Help with Reaper King EDH

Deck Help forum

Posted on April 19, 2015, 2:55 a.m. by Valentine35

Ok so i know the way to go with Reaper King is to use either Shapeshifters/Changelings or Scarecrows. I wanted to use a mixture of both, but im not sure where to start. All of the decks ive seen focus solely on getting Reaper King out on the field. But what i need help with, is making a deck that doesnt need The King of Scarecrows out all the time. My playgroup tends to play with a lot of removal and boardwipes. So i got the basics down...use stuff like Xenograft, Rite of Replication, and so forth, but what else can i do to ensure a win without The King?

Krakshot says... #2

A) Play various goodstuff to ensure the deck preforms regardless of whether or not your commander ever hits the board (like most Cromat or Oloro, Ageless Ascetic decks are)

B) Play stupid infinite combos as a supplement to the changeling theme.

April 19, 2015 4:25 a.m.

Necrotize says... #3

As Krakshot said, your deck needs to be able to function well without your commander. Reaper King has a huge target on his head most of the time because people hate getting their stuff blown up, even if he is really slow. Unfortunately, most changelings and scarecrows aren't very strong on their own and usually require combos and interactions to be powerful.

It wouldn't be hard though to build a general artifact based deck then supplement it with scarecrows and changelings. I think the problem people make most of the time is they fill the deck with changelings and scarecrows, expecting to use all of them with Reaper King, then when he gets removed quickly(like he usually does), they're just left with a bunch of sub-par creatures.

In fact, you could combine artifact decks from Esper and mono-red(Daretti) with some green for ramp and mana fixing and probably make a fairly functional deck. Just leave some space for scarecrows, cards like Xenograft and Conspiracy. Unfortunately, the further you drift from MUD combo, the more expensive your land base is going to be.

April 19, 2015 9:18 a.m.

Tomahawk-Bang says... #4

I had the same problem when I decided that I must build a Reaper King EDH deck for myself. I didn't want to build with sub-par changelings and/or scarecrows, but I also didn't want the dck to contain infinite combos (because this is frowned upon in my most common playgroup). And I already have a dedicated artifact deck, so this was out for me too...

Thus I decided to go a totally different route. I use clones to copy my Reaper King and make use of the vindicate function he offers and I use a lot of recursion to get more than one use out of my stuff. If my King gets killed too often, then the clones will still help me to move forward by either cloning my other badass legendary creatures or by cloning my opponents big guys. Here is a link to the deck if you want to take a look at it:


The Clone Wars - Reaper King EDH Playtest

Commander / EDH Tomahawk-Bang

SCORE: 8 | 8 COMMENTS | 1142 VIEWS

Don't let the deck's price tag scare you off. Simply exchange all the dual lands, fetchlands and shocklands for cheaper dual-color lands, like guildgates, ETB-tapped-Fetches (Grasslands, Krosan Verge) or the ETB-tapped and gain 1 life duals from DTK-block, then you should already have saved a lot of money.

April 19, 2015 9:57 a.m.

Zyxix says... #5

Here's my Reaper King build - It's harvest time. I went for a couple scarecrows and changelings, ramp, tutors, and infinite combos. The deck preforms fairly well, what's weird is that I've won more 1v1 matches with it than pod matches.

April 19, 2015 6:46 p.m.

This discussion has been closed