Necropotence

Enchantment

Skip your draw step.

Whenever you discard a card, exile that card from your graveyard.

Pay 1 life: Exile the top card of your library face down. Put that card into your hand at the beginning of your next end step.

Discussion (42)

forneyt on CEDH Help please

12 hours ago

I'm not sure what your playgroup consists of, or what your budget is, so I'll just rattle off some cards and (if needed) their budget alternatives, as well as what I would suggest replacing.

Mana Crypt or Charcoal Diamond in place of Mana Vault : 0-mana Sol Ring just seems strictly better, and the diamond generates colored mana, which is helpful for a low-CMC deck.

Vilis, Broker of Blood in place of Possessed Portal : You already have so many life loss cards, might as well profit from them even more!

Waste Not in place of Miasmic Mummy : Benefit from their discards even further.

Chromatic Lantern in place of Everflowing Chalice : Lantern fixes your lands that tap for colorless (or cabal coffers before you get it going), and keeps you from getting wrecked by Blood Moon by giving your "Mountains" the ability to tap for black.

Phyrexian Reclamation or Volrath's Stronghold in place of Malakir Rebirth  ^Flip: Repeatable reanimation really rocks!

I already see some other great cards in your maybeboard: Dark Confidant , Gray Merchant of Asphodel , Thoughtseize , and Necropotence among them. Confidant is "draw" without the "draw", which can be an important distinction for certain cards (cough cough Chains of Mephistopheles cough cough Nekusar, the Mindrazer cough cough). Gary is an alternate wincon and also replenishes your health after you drain yourself with your own cards. Thoughtseize basically is "I want this card in your hand" with your commander, and Necropotence is just a broken card that gives you more cards than you can cast.

I feel like your deck may be missing some draw power, so I would suggest Geth's Grimoire , the previously mentioned Vilis, and Howling Mine / Mikokoro, Center of the Sea . With all the discard potential, these last two shouldn't be a problem if your opponents get a couple cards!

For any combo of the above suggestions, I would consider cutting Living Death , Death Cloud , Tangle Wire , and Mindslicer . My reasoning for these four specifically is that they are too mana costly and also negatively affect your boardstate in a way that doesn't put you ahead.

Lastly, I have some land suggestions that I am unsure what to cut for because you already have a decent selection. High Market is a great land, along with its alternate, Miren, the Moaning Well . Deserted Temple can be an extra Cabal Coffers or Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx . If you like to take risks, you could include Dark Depths for the classic Vesuva / Thespian's Stage combo!

Nick_V on CEDH Help please

13 hours ago

Profet93 You are right about the Sheoldred, Whispering One I dont want to cut her, but she is probably on the chopping block because of the CMC. Now for the Fellwar Stone , Exotic Orchard ect, they are for Praetor's Grasp to steal kill cards such as Thassa's Oracle

I am thinking about Necropotence I might play test it first .. The exile on discard is a rough.

Thank you very much for the help

Profet93 on CEDH Help please

14 hours ago

Necropotence (good on it's own) + Possessed portal = Fun times. I get self discard makes you hesitant so I understand, but it's a powerful draw engine and synergy above.

Why is exotic orchard here, am I missing something?

Sheoldred is cool, but if you're going for cEDH, it doesnt seem impactful enough. I understand the idea of discarding and then reanimating it, but I feel there are better targets.

+1

Zhugo12 on Karadorable [cEDH Primer]

1 day ago

darkseid4nk Yeah, it seems like that deck leans more towards creature control. It also uses some high cost critters that I personally think slow the deck down. That said, I think that deck is very good, but the lack of Boonweaver Giant combo is disappointing, while understandable because that deck hasn't been updated in several years. I was also honestly baffled to not see Necropotence in that list because it is far and away the strongest card advantage effect in these colors.

Another thing you might consider looking into is decks based around Nethroi, Apex of Death. While not identical, the decks often play similar strategies, and functions similarly. If you like the hate/control cards from the Junkus deck though, you might consider looking into creature toolbox decks that helm Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa and Tymna the Weaver , because they lend themselves to utility creatures that control the board. Check out EDHRec to see what I mean: EDHRec Tymna//Sidar

VampRamped on What is a Man? (a hyper aggro Edgar Markov EDH)

1 week ago

YamishiTheWickedOne

Very Nice Aggro Edgar Markov list especially for a deck that is your first foray into commander. The Main problem I see you running into with this deck is that it is very soft to board wipes, and you will almost certainly lose the game if one resolves. I would recommend including Teferi's Protection , Flawless Maneuver , Boros Charm , Make a Stand , Unbreakable Formation , and Patriarch's Bidding . While these cards are skillful to utilize and require an understanding of your opponent's decks to know when to leave up mana to utilize them you will find you will be grateful to have them and win more often because of them.

Necropotence is an insanely strong card advantage engine especially in Edgar Markov that I would highly recommend as it allows the deck to continue to have the steam it needs going into midgame and mid-late game. In fact, when I am going for the aggressive strategy in my own deck it is the first card I tutor for if I can. Champion of Dusk , Pact of the Serpent , and Stinging Study are almost as good and serves the same purpose.

Stromkirk Condemned Is a pretty strong lord that most games you should have the land to pitch to it to boost your board, especially if you include some of the card advantage I recommended.

Reconnaissance Is also an amazing card for an aggressive strategy as it essentially gives all your creatures vigilance and you can remove any unfavorable blocks in combat.

For cards to remove to play them I will suggest cutting cards in different area's that I think have their advantages but probably benefit your decks aggro plan the least

Zealous Persecution and Vampiric Fury are not very necessary for yours deck. If you have not seen it already in time you will find that your anthem affects lords Shared Animosity , and Sanctum Seeker will be more than sufficient to win the game. Additionally, the card is quite soft to fog effects which are not too uncommon in commanders.

Anointed Procession is simply a card that is too slow for what an aggressive Edgar Markov deck wants to be doing and is much more suited to midrange aristocrat lists. Spending 4 mana for an effect that does not do anything is too slow and you would much rather want to be playing things like Sanctum Seeker , Vampire Nocturnus , and Bloodline Keeper  ^Flip

Abrade , Dismember , and Nameless Inversion have two main problems. For one when you are playing an aggressive Edgar Markov deck you are committing to winning the early mid-game so spending the time you need to kill your opponents interacting with their board states is not doing you any favors. Secondly, as an aggro deck the only permanents that are outright going to stop you are Magus of the Tabernacle , Windborn Muse , Propaganda , Ghostly Prison , Collective Restraint , Sphere of Safety , and Humility so if your going to play removal spells in your aggro deck the spell at a minimum should target enchantments though creatures as well can be valuable.

Obelisk of Urd Is ok but is probably to expensive on mana and you would rather be punching with creatures than using them to convoke this spell out.

Bloodcrazed Paladin is really only good when there is a board wipe and that is the last thing you want to happen to your board so would not recommend playing a creature that's only strength is to give you a measly benefit in the worst-case scenario.

Bloodthrone Vampire is not very good in aggro since you want to have as many creatures around as possible for all of your tribal payoffs and since your deck is not particularly geared towards and Edgar Markov Aristocrats Strat.

Stoneforge Mystic and Steelshaper's Gift help you get Skullclamp but you probably don't want to be looking for that card too hard especially if you play Necropotence , or Champion of Dusk as I recommended as you don't have to sacrifice your board state to get card advantage when a wide board state is exactly what you are looking for. Additionally, you are not playing too many sacrifice effects anyway so when you play a lord it effectively turns off your Skullclamp .

Those would be my additions and removals for your removals but your the one who gets to play the deck so make adjustments to suit your playgroup and what you want to get out of the deck. Feel free to check out my own Edgar Markov Deck A Vampire Storm *Primer*, not the exact same strategy as your deck, but you may find some useful advice in my section on my mindset of how I play Edgar Markov aggressively. Would be happy to hear your thoughts on my suggestions as well as what you think of my own deck.

Guerric on Phyrexian Arena

1 week ago

Phyrexian Arena is never great, but it is a solid, recurrable card draw option for decks that lack access to better draw options. Obviously if you are playing blue or green you have better options, but if you are in black and can't benefit a ton from sac-draw synergies this can be decent if played early. Late in the game it will be dead, which is why it isn't great, but that's not why we play it. I agree with golgarigirl that one-off card draw spells are underwhelming, especially if like Sign in Blood they only leave you one card up. Now Necropotence is worth the hype, but also insanely expensive in real-world money (glad I got mine when it was cheap), as are to a much lesser extent Bolas's Citadel and Greed . But as we need around ten card draw spells in any given deck Phyrexian Arena will often make it into certain decks and be decent. As others have said, its definitely not the format staple it once was.

enpc on Phyrexian Arena

2 weeks ago

I didn't realise that Phyrexian Arena got enough hype for it to be over-hyped. Though your comment would indicate that you're moving from a pretty casual form of EDH (where Arena does work becuase games are soe drawn out) into a more competitive more tuned version of EDH.

As others have mentioned, when you get into this space then you're correct that the card does less work, due to either more removal or shorter games. As you start looking for more draw efficiency then you're either looking into cards which are super cheap ( Mystic Remora , Esper Sentinel , Dark Confidant , Sylvan Library , etc) or cards that will get you multiple draws per turn (some of hte aforementioned cards, Runic Armasaur , etc.). The other thing is that due to its double black, it makes the card a lot more clunky to cast in early games, when typically most decks are going for double blue or double green (because let's face it, these two colours dominate the competitive meta).

You also have your cantrips (as other comments have mentioned) - Sign in Blood is decent but Night's Whisper is generally preferred as the casting cost is easier. There's also Painful Truths which needs a 3+ colour deck to work but costs the same amount of mana as Arena with the upside of getting the three cards immediately.

Generally though, the more competitive decks use black primarily for its tutor ability rather than its draw ability (with the obvious exception of Necropotence ).

TriusMalarky on Phyrexian Arena

2 weeks ago

It's the kind of card that does put in the work, but it's gotta be built around correctly(much like any card draw)

Necro is used sort of as a combo piece but also as a massively effective draw engine.

Arena is used to guarantee you two cards played per rotation, which is great . . . if that's your gameplan. It's also really underwhelming in EDH where it's trivial to assemble ways to draw 2, 3 or even 4 extra cards a rotation.

I'll take a cEDH perspective here. In cEDH, this is unplayable, because

• The only way to turn one it is with Dark Ritual

• You'd rather play Necropotence turn one with Ritual

• You could also play Dark Confidant that can almost always come down turn one and at worst turn two

It also compares badly to every other good card draw spell:

• Mystic Remora comes down turn one and either stalls the other players, giving you the ability to pull ahead, or is basically Ancestral Recall at worst.

• Rhystic Study can come down turn one with Crypt and turn two with basically every other rock. It also draws absurd amounts of cards.

• Wheel of Misfortune or any other wheel allows you to jam a bunch of rocks in play and then reload to 7 on turn 1, meaning you just pull ahead pretty effectively.

• Sylvan Library is just good.

It's good, but not THAT good.