Arrogant. Ruthless. Oppressive. Victorious.

Commander / EDH BG (Golgari) Competitive Discard Elves Stax

legendofa

Land (34)

• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Bayou
• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Boseiju, Who Endures
• 1x Cabal Coffers
• 1x Castle Locthwain
• 1x Cavern of Souls
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Darkbore Pathway  ^Flip
• 2x Forest
• 1x Gaea's Cradle
• 1x Geier Reach Sanitarium
• 1x Gilt-Leaf Palace
• 1x Llanowar Wastes
• 1x Nurturing Peatland
• 1x Overgrown Tomb
• 1x Phyrexian Tower
• 1x Prismatic Vista
• 1x Shifting Woodland
• 1x Strip Mine
• 4x Swamp
• 1x Twilight Mire
• 1x Underground Mortuary
• 1x Undergrowth Stadium
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1x Verdant Catacombs
• 1x Volrath's Stronghold
• 1x Woodland Cemetery
• 1x Yavimaya Hollow
• 1x Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth

Instant (10)

• 1x Abrupt Decay
• 1x Archdruid's Charm
• 1x Assassin's Trophy
• 1x Beast Within
• 1x Dark Ritual
• 1x Deadly Rollick
• 1x Force of Vigor
• 1x Heroic Intervention
• 1x Vampiric Tutor
• 1x Veil of Summer

Creature (22)

• 1x Aclazotz, Deepest Betrayal  ^Flip
• 1x Allosaurus Shepherd
• 1x Birds of Paradise
• 1x Braids, Arisen Nightmare
• 1x Cunning Lethemancer
• 1x Dauthi Voidwalker
• 1x Deathrite Shaman
• 1x Elves of Deep Shadow
• 1x Elvish Mystic
• 1x Fyndhorn Elves
• 1x Glissa Sunslayer
• 1x Imperious Perfect
• 1x Maralen of the Mornsong
• 1x Opposition Agent
• 1x Orcish Bowmasters
• 1x Priest of Titania
• 1x Rankle, Master of Pranks
• 1x Sadistic Hypnotist
• 1x Sheoldred, the Apocalypse
• 1x Somberwald Sage
• 1x Tergrid, God of Fright  ^Flip
• 1x Tinybones, Trinket Thief

Enchantment (10)

• 1x Black Market Connections
• 1x Bottomless Pit
• 1x Chains of Mephistopheles
• 1x Court of Ambition
• 1x Liliana's Caress
• 1x Necrogen Mists
• 1x Oppression
• 1x Shrieking Affliction
• 1x Waste Not
• 1x Words of Waste

Planeswalker (2)

• 1x Liliana of the Veil
• 1x Professor Onyx

Commander (1)

Sorcery (11)

• 1x Chain of Smog
• 1x Culling Ritual
• 1x Dark Deal
• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Imperial Seal
• 1x Sylvan Scrying
• 1x Syphon Mind
• 1x Torment of Hailfire
• 1x Toxic Deluge
• 1x Traverse the Ulvenwald
• 1x Unnerve

Artifact (10)

• 1x Anvil of Bogardan
• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Conduit of Worlds
• 1x Geth's Grimoire
• 1x Mox Diamond
• 1x Skullclamp
• 1x Smokestack
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Staff of Domination
• 1x Talisman of Resilience

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This is probably the closest to cEDH I'm ever going to get, and it's everything I want from it. This is pure theorycraft, and is far outside of my usual price range. But it's {B}{G}, it's got discard, it's got attrition, and it's strong.

Why Nath of the Gilt-Leaf?

Discard is the strategy that pulled me into the game. Who knew you could stop your opponent from doing stuff and punish them for it?

I started becoming more serious about collecting, building, and playing with the Planar Chaos set, and expanded with Alara. For those keeping track at home, that means I pretty much skipped Lorwyn/Shadowmoor. So I actually missed Nath the first time around.

Jumping ahead a few more years, the Innistrad and Return to Ravnica blocks cemented my love of {B}{G}. Efficient graveyard stuff, recursion, and removal showed me how to control a game, minimizing losses and maximizing gains.

So eventually I went back, found Nath, and knew this would be a near-perfect card for me to build around.

Why Stax?

I'm said it a lot, and I'm going to keep saying it: I'm not a competitive Commander player. I do like grindy wars of attrition, though. For me as a player, the best feeling is knowing that I saw the best my opponents had to offer, they threw everything they had at me, and they couldn't do enough to stop me from winning in the end. Stax captures that by removing the opponents' options and resources, leaving them with no good options.

In casual play, though, fun for everyone should come first. People want to show up, throw around flashy spells, scrape out a dramatic comeback through a perfectly timed counterspell, gang up on the 60/60 facestomper with their piles of Goblin tokens, and just have a good time. I have several decks that cater to that, and I'm proud of all of them. But that setting doesn't lend itself well to oppressive locks and full denial, and that's an itch that just needs to be scratched once in a while.

Since cEDH is outside of my experience, please let me know any tips, tricks, and things to keep in mind when running this deck, either in general or for Nath Stax specifically. Also, if you have any suggestions for improvements, please send them over.

I built this deck to be synergy-forward, so that almost any combination of cards is a net positive for me and/or a net negative for everyone else. Here's some of the good stuff (and a little bit of the bad stuff).

Locks

Maralen of the Mornsong + Opposition Agent = card stealing replaces all opponents' draws

Nath of the Gilt-Leaf + Sadistic Hypnotist = sacrifice a creature to create two creature tokens and opponent discards two cards

Geth's Grimoire + Words of Waste = when an opponent discards a card, pay {X} to make each opponent discard X cards while you draw X cards for each opponent beyond the first

Anvil + Chains paths

If you have both Anvil of Bogardan and Chains of Mephistopheles out, and someone tries to draw while they have at least one card in their hand:

• if it's their first draw step draw, they draw a card (normal draw), discard a card to draw their second card (Chains), draw their second card (Anvil), discard a card (Anvil)

• if it's not their first draw step draw, they discard a card (Chains), draw a card (whatever's making them draw)

If you have both Anvil of Bogardan and Chains of Mephistopheles out, and someone tries to draw while they don't have any cards in their hand:

• if it's their first draw step draw, they draw a card (normal draw), discard a card to draw their second card from Anvil (Chains), mill a card instead of drawing (Chains)

• if it's not their first draw step draw, they mill a card instead of drawing (Chains)

This applies to all draws.

Synergies

Geier Reach Sanitarium + Maralen of the Mornsong = everybody discards at instant speed

Anvil of Bogardan + Tinybones, Trinket Thief = at each player's end step, draw a card and lose 1 life

Anvil of Bogardan + Orcish Bowmasters = deal 1 damage to anything and amass on each opponents' draw step

Cabal Coffers + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth = pay {2}, add {B} for every land you control

Glissa Sunslayer + Smokestack = keep Smokestack active and growing without making it sacrifice itself

Anti-Synergies

Dauthi Voidwalker + Tergrid, God of Fright   = if a card is exiled by Voidwalker, it won't go into the graveyard to trigger Tergrid.

Maralen of the Mornsong + Orcish Bowmasters = Bowmasters' draw-punishing ability can't trigger if players can't draw

Win Conditions

Professor Onyx + Chain of Smog = repeatedly target yourself with CoS and choose to copy, making each opponent lose 2 life for each repetition.

Allosaurus Shepherd turns your spare Elf tokens into big stompy Dinosaurs.

Priest of Titania + Staff of Domination + three other Elves = infinite mana, leading into Tinybones, Trinket Thief life gouging or an infinite Torment of Hailfire.

I debated putting Craterhoof Behemoth and Triumph of the Hordes in, but decided against it. Not sure if that's the right call.

Lots of more dedicated builders than me have built Nath Stax decks. I'm not trying to do anything super original here.

Resources

This is a list of the Nath Stax EDH decks here on TappedOut. Thanks to everyone who's published their deck. They've helped me learn a lot about what to do and how to do it.

https://edhrec.com/commanders/nath-of-the-gilt-leaf/discard/expensive is another source that helped design this deck. It's the EDH rec list for high-budget Nath decks with a discard theme, and almost every card in this deck is on that list somewhere.

I have a budget (but still several hundred USD) version of this with more of a reanimator/theft focus. As Nath desires, so shall it be: A flawless world

Date added	10 months
Last updated	2 months
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	12 - 0 Mythic Rares 59 - 0 Rares 16 - 0 Uncommons 6 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.61
Tokens	Bat 1/1 B, Beast 3/3 G, Elf Warrior 1/1 G, Orc Army, Shapeshifter 3/2 C, The Monarch, Treasure, Zombie 2/2 B
Folders	untap decks to try, Commander/EDH