Wilhelt's Extraordinary Sac Parade! *Primer* (EDH)

Commander / EDH Sacrifice Tokens UB (Dimir) Zombie

Junkygoatgibblets

Land (34)

• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Cabal Coffers
• 1x Choked Estuary
• 1x Clearwater Pathway  ^Flip
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Crypt of Agadeem
• 1x Darkwater Catacombs
• 1x Dimir Aqueduct
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 5x Island
• 1x Jwar Isle Refuge
• 1x Mortuary Mire
• 1x Myriad Landscape
• 1x Path of Ancestry
• 1x Shipwreck Marsh
• 1x Sunken Hollow
• 7x Swamp
• 1x Tainted Isle
• 1x Temple of Deceit
• 1x Treasure Vault
• 1x Unclaimed Territory
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1x Verdant Catacombs
• 1x Watery Grave

Drain (6)

• 1x Blood Artist
• 1x Diregraf Captain
• 1x Plague Belcher
• 1x Syr Konrad, the Grim
• 1x The Meathook Massacre
• 1x Zulaport Cutthroat

Fodder (5)

• 1x Diregraf Colossus
• 1x Ghoulcaller Gisa
• 1x Graf Harvest
• 1x Lich Lord of Unx
• 1x Open the Graves

Control (12)

• 1x Arcane Denial
• 1x Counterspell
• 1x Delay
• 1x Dictate of Erebos
• 1x Dissolve
• 1x Feed the Swarm
• 1x Fleshbag Marauder
• 1x Gisa, Glorious Resurrector
• 1x Go for the Throat
• 1x Grave Pact
• 1x Infernal Grasp
• 1x Lose Focus

Outlet (7)

• 1x Altar of Dementia
• 1x Carrion Feeder
• 1x Grimgrin, Corpse-Born *oversized*
• 1x Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
• 1x Viscera Seer
• 1x Yahenni, Undying Partisan
• 1x Yawgmoth, Thran Physician

Recursion (7)

• 1x Dread Return
• 1x Feign Death
• 1x Havengul Lich
• 1x Living End
• 1x Prowling Geistcatcher
• 1x Reanimate
• 1x Unearth

Draw (5)

• 1x Cryptbreaker
• 1x Grim Haruspex
• 1x Liliana, Dreadhorde General
• 1x Teferi, Master of Time
• 1x Undead Augur

Lords (3)

• 1x Cemetery Reaper
• 1x Death Baron
• 1x Undead Warchief

Commander (1)

Combos (7)

• 1x Acererak the Archlich
• 1x Champion of the Perished
• 1x Fatestitcher
• 1x Freed from the Real
• 1x Gravecrawler
• 1x Poppet Stitcher  ^Flip
• 1x Rooftop Storm

Ramp (7)

• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Crowded Crypt
• 1x Dimir Locket
• 1x Dimir Signet
• 1x Jet Medallion
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Talisman of Dominance

Tutor (6)

• 1x Corpse Harvester
• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Grim Tutor
• 1x Sidisi, Undead Vizier
• 1x Unmarked Grave
• 1x Vile Entomber

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Flanked by his mass of undead soldiers, Wilhelt the Breathtaking marches on. With every stop he puts new meaning to his revered nickname, all in his goal to finally get the one woman who ever took HIS breath away to notice him. He was beaten once before, but never again. His goal is clear: Overwhelm his one true love until she is forced to acknowledge his breathtaking beauty, and his breath-stealing ax.

Introduction (Deck)

Welcome to Wilhelt's Extraordinary Sac Parade! We here at W.E.S.P seek to make you suffer by killing off our fodde- I mean friends. We are a Zombie Tribal experience specializing in the Dimir Color combo and are going to make full use out of that pairing.

Introduction (Me)

Hello! I'm Junky and I'm your typical MTG player. I've always had a soft spot for Dimir Zombies so I decided to build the best deck I could personally afford to build. By no means is this a "budget" build, but it is also certainly not a "Premium" build either! This deck is "tuned" to my meta, and will hold it's own against most of the decks in said meta without much of an issue. I've played lower-tiered cedh decks one-on-one and have won with it, but I would not consider this to be an actual CEDH deck, as it does not move NEARLY fast enough to be called that. I hope you guys like the deck!

General Information

What is this Deck? Show

Zombie Aristocrats deck alert! We all knew this was coming as soon as Wilhelt was spoiled. He's just BEGGING to be used as a zombie tribal aristocrat commander. The plan is simple: Flood the board with tokens and sac 'em off to punish those who DARE stand in the way of our path to conquest. We have a few infinite combos that are going to mill, drain, or board wipe our foes. We won't stay put, and we won't stay down. Things that die will make their way back (if they need to) and we will rule with an iron fist.

This deck thrives off of stereotypical Aristocratic actions, and does not function the same at all if sac-outlets and sac payoffs are removed. The idea of this deck is to punish those around us when WE LOSE CREATURES. As long as you're keeping that in mind for your build, this deck should pay off for you.

A Few notes: This is NOT a token-spawn deck, while it can create a ton of tokens, that is NOT the main objective, nor will the deck naturally WANT to make that its main objective. Winning through pure overwhelming strength is the last resort. This deck does not CARE if it has its zombie Lords present, and honestly can do without them. The ones that are in there are there for added value, nothing more. This deck also doesn't really care about the recursion (unlike a lot of zombie decks), and could have the recursion spells pulled with no real ill-effect. They are used for value or emergency situations.

Strats Show

"At the head of his column of the dead, Wilhelt marched on Thraben, and silence followed behind, unbroken by the screams of men or the caws of carrion birds. Where his army marched, none were left to live.". - Seanan McGuire

We have a few different options in this deck for win-cons, so you can have a variety of games if you want that sorta thing.

• Mill
• Life Drain
• Wipe the Board, then Flood the Board

To Play or Not to Play? Show

As with any deck, this one requires a person to adhere to various strategies in order to effectively pilot it. This deck was never made to be a CEDH deck, we limited tutors and infinite combos ON PURPOSE. You'll notice many of these combos rely on Rooftop Storm or have several moving parts. That was done on purpose to lower the power level of the deck. The deck DEFINITELY moves faster than you're average spam the board with tokens Dimir zombie deck, but it's still going to be slower than a lot of non-stax CEDH decks.

You may enjoy this deck if you like:

Aristocratic Sac'ing in for Value

Controlling the Board (Without ruining the fun)

Going infinite with janky combos

ZOMBIES!!!!!!

You may not want to play this deck if you:

Want to play extremely fast

Hate tokens

Don't like resorting to combat damage for the win sometimes

This deck won't be for everyone, but it certainly works for me!

Strong Match-ups Show

Creatures Matter Decks: This deck can absolutely cripple a deck in which the creatures matter. We will be constantly sacrificing our fodder while forcing our opponents to sac off their GOOD stuff. Best example: Stompy decks, because a craterhoof does nothing if you have to sac ALL of your creatures before damage can be dealt.

Indestructible/Hexproof shenanigan decks: I understand this deck-type is getting exceedingly rare in a lot of other metas, but the people in my meta love to be absolute trolls. This is one of my answers to their trolling. Since sacrificing goes AROUND these two mechanics, it makes it super easy to outvalue the people across the table from you if they're playing this kind of deck

Enchantress Decks: We can normally get around MOST things an enchanter/enchantress deck throws at us. We don't NEED to attack, so stuff like Propaganda or Ghostly Prison isn't going to hold us back, and we can force them to sacrifice permanents with Phyrexian Obliterator if we need to get rid of other enchantments.

Weak Match-ups Show

Control decks: Decks that have a LOT of interaction can stop us dead in our tracks. One or two boardwipes won't hurt us that bad, but decks that can focus down your commander and make them unplayable will be hard to overcome. People who play 15 counterspells will pretty easily be able to force us out of a game.

Fast Token decks: Elf-ball is a prime example of this. They make a lot of elves FAST, and can usually make our Grave Pact and Dictate of Erebos absolutely useless. They're also normally able to block or overwhelm our not Token-based zombie deck with pure numbers.

Curse Decks: Blue/black really struggles with enchantment removal. If you can't get counter it from the get-go, that curse is likely going to be sticking with you for the rest of the game. This is a very specific type of enchantress deck, so that's why it is specifically listed here aside from it.

Literally any CEDH deck. This deck is not CEDH, and so it's not likely to win against a CEDH deck.

Zombie Apocalypse

"Geralf, must you always whine? I agreed to nothing. I'll raise ghoul's anytime I wish.. - Ghoulcaller Gisa

So this is a Zombie Tribal deck, meaning that we are going to be flooding the board with all types of zombies. Some of these things are just fodder (looking at you tokens), some are lords, and others give huge payoffs when the fodder dies. We're going to look at some of the strategies a bit more in-depth here.

Mill Show

"Every Grave Cradles a Recruit". -Unknown

"I take no pleasure in your suffering, but it is necessary. Once you accept your fate you'll find eternity much more tolerable.". -Erebos

"it is not that you will go mad. It is that you will beg for madness". -Volrath

Mill is a pretty common Dimir mechanic, and for good reason: It offers you an alternate win-condition AND it offers up value!

Win-Conditions:

Gravecrawler+Rooftop Storm+Altar of Dementia+any other zombie

Poppet Stitcher  +Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver+Altar of Dementia

Both of these combos ARE infinite and will infinitely mill your opponents (or yourself if you decide you want a Thassa's Oracle win-con).

Value: "You'd better be worth it". - Liliana Vess

"Those who forget the horrors of the past are doomed to re-meet them". -Unknown

"No matter how deep you bury it, some evil refuses to stay dead". -Unknown

Being able to mill yourself and the other people at the table offers up the Dimir color type an endless source of VALUE. Throw a Lier, Disciple of the Drowned and now your recursion is doubled. If you want to stick with the Zombie theme Dralnu, Lich Lord will also work, albeit a bit slower. Having cards like Reanimate (to hit your opponent's graveyards) is really nice, and cards like Dread Return, Havengul Lich, and Unearth means that we don't have to worry about milling out our good creatures. We also have Feign Death for an emergency saving from a board wipe for a single target, and mass recursion like Living End for another alternate win-con.

Drain Show

"Great art can never be created without great suffering". -The Blood Artist

"It has no respect for the deeds of martyrs, reducing their legacy to a mouthful of flesh". -Unknown

Lifedrain! A beautiful mechanic that has been in black decks since the days of Sanguine Bond + Exquisite Blood (which is NOT in this deck. Could be added though if you want it.) The concept is simple: Gain life while your opponents are LOSING life. We have several cards that fit into this category and therefore have several options for infinite combos!

Combos:

Gravecrawler+Rooftop Storm+Any sac outlet+Any drain card

Poppet Stitcher  +Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver+ any sac outlet+any drain card

Nim Deathmantle+Weaponcraft Enthusiast+Ashnod's Altar+Exsanguinate OR Any Drain card.

Rooftop Storm+Acererak the Archlich Note:This combo requires the least amount of cards and can literally come out of nowhere. Acererak will infinitely venture into dungeons and then just drain everyone, create infinite tokens, and really tick off your opponents.

Just in case you haven't looked at the deck list yet, here are our drainers:

The Meathook Massacre

Blood Artist

Plague Belcher

Diregraf Captain

Syr Konrad, the Grim

Zulaport Cutthroat

What you'll notice is that there isn't really a lot of value to be had here. However, if you can't get off an infinite combo, having even 2 drainers on the battlefield can help you to pull ahead of your opponents and give you a little life to play with if you aren't in the best spot. Life is a commodity, use yours to your advantage and take away the opponents' resource.

Wipe and Flood Show

"For the necromancer barons, killing and recruitment are one and the same.". -Unknown

"Without a mind, it doesn't fear death. Without a soul, it doesn't mind killing.". - Unknown

"The dead are lonely in the crypt, and always eager for company.". -Unknown

Our last resort win-con is just to wipe the board, then build a huge board and swing SUPER wide. And that's what Zombie tribal does best. We have some token generators like our commander Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver, Open the Graves, and Diregraf Colossus which all combo with Gravecrawler, Rooftop Storm and any singular sac outlet (Carrion Feeder is a fun option if you're going for the swing wide approach). This will give us infinite tokens. Poppet Stitcher   makes them all 3/3s without Decayed which is super helpful. Throw in some Lords and you get some nice power and toughness upgrades.

As far as board wiping there is only one strict board wipe in the deck: The Meathook Massacre. Outside of that we're going to be looking at doing some Grave Pact or Dictate of Erebos shenanigans here to force sacs from every one while keeping our current board state strong.

Synergies (Not Win-Cons)

So the nice thing about zombies is that they tend to synergize very well. Simply having Rooftop Storm+Gravecrawler gives you the option to: Scry infinitely with Viscera Seer; make an infinitely large Carrion Feeder, Grimgrin, Corpse-Born or Champion of the Perished; and also draw as many cards as you want with Grim Haruspex.

Following the same line of thinking, we have two major Force-sacs in the decklist: Dictate of Erebos and Grave Pact. Every time Gravecrawler, or a random zombie token dies, we force each of our opponents to sac a creature, which, with enough mana (or through free casts with Rooftop Storm) or enough zombie tokens, can force a board wipe for everyone so that we can run them over with our tokens.

Dread Return also has quite a bit of synergy with the deck with its flashback. Say you Mill it into the graveyard, or had to cast it earlier on for an important creature. It's flashback being saccing three creatures mean you get three payoffs and lose three tokens to get back something huge for your deck like a Yawgmoth, Thran Physician, or Weaponcraft Enthusiast both of which can be key in your efforts to combo off for a win.

Yawgmoth, Thran Physician+Sightless Ghoul+Butcher Ghoul= Draw engine for as much life as you have. With any of our drain engines, it also ends up being a pesudo-wincon/free draw engine! If you're going for a Thassa's win, this could be a janky engine for the Thassa. This is dangerous if you don't have a drain engine out there, as you can quickly draw over your life total. Still a fun little synergy!

Game Progession

Early Game Show

The early game for this deck is key. We are hoping to get as much value on board as possible before other players have the chance to set up. You're normally hoping for: A Sac Outlet, A tutor, a Sac payoff, a zombie or two, and 2 lands in your opening hand to help get you started. The lower the CMC of the cards above the better. An Ideal hand (that I've had before) looks something like this:

Gravecrawler

Carrion Feeder

Blood Artist

Grim Tutor

2x Island

Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

You turn one Urborg, drop a gravecrawler, turn 2 drop an island and a carrion feeder, turn 3 you drop another island and grim tutor for rooftop storm, and then drop the blood artist and rooftop storm soon after. This sets you up and makes it harder to remove your combo pieces for later in the game. By turn four you've (hopefully) drawn into spot removal, a counterspell, or another tutor to search out something that will push you further ahead. That is an IDEAL hand. A hand that isn't ideal but should still be kept can look something like this: 3x land, sac outlet, 3x low-cost zombies.

A hand like this will help us to play some creatures early and can help us to move towards getting Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver out early.

A hand that's BAD but still better than some hands and can be kept if you want to try it out: 6x land and a mana rock.

You will very rarely see this, but seeing as how this deck can heavily rely on it's commander, this hand isn't as bad as it seems. If you have all the mana out to play wilhelt by turn three, you definitely SHOULD, especially if you don't have a lot of options. As soon as you draw into a zombie you don't care about you can start to easily turn this hand into a slower, mid-game advantage.

A hand you'll never want to keep is one that is a mishmash of different combos with just 2 land. This is a recipe for disaster. You're going to want a relatively varied hand, but if you're holding both altars, a nim deathmantle, a high cost tutor, and rooftop storm with an island and a swamp.... that's a mulligan.

Mid-Game Show

Mid-game is normally where we can randomly pop-off for a victory. An ideal hand can get us to a win as early as turn four, but most of the time we'll find ourselves going infinite around turn eight or nine. By the mid-game we are hopefully 1 or 2 turns ahead of the rest of the table value-wise and can start continuously sacking creatures to Wilhelt or with two or 3 other draw engines on the field to essentially search our library for key cards in our strategies. It's very important to keep yourself ahead on value here. We can still reliably bounce back from board wipes or spot removal of key pieces, but it will get harder the further the game gets. Thankfully this deck is very forgiving and flexible. Very few things will absolutely shut us down.

Late-game Show

This is the worst place for us to be. If we are moving into a 17-20 turn game we are either getting hammered with removal/counters or have been board wiped 3-4 times. If we do somehow make it to this point, we've more than likely whiffed on our combos, or have had them all unceremoniously plucked from our grasp and our objective becomes to fill the board with tokens and swing as hard as possible at anyone remaining. If we haven't had Gravecrawler and Rooftop Storm removed yet, there's still a chance to make infinite tokens with Wilhelt, which gives us a bit of an out. If you've been saving a hand full of combo pieces, now would be the time to play them and make the most of them.

Cards to be Wary of Show

This section will be dedicated to cards that can mess us up/stop us in our tracks. Mind you this will be relegated to my meta, so what applies to me may not apply to you! This will be a WIP section.

Eidolon of Rhetoric: This is the main one I see, but there are a few cards that limit the amount of casting a person does. This card will restrict us to using the combos that don't require Gravecrawler, and can slow us down as far as getting and playing pieces. Instead of tutoring for an altar and playing it on the same turn, you now are forced to wait an entire turn cycle to find and play a piece. This card, and any cards like it are KOS (Kill on Sight). Counter this, or wipe it from the board. Just make sure you GET RID OF IT. Or, better yet, politic someone else to get rid of it at the table who is playing something that carries enchantment destruction.

God-Pharaoh's Statue: Or any card like this is deadly to us. This card stacked with one or 2 others means you are now even further limited in your ability to combo, usually being forced to resort to the Weaponcraft Enthusiast+Nim Deathmantle combo that gets around casting costs. This is a card that can really foil your plans, so make sure you keep a counter up for cards like this to make sure you don't have to deal with them as enchantment/artifact destruction in black is exceedingly rare.

Aura Shards: Aura shards can and will blow up our enchantments. This means things like Grave Pact, Dictate of Erebos and The Meathook Massacre will be thrown into the graveyard with no ability to recur them. While this won't END our game, it does end our ability to effectively control the board state making it harder for us to find a win in the mid-late game.

Leyline of the Void: This card, along with cards like Liesa, Forgotten Archangel and Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet stop all of our aristocrat shenanigans dead in their tracks. Notice that we have a Kalitas in this deck, along with a Gisa, Glorious Resurrector this is for the exact reasons listed above: If we face an Aristocrats styled deck, these cards should hinder them to the point where we can gain value over them.

Best Cards in the Deck

The hands-down best card in the deck is Gravecrawler, followed by Rooftop Storm. Gravecrawler having the ability to be cast from the graveyard basically all the time means that we will always have the ability to do SOMETHING. Unless we get hit with some grave hate (which is why we have counterspells), we are always putting GC into the graveyard to recur later on in the game, or to help combo off. Rooftop allows us free zombies, which is just ALWAYS going to be worth the 6 mana. If you manage to draw close to your entire library and have this on the field, you just flood the board and hold the counterspells to ensure your victory.

Notable Future Additions/Possible changes YOU can make

There's a lot you can switch around in this deck to make it more combo-y or LESS combo-y. That's the nice thing about Dimir zombies, there's always fun stuff to do!

Things I'll be Adding Show

Thassa's Oracle- This card is just great if you wanna win through self-mill. It just gives you the game. You can substitute Laboratory Maniac here too if you really want.

Mikaeus, the Unhallowed- Part of the infamous Mike+Trike combo, and also having the ability to help Yawgmoth, Thran Physician go off with the undying triggers, this is usually a must-have in a zombie deck, though I've held back from buying it JUST yet.

Geralf's Messenger- One of the best undying creatures to exist. It's an amazing card and I'll be adding it (hopefully) soon.

Better Land base: This land base is BASICALLY the pre-con's land base. I'll be adding a Polluted Delta, and some lands that come in untapped to help make this deck even FASTER. This is probably where I will be placing most of the budget going forwards, as this is the next step for making this a more consistent deck.

Other notable possible additions Show

Relentless Dead- having the capacity to regenerate this AND recur other zombies in the graveyard is always going to have good synergy in a deck like this

Zombie Master- Swampwalk is just nasty, and having the capacity to regenerate some of your heavy hitters is super nice.

Grave Betrayal- This card allows you to just take whatever you're forcing other people to sacrifice. Absolute monster in most casual games.

Literally ANY Liliana Card- Liliana just synergizes with this deck. All of them.

Please feel free to leave some feedback or possible future additions not mentioned in the build below! Always open to constructive criticism (And upvotes)!.

Top Ranked	Achieved #32 position overall 2 years ago Achieved #25 position in Commander / EDH 2 years ago Achieved #2 position in Commander / EDH UB (Dimir) 2 years ago Achieved #2 position in Commander / EDH Zombie 2 years ago
Date added	2 years
Last updated	2 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	14 - 0 Mythic Rares 36 - 0 Rares 24 - 0 Uncommons 13 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.92
Tokens	Dungeon: Dungeon of the Mad Mage, Dungeon: Lost Mine of Phandelver, Dungeon: Tomb of Annihilation, Goblin 1/1 R, Morph 2/2 C, Skeleton 1/1 B, The Atropal, Treasure, Zombie 2/2 B, Zombie 2/2 B w/ Decayed, Zombie Wizard 1/1 UB
Folders	good commanders to beat these guys, Interesting Decks Not Budget, Tapped Out - User Decks, Not Mine