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Here is my version of a Chainer deck with a Demon subtheme. When I was just a youngin' one of my favorite cards was Demonic Tutor. The art was awesome and the effect felt powerful no matter what deck you put it in. I took a 20 something year break from Magic but when I came back and went through my old cards and found my old Demonic Tutor, a burst of nostalgia surged through me. I got into EDH not long after that and one of the first ideas I had was to make a Demon tribal deck. I sketched it out on tappedout but I never purchased the cards in paper. It was always in the back of my mind as something I wanted to do down the line when I had collected the mono-black staples I needed to make it sing.

11 paper decks later I finally felt like it was time to build a deck that was a love song to my favorite color. I still love demons and wanted a lot of demons in the deck, but I didn't necessarily want it to just be a Demon tribal deck anymore. I love the graveyard dance too much to ignore the siren call of reanimation. So I went looking for the mono-black commander who would exemplify everything I love to do with black magic and I found Chainer.

Black as a color is all about sacrifice. This deck demands that you sacrifice your life and your creatures for greater power. This see-saw effect in black is what makes it one of the most fun colors since you are forced to toe the line sometimes to achieve your goals. You have to find ways to work the system to mitigate the negative effects or even come out ahead since you have manipulated events to work in your favor.

Chainer's reanimation ability is borderline broken if you are able to soften the blow of his life loss. Being able to reanimate a creature from any graveyard at instant speed for BBB and 3 life is just... it's just incredible. The text box on this card reads well and sounds promising but in practice this is even more fun than it sounds.

This deck wants:

  • Creatures in graveyards
  • Lots of mana to play with
  • A way to gain life
  • A sac outlet

In order to facilitate this plan we need a lot of ramp, card draw and tutors to assemble our boardstate in ways that allow us to start to build value and work towards a win. Luckily, it's pretty easy to keep in our Demon subtheme and achieve all of these things.

I'm not going to go through every single card in the deck but just cherry pick some notable cards. There is a ton of crossover between categories.

Demons Show

Ramp Show

Draw / Tutors Show

Removal / Wipes Show

Sacrifice / Lifegain / Discard Show

Win conditions include:
  • Beating people's faces with Demons or whatever your friends best creatures are
  • Cycling Gary or Kokusho
  • Archfiend + Fraying Omnipotence (Pox gets you 2/3 of the way there as well). Archfiend + any lifeloss effect or damage is going to be very devestating.
  • Big mana into Exsanguinate or Torment
  • Liliana's Contract

Here are cards that could improve this deck. Either for budget reasons or personal reasons I haven't included them (yet)

  • Phyrexian Altar: Probably my most glaring omission, I really wish these weren't $80 Added
  • Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed: Black Eternal Witness, so good
  • Contamination: Left out intentionally as my meta wouldn't be super happy with me but I would run this in a heartbeat otherwise Added... apparently, I don't like my friends as much as I thought
  • Bloodghast: Having an auto-recurable creature for sacrifice fodder sounds great
  • Vampiric Tutor: A near-future purchase to put in here and other decks Added
  • Mana Crypt: Would be here but budget hasn't allowed me to snag one of these yet
  • Gauntlet of Power: I feel like there is a limit to how many mana doublers you want but I would probably try and sneak another one in if I could
  • Bitterblossom: A future purchase but a little steep in dollar value to offset it's in-game value

Suggestions

Updates Add

Making a pretty big move to accomodate K'rrik as the new Commander of the deck. Some changes have to be made to adapt for him. Still a bunch of demons but less utility ones and more focused on the ones that make immediate impact. I still will play Chainer in the deck and will often play the deck with him as the Commander, but K'rrik definitely pushes the power level of the deck up a notch and allows for some pretty crazy plays to happen.

Added:

Removed:

Comments

Casual

96% Competitive

Date added 6 years
Last updated 5 years
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.

Rarity (main - side)

20 - 0 Mythic Rares

37 - 0 Rares

18 - 0 Uncommons

8 - 0 Commons

Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.33
Tokens Emblem Liliana of the Dark Realms, Harpy 1/1 B, Wurm 3/3 C w/ Deathtouch, Wurm 3/3 C w/ Lifelink
Folders Stuff I like, Cool decks, Old Decks, Tapped Out - User Decks
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