Unshackled, not Unshuffled

Commander / EDH*

Kingtalk

Creature (32)

• 1x Accursed Centaur
• 1x Anowon, the Ruin Sage
• 1x Blood Artist
• 1x Blood Speaker
• 1x Bloodgift Demon
• 1x Cathodion
• 1x Crypt Ghast
• 1x Endless Cockroaches
• 1x Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder
• 1x Flesh Carver
• 1x Flesh-Eater Imp
• 1x Fleshbag Marauder
• 1x Golden Guardian  ^Flip
• 1x Grim Haruspex
• 1x Infectious Host
• 1x Insidious Bookworms
• 1x Kokusho, the Evening Star
• 1x Lawless Broker
• 1x Magus of the Coffers
• 1x Maralen of the Mornsong
• 1x Merciless Executioner
• 1x Ogre Slumlord
• 1x Plague Spitter
• 1x Razaketh, the Foulblooded
• 1x Reassembling Skeleton
• 1x Runed Servitor
• 1x Sadistic Hypnotist
• 1x Shimian Specter
• 1x Shriekmaw
• 1x Stronghold Assassin
• 1x Torgaar, Famine Incarnate
• 1x Vindictive Lich

Sorcery (13)

• 1x Bitter Ordeal
• 1x Choice of Damnations
• 1x Cranial Extraction
• 1x Curse of the Cabal
• 1x Diabolic Revelation
• 1x Head Games
• 1x Killing Wave
• 1x Nightmare Incursion
• 1x Perish the Thought
• 1x Praetor's Grasp
• 1x Read the Bones
• 1x Sadistic Sacrament
• 1x Victimize

Land (33)

• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Cabal Stronghold
• 1x Field of Ruin
• 1x Ghost Quarter
• 1x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
• 1x Rogue's Passage
• 25x Swamp
• 1x Temple of the False God
• 1x Westvale Abbey  ^Flip

Instant (5)

• 1x Extirpate
• 1x Malicious Affliction
• 1x Sudden Spoiling
• 1x Surgical Extraction
• 1x Tragic Slip

Commander (1)

Artifact (10)

• 1x Cranial Archive
• 1x Grinning Totem
• 1x Jester's Cap
• 1x Jester's Mask
• 1x Jet Medallion
• 1x Lantern of Insight
• 1x Nim Deathmantle
• 1x Semblance Anvil
• 1x Skullclamp
• 1x Sol Ring

Enchantment (6)

• 1x Oversold Cemetery
• 1x Painful Quandary
• 1x Palace Siege
• 1x Pestilence
• 1x Phyrexian Arena
• 1x Phyrexian Reclamation

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Hope your opponents have their cards sleeved, because they're gonna be shuffling.

Hey all, welcome to the Thunderdome. Today I'll be presenting to you my Ob Nixilis Unshackled deck tech. I've run this guy in a lot of black decks in my time because he gives you pretty good passive value, as Ob Nixilis is one to do. The +1/+1 counters for something dying is sweet, and maybe your opponent slips up and uses a fetch land, that's rad too. What we're doing today though is building a deck whose sole purpose is to make our opponents shuffle their decks as much as possible, and maybe we search for a few cards from their deck and exile em too.

Looking through EDHRec's page for Ob Nixilis Unshackled, one glaring thing I noticed was that there wasn't a single card on the page that made your opponents shuffle their deck. So I asked myself "How many cards are there out there that have this effect, and why aren't more people playing them?" The answer is a two-parter: There's plenty of cards with this effect in mono-black, and the reason why nobody is playing them is because for Ob Nixilis to trigger your opponent has to SEARCH their library, not just shuffle it. I didn't realize this until after I built the deck, but whatever. Let me introduce you to my deck tech, I like going in depth about the deck and laying out different themes and the thought process behind my includes, so without any further adieu: let's hop into it!

I'm going to start off with our categories of effects: Shufflers, Pingers, Recursion, Removal, Sac Outlets, and General Cruelty

Now the reason I built the deck was because I thought that whenever your opponent SHUFFLED their deck Ob Nixilis would trigger, not the case. Reading the card made me realize that all too quickly. Regardless though, we march forward. I've since cut out a few cards that made my opponents shuffle for the hell of it, and added in some more useful stuff. There's an effect in mono black that goes hand in hand with searching your opponent's library though, and we'll focus on that for this segment. The effect is that you look for cards and exile them! Let's start out with Creatures that give us effect, there's only two. Shimian Specter is a flyer that allows us to look at our opponent's hand get rid of any card our little heart desires whenever it does combat damage, pretty sweet. The next creature on our list is one that actually does what Ob Nixilis wants to do! Maralen of the Mornsong is so nasty in this deck, your opponent gets to tutor for a card, but they lose 13 life and sac a creature in the process, they're likely gonna be looking for removal. Hopefully we can search for that on their behalf though, and keep it in exile where it's nice and safe. Praetor's grasp lets us look for something and exile it to be cast by us later on in the game, I like it. Nightmare Incursion and Sadistic Sacrament can basically tear someone's deck apart. Bitter ordeal is incredible in a deck where we're trying to sacrifice and kill stuff. Head Games is just hilarious, give your opponent all their worst stuff. Jester's Mask does the same thing, just takes an extra turn to do it.

Next, let's look at pingers. Ob Nixilis will ping people in a profound way if they try to tutor, or if we trick them into doing it, but let's look at other pays to do incremental damage. Obviously Maralen falls into this category as well as the prior one, Plague Spitter will also give you some incremental damage, and take care of any token problems you might have. Infectious Host, Kokusho the Evening Star and Vindictive Lich give you dies triggers that make them prime sac material. Blood artist does the aristocrats thing that we know and love, and Pestilence is just a great utility card for the board state that also hurts our opponents a bit in the process. I didn't go to heavy on this theme because I just built a Torgaar deck where this is one of the the main categories of effect.

Now we touched briefly on sac mechanics while talking about some of our pingers that have dies triggers, Ob Nixilis wants things to die, such a twisted guy. We want to do what he wants, just works better that way in my experience. So assuming we're gonna have a bunch of stuff dying, let's try and prepare for that. Phyrexian Reclamation, Palace Siege, and Oversold Cemetery will give us great recursion on a regular basis, making it much easier to pull off the combos we want. Nim Deathmantle is also a notable mention in this category in my opinion, very underrated equipment.

Now, it wouldn't be mono-black without removal. And ya, we've got some. Accursed Centaur, Fleshbag Marauder, and Merciless Executioner will all let us sac something whilst making our opponents do the same. Ob Nixilis is just gonna get so many counters. Shriekmaw is also a cheap 2 for 1 to trigger Ob Nixilis. Killing Wave does a ton of work for us as well.

Date added	6 years
Last updated	5 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	1 - 0 Mythic Rares 44 - 0 Rares 19 - 0 Uncommons 11 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.52
Tokens	Golem 4/4 C, Horror */* B, Human Cleric 1/1 BW, Morph 2/2 C, Rat 1/1 B, Thrull 1/1 B
Folders	Commander