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Oppression / Impermanence

Commander / EDH Aristocrats Combo Sacrifice WUB (Esper)

thesrhughes

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Land (30)

Artifact (8)

Instant (20)

Sorcery (12)

Planeswalker (5)

Commander (1)

Commander: Nevinyrral, Urborg Tyrant

Creature (14)

Enchantment (10)

Maybeboard

Instant (6)

Sorcery (4)

Creature (2)

Enchantment (2)

Oppression / Impermanence combines some Aristocrats, some Lite Control, a little Diet Stax, and a disdain for countermagic.

Oppression / Impermanence is my first "finished" EDH deck. By "finished," I mean I have the deck in a shape that is playable, replayable, semi-competitive, and fun; I'm still making changes and subs and switching cards in and out from the maybeboard, but the deck feels more-or-less whole. So let's talk aboot it.

The easiest/fastest win-con for Oppression/Impermanence is the good ol' fashioned Gravecrawler + Phyrexian Altar + Wayward Servant . Sac the crawler for a , use the mana to summon the crawler back from the bin, the servant lifeleeches everyone for 1, rinse and repeat.

It takes a little more time and fuel, but I'm a big fan of Ashnod's Altar + Nevinyrral, Urborg Tyrant + Nim Deathmantle . You'll need one other creature as well--though it could be a zombie token. You sac creatures/tokens to Ashnod's to get , sac Nevvy, use the to deathmantle him, and he ETBs a zombie token for every creature that died; you sac those tokens for more generic mana, sac Nevvy, deathmantle him, and he ETBs...even more zombies. You can use this to generate infinite zombies and infinite mana. Sometimes I run an Exsanguinate or Torment of Hailfire to make use of infinite mana situations, but these days I'm more likely to just combine the process with a lifeleech pinger and use the infinite death/birth cycle itself as the means of murder.

The above also works with Phyrexian Altar but it takes more fuel to get started.

It would probably be smart to run Altar of Dementia as another way to get rid of those infinite zombies, but there's something about victory-by-milling that I never enjoyed and so I don't do it.

It's also possible to win by swinging out with your zombie army. If you want to attempt a combat victory, however, I recommend subbing in Zombie Master...though I don't know what you'd take out for him. As it stands, Shadowspear + Yahenni, Undying Partisan works pretty well for a combat phase victory through trample/lifelink. Yahenni's also pretty easy to buff up in this deck. Chasm Skulker also pairs well with the spear in a shorter-term way.

We don't do full Stax because we love ourselves. And because we want to have friends.

That being said, it's hard to have a commander with a built-in disk and not involve yourself in some forms of taxation, Diet Stax, and other ways of limiting your opponents.

No Mercy does a lot to deter attacks and doles out a much more substantial punishment than Ghostly Prison/Propaganda. It's also an expensive card, so if you're building a similar deck feel free to sub in the cheaper alternatives. In terms of raw power, I love No Mercy, but as a ratio of bang-per-buck, well... cough cough That being said, No Mercy also blocks Niv Mizzet, Syr Konrad, and a lot of Malcolm plays. Any damage pinger, really.

Blind Obedience provides some Extort, which can help bolster our life (always a concern in a slower, creature-lite deck), but more importantly forces everyone else's creatures and artifacts to come into play tapped. This messes up all manner of mana rocks, hasty bois, and even Orvar plays...

Smothering Tithe taxes our friend-ponents' draws. It's a ramp card first and foremost, to be sure, but it aggravates and irritates opponents. People don't like giving Nevinyrral treasure, for some reason, and I've watched foe-friends go to really stupid lengths to deny him. Which is great! It either accelerates good ol' Nevvy or it decelerates his opposition. It's a win-win.

The deck also likes to draw cards off of opponents' spells. Mystic Remora, Rhystic Study, and Esper Sentinel all levy a fee on opposition spell-casting, forcing opponents to choose between spending valuable mana and allowing you to have valuable cards.

We can also limit our opponents' access to their libraries through Ashiok, Dream Render, Opposition Agent, and Narset, Parter of Veils. Ashiok shuts down tutors and fetches as a static effect, always nice, and the Agent can use your foes' tutors against them. Narset can help you scan for a play, lock people out from drawing, and/or set up a degenerate Windfall play. Honestly, the Narset, Parter of Veils + Windfall and Dauthi Voidwalker + Windfall combos makes me cackle with glee every time I get them off.

Lastly, Ashiok, Dream Render can also exile graveyards. A great play right after someone puts something on top of their library or into their bin, but also good to screw up recursion decks or, say, Kathril.

Nevinyrral, Urborg Tyrant has a built-in Nevinyrral's Disk. If you can get the mana together, there doesn't even need to be a boardstate anymore.

My preferred mode to summon Nevvy is to wipe up the board and summon him afterwards. My fave wrath effect is obviously Supreme Verdict because fuckyourcounterspells. My preferred method to subsequently summon Nevvy uses Cavern of Souls for the same reason.

But in terms of controlling the board, I recommend setting up Gift of Immortality + Nevinyrral, Urborg Tyrant . This little duo will let you disk the board and immediately recover with a zombie army. Combine this with an instant-speed sac outlet and you can disk the board in response to anyone doing anything you don't like. My personal favorite set-up is Gift of Immortality + Nevinyrral, Urborg Tyrant + Yahenni, Undying Partisan because, well, Yahenni survives the disk. Which means you can repeat the process again and again and again. At instant speed.

You can also execute the above using Malakir Rebirth   or Kaya's Ghostform if you only need to do it once.

Too many people are running too many counterspells. Decklists are like 50% counterspells these days, I swear.

To hell with that.

We start our anti-countermagic stance with Cavern of Souls and Boseiju, Who Shelters All. These will let us fire a few things off without worrying about pesky blue players throwing out any of a half-dozen free counterspells. The downside to these cards is you can only use them in very specific and finite ways...

Grand Abolisher is very non-specific, however. As is Teferi, Time Raveler -- who can also let you cast sorceries at instant speed. Lastly, Silence may only work for one turn, but you might only need one turn. Another benefit of throwing these cards around is that they, themselves, draw out countermagic. If someone is holding a counterspell and you play Silence, they'll spend 2 mana to counterspell your 1 mana instant. And they'll have one fewer counterspell.

Of course, we also have particular anti-counterspell counterspells with Muddle the Mixture (also a poss. tutor), Swan Song, and Flusterstorm.

Oh, right, and we have Academy Ruins mostly because a lot of our win-cons involve artifacts and, especially since I mostly play with the same 7 people over and over again, win-cons seem to end up in the bin pretty frequently.

Alongside brazen misuse of life, speed is the deck's primary weakness. While Nevvy isn't strictly necessary to win, the built-in disk and ETB zombie horde make him an important play in swinging the game...unfortunately, he costs 6 mana. I've done my best to ramp him up while simultaneously keeping in mind that, if he disks, he takes most ramp with him.

Because a disk annihilates most ramp, Oppression/Impermanence takes the perspective that ramp mostly isn't meant to support a broad demand, but rather is meant to get the deck from Point A (land drop 01) to Point B (a board vacant of everything except for a zombie army).

Could you run a Mana Crypt in Oppression/Impermanence? Hell yeah. Ditto Grim Monolith or any other major artifact ramp. But I try not to spend too much money on cards that "aren't plays" and this deck would just end up putting them in the bin, anyway, so why waste the cash?

That being said, if you already own some of that heavy-hitting ramp, please, let me know what this deck feels like when everything happens a turn earlier.

In the meantime, this is where I came down on current ramp:

Rocks

Treasure Generators

Other Ramp Cards

It's not a ton of ramp, but it does the job and doesn't dilute the deck. Smothering Tithe does double-duty as ramp and opposition-tax, which I love. Expedition Map and Weathered Wayfarer can dig up the famous Cabal Coffers + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth combo pretty easily. If you're at a table with a lot of slower decks, I even recommend combo'ing Academy Ruins + Expedition Map as a method of rigging high-end land drops. You can use the Ruins to put the Map back on top of your deck during someone else's end phase, draw it, play it, crack it, and repeat.

Having Weathered Wayfarer is always awesome -- it might not seem amazing at first glance, but it searches for lands, not just basic ones. So assuming you don't go first (or if anyone else plays a Wayfarer's Bauble, Cultivate, Solemn Simulacrum etc), you can use him to fish out Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, Cabal Coffers, Phyrexian Tower, Vesuva, etc... Also, please note that while you can only use his ability when an opponent has more land than you (which will almost always happen), it isn't limited to sorcery speed. You can activate his ability at instant speed during the end step right before you untap, which gives you a lot of choice flexibility.

Tolaria West also serves as a tutor/fetch -- anything that can grab Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, Cabal Coffers, Phyrexian Tower, or Vesuva is pretty much ramp.

Mana Drain almost functions better as ramp in this deck than as a counterspell. Since Oppression/Impermanence shrugs its shoulders at the vast majority of permanents, most of the countermagic in the deck is used as a counter to other people's countermagic (or, on very rare occasion, combo-stoppers)...meanwhile, as already mentioned, it can be a little slow on ramp and mana. Mana Drain serves as a solution. Counterspell someone's Commander's Sphere just for the extra ramp. Why not?

You can also try Smothering Tithe + Windfall to get some extra mana.

Oh, and did I mention Cabal Coffers + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth + Vesuva ? (Since Cabal Coffers isn't Legendary, the Cabal Coffers + Vesuva combo lets you, uh...create a lot of mana.)

I've never actually drawn the Altars, I've only ever tutored them up, but in theory you could use them to sac unnecessary creatures/tokens as a way to mana-fix or ramp. They also play roles in certain win-con combos, so they also do double duty.

I'll admit the land layout is a bit strange.

I used to run a lot of dual lands and fetches but the thing is...you still have to draw them. And while I rarely feel screwed by a lack of mana volume, I have frequently felt screwed by a lack of mana flexibility. The final straw came during a game when I sac'd Nevvy to disk the board, played a Wayward Servant, went to play Nevvy again from the command zone...and didn't have another source of . The board sat empty, Nevvy stayed in the command zone, and I passed the turn with a lonely Wayward Servant.

I went home and replaced all of my fetch lands with more mana fix/any-color lands. I haven't been screwed on mana access since.

I did develop a rather predictable side-effect, however: occasional floods of land when I needed to draw a play. Thus the modal lands. Agadeem's Awakening   can fetch creatures lost to earlier wrath/disk effects and/or opposition play; Malakir Rebirth   let's us trigger Nevvy's disk effect and immediately recur him afterwards (or to protect another creature from said disk); Glasspool Mimic   can clone a life pinger, Esper Sentinel, Dark Confidant, Dauthi Voidwalker, or even Nevinyrral, Urborg Tyrant -- the Mimic might die to the Legendary rule, but you still get those ETB zombies; the other two, Ondu Inversion   and Sea Gate Restoration   have only been used for their spell-sides once each, but in a longer game even they can be useful. Oh, and also all of those things can just be lands instead, so there's that.

I also run Dimir Aqueduct in large part because of the modal lands. Being able to bounce a land back to your hand, flip its mode, and cast a spell can be nice. Also, it always kind of feels cool.

All in all, I ended up with these important land selections.

Mana-Fixing Lands

Fix-Adjacent Lands

Utility Lands

Spell/Land Modals

There are a few different ways to generate your zombie horde.

The most mana-intensive way is to wipe/wrath/disk the board and summon Nevinyrral, Urborg Tyrant after. The cheapest way to work this, at seven CMC, is to use Nevinyrral's Disk to wipe the place up for and then summon Nevvy for . It's expensive but it gets the job done. For nine mana, Toxic Deluge also works. At ten mana, Supreme Verdict.

Of course, if Nevinyrral, Urborg Tyrant is in your graveyard, a Supreme Verdict followed by a Reanimate works great.

Most of the time, though, you'll probably be using Nevvy himself to nuke the board, subsequently recurring him. I recommend doing this using a mana-source sac-outlet to avoid Koma's Coils and other things that might turn Nevvy off before his death trigger (mana sources don't use the stack, so there's no opportunity to respond to the sacrifice -- people will still be able to respond to the death trigger, itself, however). Nevvy then disks the board for and, after that, we yeet him back onto the field with a horde of zombies in tow.

S-Tier Nevvy-Recursion Combos

A-Tier Nevvy-Recursion Combos

B-Tier Nevvy-Recursion Combos

C-Tier Nevvy-Recursion Combos

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