Beseech Your Queen! Mardu Stax cEDH

Commander / EDH* Combo Infinite Combo Prison RBW (Mardu) Stax

MurderForBrunch

Land (30)

• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Arch of Orazca
• 1x Arid Mesa
• 1x Badlands
• 1x Blood Crypt
• 1x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x Boseiju, Who Shelters All
• 1x Buried Ruin
• 1x Clifftop Retreat
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Concealed Courtyard
• 1x Dragonskull Summit
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 1x Flooded Strand
• 1x Geier Reach Sanitarium
• 1x Gemstone Caverns
• 1x Godless Shrine
• 1x Hall of Heliod's Generosity
• 1x Inspiring Vantage
• 1x Isolated Chapel
• 1x Luxury Suite
• 1x Marsh Flats
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Sacred Foundry
• 1x Scrubland
• 1x Silent Clearing
• 1x Snow-Covered Plains
• 2x Snow-Covered Swamp
• 1x Wasteland

Creature (9)

• 1x Alms Collector
• 1x Aven Mindcensor
• 1x Dockside Extortionist
• 1x Drannith Magistrate
• 1x Grand Abolisher
• 1x Linvala, Keeper of Silence
• 1x Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
• 1x Thalia, Heretic Cathar
• 1x Worldgorger Dragon

Artifact (24)

• 1x Aetherflux Reservoir
• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Bolas's Citadel
• 1x Boros Signet
• 1x Chrome Mox
• 1x Cursed Totem
• 1x Defense Grid
• 1x Ensnaring Bridge
• 1x Expedition Map
• 1x Fellwar Stone
• 1x Lotus Petal
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mana Vault
• 1x Mind Stone
• 1x Orzhov Signet
• 1x Rakdos Signet
• 1x Sensei's Divining Top
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Sorcerous Spyglass
• 1x Talisman of Hierarchy
• 1x Tangle Wire
• 1x Tormod's Crypt
• 1x Trinisphere
• 1x Winter Orb

Sorcery (11)

• 1x Buried Alive
• 1x By Force
• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Exsanguinate
• 1x Gamble
• 1x Night's Whisper
• 1x Painful Truths
• 1x Ransack the Lab
• 1x Sevinne's Reclamation
• 1x Toxic Deluge
• 1x Wheel of Fortune

Commander (1)

Instant (15)

• 1x Anguished Unmaking
• 1x Comet Storm
• 1x Dark Ritual
• 1x Deflecting Swat
• 1x Enlightened Tutor
• 1x Entomb
• 1x Fire Covenant
• 1x Pyroblast
• 1x Red Elemental Blast
• 1x Silence
• 1x Snuff Out
• 1x Swords to Plowshares
• 1x Thrill of Possibility
• 1x Vampiric Tutor
• 1x Wear / Tear

Enchantment (10)

• 1x Animate Dead
• 1x Aura of Silence
• 1x Blind Obedience
• 1x Blood Moon
• 1x Dance of the Dead
• 1x Necromancy
• 1x Necropotence
• 1x Price of Glory
• 1x Smothering Tithe
• 1x Stranglehold

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Maybeboard

Instant (1)

• 1x Lapse of Certainty

Creature (1)

• 1x Anje Falkenrath

Enchantment (1)

• 1x Leyline of the Void

Artifact (1)

• 1x Codex Shredder

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Hi all! This deck is a Mardu Prison cEDH deck which tries to lock people out of the game fast, and then win through an infinite combo. The challenge I had while building this deck was choosing the hate pieces I wanted to include while still make a good win con viable through those hate pieces, in that, most of those are symmetrical. The main win con of this deck is Worldgorger Dragon combo with a Reanimation enchantment like Animate Dead. Then, after you generate infinite mana plus draw your hole deck, you can kill the table with Exsanguinate or Comet Storm.

How does the combo work?

The Worldgorger Dragon combo is based around the namesake Worldgorger Dragon. For the combo to work the dragon must be in your graveyard. Then, you have to reanimate the dragon with an enchantment reanimation effect like Animate Dead. When you reanimate the dragon with an enchantment, the ETB effect of the dragon triggers, and you exile all your permanents including the enchantment. When the enchantment leaves the battlefield, you have to sacrifice the dragon, which brings everything back, including the dragon. When the dragon enters the battlefield you exile all your permanents. And so, this is a loop!

In this loop, what you can do is float mana with your lands, which upon coming back from exile they do so untapped. Therefore, you can generate infinite mana. Another important combo piece is something to draw cards, of which there are four: Geier Reach Sanitarium, Mikokoro, Center of the Sea, Arch of Orazca and Anje Falkenrath. I’m not including Mikokoro, because if I use that as a combo piece, my opponents also draw their deck and that’s not good, they can easily find their interaction. If I have either of the other pieces I can loot or draw my entire deck to look for the win cons. Once you have your hole deck, or at least a big chunk of it, as long as you have infinite mana, you can cast either Comet Storm or Exsanguinate with X equal a million, and kill the hole table!

The good thing of these two cards is that they have utility on their own, Comet Storm being removal, and Exsanguinate being a powerful effect that can win or prevent me from loosing. As long as I have a ton of ramp, it's conceivable that in the long game someone is on a precarious life total and I can kill them with Exsanguinate. Or buff my own life total to live a little longer.

Stax Pieces and Main Locks

Stax is a strategy where you deny resources to your opponents or hinder their game plan somehow. Some of the pieces that accomplish that are symmetrical so this strategy tires to minimize or nullify the negative effect of those pieces for yourself. This was a challenging part of this deck because some of the stax pieces that stop some of the most usual combos, also stop your own combo. Some of my favourite stax pieces are Spirit of the Labyrinth and Torpor Orb, but the problem with those pieces is that they stop you own combo, the Spirit by not letting you cycle through your deck and Torpor Orb just stops the ETB trigger from the dragon.

Also, one thing to keep in mind is that many of this hate pieces do work, but they’re exquisitely oppressive in combination. For example, although Winter Orb is annoying many decks have artifact ramp. However, the orb plus Blind Obedience is devastatingly annoying.

Mana Stax Pieces

The main stax pieces included in this deck are focused on mana attrition like Trinisphere, Aura of Silence and Thalia, Guardian of Thraben which make things more expensive. There’s also things like Blind Obedience and Thalia, Heretic Cathar which makes creatures enter tapped. Also, and very importantly, Thalia makes non-basic lands enter tapped, and Blind Obedience makes artifacts enter tapped, which really makes things for any opponent who wants to ramp. In this sense, there’s also Tangle Wire and Winter Orb which slows down the game, while we ramp and progress our game plan. Then there’s Blood Moon because Blood Moon!

Timing Stax Pieces

Other stax pieces focus on what you can play and when you can play it. Some of the main ones are Cursed Totem, Linvala, Keeper of Silence, Grand Abolisher, Defense Grid and Price of Glory. Some of this pieces, like the Abolisher, Defense Grid and Price of Glory are intended to stop interaction on your own turn and prevent or make more difficult disruption for your combo. In general, all this pieces really hurt control players!

The Cursed Totem and Linvala are just pieces that stop many combo decks, like Najeela, the Blade-Blossom and many Flash Hulk lines, but also stop any kind of activated ability, such as mana dorks, any Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker line and it also stops Walking Ballista which is a popular infinite mana payoff.

As a final inclusion in this category, I'm including the Drannith Magistrate. This cards looks brutal! It stops any spell being cast from a graveyard or a library, it stops cascading, but more importantly, it stops casting spells from the Command Zone! This is just too amazing not to include! :D

Other Stax Pieces

Finally, the other stax pieces are powerful artifacts and enchantments that have very narrow but very potent applications. One that I particularly like is Stranglehold, which by the way is non-symmetrical! Very similar to Aven Mindcensor. For most decks Alms Collector is pretty useful and annoying. Against Craterhoof Behemoth and similar strategies there’s an Ensnaring Bridge which prevents attacks from big creatures. Also, Tormod's Crypt and Leyline of the Void go against graveyards, while leaving our own intact.

Tutors and Card Draw

As a cEDH deck this deck has a lot of tutors and card draw spells. Also as a Mardu deck, this deck has access to the best tutors, like Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Gamble and Enlightened Tutor. Any of this tutors can find Animate Dead, or Mana Crypt in case you need mana. They also can find the Worldgorger Dragon or a means to discard it. There are other two tutors which tutor into the graveyard, and those are Buried Alive and Entomb. Both can find the Dragon and bin it, but Buried Alive could also bin a Grand Abolisher. Reanimating the Abolisher can provide protection for your combo.

As for card draw, there are a some spells which also can discard the Dragon in Ransack the Lab, Thrill of Possibility, Tormenting Voice and Wheel of Fortune. Another efficient card draw spell is Night's Whisper. A great piece of card draw is Sensei's Divining Top. Also there's a Necropotence which an incredible draw spell. Bolas's Citadel is not card draw per se, but it's essentially card advantage. And finally, Queen Marchesa makes you the monarch and thus is card draw on a stick! Speaking or card draw on a stick, Alms Collector is a pretty cool card as well!

Interaction, Back Up Win Con and Other Aspects of the Deck

As a Mardu deck , this list has access to the best removal, which is either very efficient or very versatile, like Swords to Plowshares, Anguished Unmaking, Fire Covenant and Snuff Out. All these pieces of removal can either kill almost anything or are really efficient. There’s also removal for artifacts and enchantments in Wear / Tear, By Force and Aura of Silence. Another card that is really useful in many situations is Toxic Deluge, which can deal with either multiple threats or indestructible ones. Other pieces of interaction are things like Pyroblast or Red Elemental Blast, which are both counterspells and removal at the same time. There’s also a Silence in the deck, which can prove to be very disruptive, as well as Deflecting Swat, another new card that looks super spicy, being able to redirect either a counterspell or a removal spell!

The backup Win Con of the deck is the combo between Bolas's Citadel, Sensei's Divining Top and Aetherflux Reservoir. All these cards have a great utility in the deck. Bolas's Citadel is straight card advantage, just as the Top. On the other hand, the Reservoir buffs the life total which is nice, because in this deck there's a bunch of effects that lets us pay life for resources. So this artifact stems the bleeding a little bit. However, with all three in play I can draw a card with the Top, pay one life to replay it with the Citadel, and repeat the process drawing my whole deck and gaining enormous amounts of life with the Reservoir.

Finally, a spicy include in the deck is Sevinne's Reclamation. This is a card that doesn’t have an application specifically, but I think it adds a lot of resiliency to the deck. It’s able to return either a reanimation spell or a lock piece that might have been destroyed or countered. Plus, this card has flashback, and although it’s an expensive cost, it adds redundancy plus extra value when cast from the graveyard.

And that’s essentially the list! This might not be the most effective prison deck, nor the fastest combo deck. But it seems like a competent cEDH prison deck that can be super fun to play. That being said, any comments, critics, suggestions or any though is more than welcome, so feel free to leave a comment!

Date added	4 years
Last updated	3 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	14 - 0 Mythic Rares 50 - 0 Rares 22 - 0 Uncommons 11 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.27
Tokens	Assassin 1/1 B w/ Haste, City's Blessing, The Monarch, Treasure