Yea, groundseal is weird bc it stops a lot of our own recursion. Btw gonki i took out rest in peace from my list because it stops too much of stuff like teneb, and what not. Its the best gy hate card ever printed, but I dont like it just because of my strategy.

I don't mean to show off my relative newbness, but what makes Grafdigger's Cage better than Ground Seal? Other than the fact that the Cage also stops library interaction, as opposed to the Seal which only blocks the gy?

CrazyDanPsycho, grafdigger's cage is better on so many levels. For starters, it stops creatures like Bloodghast, and Gravecrawler (neither of which is heavily played in commander but you get the point). Cage also stops flashback. "Players cant cast spells from thier graveyard" means no flashback.

Groundseal isn't what this deck wants, because NOTHING in a graveyard can be targeted. That means that ground seal stops my Necrogenesis, Deathrite Shaman, Scavenging Ooze, Whip of Erebos, Teneb, the Harvester, Pharika, God of Affliction and Sigarda, Heron's Grace. It completely makes these cards useless, so for this deck, its pretty bad.

Wow, thank you very much for the explaination! I had always thought about using either of those, but I value my own graveyard too much to lock it away...(lol) Even in non-black decks, I almost always try and find ways to reclaim my entire graveyard or things from it if at all possible. (shrugs) Exile decks are my worst enemies... :o

No problem CrazyDanPsycho. Who is your commander btw?

For which deck? :-) I have...I believe...close to 50 EDH decks. I haven't assembled a couple, but they are built, and I have yet to get the time to post them all...and some of them are not worthy of this site...(lol) I have a couple decks I'm not entirely fond of, but I keep trying different methods with them, hoping to one day stumble across the Magic build, pun slightly intended. ;-)

CrazyDanPsycho, thats sick man! Good for you! My buddy gonki introduced me to commander. I have been playing modern for so long. He took me to a commander tournament at a shop near us, where we realized that gy hate would dominate the meta. I havent assembled this full list yet, but I will have it soon. It will be my first commander deck. You should check out some of his stuff on his page and fredsamboyo too. This was a collaborative effort between all 3 of us. Only fair for me to give them a shout out lol. Thanks for all of the feedback and questions man!

Thanks for all the answers! I've pretty much only played Commander, since I first started allllllll the way back with Avacyn Restored. It still breaks my heart that they killed her off... :,( I guess I have so many decks because I never disassemble anything, I just rework and update em. Takes up a decent chunk of my closet and drives my wife nuts, but that's what you do for a hobby/addiction, right? (lol)

Sorry, rambled a bit there. Back to Grafdigger's Cage and Ground Seal...I -want- to use these cards, preferably together...is there a Commander or color combo that would make the best use out of either or both?

CrazyDanPsycho, I wouldn't run groundseal in any strategy that wants to interact with the graveyard. It realistically stops ALL recursion that targets (which is basically all recursion). Its a weird card for commander in my opinion. The only reason I could see playing it would be in mono green if your meta houses a lot of graveyard based strategies. If you go into different colors, you get much better options though which makes this card weird to me in commander. I'm certainly not an expert on commander AT ALL, but I do know A LOT about magic and deck building as a whole (not to toot my own horn or anything like that), and I really wouldn't recommend ground seal in a commander deck. Cage on the other hand could be really cool to hose decks that play flashback cards galore like Mizzix or Melek, as long as it doesnt impact your own strategy as well.

But to answer your question, mono green has very little ways to stop recursion and hate the opponents graveyard, and it doesnt have a lot of recursion itslef. I could see you running both in something like Yeva, Nature's Herald to stop opposing recursion (which basically every commander player plays). Yeva is also cool for obvious reasons and is my personal favorite for mono green commanders (close second is Azusa, Lost but Seeking)

I think you can run Ground Seal in tokens. Selesnya tokens in particular you aren't going to interacting with your graveyard much, depending on your build. Also like Sergal said it works in mono-green. The cards that matter like Praetor's Counsel, Green Sun's Zenith etc. generally don't target so it won't hit them. However I will note for me that in mono-green I like to run a minimum on enchantments and artifacts in order to play Wave of Vitriol. If your meta has a lot of shards and clans that card is a bomb.

I want an Azusa a lot!!! I would have -fun- with a deck like that! (lol)

If I ever was to use a Cage, I'd prolly try and find a way to build the deck around it as opposed to the Commander. I've only built a couple of my decks around a certain card instead of the Commander choosing the deck. I built my Vorel of the Hull Clade merfolk/kraken/leviathan deck around the Stormtide Leviathan. If there's a strategy out there for a Grafdigger's Cage/Ground Seal combo, I'll (eventually, maybe, possibly) find it. (lol)

Thank you both -so- much for all the ideas! I'll have to post any builds that I can come up with...I'd prolly have to buy a -lot- of cards, so it might take me a while...(lol)

As I Meren player I don't like it. However, it looks great so +1. Only suggestions I have are Oblivion Stone and Mirari's Wake. Unless of course you get board wipes when you need them. I hate playing against Anafenza.

Like mirari's wake. Adding it now

Besides Graveyard hate what is your wincon?

mriley0528, I win the good old fasion way; creature beatdown... there is a lot of removal in the deck which is used to control the board, and make sure my board state is the fullest, and then i get in there for beats. GY hate isnt a wincon btw, its a strategy. I use it to make my opponents life difficult while I pound them with creatures.

Path to Exile?

McKz, thanks for the suggestion man. I have a lot of unconditional removal in this deck. Stuff that hits "permanents" instead of "creatures". I went with doom blade, heros downfall and swords to plowshares as my creature removal. Path is good, but I dont really want to make space for it. I actually took path out for swords. Otherwise, I have 7 spells that can remove creatures directly and 6 wraths spells, among abilities that force sacrifice. I have more than enough removal imo. Thanks for the feedback tho!

i mean you can never have enough removal XD i run an "aggro" deck kaalia of the vast she has like 15 pieces of spot removal in it.

McKz, i feel you, but its a tight list lol. What would you take out for path?

McKz nvm man. I found a spot for a path

i just keep looking at doomblade and keep thinking theirs something that could replace it

Go for the Throat?

Okay, you hit a lot of Graveyard centered decks, but how does the deck fare against decks that have no graveyard recursion? Does it feel powerful by itself or is it just a go-to option to bring hate to graveyard players?

I'm asking because I genuinely can't figure it out, looking at the list. Looks too narrow, too focused on one objective and that's not winning (unless all your opponents abuse their graveyards)

I do play a Meren deck, and sure, I can't see a way in which I could win consistently against this build, but suppose you face a Mizzix of the Izmagnus deck, I suspect you'd have a bad time. In fact, in my playgroup there are all kinds of graveyard based decks, from Prossh, Skyraider of Kher, to my Meren, a Grimgrin, Corpse-Born, Marchesa, the Black Rose (which isn't on your list, but is also hurt with Anafenza, since creatures with counters don't stay in the graveyard to comeback at EoT), and the one deck with 100% win rate is Mizzix of the Izmagnus since the day it came out. All this to say, maybe the answer to Meren and other GY strategies isn't GY hate, but a good control shell.

About the deck itself, well, I played a lot of Abzan when it was standard legal, so I kind of have a thing for those KTK block Abzan cards. I don't know what to cut but I'd definitely run Eldrazi Displacer + Siege Rhino that work beautifully together in multiplayer, and also take advantage of Anafenza's counters with cards like Daghatar the Adamant, Abzan Falconer, Mer-Ek Nightblade, Ainok Bond-Kin and High Sentinels of Arashin. Anyway, as I said, I can't figure out if the deck can hold its own against non GY centered decks, so at first glance I have no idea what exactly is your best route to victory and so I can't say what's best to cut or to include here.