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Black Suicide - No Pain, No Gain!

Thanks for having a look at my suicide EDH deck. This deck has been changed a lot until now and I might still exchange some cards after further tests. However, the general strategy has worked well so far, actually better than expected. This deck works on the simple principle that paying life is never a problem with 40 starting life, if there is something to gain from the lifeloss.

The most prominent card for that purpose is surely Hatred and with a basically unblockable Commander it's 18 life for killing one opponent on the spot. There's also card draw in the form of Dark Confidant and Dark Tutelage, which puts the cards in my hand instead of drawing (which is great with Necropotence and Chains of Mephistopheles or even with Maralen of the Mornsong) for a bit higher risk than the usual pay 1 life, draw one more effects.

To use Xiahou Dun best, I go for massive discard, mostly double-sided effects such as Delirium Skeins, Mindslicer, Oppression, Bottomless Pit and Pox/Smallpox. I don't care about discarding my whole hand if it disrupts the other players in the game, because I can get the useful pieces back with the commander anyway. To repeat the recursion without having to cast Xiahou Dun from the command zone multiple times, I have lots of one-time and constant reanimation effects in the deck.

Even though I have some ways to quickly reduce everyone's life total (Pox, Sorin Markov, temporal extorsion,...) the deck is played as control. Combo should have a hard time with all the hand disruption and everything with creatures falls to the mass removals and sacrificing effects. In the late game the main win options are the life sucking effects like Grey Merchant of Asphodel, Exsanguinate, Kokusho, the Evening Star or the only inifnite loop Bloodchief Ascension/Mindcrank. I've tried the combo Helm of Obedience/Leyline of the Void here (as it's one of my favourite combos in EDH) but the parts of the bloodchief combo do something on their own, while the helm is useless and the leyline prevents me from stealing creatures out of my opponent's graveyard.

Another notable card is Chains of Mephistopheles. With Anvil of Bogardan I get the following sequence in each player's draw phase:
draw the regular card, discard a card, draw card for anvil and immediately discard again
This means no one will get additional cards in their hands as long as this lock is in play and with no cards left in someone's hand, that player may only cast instants and nothing else. The Anvil itself has the purpose of making everyone draw and discard, so that Liliana's Caress keeps triggering, even if people have no cards in hand left, that I get Quest for the Nihil Stone active even in the late game and that Waste Not continues to produce some value. Of course, drawing additional cards won't work for me either with the Chains but the point is I'm prepared for that and the opponents aren't!

If you have any suggestions as for how to further improve the deck, please leave a comment!

Recently switched the commander, following description is for the deck lead by Maralen of the Mornsong. Show

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The main focus of the deck is now to empty all player's hands very quickly in order to force everyone into topdeck modus. With Amonkhet I've added Archfiend of Ifnir and Liliana, Death's Majesty. The first is really sick with the constant draw and discard in the deck, the second works well with the reanimator aspect.

Noteable changes are the addition of more control elements, such as Ensnaring Bridge, more token producing permanents and a bit more useful creatures to reanimate. Apart from the big creatures, the mana costs have been lowered and only the cheapest mana rocks remain in the deck. I've also added Basilisk Collar for at least a chance of lifegain in a deck that spends life faster than mana. It's cheap enough to be played without disrupting the flow and it can create some advantage in games that last longer than expected.

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Revision 1 See all

(6 years ago)

-1 Innocent Blood main
+1 Liliana's Caress main
-1 Lotus Petal maybe
-1 Ophiomancer main
+1 Quest for the Nihil Stone main
Date added 7 years
Last updated 6 years
Key combos
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

9 - 0 Mythic Rares

45 - 0 Rares

20 - 0 Uncommons

3 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 2.63
Tokens Copy Clone, Faerie Rogue 1/1 B, Zombie 2/2 B
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