Szadek, Lord of Secrets

Legendary Creature — Vampire

Flying

If Szadek, Lord of Secrets would deal combat damage to a player, instead put that many +1/+1 counters on Szadek and that player puts that many cards from the top of their library into their graveyard.

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Block Constructed	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Modern	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (50)

legendofa on League of Supervillans

9 months ago

How villainous do you want to get with this? Rakdos and Lazav are both very much sinister, destructive, monomaniacal beings, but they played a key part in taking down the Nephilim, Experiment Kraj, and Nicol Bolas (Rakdos got in on all three, Lazav missed the first two). On that note, Szadek, Lord of Secrets is pure villain.

Volrath the Fallen was one of the earliest arc villains. Yawgmoth, Thran Physician can fit in.

Oona and Maralen are at least antagonistic, but are they strictly villains? They mostly just acted against each other, trying to work around the Great Aurora.

Lord_Olga on Therapy failed because I kept putting up Walls

1 year ago

Great deck!! I run Szadek, Lord of Secrets in my Phenax deck cause he can make himself bigger by milling and attacking which makes him work better and better with Phenax. If you can generate the mana to cast him, he's great.

CasualCucumber on zombie

2 years ago

It seems your deck is going in too many directions at the moment. You have a lot of zombie lords which is good, but there needs to be a bigger zombie production. You seem to be going for the token zombie spam, so cut out the creatures that doesn't help this plan. In zombie tribal I would build around The Scarab God first ability and not focus too much on the second ability in your deckbuilding - plenty of graveyards will be filled without dedicating yourself too much to a mill plan. Of course I can see you're not finished with the deck but simple things like Szadek, Lord of Secrets seems bad when you could run Altar of Dementia.

To start with, cut: Ascendant Evincar, Pontiff of Blight, Evil Twin, Szadek, Lord of Secrets, Wight.

DemonDragonJ on Diabolical Machinations

2 years ago

I have replaced Szadek, Lord of Secrets with Blizzard Specter , which lowered this deck's average converted mana cost from 4.66 to 4.61, which is a good thing, since this deck still has the higher mana curve out of all my decks.

DemonDragonJ on Mind Over Matter

2 years ago

I have replaced Dromar, the Banisher _ with Yennett, Cryptic Sovereign , because, as much as I wish to have all ten primordial dragons in my decks, Dromar is highly situational, because he hurts his controller three-fifths of the time.

I have replaced Mindleech Mass with Blizzard Specter , mainly because the specter has a lower mana cost than does the mass.

I have replaced Szadek, Lord of Secrets with Nemesis of Reason , because, while it is great that Szadek grows more powerful with each attack, milling my opponents' cards is not a central strategy of this deck, so I cannot afford to pay Szadek's high mana cost.

These three changes together reduced this deck's average converted mana cost from 4.24 to 4.13, which is very nice.

multimedia on Which Card Should Replace Mindleech …

2 years ago

DemonDragonJ, you have the right idea with wanting to cut an 8 drop for a another 3 drop creature and more of these ideas would further help gameplay. Ponder about more things you can do before you cast your Commander not after you control it. Something to think about is the amount of high CMC creatures you're playing and if these creatures are really needed or could something else lower CMC better help Sen? The large amount of high CMC creatures is making the avg. CMC 4.0+ which doesn't give you many plays to make before you cast Sen.

Sen is the high CMC creature you want to cast more than the others, but before you can cast Sen you want to cast other cards and hopefully these cards help you to cast Sen or give you another advantage the turn you control Sen. Lots of high CMC creatures doesn't give you as much plays to make before you control Sen. An Arcane Signet for example is going to do more than Szadek, Lord of Secrets because you can potentially cast Arcane before Sen and it can help to cast Sen and opponents spells afterwards.

Another example is Lim-Dul's Vault could replace another high CMC creature such as Drogskol Reaver since you can use Vault to potentially find your best high CMC creature when you can cast it or before that to setup your draws before or after you can cast Sen. Vault can also help to find Chromatic Lantern to make it easier to cast opponent spells.

DemonDragonJ on Which Card Should Replace Mindleech …

2 years ago

Profet93, I wish to avoid cards that I consider to be degenerate, so I suppose that Nightveil Specter seems to be the most popular choice of the cards that I have mentioned.

I also am wondering if I should keep Szadek, Lord of Secrets in that deck, since he is expensive and has a very strict mana cost, so should I replace him with one of the other cards that I mentioned, such as Nemesis of Reason ?

twechsler on A small library in Phoenix ceases to exist

2 years ago

Thank you! I didn't even think about having multiple possible commanders but it makes sense. If money didn't exist I feel like Phenax, God of Deception would be the best for this but I landed at Mirko because he's cheaper and still effective I think. Szadek, Lord of Secrets is another good one. How does it work having the starting cmc be so high at 7? If it gets removed it would suck to put it back for 9 already but I haven't played commander so maybe this isn't as much of an issue. I updated the maybe board to have what I currently own (I know some don't fit but I just wanted to let you know what I'm working with). Once again thank you for helping me on my first EDH!