Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver

Legendary Creature — Zombie Warrior

Whenever another Zombie you control dies (is put into the graveyard from the battlefield), if it didn't have decayed, create a 2/2 black Zombie creature token with decayed. (It can't block. When it attacks, sacrifice it at the end of combat.)

At the beginning of your end step, you may sacrifice a Zombie. If you do, draw a card.

Discussion (29)

x12721 on Looking for a casual but …

1 month ago

I've been enjoying Feather, the Redeemed recently, as I usually focus more on graveyard decks. If you do want to play around in the yard, both Meren of Clan Nel Toth and Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver can get you some serious value pretty quickly

Necrosis24 on dimir zombie token engines

3 months ago

I feel like there is an underlying issue here because as you said you have a lot of the suggested cards so you should be able to generate quite a few tokens already.

Regardless here are some synergies to look out for. Massacar's infinite loop paired with a good chunk of cards in your deck will give you a win so I won't bother with the potential infinite combos as that is self explanatory (Gravecrawler + Phyrexian Altar = Infinite Etb, Cast, and Death Triggers)

Token Combos

Champion of the Perished + Wand of Orcus or Ghoulcaller Gisa: Assuming Champion of the Perished has a decent amount of counters you can easily get a threatening board state especially with lords in play.

Ghoulcaller Gisa + Headless Rider or Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver: Any creature you sacrifice will generate an additional zombie token. If both are in play even better.

Crowded Crypt + Ashnod's Altar/Phyrexian Altar + Headless Rider or Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver: At the end of your opponent's endstep sacrifice your nontoken zombies to either altar assuming you have enough creatures to generate . Each creature you sacrificed will net you a 2/2 zombie from wilhelt or headless rider. Activate Crowded Crypt using the mana you obtained from sacrificing your creature's which will basically double the amount of tokens you have. So assuming you had six zombies in play at the end you will have twelve 2/2 zombies.

Tormod, the Desecrator + Gravecrawler + Ghoulcaller Gisa: Will net you three zombies a turn (Even more with lords in play or Headless Rider/Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver).

Necromancer's Stockpile + Bone Miser: Each creature you discard will net you two zombie tokens. Hopefully you draw into Zombie Apocalypse to get them all back.

Fleshbag Marauder Equipped with Blade of Selves + Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver: Assuming you have three opponents when each Felshbag Marauder token enters the battlefield they can sacrifice themselves to their own etb. This nets you three 2/2 zombies with decay and your opponents must sacrifice three creatures.

Other Suggestions

It seems like the deck does not have many sac-outlets or recursion to take full advantage of your commander's ability.

Some sac-outlets to consider:

1. Viscera Seer
2. Nantuko Husk
3. Carrion Feeder

Some Recursion:

1. Command the Dreadhorde
2. Rise of the Dark Realms
3. Living Death
4. Thrilling Encore

Some Card Draw:

1. Graveborn Muse
2. Plumb the Forbidden
3. Erebos, Bleak-Hearted
4. Undead Augur
5. Smothering Abomination

These are just a few affects to give you an idea on what to look for.

BertilFalukorv on Need a home for my …

3 months ago

My favorite card is a black enchantment on the Reserved list that I got two copies of a while back before the prices skyrocketed. But I never found a proper home for it.

The card in question is Tombstone Stairwell

As long as my yard always have more creatures than my opponents it will never be worth attacking me since then I can always outblock their tombspawn tokens.

Below I've listed what some of the colors can do to bring this card to life. (hehe) I know there are a lot more and please don't hestitate to type in your suggestions so that I can add to the list. The reason I list them is to make it easier to think of what kind of deck I could run this in as a "win-more-card" without ruining the deck so it fails of my yard gets emptied. It's also worth noting that the tokens gets Destroyed so if you make your creatures indestructible with something like Eldrazi Monument you get to keep your tokens where your opponents have to destroy theirs.

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RED • ETB triggers like Purphoros, God of the Forge

• Cool Synnergy with Deathbringer Thoctar which is extra nice since it's also a Zombie

BLACK • Various Deathtriggers like Blood Artist

• Sac outlets

WHITE • Great Synnergy with Cathars' Crusade

• Some Deathtriggers

• Has some nice player protection (To avoiod effects like Bojuka Bog and also nice recursion of enchantments and/or protection for enchantments.

GREEN • Good recursion cards, even on bodies like Eternal Witness to mention one of many.

• Death Presence

BLUE • Draws a lot of cards

• Protects gameplan and has some good Counter Triggered a bility cards like Stifle and Nimble Obstructionist which is extra nice to have on a body that also draws a card.

Basically I've made decks around this a hundred times but when I'm about to finish I feel like I'm lacking something in the colors I'm in or something else, I'm lost in what direction I should go to make the best out of this without having a poop deck till all the stars align.

Best Commanders I can think of as of yet:

• Alesha, Who Smiles at Death Aristocrats

• Kresh the Bloodbraided works well with this too, currently I'm building him in a more traditional direction since I fell in love with this commander for some reason. :)

• Teysa, Orzhov Scion Aristocrat Tokens

• Teysa Karlov Aristocrat Deathtriggers

• Ghave, Guru of Spores w/o going for inf combo wincon

• Grismold, the Dreadsower

• Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord

• Varina, Lich Queen Seems perfect in many ways for this too.

I currently run it in a Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver but I never gotten to cast it yet. The boring thing about Zombie tribal is that it's boring to build and somewhat fun to play (Play zombies, play lords, swing) and it leaves for a less interactive gameplay. It's a solid deck but it doesnt feel very spicy.

I don't necessarly need to run the most optimized deck to have fun or run the most expensive cards. I'm helpful for all the Ideas you can bring me as I seem to have hit a wall where I don't know what to do anymore.

Currently I'm leaning towards either of Teysa's or Alesha.

TL:DR What deck or what colors do you think Tombstone Stairwell would do best in?

Much appreciated. :)

VensersJournalist on Commander for Abzan Aristocrat deck

3 months ago

You mentioned wanting to draw cards as well. Have you considered a Grixis build? Possibly around Nekusar, the Mindrazer? It wouldn’t exactly be built to fit Tombstone Stairwell, but you could include that, Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver, and Purphoros, God of the Forge all in the same deck.

BertilFalukorv on Commander for Abzan Aristocrat deck

3 months ago

Yeah Ghave was the first one I looked at, I don't want my graveyard to be targeted so running a lot of recursion is something im trying to avoid.

I feel like I'm probably trying to jam in my Tombstone Stairwell in the deck. The best thing to do would probably be to run Mardu or Esper with Varina, Lich Queen and run a zombie theme. Problem is I have a zombie deck already with Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver Maybe I should just expand it to Esper instead of dimir and run more creatures.

Mardu is too tempting to run with Triggers like Purphoros, God of the Forge

The thing with Ghave is that It's like Abaques says, it's a known combo enabler and I try to stay away from such decks :)

So maybe the topic is wrong, I should make a thread about Tombstone Stairwell instead :P

Polaris on Help me understand Sac outlets …

3 months ago

You'll kill the table regardless. Once something triggers, the trigger will resolve regardless of whether the permanent with the ability stays in play. It's you want, you can just hold priority (assuming it's your turn) and sacrifice all your creatures in a row, then watch the triggers all play out (at that point it doesn't matter if an opponent pulls out removal, unless you were counting on making extra tokens with Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver to have enough sac fodder to close the game.

The correct time to use Walking Ballista is in response to Phyrexian Ghoul, Mayhem Devil, or Bastion of Remembrance being cast. Once all three are in play, it's too late. If Mayhem Devil is in play, you respond to the cast by hitting it three times to kill it. This forces you to either lose the kill if Phyrexian Ghoul isn't in play yet, or lose half the damage because Bastion isn't in yet. Otherwise, you have to keep threatening the Ghoul to force you to sac stuff before Mayhem Devil resolves. You'll still lose most of your life, just not all of it.

LordTourettes on Help me understand Sac outlets …

3 months ago

I'm trying to understand stack rules interactions and how priority works for death triggers.

I have Phyrexian Ghoul, Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver, Bastion of Remembrance and Mayhem Devil and 13 zombie tokens on the field. My opponents are at 20 life and I would like to sac my tokens to kill the table.

My opponent has a Walking Ballista with 12 counters on it. He would like to kill the Phyrexian Ghoul and Mayhem Devil.

Can I execute my win-con without being disrupted? At what point does my opponent respond to correctly stop me?

DawnsRayofLight on And The Dead Keep It, The Way Is Shut

4 months ago

I might consider going flat out zombies for this list. mono White, mono blue Urza, green white, or bant tend to do tax lists a bit better. I get the reasoning with rooftop storm, but it isn't enough.

If you want to do zombies, U/B is great because you have 3 solid generals to choose from between Grimgrin, Corpse-Born, Gisa and Geralf, and Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver

If you want to focus on Stax, maybe look into Urza, Lord High Artificer, Derevi, Empyrial Tactician, Hokori, Dust Drinker, Michiko Konda, Truth Seeker, Yasharn, Implacable Earth, Sigarda, Host of Herons, etc. All make great Stax commanders and have easier colors to work around the orb and tax effects (Opposition, Glare of Subdual, Seedborn Muse, Urza, Lord High Artificer, etc). Black can allow for reanimation for smokestack and the like white also has the potential along with plenty of ways to generate tokens.

You can do whatever you feel like, it is certainly your list, I just wanted to maybe offer the advice that this list is trying to do too much which keeps it from doing either of its game plans effectively. I speak from experience trying to make a Naya list that could be stompy and run tokens which didn't work well.