Cons with Jarad, or suggestions for Jarad?
Commander Deck Help forum
Posted on Sept. 30, 2015, 10:43 p.m. by benajminmich
Hello, I'm just starting EDH and I think I'm going to use Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord as my commander. My deck will look something like this . I was wondering if there is any cons with Jarad, or any suggestions you have with the deck? I'm going to play in a casual setting and I will play mainly multiplayer. Thank you.
When you say casual setting, are you still talking about winning in one turn off of Jarad?
As a janky casual cards, Heroes' Bane is good. It gets nice and big quickly. Then there's Phyrexian Devourer which just wins. Bonehoard + Reassembling Skeleton is also good.
My advice, put a decklist base together and work from there.
October 1, 2015 12:06 a.m. Edited.
The cons with Jarad... (I used to run him but he never seemed to perform well)
Well, GY hate is very prevalent and cheap. A lot of people run some form of it whether it's Bojuka Bog or otherwise. Jarad loves fatties, and fatties love mana so it is a very mana intensive deck unless you try to cheat them in via GY reanimation (which is the way most Jarad decks go), but that falls victim to what I mentioned earlier. Your only real defense is to give yourself hexproof or shroud so no one can target your GY- something like Witchbane Orb. Sometimes you'll feel like he isn't doing anything, which most of the time is true. Especially when you don't have any cards that fill up your yard (Mesmeric Orb ftw). And he is only useful when you have a creature online to sac, and then you better have the mana available to cast him and activate his ability because otherwise he'll be spot cleaned. Most the time he will be stuck in the command zone and really doesn't interact with the game. However, he can perform some pretty janky combos that can win the game pretty quick.
October 1, 2015 1:19 a.m.
Adding to Flagellum's comment, a big issue with a lot of Jarad decks (or commander decks in general) is that while they try to reduce costs by cheating creatures in, they run next to no dedicated ramp as a consequence. If you want to build the deck then just make sure you run a solid ramp package (between 10-20 ramp effects depending on how aggressive you want to be) and you should be good.
October 1, 2015 1:34 a.m. Edited.
Luckily green has a lot of ramp available. Things like Cultivate, Kodama's Reach, and Far Wanderings are all available for jarad and are edh staples. Not sure of your budget constraints but Lord of Extinction I believe is a must with jarad. Mossbridge Troll, and Kokusho, the Evening Star do wonders and are great. Then there's always the Mikaeus, the Unhallowed and Woodfall Primus interaction.
Gidgetimer says... #2
Link for the lazy: Jarad, Extreme Sub $40 Budget EDH
September 30, 2015 10:47 p.m.