Creature (23)
- 1x Academy Rector
- 1x Aven Mindcensor
- 1x Bane of the Living
- 1x Containment Priest
- 1x Crypt Ghast
- 1x Crypt Rats
- 1x Deathbringer Regent
- 1x Dimir House Guard
- 1x Eidolon of Rhetoric
- 1x Erebos, God of the Dead
- 1x Eternal Dragon
- 1x Ethersworn Canonist
- 1x Gray Merchant of Asphodel
- 1x Hushwing Gryff
- 1x Linvala, Keeper of Silence
- 1x Necrotic Sliver
- 1x Recruiter of the Guard
- 1x Stoneforge Mystic
- 1x Sun Titan
- 1x Thrashing Wumpus
- 1x Twilight Prophet
- 1x Weathered Wayfarer
- 1x Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed
Enchantment (10)
Land (33)
- 1x Bojuka Bog
- 1x Boseiju, Who Shelters All
- 1x Cabal Coffers
- 1x Caves of Koilos
- 1x City of Brass
- 1x Command Tower
- 1x Concealed Courtyard
- 1x Fetid Heath
- 1x Godless Shrine
- 1x Isolated Chapel
- 1x Kor Haven
- 1x Mana Confluence
- 1x Marsh Flats
- 3x Plains
- 1x Reliquary Tower
- 1x Scrubland
- 1x Serra's Sanctum
- 1x Shambling Vent
- 9x Swamp
- 1x Tainted Field
- 1x Temple of Silence
- 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
- 1x Volrath's Stronghold
Artifact (10)
Commander (1)
Sorcery (12)
- 1x Austere Command
- 1x Bubbling Muck
- 1x Damnation
- 1x Debt to the Deathless
- 1x Decree of Pain
- 1x Demonic Tutor
- 1x Diabolic Intent
- 1x Exsanguinate
- 1x Grim Discovery
- 1x Merciless Eviction
- 1x Open the Armory
- 1x Wrath of God
Instant (6)
Planeswalker (5)
Sideboard
Sorcery (2)
Creature (2)
Maybeboard
Creature (5)
- 1x Angel of the Dire Hour
- 1x Keening Apparition
- 1x Magister of Worth
- 1x Myojin of Night's Reach
- 1x Thrashing Wumpus
Enchantment (1)
Sorcery (4)
Foreward
Surprised to see a lot of reanimator and even more Shadowborn Apostle style decks for this general and nothing else. I felt like putting what I have out there and hopefully it helps someone!
Concept and Choice Inclusions
Let it be said first that this deck deviates from traditional cut and paste Orzhov Reanimator style decks. The choice of running Athreos, God of Passage as your general suggests it may be in our best interest to discard hopes of running a reanimator strategy (perhaps o.g Teysa, Ghost Council of Orzhova, or Vish Kal can get may help you in better fashion if that is what you seek). The decision to forego this cookie cutter build really allows us to explore some other ideas that might not only work well in an Athreos deck, but might be its defining attributes above other choices and play styles.
We begin by referring to well known deck featuring Pestilence in an alternative format known as pauper; a primer on that specific deck can be found here:
http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/the-game/casual-related-formats/casual-primers/167703-primer-decks-pestilence
The general idea features the use of pestilence and creatures with protection from black or indestructibility to keep the enchantment on the field. We can transplant this concept into the foundation of our deck. Since Athreos is indestructible, if we keep it online then pestilence will also stay on the field. By itself, this idea can hardly sustain a fully functioning deck - but exploring the mechanics around this will lead us to other inclusions.
Notably, Crypt Rats and Thrashing Wumpus come to mind as cards with parallel effects to Pestilence, but with a slight trade-off. Pestilence loves to keep our general online, but the Wumpus and Rats don't care either way. They instead interact with the second mechanic of our general - upon death one of our opponents has to make a choice between letting us potentially resolve another pestilence-effect in the future, or paying 3 life to keep that creature in the yard.
If we were running typical reanimator targets, such as perhaps a Rune-Scarred Demon or Angel of Despair the choice would likely be easier one way or the other in accordance with circumstance (put the creature in the zone that is least accessible to the Athreos player) With Crypt Rats, the story is slightly different; a typical scenario may have us tapping a Cabal Coffers on an opponents turn for repeated activations on the Rats; suddenly the difference of three life after losing anywhere between 5-10 becomes disheartening...the choice to put that creature into your graveyard is, 9 times out of 10, usually the correct one for the sake of the table's survival. However, the three life spent to keep it there puts that player at a distinct life disadvantage. Normally, life-total is not treated as seriously of a measure of winning or losing in any regards in EDH, but this is exactly where this deck will hit our opponents. In short, we seek to reinforce the idea that life is a resource, and we will use more of it and have more of it than our opponents.
Of course, either choice made from our Athreos trigges is perfectly fine with us. We're running Volrath's Stronghold, Phyrexian Reclamation, Haunted Crossroads, and Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed anyway.
We can assume that a plan to get the most out of pestilence and company must be supplied with a large amount of black mana. The way you do this in your own implementation is entirely up to you, we have a lot of big mana options to choose from in black alone;
Big Mana Options Show
My current list uses only crypt ghast, cabal coffers/urborg, black market, and bubbling muck but I might change that for future revisions. We can build on the coffers with Vesuva, Thespian's Stage, and Deserted Temple, which by themselves are already versatile. You might consider leaning more on the creature-side rather than artifact side for big-mana acquisition, as it increases the frequency of your Athreos triggers. Black Market is solid in the deck by itself and furthermore increases our devotion count.
On that note, devotion is worth putting into consideration, because we'll be utilizing it to turn our general between "on" and "off" states for our own benefit. This includes avoiding spot removal, mass creature removal, and creating or eliminating our own board presence for combat purposes or otherwise. Being indestructible by itself doesn't cut it against the likes of Swords to Plowsheres, Path to Exile, etc...so being able to turn our general from a creature back into just an enchantment is a viable defense mechanism if we are able to manipulate our devotion at instant speed. To this end we have Aura of Silence, and Seal of Cleansing (with others of the similar ilk Seal of Doom, Executioner's Capsule, Dispeller's Capsule) Necrotic Sliver, Flickering Ward. These cards very viable in their own right but serve doubly as devotion manipulators. Seal of Cleansing and Aura of Silence hit the board early to disrupt opponents and can stick around for devotion, while Necrotic Sliver's vindicate ability can be used for a 3 life sting or a political leverage upon Athreos' trigger. Flickering ward has a number of uses, most obvious of which we can give our Crypt Rats or Wumpus protection from Black and blast away at board states and life totals. Crypt Rats and Thrashing Wumpus can additionally be used in this way to save our general if need be. A final note to this section, someone who truly wishes to keep our general from the battlefield can do so, albeit with greater difficulty than normal (barring usual counter spells, we consider Return to Dust and Merciless Eviction in first and second thoughts, and as of SOI we have Anguished Unmaking and Nahiri, the Harbinger will do just fine), but from a big box perspective that may be a wasted spell that could be better spent disrupting a combo, stopping a game-ending play, etc (More on this later). Lets move onto recurring creatures.
The use of the word recur here implies that one does care about graveyard to hand interactions, and does not care about graveyard-to-battlefield interactions, in fact this is perhaps one of the few orzhov colored decks that can afford to symmetrically hate reanimation. You could even choose to go as far as hate ETB effects (though my list moves in a different direction). Thusly, Containment Priest makes the cut. This card is phenomenal and I wish more people would run it - you can come up with your own list of EDH powerhouse staples that get hosed by this card but I'll throw out Tooth and Nail, Living Death, Sneak Attack, and Deadeye Navigator for starters. The gravy here is that the flash doesn't just let us hose game-ending cards at instant speed, but also ticks our devotion up by one if we need our general online to block. By association we can mention Aven Mindcensor and even Hushwing Gryff (and Torpor Orb while you're at it) if you want to run low or nil on ETB creature count.
Speaking of ETB effects, many of the creatures that I will be recurring are meant specifically to interact from being cast from your hand; which is in line with the synergy that Athreos provides by allowing opponents to send cards to our hand instead of staying in the graveyard. Interestingly enough, I noticed that a lot of these cards meant specifically to be cast from hand happen to have mass removal on ETB triggers - and it just so happens that our general is quite resilient to most common wrath effects (Can you feel the synergy?)
Our list of possible creature-wrath includes; Show
I supplement this with a usual suite of sorcery speed mass removal and then some;
Possible Wrath Includes Show
From here we can begin fleshing out the rest of the deck in usual fashion.
Equipments: Show
Draw and Planeswalkers: Show
Spot Removal Show
Tutor Package: Show
Misc Show
Closing and Deck Philosophy
It was aforementioned that first our general is resilient to most common forms of removal and yet still vulnerable to some (and this number of usable removal grows with time) and second that I chose not to include lightning greaves in my list. This is a great jumping point to conclude this deck overview.
It is beneficial to not be attached to Athreos, at least to the point of obsession in terms of his board presence or lack-thereof. We are playing one of the worst generals available in our color, and its absolutely important to drive that point home. Many primers for other generals will emphasize the importance of sitting back and appearing harmless so everyone wastes their removal and answers else where. In this kind of deck, we won't have a choice in the matter - this should deliberately feel like an underdog deck because it was designed that way in nature. Even the mechanics of the God of Passage himself suggest political play and constant social interaction. With an overwhelmingly powerful general that begs powerhouse cards this style of underdog politics is not consistently feasible. With Athreos as our leader we encourage, and even force our opponents to play our "game of thrones" The fundamental idea driving this is that you will always give them the choice - hand or graveyard. In short, we employ the often lost and forgotten concept behind the social format that is EDH and Commander, the "social" part.
You may find that people don't take your deck seriously, the first, fifth, or tenth time - and opponents that attempt to can't pinpoint a moment when Athreos or the deck itself ever had a game defining moment. That's simply because we exist in a format where massive combos and infinite big/big's sweep across the board in truly convincing and game-ending fashion; but we choose to instead play the a game of inches. Whether you decide to use anything from this list in your own design or not, I think its important to understand that when building any kind of Athreos deck- good luck brewing!
Possible Includes and Testing
Twilight Prophet So far I'm liking this card, but I do have to acknowledge there's a lot of stuff going on already at the 4 drop slot, which isn't exactly a problem since this card likes to hit the board in the later turns anyway, the built in evasion is also nice to throw a sword on as well.
Spreading Plague Clearly, we aren't going to directly affect anything in the Temur wedge. That's perfectly fine, since its very likely our opponents will be hurting themselves if this enchantment is on board. Athreos has no problem with this card, and most of our creatures are relatively indifferent to how they are affected, death only means more triggers on our general.
Update: After some playtesting, I can indeed say this card is absolutely nuts! I'm moving it into sideboard from maybe-board.
Spirit Loop This card can serve a plethora of useful synergies here. Exile excluded, we will always get this card back to our hand when it falls off (avoiding a 2-for-1 deficit), it adds to our devotion count, and we can throw it on our crypt rats or wumpus for massive amounts of life gain. Additionally, we can toss it on an opponents fatty to ward off or nullify attacks.
UPDATE - This card can do work in this build but make sure you can get enough mileage with it to justify including it in your list.
Gray Merchant of Asphodel Since we can expect a decent board state (minimum 3 black devotion with the merchant and Athreos), this card plays into our strategy very well.
UPDATE - This card works really well, definitely recommend!
Kokusho, the Evening Star I hesitate on this card simply because I don't run instant speed sac outlets in this deck. This opens up a lot of vulnerabilities such as Swords, Paths, and of course Rite of Replication. However, I must acknowledge the power and synergy this card provides for us.
Kami of False Hope This card is great politics for everyone involved. A one drop that you can use to save a friend or foe (or yourself), then negotiate for its safe return to your hand because the Rafiq player had an absurd opening hand and simply needs to be kept in check.
Myojin of Night's Reach Most likely ends games. If our opponents are slow playing their hand because they know you're running plenty of wrath-effects and spreading plague, this is how you punish them.
Yawgmoth's Will Lets you cast cards from the yard, which does dodge containment priest but you won't get value from having certain creatures cast from your hand.
Recruiter of the Guard This certainly hits a lot of key cards in my build - I'll be keeping acquiring this card as soon as possible to see what I can do with it.
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Feel free to check it out
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Revision 8 See all
(5 years ago)
| +1 | Grafdigger's Cage | main |
| -1 | Greater Auramancy | main |
| +1 | Grim Discovery | main |
| -1 | Mind's Eye | main |
| +1 | Open the Armory | main |
| +1 | Thrashing Wumpus | main |
| +1 | Toxic Deluge | maybe |
| +1 | Twilight Prophet | main |
| -1 | Underworld Connections | main |
| +1 | Vindicate | maybe |
| Top Ranked |
|
| Date added | 10 years |
| Last updated | 5 years |
| Legality | This deck is Commander / EDH legal. |
| Rarity (main - side) | 18 - 0 Mythic Rares 43 - 4 Rares 18 - 4 Uncommons 9 - 0 Commons |
| Cards | 100 |
| Avg. CMC | 3.24 |
| Tokens | City's Blessing, Emblem Liliana of the Dark Realms, Morph 2/2 C, Vampire Knight 1/1 B |
| Folders | EDH, Black/White, Inspiration, Fun Looking Stuff, Commander, favorites, commander/edh, EDH - ideas, deck ideas, Commander Deck |
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