Archon of Cruelty
Set Price Alerts

Combos Browse all Suggest

Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Archenemy Legal
Arena Legal
Block Constructed Legal
Canadian Highlander Legal
Casual Legal
Commander / EDH Legal
Commander: Rule 0 Legal
Custom Legal
Duel Commander Legal
Freeform Legal
Gladiator Legal
Highlander Legal
Historic Legal
Historic Brawl Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Modern Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Planar Constructed Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Archon of Cruelty

Creature — Archon

Flying

Whenever this enters or attacks, target opponent sacrifices a creature or planeswalker, discards a card, and loses 3 life. You draw a card and gain 3 life.

TheVectornaut on King of the Skull Servants

1 month ago

As a fellow enjoyer of Grass Looking Greener (mostly Lightsworn but also some Zombie/Vampires, PK+Paleos, and Skull Servants), I do think the idea is interesting. You're always going to be in a bit of a battle between thematic consistency and power level. For instance, a grave-counting creature like Wight of Precinct Six or Nighthowler would fit the idea of King growing with more guys in the yard, but they would also be disappointingly weak right now since you don't have a lot of mass self-mill at the moment (Stitcher's Supplier and Overlord of the Balemurk are the first things that comes to my mind). On the subject of getting what you want in the GY, it probably is best to have a few more ways of getting specific targets buried at least. With Entomb off the table in modern, I could see Unmarked Grave being the best cheap option instead of or in addition to Buried Alive. This only negatively affects Maha who I already think is worse than reanimator staples like Archon of Crueltyfoil or Sire Of Insanity. Fewer legendaries also makes Persist a great choice. There's also Lively Dirge if you want to stick to the low mana value plan and can afford to pay more mana. Finally, I'm partial to Burning-Rune Demon as a way to extend into more reanimations while being a reasonable threat in its own right. I think it would be cool to run more skeletons for the theme too, although most aren't that helpful. Cards like Reassembling Skeleton or Persistent Specimen could be sac fodder to a Victimize or Hell's Caretaker. Another one that I know can be good in black reanimator is Emperor of Bones, although he has some unfortunate anti-synergy with other cards in the deck like Twilight Diviner. Death Baron is always an option if you find the Corpses of the Lost backup plan doesn't have enough oomph.

Some final notes: It may be more consistent to focus on just the Xu-Ifit negated reanimations. That would involve going up to 4 Death's Shadow and adding in some similar options like Moonshadow or Yargle and Multani. The EDHRec page for Varolz, the Scar-Striped could be a place to start. That all said, having the more powerful effects of non-negated creatures may still be worth the inconsistency of the two plans not always meshing whan you need them to. You do want to have the best options available in either case though. My first cut suggestions would be Gloom Sower, Avatar of Woe, Inkwell Leviathan, and lastly Maha, Its Feathers Night. Finally, I second cutting some lands and would suggest Bitter Triumph as a replacement for Cast Down that comes with a Cabal Therapy option built-in.

TijuanaBachelorParty on Cookin' with Lightning

3 months ago

Crow_Umbra Thank you, I am enjoying curating this list and appreciate the input and card suggestions.

  • The higher land count is intentional, though the number is muddied even more considering Glacial Chasm and Maze of Ith as well as the couple modal dual faced cards in the deck. I tend to avoid mana rocks and instead lean on high land counts to never missing a land drop while having flexible color fixing to play proactive cards for the game plan. I would appreciate 2 more slots in the deck, however I have not found a proactive mana ramp spell I would want to play other than Talon Gates of Madara. Any suggestions?

  • I'm glad you mention the mana curve, it has been a point of debate for myself. Some of the heavy hitters have not seen play while lower mana value cards have had the chance to shine. As much as I love Archon of Crueltyfoil... Patron of the Kitsune is likley going to stay. Oddly I have found myself avoiding casting Tempt with Vengeance and Eiganjo Uprising; which might be related to ramp in this deck. The 3 mana slot is something I am currently looking to trim as well while keeping some of the charm of something like Hissing Miasma.

  • Seifer, Balamb Rival and Nelly Borca, Impulsive Accuserfoil are great suggestions and I particularly like Squall, Gunblade Duelist. I can see fun build around Squall and he will likely find a place for him in this deck with a couple cuts.

I appreciate the feedback as this is my first goad deck. I had not seen Isshin built in this way before and have had fun the couple of games I have had with it.

SaberTech on mimeo

5 months ago

I saw your post asking for help with cuts to the deck. Mimeoplasm decks are fun and there's all sorts of interactions to play around with so I get how it's tough to trim the list down.

I don't know what exactly you personally consider fun to play and what cards you are more inclined to keep in, so I think that it might be easier to just highlight what looks to be the core of the deck and try to build outwards from there.

Win-Cons:

  • Necrotic Ooze + Phyrexian Devourer: I'm not sure when the change happened, but on Oracle the errata's text for the Devourer's activated exile ability now reads "Remove the top card of your library from the game: Put X +1/+1 counters on Phyrexian Devourer, where X is the removed card's converted mana cost. If Phyrexian Devourer's power is 7 or greater, sacrifice it." Before, you never had to worry about the sacrifice part because it was a triggered ability so the Ooze didn't copy it. Now that the self-sacrifice effect is built into the activated ability it means that the Ooze will kill itself if it activates the ability and ends up going to 7+ power. I don't think this combo is feasible anymore and that you can cut it.

  • Blightsteel Colossus: You don't have a way to reanimate or copy this at instant speed in response to its shuffle trigger when it is put in your graveyard, so your only way for it to stick on the board is if you hard-cast it. I don't think that it's worth the effort. And I think that most games will end before you risk decking yourself and needing the Colossus to keep shuffling itself into your library. I'd cut it from the deck.

  • Blighted Agent/Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon + big creatures under Mimeoplasm: This is what I would consider your main means of knocking players out. Death's Shadow, Impervious Greatwurm, Lord of Extinction, Titanoth Rex, and Yargle and Multani are your main targets to remove for counters on Mimeoplasm, so these are 7 cards that should definitely be staying.

  • Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur: Reanimating this early in the game and getting it to stick is a backup win condition. Buried Alive, Entomb, Fauna Shaman, and Frantic Search are your best ways to try to get Jin into the graveyard. Animate Dead, Necromancy, Reanimate are your best ways to reanimate Jin early. So that's 8 cards you should definitely keep. Victimize helps too but it is a little unreliable early due to needing 2 targets in your graveyard. Still worth running in my opinion.

So that's 16 card + your commander that you know that you want to run to help you win. From there you can mark out the slots for land, ramp, draw, and interaction. What slots are left goes to what best supports you reaching your win conditions. You'll need to really consider which cards help you reach your win conditions and which are there more for fun.

Looking at your list, some things that I can note are:

  • You shouldn't count thinks like Conduit of Worlds as ramp since they don't help you get ahead in mana. They just help make your land drop each turn. Matzalantli, the Great Door  Flip and Aftermath Analyst also don't help ramp you in the early game. So on the whole your deck is actually suffering from a pretty notable lack of cheap ramp.

  • Cards that mill opponents but not you like Mindcrank, Psychic Corrosion, and Ruin Crab do technically help you by getting cards into your opponent's graveyards that you can reanimate or exile with Mimeoplasm. However, they are less useful to you overall than cards that can also mill you because you know that milling yourself helps you reach your deck's build-in win conditions while milling opponents is a gamble.

  • Memory Plunder can be fun but you might be better off running a card you are pretty certain that you can use than gamble on useful opponents' cards ending up in the graveyard in a timely manner.

  • Archon of Crueltyfoil isn't as impactful in multiplayer games as it is in 1v1. It's still an ok reanimation target if you don't currently have anything better.

multimedia on Necromancy Aristocracy

1 year ago

Hey, Gisa only having one haste source here makes her really slow to get going, if at all. Lightning Greaves, Swiftfoot Boots, Lavaspur Boots, consider maxing out on these haste sources? If you already control one then have more ways to discard away the others Collector's Vault, Putrid Imp?

There's some 2 drop mana rocks/cost reduction you could add to increase ramp Mind Stone/Jet Medallion, but I think you would be better off using these deck spots to improve potential early game reanimation. You have some reanimation, but what I don't see here are effects that can get Zombies into your graveyard to reanimate before you get Gisa as a sac outlet.

Collector's Vault, Diresight, Entomb, Unmarked Grave, Buried Alive, Lively Dirge, Putrid Imp these are spells you could potentially cast long before you control Gisa. Getting some cards into your graveyard a little faster helps Stitch Together's threshold. Can even play more potential early game draw Night's Whisper/Sign in Blood to get more than 7 cards in hand which then you can at your Cleanup step discard down to 7 cards as free discard to setup reanimation. If you're discarding creatures to reanimate then consider increasing lower mana cost reanimation Reanimate, Animate Dead, Persist, Necromancy?

Consider adding an earlier game reanimation plan to get Grave Titan onto the battlefield? Titan being a repeatable Zombie token source can hold down the fort until you get Gisa going. In the meantime, Titan could do damage to opponents. Archon of Cruelty also isn't a Zombie, but is an excellent reanimation target, who if you can control it in the earlier game can give you a huge advantage. When your Commander can create creature tokens and with Grave Titan, Altar of Bhaal is powerful repeatable reanimation when you have creature tokens to exile.

I hope this advice was helpful and if you're interested I offer more advice about what cards to consider cutting.

multimedia on The Ooze makes it sticky

1 year ago

Hey welcome to TappedOut :) Nice budget Golgari brew you have here.

Sol Ring is a staple card for ramp in Commander. You might not be playing it because your playgroup has banned it? If that's not the case, consider adding it? You're trying to play Stickfingers like Meren when they're very different Commanders. Consider a different approach with Stickfingers?

Meren can reanimate, but only after you get some or many experience counters by sacing your own creatures thus you want to play a lot of creatures with Meren. Meren is a lot of setup though for reanimation and you want to play little creatures who can sac themselves such as Sakura-Tribe Elder and Viscera Seer. What Meren lacks is getting creatures into your graveyard to reanimate, that's usually what makes Meren slow.

Stickfingers is different, it's the enabler to get creatures you want to reanimate into your graveyard right away. All you need with Stickfingers to reanimate is to trigger him, reveal a big creature and have a reanimation spell in your hand. Playing less creatures with Stickfingers there's much less setup for reanimation.

Playing less creatures with Stickfingers gives you more chances to reveal your big creatures who you want to reanimate without needing a ton of mana to cast Stickfingers. If you reduce your creature count down to the best creatures you want to reanimate and creatures who can recur any card from your graveyard then you have a much better chance of reanimating a big creature as well as recasting reanimation spells.

Less creatures does conflict with how big Stickfingers is, but if you're playing for reanimation that shouldn't matter and Stickfingers would be better as a sac fodder for value reanimation or draw. Consider reducing the creature count to your best big creatures and creatures who can recur any card from your graveyard? All other spells in your deck could then be noncreature ramp, other reanimation and removal.

Here's an example of a reduced creature base using the best creatures you already have and some others after within your budget to consider adding:

If you like these ideas and choose to go this direction than I offer more advice.

zigkid3 on Zenith Seeker

1 year ago

Archon of Cruelty is an Archon, not a demon, fyi. Baleful Strix does not match your commander's color identity. Ophiomancer Why? Just for blockers? Maybe try Luminarch Ascension instead Yarok, the Desecrated Doesn't match your commander's color identity

I like the Ephemerate I feel like its an underrated card so bonus points for that.

Niko9 on How Good is Pain Magnification?

1 year ago

Last_Laugh I agree with you, in commander it looks like a very snowballey enchantment. I think Pain Magnification might take the right deck to be great, it's not a rakdos staple, but in the right build it would absolutely be a must remove threat.

The main drawback I could see with it is that in commander players can get very salty about discarding and not everyone will have enchant removal, so you may become the archenemy when you play this.

Just throwing out ideas here, but Pain Magnification might be brutal in a rakdos Blade of Selves deck that runs Balor and Archon of Cruelty as reanimated blade carriers.

ViscountVonSausageRoll on Temporary Graveyard

2 years ago

I can tell when you played xD

And hey, don't sell yourself short, casual 60 card is the epitome of magic.

Budget Suggestions (≤ $10): Griselbrand because he's awesome, Dark Ritual because speed, Go for the Throat or alternatively: I see you're running Bone Shredder. Perhaps considering replacing with Shriekmaw? He's less hardcastable, but he does throw himself into your graveyard in a hurry. Consider Buried Alive to fill the GY? Vampire Nighthawk has been replaced with Nighthawk Scavenger I know, the powercreeper has been powercrept.

Non-Budget Suggestions ($10+): Archon of Cruelty. I mean, read what it does. Right? That's ridiculous.
Recurring Nightmare It's pricey, but it's absolutely busted. (It sacs a dude and bounces to your hand as an additional cost) It never goes away.
Atraxa, Grand Unifier Honestly not my cup of tea, but she's very powerful. Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth Only because: It's just good in this deck. You're already running Liliana of the Dark Realms x2 and Coffers. Maybe find some heavily played ones?

Make Room: The most unfun part of coming back to any old deck. Well, Liliana Vess is just too expensive now days (even back then she was kinda pricey), but most of the time she ends up being a 5 CMC vampiric tutor at sorcery speed anyways. She never lives long.

Sorin Markov kind of falls under the same boat, at least in this deck imo. Usually by the time you can cast him, opponents aren't at 20 life anymore, so the appeal of "10 dmg" can be somewhat deceptive.

Anyways, welcome back, and I hope you enjoy yourself

Load more
Have (2) Azdranax , Huntroid
Want (1) qao50