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Costly Combo

Commander / EDH

Penguin_Gamer_1

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Commander: Demonlord Belzenlok

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Lands (38)

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Now you may be asking, "How do you ever make a Demonlord Belzenlok combo deck work?". Well I answer that with this deck. The deck focuses on staying alive until it can ramp up to enough mana to pull off it's main combo. This combo, while requiring some set-up in order to make it work, is quite effective in practice. The deck, as you can see, contains only one card below 4 mana, that being Sickening Dreams. By searching this card up with one of the many tutors, you are able to draw your entire deck with Belzenlok. If you can get one of the 5 ways to survive Demonlord Belzenlok's ability, those being Whip of Erebos, Bone Mask, Mourner's Shield, Glacial Chasm, or Platinum Emperion, either by naturally drawing them or searching for them, you can draw your entire deck. From there, exile any black card to cast Unmask for free, targeting yourself and discarding Haunted Dead. Activate Haunted Dead's ability for one and a black, discarding Dread Return and Skirge Familiar. This will allow you to activate Dread Return's Flashback, sacrificing Haunted Dead, the token it creates, and any third creature (usually Belzenlok). This will let you gain as much mana as you need in order to play Sickening Dreams or Pestilence as well as a way to survive them (usually the other tap artifact for Sickening Dreams and Hammer of Nazahn + Platinum Emperion for Pestilence). With this, you can kill your opponents but keep yourself alive. Another thing that usually destroys these kinds of decks are counterspells or removal. If Belzenlok gets countered, no problem, just recast it next turn and try again. If the flashbacked Dread Return gets axed off, its also okay. Just move to end step, discard Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre + a bunch of other stuff to hand size and refill your library to try again. Usually playing Pestilence first is the safe play, as if that gets countered, it is the less punishing of the two and makes way to play Dreams. Sickening Dreams can also discard Ulamog, again reseting your library if it gets countered. The few scenarios that are devastating for the deck are getting platinum emperion/angel before Belzenlok's ability goes off. This is why it is usually the best option to try and use the Shield/Mask for the combo as a kill spell does not stop them and the only real way for them to be stopped is a stifle, which very few decks have. The entire combo is expensive though, costing a minimum of 8 mana to pull off and only if a survival piece (not counting the shield or mask) stays alive. This means the deck tries to control the board and build up mana until it is finally able to pull off the combo. It has a good number of cards that are able to be played early so that you are not just sitting there on turns 1-3 with 0 plays. Though the deck may seem very inconsistent and fragile, it actually holds quite a bit of hidden resilience that allows it to be a fairly powerful deck. The main cards to watch out for are definitely K-Grip and Stifle/any variant of it. Another thing is the combo can be messed up if they are able to kill haunted dead before the token trigger activates, so it can often be useful to have at least one creature on the field before you play Belzenlok. And with that in mind, the deck can perform quite well as a control deck early to mid game and eventually burst out with a combo kill when your opponents least expect it. Just.... make sure no one's playing Gaddock Teeg....

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