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Death is at your door, and he's challenging you.

Commander / EDH Aggro BUG (Sultai) Deathtouch Mill Multiplayer Sacrifice

AKTriple5

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Land (36)

Enchantment (8)

Creature (25)

Instant (10)

Commander (1)

Commander: Sidisi, Brood Tyrant

Sorcery (16)

Artifact (4)

Knock knock. Anyone home? Now's your chance to handle death itself to take out your foes, just don't take yourself out with this power.

Just a simple, run of the mill black/green deck. Mana ramp early game, kill their stuff mid-game, and enjoy watching the life flow out of their eyes as your spells grow more potent. I have upgraded this deck recently thanks to a cough cough wonderful cough government paying for some new cards. This deck should be simple enough to see how it works, but I will explain the intricacies down below.

This deck is all about putting cards into the graveyard and then using that against your enemies. In order to do that, you need cards to put other cards in the graveyard.

The simple way to do that is to destroy creatures with Casualties of War and Poison the Cup. Another good card to use is Deathsprout to not only destroy a creature, but get a land out of it. You can use this land to get bigger spells out. These bigger spells can even destroy more creatures at once, like Decree of Pain or In Garruk's Wake. Now if you hadn't noticed, those big board wipes are expensive. Which is why Decree of Pain can be discarded for a much more reasonable cost to draw a card and still get rid of some smaller creatures. Luckily, if you wait until late game, some of these cards even get better. For example, Avatar of Woe and Drag to the Underworld get cheaper and can cost as little as 2 mana. Plus if Ruinous Path is cast with 7 instead of 3, you also turn one of the many lands into a 4/4 creature.

The next method is through sacrifice. One thing that needs to get brought up is that if you have an opponent sacrifice a creature, they are one to choose that creature. So if they own a really small or useless creature, that is likely what will get sacrificed. But nothing is stopping you from sacrificing your useless creatures. Though, if they have only one creature left, that is what gets sacrificed. Barter in Blood, Smallpox, and Torment of Hailfire are great, straightforward cards to cut down the enemy numbers. Now, those cards could be good for one time, but you could easily use Archfiend of Depravity or Clackbridge Troll for constant sacrifice unless your opponents want a giant Troll smacking them in the face. Blighted Fen is also a sacrifice stick on a land, which is fun as many opponents tend to forget about your lands. You could even sacrifice your own cards for some fun effects. Attrition and Spark Harvest can be utilized to destroy specific creatures. Izoni, Thousand-Eyed and Village Rites can be used to get some card draw that this deck sometimes really needs. Eldrazi Conscription is a way to to get a big creature even bigger and Annihilator 2 which is the only way in this deck to sacrifice lands, artifacts, enchantments, or planeswalkers. Granted, there is no way to force what they sacrifice, but if their board is empty, they have to empty it even further.

The final reason to sacrifice is to receive bonuses every time you do it. Grave Pact is a simple way to force an opponent to sacrifice a creature upon the loss of one of yours. Moldervine Reclamation can be used for more much needed card draw. Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest is a great card to set up for your final strike by getting all of your creatures bigger with every sacrifice.

If you feel like you can't spare a single card, there are a few ways to spare a few. Deadly Recluse is an early game card to deter attacks with its deathtouch, but becomes ample fodder when it is no longer needed. card:Relentless Reveler causes all players to mill three cards which is at least six extra cards in the graveyard. Sac it as soon as you can. Silumgar Assassin is an early game kill that once the kill has been activated, has decent pseudo evasion or can be used as a sacrifice later once he is done. Izoni, Thousand-Eyed has already been discussed but when she enters, depending on how much you have been able to kill, she hands you a handful of tokens that can be used to sacrificed later. Do keep note that sacrificed tokens don't go into the graveyard, but they do count towards death triggers.

Garruk, Apex Predator, Garruk, Cursed Huntsman, and Garruk Relentless   need to be grouped together because they fall into almost all of the categories this deck uses individually. They all summon tokens for sacrificing, have ways to destroy creatures with extra benefits along with it, and their ults get your creatures much bigger and trample in order to help end the game in a spectacular attack. They each have their own things to keep each one unique from each other, so just read the cards to figure out the specifics, but they all have those three basic uses.

Autumnal Gloom   didn't really fit in any of the other categories, but it mills your own cards for those cards that require cards in your graveyard, then is a great field presence once it flips. Special note, it is also a fun card against counter decks. I have talked to some more professional players when I first started playing and they admitted that counter decks don't typically worry about enchantments so it will likely get onto the field fine. Then when it flips, hexproof will defend itself from most things that those decks may have in its sideboard. So it may not win a game singlehanded, but I'm not saying it won't.

Finally, there is one main type of card is a huge competitor against this deck. Indestructible. There are two ways to kill an indestructible creature: Sacrificing it or lowering its toughness to zero. Sacrifice is very prevalent in this deck, but as I have stated, it is hard to get an opponent to sacrifice a specific creature without killing everything else first. The other method is much more practical. Using a card like Dismember isn't a guaranteed kill, but it will take out most early to mid-game creatures for as low as 1 mana (if you don't mind paying some life).

Obviously, this deck is based on the entire idea of Lord of Extinction. The King of this whole deck. Every card in every graveyard is his. He is the mighty lord of all! But, he unfortunately can't exactly do everything on his own. So he has Lieutenants that utilize a similar, lesser power. Even though they may not be nearly as powerful as The Almighty, they do have other abilities to let them do things that He can't.

Sewer Nemesis is the favorite of the Lieutenants. His Power/Toughness is tied to only one graveyard, but it is all cards in said graveyard. His ability is great as well. When you choose whose graveyard he is based on, he also gives that player the ability to mill every time they play a spell. This is HUGE for growing graveyard numbers. And don't forget that you can target yourself if you have a few cards that focus on your graveyard.

Revenant is next up. It is a little narrow in looking at specifically creatures in your graveyard making him probably the smallest lieutenant in terms of Power/Toughness, but he makes up for it by having Flying. Evasion is always nice.

Lhurgoyf is a much better version of Undergrowth Scavenger, which for a while was my favorite card and probably still is my favorite common. But Lhurgoyf is just a better version for the same mana. He looks at all graveyards, but only creatures. This just makes him a diet Lord of Extinction for 1 mana less. He also has a better survivability having his Toughness being Star +1, allowing for survivability against graveyard clean-ups.

Vulturous Zombie is easily the smallest and the least favorite lieutenant. It enters as a 3/3 instead of Star/Star which immediately says something. What does put him as a lieutenant, though is that he gains a +1/+1 counter each time a card ends up in an opponents graveyard from anywhere. This is a more risky strategy as counters can be removed, but if cards are removed from a graveyard, he does keep the counters. So he is a little more situational, but you can't deny its power. Not to mention it can fly, giving it the potential of even outgrowing Revenant, but it likely won't as the five mana cost will end up having it miss a handful of counters, where Revenant just cares about the cards already there.

The Long Reach of Night   is the newest and probably the weird step-child of the mix. It has the same advantage as Autumnal Gloom   of entering as an Enchantment first, possibly slipping past counterspells. Then it has the downside of having to wait a few turns before it can do anything. But it still makes itself useful during those turns by either getting a sacrifice and/or a discard. We would want a sacrifice, but hey, a card in the graveyard is still a card in the graveyard. Next, this finally gets a chance to flip into Animus of Night's Reach  , the true lieutenent. Though this may honestly just be a Fan-girling-knight in comparison. For starters, it is a 0/4. No stars. This does give survivability if someone were to clean out their graveyard, but that 0 is not too inviting. Next, it has Menace, which is comparable to flying in that it could provide evasion, as long as you are clearing out their defenses like you should be. Finally its main selling point. "When it attacks, it gets a +X/+0 until end of turn, where X is the number of creature cards in defending player's graveyard." First, it is just creatures. Second, from one graveyard. Third, until end of turn. None of these make it a bad card necessarily, but this is why I would honestly give this the title of Knight, rather than Lieutenant. It is still a good ability that works well with this deck, as long as you play your cards right. It's basically just used for a bit of guaranteed defense that can strike when the time is right for some decent unavoidable damage. You should be keeping an eye on all graveyards anyway. Worst comes to worst, if you can't find an opening, this can be another set of sacrifice fodder.

For starters, this deck comes with a fair amount of Swamps and Forests. These are the fundamental cards to summon everything in this deck. Some cards have very specific color costs and as such, we have some color fixing. I currently have Jungle Hollow as my fixing, but I do plan on swapping over to Overgrown Tombfoil over time. I don't really feel like sending $40 on 4 cards at this moment. But once I do get them, they will fit nicely in this deck as you likely won't need open mana early game, so you can let them come in tapped no problem. But if you are in a pinch and draw one and need the mana now, 2 life is not that much in the grand scheme of things. Blighted Fen can tap for mana, but is mainly used as a late game sacrifice once you have enough mana and aren't drawing quite what you need. Moving on.

Now, you may have noticed that this deck requires a bit of mana. You are going to need that mana and hoping for good land draws throughout the game won't do it. Well, it might. But it's not likely. Hence why we need ManaRamp. Market Festival turns one land into three and Wolfwillow Haven turns one land into two and can create fodder when it is no longer needed. Nissa's Pilgrimage finds you two forests unless you have cards in your graveyard, then it finds you three! Finally, Deathsprout kills a creature and you get a land out of it.

Now to give special attention to the card Old Rutstein. This card is honestly a great way to get consistent cards into the graveyard, even if they are yours. But you do still get compensated for it. I mostly bring him up here for the potential of Treasure tokens, with the possibility of being able to play a land and sacrifice a treasure. Though the possibility of the insect is good for good sac creatures and the blood tokens are just...there. They are nice, and can be useful, but don't add too much to the deck overall.

I completely recognize the fact that in order to play a deck like this competitively, I would need to have up to four copies of the best cards and cut down on everything else. I just like playing in this way in order to provide myself a different experience every time I play it, so it is my preferred method in order to have fun.

"But if that is how you like your decks, then why don't you turn this into a commander deck?"

Simple. Lord of Extinction isn't legendary. If I were to turn this deck into a commander deck, I would want a card similar or better than Lord of Extinction as the commander. There are some cards that have come out that I wouldn't mind getting as a temporary commander, like Chevill, Bane of Monsters, Nath of the Gilt-Leaf, Old Rutstein, or Old Stickfingers. Heck, I may even consider those last two. But who knows. We will just have to wait and see.

In short, this is the way I play magic and I will turn this to commander once they release a card that is a fitting commander for this deck.

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Revision 6 See all

(7 months ago)

-1 Autumnal Gloom  Flip main
+1 Back for More main
-1 Barter in Blood main
+1 Bilious Skulldweller main
+1 Blight Grenade main
-2 Blighted Fen main
+1 Braids, Arisen Nightmare main
+1 Breathe Your Last main
+1 Broodspinner main
+1 Case of the Stashed Skeleton main
+1 Command Tower main
+1 Commune with Evil main
+1 Consuming Aberration main
+1 Darkwater Catacombs main
+1 Deathbloom Ritualist main
-1 Deathsprout main
-1 Demogorgon's Clutches main
+1 Desert of the Glorified main
+1 Desert of the Indomitable main
+1 Diabolic Intent main
and 90 other change(s)