Grave Titan or Wurmcoil engine
Commander Deck Help forum
Posted on July 14, 2015, 2 p.m. by CuteSnail
I've had both in Lili's Revelation and the deck is reaching a completed status, thus making cuts are hard.
Both have their upsides,
Tokens are not vanilla, and 3/3's
Colourless
Lifelink + Deathtouch
Tokens are immediate
Chance to get more tokens upon swinging
Bigger body
Deathtouch
So, which to you think is better? They both are six drops and are good reaninator targets.
If you'd like to find a nonramp spot for either, I'd be willing to hear it. (That means my 0 drop mana rocks are staying in.)
July 14, 2015 2:19 p.m.
buildingadeck says... #4
Haha! I got you. Hmm. You are right. Grave Titan forms good synergy with Graveborn Muse and a general Zombie theme, so I think I have to say that one.
Plus, the tokens for Wurmcoil Engine in the quantity you want them as a reanimator would be pretty costly.
July 14, 2015 2:25 p.m.
Depends on your meta. Control heavy metas benefit more from the Wurm while creature heavy ones benefit more from the titan. Is lifegain important to you?
July 14, 2015 3:15 p.m.
It's generally a creature heavy aggro meta but ai can deal with them. I have issues with combo control.
I'd like the life gain to counteract Graveborn Muse and general beats.
July 14, 2015 3:17 p.m.
You could cut 1 land and have the best of both, you seem to have more than enough rocks and mana duplication to allow being 36 lands.
July 14, 2015 4:55 p.m.
I don't know how often you get a board state going or how competitive your play group is, but I would toss both in and drop the grey merchant or gravecrawler.
As far as suggestions for the deck go, I think Soul of Innistrad is awesome, Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief is awesome, Ghoulcaller Gisa is awesome if a bit slow, Burnished Hart is absolutely fantastic, especially with Phyrexian Reclamation, and Myojin of Night's Reach is probably the dirties card you can play in multiplayer edh.
Infernal Darkness is a great lock out, Beseech the Queen is a fantastic tutor, Phyrexian Arena and Necropotence would be great (and both Ivory Tower and Venser's Journal both work great with necropotence), and if you are really going for a zombie theme, maybe toss in Empty the Pits.
Don't know if you considered any of these but thought i'd throw out some suggestions as these were some of my favorite cards in my mono-black edh deck before I turned it into esper.
July 14, 2015 5:30 p.m.
Akroma's Memorial is probably worse than both these and harder on the curve. its never as good as you want it to be either. imo I'd rather play 6 drops that enhance my baord state and do wonders in combat than play out a 7 drop thats only effective if I've played out powerful creatures already. its just my preference but this kind of effect although really is blatantly win more and is rarely going to impact the board state in the same way a 6/6 death touch token generator would.
July 14, 2015 5:31 p.m.
Not to be a dick or anything, but somebody didn't read the description or updates. kyuuri117, I removed Phyrexian Arena for an easier recurrable Graveborn Muse. Gary often wins games after a Rise of the Dark Realms, as does Akroma's Memorial, Vexton.
Ghoulcaller Gisa is too slow. Her lack of haste, really made her ineffective. Soul of Innistrad is too much mana to be effective to be useful.
I already have Burnished Hart in the deck. I'm considering Myojin of Night's Reach but don't know how much of an actual impact itll have.
Phyrexian Reclamation is slow and resource intensive, thus subpar. Beseech the Queen is a horrible tutor. Black has so many more tutors that are better. It has to reveal and it can only grab cards with cmc below your land count.
Finally, I'm a reanimate deck. I want my creatures. Army of the Damned fits better than Empty the Pits
Again, hope I don't sound like a dick.
July 14, 2015 6:15 p.m.
Yep, the flying and protection don't hurt either. Vexton
July 14, 2015 6:39 p.m.
Orb of Warding could be traded unless you are using it because of a specific player in your playgroup who keeps targeting you with burn or something.
You could also drop 1 or both of your non commander Lilianas seeing as she is your commander so having 3 versions of her may notwork in your favor.
July 14, 2015 7:22 p.m.
Well, I'll admit I didn't check out the deck list. Was on my phone at the time and checking out deck lists is really slow work. Just wanted to throw out ideas. I did read that you said you are usually in multiplayer games instead of 1v1, and as such, the more expensive stuff like Soul of Innistrad is not at all too mana intensive.
I guess my thought is that Rise of the Dark Realms into Gray Merchant probably isn't going to happen very often and as such he probably isn't worth a spot just for that.
As far as Phyrexian Reclamation goes, if you think it's inefficient and too resource intensive, then I don't know what to say other than you probably haven't even tried the card. It's an absolute powerhouse. You just keep replaying your best creatures over and over until your opponent does something about the enchantment. Black shouldn't care about life as a resource anyway, and in EDH you're gifted with 40.
Beseech the Queen is not a horrible tutor. Sure there are better tutors, I never claimed otherwise, but I just checked and your deck list only has Demonic Tutor, Liliana Vess and Buried Alive in it at the moment. And realistically, what are you going to be tutoring for that costs more than six mana anyway? Six lands is super easy to get to in EDH. Besides, I don't know what your budget is and recommending stuff like Grim Tutor and Imperial Seal didn't seem to make any sense.
I guess I offended you in some way with my suggestions, dunno why but sorry.
July 14, 2015 7:24 p.m.
I also run Sidisi, Undead Vizier, and Rune-Scarred Demon. I tried out reclamation, but a was a couple months ago. kyuuri117 I'm not offended, but just trying to explain that I tested most of your suggestions and removed them for various reasons. I'm not mad, just not going to use most of your suggestions.
Atmosbear Hexproof protects my graveyard from a lot of exile effects. Bojuka Bog and the like target the player.
In any event I do welcome all your comments.
July 14, 2015 8:23 p.m.
You're probably not going to like this suggestion, but I think you should swap out Sorin Markov and just side him in for one-on-one games. Same CMC, both have an aggro-like effect, and Sorin is typically only going to be good against one player in EDH, as everybody else at the table is going to work together to get rid of him.
Just a few other points I noticed while looking though the deck:
Since you're already running Rings of Brighthearth, you may want to consider running all the black fetchlands to go with it. Incidental ramping is always nice.
I feel like there are better options for reanimation than Beacon of Unrest. Animate Dead and Necromancy have always seemed better to me as one shots (Sure, Beacon shuffles itself back in, but how many times are you actually going to see it each game, realistically?); Coffin Queen and Dawn of the Dead are more repeatable if you have a sac outlet; and Doomed Necromancer and Hell's Caretaker could be recurred themselves off of Lili better than your bigger creatures (or put on a Mimic Vat, which this deck kinda needs). There's also Corpse Dance, which while it's limited in it's options has the benefit of being both repeatable and instant speed all on it's own.
Do you really need Liliana of the Dark Realms? She's not that great (Four mana landfixer that doesn't ramp?), and she's negetive synergy with your commander.
If any of the card I mentioned were already tested and cut from the deck, apologies, but I'm not going to look though all 18 updates just to make sure I'm not being redundant.
July 15, 2015 10:12 p.m.
sonnet666, again, I hope I don't sound like I'm trying to shut you down but...
I've considered removing Whip of Erebos because I dislike exiling my reanimated creatures so much. A few of the suggested cards exile and have less impact that whip.
I do like Doomed Necromancer, like a lot. I also like Necromancy, I'll have to find my copy.
I already run an alarming amount of nonswamps in the deck, I don't think adding fetches will amount to much other than a bit of life loss.
I like beacon because it also hits artifacts AND my opponents graves.
I like Sorin main board, he demands attention and lets some heat off of me. He'll die in the process, but oh well.
And I adore Liliana of the Dark realms. She often goes unnoticed for a few turns. No one expects a -3 from the "bad Liliana" to kill their dude. And if all else fails, she ensures I make my Swamp landdrops, which is key.
Take my resistance with a grain of salt, I've playtested for 4 moths, these are the cards that has survived 18 rounds of 'what should I remove for this....'
July 16, 2015 12:04 a.m.
A lot of the cards I mentioned only exile as a trigger, if you sacrifice the creature or have it leave the battlefield some other way before that trigger they'll be right back it the graveyard. You can abuse that to reanimate the same creature every turn. Whip of Erebos exiles as a trigger and as a replacement effect, so it can't be abused that way.
Your deck doesn't seem to run a critical mass of sac outlets, so that strategy might not be a perfect fit in this deck, but I thought it was worth mentioning anyway.
July 16, 2015 1:19 a.m.
The Rings of Brighthearth + black fetches seems pretty decent. I mean, if you're that worried about life loss are you even really playing black?
July 16, 2015 1:47 a.m.
He mentions Necropotence in the "cards I'm not running" section.
July 16, 2015 2:06 a.m.
Fill out your hand, go big, or in response to mill that would throw away something you want, assuming you know what the top cards are by some legal means. I fail to see how much 'skill' it requires beyond that. And if the life gets to ya, throw in Venser's Journal.
buildingadeck says... #2
Note that Grave Titan is not a bigger body than Wurmcoil Engine. I tend to prefer the Engine, but I'm a Tron player, so that is slightly biased. The ability to produce a slew of tokens like Grave Titan does is pretty great, but so is Wurmcoil Engine, especially against wrath effects. Is there any reason you can't run both?
July 14, 2015 2:17 p.m.