If his main reason was 'online doesn't like it' I think he's being spurious, the reason we could never have 'blocks extra dudes' as a supported mechanic was because it slows games down; if you have a big creature with the ability to block two creatures it's considerably harder to attack into because each swing likely costs 2 creatures (which also deal no damage to the opponent). If the creature is small it's even more problematic because the ability would probably be cheap to see play. Toss in Vigilance and Lifelink and now your big creature needs to be removed or you're going to win. The ability looks small until you actually play with it IMHO, Brave the Sands is a very good option for Voltron decks for this reason, even though neither ability is remotely flashy or exciting.

FWIW it also interacts strangely with things like Menace; can the creature block the Menace threat by itself, or can it only block it with another creature (and yet can still block a 2nd creature that combat)? Players don't want these hassles in their fun hobby, they want fast games where AGGRO is always a 'viable' strategy, even if it's not usually 'the best' strategy. It's also why 'toughness matters' is WAY less supported than 'power matters', because incentivizing high power helps finish games more than buffing toughness, which worst of all threatens the nightmare of 2 mono-white decks facing off with a variety of Vigilance turtle creatures. Toss in that White has bad creature removal for most of Magic's history and you have the Dev's worst nightmare. The problem is these types of 'toughness matters' decks are very fun and interesting if they're rare, but as soon as they start having mirror matches it can result in delays in the tournament because nobody can generate enough advantage to win. It's also why we don't get turtle creatures that are like 3/7 with Vigilance and Lifelink, they just stall the game and can't win without serious support (I just looked and the closest I could find was 3WW for a 2/4 with the two keywords, imagine if you pulled those in draft as your top end for your mono W list, and run into the mirror! The match will take 2 hours and end in game one with one player decking out.

Just my 2 cents.

If you care about finding those Sorceries maybe Personal Tutor? It's no longer as expensive as it once was, but it's still not a great card. It can find something like Winds of Abandon.

IMHO the thing that makes a deck Bracket 5 isn't usually it's ability to threaten an early win (the actual fastest deck is the exception), it's the ability to protect that attempt or interfere with opponents' attempts. cEDH decks aren't always fast, but they have to either be the fastest deck or be able to interact with the fastest deck reliably enough that they can compete with it. A Bracket 4 deck can be just as 'strong' as a cEDH list, but it won't win it's share of cEDH games because the deck won't be running enough interaction/Hatebears/won't be quite fast enough.

I agree with everyone saying that lots of people just assume that their best deck is probably competitive with other people's competitive decks. It's not like a neophyte can effectively goldfish a cEDH list to get a feel for it's potential ceiling/floor and relative consistency, meaning that doing so for their own deck would be impossible, and playing only vs a small pool of less competent opponents could delude them further. If it's not particularly easy to learn Commander, it's a pretty big intellectual investment to learn even rudimentary cEDH level skills, so a lot of people who are new to cEDH probably suck at it.

I think it's a lot more likely people are just dumb vs them maliciously pranking you by posting bad decks and marking them Bracket 5 (though I've found decks that I'm sure are trolling, and you could argue I have several troll decks of my own). IMHO you can either laugh at them and move on or you could link them to some basic cEDH stuff. TONS of people mark their low budget kitchen table decks as Legacy, not realizing that Legacy is an astoundingly cutthroat format known for fast combos and harsh countermeasures. The friendlier members on here find those decks and try to give these hapless folks a hand.

I'm guessing I'm missing something, but why no Liliana's Caress? Maybe Bloodchief Ascension? It's risky but an incredibly strong effect. Since you're not running lots of creatures and might want the discard, maybe Breathstealer's Crypt? I feel like if Shrieking Affliction makes sense that Painful Quandary might be worth a look, it's 5 mana but the effect is amazing with stuff like Megrim and other discard effects.

It's always a joy to know that people are still using the OG Legends!

Thanks for the up vote!

I see that you are taking a pretty different angle than I did here, but there might be a few cards that I can suggest from my own Meren and the Golgari Queens. Would Savra, Queen of the Golgari make sense in your list? It's a slightly different Grave Pact, but at 4 mana and easy to cast she can come out earlier, the life gain is a lot less important other than offsetting the payment for the effect.

I think they're about as fun as an untreatable toothache, but Grave Pact effects in my experience like you to run several of the Merciless Executioner type creatures that exist, Accursed Marauder is a great start, but I think Plaguecrafter and Demon's Disciple might fit. I don't know exactly how many you'd 'want', but I'd run 3-5 creatures that exist almost purely to make everyone sacrifice a creature. IMHO if you only run one or the other the Executioners are probably the better include since you can get them out sooner, they stand alone (Grave Pact does nothing if you don't have a creature), and you can recur them with your Commander, but both are INCREDIBLY nasty when combined. In the decks I have that use edicts you really want to reach 'critical mass', so that you both have access to an Edict when it's necessary, but also have enough to continuously pare back the opponent's board.

This is a personal preference more than anything, but when I play Meren my fondest hope is usually to have a creature that ramps me that also kills itself; Sakura Tribe Elder is the 'gold standard' of the effect, but I think you could benefit from Diligent Farmhand and Dawntreader Elk, and maybe Yavimaya Granger. I even run Fertilid and Burnished Hart, but I don't think I'd recommend them to anyone else at this point! Anyways, the idea is you juggle one of these to both gain XP for Meren while ramping yourself, and when you draw something better to reanimate just reanimate that. The ramp is usually very useful to cast either Protean Hulk or Razaketh.

Speaking of Razaketh, I found it VERY useful to have mass untap effect to go with Life/Death, once Life/Death makes all your lands into weenies you can untap them with something like Vitalize or Benefactor's Draught. I also threw in a Songs of the Damned and Dark Ritual to help generate mana when I'm short. Lotus Petal is also a very good Razaketh card if you don't want to spring for Lion's Eye DiamondGC.

Just a little tip I stumbled upon, most Meren decks have very high Black devotion, but they rely heavily on early Green ramp; I really wanted to shave lands for creatures in my list, but since I can find Swamps with Forests via ramp, I ended up running WAY less Black sources than Green. I used 7 Basic Swamps and 2 Swamp/Forest duals, and I find I have very few fixing issues, even with a very low land count, since I almost never need more than 2 lands early on, and I found the deck absolutely hated drawing into them (Meren is a deck where I feel like you're supposed to run all the creature ramp you can, because Meren cares so much about Creatures and so little about non-creature spells, lands are dead draws).

I guess that brings me to the last point, I feel like you should really try to get more creatures into this list; your Commander does absolutely nothing if you don't have creatures in the graveyard. I have 57 in the 99 atm, I feel like having less than 40 in a Meren deck is too few. The nice thing about creatures is that Golgari has a LOT of creature synergies, I love using Lurking Predators or Heartwood Storyteller.

If you want more specific help feel free to ask!