Grist creepy crawly things

Commander / EDH BG (Golgari) Insect Mill Sacrifice

jankinthetank

Creature (34)

• 1x Battlefly Swarm
• 1x Carrion Beetles
• 1x Caustic Caterpillar
• 1x Elvish Mystic
• 1x Fyndhorn Elves
• 1x Hex Parasite
• 1x Llanowar Elves
• 1x Mortician Beetle
• 1x Scute Mob
• 1x Blightbeetle
• 1x Fauna Shaman
• 1x Golgari Thug
• 1x Skylasher
• 1x Atraxa's Skitterfang
• 1x Bloodline Pretender
• 1x Deadly Grub
• 1x Devouring Swarm
• 1x Eternal Witness
• 1x Nantuko Elder
• 1x Nantuko Husk
• 1x Scute Swarm
• 1x Six
• 1x Stinkweed Imp
• 1x Bane of the Living
• 1x Carrion Grub
• 1x Nantuko Vigilante
• 1x Necrosquito
• 1x Grave-Shell Scarab
• 1x Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest
• 1x Swarm of Bloodflies
• 1x Syr Konrad, the Grim
• 1x Giant Adephage
• 1x Hornet Queen
• 1x Living Hive

Land (31)

• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Darkbore Pathway  ^Flip
• 1x Deathcap Glade
• 1x Exotic Orchard
• 7x Forest
• 1x Golgari Rot Farm
• 1x Necroblossom Snarl
• 1x Overgrown Tomb
• 1x Path of Ancestry
• 1x Shifting Woodland
• 1x Svogthos, the Restless Tomb
• 8x Swamp
• 1x Tainted Wood
• 1x Takenuma, Abandoned Mire
• 1x Terramorphic Expanse
• 1x Undergrowth Stadium
• 1x Verdant Catacombs

Enchantment (9)

• 1x Ripples of Undeath
• 1x Alpha Status
• 1x Beastmaster Ascension
• 1x Cemetery Tampering
• 1x Crawling Infestation
• 1x Oubliette
• 1x The Hunger Tide Rises
• 1x Binding the Old Gods
• 1x Moldervine Reclamation

Artifact (4)

• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Idol of Oblivion
• 1x Ashnod's Altar

Commander (1)

Sorcery (12)

• 1x Profane Tutor
• 1x Urborg Repossession
• 1x Forever Young
• 1x Buried Alive
• 1x Flare of Cultivation
• 1x Pact of the Serpent
• 1x Crippling Fear
• 1x Dread Return
• 1x Jarad's Orders
• 1x Rise of the Witch-king
• 1x Patriarch's Bidding
• 1x Wave of Vitriol

Instant (9)

• 1x Black Sun's Twilight
• 1x Revitalizing Repast  ^Flip
• 1x Assassin's Trophy
• 1x Plumb the Forbidden
• 1x Rushed Rebirth
• 1x Bone Harvest
• 1x Footbottom Feast
• 1x Gravepurge
• 1x Hostile Negotiations

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Of all of the interesting and powerful stuff to come out of MH2, somehow the little bug planeswalker Grist caught my attention quicker than anything else in the set. While everyone else was rushing to make a viable squirrel or food-based EDH deck I was trying to find a way to make insect tribal work.

looking at Grist, the Hunger Tide, we have 2 main abilities we are going to build around. First, we need a lot of insects so that his first ability can get some hits to rapidly increase his loyalty and get some tokens down on the board. second, we are going to be messing with the graveyard and milling ourselves to try to get some good damage from his -5 ability.

This deck has 3 potential win-cons. I'll present them in order from least interesting to coolest.

the first win-con is really the backup wincon. if things go badly and you can't keep Grist on the table, or you get your graveyard exiled this is the fall back. the deck can win through combat damage with one of two methods. the first is to go wide with 1/1 tokens (from Grist, Hornet Queen, Living Hive and cheap but small bugs. then pump the team with Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest and a sac outlet. option 2 is to use one of the bugs that can go real big Swarm of Bloodflies, Mortician Beetle and sacrifice a bunch of tokens to make them huge. not the most flashy win, but certainly possible in a low-power budget pod.

Option 2 is printed on the commander. spend the early/mid game milling yourself, get a bunch of creatures in the graveyard and then use the -5 ability to zap all your opponents for enough life to finish the game. unless you mill the whole deck you won't get to the point where you can do this in one shot unless you (and the other players) have been chipping away at life totals through the game. even if you don't kill them all, if you use the -5 late-game you should get the opponents pretty low, and could do it again in a few turns. it only takes one insect off the top of the deck to make Grist able to use his -5 again in 2 turns.

Option 3 is our combo-kill using one of the only non-insect creatures in the deck, Syr Konrad, the Grim. to kill the table you need Konrad, Grist, one of our Forever Young effects, and X/2 creatures in your graveyard where X is the highest life total of your opponents. if you also have a manaless sac outlet like Nantuko Husk or Sadistic Hypnotist you only need X/3 creatures.

With Konrad on the table, cast Forever Young, Footbottom Feast, or Bone Harvest. this puts all of your insects back on top of the deck. each of them does 1 point of damage to each opponent thanks to Konrad. then you activate Grist's +1 ability. you know that you have X/2 insects on top, each one causes Grist to fire again. each insect into the bin does another point of damage, gives a loyalty counter and makes a 1/1 insect. then if you have a sac outlet, you can sac each oof the 1/1s, causing 1 more point of damage per insect!

Oh, and we also managed to fit in Mortal Combat because who doesn't love that card?

to maximize our hits off of Grist, we have a large number of insects and have cut down from what i normally use on utility slots. we don't have a lot of spot removal (though Grist has one on his card, and a lot of insects have either deathtouch or removal abilities), or card draw. we are generally treating our milling as draw since it filters through the deck to find our combo pieces and get creatures where they need to be (graveyard instead of hand in this case). we have a decent number of cards that bring cards back from the graveyard to pick up the cards we need as we mill the rest.

Our ramp is mostly land-based to get the lands out of the deck so they don't stop Grist from triggering. we also use cards like Mulch to look at the top cards, keeping lands and dropping more bugs into the bin.

this deck seems like a fun one to play, and I am glad I got to explore the tribal world of insects! there are so many i had never seen before, which was super fun.

Date added	3 years
Last updated	6 months
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	3 - 0 Mythic Rares 36 - 0 Rares 24 - 0 Uncommons 20 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.03
Tokens	Copy Clone, Eldrazi 10/10 C, Insect 1/1 BG, Insect 1/1 G, Insect 1/1 G w/ Flying, Deathtouch, 6/1 G Token Creature Insect, Morph 2/2 C