Meren EDH deck help
Commander (EDH) forum
Posted on March 17, 2022, 3:31 a.m. by peterbdude
Hey all, I’m new at edh deck making and decided on making a meren commander deck Cheat Death. I took inspiration from other people’s and found some cards nobody else was using that seemed good. I’m going for more of a control route than a combo one. I’m also restricting my budget of the deck to under $100 so if there’s any suggestions for replacing things, I probably won’t put anything more than $5-$10 in.
Thanks! :)
I agree with Guerric, look for small creatures with useful effects that sacrifice themselves or can sacrifice another creature with low or no cost. You probably want to be recuring stuff for it's ETB or death trigger. For a few specifics, I think you probably want to look into cards that are similar to Sakura-Tribe Elder, I run that, Dawntreader Elk, Diligent Farmhand, Yavimaya Granger, Fertilid and even Blood Pet to have lots of creatures I can use to ramp repeatedly with. Blood Pet is a bit worse at ramping, but it's one of the better XP sources, alongside Spore Frog by being a 1 drop that can sacrifice itself. You can also run cards like Wood Elves and Farhaven Elf, but these are not as good because they can't sacrifice themselves. With those self-sacrificing rampers, you can easily outramp almost any deck, and the deck likely 'needs' to hit only 3 lands to start working. Noting that I always need to have Green mana meant brutal cutbacks in my Swamp count, but since I run so many ways to find Swamps, I often can ramp out many before I win. If you use tons of Green Creature Ramp (which you should be IMHO), you will always need at least 1 Green Mana to get by, and Green mana can usually get you black on or before turn 4, so keep that in mind. I think you should try to cut out artifact and spell ramp in favour of creature ramp, and do similar with as many other effects as possible. I would strongly encourage you to look for creatures that can do what you need done. Caustic Caterpillar and Foundation Breaker coupled with tutoring should give you some removal options, there are tons more in Green that vary in value. If you have enough creatures, Lurking Predators becomes pretty solid, even you are cheating in small creatures, a 50 creature deck can cheat out 3 or 4 of them per cycle, which is not something other decks will enjoy. A final point, I love running several Plaguecrafter/Demon's Disciple cards, Meren recurring them feels incredibly pushed in some metas.
Nel Toth Community College and Round Table is my Meren build based on all that (it's more than your desired budget, but it's got lots of fluff alongside pretty cutthroat stuff). It also has a good win con you can throw into a full on Dredge deck: Haakon, Stromgald Scourge is a really good way to generate repeated recursion, since you can just recast any Knights in your graveyard. Ashes of the Fallen and Maskwood Nexus can both make everything a Knight, but if you've got 4-5 to work with, you'll probably do okay. If you have a limited budget, it'll probably not be able to go infinite, but Haakon with Aristocrats should squeeze people out. If you want to go infinite, the best cards that are close to your budget are Pitiless Plunderer and Ashnod's Altar. Both work wonders. If you do use Haakon, you'll want some discard outlets in the deck, fortunately there are lots of good discard outlets in Green and Black. My deck has a few of them in it, and due to the available tutors as well, I am almost never stuck.
March 17, 2022 9:19 a.m.
DreadKhan I didn't even know about Yavimaya Granger and Diligent Farmhand. Those are great, and I need to add them! And you're totally right in what you said on the other thread- "hell is having Meren out with nothing to sacrifice." That happened to me earlier in my Meren career when I was still upgrading the precon, and it was miserable. That's why the self-saccing creatures are so good!
The other big mistake I had was having a great grindy, controlly deck without a clear wincon, which I'll confess is a bit of a noob's mistake. Syr Konrad, the Grim/Blood Artist/Falkenrath Noble + Living Death/Massacre Girl fixed that, and World Shaper + Field of the Dead added a second one. None of the cards from the first "combo" are over $10, and only Field of the Dead is pricier from the second, and while fun to have both you don't need them all. There is also the option of just getting lots of mana and casting Exsanguinate or Torment of Hailfire, but I passed on those ones since it's something I do in my Teysa, Orzhov Scion deck.
If you can fix your engine and have a clear winning "combo" (not an infinite combo, just a bunch of cards that synergize to help you win) you'll have so much fun!
March 17, 2022 10:24 a.m.
If you can go infinite with Haakon's ability, usually via a 1 or 2 drop you can recast either for mana to cast it or have extra for infinite mana, any aristocrat payoff will win the game, as will Tendrils of Agony since Haakon lets you cast from graveyard a knight infinite times. It's card intensive, but using Haakon lets me use Liliana's Standard Bearer in the deck, a card that has drawn me more than 10 cards some games, and can go infinite with Haakon's ability potentially (until you deck yourself I guess), using a 1 drop to generate mana to recur the bigger knight a few times. It's a pretty easy combo to tutor out with Protean Hulk, but now that I finally got the right art for Gravecrawler, I added that with Protean Hulk to make infinite sacrifice wins really easy to pull off. It's easy to interact with, but I can hopefully rebuild if I need to via my recursion. Protean Hulk can find Gravecrawler, Carrion Feeder, and Pitiless Plunderer to get infinite death triggers, so at end of turn you use Meren to bring back Protean Hulk to sac it to find payoff creatures to win on the spot. This is better than Haakon, but the OG Gravecrawler art is unsettling!
I do agree though, you don't really need to go infinite with Meren to win or have fun. Meren can win grindy games with Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest and Sheoldred, Whispering One. I still find space for Visara the Dreadful for situations like that, where I need repeated targeted removal to win, and to swing if there is nothing better to do she's still a 5/5 Flying. Not sure I'd recommend that card to anyone else, but I usually like seeing it.
March 17, 2022 10:55 a.m.
peterbdude says... #6
Guerric I updated the deck with a bunch of your suggestions and I think it definitely looks better, there was a $25 price jump but considering the difference some of the card made I think it's worth it. Let me know what you think. Thanks for your suggestions!
Guerric says... #2
Hi peterbdude! Great choice picking Meren! She absolutely rocks, and can definitely be built powerfully and cheaply. I haven't yet written a primer for my deck yet (though I probably will some day), but I likewise play a control deck free of infinite combos. I'll post a link to my deck at the end of this.
Many years ago on the Command Zone podcast Alex Kessler described what is the key to playing Meren, which is having a lot of low cmc self-sacrificing creatures which you can sac for value and then recycle with Meren. When you build it right you'll have more mana that you know what to do with and an unstoppable engine that can grind games out like no other. The other key thing with Meren is that she heavily benefits from a Dredge approach where you dredge stuff into your graveyard in lieu of drawing. Thankfully most dredge cards and self-saccing key pieces are inexpensive cards, and while I do have some pricier cards in my deck most of them are not essential. What is important for Meren is just making sure the engine works, and that you can always be ramping lands, dredging cards, and controlling the board, as well as making sure you have a way to win that synergizes with all of this while not being a combo. For me this is Syr Konrad, the Grim who can drain the life out of your opponents like no one else, and costs a few cents. My build is here- Recycling for Profit: Dedgin' the Fill with Meren. I'll go post some key suggestions on your page as well!
March 17, 2022 8:26 a.m.