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Lich's Mastery Bat Tribal!

Commander / EDH Bat Flying Lifelink Theme/Gimmick WB (Orzhov)

Vallaris

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Creature (33)

Land (32)

Enchantment (8)

Instant (5)

Commander (1)

Commander: foil Athreos, Shroud-Veiled

Artifact (9)

Sorcery (8)

Planeswalker (4)

Maybeboard

Land (5)

Planeswalker (1)

Creature (3)

Sorcery (3)

Artifact (3)

Enchantment (1)

As far as I can tell, this is the first EDH bat tribal deck on TappedOut. I have found a few other non-EDH bat decks which I've listed in a section further down but have really not found very many bat decks in general. If you know of any other bat decks, let me know! I will add them to that list.

Now I tend to make some odd decks sometimes out of some more unusual mechanics or tribes or themes sometimes, but this bat deck is not born from a motive of uniqueness. Really, I just love bats. They're my favourite animal and I'm highly passionate about them. Bats also had quite a lot to do with the first game of MTG I played as an adult, it was with the Garruk vs. Liliana dual decks and I won by having a ton of bat tokens. So yea, bats are special to me from a personal standpoint as well as with playing MTG.

..........................

Pardon all of this being a mess, WIP

Lich's Mastery is the soul of this deck.

That said, there is a correct way to play Lich's Mastery, and many wrong ways to play this card. Do not ever play this card as soon as you can, this is not for early in the game or for a deck that wants a quick win. Play it too early and you'll be exiling it and then you're out. Or you'll be a Cleaning Nova away from being out of the game. While Lich has hexproof, it is extremely vulnerable to mass enchantment destruction and resolving this issue is something I will be working out over time. Indestructibility is a useful card to help mitigate this problem, but there should be a few more solutions as well.

Lich must have a solid board state before it is played. Even in a something like bat tribal which has little to no support, you can master the Lich by ensuring that whatever you remove from the board has a good chance of coming back. Athreos, Shroud-Veiled is commander for a reason, put his coin counters on your own permanents, and they will come back, even if you exile them. His indestructible keyword makes him highly resilient. Kaya the Inexorable works similarly, although she must be protected, more than doable with lots of creatures in the air getting slowly pumped up with anthem effects.

Get this kind of thing set up, go for a board wipe if you have to, and then play the Lich. After that, your deck is your oyster, there's a lot of life gain, and even if you deck yourself, you're a Lich now, you won't lose the game.

I'm always improving the mana bases of my decks as I acquire lands that fit. Not all that are in this list are in the deck yet, if they're not, I just haven't acquired them yet.

Do have:

  • Reliquary Tower - I think this land is overused at times in EDH. That said, this is the most important utility lands to have in a Lich's Mastery deck. If you get your lifelink draw engine going, it gets explosive real fast and it's very easy to draw your entire deck.

  • Thought Vessel - similarly, this mana rock is absolutely going to be absolutely necessary in a Lich deck.

  • Cavern of Souls - used to have several of these, sadly many were lost. My one remaining copy goes in this deck because of how it fits thematically on top of it being tribal support.

  • Vault of the Archangel - utility land that gives all creatures deathtouch and lifelink for an activated cost.

  • Agadeem's Awakening   - bats on the art for the sorcery side is the main reason I have this card here lol. Nonetheless, this is a crazy useful card for any deck running lots of creatures. The life pay effect on the land side should not be an issue either. Either you haven't developed the board enough yet and it's fine to pay, or your board is developed enough where you can have it come in tapped or blink the bats from the counters on them from Athreos.

  • Emeria's Call   / Emeria, Shattered Skyclave   - This one is in this deck tentatively for now, haven't tested it yet. Early game, like with Agadeem's Awakening, paying 3 life to come in untapped won't be an issue. The bodies this land can provide might be useful, but for 7 mana, I can think of a lot of other things I'd rather do.

  • Tainted Field - I'm a big fan of this cycle of lands from Torment. I don't like them as much in three colour decks, but in two colour that leans black, they're excellent.

Don't have yet, but plan to add:

Hall of Heliod's Generosity - have one in another deck, been meaning to acquire a second for this one. I try to avoid "just in case" scenarios when adding cards to my deck, but just in case something happens like Lich's Mastery gets Wheel of Fortune'd out of your hand (which my partner plays a ton, so it's a bit more than a "just in case scenario"), it's nice to be able to get it back. There are other useful enchantments that make this a worthwhile card to have as well.

Aside from that, the mana base has a bit of a weakness with getting enough of each colour, this will be fixed in due time.

Only 22 cards with the Bat creature type have ever been printed in all of MTG. I will not list them all here, but all 22 are in the deck. First section is for non bat cards that provide direct support for bats (tokens in all cases). Second section is some personal favourites of the Bats.

Belfry Spirit - Spirit. Generates two 1/1 bat creature tokens upon entering the graveyard. Works extremely well with Athreos, Shroud-Veiled.

Regal Bloodlord - Vampire creature that gives you a bat in your end step if you gained life that turn

Skeletal Vampire - this is it, the card that generated all the bat tokens that won me my first game of MTG when I got back into it as an adult.

Sengir Nosferatu - Vampire that can transform into a bat token, but some janky shit can be done with Athreos so you can keep getting bat tokens without having to sacrifice them in order to bring him back

Desecrated Tomb - generates bat tokens whenever a creature leaves your graveyard which should happen often enough

Batwing Brume - while not a true bat card, this obscure and unique card from Eventide has a swarm of bats in the awesome Richard Kane Ferguson art. fog effect that punishes your opponent with life loss for attacking.

Dakmor Bat - for the art, adorable little brown bat (myotis lucifugus), my favourite animal. I have a bunch more of these that I use as tokens for my Edgar Markov Vampire deck. Anyway, this species is particularly special to me, they used to be seen everywhere in my home state but are now sadly endangered (I have more on this in the non-decktech section further down).

Sengir Bats - this card actually has two different arts, this was common in Homelands apparently. I use one as the actual Sengir Bats in the deck, and the other as the token for Sengir Nosferatu.

Dirge Bat - from an objective standpoint, Dirge Bat is the best of the bats. It's mutate ability can't be used a whole lot in this deck the way it can in my Snapdax, Apex of the Hunt deck where it's particularly powerful, but even in the Bat Lich deck it's good. This card actually has three different arts, the main from Ikoria (in Snapdax deck), the Showcase variant (in this deck), and then the JP Alternate Godzilla Skin of Battra Terror of the City which is cool, but depicts a moth, not a bat lol.

Blight Keeper - have to give mention here that I LOVE how this one was in Ixalan of all sets. Central and South America are home to almost a third of the world's bat species, and it's a fun nod to prehistoric bats found in the region (though larger than the bats of today, were still rather small).

Bats are not very powerful on their own, but have a lot with a whole bunch of anthems and now we're talking.

Always Watching - gives all creatures +1/+1 and vigilance

Bad Moon - will boost all bats since they're all black. I had Hall of Triumph in here before, but seeing as black will always be chosen, and Bad Moon costs one mana less, Bad Moon is the better of the two.

Cathars' Crusade - while not strictly an anthem effect, this increased power from the ETB of creatures fits the goal. This one gets ridiculous with Athreos, Shroud-Veiled

Dictate of Heliod - mega boost on it's own, but can be a real game changer if flashed in

Spear of Heliod - anthem plus conditional removal, this replaced Glorious Anthem

Coat of Arms - killer anthem effect, currently borrowed from my partner

Vanquisher's Banner - anthem plus card draw yes please

mikeaus, the unhallowed - 26 June 2021, well he's officially going in the deck now! Lovely gift from my partner, my god. I've wanted Mikaeus so bad since Dark Ascension was in Standard but just never had one. Mikaeus is such a sick and highly versatile card, he'll be used in a bunch of decks actually. In this one though, he's got an anthem for non-Humans and gives them undying which is great for building up the board and helps bring the bats back if they don't have counters from Athreous or Kaya yet.

Maybe...

Obelisk of Urd - expensive to cast, but has convoke which helps. this deck doesn't generate a huge number of tokens, so it might be risky. I will have to test this one out. That said, seeing as I will be adding Hall of Heliod's Generosity at some point, I'd rather have enchantments over artifacts when possible

Mikaeus, the Unhallowed - this one isn't so much a maybe, more like an absolute yes for this deck. I just don't have him yet, waiting for him to get reprinted as he's a bit expensive at the moment.

Dirge Bat - removal on a stick, the most on theme removal for this deck

Athreos, Shroud-Veiled - although the goal is to get his coin counters on my own permanents to bring them back again and again if needed with Lich's Mastery, they can also be used to steal permanents away from an opponent

  • Kaya's Wrath - board wipe with lifegain

  • Damn - versatile card that can target one creature or wipe them all

  • Hour of Revelation - Actually not terrible in this deck which can be slow to really get started, and can potentially cost only 3 mana to cast. Athreos has indestructible and if there are enough counters on other permanents, they can survive a wipe like this. If Lich's Mastery is out, this spell potentially becomes a dead draw since if the Lich is destroyed it's an instant lose. I've been adding ways to make Lich and other permanents indestructible, but this is still not an ideal board wipe for this deck. Not sure what I will be replacing it with just yet.

  • Austere Command - a more targeted but versatile board wipe.

Vindicate - any permanent, I like having some sort of removal like this to deal with particularly pesky lands in EDH

Damn - can target any creature or be cast for the overload cost to destroy all

Mortify - creature or enchantment

Kaya the Inexorable - with her -3 ability

Gideon Blackblade - I don't have him in here for removal, rather his +1 ability for lifelink, but if he survives a few turns, can be used to exile almost anything.

Vona's Hunger - Underrated card imho.

Dictate of Erebos - only just moved this one from my Triangle Ears deck to this one, I'm sure it will be decent here, but so far is untested

This deck doesn't have a whole lot of card draw since the main engine for this is Lich's Mastery. Card draw, or lack thereof, is certainly a current weakness of the deck that could use some work.

Both of these tutors were high on the "I'd love to get these in packs" wishlist but definitely not cards I'd want to have bought outright. I've been lucky enough to acquire both this way. My partner and I are somewhat casual players, and as much as I like tutors as a card type, they are certainly some of the most powerful in EDH. By proxy of this ultimately being a bat deck though, a creature type that has not had much support, nor are the cards objectively good, even the best of the best tutors merely help this deck become more playable. I am mostly sharing this because I am assuming that most players reading into the function of a bat tribal Lich's Mastery deck are going to lean casual. IMHO if you have these cards and want to build a deck like this, by all means include them, but if you don't, a lot of other tutors are fine. For what it's worth, my original kitchen table Lich deck used Behold the Beyond. The new Profane Tutor from Modern Horizons 2 is quite affordable, and Grim Tutor is not horrific in price either. Mastermind's Acquisition and Diabolic Tutor are also fine in more casual metas. Wishclaw Talisman and Scheming Symmetry are also viable options if you don't mind an opponent getting to tutor as well, I'm actually a big fan of the latter. This deck doesn't need to be overloaded with tutors or anything, but having a few helps make using Lich's Mastery a little more consistent when playing.

As before, this is where the deck might need a little more to get it going in the early game. There is not much card draw in white, and much of it in black revolves around losing life, which this deck doesn't want a whole lot of.

  • Fountain of Renewal - can be cracked for a card. Certainly not ideal card draw, but it fits a multipurpose here because of lifegain. Definitely looking to replace this card with something else though.

  • Geier Reach Sanitarium - rummage effect on a land

  • Vanquisher's Banner - anthem plus card draw when the chosen creature type is played

These are various cards I've found that do not involve losing life for drawing cards. Some involve sacrifice which I'd also prefer to avoid, but mentioning them in case anyone is seeking ideas for card draw for a Lich Deck.

  • Erebos, Bleak-Hearted - Actually quite like this one and might switch it from my Knights deck to this one. He is versatile enough to be valuable both before and after Lich's Mastery is out. The life loss before Lich's Mastery is out is not an issue, only after. Post Lich's Mastery coming out, he's still a 5/5 indestructible creature.

  • Erebos, God of the Dead - this version of Erebos would also be great, easier than the former to make work. I do not have this one though.

  • Infernal Tribute - currently in my Liliana deck, this card is awesome in anything with a high focus on the graveyard...or if you can bring something back easily. If the bats have counters from Athreos or Kaya, it's pretty much like getting a free card. Still, I'd like to avoid sacrifice where possible.

  • Casting of Bones

  • Dark Deal
  • Dregs of Sorrow - this one is interesting as it involves card draw for destroying your opponents creatures rather than by sacrificing your own which is much more common in black. It is expensive to cast though.
  • Merciless Resolve

  • Vampiric Rites - interesting card that gains life when sacrificing to draw, usually cards like this have life loss

  • Dawn of Hope - really wish white had more card draw like this that was dependent on lifelink, but if you're not a real stickler for being on theme with bats/vampires/etc, then this is great for Lich decks. This one is good enough that it might warrant a slot in here anyway because there is a ton of lifegain in this deck.

There are lots of ways to gain life in this deck, which is very much necessary for a Lich deck. That said, I might have too many clogging up the deck, something I'm smoothing out.

Sorin, Vengeful Bloodlord - so I'm listing him first here because he's the Vizier (where we play with both a commander and a planeswalker). Gives all creatures lifelink on your turn and his +1 gains life

Gideon Blackblade - can give himself or another creature lifelink. This one is also a bit of a pet card, Gideon is probably my favourite mono-white planeswalker and this iteration I am particularly fond of.

Sorin Markov - his +2 ability gains life. Not sure if I will be keeping this one in here long term.

Chalice of Life   - life gain on main side, life loss for opponent on the other. It's just kinda here for now.

Debt to the Deathless - that fantastic art aside, this card is sick in multiplayer and a great way to draw a ton of cards with Lich's Mastery

Exsanguinate - similar effect to Debt to the Deathless, this one is easier to cast, but does not have quite as big an impact. Much as I love Scars of Mirrodin, I do hope this one gets reprinted on Innistrad later this year with art that better fits the theme of the deck.

Kaya's Wrath - board wipe with lifegain, probably the best fitting wipe for this deck

Fountain of Renewal - gains 1 life upon upkeep, can be cracked to draw a card. Will replace eventually. Might replace with Ajani's Welcome for now.

Staff of the Death Magus - I actually really like this one for this deck

Vault of the Archangel - utility land that can grant lifelink to creatures

Akroma's Will - can give creatures lifelink for a turn. This is actually a great card, but I think this deck might want something else here instead, something that has a more lasting effect on the board.

Vito the Dusk Rose - activated ability gives all creatures lifelink

Basilica Screecher - extort cost can gain life

Blight Keeper - stupidly high activated cost to gain 4 life, but it's there

Blind Hunter - lifegain on ETB and lifegain for haunted creature when ETG

Bloodhunter Bat - lifegain ETB

Ghastly Gloomhunter - lifelink

These are not cards that give lifelink, but capitalize off of it

Lich's Mastery - card draw with lifelink

Regal Bloodlord - get a bat token with each end step for gaining life that turn

Sanguine Bond - gaining life causes target opponent to lose life

Maybe Exquisite Blood - my partner swears he saw it in my old collection after I got it back, though I have yet to find it. If/when I do, it is absolutely going into this deck. Really hope I'm not on a wild goose chase looking for this one lol.

All of the planeswalkers here are mostly here for their + abilities.

Sorin, Vengeful Bloodlord - he's the Vizier when we play that way. Gives all creatues and planeswalkers lifelink, can bring the bats back from the graveyard easily.

Kaya the Inexorable - pairs really nicely with Lich's Mastery if something needs to be exiled, it can be brought back. Her -3 ability is nice removal as well.

Gideon Blackblade - here for lifelink or indestructable when needed

Sorin Markov - when the Lich is out, his +1 may as well read "target opponent loses 2 life and you draw 2 cards"

Darien, King of Kjeldor - this was a card I was unaware of before that someone suggested as a must include for a deck running Lich's Mastery. I am inclined to agree with that assessment and I am currently waiting for it to arrive. With Darien, any damage dealt creates that many tokens which can be immediately sacrificed, thus preventing board disruption.

..........................

Other non-decktech stuff

There seem to be so few bat decks out there that whenever I find one, I will add it to this list. If you know of any others or have a bat deck yourself, please post a comment and I will add it here! Doesn't matter if it's on here or elsewhere.

Lich's Mastery Bat Tribal - So far as I can tell, mine is the only EDH Bat Tribal out there. Hopefully more pop up soon or I find some

Midnight Hunt: Orzhov Bat Tribal - by seshiro_of_the_orochi, thanks for posting your deck as well as the suggestions for mine!

Not the Bats! by usherp - casual deck, but if Altar's Reap were replaced with something else, it could be Pioneer legal. If we still lived in ND, I would be super tempted to build a variation of this deck where off-meta decks were not only viable sometimes, but highly welcomed, entertaining, and memorable to other players usually.

When Blex, Vexing Pest   was spoiled, I thought it was cool that bats were finally getting a tribal leader of sorts, even though he is not exclusively for bats, but I didn't like the insinuation that bats are pests. It's just rather...incorrect. If anything, bats are nature's best form of pest control, in the USA alone they save tens of billions of dollars per year, reducing the use of pesticides as well as reducing the cost of food. Other species around the world help substantially with pollination. They're definitely not pests! So yea, Blex as the commander is unfortunately not a suitable commander for a bat fan like me!

I played around with the idea of using K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth as the commander of bats, just mono black, lots of graveyard recursion with stuff like Desecrating Tomb and various anthem effects like Bad Moon or Coat of Arms. I ran into a problem though, in all of MTG's history, there have only ever been 22 bat cards printed in black border (an additional two in silver) and a few of them are white/black in colour identity. There are also two non-bat creature cards that involve white that generate bat tokens, one being Belfry Spirit the other being Regal Bloodlord. In order to include those four cards with a white identity, this deck needed to be Orzhov.

So Orzhov commanders...

To start with, one thing I did not want this deck to be was a sacrifice deck. In the past decade, the population of several species of bats in the USA and Canada have been absolutely devastated by an invasive species of fungus to the point where some which were once common are now endangered. I'll post more info in another spoiler at the bottom that will include more info on this and how help these little critters IRL, but for now I'll keep it focused on the deck and my general motive/inspiration behind it. But yea, bats have had deaths in the real world so sacrificing them as a theme was 100% not where I wanted to take this deck.

Since I tend to shop from my collection when first building a deck, I had a few options. Teysa Karlov was not suitable as the commander, first due to theme, but also because of the 22 bats in MTG, only one, Eyebat has a death trigger anyway. That said, I have included her in this deck, just not as a commander, as she does give tokens lifelink and vigilance which is more useful for where this deck ended up going. There were a few others, but none particularly seemed to fit as the commander.

Then Athreos, Shroud-Veiled, caught my eye. This card had been sitting in my box of rares since I got it as the buy-a-box from Theros Beyond Death and this seemed like an interesting use for him since he can bring creatures back from death or exile, much more fitting with what I'd like to see happen in the real world as well for these lovely critters. I knew from the start that I would also want to use a lot of anthem effects to make the bats stronger, but there definitely needed to be something more...

There was a kitchen table deck I had built a few years ago, actually the first after getting back into MTG, the summer after Dominaria came out. The first pack bought in years had a foil Lich's Mastery, back when foil rares were actually rare lol. I build an Orzhov deck around that card, and in spite of many other kitchen table decks built after that, it remained my favourite. When we got into EDH, I ended up pulling some important pieces out of it and the rest of it never saw play again. I've been trying to find a perfect place for a Lich's Mastery deck ever since.

...and here the Lich found a home, one that would befit Athreos as well as Athreos would befit the Lich.

I've been hesitant on whether or not to include something like this because no one comes to tappedout to read about helping bats or other issues like that. That said, considering how much I love these creatures, and considering the efforts I make IRL to help, I feel like I should include this section. If this is not your thing, I totally understand, feel free to skip it. If it is and you want to also help, extra cool!

Things you can do to help bats IRL

The first one is free! Education. A lot of people really just don't know about the struggles bats have faced in recent years since the spawn of White Nose Syndrome. Spreading correct information on bats goes a long way whether it's to reduce fear of bats, taking measures of safety when visiting caves (or avoiding them until bat populations recover) or just spreading the word about how important they are. BatCon International and Merlin Tuttle Bat Conservation both have a ton information, I highly recommend these two resources. A few books I can recommend as well are Bats: An Illustrated Guide to All Species by Merlin Tuttle and Bats: A World of Science and Mystery by Melville Brockett Fenton and Nancy Simmons.

Bat houses! This one is rather inexpensive, but if you have a property and live in an area with bats (or if your landlord is cool with it), having a bat house can help keep them out of your home while also providing them with a smaller space to bats to live in and thrive during the summer months. These bat houses help reduce the spread of white nose syndrome while also giving bats a safer place to raise their young.

A lot of areas lack laws that help protect bats. While this might not seem like something your local reps would even care about, if you point out how helpful bats truly are, there's a chance they might. No one wants the cost of food to go up after all. If agriculture is a big industry in your state, it will (or should) very much be something they care about. They can also do things a little more easily than your average person to coordinate community efforts for education as well, so even if they can't get anywhere with laws, there's that option as well.

Usually bat conservation organizations seek to achieve the stuff I mentioned previously anyway so if that's something you can do, great! They also do things like conduct research and sometimes manage to buy land with larger bat roosting spots (such as caves or abandoned man-made structures/mines/etc). There are also some smaller bat sanctuaries and rescue centers dotting the county. I am not advocating any particular organization here since I think that should be your choice if it's something you want to do, but support to any of these kinds of places are extremely helpful as well.

This of course can include actual donations, but there are other ways to help as well. I've seen some donate bat art so that organizations can sell it or prints of it, some have the designs on various items. Volunteering at any of these places is also something that can be done if there's a place close enough to you, but you do need to have some shots (rabies in particular) before working with any wild animal.

Suggestions

Updates Add

Bat Whisperer — Sept. 20, 2021
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Innistrad: Midnight Hunt has finally graced the game with a card that has me on it. Bat Whisperer even refers to her bats as her little winged friends in the flavour text. This card has replaced Chalice of Life  Flip for now. I'm very much looking forward to Crimson Vow, hopefully there are even more bats!

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91% Casual

Competitive

Top Ranked
Date added 3 years
Last updated 2 years
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)

9 - 0 Mythic Rares

34 - 0 Rares

15 - 0 Uncommons

24 - 0 Commons
Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.53
Tokens Bat 1/1 B, Bat 1/2 B, Blood, City's Blessing, Emblem Kaya the Inexorable, Soldier 1/1 W, Spirit 1/1 W
Folders Vallaris EDH Decks, Awesome EDH, things, funny funny stuff
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