So this deck started with the idea of fast Commander damage as soon as I saw
Skullbriar, the Walking Grave
. I find it very interesting that he keeps his counters when he dies, and since you can decide to put him back into the command zone instead of anywhere else, he would never lose those counters. A two cost with haste means he can start swinging right away, and I decided that was going to be the main focus. Originally. It didn't play out as good as I'd wanted it to without some kind of of sub-theme. I looked at a ton of different tribal stuff before I even realized that Skullbriar is not a Fungus Horror as it would appear. He is in fact a Zombie Elemental, two tribes that have a lot going for them. I should have noticed the crows and the lack of mushrooms. In Golgari colors though, Zombie was absolutely the way to go. So now we have a wonderful zombie build that I'm pretty excited about.
The main cards that were originally automatic add-ins to work with Skullbriar were Hardened Scales, Winding Constrictor, Doubling Season, Corpsejack Menace, Power Conduit, and Spikes. The Conduit lets me move counters from one creature to another, or remove a counter and put another on itself to gain extra counters from the other enchantments. Then, go after the person that either can't block or would have to throw things they'd rather keep under the bus to stay alive and build up +1/+1 counters like nobody's business. When I decided to add zombies in the mix, Doubling Season became soooooo much more powerful...
Army of the Damned for 26 tokens, please. Flashback? That's Hilarious. Liliana Emblem? Gross. Grave Titan?
Endless Ranks of the Dead
?
Syphon Flesh
to kill up to 3 creatures and give me up to 6? All disgusting when they make twice as many tokens.
Noosegraf Mob
could enter with as many as 12 +1/+1 counters on it (Wait: Corspejack would double the 5 normal counters to 10 and Doubling Season would double the 10 to 20 and then the Constrictor and Scales would add 2 more for up to 22. Jesus.) and then it would make two Zombies every time an opponent casts a spell. Value. Shepherd of Rot can absolutely be a finisher once some of these things are in place, especially if you have Liliana Emblem AND Endless Ranks. Careful though, that hit everyone. Wipe the board all you want, I'm getting at least two creatures an upkeep, but significantly more if you don't get rid of them. This also makes Noxious Ghoul particularly deadly since it would be a board wipe every turn for everyone except you.
Most of the rest of the deck either allows you to move counters with Graft or an activated ability. These are mostly meant to land on Bloodbriar, but whoever has the best chance of winning works too. The
Aetherborn Marauder
could potentially steal a whole bunch of counters and having both Flying and Lifelink could bring you back from the brink of death.
Cytospawn Shambler
has quite a few counters to move around but also has the ability to give Skullbriar, or whoever, Trample as long as they have counters on them which is huge.
Sporeback Troll
also has the ability to enhance someone with a counter on it by giving them all Regeneration for two mana.
There's a bit of reanimation to buy back lost Creatures, Lands, and even Artifacts. Too bad I can't buy back Enchantments, but oh well. Can't have it all. There's even a bit of Tutoring going on with Behold the Beyond, Demonic Tutor, and Green Sun's Zenith. Crucible of Worlds lets me fetch for lands every turn or just play regular land that may have been destroyed or had been discarded. Life from the Loam is an interesting Dredge card that also lets me pick back up my fetch lands to help thin out my deck of lands and can bury creatures and things that I can buy back.
Ob Nixilis, the Fallen
Approves. Glissa, the Traitor buys back my Artifacts if they get picked on. Nothing too crazy, but
Ring of Kalonia
, Nightmare Lash, and Lashwrithe all on the same creature (like Skullbriar) while Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth makes all of my non-swamps swamps would give something like +20/+20 or more and Trample. Not likely, but it's there. Reanimate,
Baloth Null
, Liliana, the Last Hope, and the mother of all reanimation spells Zombie Apocolypse are all there to keep your army building. The Apocolypse is great with the Dredge options since you don't have to worry about dumping corpses into your graveyard.
I also played around with Scavenge for the first time since they can be used to toss extra counters onto Skullbriar.
Slitherhead
is a great early drop that is useful for a free counter(s), and
Dreg Mangler
is nice too.
Shambling Shell
is probably my favorite recurring counter generator. Too bad I couldn't find more like him. Forgotten Ancient is like Managorger Hydra but a little harder to kill with 3 starting toughness and has the much better ability to shift counters around. If you know your opponent's deck and think this guy will be around he makes a great target to dump extra counters onto and then move strategically around your field every upkeep depending on what enhancers you have out.
Fungal Behemoth
for as much mana as you can handle is great at any stage of the game to Suspend and just gain extra counters every upkeep until he lands and becomes rather large.
That's about it. There are other tricks and synergies with other fatties but they are more obvious. I guess the last thing to point out is that the Spikes can put counters back onto themselves which goes well with the extra counter cards. Spike Feeder is particularly nice since he can eat those counters to gain life. The others aren't quite as good since you have to spend mana to use them, but the
Spike Hatcher
simply comes in with a ton of counters and can be regenerated which is nice, and the
Spike Rogue
can move counters back and forth to grow free counters with extra mana. The Spike Weaver made the cut as well for protection since it can prevent combat damage. There's no reason it should ever run out of counters either which is nice. If you can regenerate it with the Shambler or protect it (and every other non-token for that matter) with Cauldron of Souls from board wipes or removal you should be well protected.
On that note, the Cauldron is especially cool since so many things come in with +1/+1 counters so Persist just makes them come back with one less and they can saved nearly indefinitely. Even if something did have a -1/-1 counter on it there are a ridiculous number of ways to get rid of it by just adding +1/+1 counters. Give literally everything Persist every turn (well, once a round) and you should be in good shape. Board wipe? Alright, hang on. Let me tap this weird bowl face thing real quick first.
There, that should do it this time :) I'm excited at the outcome of this deck. It has a lot of interesting intermingling parts that basically result in a killer zombie deck and a viable strategy to win quickly with Commander damage. I can't wait to see how it does with my playgroup, we've been doing a lot more Commander lately and we all have a TON of decks and ideas to play with. This is very different than anything I currently have and so far nobody else has gone down the zombie or counter path. Aw, shit, I just remembered Verdurous Gearhulk! Alright, well there goes a Swamp. I'd have recursion for him as both an Artifact and a Creature, and those counters would be insane...
Hope you like this build and give it a try with me, I think it should prove to be quite powerful and fun to play :)
