Thorn of the Black Rose
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Legality

Format Legality
1v1 Commander Legal
Archenemy 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
Oathbreaker Legal
Pauper Legal
Pauper Duel Commander Legal
Pauper EDH Legal
Planechase Legal
Quest Magic Legal
Vanguard Legal
Vintage Legal

Thorn of the Black Rose

Creature — Human Assassin

Deathtouch (Any amount of damage this deals to a creature is enough to destroy it.)

When Thorn of the Black Rose enters the battlefield, you become the monarch.

K4nkato on death by 1000 papercuts

4 months ago

Some thoughts:

1) Troll of Khazad-dum should be in some of your land slots to fix your mana. He should be fetching Geothermal Bog

2) The deck doesn't have a timely win condition. I ran some test games with your list against Goblin Combo, Grixis Affinity and Mono Blue Faeries. If a creature deck plays out a creature every turn then your removal absolutely runs them over at first, but there comes a point around turn 7 or 8 where you simply run out of cards. There's no draw cards in this list. It can wipe every card drawing Ninja, Faerie and Myr that hits the table but those decks will draw an addition 2, 3, even 5 cards over the game. Faeries wins out by holding all their Ninjas until the middle game, casting Of One Mind for full price to pull ahead, then casting a single Ninja and attacking into an empty board. Goblins wins by doing nothing until they have the whole combo in their hand / graveyard then they just win on the spot. Affinity draws cards until they can play two/four Myr Retrievers in one turn and defend them with Metallic Rebuke.

Fang Dragon costing seven mana puts him too far into the future to cast as a timely threat. By the time this deck reaches seven lands your opponent will have a removal spell, counter spell or other answer waiting for him. Gurmag Angler is big but most top decks can answer him. Thorn of the Black Rose refills your hand if you can watch the throne, but attacking for 1 isn't a reasonable clock.

I think Ichor Drinker is a good choice for the deck. It gives you a reasonable early turn play & some recursion post-board wipe, but I wonder if something like Nested Shambler, Persistent Specimen or Putrid Goblin would be a stronger choice for a threat. They naturally replace themselves on their own.

3) You aren't running enough support for You Are Already Dead in my opinion. I'd love to brew a deck built around these removal spells but they need a lot of support going for them. Someone else has recommended Crypt Rats but if you're looking for an interesting card with a lot of potential, have you considered Cuombajj Witches? One damage to any target, then you immediately pick it off. Fits the deck, provides a win condition, etc.

multimedia on Infectious Invasion

1 year ago

Hey, good start. To help with deck building add 36 lands, even just basic Swamps to start, to see how many deck spots you have left to fill? How about the name Infectious Invasion?

Other areas to help improve gameplay are more ramp sources and more draw sources. Sheoldred is 7 mana you'll want ramp to consistently cast her as well as cast many high mana cost infect creatures. Dark Ritual, Defiler of Flesh and Culling the Weak are good, but consider more?

Black does well with mana efficient draw for the cost of life or a permanent. Weatherlight Compleated looks to be powerful, but slow and Phyrexian Rager is subpar, consider more draw?

Infect gives poison counters to players when any type of damage is done by the creature with infect, not just combat damage. Vindictive Vampire when it has infect gives each opponent a poison counter when a creature you control dies.

Good luck with your deck.

Spell_Slam on GTA (Grand Theft Auras)

2 years ago

Props for the cool deck idea!

You should really be running Shade's Form over any of your current enchantments. It has the upside of you playing it on your own creatures to have the pump ability and protection from removal. I would suggest cutting False Demise for it to focus more on Black than Blue.

Now that I look at your deck, I'm not sure if you should even be playing Blue at all. The only real non-replaceable cards in your maindeck would be Counterspell.

Azure Fleet Admiral could be Thorn of the Black Rose.

You could be playing Sign in Blood and/or Night's Whisper as efficient card draw.

Your removal could also be stronger. Cast Down is a much better kill spell in Pauper than Terror. Other strong kill spells in the format are Victim of Night, Snuff Out, Defile, and Chainer's Edict.

BOXES_O_MOXES on Ancient lumberknot PDH

2 years ago

Heya!!!!

I was eyeing this guy too. I have been brainstorming. Contemplating a build around him as well. Some cards that came to mind were these. Also, these are my opinions. There's nothing wrong with your deck if you enjoy it like it is. My comments are just my 2 cents. The reason I havn't really started to put this together yet is because I'm not too much of a fan of EDH decks that 100% rely on the commander being in play to net more than 50% benefit. I think this guy might be that guy that looks better that he plays out, but we'll see. The only card that can really protect this guy 90% of the time is Whispersilk Cloak. And that Cloak is 1% of your deck. Your opponent is going to put soo much pressure on your commander if they can. Which sometimes can be a good thing if you can make the creatures in the deck count as much as the commander or more in the long run.

These first two I think should be auto includes because of Monarch. They also toughness is equal or better than power, so they fit.

Entourage of Trest

Thorn of the Black Rose

These others are just good ideas to ponder IMO:

Silumgar Scavenger, He just gets better when/if your crits die.

Forge of Heroes, Opal Palace Need to be in every pauper EDH deck.

Terramorphic Expanse, Evolving Wilds, the pauper fetch pack should probably be in every deck too. It helps to keep your draws a little more consistent.

Mortuary Mire, recursion that is technically free.

Bojuka Bog, Another black auto include. People play A LOT out of their graveyards.

Bonder's Ornament, this has become my favorite pauper card draw rock. Even if others end up playing it, it will add speed to both decks. Makes for more spells being played per turn for both players, or will just net you advantage if they don't play it. Creates more interaction. Pauper decks can tend to be slow from beginning to end without a card draw engine.

Removal spells. I'd try to fit a few in. You are relying too much on Pestilence. I think i would actually consider running a Crypt Rats along with the Pestilence. You can get the rats back with TORTEX. It can get mean. Keep recycling the rats when you need to.

Ash Barrens, deck thinning.

Lightning-Core Excavator, This guy is soo good with TORTEX. It's a repeatable bolt effect and in this deck technically he's a 3/3 for .

Aquastrand Spider, could be pretty fun in this deck. He can come back with TORTEX and make more graft counters to move around. Gives himself and other creatures reach if need be. He holds equipment well. So you can move both 1/1 counters without him dying. Whilst making other crits bigger. You don't have much for flying in here.

Ulamog's Crusher, to be honest I'd run him. The value is there. He doesn't need to be a 1/8 and cost 5 to play to be good for this deck. He's just pressure mid to late game and comes back with TORTEX. You run some ramp. So he shouldn't be overlooked.

Dimir House Guard, 10% of your deck are 4 costed spells. So he's a repeatable tutor for those other 10% of spells. It goes and gets Pestilence. for a 2/3 with fear and tutor isn't terrible at all.

For now this is all I have time for. We'll chit chat here and there when you reply. Maybe we can work out a good build together and I'll start building this in paper and add it to my stack of PEDH decks. =]

Have a good one!!

multimedia on

2 years ago

Hey, well done for a first deck on such a low budget. I haven't seen this Commander before.

When you're just starting out building decks in Commander it can be helpful to have some basic deck structure guildlines to follow.

This is just a basic structure to get things started. It doesn't cover everything and your final deck may have different numbers for each part of the structure such as you might have more creatures. Some cards can cover more than one area such as Palace Jailer who is creature removal and can be repeatable draw which is really helpful.

Ramp is something all Commander decks need since you don't want to only rely on lands/land drops to make mana. You have Sol Ring which is really good, but that's where the ramp ends here. Only Sol is not enough ramp.

I always explain to new Commander deck builders that you need to be able to sacrifice (cut) some of the fun cards to add ramp to your deck. Since doing this will help gameplay so that you can more easily cast your Commander and the other big fun cards you want to play. In the case here my advice is consider cutting at least 9 cards to add more budget ramp?

Some cards to consider cutting to add more ramp are creatures who don't do enough for their mana cost: Gods' Hall Guardian, Living Tempest, Dread Rider, Shepherd of Heroes, Kor Celebrant, Ronom Unicorn, Brinebarrow Intruder

Like ramp all decks also need draw that comes from single draw effects and more importantly repeatable draw sources. Currently your deck has three good single draw effects Baleful Strix, Champion of Wits, Cloudblazer and one repeatable draw source Jace, Wielder of Mysteries. There's a reanimation theme here that can get you more draw from these creatures which is good, but consider more draw?

Jailer and Rose can be repeatable draw sources with the Monarch Emblem. When you have the monarch then you draw a card at your end step. Only one player in the game at one time can be the monarch and it can change players. As long as you are monarch you get the repeatable draw at your end step which is a big advantage.

For an opponent to become the monarch they have to do combat damage with a creature to you or play a card/effect that makes them the monarch. When this happens you loose the monarch and that opponent becomes the monarch. You can get back the monarch though by doing combat damage with a creature to the opponent who is the monarch or playing a card/effect that makes you the monarch.

Some cards to consider cutting to add more draw: Withercrown, Grave Endeavor, Arcane Endeavor, Smite the Monstrous, Extract Brain, Wand of Orcus

The area of your deck that you have a lot of is removal. I count 23 single effects of removal here. You can afford to cut some removal to improve other areas of your deck: Withercrown, Befuddle, Iron Verdict, Smite the Monstrous.

If you're interested I offer more advice in another comment. Including explaining how blink from single effects or repeatable such as Soulherder and Brago, King Eternal can be powerful here. Would you like me to continue with more advice?

Good luck with your deck.

SourRnaGrapes on One Attacker to Rule them All

2 years ago

CommanderNeyo thanks for the suggestions! I'll have to add Unmarked Grave in somewhere (might remove Thorn of the Black Rose). As for the recursion spells, they'll be great for recurring tutors, but I'll have to see which one fits best in there.

plainsrunner on Social experiments in edh

2 years ago

These aren't really combos, but any card that grants the monarchy, like Thorn of the Black Rose can encourage attacks that more hesitant players might not have made in order to get that extra card draw. And any planeswalker can also encourage players to change their behavior by attacking desperately to stop that ultimate.

ajz123098 on Jund

3 years ago

Grubbernaut i was thinking about that card but i like how Thorn of the Black Rose has deathtouch so is basically a removal spell. The Altisaur and boarding party are usually enough big creatures for the grindy matchups. I'd like to have as many ways to control the board as i can while being the monarch.

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