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Xantcha, Woke Agent

Commander / EDH* pokepower116

SCORE: 102 | 45 COMMENTS | 16879 VIEWS | IN 40 FOLDERS

Update 3/5/2019 —March 5, 2019

I've made quite a few changes to the deck since the last update on August 28th. Since the deck has been in a constant state of flux I'll just list some of the most notable additions/removals.

Additions: Crypt Ghast, Cabal Coffers, Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, Bedlam, Worldgorger Dragon, Animate Dead, Dance of the Dead

Removals: Sire Of Insanity, Pain Magnification, Necrogen Mists, Harsh Mentor, Heartless Hidetsugu, Dire Fleet Ravager

Additions:

Crypt Ghast, Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, and Cabal Coffers -- More ways for this deck to generate large amounts of mana to sink into Xantcha or just to play spells.

Worldgorger Dragon, Animate Dead, and Dance of the Dead -- Infinite combo to win the game on the spot if your opponents don't have interaction. I describe it in depth in the description.

Bedlam -- We run very little creatures so we don't care about blocking and this stops opponents from chump blocking Xantcha or blocking with a big enough creature to remove her.

Removals:

Sire Of Insanity, Pain Magnification, and Necrogen Mists -- The discard route wasn't as great in playtesting as I had originally hoped. I still like running a bit of discard in this deck but I felt like these 3 cards were the worst of the ones I was running.

Heartless Hidetsugu and Dire Fleet Ravager -- Heartless rarely ever had the chance to untap and Dire Fleet isn't as great if you don't have a way of replaying it.

Harsh Mentor -- Discouraged opponents from ever activating Xantcha.

Gleeock says... #1

  • Yeah, I saw you mention Enchanter's Bane, alot of people dumping on this card without alot of playtesting. There are definitely pros & cons, but I am mostly seeing the cons mentioned on public sites (which are significant); However...
  • Pros:
  • 2 cmc, pretty good to cast 1 turn prior to Xantcha
  • Repetitive dmg, people say 3 dmg average, even repeated is tiddlywinks... not true when your deck has multiple sources of incremental dmg. Also, there isn't a vast array of 2 cmc enchantments that will repetitively deal 3 dmg average without sinking additional mana into it.
  • If you play a bit of slug without HEAVY control focus you don't care about your opponent choosing the "lesser of 2 evils" for themselves. The fact of the matter is that they are taking a different form of punishment either way. They take some damage, I'm happy, they sac an enchantment I'm happy. They realize too late in the game they should have sacced, I'm happy.
  • Rattlesnake: unusual effect of potentially forcing opponents to hold their enchantments rather than play them, or become political with their Overwhelming Splendor usage.
  • God-Enchantments, pretty fun vs. indestructible god commanders. Gods average 4 cmc, average 4 dmg/turn. Or the sac. effect actually applies to them at least.
August 28, 2018 1:44 p.m.

SynergyBuild says... #2

+1 for any deck running discard-politics with Xantcha and Oppression ;)

BTW, along those lines Bottomless Pit and Necrogen Mists can work as well, why don't you run them?

December 18, 2018 10:42 a.m.

pokepower116 says... #3

SynergyBuild I actually love the idea of both of those cards! I've never even seen Bottomless Pit before and Necrogen Mists was on my radar when I first started building this deck but ended up falling off somehow.

Any suggestions on cuts? Leaning towards Dismember, Fraying Omnipotence, Pox, and Decree of Pain

December 18, 2018 12:18 p.m.

SynergyBuild says... #4

Decree&Omipotence can be dropped.

December 18, 2018 12:22 p.m.

Yawgmoth73 says... #5

I found a good thing to attach to Xantcha is Treacherous Link .

February 12, 2019 7:59 a.m.

speedykoala says... #6

pokepower116 - had the opportunity to pilot this deck a few times this past weekend, had an absolute blast.

Question with the strategy though - how do you keep people from attacking out of retribution for the groupslug damage going around? I was able to get No Mercy up for one game, and Crawlspace for another, but it reached a point in the game where all of my opponents allied to just attack me and take me out of the game over the course of one round. Does more politics-ing help with this? Getting more pillowfort up faster?

March 4, 2019 8:50 p.m.