This list was a bit of a challenge to put together, as there isn't enough available for one specific strategy in common that would align with this commander. Luckily, we're still able to stitch together the best of what we do have and make something that's not only a blast to play, but pretty damn powerful as well!
THE GAME PLAN
Lucky draws aside, we have 4 main goals here that all work towards draining your opponents out of the game:
- Mill the table
- Kill the board
- Attack the hand
- Get stuff out of your graveyard
I'll be going through each of these below, as well as some notable combos and inclusions.
MILL THE TABLE
This is our fail-safe.
Syr Konrad, the Grim
has this ability tacked onto him, and we're playing a bunch of mana dorks, lands, and fast mana to make sure we can always play him from the command zone and activate him a bunch of times. If we assume each deck at a table has around 25 creatures in it (most decks run 20-30 creatures), it's very likely that at least one of the players at the table will mill a creature with each activation. When the dust settles, we should be able to still cast and activate our boy to grind out a win!
Ghoulcaller's Bell
and
Eye Collector
: These essentially give us a free
Syr Konrad, the Grim
activation every turn at the very low investment of 1 mana. Sweet.
Sibsig Host
and
Returned Reveler
: Both of these give us a one-time mill 12 for 5 and 2 mana respectively. Considering this equates to 3
Syr Konrad, the Grim
activations (a total cost of 6 mana), it's a pretty good deal.
Balustrade Spy
: Has the potential to be explosive. I think this card is questionable as there's no guaranteed value, but hey, it sure is fun to spin the wheel sometimes.
KILL THE BOARD
It's easy to forget that
Syr Konrad, the Grim
's triggered ability also includes death on the battlefield. We can take advantage of this while simultaneously through a few board wipes and symmetrical sacrifice effects.
Crypt Rats
and
Pestilence
: The cardinal board wipes of pauper, with the added effect of bringing our opponents' life totals lower.
Innocent Blood
and
Slum Reaper
: Good sacrifice effects that hit all players. Keeps the battlefield at bay and procs
Syr Konrad, the Grim
.
Evincar's Justice
: This can be played early on to keep more aggressive decks at bay, or recurred later for bonus value. This card may not be great in all metas, but when it's good, oh man is it good.
We also play a small suite of spot removal spells. Since there are no great "kill anything" spells, what we play is all dependent on our meta.
ATTACK THE HAND
If we don't hit our Really Good™ cards, we want to be able to grind out the last few life points of our opponents. Remember, we'll always have something to dump mana into as long as
Syr Konrad, the Grim
is in play, and that gives us the inevitability a lot of other decks don't have!
Burglar Rat
and
Liliana's Specter
: Creatures that take one card from the table. They even give us the added bonus of potentially putting a creature in grave.
Tasigur's Cruelty
and
Unnerve
: Take two cards from everyone. Oh yes.
Syphon Mind
and
Vicious Rumors
: Some good discard with added bonuses that we benefit from.
GET STUFF OUT OF YOUR GRAVEYARD
The cool thing about milling a ton is that our commander also loves having stuff to do with creatures in the grave as well!
Footbottom Feast
,
Gravepurge
and
Forever Young
: Lets us proc
Syr Konrad, the Grim
by removing creatures from our graveyard, potentially allowing us to mill them again. We can even order them in such a way that we draw the ones we want to draw and mill the ones we don't.
Mortuary Mire
and
Witch's Cottage
:
Forever Young
Lite attached to a land with little drawback. The shoe fits so we're wearing it!
Nihil Spellbomb
,
Relic of Progenitus
and
Bojuka Bog
: Either we exile a bunch of stuff from our graveyard, or foil an opponent's graveyard plan. If we're playing against anything graveyard-centric, it's important to remember that our deck gives them free mill by design and we need a way to make up for that.
This list also includes about 5 delve spells, which may be too many. It's nice to see about 1 per game on average and we usually do with this amount.
NOTABLE CARDS
Tortured Existence
: Absolute gas. Allows us to pay {B} to rotate two creatures between hand and grave, netting 2 damage to each opponent per rotation. This is the card you wanna see every game.
Stinkweed Imp
: Lets us mill ourselves, which is useful for getting creatures in grave as well as enabling our delvers and graveyard recursion. This card in tandem with a
Forever Young
effect can drain everyone at the table for a quick 10 if you put back 5 creatures and dredge it for the draw at the end of the spell.
Gray Merchant of Asphodel
: Format staple. Fits our plan. Not much else to say.
Vampiric Link
: Good on our commander. Bananas on
Crypt Rats
.
There's some other stuff on here, but most of it is self explanatory. It's also worth noting that, after a lot of testing, many of the cards that seem like "auto includes" don't really perform as well as one would expect. Most of the "mill target player for X" when they come into play or die creatures aren't worth their weight in mana. The same goes for many of the draw spells that let you pick one or two cards and then put the rest in grave. We're never really digging for anything in particular, and generally just activating
Syr Konrad, the Grim
twice is good enough in the situations we'd play one of those cards. That's my experience at least. Also I don't play
Tainted Strike
or
Phyresis
because my playgroup has a loose "no infect" rule and I don't want to be a jerk. They're both probably worth at least testing. Feel free to hit me with any questions/comments/constructive criticism.
Keep on draining!!!
