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Reaper King Persist/Sacrifice EDH

Commander / EDH

EternalStar

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Creature (33)

Land (34)

Artifact (8)

Commander (1)

Commander: Reaper King

Enchantment (9)

Sorcery (9)

Instant (6)

At it's core the deck is pretty basic. Get a creature with persist; a way to sacrifice them for free; a way to give them a +1+1 counter when they come into play.

To get a benefit from Reaper King you turn your creatures into a scarecrow via cards like Xenograft , Conspiracy or Arcade Adaptation .

The deck also features the (newly unbanned) Flash + Protean Hulk combo. The deck also features many sacrifice outlets making Hulk easy to kill other ways though not as easy to get out. Flash just works great with the deck anyway. With Reaper King out and something like Conspiracy Flash essentially turns into a double Vindicate if you throw down a persist creature. Flash into Woodfall Primus on turn two is also pretty annoying. If you're worried about an opponent ramping then you have turn two blow up two lands! The deck also features the Reveillark infinite combo using Karmic Guide + Reveillark + Saffi Eriksdotter . As a back up to Saffi Eriksdotter you can also use Body Double to target Reveillark .

When Protean Hulk dies you can fetch a game win. Assuming you already have a sacrifice outlet you search for either Melira, Sylvok Outcast or Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit as well as Murderous Redcap . That's the easy route. The harder route is to fetch Viscera Seer & Karmic Guide then bring back Protean Hulk , sacrifice it with Viscera Seer , fetch Reveillark and maybe Dryad Arbor since it's free, doesn't matter, you wont need it. After that you have the infinite and you can go fetch nearly every creature in the deck, the only creature too expensive is Woodfall Primus .

To mana fix most of the ramp spells specifically target forests. Nature's Lore , Skyshroud Claim , Wooded Elves, Farseek , and Shard Convergence all will let you tutor for forests. Simply find the dual land or shock land that shares the second color you need. If you're hurting for red go get Stomping grounds. This gives you the benefit of more green sources and fixes your color.

Your win conditions are: Blow up the board with Reaper King or Woodfall Primus and just slowly beat your opponent down (assuming they don't just concede). Infinite damage with Goblin Bombardment , Zulaport Cutthroat , Murderous Redcap or Purphoros, God of the Forge . Deck the opponent with either Altar of Dementia or Bitter Ordeal Go infinitely tall with a couple of other creatures and Cathars' Crusade .

One interesting combo is Spark Double will naturally go infinite by cloning a persist creature. This means that if you have a sacrifice outlet and another persist creature you don't need any of the cards that give creatures +1+1 counters when they come into play.

The deck has a few weaknesses at the moment and a few cards I'm interested in putting in somewhere but not sure what I want to take out.

  1. The deck is a little on the slow side, typically you are looking at like a turn 6-7 win without interruption.
  2. The deck doesn't have much card draw (though it has several tutors) so it can run out of steam as your hand size dwindles.
  3. Removal is situational. Without Reaper King there isn't much direct removal for creatures and only 1 board wipe. You could potentially swap Aura Shards or Shriekmaw for Path to Exile or Wrath of God if that helps.
  4. Exile sucks, but when doesn't it?
  5. Graveyard hate. Especially cards that exile at instant speed. Opponents can respond to the persist trigger or Reveillark combo by exiling your graveyard mid combo.
  6. Blood Moon or Winter Orb; the deck is 5 colors with tons of non-basics lands. There's 11 basic lands, 2 mana rocks that produce colored mana, and Phyrexian Altar . On top of that, the only enchantment removal in the deck is either Reaper King , Aura Shards , or Woodfall Primus . It's very hard to get rid of enchantments.

The deck is prohibitively expensive because I'm running the true classic duals. If you remove those and put in like trilands or utility duals you'll drop the price dramatically. Removing the revised duals would drop the price down to around $700. If you remove Vampiric Tutor & Vesuva then you have a much more reasonable $600 deck. Expensive, but not crazy.

Update: changed a few things, removed Essence Warden for Worldly Tutor , add a few new Modern Horizons cards, and removed Panharmonicon since it's just a "win more" card. Deck now registers as 100% competitive, something you might not see much of with a Reaper King deck. This is certainly the only persist king deck I've ever seen.

Although the deck is rather slow overall, there are a handful of ways to win on turn 3 or 4 with the right draws.

I'd say that as far as I can tell the main way to improve it would be to add in the 1 life fetches, and/or maybe just throw in the remaining classic duals. That might speed it up. Another sacrifice outlet or draw engine might not hurt either. Otherwise I think it's really solid.

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99% Casual

Competitive