Soulless Jailer

Artifact Creature — Phyrexian Golem

Permanent cards in graveyards can't enter the battlefield.

Players can't cast noncreature spells from graveyards or exile.

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
Historic Brawl	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Modern Beyond Horizons	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Pioneer	Legal
Planar Constructed	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Pre-release	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Standard	Legal
Standard Brawl	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (14)

SufferFromEDHD on Bant Golems

2 days ago

Great minds think alike ;) Roon of the Golem Realm

Splicer's Skill is what motivated me to build golems a few years back. Would be great in this. Cut Mental Journey.

Platinum Emperion you are running the big robot. This would be a solid #2 fattie. Cut Glassdust Hulk.

Soulless Jailer golem stax tax

Nexus of Becoming newest toy

shadowjules on Budget Cycle Storm

2 weeks ago

Hey QuantumGeckoGuy! Very cool deck man, I tinkered with something like this for a while as well.

I tinkered with a similar concept for ages. Instead of looking to scale with Drannith Stinger and Marauding Mako, mine had a combo win with Lotleth Giant, and a secondary beatdown plan with Hollow One and Chitin Gravestalker. The deck DESPERATELY needs to cut down as much as humanly possible on any card without cycling. I think running Dark Ritual is a mistake, as you can get similar results with 4 copies of Lotus Petal - when churning through your deck, you can combo off so much earlier with you effectively know you can consistently find free bursts of 1 mana to cast Songs of the Damned. The difference between your bursts of mana costing (1) and costing (0) is huge. Running Lotus Petal is extra good when accompanied by a suite of (1) cost cyclers. Drannith Stinger is a good start, but I would run every creature with a (1) mana cycling ability ever printed - it just adds a crazy amount of consistency. I've found that 38 to 40 creatures with cycling in the deck is ideal for a 1 turn combo kill.

Finding lands is extra easy with cards like Troll of Khazad-dum and Oliphaunt. With the amount of cards that cycling lets you see, you really don't want to mulligan. These landcycling cards are huge because they often allow you a turn 1 tutor of a land in the early game (Troll of Khazad-dum gets you Fetid Pools and Oliphaunt gets you Canyon Slough). You can tutor for a land turn one either with an untapped Ash Barrens or the strict upgrade in Capital City that also filters your mana, or again with a turn 1 Lotus Petal. Later in the game, the land cyclers are never dead draws, because they tutor for a dual land, that also ends up cycling away, letting you see more cards and remove more lands from your deck as you combo off.

Crucially for the combo win, Lotleth Giant only cares about creatures in your graveyard, so do keep that in mind when comboing off. I tend to split my graveyard into two piles - 1 with creatures and 1 with noncreature spells (cycled lands, lotus petals, and so on). The combo turn needs to resolve a Songs of the Damned to cast Lotleth Giant usually, but thats not always super hard. A sideboard tech of Miscalculation really helps protect this here. Also 2 Shadow of the Grave is usually enough to stop your deck from running out of steam, especially since you run out of steam after seeing like around 30-40 cards in your deck. Again, Lotus Petal is so useful here.

Finally, I've found that you CAN run 3 fluctuators and not 4 if you're able to have a split of cycling cards with a low enough curve. This deck really wants to minimize the turns it spends not spending mana, so again, Ash Barrens and Capital City not entering tapped is really important, same for your Lotus Petal. These untapped mana sources, along with 1 mana landcyclers and 1 mana cycling creatures gets this deck to be much more consistent and much faster.

Built like this, the Hollow Ones / Chitin Gravestalker Beatdown plan is more of a trick to trip up your opponent rather than a primary win condition. When your opponent plans to counter your big combo turn, dumping 2 4/4s and a 5/4 onto the battlefield really early can be backbreaking. THese are the matchups where something like Drannith Stinger is just a lot less useful as a pinger, and I would think of Marauding Mako and Drannith Stinger as plank cards with cycling rather than win conditions.

This deck has trouble against certain kinds of graveyard hate. It never targets anything in the graveyard, and never looks to play things directly out of your graveyard, so cards like Grafdigger's Cage and Soulless Jailer don't do anything. But cards that exile our whole graveyard or stop cards from getting to the graveyard (Rest in Piece / Leyline of the Void / Soul-Guide Lantern) make the Lolteth gameplan obsolete. Sideboarding in Ominous Seas still turns out cycling card draw into massive beaters, and this can still let us combo into two or three 8/8s to threaten a short clock.

The deck has some potential and honestly is a ton of fun to tinker with. I've been iterating on it for ages myself. Here's my list if you're at all curious (Ignore the silly name and out-of-date descriptions, its a little messy and I started it 5 years ago in high school). Deck: deck-large:cycling-coombo-deck

Crow_Umbra on Good uses for bad cards

5 months ago

Knowledge Pool could also be paired with Soulless Jailer for additional Stax-y wrinkles

legendofa on Brew ideas for Scrawling Crawler

7 months ago

Birthing Ritual + Ancient Stirrings + Scrawling Crawler + Myr Retriever + something like an artifact hatebears package? Phyrexian Revoker, Soulless Jailer, Haywire Mite, Hex Parasite... Keep circulating artifact creatures, add in some Unearth or Recommission, something like that.

leovolt884_ on March of the Elfs

11 months ago

I don't see the point in adding black since you're not running great black removal or even card draw. I'm not sure that with what else you have in the deck Shaman of the Pack makes black worth it unless you want to start running better removal. Black kind of is driving up the price and Vein Ripper is not going to be cast often despite being powerful. A 6 drop with 3 off color pips that isn't in the decks tribe just doesn't feel great. I would recommend going up to 4 copies of Collected Company since it can hit almost every creature in your deck the value is pretty insane. I would lean into the +1/+1 counter theme and go up to 3 or 4 Kalonian Hydra and play 4 Metallic Mimic so everything can accumulate counters. 27 lands is also crazy without land payoffs. 27 lands + curving out at 3 cmc and running 12 mana dorks is going to keep you mana flooded almost all the time. Cut some mana dorks for more efficient low drop creatures and cut at least 6 lands, even as many as 8 or 9 if you plan on keeping 6+ mana dorks. Add more creatures instead, I would recommend a lord like Leaf-Crowned Visionary, Pelt Collector is great, Pollenbright Druid could be very versatile, and Rishkar, Peema Renegade is very powerful in a counters deck. If you keep black consider both Glissa Sunslayer and Glissa, Herald of Predation as quite frankly they are just busted cards. Consider adding board protection like Heroic Intervention and some removal. Soulless Jailer can be sideboarded if you play best of three matches but I think its a great choice since it can be hit with Collected Company. Those are just some recommendations but play it however you want, and take this from someone who knows nothing about pioneer meta and what decks you'll likely play against :>

Exoflo on SIX

11 months ago

Avarice Totem is a bad card

Soulless Jailer and Chef's Kiss are too specific cards that are not synergistic

Negate can be replace by a general counter spell

Brand is useless imo

Contested Game Ball just ask people to attack you

Harmless Offering and Wrong Turn are useless if zedruu stick on the field

Scrambleverse is pure chaos. It throws game and does not make it fun anymore, neither for u or your friends

Jinxed Idol is anti-synergistic cause you give creature

You have to many creature-focussed removal and not true "remove all" (like Witness Protection or Path to Exile. Keep enchantment, they are synergistic with Zedruu)

You have to many wincon, choose how you want to win and remove the other (keep them appart and modify you deck if you want to try new thing)

Remove more that 18 cards and add some lands

Consider adding some protection for Zedruu

After that, remove some bad gift and some "givers"

I don't like giving creature to opponent cause they can just sac it, or kill it during combat. That's just my opinion.

I don't like bad gift zedruu, again that's my opinion

Very good choice of commander

More important : play the card you like the most

SomeDipshit on Deliberate Denial of Death to the Dead

1 year ago

Bitterblossom Yeah if I was good at this game I'd probably run that for all the times Shirei gets sent to the impound lot.

Infernal Darkness I cannot ramp hard enough to support it usually but yeah its a good card.

Soulless Jailer -- ha ha! It is asymmetrical! Simply don't sacrifice him on your opponents turns! His ability is not active while he is a card in the graveyard, only when he is a creature, so it works quite well. As for "is your meta cursed?" yeah its hell. I play with like, cobblepot tier degenerates most of the time. Maelstrom Wanderer and Karador are common. One guy has a Chainer deck its nuts lmao.

Profet93 on Deliberate Denial of Death to the Dead

1 year ago

SomeDipshit +1

Bitterblossom - Synergy with contamination, token fodder for smoke stack, attrition, blocker, etc....

Your wincon is commander reliant. Have you considered an additional, versatile form of protection for it such as Imp's Mischief? It "counters" counterspells and redirects targeted removal, draw and extra turns! Conqueror's flail is a solid, repeatable option but it's more mana and easily telegraphed.

Infernal Darkness - Contaminations cousin. It can easily stall for a turn or 2 without creatures, and doesn't affect your coffers, Phyrexian Tower, Lake of the Dead or ancient tomb.

I don't understand Soulless Jailer, as it seems completely counterintuitive to your gameplan. Is your meta filled with so many graveyard decks that you require symmetrical grave hate? I get that you can sacrifice it, but it seems unnecessary. What has been your experience playing with it for about a year? Have you considered swapping it out with something asymmetrical such as Soul-Guide Lantern?