My primary EDH deck that I use at store events is Meren of Clan Nel Toolbox. Using the template provided by Jimmy Wong and Josh Lee Kwai at the Command Zone on Youtube, I've made a new Meren list, with quite a few new card additions. At the moment, my Toolbox deck has quite a few weaknesses. You'll notice that there are no board wipes and very little spot removal.
For the first question in the template video, what is the goal of this new deck? Meren of Clan Nel Toth is a graveyard-based commander with heavy emphasis on recursion. The goal of the deck is this: I want to win the table by accumulating more value than my opponents by quickly recycling creatures that both enhance my board state and disrupt my opponents'.
An overwhelming majority of the critical functions addressed in The Command Zone's template video (draw, ramp, spot removal, board wipes, etc.) are attached to creatures so that Meren can abuse their abilities with hers. We also want our creatures to die in large numbers in the early game. Once I hit eight experience counters on Meren, then the time comes to play defensively and build an army as she will be at full power.
The Standalone cards in this deck fall into several categories. They can be creatures with Enter the Battlefield effects or creatures that can sacrifice themselves for a payoff, no sac outlet required. Both are good even in the early game and whenever Meren is not in play, as the former can start accumulating value before Meren hits the board while the latter can place themselves in the graveyard as targets for Meren for when she enters play. The last type of standalone card is the token generator. These cards generate an endless number of token creatures for multiple uses. They are perfect in the early game for making a wall of chump blockers to get experience counters, ideal in the mid-game for manufacturing sacrificial fodder, and excellent in the late game for when I need to go wide and secure victory.
The Enhancer cards in this deck accelerate the value cycle or spread my "pain" to my opponents. Some are already Standalone, but when Meren is on the field, the game plan of the deck is kicked into high gear by these cards. The first type of Enhancer is the Sac Outlet, preferably one that allows me to do it for free and provides a payoff for doing so. These cards, when Meren is on the field, allow me to accumulate all of the experience counters I need in a very short amount of time. The next type of Enhancer is the tutor. If I have Meren on the field and there's a particular card I'm thinking of that would wreck an opponents' game plan if I played it repeatedly, a tutor can go grab it to turn on the pain train. These tutors can either put the card I need into my hand, directly into my graveyard so Meren can reanimate it, or directly onto the battlefield for instant value. While Board Wipes are suggested for every deck, they are actually Enchancers in this one only if they destroy all creatures, not exile them. Damnation wipes the board while also giving me a load of experience counters if I put everything on the stack right. Another Board Wipe archetype is called Pox, named after cards like Pox that force all players to sacrifice things. Pox cards can also come in the form of spells that turn my losses into simultaneous losses for my opponents, cards like Butcher of Malakir and Dictate of Erebos. Yet another type of Enhancer is the Miller, or cards that put cards directly into my graveyard, giving Meren targets to reanimate. The last type of Enhancer is a card that reanimates. Meren can't be the only source of recursion for my deck. If she is, and my opponents believe that's the case, all that the table has to do to lock me out of the game is kill Meren a couple of times to make it impossible for me to cast her. At that point the Value Train is derailed. With multiple extra sources of reanimation, the deck can function without its commander at a slower place, but the deck becomes ludicrously powerful if these cards are in play alongside the commander and a sac outlet.
The last card category is the Enablers, and these cards will fill in gaps left by Meren's strategy. The last type of Enhancer, cards that reanimate, can be classified as Enablers too. Without Meren, these cards allow the deck's game plan to remain in motion. Any card that helps fight graveyard hate can be considered an Enabler as well, for if an opponent successfully exiles the contents of my graveyard, I have essentially lost. Enchantment and artifact removal spells are in this category, as they destroy (or force my opponent to destroy) the most common types of cards that screw with my graveyard: cards like Leyline of the Void, Rest in Peace,
Relic of Progenitus
, Grafdigger's Cage and more. One of my personal favorite tricks for if my opponent tries to exile my entire graveyard a-la-Bojuka Bog or any of the above cards is to put
Entomb
on the stack to fetch Gaea's Blessing and put it directly into the graveyard, causing Gaea's Blessing to trigger, allowing me to shuffle my entire graveyard into my library. Entomb and the Blessing resolve, the graveyard hate spell tries to resolve but there are no targets in my graveyard, so the card is wasted and my opponent is punk-d. I can recycle Sidisi, Undead Vizier to put
Entomb
back in my hand so I'm ready to do it again should anyone be dumb enough.
On that note, the Tutor Engine for this deck is among the sickest things I've ever designed for EDH. All it takes is for me to draw one of either
Entomb
, Sidisi, Undead Vizier, Buried Alive, Rune-Scarred Demon or
diabolical tutor
and I can assemble a machine that pumps out anything I need whenever I need it.
Here's a sample progression: I draw
Entomb
, I use it to put Woodland Bellower into the graveyard, Meren reanimates it or puts it in my hand, the Bellower brings Eternal Witness into play who then puts
Entomb
back in my hand. Repeat to grab anything you need.
If you draw Buried Alive, you must put a combination of Woodland Bellower, Sidisi, Undead Vizier, Enternal Witness, Rune-Scarred Demon or Hell's Caretaker into the grave if they aren't already. You now have access to your entire library with those cards.
