Grim Haruspex
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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Alchemy 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
Historic Legal
Legacy Legal
Leviathan Legal
Limited Legal
Modern Legal
Oathbreaker Legal
Pioneer Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Tiny Leaders Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Grim Haruspex

Creature — Human Wizard

Morph (You may cast this card face down as a 2/2 creature for . Turn it face up at any time for its morph cost.)

Whenever a nontoken creature you control dies, draw a card. (Is put into the graveyard form the battlefield.)

Last_Laugh on Marchesa, Queen of Nazgul

2 months ago

I'd recommend taking a look at some other Marchesa lists for some ideas on random staples here.

Unspeakable Symbol is an absolute must have here. Don't add counters to everything, just in response to removal or to abuse any etb/death trigger.

Sneak Attack is amazing here. If you have a sac outlet, sac the creatures before your end step so they return on your end step instead of the next player's end step.

Sage of Fables/Metallic Mimic/Vigean Graftmage/Mikaeus, the Unhallowed all allow you to immediately protect creatures and/or abuse etb/death triggers on everyone's turn.

Grim Haruspex is really good at drawing cards here.

Kardur, Doomscourge is a hilarious (and kinda mean) etb to abuse.

Chaos Warp and Canoptek Tomb Sentinel (along with Feed the Swarm) are your only answers for problematic enchantments that shut Marchesa down like Solemnity or Rest in Peace.

I could go on, but feel free to check out my list for ideas. Upvotes on any of my decks are appreciated. Every Masochist Needs a Marchesa to Love Them

Last_Laugh on Marchesa - You made this? I made this.

4 months ago

Chaos Warp and Canoptek Tomb Sentinel are your best options (along with Feed the Swarm) for dealing with problematic enchantments like Solemnity or Rest in Peace.

Seize the Spotlight won't typically steal creatures... but that means you draw 3 essentially free. This card is amazing here.

The other thing I'm noticing is your creature's avg. cmc is really high (3.96 discounting Metamorph and Mulldrifter). That means on average you won't play a single creature before Marchesa hits the field.

A few low drops I'd suggest include:

Vigean Graftmage lets you abuse any etb/death trigger on everyone's turn.

Grim Haruspex is the best draw engine by FAR here.

Drana, Liberator of Malakir allows you to swing at lower life totals while getting your counters before regular combat damage thanks to first strike.

Imperial Recruiter looks up a surprisingly good toolbox of answers. Couple it with Vigean above or Metallic Mimic on humans for extreme brokenness.

Oona's Blackguard's discard is brutally effective here.

Phantasmal Image needs no explanation.

Gisa, Glorious Resurrector costs 4 but is your best theft effect here BY FAR.

Feel free to check out my list for ideas. I've been playing Marchesa for over 8 years now and there's a buttload of posts to sift through for more ideas. Upvotes on any of my decks are appreciated. Every Masochist Needs a Marchesa to Love Them

king-saproling on Dark Apostle

4 months ago

Personally I would make these swaps:

Unburial Rites -> Second Sunrise
Gilded Lotus -> Pitiless Plunderer
Mind's Eye -> Grim Haruspex
Indulgent Tormentor -> Species Specialist

DreadKhan on EDH Merens Reanimator

5 months ago

In my Meren deck, I don't run a lot of bigger creatures, even though the deck has decent odds of ending up with huge amounts of mana, stuff like Beast Whisperer/Grim Haruspex draw cards off of creatures either entering or leaving the battlefield, there are lots of variants of both of those effects, and these will let you play many spells in a turn, rather than play one huge thing. I don't think your MVs are a huge problem, but the 'top of my curve' creatures are Razaketh, the Foulblooded, Protean Hulk, and Sheoldred, Whispering One, the first two can win on the spot or very quickly, while Sheoldred is a bit more questionable, a lot of people find stuff like Sheoldred tends to be too slow in todays game, so even that is a card I'm considering switching out for lower to the ground stuff. I checked and atm I have 14 1 drops, which is a few more, there are plenty of decent 1 drop mana dorks you could throw in to both lower your curve and possibly raise your consistency, though the best is Elves of Deep Shadow, since your deck cares more about Black mana.

As a general rule of thumb for Meren, if you can do a thing with a creature instead, you probably should unless the creature option is truly awful, I run 55 creatures in the 99, and I'm still thinking about sneaking more in by taking out things like Artifacts. Creature payoffs are better than artifact payoffs in Golgari, and Meren can't recur non-creatures.

For sac outlets, you ideally want a selection of 'free' sac outlets, ones that only use a creature and no other input, so stuff like Viscera Seer, Carrion Feeder, Woe Strider, any of the good altars (Phyrexian Altar, Ashnod's Altar, and Altar of Dementia are my all very good), Sadistic Hypnotist is insanely useful (it is a 5 drop though), if you have 4 drops that matter you can use Dimir House Guard because Transmute is a good mechanic if you care about the MV and it's also a free sac outlet. I think you can throw in a few sac outlets that are more limited, stuff like Helm of Possession, Phyrexian Tower, Hell's Caretaker, Altar of Bhaal, and Ritual of the Machine are all beefy effects, even if you can only use them once per turn. I really like stuff like Sakura Tribe Elder because the card provides it's own sac outlet (but only for itself), ymmv but I think you're taking a risk by running something like Solemn Simulacrum over Dawntreader Elk or Diligent Farmhand, 4 mana is a ton and it lacks a self destruct feature.

One option some people end up taking is replacing Meren as the Commander, not because she isn't strong enough but because the play patterns are pretty consistent, once you've figured out what your deck is trying to do, Meren is usually very predictable, so some people prefer something like Baba Lysaga, Night Witch. She offers card draw and a sac outlet in the Command zone while caring a lot less about creatures in particular, so you'd have more freedom in terms of card types.

Hope some of this is helpful!

Mousemke on Glissa Minor

5 months ago

Modern upgrades

Land base -

4x Jungle Hollow > 4x Overgrown Tomb

4x Deathcap Glade > 4x Blooming Marsh

2x The Dross Pits > 2x Nurturing Peatland

3x Forest, 1x Swamp > 4x Verdant Catacombs

Other cards -

4x Cankerbloom > 4x Outland Liberator  Flip (but in the side)

I feel like Outland Liberator is better than Cankerbloom generally but I also think that the newly added Liberators should be in the sideboard though I don't immediately have a replacement suggestion. MV of 2 is good. Power of 3 is good. Maybe Grim Haruspex for the card advantage

4x Glissa Sunslayer

Great card. Keep 4. But you may want to sneak into the deck a way to ensure more consistently dealing player damage

4x Plaguecrafter

no notes. I'm unsure about this card but it has a bit of a unique ability so maybe it's ok.

4x Savage Gorger > 4x Dauthi Voidwalker

Gorger feels underpowered to me. Voidwalker is shadow so more consistent damage (though a tradeoff with no blocking). But much more so - all the discarding and sacrificing? Now you can cast those things

4x Urborg Repossession > 4x Unearth

you may want a mix of the 2. I understand Urborg Repossession can theoretically return 2 cards, but Unearth is directly to the Battlefield

DreadKhan on Meren Reanimation

5 months ago

I have a lot of fun using Meren in an EDH deck, maybe some of my EHD concepts translate?

I really liked stuff like Diligent Farmhand, Dawntreader Elk, and of course Sakura-Tribe Elder are very useful. There is also Elves of Deep Shadow, which is useful if you use the 'trick' of running lots of green ramp that finds Swamps/makes black mana and run less black sources because you only need a few. A few black ramp creatures are Blood Pet and Blood Vassal, Vassal is probably worse. A card I used to use in Meren that might work here is Street Wraith, it'll eat up a bit of life, but it gives Meren something worth getting back if she has low/no XP, I settled on running enough ramp-that-dies to not worry about Meren having nothing to do. Death payoffs like Grim Haruspex to draw some cards when things die might help too.

One really funny trick that's very easy for Meren to pull off (and that's way better in 1v1) is abusing Spore Frog, this also builds up XP fwiw. I think Dawnstrider is a lot worse in 1v1 than Spore Frog, but it is also a discard outlet so I run both in EDH.

If you want another 'backup Meren', there is also Hell's Caretaker, this is a bit cheaper than Meren and can actually reanimate big stuff on it's 2nd turn (usually much sooner than Meren), but it does eat a body each time.

Another trick I liked using was Gravecrawler + any sac outlet, as long as you've got another Zombie you can just reuse your Gravecrawler, even if you don't want to splurge on something like Phyrexian Altar or Pitiless Plunderer to make it infinite, it can still be pretty good to have a recursive (and cheap) creature.

Max_Hammer on Kadena "Surprise tool for later" …

5 months ago

For those that are curious on the changes I made to the deck

What I'm taking out: Show

What I'm putting in to replace it: Show

I also plan on changing out some other lands, but above are the utility lands only.

DreadKhan on EDH Merens Reanimator

6 months ago

When I built my Meren deck, I found that even with a pretty Black heavy deck, it was nice to run more Green than Black mana sources, since my Green ramp fixed my Black mana. I also cut lands for repeatable (and potentially repeatable) ramp like Diligent Farmhand or the Dawntreader you're considering, these can not only help get Meren out early, they give her something very useful to do with her ability as soon as she's out. There are quite a few now, but I only run ones that can find swamps. I also run a couple cards like Wood Elves, which don't sac themselves but can be sacrificed for value as soon as Meren is out. Using these types of cards allows my fairly low land Meren deck to be extremely rampy if Meren stays out. You can also run lots of 1 mana dorks in Meren, including Elves of Deep Shadow and knock-off Llanowar Elves.

I also find it's hard to run enough card draw, stuff like Grim Haruspex and Midnight Reaper or Beast Whisperer can draw a bunch of cards, and all of them are creatures. This brings me to another point, I found that in Meren that it's hard to run too many utility creatures of various sorts, you can do an astonishing amount of stuff with creatures in Golgari, I presently have 55 creatures in the 99, which makes cards like Lurking Predators insane and Heartwood Storyteller lots of fun, because Meren decks are also pretty good at pressuring the board, it's hard to know how many of the various Demon's Disciple family of cards you should run, but they feel pretty decent in Meren in my experience, if a bit obnoxious. There are also more cards like Grave Pact, Dictate of Erebos, as well as Savra, Queen of the Golgari, these are all super-obnoxious in a deck that likes to sacrifice stuff. One really weird 'one creature toolbox' is Callous Bloodmage, this can do a bunch of stuff and can be worth recurring if you can get it killed.

Not sure if you've ever come across these, they are old and rare even in Commander, but I find Ritual of the Machine and Helm of Possession can do work in Meren, the Helm is a sac outlet that grabs the best creature on the board. It rarely lasts too long, but it's a very strong effect if you're not worried about running artifacts. Ritual is nice and compact, you sac something you want dead to steal the best thing in a way that's hard to interact with for many decks. Final Parting is an interesting card in Meren, you can put a Protean Hulk or Razaketh, the Foulblooded, maybe Sheoldred into the graveyard and a Reanimate into hand, so it's 6 or 7 mana to put your best creature into play from the library.

If you want any ideas about infinite (or non-infinite) combos that can win games, I read a lot of Meren deck Primers, so I might have some ideas if you want to have that option.

Very good deck so far, hope you enjoy testing it!

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