Meren Midrange

Commander / EDH BG (Golgari)

forrest716

Creature (30)

• 1x Apprentice Necromancer
• 1x Birds of Paradise
• 1x Blighted Bat
• 1x Caustic Caterpillar
• 1x Channeler Initiate
• 1x Collector Ouphe
• 1x Dark Confidant
• 1x Deathrite Shaman
• 1x Destiny Spinner
• 1x Devoted Druid
• 1x Elves of Deep Shadow
• 1x Fyndhorn Elves
• 1x Hermit Druid
• 1x Llanowar Elves
• 1x Massacre Girl
• 1x Mindblade Render
• 1x Mindslicer
• 1x Minister of Pain
• 1x Necrotic Ooze
• 1x Oakhame Adversary
• 1x Ohran Frostfang
• 1x Phyrexian Revoker
• 1x Plaguecrafter
• 1x Ravenous Slime
• 1x Riftsweeper
• 1x Runic Armasaur
• 1x Sidisi, Undead Vizier
• 1x Viscera Seer
• 1x Walking Ballista
• 1x Yisan, the Wanderer Bard

Artifact (9)

• 1x Bag of Holding
• 1x Birthing Pod
• 1x Chrome Mox
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mox Diamond
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Sphere of Resistance
• 1x Tangle Wire
• 1x Trinisphere

Land (30)

• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Bayou
• 1x Blast Zone
• 1x Blooming Marsh
• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Cabal Pit
• 1x City of Brass
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Dryad Arbor
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 1x Forbidden Orchard
• 1x Gaea's Cradle
• 1x Geier Reach Sanitarium
• 1x Gemstone Caverns
• 1x High Market
• 1x Llanowar Wastes
• 1x Mana Confluence
• 1x Nurturing Peatland
• 1x Overgrown Tomb
• 1x Phyrexian Tower
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Tainted Wood
• 1x Tarnished Citadel
• 1x Twilight Mire
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1x Verdant Catacombs
• 1x Volrath's Stronghold
• 1x Windswept Heath
• 1x Wooded Foothills
• 1x Woodland Cemetery

Sorcery (8)

• 1x Buried Alive
• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Diabolic Intent
• 1x Eldritch Evolution
• 1x Finale of Devastation
• 1x Green Sun's Zenith
• 1x Imperial Seal
• 1x Thoughtseize

Commander (1)

Enchantment (13)

• 1x Bottomless Pit
• 1x Carpet of Flowers
• 1x Chains of Mephistopheles
• 1x Compost
• 1x Contamination
• 1x Drop of Honey
• 1x Nether Void
• 1x Oppression
• 1x Pernicious Deed
• 1x Root Maze
• 1x Survival of the Fittest
• 1x Sylvan Library
• 1x Waste Not

Instant (9)

• 1x Abrupt Decay
• 1x Assassin's Trophy
• 1x Crop Rotation
• 1x Entomb
• 1x Krosan Reclamation
• 1x Nature's Claim
• 1x Vampiric Tutor
• 1x Veil of Summer
• 1x Worldly Tutor

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Death is Never the End

Meren Midrange MM is midrange stax deck that relies on various hand hate, taxing, and removal to slow down the game and grind value using Meren triggers. The ideal state for the deck is to have no cards in your opponents’ hands And to have a few toys in our graveyard.

MM is a parasitic stax deck looking to take advantage of slow meta's and to grind value. Our worst match-ups are fast combo decks as we rely on stax pieces to lock down the game. The main way we combat these decks is through our hand hate, tax effects, and targeted disruption (i.e. Ravenous Slime) to disrupt their combo.

The true strength of MM is in the resilience of its combo. Since we use a creature based combo and we have a repeatable pseudo reanimate in the command zone we can repeatedly recur our wincon through removal and force the win.

As with all stax decks our pieces can be swapped to match any meta.

Stax

Our primary method of stax is through resource denial, namely hand hate. Our persistent effects like Bottomless Pit, Oppression, and Chains of Mephistopheles are capable of shutting down games all on their own, due the massive amount of card denial. In addition Chains combos incredibly well with Geier Reach Sanitarium allowing us to drain everyone’s hands very quickly.

Our targeted hand hate on the other hand is more aimed at the fast combo decks. An early Thoughtseize can take key combo peices. The targeted package in this list is rather small but could be expanded with cards like Duress or Inquisition of Kozilek if you are in a faster meta.

Our other forms of resource denial are things like Trinisphere, Sphere of Resistance, and Nether Void to slow the game down, Tangle Wire and Contamination to deny our opponents mana, and Phyrexian Revoker to shut down combos.

Our last form of stax is enabled by Meren herself. Once we have a couple of experience we can start the endless chains of cards like Viscera Seer, Plaguecrafter, and Caustic Caterpillar. With these cards we can repeatedly hurt our opponents with little more than Meren trigger as a cost.

Combo

The first thing any casual glance over the deck list reveals the rather noted omission of the Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Triskelion combo. I find that both are incredibly bad draws and by removing both we can vastly increase our slot efficiency. In addition we don’t run Protean Hulk, it is rather inefficient when we are unable to run flash.

Our combo relies heavily on Hermit Druid. The main combo is:

1. Use Hermit Druid to flip deck
2. Flashback Dread Returnto reanimate Necrotic Ooze.
   (or use a Meren trigger at the end of turn)
3. We then use Blighted Bat's ability to give Ooze haste.
4. We then use the combination of Devoted Druid, to add -1/-1 counters and to untap Ooze, and Channeler Initiate, to remove -1/-1 counters and add mana. Thus we create infinite mana at instant speed through interaction.
5. We then use Walking Ballista to machine gun our opponents to death.
   

Combo Safety

The main problem we face is our combo fizzling, our main answer is to use Krosan Reclamation to return two of our reanimates if all of the pieces are intact, or to guard the pieces that are being exiled. Remember that Ooze is always a valid target as we can commonly hard cast it for the win after drawing it.

The second problem is removal and the safest answer is to use Apprentice Necromancer's ability to reanimate the Apprentice with haste and then sac the Apprentice to get back Ooze. We also can simply power through and keep activating abilities. Alternatively we can let ooze die as long as we have Meren with at least 4 experience and then just reanimate Ooze at the end of the turn.

Also remember that we can always recur Riftsweeper repeatedly with Meren to get our combo back.

Buried Alive

Buried Alive is an extremely versatile card in MM. We can use it to grab the last parts of the combo to win without flipping the deck, or we can use it to grab Ooze, Hermit and Bat to turn Ooze into a hastey Hermit Druid.

Birthing Pod/Yisan

One of the most powerful engines in MM aside from Meren herself is Birthing Pod. It can enable all sorts of stax and combo potential. Here is a list of our main targets:

1cmc - Viscera Seer and Caustic Caterpillar are our main targets.

2cmc - This cmc is mainly toolbox of creatures, although Hermit Druid is important if there is an opening in interaction.

3cmc - This is our sweet spot with Minister of Pain,Plaguecrafter, and Ravenous Slime to disrupt our opponents and grind value.

4cmc - Our main target is Mindslicer

5cmc - we have Massacre Girl for removal, Sidisi, Undead Vizier as good follow-up to Mindslicer, and Ohran Frostfand for value.

Past this we don’t have any creatures

The Hermit is a Hermit no More

The inevitability of MM comes with the easy repeatability of Meren's trigger. Simply ask, 'can you kill my Hermit Druid?', and then if they can we simply bring it back and ask again, and again, and agian... until they have no more answers. Even if they exile it we have Riftsweeper to do it again. While MM is capable of blitzing a win, the name of the game is much more focused on the grind.

Date added	5 years
Last updated	4 years
Key combos	Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Triskelion
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	8 - 0 Mythic Rares 64 - 0 Rares 19 - 0 Uncommons 9 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.09
Tokens	Experience Token, Spirit 1/1 C, Zombie 2/2 B
Folders	meren, Competitive EDH, Meren, Decks I want