Gray Merchant of Asphodel

Creature — Zombie

When this enters, each opponent loses X life, where X is your devotion to black. You gain life equal to the life lost this way. (Each {B} in the mana costs of permanents you control counts towards your devotion to black.)

Combos

• Animate Dead + Gray Merchant of Asphodel + Viscera Seer

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
Modern Beyond Horizons	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pauper	Legal
Pauper Duel Commander	Legal
Pauper EDH	Legal
Pioneer	Legal
Planar Constructed	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (50)

SaberTech on Ideas for an Ayli, Eternal …

1 month ago

I kind of see Ayli as more of a control oriented commander when compared to other potential WB aristocrats style commander options, although the need to gain life and have creatures to sac to her ability does cause a lot of overlap.

The first real hurdle is getting up to 50+ life. Running Ayli means that you opponents have even more reason to default to attacking you so that they can to keep you from using Ayli's removal ability. While being able to pick up life off of Blood Artist and extort type effects is useful, I think that it's worth finding ways to get big swings in life too. Tree of Perdition is one that comes to mind since it has 13 toughness for 4 mana right off the bat and you can increase its toughness even more if it stays on the board. Unhallowed Phalanx offers another high toughness for sac fodder. Serra Ascendant, Kokusho, the Evening Star, Gray Merchant of Asphodel, and Exsanguinate are also ways to gain a bunch of life. Angelic Chorus, Proper Burial, Rhox Faithmender, and Cleric Class have potential as well. Heliod's Intervention could be worth running as a removal option.

There are a bunch of options for token production but I thought that I would mention God-Eternal Oketra combined with Kor Skyfisher, Whitemane Lion, and possibly Stonecloaker as well. Oketra has reasonably high toughness and comes back quick if sacrificed for life. 4/4 tokens are good for sacrificing if you need to. The white bounce creatures can be used for repeatedly triggering your extort effects and other cards like Angelic Chorus, Oketra's Monument, and Cathars' Crusade.

Prava of the Steel Legion is another token producer that can pump all your little tokens into high-toughness sac fodder to gain life.

EchoSpice on Things Betor Left Undead [Primer]

5 months ago

Cool deck! Maybe Greed to help with life loss triggers and card draw? And youve got quite a bit of black mana pips, Gary might also be good. Gray Merchant of Asphodel

SaberTech on Make It Work

6 months ago

I think that at this point the deck list doesn't have a solid plan for ending the game. It has Gray Merchant of Asphodel but doesn't have a focus on building up your black devotion to really make it hurt your opponent when it lands. Torment of Hailfire could be a game-ender but without any big mana ramp in the deck it will be pretty late in the game before it can really do damage. I think that, going by the list, the deck's default is to try to play a control game by using Ketramose to cantrip a bunch of exile-based removal to help your big fliers get through. Ketramose is a strong card draw engine but you've focused so much on triggering it with removal spells that you haven't planned out a solid winning strategy or combination of cards.

Maybe the deck could be shifted into more of a Blink deck? BW has all sorts of good ETB effects for generating value and tokens. Cards like Teleportation Circle, Conjurer's Closet, and Eldrazi Displacer could be the core engine cards of the deck alongside Ketramose.

There are also a variety of creatures that let you exile cards from graveyards. Withered Wretch is pretty efficient since its ability is only 1 mana and it only removes one card, giving you more opportunities to draw cards off of Ketramose.

PhyrexianPraetor on Mono Red Devotion

6 months ago

kamarupa I cut Braid of Fire due to not being sure if I can make it work 100% of the time. I can look at adding it again.

I was considering on making each of my devotion lists two colours in the long run. The thing that helps Fanatic of Mogis is that it is easier to cast than Gray Merchant of Asphodel, it also helps that red is a rather aggressive colour compared to black.

Thanks for the suggestions.

kamarupa on You Go Squirrel

8 months ago

This deck won 2 of 3 in 1v1v1 this week against mono-black aristocrats and mono-blue merfolk/mono black Waste Not. (We play that a player can change decks after winning or losing twice) It lost the first match to Harbinger of the Seas as I only had non-basic lands in play (though it was mono-black aristocrats that got the win). In the second match, Valley Rotcaller quickly whittled away both opponents' life totals. The third match turned into a real grind as mono-black kept a Tainted Remedy in play despite repeated removals on my part while also removing our own Tainted Remedys. In total, TR was cast 6 times, 3 each from two decks. In the end, though, Squirrels were victorious. It was quite funny when in the end, the mono-black Waste Not deck was finally able to cast Gray Merchant of Asphodel to almost no effect and still lost.

Doombeard1984 on Zombies Ate My Neighbors (Zul Ashur)

8 months ago

Love a pet deck lol.

So whilst your Commander does let you reanimate a few each turn, feel like some mass return would be a good idea maybe.

Phyrexian Delver, Balthor the Defiled, Zombie Apocalypse, Living Death. Patriarch's Bidding. will all likely give you a better outcome than any non typal based decks. And if you happen to have milled a Gray Merchant of Asphodel then it will see everything else also enter and will count their devotion too!

Also, Noxious Ghoul can be back breaking for other decks, especially if you are getting more than 1 Zomboi onto the battlefield each turn. With an Endless Ranks of the Dead can literally keep everyone off creatures, and your board safe and sound.

Kind of feel Call to the Grave would also be useful given that you only have 2 non Zomboi creatures.

+1, and thanks for sharing your deck

Last_Laugh on Oops! All female! Marchesa

10 months ago

It does immediately come back to the battlefield from Marchesa but the Thran trigger goes on the stack when the creature leaves the grave, which is when targets are chosen. Because the creature isn't actually on the battlefield at that exact moment, it's not a valid target. A minor nuance, but if it said "when ~ enters" or "~ enters with" then it'd work as you describe.

Marchesa is unique in the sense that each of her triggers to return a creature are separate. This means you choose what order things come back in and that any etb's/triggers from that creature entering resolve before the next Marchesa trigger brings the next guy back. Also, each creature entering doesn't see the other Marchesa triggers on the stack so if you have Gray Merchant of Asphodel and Clone entering, the clone entering after and copying Gary will drain for 2 more than Gary did.

griffstick on Your favourite Card from Bloomburrow

1 year ago

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