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Curse Commander (mk6.1)

Commander / EDH Bracket 3 UBR (Grixis)

kairu99877

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Land (38)

Instant (4)

Enchantment (24)

Sorcery (11)

Commander (1)

Commander: Lynde, Cheerful Tormentor

Creature (13)

Artifact (8)

Planeswalker (1)

Maybeboard

Land (41)

Artifact (12)

Enchantment (40)

Instant (9)

Planeswalker (1)

Creature (30)

Sorcery (25)

Prologue: I've been playing Magic for around 15 years, though in the last 5 years I've been playing commander only. Until now all of my decks were marked as private and unlisted. I only made one deck public in the past, and that was my standard dinosaur deck I used to play (and won a couple of regional competitions with) but I decided it was about time to makek some of my commander decks public. The version of the deck is in the name (the higher the number, the more it has been tested and reworked). Feel free to take inspiration from my decks or even better, comment your own ideas on what works well or what could be improved as they are an ever imroving process. All of my decks are designed for a Commander / EDH pod with 4 - 6 players and are not designed for 1 on 1 play. I will outline the deck and then segment this description to focus on different combos and aspects of the decks strategy. This description will give you a detailed analysis on the decks features, combos and how its played.

Introduction / Overview: This deck is a curse deck with Lynde, Cheerful Tormentor as the commander. The idea of the deck is to throw up defensive spells and walls while making yourself appear not to be a threat before targetting a single player to sling your curses on. This deck plays defensively as you can only really target 1 player with curses at a time, which is the main weakness of this deck. ITs strengths lie in the abilit to decimate one single target and throw up lots of defenses to dissuade people from attacking you.

Mana Base: As with all of my decks, the deck features 38 lands. with a split of 40% blue and black and about 20% red. I find this to be a sweet spot as most of the decks cards are blue and black, and all red cards included only require a single red. It includes sac lands, dual lands and generally the lands I think run best with the decks colours. The deck features several mana rocks such as Arcane Signet, Dimir Signet (Due to black and blue being the most important mana in the deck) Sol Ring (staple for any deck) and Firemind Vessel which is a little expensive, but I always design my decks with 38 lands to ensure reliable mana in EVERY game. Every deck I have can reliably get 3 lands in the first hand including 1 free mulligan and usually you will almost certainly draw 1 more land to make 4 if the firemind is in the opening hand. While it is pricy, i like it as it can give coloured mana and not only colourless which is almost always useful, especially if you're missing a red (which this deck does not run many of).

Nasty Mana Combo: I run this particular combo in ALL of my black decks as it's just too powerful not to. Cabal Coffers, Cabal Stronghold, Crypt Ghastfoil and Magus of the Coffers can all produce outrageous amounts of mana for every swamp you control while Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth can make all lands be treated as swamp. These combinations can REALLY help you get your mana off the ground in the mid game and get ahead of the curve to play those bigger and more powerful curses. The Final card to note for the mana base is the deck only features 1 counter spell. And that is Mana Drain. This is fantastic simply for being able to not only counter an opposing card, but then letting you use that mana to play something big on the following turn which can be extremely strong in this deck.

General Mana Fixing: The deck also runs a few lands for mana fixing such as Undercity Sewers, Temple of Epiphany, Temple of Deceit and Precognitive Perception which can be great for mana fixing in the early game. Combine this with all the mana rocks and you should never have mana issues with the deck.

The Defenses: Enchantment Defenses: Curses are not super quick or easy to get out, so I made the deck to be quite defensive. Propaganda makes it more difficult to attack you. I love this card because in most play groups, it really just dissuades people from attacking you as it costs them mana, but equally, it does not alienate other players or make them target you. It's great for discreetly disincentivising other players from targetting you. No Mercy will destroy any creature that deals damage to you. This one is a bit more aggressive, and players may try to kill it. But it is still a great way to put opponents off targetting you. Finally, Silent Arbiter also makes it far easier to defend by slowing the entire game down by allowing only one creature to attack per turn.

The Wall: One thng I fell in love with rcently, was fog bank walls. Effectively you play Fog Bank, and then you clone it... Alot... using cards like Endless Evil, Followed Footsteps, Extravagant Replication and Rite of Replicationfoil. This defensive strategy works pretty well against all decks that are aggressive but not voltron decks. It's only real weakness is trample. You might think that copying fogbank is a dumb strategy that does not fit into the deck well, but I will come back to this point later as copying is a critically powerful part of the deck. Fogbank is just a good early game card to copy for defensive purposes.

Board Wipes and Answers: As mentioned earlier, this deck has the potential to get an obscene amount of mana. Therefore, I chose In Garruk's Wake as one of my main board wipes. This deck does not have many creatures, but the ones on your field are critically vital so you want to keep them alive if possible. Whether that be your Fog Bank you've spent turns building up, your commander, Lynde, Cheerful Tormentor, the mana generators such as Crypt Ghastfoil and Magus of the Coffers or other critical board pieces. Aetherspouts punishes opponants who attack you by not only removing all of their attackers from the board, but either preventing them from replaying them, or wasting several turns worth of drawing. This can be punishing to decks without much draw power. And lastly, Cyclonic Rift which is simply a staple in every single blue deck I play. Fitting into the theme of protecting your board while devastating your opponants. The final nasty combo in this section is Flood of Tears which is a board wipe which then (assuming you have 4 permenants, which with this deck you almost certainly will) lets you play any card into play from your hand. If that card just happens to be Omniscience then your opponant really will be in a literal flood of tears.

Draw Power / Search Power (Tutoring): I have always been someone that is quite passionate about draw power. I always want to have more choices than my opponants as often that is what a game can come down to if you are both burned out.

The Commanders Draw Power Engine: One of the core draw power combos of this deck is the commanders draw engne herself. Lynde, Cheerful Tormentor allows you to both ressurect curses your opponant destroys, and then attach them to an opponent of your choosing, and draw 2 cards at the same time. What is the problem here? You can't only rely on your opponant killing your curses. You need a way to do it yourself. This deck used to have alot more sacrifice cards, but alot of them were quite weak. So in the current interation of the deck, I have only kept the strongest ones. Infernal Tribute allows you to sacrifice any card you control. What are we gonna choose? Curses ofcourse. But this card automatically increases the efficiency of the combo by 50% as you will be drawing 3 cards per turn in addition to your initial draw phase instead of only 2! The other extremely powerful card I kept was Braids, Arisen Nightmare. This gives you versatility in what you choose to sacrifice. Either your opponant must also, or each opponant will be taking damage and you will be drawing several more cards again!

OTher Draw Power: The deck also features Rhystic Study as a reliable blue stable to give you consistant draw power while being low threat enough that most play groups wont try especially hard to kill it. Another such card is Fevered Visions which gives all players a bit of draw power. They think you are being kind, but in reality they dont know what else may be coming next. The final piece of draw power in the deck is Consecrated Sphinx. This card is insane for draw power, but almost every game you play it, it will be quickly removed from the field. Usually, I do get 4 - 6 cards out of it before it is killed though so I'd say its worth that cost.

Hand Cycling One powerful combination I included in this deck was hand cycling. One benefit of this deck is you will always have enough cards from all the draw power in it. And this last section is a nasty draw power strategy. Firstly you have cards such as Jace's Archivist and Wheel of Fortune in the deck which let you (and all other players) discard your entire hands and then draw new ones. At first, your play group may think you are doing them all a favour. But then the other parts of this strategy will surface. Notion Thief makes it so that only you can draw cards outside of the draw step. This means, not only will your opponants cards which allow them to draw, not work, but you will gain those additional cards. And even worse, when you hand cycle, it will effectively make the entire table discard their entire hand, while you draw 28 cards. But with cards such as Reliquary Tower and Sea Gate Restoration  , you won't have a hand size limit anyway, so that wont be a problem for you. Finally Fevered Visions works extremely well with Notion Thief for sustained draw power.

Re-cycling: The deck also includes Call to Mind and Clear the Mind to allow you to infinite re-cycle cards repeatedly. Let alone Lynde, Cheerful Tormentor and Tamiyo, the Moon Sage who will make sure your enchantments and all your other cards are here to stay and can be recycled as much as you like as long as you protect them well.

Tutoring: Being a predominantly black deck, this deck features all of the strongest Tutors in the game such as: Demonic Tutor, Grim Tutor, Profane Tutor, Solve the Equation and Vampiric Tutor. This will allow you to gather any pieces you require for the implementation of ANY of the strategies included in this deck based on what pieces you already held in your starting hand. Sometimes you may have the wall pieces already, or wheel cycling cards but still require Notion Thief. Or perhaps you just want to get Curse of Misfortunes to simply get your curses out early. Having 5 powerful tutors and so much draw power potential means you can control the flow of the game and have what you need when you need it.

Commander & Critical Creature Protection: In terms of protection, this is an area where the deck does lack a little. However, you do have Darksteel Plate which makes the equipped creature indestructable and Swiftfoot Boots granting hexproof. Two powerful protective abilities.

The Curses: I know this is the part of the deck you are most looing to (Obviously, you came here for curses, not fog banks). The most powerful curse card in magic, is in my opinion Curse of Misfortunes. This lets you get ANY curse you want from your deck every single turn. You have 5 tutors in the deck, so once you have decided on a player to target, this is the first card you want to tutor and stick on them. Other particularly nasty curses are Cruel Reality, forcing the enemy to sacrifice creatures or pay life, Curse of Unbinding which lets you steal a creature from an opponants deck each turn without paying mana, Mind's Dilation which does the same thing. It is not a curse, but works the same way and I think it works great in this deck. There are some curses that are really here for utility. Curse of Oblivion may appear underwhelming but I have found it very useful in several games which players focus a bit too hard on their graveyards. Curse of Surveillance and Curse of Verbosity can give you even more draw power while being used for politics to bribe other players. There are also plenty of curses which either do burn damage or drain damage. Fevered Visions and Maddening Hex deal steady burn damage while Accursed Witch  , Curse of Leeches   and Curse of Fool's Wisdom can do some great burn damage. Curse of Fool's Wisdom is particularly nasty due to the insane amounts of draw power (and forcing your enemies to draw) this deck can do. They will be burned alot faster than exepcted. Curse of Thirst deals damage for each curse attached to the player and Once you throw Curse of Bloodletting into the mix to double all damage dealt to the cursed player, it will be come a literal blood bath.

The right to Replicate The final aspect to this decks strategy is the right to replication... Earlier, Fog Bank may have seemed a little lack luster. But, oh boy that is not the only card you can replicate. With many cards to replicate enchantments such as Copy Enchantment, Estrid's Invocation and Extravagant Replication You can copy curses. Perhaps you want to steal 2 or 3 creatures from a player per turn instead of 1 using Curse of Unbinding or perhaps you simply want them to take more damage so you copy Curse of Fool's Wisdom and Curse of Thirst. Maybe you'd' like every player at the table to have a Curse of Bloodletting on them at the same time so Curse of Fool's Wisdom, Fevered Visions and Wheel of Fortune can literally make them melt? Or perhaps you just want to copy Extravagant Replication so you can rapidly clone even more of your rediculously broken cards. Helm of the Host Let's you copy ANY creature including legendary creatures. If you clone The Locust God or Krenko, Mob Boss you will have a near infinite legion of creatures which Brudiclad, Telchor Engineer can then turn into copies of literally any token you like. This deck may have a weakness to trample, but just think. With 100 Fog Bank Nothing will be able to walk over you! You could also make Platinum Angel... just... dropping that out there... could be... interesting.

Anyway, After having remade the deck a dozen times, I think its quite a fun, consistant and versatile deck. It does have weaknesses, but overall, it is not too weak for the average EDH / commander table and its alot of fun to play. As mentioned, please leave some comments below on your thoughts, things you liked or think could be improved in the deck, and if you took inspiration from this deck also let me know! If people have found this helpful, I will continue to publish more of my details deck descriptions like this one!

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96% Casual

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