Mentally Screw With Your Friends [Negan Primer]

Commander / EDH Blink Control Group Slug Primer RBW (Mardu) Sacrifice

Feyd-Rautha

Land (36)

• 1x Battlefield Forge
• 1x Blood Crypt
• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Caves of Koilos
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Evolving Wilds
• 1x Fetid Heath
• 1x Godless Shrine
• 1x Graven Cairns
• 1x Mistveil Plains
• 2x Mountain
• 1x Myriad Landscape
• 1x Nomad Outpost
• 5x Plains
• 1x Rugged Prairie
• 1x Sacred Foundry
• 1x Sanctum of Eternity
• 1x Savai Triome
• 1x Sulfurous Springs
• 7x Swamp
• 1x Tainted Field
• 1x Tainted Peak
• 1x Terramorphic Expanse
• 1x Vault of the Archangel
• 1x Volrath's Stronghold

Enchantment (5)

• 1x Martyr's Bond
• 1x Phyrexian Arena
• 1x Revel in Riches
• 1x Sigil of the New Dawn
• 1x Smothering Tithe

Planeswalker (4)

• 1x Kaya, Ghost Assassin
• 1x Liliana, Dreadhorde General
• 1x Sorin, Grim Nemesis
• 1x The Eternal Wanderer

Creature (21)

• 1x Bloodgift Demon
• 1x Burnished Hart
• 1x Custodi Lich
• 1x Demon's Disciple
• 1x Eldrazi Displacer
• 1x Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines
• 1x Emeria Shepherd
• 1x Fleshbag Marauder
• 1x Harvester of Souls
• 1x Hofri Ghostforge
• 1x Kor Cartographer
• 1x Mahadi, Emporium Master
• 1x Marionette Master
• 1x Merciless Executioner
• 1x Nightmare Shepherd
• 1x Ob Nixilis, Unshackled
• 1x Plaguecrafter
• 1x Queen Marchesa
• 1x Sheoldred, Whispering One
• 1x Solemn Simulacrum
• 1x Tergrid, God of Fright  ^Flip

Instant (11)

• 1x Crackling Doom
• 1x Eerie Interlude
• 1x Ephemerate
• 1x Kaya's Guile
• 1x Orim's Thunder
• 1x Rakdos Charm
• 1x Return to Dust
• 1x Soul Shatter
• 1x Szat's Will
• 1x Utter End
• 1x Vona's Hunger

Commander (1)

Sorcery (12)

• 1x Dismantling Wave
• 1x Mythos of Snapdax
• 1x Painful Truths
• 1x Pirate's Pillage
• 1x Promise of Loyalty
• 1x Rise of the Dark Realms
• 1x Ruinous Ultimatum
• 1x Single Combat
• 1x Slaughter the Strong
• 1x Torment of Hailfire
• 1x Tragic Arrogance
• 1x Virtus's Maneuver

Artifact (10)

• 1x Bolas's Citadel
• 1x Conjurer's Closet
• 1x Conqueror's Galleon  ^Flip
• 1x Lucille
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Sunforger
• 1x Talisman of Conviction
• 1x Talisman of Hierarchy
• 1x Talisman of Indulgence
• 1x Treasure Map  ^Flip

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Maybeboard

Creature (7)

• 1x Archfiend of Depravity
• 1x Cataclysmic Gearhulk
• 1x Dockside Extortionist
• 1x Gadrak, the Crown-Scourge
• 1x Goldspan Dragon
• 1x Luminous Broodmoth
• 1x Mari, the Killing Quill

Enchantment (3)

• 1x Forging the Tyrite Sword
• 1x Offspring's Revenge
• 1x Oubliette

Sorcery (2)

• 1x Capital Punishment
• 1x Make an Example

Planeswalker (1)

• 1x Daretti, Ingenious Iconoclast

Land (3)

• 1x Badlands
• 1x Plateau
• 1x Scrubland

Artifact (1)

• 1x Sword of Hearth and Home

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Hello and welcome to my Negan, the Cold Blooded EDH deck page! I ordered the Walking Dead X MTG secret lair and I was interested in making an EDH deck with Negan. He seemed like an interesting card but I found out he was a lot harder to build than he originally appeared. This was one of the more difficult builds I've done because it requires a balance between a number of factors; mana ramp, card advantage, control, and making your opponents sacrifice creatures all need to be be balanced so the deck isn't too lopsided.

What kind of deck is this?

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Make no mistake about it. This is a hard control deck that is very effective and efficient at clearing the board of creatures. I know this may seem presumptuous but in my experience control decks do not fare very well in EDH because it is difficult to fight the resources of three other players by yourself. This deck, however, has proven itself time and again to be able to take down creature based strategies. I will emphasize that if your local metagame is a lot of durdly pillowfort decks, enchantment-based strategies, or pure combo with few or no creatures then this deck is not going to be able to shine. This deck is packed to the gills with interactive cards but a large majority of them affect creatures; we run no countermagic and a lot of the cards I've used mainly deal with permanents in play. This type of controlling strategy is not going to make you any friends, though, so be prepared to fight hard for your wins because we lack infinite combos and not many ways to "go off" so to speak. Grindy, haggard games with people muttering under their breath are in your future if you play this deck, haha.

Playstyle

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Negan is an interesting card in that he gets around a lot of common ways to protect a creature (e.g. hexproof, indestructible, shroud). That means that he can usually remove at least the single worst threat a player has. His ability means that you can play a mind game with your opponent and possibly get two creature sacrifices from him if you believe your opponent wants to minimize their losses and pick their best creature, thinking you will also pick it. This usually happens when there is one creature that is pivotal to their startegy, maybe their commander with an equipped boots or a combo creature they need to make their combo or engine run. Once Negan has hit the battlefield and his ETB is spent then his secondary, passive ability will continue to provide value while he remains in play. Oftentimes you can taunt your opponents with Negan, sometimes even asking them to kill him, just so you can reanimate him or recast him to get his effect again. Sometimes sacrificing Negan to one of your own creatures is the right play; keep in mind that with a mass sacrifice board wipe Negan sees all the other creatures being sacrificed and you still get the treasures even if you sacrifice Negan himself.

Early game is about setting up some kind of enabler or payoff card. An example of a payoff card is Negan himself; each self saccing creature you play after Negan yields you more treasures which you can then use to snowball into other powerful spells. The early turns of the game usually involve you trying to get some ramp going because this deck not only loves its land drops but it is in a good position to utilize large amounts of mana, chaining spells and draw effects into one another. Since your deck is almost tailor-made to destroy creatures on the board it is worth your time to ramp and set up draw engines as early as possible. This early setup is what is going to put you in a good position to dominate the mid and late game against creature strategies. Kill creatures, get treasure, ..., profit?

The midgame usually revolves around you constantly clearing the board of serious threats, playing/recurring a threat of your own, or if you have done these two things already, continuing to ramp and develop card advantage. Some of the flashy plays in this deck require a lot of mana so continue to ramp throughout the game even if it doesn't seem necessary at the time. Using your open mana to ramp and develop will thin your deck and make your draws better the longer the game goes on. Try and become the monarch during this time because you will find that you retain the crown for a long time without any creatures swinging at you.

The lategame in this deck usually sees you become the arch-nemesis. I'm going to be straight with you this is the hard part. If your opponents can't keep their creatures on the board they are going to lash out at you and use all their removal on you (probably because you will be the only one with creatures left in play). This is the part of the game where diplomacy will get you nowhere; players are going to be holding counterspells, artifact and enchantment removal, graveyard hate, and every creature kill spell just for you. Hopefully you were able to get far enough ahead in the early and midgame to have enough resources to weather the storm. Remember, though, to laser focus the most likely player to be able to make a comeback first or who is causing you the most problems. With them out of the way things will become easier. To be real you might have to beat down with Negan over 5-6 turns to take someone out; this is something I have done before and its not pretty. Your strong finishers are Torment of Hailfire, comboing Volrath's Stronghold with Sorin, Grim Nemesis, a giant Rise of the Dark Realms after you have cleared the board, actually triggering Revel in Riches wincon on your upkeep (don't laugh I have actually done this multiple times), or just the normal way with beating down with creatures. If all goes well your opponents will be very bitter and you will stand victorious.

Pros and Cons

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Pro -Negan gets around hexproof, indestructible, and shroud. Very nice for pinpoint targeting a single creature.

-Kills creatures like nobody's business.

-Allows you to torture your friend's minds with cardboard.

-Less than $500 USD to put this together, cheaper if you make some budget cuts (a big budget cut is Volrath's Stronghold).

-Actually viable control strategy in EDH without resorting to nasty (not to mention expensive) stax or land destruction strategies.

-You get to use an uncommon commander with a unique effect that has you play a guessing game with your opponent.

-Exciting but tense games where you have to navigate through the hate to find the win.

-You get to be the arch-nemesis of the table.

Con

-You become the arch-nemesis of the table.

-Games take longer than normal.

-The deck has a way of pissing people off.

-Very weak in metas where your opponents play little to no creatures.

-More expensive than a precon, also might be out of some players' budgets.

-TWD secret lair (not to mention the character Negan himself) has a sort of polarizing effect with some players.

-Hard or impossible to find Negan, Lucille, or Volrath's stronghold to trade for, you are probably going to have to buy these as singles.

Card Choices

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Equipment Show

I felt Lucille would have been lonely without a Sunforger. Mardu is an excellent shell for a sunforger build, whether or not you go heavily into equipments. I did not choose to focus on equipments but I could imagine a build that utilizes them. For that matter I did not choose to go heavily into flicker effects for this deck. I don't think you're going be winning via commander damage but if you were going that route it would be a huge burden to constantly have your equipments fall off due to you flickering Negan. Instead I have only the two weapons, hopefully equipping marionette master for extra life loss when you sac your artifacts. The sunforger package I included in this list tries to cover as many of the bases as I could manage. There are clearly a lot of great Sunforger toolboxes but in the colors I went with graveyard control Kaya's Guile + Rakdos Charm, targeted permanent removal Utter End + Orim's Thunder + Rakdos Charm + Return to Dust , a couple of flicker effects Ephemerate + Eerie Interlude, and of course creature sacrifice Kaya's Guile + Crackling Doom. Take note that you can kick Orim's Thunder off of sunforger, as it says on cast, so you can tutor up the thunder, kick it and destroy a creature after nuking an artifact/enchantment. Pretty useful.

Support Artifacts and Enchantments Show

I didn't want to go too heavily into artifacts or enchantments in this list because I planned on hating on them with cards like Mythos of Snapdax, Tragic Arrogance, and Cataclysmic Gearhulk. The gearhulk can be flickered for extra fun later on. The enchantments I did include needed to really pull their weight so I went with recursion Sigil of the New Dawn, ramp Smothering Tithe, card advantage Phyrexian Arena, and removal Martyr's Bond. Other lists I've seen have included cards like Grave Pact and Dictate of Erebos but I don't think that this deck needs them that badly, it seems like overkill. Testing will tell.

The artifact package I included also had to be tight and streamlined for the aforementioned reason. I focused on cheap ramp that could produce colorless for Eldrazi Displacer, massive card advantage in Bolas's Citadel, recursion in Conqueror's Galleon  , and the equipment duo of Sunforger and Lucille. I threw in a flicker type effect in Conjurer's Closet and a cute early game play with mid-game value in Treasure Map  . The map also allows us some more things to do with our treasure tokens, turning them into even more card advantage.

Planeswalkers Show

I included a few planeswalkers in the list to try and even out the permanent distribution; since some of our cards only allow you to keep one of each permanent type I included them to attempt to give myself an advantage after I wiped the board up. I tried to keep the theme in card advantage Sorin, Grim Nemesis, removal Liliana, Dreadhorde General, and flicker Kaya, Ghost Assassin. I feel like this deck is screaming to include dareti, ingenious iconoclast. With probably a slew of artifacts to sac, he seems a perfect fit.

Creatures Show

The creature base is always hard to pick in a control shell so the creatures must be as clean and ruthless as possible, just like Negan. The creatures I included are able to handle a punch, ramp Solemn Simulacrum, remove permanents Plaguecrafter, recur things from my grave Emeria Shepherd, provide card advantage Bloodgift Demon, and just generally be a pain Ob Nixilis, Unshackled. Even better if they can cover multiple bases all by themselves Sheoldred, Whispering One.

Lands Show

The lands in this deck were hand selected to be able to work specifically with Eldrazi Displacer. It's unusual how a single card can warp a whole deck's land base around it but in this case the payoff for the displacer is huge. The whole purpose of a lot of these colorless producing lands is to use it to flicker things with the displacer. Being able to at will flicker Negan for removal, solemn simulacrum or kor kartographer for ramp, custodi lich or queen marchesa to regain monarch/card draw/creature control, or to sow mayhem with cataclysmic gearhulk is huge. Anytime you run Sunforger you really want to run a Mistveil Plains; it lets you recur your used instants to use again with sunforger but it could also save you from getting milled out. A more budget friendly of this list could skip the dual lands and Volrath's Stronghold, but the stronghold is such an excellent land it it has a lot of uses in EDH even outside of this deck. Sanctum of eternity is just there to give us a little more use from Negan. The deck is very color hungry and the amount of non-color-producing lands is scary at first. Testing will tell if I need to include more colored sources. EDIT: Sanctum of eternity was cut; I ended up needing more colored mana. I think I added in a basic swamp.

The maybeboard is reserved for cards that are really nice upgrades to this deck but are expensive, I don't own, or are in another of my decks and I am not interested in swapping out. I've also included some interesting cards that you may get some mileage out of but I haven't really tested out thoroughly. Also Oubliette is a pure flavor card for Negan.

NOTABLE COMBOS Show

Volrath's Stronghold + Sorin, Grim Nemesis if players keep killing your sheoldred or negan, put them on top, grab them with sorin and watch your opponents' life points wither away.

Sigil of the New Dawn + Plaguecrafter or one of his brothers, Fleshbag Marauder, Demon's Disciple, or Merciless Executioner. With 5 mana you can sac your creature to itself, recur it with sigil, and continue to do this combo over and over. Add in Negan and you can do this more times if your opponents have creatures since Negan supplies you with treasures for each of their sacced creatures. You can also ramp with Burnished Hart and sigil.

Sunforger + Mistveil Plains Lets you recur powerful effects like Orim's Thunder or Kaya's Guile.

Mythos of Snapdax + Hofri Ghostforge pretty much an asymmetrical board wipe.

Revel in Riches + Smothering Tithe. Revel combos with a lot of cards in this deck so actually winning from the trigger is a realistic goal.

Martyr's Bond + treasure tokens. Opponents mana rocks and any artifacts they control are gone.

Martyr's Bond + any of you self saccing creatures like Plaguecrafter get doubly strong. If an opponent has only one creature you can stack the triggers (have maryr's bond resolve first) so they are forced to discard.

Tergrid, God of Fright   + any self saccing creature or discard spell to steal all your opponents' stuff.

There are a few finesse plays that you can make with this deck and they become easier to make when you've had some time playing with it. Hopefully you will discover them for yourself.

If you like this page please leave a comment, a suggestion, or an upvote! Cheers!

UPDATE

Update 1 - Mid 2021 Show

After testing this deck for a few months here are some things I have learned:

1: Bring a sticky pad/some scratch paper and a couple of pencils/pens. When Negan comes into play you hand your opponent a sticky note and you keep one, then you tell them to secretly write down their choice of creature and you write down yours, then at the same time you both reveal. This makes things so much smoother, especially if you are flickering Negan.

2: Against casual decks that focus on creatures this deck becomes an arch nemesis. A lot of decks can't operate very well without having creatures on board and this deck does an excellent job of keeping creatures off the board. There are a few soft locks that prompt some players to just scoop Plaguecrafter + Sigil of the New Dawn because they can't get any board position.

3: This deck is very much a control deck and usually has a very slow win condition; you are usually beating down with a small number of low power creatures so the games are usually slow and methodical, pretty much the exact opposite of a fast aggro deck. Be prepared for long and tense games. This deck can assemble a few nasty board states which are hard for your opponents to get out from underneath of. Do your best to smother their plans but keep in mind that, because many of your spells hit all opponents, there is a good chance your going to get teamed. Protect your powerful lock pieces, don't get too greedy, know when to play it cool and not barf all your cards onto the board, and grind your opponents down with your powerful value cards. This deck really needs to resolve some key spells so learning how to play around counterspells is a skill you need to get good at with this deck. Baiting powerful spells one turn, or better yet with an instant at the end of an opponent's turn just so you can land your important spell on your own turn is a skill you really need to know to play this deck to even a low level of success.

Update 2 - 2022 Show

1: This deck makes you the arch-nemesis in most casual games of EDH. For this reason I have included another win condition in Torment of Hailfire. You really need a way to close out games sometimes and this deck is already super grindy and great at ramping, so hailfire seemed like a good fit. When your opponents can't counter a hailfire where x=10 they usuauly just scoop it up, especially after you have cleared the board of all their creatures and mana rocks and super especially if you have Tegrid out.

2: I have incorporated a couple of really sweet quality of life upgrades into my magic kit. The first is this thing called a boogie board. Think of an etch-a-sketch but thinner. Not only can you use this instead of bringing pen and paper for both you and your opponent but it leaves zero waste and can be reused endlessly.

3: Another really sweet thing I have started using is dry erase cards and dry erase markers. They allow you to create any token on the spot without having to bring a million tokens with you for each deck. This deck has about ten or so that it makes. It is nice if you can bring all the tokens you need but invariably in pretty much every game of EDH either one of the other players doesn't have their tokens or you are given one by someone else, something gets cloned, etc. The board gets messy and confusing enough without having to guess at which dice represent a treasure and which represent a squirrel or a zombie. As a plus it makes for an interesting talking point and you get to be the hero who gives the new player a hand drawn squirrel token for his/her new deck.

Date added	3 years
Last updated	2 months
Exclude colors	UG
Splash colors	WBR
Key combos	Plaguecrafter + Sigil of the New Dawn
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	10 - 0 Mythic Rares 49 - 0 Rares 18 - 0 Uncommons 9 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	4.05
Tokens	Assassin 1/1 B w/ Haste, City's Blessing, Copy Clone, Samurai 2/2 W w/ Double strike, Servo 1/1 C, Spirit 1/1 WB, The Monarch, Thrull 0/1 B, Treasure, Vampire Knight 1/1 B, Zombie 2/2 B
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