Meren, Reanimator of Clan Nel Toth

Commander / EDH BG (Golgari)

beyonddevnull

Creature (32)

• 1x Apprentice Necromancer
• 1x Arbor Elf
• 1x Birds of Paradise
• 1x Bloodthrone Vampire
• 1x Body Snatcher
• 1x Carrion Feeder
• 1x Caustic Caterpillar
• 1x Collector Ouphe
• 1x Dark Confidant
• 1x Deathrite Shaman
• 1x Disciple of the Vault
• 1x Dross Hopper
• 1x Elves of Deep Shadow
• 1x Elvish Mystic
• 1x Eternal Witness
• 1x Fyndhorn Elves
• 1x Grim Flayer
• 1x Lesser Masticore
• 1x Llanowar Elves
• 1x Melira, Sylvok Outcast
• 1x Mindblade Render
• 1x Mindslicer
• 1x Minister of Pain
• 1x Oakhame Adversary
• 1x Plaguecrafter
• 1x Priest of Titania
• 1x Protean Hulk
• 1x Reclamation Sage
• 1x Riftsweeper
• 1x Sylvan Safekeeper
• 1x Viscera Seer
• 1x Yawgmoth, Thran Physician

Artifact (7)

• 1x Birthing Pod
• 1x Mana Crypt
• 1x Mox Diamond
• 1x Null Rod
• 1x Skullclamp
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Tangle Wire

Land (31)

• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Bayou
• 1x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x Blooming Marsh
• 1x City of Brass
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Dryad Arbor
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 3x Forest
• 1x High Market
• 1x Llanowar Wastes
• 1x Mana Confluence
• 1x Marsh Flats
• 1x Misty Rainforest
• 1x Nurturing Peatland
• 1x Overgrown Tomb
• 1x Phyrexian Tower
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Snow-Covered Forest
• 1x Snow-Covered Swamp
• 2x Swamp
• 1x Tainted Wood
• 1x Twilight Mire
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1x Verdant Catacombs
• 1x Windswept Heath
• 1x Wooded Foothills
• 1x Woodland Cemetery

Sorcery (9)

• 1x Buried Alive
• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Diabolic Intent
• 1x Eldritch Evolution
• 1x Footsteps of the Goryo
• 1x Green Sun's Zenith
• 1x Natural Order
• 1x Reanimate
• 1x Toxic Deluge

Commander (1)

Instant (10)

• 1x Abrupt Decay
• 1x Assassin's Trophy
• 1x Entomb
• 1x Force of Vigor
• 1x Mausoleum Secrets
• 1x Nature's Claim
• 1x Vampiric Tutor
• 1x Veil of Summer
• 1x Wake the Dead
• 1x Worldly Tutor

Enchantment (10)

• 1x Animate Dead
• 1x Carpet of Flowers
• 1x Dance of the Dead
• 1x Necromancy
• 1x Oppression
• 1x Pattern of Rebirth
• 1x Survival of the Fittest
• 1x Sylvan Library
• 1x Utopia Sprawl
• 1x Wild Growth

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Maybeboard

Creature (6)

• 1x Boreal Druid
• 1x Fleshbag Marauder
• 1x Merciless Executioner
• 1x Phyrexian Delver
• 1x Runic Armasaur
• 1x Sakura-Tribe Elder

Instant (2)

• 1x Beast Within
• 1x Noxious Revival

Enchantment (2)

• 1x Contamination
• 1x Root Maze

Sorcery (2)

• 1x Regrowth
• 1x Yahenni's Expertise

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"She draws upon the darkness between the heartbeats of the world."

Introduction

My history with Meren

While trying to settle on a commander, I ended up putting together a fairly competitive Meren list. As the years went on, Meren slowly grew on me. After a short hiatus from MTG, I returned and modified the Meren list based on the ideas roguelikedev had acquired from their time piloting Varolz and BloodPod. After months testing my own modifications, I decided to write a primer on here. So without further ado, here is Meren, Reanimator of Clan Nel Toth (a primer!)

Deck Archetype

Meren of Clan Nel Toth is a competitive adaptive combo list similar to that of Chain Veil Teferi. We have our primary path to victory which is a number of hulk lines to our combo. However, depending on our hand or interaction throughout the game, Meren is equipped with a package of punishing STAX options in the forms of artifact and hand hate.

Why Meren?

In G/B we have the other following options:

• The Gitrog Monster - A resilient combo deck
• Varolz, the Scar-Striped - A fast combo deck
• Nath of the Gilt-Leaf - a STAX deck

Meren can be built similar to Varolz to obtain the combo fairly consistently by turn four and often around turn three. Where she differentiates herself is that her ability allows her to be naturally break parity on stax elements like Mindslicer, Plaguecrafter, Oppression and Null Rod. This permits the list to function as an adaptive combo list, choosing the lines of play that best fit the situation she is in.

Strategy / Gameplan

There are two primary elements to Meren, obtain the combo through the hulk path or opting to grind out the match with STAX elements.

Fast Combo

The goal here is to get Protean Hulk into play and send it to the graveyard, trigger the ability into our win. The bulk of the lines require a sac outlet in play. For this reason the list has a high density of sac outlets and you should make sure to play one early so you can execute the combo on the following turns.

This list has a number of routes to start the combo line:

• Sac outlet + Natural Order on a green creature
• Sac outlet + Pattern of Rebirth on a creature
• Sac outlet + Protean Hulk in Graveyard + Animate Dead
• Sac outlet + Protean Hulk in Graveyard + Dance of the Dead
• Sac outlet + Protean Hulk in Graveyard + Apprentice Necromancer
• Sac outlet + Protean Hulk in Graveyard + Body Snatcher
• Protean Hulk in Graveyard + Footsteps of the Goryo
• Protean Hulk in Graveyard + Wake the Dead
• Protean Hulk in Graveyard + Necromancy

Stax / Grind

Matches rarely go as planned in magic and Meren operates with a small yet brutal STAX package for our rainy days.

Our typical stax lines to victory look as follows:

• Meren + Mindslicer + sac outlet - we put the group into topdeck mode. This is a great way to stop most decks we would play against. You can time the sac to occur right before your turn, clearing your opponents hands so you can combo off unhindered by countermagic.
• Meren + Plaguecrafter - this loop is something I would use in addition to Mindslicer. Since this hits creatures as well, between this and mindslicer you should be able to lock most opponents out of the game until you can draw into the combo
• Null Rod/Collector Ouphe - this shuts off all our opponents ramp and many of the most powerful and popular combos in the format.
• Oppression - an absolutely...oppressive card. This empties opponents hands. As they will not have a way to break parity, this can put them quickly into a position of where they will need to either be stopping over combos or opening themselves up to not having countermagic to protect their own.

Meren also has engines to keep us ahead of the game in addition to being one herself:

• Grim Flayer + topdeck tutors like Vampiric Tutor / Worldy Tutor turning them into Entomb
• Skullclamp, Dark Confidant, Oakhame Adversary, Runic Armasaur, Yawgmoth, Thran Physician and Sylvan Library all serve as excellent draw engines

Winning the Game

The combo:

1. Melira, Sylvok Outcast, Lesser Masticore, Disciple of the Vault, sacrifice outlet (Carrion Feeder or Viscera Seer).
2. Sacrifice Lesser Masticore to your sac outlet.
3. Disciple of the Vault trigger, target opponent loses 1 life.
4. Lesser Masticore Persist trigger, returning it to the battlefield
5. No -1/-1 counters happen to Lesser Masticore due to Melira, Sylvok Outcast passive ability
6. Repeat until you win

The hulk combo line:

Protean Hulk dies fetching Melira, Sylvok Outcast, Lesser Masticore, Disciple of the Vault, sacrifice outlet (Carrion Feeder or Viscera Seer), and Dryand Arbor depending on the board state.

Protected hulk line:

1. Protean Hulk dies fetching, Body Snatcher, sacrifice outlet (Carrion Feeder or Viscera Seer), and Sylvan Safekeeper
2. Body Snatcher ETB trigger on the stack, sacrifice it with Carrion Feeder or Viscera Seer
3. Body Snatcher dies,die trigger on stack, die trigger resolves first, reanimate Protean Hulk
4. Body Snatcher ETB trigger resolves with no target (nothing is discarded)
5. Sacrifice Protean Hulk fetching combo pieces above.

How do I deal with _?

Countermagic - We do not deal with it head on. If we are unfortunate enough to be in a pod with two “hard control” decks like Baral and Rashmi, our best hope would be a mix of timely Plaguecrafter and Mindslicer triggers to suppress their ability to have spells to counter us with. At the end of the day, Meren might need to make multiple win attempts to take victory which is why we run multiple ways to get protean hulk back from the grave.

Graveyard hate - Rest in Peace, Grafdigger's Cage, Silent Gravestone, and Leyline of the Void.

We combat GY hate with a suite of dedicated removal - Abrupt Decay,Assassin's Trophy,Nature's Claim, Force of Vigor, and our recurrable Caustic Caterpillar and Reclamation Sage all serve a purpose to keep that hate off the table as this is the decks Achilles heel.

Card Discussion Highlights

Stax

One Meren's unique capabilities is her natural immunity to stax and parity break abilities:

• Null Rod/Collector Ouphe - Prevents mana acceleration and combos that a vast majority of other decks in the format rely on. This effect is so powerful, we are more than happy to play our own fast mana to rush this out.
• Oppression - Is one of our most key stax pieces. Most combo decks rely on multiple cards for both the combo and to defend it. Oppression puts a halt to this by taxing their hand very quickly. We break parity on this by return a creature to our hand with Meren's ability each turn. This allows us to fuel an additional spell each turn without hurting out hand count. We Can also use this as a discard outlet to pitch Hulk or Mike to the yard.
• Mindslicer - Locks everyone in topdeck mode. We grind out the match with Meren in play until we can reanimate into our combo (through either hulk or direct reanimation)
• Plaguecrafter - clear our opponents boards of creatures, but then begins to attack their hand. We break parity on this with Meren and can function as a sac outlet for hulk.
• Tangle Wire - as a permanent heavy deck, this often has very little negative impact for us and can put our opponents in an awkward position by not leaving them enough mana to both be proactive while holding up interaction.

Tutors

In any successful high powered or competitive list, you need access to the right answers and combo pieces and you rarely get the opportunity to draw into them. To give us access to the cards we need, we run a wealth of tutors:

• Eldritch Evolution - gets us mindslicer
• Entomb - puts hulk into the yard
• Vampiric Tutor - topdeck tutor
• Worldly Tutor - topdeck tutor
• Birthing Pod - grinding value
• Buried Alive - put Minslicer, Hulk, and Plaugecrafter into the yard
• Demonic Tutor - amazing tutor
• Diabolic Intent - like demonic tutor, but can kill our hulk
• Natural Order - gets or sacrifices hulk
• Green Sun's Zenith - T1 ramp into Dryad Arbor - tutors in things like caustic catapiller
• Survival of the Fittest - sets up the hulk combo on opponents end step
• Mausoleum Secrets - instant speed tutor to cast prior to our untap

Mana Acceleration

• Arbor Elf
• Birds of Paradise
• Deathrite Shaman
• Elves of Deep Shadow
• Elvish Mystic
• Fyndhorn Elves
• Llanowar Elves
• Priest of Titania
• Carpet of Flowers
• Utopia Sprawl
• Wild Growth
• Mox Diamond
• Mana Crypt
• Sol Ring

Flex Slots

In progress

Single Card Notes

Creature

• Apprentice Necromancer - reanimation "spell"
• Arbor Elf - solid mana dork
• Birds of Paradise - Mana Dork that provides mana in both our colors. What more could we ask for.
• Bloodthrone Vampire - Higher free sac outlet density to accommodate all in on hulk.
• Body Snatcher - Combo
• Carrion Feeder - instant speed sac outlet at no cost and only one mana to drop.
• Caustic Caterpillar - Artifact and Enchantment removal that kills itself so we can reanimate and repeat. At only one cmc this is the best creature that could fill this slot.
• Collector Ouphe - null rod on a stick that we can reanimate.
• Dark Confidant - With our low avg cmc we get an extra card per turn at roughly 2.5 life per turn. This on average will hurt us less than a Sylvan Library making it a fantastic draw engine for us.
• Deathrite Shaman - A mana dork with built in graveyard removal. This is as they say, a one cmc planeswalker.
• Disciple of the Vault - combo piece - unfortunately a dead card
• Dross Hopper - Higher free sac outlet density to accommodate all in on hulk.
• Elves of Deep Shadow - A green mana dork that gives us black is incredibly useful. This lets of keep hands without access to black safely.
• Elvish Mystic - staple mana dork
• Eternal Witness - recursion for those non-creature spells
• Fyndhorn Elves - staple mana dork
• Grim Flayer - filters, dumps cards into the yard. Turns top deck tutors into Entomb. Hits like medium sized truck. Amazing.
• Lesser Masticore - combo
• Llanowar Elves - staple mana dork
• Melira, Sylvok Outcast - combo
• Mindslicer - who needs a grip full of cards? For us that is our graveyard..not so much for everyone else. Puts the table into topdeck mode while we just recur everything we could ask for with Meren. Great way to make the games go long where we shine and faster Storm/Combo decks often fall apart and even stax decks struggle if their board is light without a hand.
• Minister of Pain - This is a one sided recurrable mana dork wipe and a one time sac outlet.
• Oakhame Adversary - Draw engine with a decent body and deathtouch, there's a lot to like about this card.
• Plaguecrafter - fantastic recur-able edict. One of my preferred Meren targets
• Priest of Titania - becomes more than your average manage dork by boosting itself when it is in play with most other mana dorks
• Protean Hulk - this is a combo card. If this goes from play to GY, we are hoping to win.
• Reclamation Sage - flexible and recurable answer to most hate cards our deck is weak to
• Riftsweeper - return combo piece back to library so we can still win games.
• Runic Armasaur - draw engine that can block partners
• Viscera Seer - combo piece, instant speed sac outlet, cheap cost, and scry. Fantastic little creature.
• Yawgmoth, Thran Physician - sac outlet, removal, draw engine, and draw engine blocker

Instant

• Abrupt Decay - removal that CANNOT BE COUNTERED that hits every target we could hope to care about. This is one of the best cards in the format that the blue players literally cannot say "No" to.
• Assassin's Trophy - removes all the things for only two mana
• Entomb - fantastic GY tutor
• Force of Vigor - This card is a 2for2 zero cost removal spell that hits most of the cards our deck hates to play against. Love it.
• Mausoleum Secrets - instant speed tutor
• Nature's Claim - single cmc artifact and enchantment removal. We rarely care about our opponents life totals and this gets rid of most dreaded GY hate.
• Veil of Summer - combo protection and cantrip-ish. Countermagic has been the biggest issue I've run into and this helps with that

spell like Animate Dead. This has to be my favorite "sleeper" card in EDH to date. - Vampiric Tutor - Single cmc instant speed topdeck tutor. Great endstep play - Wake the Dead - instant speed reanimation spell with a built in sac outlet - fantastic utility - Worldly Tutor - Single cmc instant speed topdeck tutor. Great endstep play

Artifact

• Birthing Pod - Sacs a creature to engine us into a win.
• Mana Crypt - fastest mana
• Mox Diamon - fast mana that also transforms a land into a dual
• Null Rod fantastic stax piece
• Skullclamp - value engine if the game goes to long
• Sol Ring - it's sol ring
• Tangle Wire - It's a stax card that hurts us less

Sorcery

• Buried Alive - My favorite GY tutor to set us up for a quick win
• Demonic Tutor - classic tutor
• Diabolic Intent - we run enough creatures and recursion to make this viable.
• Eldritch Evolution - Gets us mindslicer - we have enough 2 and 3 drops to make this happen
• Footsteps of the Goryo - reanimation spell
• Green Sun's Zenith - for 1cmc this lets us ramp out a Dryad Arbor or a late game creature tutor
• Natural Order - gets our hulk to go for the win
• Reanimate - 1cmc reanimation spell
• Toxic Deluge - best way to wipe the board in EDH.

Enchantment

• Animate Dead - staple re-animator spell
• Carpet of Flowers - amazing ramp given the High Power meta I play in
• Dance of the Dead - staple re-animator spell
• Necromancy - staple re-animator spell and one we love to target a Protean Hulk with as it acts as the initial sac outlet for us to get the combo off
• Oppression - anti everyone who doesn't live out of their graveyard
• Pattern of Rebirth - With two creates in play, with a sac outlet, we can go right into hulk combo
• Survival of the Fittest - tutors to hand, then you can discard it to the graveyard to be reanimated. Being able to place cards from your hand into the graveyard is extremely powerful and allows you to keep hands that you would not otherwise be able to.
• Sylvan Library - Staple draw engine and filter in green. The ability to choose what you draw is underrated IMO.
• Utopia Sprawl - mana acceleration
• Wild Growth - mana acceleration

Notable Inclusions

• Oppression - This and Null Rod are our most powerful stax cards.
• Wake the Dead - This is great - functions similar to Necromancy, but also can be used as a clutch spell to recur things like multiple ETB edicts on a stick.

Notable Omissions

I have seen a lot of other Meren lists running these cards or have run them myself.

• Mikaeus, the Unhallowed and Walking Ballista - this combo while still great is just slight worse for us than Melira. This combo does not work through our own stax cards and required Phyrexian Delver in the list to reasonable get our Mike if we were unfortunate enough to draw him. This also makes dark confident ever so slightly better
• Nooze combo - Amazing very early game, not usable late game. With the low cmc needed to be competitive our targeted mid and especially late game puts us at to much of a risk having not enough cmc in the library to finish off the table.
• Triskelion (Mike + Trike combo)- For the most part, this is completely redundant to Walking Ballista. Nooze, Mike + Trike, and hulk all require Mike. If he is targeted all three combos are useless. For this reason I opted to focus on the fastest and most reliable hulk lines and free up slots for stax, interaction, and Riftsweeper to lead us to victory.
• Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord - I used to run this myself, but it just was not needed. At four mana, adding an extra creature to the combo did not help as in a four man pod, Nooze combo has just enough juice to clear the table.
• Kokusho, the Evening Star - This is of one my favorite cards ever printed, but it did not make the cut. At six mana, I am hoping to win the game, not paint a target on my back. Once you slam a kukusho and go off. You only gain fifteen life, putting you most likely not to far off where you were at. Since you appear to be the threat, the other players will just take you down. If you are in a high powered meta, you will just loose to an infinite combo as your life total does not matter that much in EDH.
• Gray Merchant of Asphodel (Gary) - This can replace ball if you're in a meta that does not allow infinite combos. If you can infinite, ball is better. (See roguelikedev's list for more info)
• Acidic Slime - After running this card, I never ended up casting it. I found it easy to tutor into a beast within and destroy any troublesome lands that way.
• Spore Frog - I originally did not think I would even need to include this until per EDHrec, it appeared that a whopping almost half the Meren lists were found to be running this. I find this card to just be bad. In MTG, it is in general better to remove the threats than to stall. Assuming a four man pod, with SF you are only getting 1/3 of the expected value, only against combat damage, and only for a single players turn. By not preventing all damage to your next turn, there are better outlets to solve an opponents threatening board state. Specifically plaugecrafter or having instead drawn a board clear like Toxic Deluge. Finally your end goal is to just win. It turns out, player removal is quite strong. If you want to play the Spor Frog, checkout the Pauper list "Tortured Existence".

Looking to Add / Experiment with...

• Earthcraft + Squirrel Nest - i'm not sold on this inclusion unless there's a payoff with something like Blood Artist or Zulaport Cutthroat for an immediate win. Expecting to go an entire turn cycle to win with combat damage the following turn seems unlikely to me. In the scenarios I've been in where I feel like you would have this time game, you would be against a blood pod list that runs Elesh Norn and this wouldn't go so well there. Pyroclasm effects are also very popular so I just do not see the payoff without an outlet. Our card quality feels fairly high right now and adding three to four extra cards as an fallback to the main combo does not seem worth it at this time. I would rather run just Riftsweeper in case something in my primary combo becomes exiled from the deck.
• Choke - countermagic seems to be the biggest issue I am running into. This might be worth a slot at this rate.

Budget Options

My "Budget" Meren build updated for 2019.

This list is based on the significant work roguelikedev and pao2 has done to improve Meren over the past year(s). Checkout Honorless Meren and Honorbru to see RazaLED.

Shout out to Riku's Meren List of which my earlier builds were based on.

A personal thank you to both Riku and roguelikedev for the time they have spent discussing Meren with me.

Top Ranked	Achieved #10 position overall 5 years ago
Date added	7 years
Last updated	4 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	8 - 0 Mythic Rares 48 - 0 Rares 23 - 0 Uncommons 14 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.09
Tokens	Experience Token
Folders	EDH, EDH - Ideas Meren, cEDH, Helpful Decks, Interesting Commander Decks, Decks to try, EDH, Cool shit, Cool Decks, Test deck