I have a perfect deck for you than check this one out it has the lowdown on everything might need to know and want to know about Meren Precon League Meren. It was built from the ground up and has a change log for every new card put in and taken out! hope this helps you.

Thank you for your suggestion. While researching I did find suggestions on Grave Titan, Life from the Loam Contamination, Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Phyrexian Altar, Sylvan Library and Survival of the Fittest

While some of them will be gotten with time, there are others way too expensive, but they are on my to watch list. Maybe in the future!

The breakdown is very extensive and makes me able to understand why cards were removed. Again thank you for suggestions!

Hey, Rune-Scarred Demon or Razaketh, the Foulblooded are good top-end creatures with Meren. Consider replacing Abhorrent Overlord for either? Overlord is very lackluster.

Grim Haruspex is amazing repeatable draw with all the sac outlets especially Sakura-Tribe Elder and Spore Frog since they can sac themselves for no mana cost and easily be reanimated with Meren. Consider replacing Cloudthresher for it?

Grisly Salvage and Buried Alive are very good graveyard enablers. Consider replacing Bonehoard and Viridian Emissary for them?

For the manabase I recommend more budget Golgari dual lands:

• Llanowar Wastes
• Hissing Quagmire
• Temple of Malady
• Woodland Cemetery


• Bojuka Bog

Good luck with your deck.

Hey, I'm the owner of the deck that MQQMAN434 mentioned. I planned on doing a high power build with a writeup, but still haven't gotten around to it

Depending on what you plan on budgeting and overall meta competitiveness (I'll try to cover as many cost specific items as I can). Using Star City Prices, cuz I'm faster with that site compared to TCGPlayer :

$5 or less

Buried Alive: One of Meren's best friends. Can dump value in the graveyard like Sakura Tribe Elder or Spore Frog, or a game-ending combo. Devourer/Triskelion/Necrotic Ooze lets you deal your deck's worth of cmc to creatures and players at your choosing. A slower, higher power Entomb, essentially.

Fyndhorn Elves, Elves of Deep Shadow, Arbor Elf: Finishing the cycle of 1 mana dorks gives you a faster way to get Meren on board. The quicker she's on board, the quicker the grind on your opponents begins.

Blood Pet: In the same vein as the dorks above, Blood Pet is cute as a quick mana and a way to get experience innocuously.

Mindslicer: Sadistic Hypnotist's bigger brother. He isn't a sac outlet himself, but getting him sacced has a much bigger bang.

Viscera Seer: The 1 drop sac outlet every Meren deck needs. Can sac to himself for that vital first counter. Plus, control over your draws in the mid-lategame gives you a good amount of control and consistency.

Blood Artist/Zulaport Cutthroat: Useful for the long game, letting you gain incremental life, or kill the table if/when you decide a Mikaeus is in the budget. Mostly a redundant combo piece in the second case though.

Bane of Progress: Stops artifact/enchantment decks dead in their tracks. More of a meta call, but a lot of decks like their Sol Rings and whatnot.

Grim Haruspex: multimedia is dead on the money on this one. You refill quick and efficently for just playing the game.

Fecundity: A spicy piece of tech if you're the only sac/reanimate deck in your meta and can abuse it the best.

Yisan, the Wanderer Bard: Finds you action if you can't find it yourself.

Under $20

Entomb: Puts a card where you can easily interact with it. An essential staple imo

Fauna Shaman: A cheaper version of Survival of the Fittest. More fair, unfortunately, but also not $50.

Birthing Pod: Feed Meren bodies, pull value out of your deck. Good for putting creatures into play around counterspells

Massacre Wurm: Meta call if you deal with a lot of mana dorks and hatebears.

Sylvan Library: Pure old card advantage. Playing Meren at a fairly high power level also makes you shuffle a lot inherently. You'll almost always be able to see a fresh 3 if you so desire

Toxic Deluge/Damnation: Toxic kills indestructible things (and deals with Sigarda in a way that Fleshbag can't), and Damnation. Meta call for needing a second wrath in Damnation, mostly if you deal with a lot of Army-in-a-can shenanigans that Fleshbag loops can't deal with.

Worldly Tutor: It's a tutor. It gets you a creature you need. nuff said.

Contamination: Useful for hating out greedy strategies, or locking the game down until you either have a win con online or make the game unwinnable for anyone else. Picks on Gaea's Cradle and Nykthos quite well

No Budget (I may have noticed while writing this up, that this section is basically nothing but tutors)

Mikaeus, the Unhallowed: You already know you need this. Triskelion is not a very good card without Mike.

Survival of the Fittest: The most broken card you'll ever play with in a Meren shell. I guarantee it.

Demonic Tutor/Vampiric Tutor: Redundant copies of any card in your deck. You know you need them, I'm merely keeping them fresh in your mind c:

Diabolic Intent: Another tutor, especially synergistic with Meren.

As far as cuts go, my suggestions are:

Death's Presence: I'm a fan of winning outside the combat step, so bigger beef isn't really what I'd run. YMMVAmbition's Cost (if you're adding one of the suggested forms of card draw. Don't skimp on drawing, it's how you get consistency)
Eldrazi Monument: The only creature you really want indestructible is Meren. Focus on keeping the mana flowing and they'll give up on the virtue of you never being locked out of your commander
Thief of Blood: Card is a meta call, if you have a lot of Planeswalker commanders or +1/+1 counter players, keep. If not, it's not all that good.
Phyrexian Plaguelord: Cheaper sac outlets are better. You'd rather be trying to win the game than playing a 5 mana dude that might kill 1 or 2 creatures
Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest: 5 mana for a beater. Same reason as Death's Presence
Cloudthresher: Expensive card that does little
Abhorrent Overlord: The harpies aren't going to give you the game. Looping it seems for 1/1 flyers seems cute, but isn't handing you the game for its staggering 7cmc
Puppeteer Clique: Unless you really like your opponent's GYs, it's not as good. You'll be trying to win off of your graveyard more often than not.

Also recommend retuning the landbase. Not a huge fan of the ETB tapped lands, they slow you down. In a 2 color deck, you don't need the fixing as badly. Not saying run out and buy fetches and Bayous, but replacing them with basics will make the deck feel much more smooth when you cut down the average cmc of the deck by tuning. Llanowar Wastes is probably the best budget add to the landbase. City of Brass and Mana Confluence are nice to have as well

Sorry for the wall of text, there's a lot of information to give. The other part to consider when making changes is what kind of game you're playing for. I built the precon league one as an efficient combo engine that aimed to finish the game quick with a couple of 2-card combos, with the ability to grind out value if that wasn't working. To that end, I added a lot of tutors and worked towards the combos aggressively, making the table play around me as the aggressor. The alternative is playing the long value game, with Fleshbag and Sadistic Hypnotist picking your oppenents' boards and hands apart before beating them down with whatever you have handy. Luckily Meren plays both styles quite strongly and has answers to hate cards like Rest in Peace. As long as you don't get overly greedy or backed into a corner, you should be able to survive getting a lot of your deck exiled and keep on churning

Good luck!

Hello ThaElectroGypsy. Thank you for your very detailed explanation. Can you please explain the landbase return? I quite did not understand what you mean by that.

I have updated deck as per suggestions that are within my budget (for now). Opinions?

Hello again :D

Rework the landbase was what I was saying. Cutting the lands that enter the battlefield tapped for untapped options to give you an overall faster game instead of being slowed down by your manabase. Llanowar Wastes, City of Brass, Mana Confluence, Tarnished Citadel-esque cards instead of the cycling and vivid lands. Overgrown Tomb is fetchable with your Wood Elves and covers both your colours. It feels bad having a Birds of Paradise in your opening hand with no way to put in on the field on turn 1.

Overall, the deck looks solid for a more budget build. You'll be doing things consistently that progress your board. I also suggest readding Mulch as a way to dig into your deck quickly. Even if you don't have the experience counters to reanimate what you put in the graveyard, Meren will just put it into your hand for later.

Re-add Skullwinder. A second copy of Eternal Witness is something this deck likes a lot, especially without access to a lot of tutor effects. The deathtouch blocker is also discouraging for people to swing into, so it could save you a few life along the way. Someone will almost always have a dud graveyard in a 4 player game, so the downside is not as huge of a factor as you would think.

Suggested cuts:

With the drop in average cmc of your deck, along with the addition of 1 drop mana dorks, you could go down to 36 or 37 land and still consistently play your gameplan out. Cutting land is a so-called sacrilege of EDH, but with lower cmc comes the chance of having too many land and not enough action, especially when you don't have an outlet for excess mana. Just make sure to watch the colour skew in your deck and don't cut too many of one colour.

Wretched Confluence: In my experience, this is usually a draw 3 for 3 life. YMMV, but for 5 mana, you can do better, especially with things like Disciple of Bolas already in your deck. Life's Legacy could be a consideration.

Thought Vessel: Surprisingly, the no maximum hand size is not what we want. If you happen to go over 7 cards in hand, discarding creatures to reanimate later is where you want to be more often than not. This is a more proactive deck, and sitting on a giant mitt of cards you can't play at instant speed is not where you want to be. Even a 2 mana dork like Sylvan Caryatid is at least a creature you can use.

Other suggestions that came to mind:

Animate Dead: Having more ways to reanimate if Meren gets stuck where you can't access her easily can be handy. Your opponents will get used to you reanimating at end step, so a main-phase reanimation or bringing back both pieces of your combo in the same turn might slip under their radar. Reanimate as a non-budget alternative.

Abrupt Decay/Nature's Claim: Non-creature ways of dealing with problem cards like Rest in Peace, Humility, and Torpor Orb if those are cards you deal with in your meta. If you don't see either, sticking with your Reclamation Sage and Caustic Caterpillar should be fine. Maelstrom Pulse as a non-budget option.

Riftsweeper: A way to get back an exiled win con, on a body that can be recurred.

Revel in Riches: an alternative I-win card that incidentally provides value. No one will want to cast a wrath if you have this online, because it likely means you just win as a direct result of resetting the board

And apparently the suggestion tab only uses the first 16 linked cards. I learned something today.

Happy Grinding!

ThaElectroGypsy Updated Deck. Any Advice Sensei?

Maybe board is stuff I need to still buy :3

Hello again.

Deck seems sweet in it's current state. And no EDH deck is ever finished, so you'll still be fiddling with it for years if you stick to it _.

I'm running out of advice to give, most of it you'll pick up as you play and figure out what you need. Sheoldred and Sepulchral seem a little slow, valid only as late game creatures, and you don't have a lot of ways to feed your graveyard if you reanimate one of these early. A better high end creature might be Razaketh, the Foulblooded. A sac outlet that can likely win you the game if you get to use it more than once.

Deathrite Shaman might be a good include. It gives you a degree of graveyard control against other reanimator/graveyard value strategies and plays the long game if you need it to. A single black mana for 2 life per opponent adds up in the long run. Plus, if your opponents play fetchlands in their decks, it pushes deathrite over the top, because it now also ramps you mana out of their graveyards.

Life from the Loam is a good card, but not viable in your deck at the present time. No Grisly Salvage, no dredge package, no fetchlands. It's got 2 targets that enter the graveyard of their own volition. As it stands now, this card in your deck reads "On every other turn, mill 3 and put this in your hand, maybe you'll get a land or 2 out of it"

A couple lands I'm not a fan of either. Temple of the False God is a trap that almost everyone seems to fall into at some point. A basic is almost always a much better option due to consistency. Temple of the False God in your opening hand is always a dead card and never a land you want to see before turn 5. Svogthos costs 5 mana to use, and generally won't be a very big creature unless a lot of wrath effects were used or you have consistent methods to mill yourself like Mesmeric Orb or dredge cards like Golgari Grave-Troll and Stinkweed Imp, which wouldn't be bad cards to add anyways.

A great source for suggestions would also be edhrec.com. (I've tried for like 10 minutes to make the link work, am dumb and gave up). It has every commander that sees any amount of play, and a lot of handy cards for any of those decks that you might consider running.

Good Luck!

We have different understandings of „budget“ I guess