EDH. Everything boils down to this deck changing the rules. When you change the rules people just can't deal with it. Of course I encounter good players that can adapt but most people can't. They play decks that autopilot and I take advantage of it.

As a final note I'd like to say this deck can run combos of its own. Infinite mill, Sanguine Bond/Exquisite Blood and you have a tremendous amount of removal and tutoring available in these colors to get those combos on the board quickly. I just find that people expect that. They're looking for me to combo out so it's easier to just smash them with Avacyn or one of the other large creatures. This deck is a consistent winner. Of course nothing wins 100% of the time in EDH but I bring a lot of decks on an average night and generally someone asks to borrow this deck almost every time. The only other deck I can say that for is From Zero to Dragons.

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So I hadn't updated this list in quite a while. I dropped a bit of graveyard hate and made some substitutions. The notable changes are adding tutors and fetches. I also got some hatebears in here and replaced Kiku, Night's Flower with Ashling, the Extinguisher. The optimized deck continues to outperform anything I expected and has longsince chased Meren of Clan Nel Toth out of the meta at my LGS.

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Revision 11 See all

(4 years ago)

+1 Find / Finality maybe
+1 Kaya's Wrath maybe
+1 Kaya, Orzhov Usurper maybe
+1 Revival / Revenge maybe
Date added 8 years
Last updated 4 years
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

10 - 0 Mythic Rares

40 - 2 Rares

25 - 0 Uncommons

11 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.39
Tokens Assassin 1/1 B w/ Player Killer, Beast 3/3 G, Emblem Sorin, Solemn Visitor, Enchantment Snake 1/1 BG, Human Soldier 1/1 W, Spirit 1/1 WB, Vampire 2/2 B, Wolf 2/2 G, Worm 1/1 BG
Folders Commander
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