Lose All Your Friends, The Raven Man Way

Commander / EDH Control Cycling Discard Mono-Black Sacrifice Tokens

Eareph

Creature (27)

• 1x Archfiend of Ifnir
• 1x Asylum Visitor
• 1x Ayara, First of Locthwain
• 1x Bone Miser
• 1x Braids, Arisen Nightmare
• 1x Burglar Rat
• 1x Containment Construct
• 1x Crypt Ghast
• 1x Cunning Lethemancer
• 1x Dauthi Voidwalker
• 1x Elderfang Disciple
• 1x Fell Specter
• 1x Junji, the Midnight Sky
• 1x Liliana, Heretical Healer  ^Flip
• 1x Necrogoyf
• 1x Rankle, Master of Pranks
• 1x Sadistic Hypnotist
• 1x Sangromancer
• 1x Sheoldred, Whispering One
• 1x Sheoldred, the Apocalypse
• 1x Tergrid, God of FrightGC  ^Flip
• 1x Tinybones, Trinket Thief
• 1x Tourach, Dread Cantor
• 1x Undead Gladiator
• 1x Undertaker
• 1x Virus Beetle
• 1x Yawgmoth, Thran Physician

Sorcery (8)

• 1x Call to the Netherworld
• 1x Dark Deal
• 1x Demonic TutorGC
• 1x Duress
• 1x Mind Rake
• 1x Pilfer
• 1x Syphon Mind
• 1x Vicious Rumors

Enchantment (19)

• 1x Attrition
• 1x Black Market
• 1x Bottomless Pit
• 1x Braids's Frightful Return
• 1x Contamination
• 1x Court of Ambition
• 1x Cunning Rhetoric
• 1x Grave Pact
• 1x Liliana's Caress
• 1x Malevolent Awakening
• 1x Megrim
• 1x Mind Slash
• 1x Necrogen Mists
• 1x Oppression
• 1x Raiders' Wake
• 1x Shrieking Affliction
• 1x Tainted AEther
• 1x The Cruelty of Gix
• 1x Waste Not

Artifact (9)

• 1x Anvil of Bogardan
• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Jet Medallion
• 1x Library of Leng
• 1x Mind Stone
• 1x Mindcrank
• 1x Skullclamp
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Swiftfoot Boots

Commander (1)

Land (28)

• 1x Ash Barrens
• 1x Barren Moor
• 1x Blasted Landscape
• 1x Desert of the Glorified
• 1x Geier Reach Sanitarium
• 1x Phyrexian Tower
• 1x Polluted Mire
• 1x Reliquary Tower
• 19x Swamp
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

Instant (8)

• 1x Dark Ritual
• 1x Deadly Dispute
• 1x Defile
• 1x Infernal Grasp
• 1x Malakir Rebirth  ^Flip
• 1x Shadow of the Grave
• 1x Vampiric TutorGC
• 1x Village Rites

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Like the deck title suggests, you will not have any friends if you play this deck. Absolutely none. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Buuuuut, if you wish to play this deck, here's a quick rundown on how it operates and why I felt like building it.

One of the strongest forms of control in any card game, second only to actually skipping a turn, is hand control. The ability to deprive your opponent of any resources in hand, well, it is essentially the defacto ability to turn off their turn. (This is universally hated and you should feel bad.) If don't feel bad doing this, then by all means play this deck!

I stumbled upon the The Raven Man card quite by accident while I was looking for something else and I was instantly hooked. Not because it's all that impressive, or even the amount of lore surrounding him (which I didn't know about until later), but simply because I rather liked the name and thought the art was cool. I also liked the idea of creating a flock of ravens (which are super smart and very, very cool birds!) to attack my opponents. I took a double take at the ability though, and realized that my flock wasn't gonna be as awesome as I had previously thought. They can't block! I lost my motovation once I discovered this little caveat, but the idea never fully left my mind. The allure of having The Raven Man was too strong though, and so after a little bit of time I decided to sit down and craft a deck that could make full use of this very intriguing commander.

The best thing about this commander is that he is cheap, dirt cheap really for the value he can represent. For only {1}{B} you get a 2/1 body that can produce a 1/1 flyer. That's pretty darn good in my opinion. I don't even care about his second ability, we have loads of other cards that do that better and are one time expenditures. One of those cards, and I think is hands down the most important card in our deck is: Anvil of Bogardan. This will ensure that we proc our commander every turn, plus the possibility of depriving our opponent's of something they really needed. A great little combo with Anvil of Bogardan is Library of Leng. You draw the extra card with Anvil and then Leng will redirect your discard to the top of your deck, which you will then draw. Leng is also optional, so you don't have to redirect a card if you instead want it in the grave and there are times where you will want that. Another couple of great cards are Waste Not and Bone Miser. You can intentionally discard a land to produce two black mana and then do some fun stuff in your upkeep, such as activating Attrition or Mind Slash, the same goes when your opponent discards of course.

There is also a sub-theme of sacrifice in this deck, as is obvious by the two cards mentioned previously. Specifically the cards: Attrition, Mind Slash, Malevolent Awakening, Tainted AEther, and Contamination to a lesser degree, though that's more for the general control aspect, not really the sacrifice part. These all work in conjunction with Grave Pact for creature control, and to turn Liliana, Heretical Healer   into Liliana, Defiant Necromancer. I should also include Sheoldred, Whispering One in this list. Honestly though, I only include her because I really like the card and think that she's always fun to have.

The main wincon of this deck will be burn. Specifically: Shrieking Affliction, Liliana's Caress, Megrim, Raiders' Wake, Fell Specter and to a lesser degree Court of Ambition. You set up any one or more of your burn enchantments and then just hand control your opponents until everyone is dead. Maybe hasten things along with your ravens, since they can't block anyway.

There are other card interactions, but I feel like I've named most of the big ones. Anywho, this is a fun deck for the pilot (not for anyone else) and you will fully deserve any wrath you bring down upon yourself.

Date added	2 years
Last updated	2 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	8 - 0 Mythic Rares 34 - 0 Rares 26 - 0 Uncommons 12 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.78
Tokens	Bird 1/1 B, Emblem Liliana, Defiant Necromancer, Monarch Emblem, Treasure, Zombie 2/2 B