Baleful Force: This fellow is here for the early game
Entomb. The ideal play here is
Dark Ritual or
Lotus Petal into Entomb in a
Reanimate effect. From there, draw a bunch of cards and move on from that.
Caustic Caterpillar: This fellow, to me, is an auto-include in most green decks. In Meren, he is absurd. One activation while Meren is in play starts your EXP count and allows you to loops this powerful effect. This card also gets stronger if you control your
Grim HaruspexDark Confidant: Bob is Bob. The deck has a very low cmc average of 2.22 (Cheers, Tappedout.) so playing the Bob is a very low-risk-high-reward advantage machine.
Eternal Witness: This creature is obviously great for the one time
Regrowth effect, but in addition to that, once she is in the graveyard Meren can start to recycle her. Ideally, she is coming onto battlefield every time. But going back to your hand is fine as well. Reusing Eternal Witness is always fantastic. Also,
Skullclamp.
Fleshbag Marauder: The bag is a great piece of removal. Obviously, Meren helps me repeat this effect multiple times. Once I am at 3 EXP, every end phase I can bring the bag back into play, kill off another creature an opponent controls and accumulate more EXP. This card also gets stronger if you control your
Grim Haruspex.
Grim Haruspex: His name has come up a few times so far, but let's get a little deeper into it. Haruspex is an insane draw engine. He adds draw a card to everything that dies, which is absolutely incredible when you play things like
Caustic Caterpillar. Adding card draw to already powerful effects is extremely relevant to a deck with no blue that loses out on the draw/fixing cards like
Ponder. Meren allows us to reuse these creatures that sacrifice themselves, thus allowing us to draw more and more cards if the
Grim Haruspex is in play.
Hope of Ghirapur: This nasty little thing works
incredibly well with Meren. If we go the route of recurring the Hope, we can lock out one of our opponents from the game. This is super effective against decks unlike our own, that do not use creatures for their main game plan. This card has proven extremely effective and threatening against decks like
Breya, Etherium Shaper and
Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourge, to name a few. I've found my opponent's go out of their way to deal with the Hope, allowing me to work on other things undisturbed. Once again, I'll say this works extremely well when you have your
Grim Haruspex on the battlefield.
Mikaeus, the Unhallowed: Mike is really just a combo piece, but if the game gets weird, you can use him as a value engine. He makes your dudes bigger, for stronger beats on the
ad nauseum player. In addition to that, he makes effects like
Caustic Caterpillar and
Viscera Seer much stronger.
Mindslicer: Mindslicer is a very nasty creature that many people will go out of their way to neutralize safely. He will eat the counterspell, he will eat the removal piece. The remove used on him typically exiles, which is nice because that is one less
Swords to Plowshares to be used on something more relevant to our victory, like
Protean Hulk. Mindslicer with a reusable sacrifice outlet (
Ashnod's Altar, etc) can be devastating, especially if we control our fearless leader Meren and are sitting pretty at 4 EXP.
Phyrexian Delver: Delver is mainly to be used for combos, but if we really need to, we can use it as a
Reanimate.
Reclamation Sage: I will never build a deck that has forest without adding a Rec Sage. This card is so efficient, I can't say a bad thing about it. It works on so many levels, it can be played very early on as well if you're assisted by a Sol Ring, a Crypt or a Petal. In addition to this, it has a few other characteristics that prove relevant. Rec Sage is an Elf, so my
Priest of Titania gets more value off of her once her ability has come and gone, she keeps up her usefulness. She is also Clamp-able. Having 1 toughness makes her a prime candidate for
Skullclamping. From there, we get an addition EXP counter and then start to recycle her with Meren. Allowing us to deprive our opponent's of their rings-n-things, and also allowing us to Clamp her once more to get more cards.
Skullclamp, ladies and gents.
Scavenging Ooze: Scooze is a pretty simple explanation. Scooze is there for the decks similar to our own, or even the storm deck with a
Snapcaster Mage or a
Yawgmoth's Will. Graveyard disruption is obviously powerful, we know this first hand as it can ruin our day.
Sidisi, Undead Vizier: Sidisi is a reusable tutor engine. Normally, paying 5 mana for a
Demonic Tutor is trash. But doing it with Sidisi gives us one more EXP because of the Exploit trigger. Usually, you'll be having Sidisi send herself to the yard to get her back into your hand (sometimes, back into play all together) with Meren. But there will come a time or two when you just want to reuse that Rec Sage or kill off a
Protean Hulk and go for the win. This card also gets better with a
Grim Haruspex.
Viscera Seer: Seer is a great way to start Meren off on accumulating EXP. By sacrificing itself, you get one EXP and you bring the Seer right back into play on the end phase. In addition to this, if you control a Seer, Meren and several dudes and you get
Toxic Deluged, you can sac all of your creatures in response to get lots of scry power, and lots of EXP so next time you cast Meren, you can start rebuilding your army. This card also gets better with
Grim Haruspex.
Walking Ballista: Ballista is mainly just a combo piece, but it has a few other, smaller functions I'll mention here. If you control a Meren, you can play Ballista for zero, this kills it and gives you EXP. Or you can cast it for one, to kill off a mana dork, have also killing Ballista, resulting in an EXP. From here, we can bring back Ballista on our end step to have it die again, to get yet another EXP. This is only really worth doing if there is nothing else to do. But it is handy.
Yisan, the Wanderer Bard: Yisan is our friend, he is super efficient at finding what we need. I'll show you the first three verses, but I don't feel listing beyond the third is relevant.
Verse 1: Mana dorks,
Caustic Caterpillar,
Hope of Ghirapur,
Viscera Seer.
Verse 2: Mana dorks,
Dark Confidant,
Scavenging Ooze,
Verse 3:
Eternal Witness,
Fleshbag Marauder,
Grim Haruspex,
Reclamation Sage,
Yisan, the Wanderer Bard(You never know, you could be using an opponent's Yisan that you
Reanimated.
