Introduction
So back when my playgroup was trying to get into PDH and were brewing away I wanted to join in with a PDH-deck that could sit at a normal commander table and still impress. I've since been improving the list and it's still one of my most fun and powerful decks.
The deck is simple, effective and actually quite noob-friendly to play with. It's basicly just a mono-b midrange deck, but with counterspells and better draw. The gameplan is to slow the game, get ahead, stay ahead, then win with something big like Lotleth Giant, Gray Merchant of Asphodel or just a bunch of speedrunning Undercity.
Most Valuable Plays (MVP's)
With Araumi of the Dead Tide:
Without Araumi:
Strategy
(Not) playing the commander
The deck is designed to be functional without the commander, because trying to protect a beast like Araumi is close to impossible. The opponents will know Araumi is dangerous and would be fools not to hold interaction to prevent us from ever activating it. Instead we will try to use that fact as an advantage to maybe waste some of their mana, waiting for a threat we won't play. Or maybe get more value from combat because we ourselves are holding mana to threaten playing Araumi or interaction, helping our other threats stay out longer before the opponents decides to do away with them.
On some occasions, like when the table decides you start the game as the archenemy, i've found it useful to play Araoumi out early, knowing it will be killed. But in doing so baiting the opponents to leave me alone for a couple turns afterwards, seeing as the "threat was dealt with".
In general we want to hold back and apply a bit of damage here and there, while mending our advantage until the opponents are exhausted enough for us to all-in and play Araumi to kill them with Gary or (with enough mana) using Araumi of the Dead & Corridor Monitor to get three encores in a single turn.
The deck and strategy can be roughly broken down to 3 key components.
- Advantage
- Interaction
- Pressure
Advantage
Advantage in every sense. Card advantage, board advantage, mana advantage.
The primary types of advantage we use are: draw, edicts, discard & initiative.
Staying ahead on draw is crucial to our survival, as we will need all the answers we can get. Straight up draw spells like Deep Analysis and especially Syphon Mind will set us directly ahead in cards getting us more of the other advantage-cards, aswell as hitting our lands.
Impaler Shrike is surprisingly effective, because it often requires an immediate removal and will get you a stupid amount of cards if you get it through their defenses or if Araumi's ability resolves targeting it.
Edicts and discard, like Fleshbag Marauder & Burglar Rat, can keep each opponent's hand and board down while still leaving us with blockers. Backed by our draw and recycling it can completely exhaust some decks in the format.
It doesn't matter what powerlevel the opponents are playing, force them to discard a bunch of cards or sacrifice some dudes. It's just mathematics. Their game-plan will fall apart trying to deal with 3 opponents while having limited options. Meanwhile we trade even or get further advantage because almost every card in the deck keeps us atleast card neutral with the opponents.
In terms of mana, we can get really far with just hitting land-drops which is why we knly have have 2 "rocks". Springleaf Drum is basically an extra tapped land-drop as long as we have cheap creatures to play. And just because we sometimes don't mind a Dreamstone Hedron, Sisay's Ring or Prismatic Lens depending on the situation, we've included all three in the form of Everflowing Chalice. Dark Ritual is an include as well, for various rather obvious reasons, but mainly to hold for when we need to do explosive shit.
Interaction
Interaction is not just removals and counter-spells, it's Surprise.
Feign Death, Deadly Dispute & spells like them are instant for a reason, we need to be sacrificing and returning our creatures in response to the removals from the opponents, to gain maximum value. This is especially spicy with Floating-Dream Zubera as it will draw extra cards if it dies multiple times during the same turn. Adittionally Abyssal Gatekeeper can be used in various interesting ways at instant speed as well. Holding mana open let's us do what we need most, when we need it.
I mentioned earlier that Araumi is near impossible to keep alive, but we still try with roughly 10 pieces of protection. 5 "grave flickers", 4 Counterspells and Neurok Stealthsuit. The important thing to note is that all of the cards in the category can serve a secondary purpose of either countering threats or reccuring our other creatures. This means we are able to use most of the protection outside of strictly protecting Araumi while still having a high chance of protection in hand when we do want to play it.
Abyssal Gatekeeper, Fleshbag Marauder and others will be used to keep the boardstate near frozen. Oubliette and Fall from Favor are too good to pass up on, so we are in pretty deep with sorcery-speed interaction. Except for those examples, sorcery speed removals are usually trash in multiplayer and in this deck especially. Since we already want to be holding mana open for protection and draw, naturally the remaining spot-removals are instant. Snuff Out deserves special credit as the only card that will still punish attacks while we are tapped out.
We don't really need to kill everything. We are already decently equipped to keep the board small, beyond that we only need to kill the things that swing at us or threaten us directly. We may not want to make enemies at the table, but we absolutely must punish those who make an enemy of us. This is another reason we need to be especially selective with the interaction.
Pressure
The wincon would ideally just be 5x Gray Merchant of Asphodel, but Lotleth Giant, Serrated Scorpion &Troll of Khazad-dum can work just as fine in some scenarios.
Putting distance between our life total and the opponents' will be the key difference when we reach the final few rounds in most multiplayer games. Especially considering that some of the most potent boardwipes/finishers are Crypt Rats & Pestilence.
Threatening with a bit of pressure discourages greedy plays from the opponents who will be forced to think more on the short term, because the clock is ticking. Couple this with discard and edicts, and the opponents will be faced with a dilemma where they want to get maximum value from a card but: if they play it now, it may die to removal || if they don't play it now it may be discarded. We ofcourse want them to play their stuff out without getting too much value in the process, and out where we and everyone else can see it and interact.
Because of the way the deck is constructed to hit all enemies repeatedly with effects like Burglar Rat or Slum Reaper, we should be aware that we can become a target by accidentally kicking someone who's already down which some players may take very personally and may get us some negative attention. Our general politics game suffers a bit for this reason aswell as discarding a card from everyone instead of just drawing one for yourself will inevitably make the opponent feel bad. Someone may suggest we could just run Dusk Legion Zealot and Phyrexian Rager instead, but the truth is: we already have too much draw and there is not much point in drawing two more when we are already at eight. In that scenario we would still like more card advantage, but card-draw won't give it to us. That's why we go for discard. It may cause some mana screw and bitter comments from the opponent, but it will win us games regardless.
Notes
Notes on Mill
One might think that Araumi requires a lot of self-mill and discard to fuel the graveyard, but i personally don't see that direction as entirely neccesary in this format because games are inherently slower. Araumi will generate a ton of value with almost every creature in the deck and will require only a few other cards to activate. We won't be trying to do anything with Araumi early-game anyway so the grave can simply build up organicly as the game progresses, there will almost always be something worth targeting once we get Araumi in play later. We have a few cards like Fallaji Archaeologist that can put cards directly in the grave, but serve a second purpose of also filtering through the deck for better answers and relevant threats.
_Buffs
I have included a list of "buffs". Cards banned or at uncommon and above in the maybeboard. They serve the purpose of adding stronger cards to better compete at tables with fine-tuned EDH decks. The cards are not neccesarily the best commander cards in the colours, but they slot in well with the commons in the deck and increase the decks consistency and speed while supporting the original gameplan.
