The Scarab God
Commander (EDH) forum
Posted on July 30, 2017, 9:19 p.m. by phc
I have been thinking about The Scarab God as a commander, and what builds would most benefit from his triggered and activated ability. The two obvious ones are either mill or zombie tribal, but what about some unexpected decks?
Infect: There are almost thirty infect creatures available to a blue and black deck. Two of the issues around these creatures is a high CMC and low power. What if you could have a 4/4 Blighted Agent or Plague Stinger ? Rather than hard casting your infect creatures, self mill them into your graveyard and eternalize them.
Arcbound: This deck type is trying to get double value over the various arcbound creatures. Not only will eternalize bring them back as a 4/4, but with their +1/+1 counters as well.
Eldrazi: This one is a little tricky, and probably would not work as a dedicated Eldrazi deck. However the various Eldrazi Processor cards allow you to put one or more of your opponent's cards from exile into their graveyard. Those cards could then be eternalized again by The Scarab God. Two of the Eldrazi Processors have activated abilities, the Oracle of Dust and Cryptic Cruiser . With an infinite mana source you could create an infinite number of eternalized creature tokens from your opponent's graveyards.
Any suggestions for other curveball decks with The Scarab God?
Epochalyptik says... #3
Arcbound Reclaimer is the only arcbound creature worth considering in Commander, and even it's not a great all-around include.
July 30, 2017 10:39 p.m.
RoarMaster says... #4
I quite liked his "Scry/Die" ability myself. Although the token making is quite handy as well.
As far as sort of odd ways to use him, you could run a lot of random token generators and Conspiracy and Xenograft to make them all zombies.
Personally I was thinking of using some of the better zombie token creation cards with a few crazy synergies to snowball a win over the course of a couple of turns. Use the scry to find Mind Unbound and Zombie Infestation to draw a ton and discard to make more zombies to power more ScryDieing. Alternatively trying to get a Tombstone Stairwell and Endless Ranks of the Dead out to make shwackloads of zombies if you have a stocked 'yard. Hopefully keeping everyones grave filled with a Mesmeric Orb. And since Stairwell is there, Vengeful Dead and friends will trigger on mine and my opponents zombie tokens dying at EoT. Although Im generally against donating card slots to straight mill cards, Traumatize has some added use in this deck and has been a pet card for many, so it could be fun to run Fraying Sanity alongside it as a 'One-Two Punch' sort of thing.
All sorts of fun ways to win, while still making zombies, I love it!
July 31, 2017 5:19 a.m.
Karns_Pyromancer says... #5
The list I'm brewing is a mashup of Teferi (Mono) Stax & Mono prison.
The zombies will come from the general & cards like Gravecrawler. The Scarab God is a wincon & enabler on his own so I think this should be a decent deck.
July 31, 2017 10:37 a.m.
RoarMaster thank you for pointing out Zombie Infestation. I run that with Alesha, Who Smiles at Death, but the enchantment has so much more synergy with The Scarab God.
July 31, 2017 5:27 p.m.
I just realized how gross The Scarab God is with Mindcrank. Now your opponents are losing life and cards, which gives you more targets for The Scarab God's activated ability.
July 31, 2017 5:32 p.m.
RoarMaster says... #8
phc Good catch with Mindcrank! Might as well toss in Bloodchief Ascension and\or Duskmantle Guildmage too.
DrLitebur says... #2
You have the obvious zombie tribal, and the not too obvious Mill deck, and with this commander, Mill can be self-targeting or targeting your opponent. Combine with Phenax, God of Deception and Lazav, Dimir Mastermind and one of my personal favs in Geth, Lord of the Vault and you have a really decent mill base to work with.
July 30, 2017 10:10 p.m.