"My power is generosity in a way. I give my survivors an appreciation for their lives" plaguecrafter
hello everyone and welcome back once again to another budget deck tech, this time around i will be covering my favorite commander deck that i've EVER built. the budget for this one might be slightly higher then my previous Tormod+Ramirez deck simply because this is my favorite deck. the commander is Josu Vess, Lich Knight. the theme is mono-black tokens with a Deathtouch sub-theme, and hopefully by the end of this, i can show you the things you never knew Black had access too!, this is Josu Vess, Undead legionnaire, lets get too it.
before we begin i wanna go extra in-depth on Josu himself as i feel most people probably didn't know this creature existed in dominaria back in 2018 and i also believe he is HIGHLY underrated, maybe not CEDH good, but still strong for what he offers. Josu Vess, Lich Knight is for a legendary Zombie knight with a Kicker of which is an additional cost you may pay to get a benefit on ETB and in Josu's case it's a big one. as well as having menace making it so if anyone wants to block him they're gonna need 2 creatures to do so. he also states that "when Josu Vess, Lich Knight enters the battlefield, if he was kicked, create eight 2/2 black zombie knight creature tokens with menace". and no, i didn't mistype, you literally make EIGHT zombies and all of them have evasion thanks to menace. yea your paying mana to do so but in exchange you get 20 power worth of tokens on the board. and that's not even counting if we use anthems to buff up our undead legion, and we also have the ramp package required to reach that mana Kicker faster then we would then just playing lands.
Speaking of that Ramp Package, lets go over that now as it IS important to our playstyle. Because we're not in green, ramp doesn't come cheap, but that doesn't stop us from generating enough mana to rival that of green's mana production. Sol Ring basically the face of the format, Ur-Golem's Eye and Hedron Archive are functionally all the same card, with Hedron Archive letting us sac it to draw cards if need be. Palladium Myr and Kozilek's Channeler can also generate us two mana except on a body, Burnished Hart is an extremely underrated commander card and can act as an explosive vegetation on repeat with this deck given how much recursion we'll be running which i'll talk about later on. Heraldic Banner is a mana rock which makes black mana while also giving our team an extra 1 power to play with, it's a small anthem but it's quite potent. We're also running cards like Dark Ritual and Bog Witch to generate even MORE mana, why settle for one dark ritual when we have TWO?. as for keeping our budget low we're also running a few cheaper rocks in terms of coinage with Prismatic Lens and Mana Geode, one of which is only mana and the other scry's us a card when it enters, and Ruthless Knave is both a sac outlet AND ramps us with treasures.
and if you thought our ramp ended there then you must have a demon whispering in your ear, i know belzenlok won't shut up in our ears!. i wanna bring special attention to our land base as it has some Key cards within it that can crack our mana troubles in wide open. did you know that it's 100% possible to run 3 copies of Mage-Ring Network in your mono-colored decks?, what?, your saying you can't?, OOOOH no no you definitely can, in fact not only is Mage-ring Network in our deck but Bottomless Vault and Subterranean Hangar can effectively act as 2 bonus copies of mage ring network in our deck, and added redundancy never hurt anyone. i know it sounds like cheating, but hey, sucks for our opponents right?. of course we're also running Myriad Landscape for more lands because greed is good. and THIS is where i give a budget warning because we're about to get into some more Pricey cards. Cabal Stronghold is a 7 dollar card as of the making of this Deck profile but it's SO INCREDIBLY strong and helpful in our Josu main plan that i feel it's needed. and the last non-basic land we're running is Memorial to Folly for some late game recursion at the cost of cracking it.
But enough about ramp, you wanna see how this ALL comes together, well wait no more. fair warning: THINGS ARE GONNA BE DYING A LOT with this deck, Slum Reaper, Fleshbag Marauder and Plaguecrafter are all walking edict effects, and Syphon Flesh makes us zombies when we edict our opponents creatures with it, death and recruitment are one in the same in the eyes of a Necromancer. and Overseer of the Damned is one demon who understands that better then anyone, while your opponents creatures are dying, he is crapping out zombies left and right!, and our accursed sister's minion Liliana's Devotee will quietly sit there and raise an undead army at your beckoned call. speaking of death, Deathbringer Regent is a fantastic board wipe on legs, and since we're making zombies out of our opponents cards already, we might as well steal them too with Necromantic Selection.
Noosegraf Mob makes a return Debut in this deck, coming all the way over from the tomb of madness just to make us more monsters, and Death Tyrant will make us zombies whenever our opponents creatures die to our deathtoucher's in combat. but Josu isn't our ONLY mass token producer, Dark Salvation if we pump enough mana can generate us an instant army while also killing a key creature, Midnight Ritual lets us make zombies by exiling our uselessly dead creatures in our graveyard, and Army of the Damned can do a fine Josu Vess impersonation, although IT'S zombies come in tapped sadly. all this death talk and yet we haven't even discussed our legion of deathtoucher's that will surely make our opponent second guess attacking us, where are my manners?!. Onyx Mage and Paragon of Open Graves can give our creatures Deathtouch for a small fee while Death Baron just gives our whole army deathtouch and a +1/+1 buff (if it's a skeleton or zombie that is), not bad. Foulmire Knight draws us a card at instant speed while being a deathtoucher whom will make the opponent think twice about touching us, speaking of not wanting to touch us we also have Drudge Skeletons, this may seem like a weak 1/1 but you'd be surprised how little people pack anti-regenerate spells in their decks, he can tank some shots for you if the opponent doesn't have trample. Grimdancer can come in as a 3/3 with any two of the keywords lifelink, menace and deathtouch while Vizier of the Scorpion also makes a return debut with Noosegraf Mob because deathtouch as well as Persistent Specimen and Eternal Taskmaster because they care.
Finally i wanna talk about some spicy tech cards in this deck which most don't know even exist and i believe are absolute bomb cards if you play your cards right. Skyclave Shade can come back over and over again and deal a whopping 5 damage to our opponents on attack when he does come back from the graveyard, and if they block it, chances are it'll kill whatever they blocked it with and we'll make a zombie out of it. Soul of Innistrad and Gravewaker are fantastic mana sinks if you've got no cards in hand and need something to do, Gurgling Anointer acts as fodder while grabbing us a creature from our graveyard upon his death should he get big enough, Transmogrant Altar can let us ramp even harder while also allowing us to make bigger zombies and all for sacrificing 1 creature, Wasteland Scorpion is a deathtoucher which if un-needed can be pitched too it's own Cycling ability for an extra draw, i do love me some flexibility in my cards. and finally i wanted to talk about Nezumi Graverobber
, a card i see NOBODY talking about but it's seriously just an insane card, if you can play this after someone get's their graveyard exiled or someone else's graveyard is empty, you can use it's activated ability and flip it straight away and get Nighteyes the Desecrator, who for can reanimate any creature in any graveyard at instant speed!, now THAT'S a gut punch. even if nezumi graverobber NEVER FLIPS it is at it's worst a graveyard hate piece which isn't even the worst thing it could be, this card is insanely strong and i love it.
I hope you all enjoyed this deck profile, hopefully if you do end up getting this deck that you rock your tables world with this underrated commander and i'll see you guys on the next deck profile.
