Crypt Ghast

Creature — Spirit

Extort (Whenever you cast a spell, you may pay {WB}. If you do, each opponent loses 1 life and you gain that much life.)

Whenever you tap a swamp for mana, you may add {B} to your mana pool (in addition to the mana the land produces).

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
Gladiator	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Modern Beyond Horizons	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pioneer	Legal
Planar Constructed	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (49)

TheVectornaut on Tergrid - making cuts

3 days ago

You say you're going for more sacrifice than discard but the current list feels very much the opposite to me. If you are serious about wanting to make the deck more casual friendly, cutting all of the cards that exclusively care about discard does seem like the easy way to get down to 100. Having cards that do both like Rankle's Prank will probably be more palatable, even if the outcome is actually even more lopsided. As an aside in the event you do keep some discard spells, you'll be better off paying a little extra for the multiplayer focused options like Delirium Skeins vs. something targeted like Duress. Obviously, if you want to do a lot of 1v1, that evaluation changes. I like the idea of focusing on a sacrifice shell with all of Grave Pact, Dictate of Erebos, and Butcher of Malakir to ding opponents while you're sac looping your own creatures with various reanimator tools. Cards like Hell's Caretaker or Whisper, Blood Liturgist are favorites of mine since you can easily convert your chumps into discarded bombs or re-trigger ETB and death triggers. You have a ton of cheap Fleshbag Marauder-type cards and that's the real reason I'd recommend this angle. If you stick with at least some of the discard package, you can run plenty of Burglar Rat and Virus Beetle 1/1s to take advantage of Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker which is also conveniently good with Valgavoth's Faithful and other potential synergy pieces like Viscera Seer, Blood Artist or Zulaport Cutthroat.

I'll also list some other cards I'd consider cutting, regardless of the focus on discard or sacrifice. Crypt Ghast feels excessive here since by the time you can play it and untap on the following turn, there's currently only two cards that you wouldn't be able to cast anyway. Since I'm also recommending the cut of All is Dust anyway for being too symmetrical of a wipe for its high cost, I don't know that you'll need all that mana very often. The obvious counterpoint here are the x spells, but I'd urge caution on keeping too many of those too. Unless you're ending the game with a final enormous Torment of Hailfire, these types of effects can fall squarely under the "feels bad" category, or at least that's my experience. If you do want to keep them as wincons, you probably want even more cards like Ghast to improve consistency in reaching that goal. For somewhat similar reasons, I'd also consider cutting Dark Ritual and Culling the Weak. Turbo-ing out your oppressive commander is exactly the kind of play pattern that earned the recent commander bans their new status. If the other players at the table feel like they have time to prepare potential answers to Tergrid, I think people will be much happier to play with you. And if you feel you need more mana and a way to sac guys you want in the yard, Ashnod's Altar and Phyrexian Altar are always an option. In terms of draw, I like engines that play off your deck's existing themes like Waste Not, Geth's Grimoire, Grim Haruspex, Harvester of Souls, etc. as opposed to once a turn effects like Dark Confidant or Phyrexian Arena. They may not always be more efficient but they're certainly more interesting. Necrodominance is an option I'd be careful with though since it has some anti-synergy with self-reanimator strategies. I like the idea of Deathgreeter to recoup some of the life loss from symmetrical pox effects and to benefit from mass sacrifice. I just think some of the previously mentioned options at two mana do the job better. Similarly, I feel that Osseous Sticktwister will accomplish less than some similar cards in the deck since your opponents are free to choose the life loss in a format that offers them plenty of life to spare. If you were going for a more explicit life drain strategy, I think the card could pair nicely with other 8rack staples. Unstoppable Slasher is another card that is only good if you're focused on dropping life totals quickly, and with no obvious ways to guarantee the damage gets through, I don't see this guy as being too impactful. The final card I'll mention is Mithril Coat. It makes sense on paper to protect your commander when you know it's going to get targeted. However, Tergrid is so feared at many tables that she's likely to get targeted and removed before you even have the spare mana to equip her. For this reason, I'd prioritize cheaper protection like Boots/Greaves. You could even try one of the many instants and auras that offer a one-time reanimation effect since those will also protect against your own sacrifice effects where equipment will not.

Apoptosis on All my life

2 weeks ago

Updated with better tutors/mana rocks I pulled from an old tribal zombie deck. Additional changes made to make it more competitive.

I think it still needs more removal and ways to deal with artifacts/enchantments, but I haven't decided what that should be. I'm also not super excited about my high end bombs, it would be nice to have win-cons that are not dependent on going infinite or forcing loss of life.

Cards removed from mainboard: Out

Orzhov Signet Orim's Prayer Sorin, Grim Nemesis Palace Siege Gilded Lotus Angelic Accord Crypt Ghast Spirit Link Disciple of Griselbrand Azorius Guildgate Meandering River

Cards added to mainboard: Sol Ring Dark Confidant Profane Tutor Demonic Tutor Vampiric Tutor Well of Lost Dreams Talisman of Hierarchy Arcane Signet Alhammarret's Archive Reflecting Pool City of Brass

Mortlocke on Delicious Skittles EDH

1 month ago

Hi NeverCloud,

I am always a fan of Skittles, and Poison (aka Infect/Toxic) and am happy to see yet another deck in my favorite archetypes. First bit of advice I must give you is that you must build a proper deck description. You don't need to build a whole primer, but you need to inform the visitor to your page of what cards/synergies are important. Is this deck meant for a 4 player pod? Single player? What kind of decks do you want to match this deck up against?

As for card recommendations, I understand you are going for a more stax (shout out to that foil tangle wire btw, I have one of my own and I absolutely adore that card) approach but I think having a bit of ramp may help you have more consistent games. I suggest the following:

• Crypt Ghast - a mana doubler in monoblack is always worth consdering.
• Cabal Coffers - The "mate" if you will to the already included Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth. It's great consistent ramp that I highly recommend.
• Sceptre of Eternal Glory - a strictly better Gilded Lotus for mono colored decks.
• Canoptek Wraith - A goofy ramp option in monoblack. I think it's definitely worth experimenting with.
• Demonic Tutor - the strictly better Diabolic Tutor. On that note, there's also Vampiric Tutor and Imperial Seal.

I'm curious as to why you lean more heavily into a discard theme as opposed to a voltron or proliferation subtheme? On that note, I do have some card suggestions for you:

• Sword of Feast and Famine - this helps you break parity with Tangle Wire and Static Orb in play. Unfortunately, yes you can't target it with Hatred or Howl from Beyond but I think that's a small price to pay to be able to get all of your lands to untap after just one attack.

• Phyresis Outbreak - this card gets poison counters on opponents without targeting them, and is only amplified in efficiency by your commander after it takes just one swing against an opponent. It may be slower than what you're looking for, but worth considering.

That's it from me, I don't want to inundate you with card options. But I am genuinely curious as to how your games look, and what your usual paths to victory are.

griffstick on Your favourite Card from Bloomburrow

2 months ago

I really like Coiling Rebirth double up on really good creatures like Grave Titan or Crypt Ghast or Gray Merchant of Asphodel

Crow_Umbra on How do dual mana symbols …

3 months ago

Yes, you can use Crypt Ghast in a Tergrid deck because the {WB} is part of the reminder text for Extort.

Unfortunately something like Batwing Brume would not be able to be played in a Mono White or Mono Black deck.

AwesomeDude7113 on How do dual mana symbols …

3 months ago

Lets say that I want to make a Tergrid, God of Fright  ^Flip deck. Would Crypt Ghast be allowed? Less specifly, are mana symbols like {WU}, {BG}, or {RW} allowed in mono color decks/ decks with only one of the colors?

Veethevvitch on The apocalypse (Sheoldred)

4 months ago

ShadowMasterNL Thank you for your comment, but I have more questions if you don't mind.

Do you always run 33 to 35 lands on top of all the rituals like : Dark Ritual+ Culling the Weak, dorks like: Crypt Ghast and rocks for extra mana ?

Because I was aiming to add more for fast mana in this case considering my avg cmc is around 2.84 so I wanted to play as much as possible as fast as possible to gain the edge and get ahead of the curve.

Should I consider removing some rocks and add more lands ? Or do you have any suggestions for cuts ?

I am a bit stuck at the moment with what to remove and still keep the deck balanced, asking for a friend lmao. XD

fluffyeel on You draw you lose

4 months ago

Some small recommendations I can think of:

• You have a lot of drawing for all parties, but your opponents will also be discarding (quite likely, especially given the Memory Jar). I therefore recommend Megrim, which actually is the reason Memory Jar became the first emergency ban in MTG history. You could also run things like Animate Dead, Reanimate, and Necromancy to take advantage of loading up your opponents' graveyards. Of course, Rise of the Dark Realms is a nice showstopper, though it's quite pricey...
• Archfiend of Despair is a delightful combination of Wound Reflection (already recommended) as well as stopping lifegain. I love using it wherever I can. (It's also a demon, so it synergizes with one of your alternate win cons.)
• You could also consider going more of a snow-covered route, so replacing your basic swamps with the snow-covered kind and going with Extraplanar Lens to amplify your black mana. Crypt Ghast also is another mana accelerator.
• The Meathook Massacre and Massacre Wurm are also "board wipe with benefits" that I highly recommend. I also almost always play Kokusho, the Evening Star in every black deck I run. Archfiend of Despair could also be another fun option for removing things and punishing your opponents.
• Some of your artifacts and tutors could be better. Rather than Wayfarer's Bauble, I could suggest Expedition Map instead. Grim Tutor, Planar Bridge, and Beseech the Queen could also make for fun tutoring.
• I'm not sure if Gemstone Caverns and Mox Diamond are worth it here: sure, they're fast and get you more mana quickly (always a good thing), but the multicolored mana isn't so necessary. There are options I might prefer like Mox Amber, Mana Vault, Volrath's Stronghold...
• For a mono-black deck, Contamination might be a great way to lose all friends. I highly recommend it.