+1 for the description, damn. i can see the blood, sweat, and beers put into this deck. have you considered adding a similar description to this site?

FireStorm4056

I just read your primer. +1 for your level of detail (although my head hurts, even after skipping some portions).

Question for you. You mention Chains of Mephistopheles in your primer but I don't see it here, why is that?

Moreover, Blood Funnel seems pretty weak (although it might be powerful in this build and I just can't see it). What has your experience with this card been?

Reassembling Skeleton can be useful with Contamination and Smokestack.

How do you deal with planeswalkers? You only have Beast Within and Maelstrom Pulse. Hero's Downfall or Never can help with that if you find that to be an issue (maybe people will play them more/less given the new legendary rule for planeswalkers).

Grim Tutor for more tutoring? I'm VERY SURPRISED to see no Yawgmoth's Will. With your low CMC, you could cast a lot of spells.

Rishadan Port or Strip Mine to tap down their lands like coffers and cradle?

oliveoilonyaasscureshemorrhoid:

I plan to make a more elaborate "Primer" here, but it will take some time to get the writing finished and everything formatted. It probably won't happen for a few weeks yet, but keep an eye out!

Profet93:

The primer text is in need of a major update - a lot of it was written a few months ago, before many of the more recent changes. So, my apologies that some of the references may not be up-to-date with the actual decklist!

Chains of Mephistopheles is strong against the right lists, but not universally so - it can be a good situational pick in the right metagame and nothing does the same job better. However, an early Chains doesn't accelerate your board position and typically doesn't universally impair your opponents the same way an early Sphere of Resistance would. The lack of my inclusion doesn't mean you shouldn't play it, just that it might not be the best choice when approaching a new and unknown meta.

I haven't come across Blood Funnel that many times in testing but I have actually been quite impressed with it so far. The "downside" of sacrificing a creature is actually often helpful since the list tends to be a bit low on sacrifice outlets, and making noncreature spells 2cmc cheaper really puts you ahead in T3+ (letting you play multiple spells per turn when otherwise you couldn't). It's not a guaranteed include but so far I've been decently surprised with it... and as far as I know I'm the only person running it in a Meren list and it's a definite hidden gem, I encourage you to give it a shot.

I don't run Smokestack anymore, it is just too slow to keep up, even with acceleration ( CMC AND waiting a full turn before any payout is just not acceptable). And, I find I often don't have trouble feeding Contamination, so I prefer to devote slots to utility creatures rather than creatures that don't have much utility outside of feeding the engine (which doesn't actually get online that often anyway).

Re: Planeswalkers - first, they just aren't that common at competitive tables, so devoting slots solely to that problem is not all that necessary. Additionally, this list tends to have more creatures than others, so planeswalkers can often be dealt with simply by attacking them!

Grim Tutor and Yawg's Will are both sort of in the same boat - the effects are very powerful, but there are rarely turns where we are lacking something to do and can afford to spend CMC like this. It's possible one or both may get in here eventually (I tend to make rather large/sweeping changes as you've seen!), but right now I'm pretty pleased without them and don't know where in the turn-tempo they would smoothly slot in.

Re: Lands - hitting your colors in turns 1-4 is simply so important that any lands which tap for colorless mana MUST have exemplary and oft-used effects. I used to run both Port and Strip Mine, but (a) the lack of color production can literally lose you the game in an opening hand, (b) I didn't actually use their utility effects very often, and (c) using them on another player requires making sacrifices of your own - the rest of the table nets advantage while two people (including yourself) fall behind.

Very detailed response. Please inform me when you have an updated primer. I would love to take another look at your deck with a fresh eye. Love the deck and thought process that goes into it

How well do you find that Umezawa's Jitte works for you? I'm thinking about throwing it into my own Meren build, but I'm curious how your usage of it typically goes.

smiffdemon

On luck-of-the-draw I actually haven't seen Umezawa's Jitte all that often, but the times I have it's been very good and I've been impressed with it. It basically does everything we need:

• Spot removal (hits black creatures unlike Shriekmaw)
• Incremental lifegain to counteract our many sources of pain ticks
• Fast clock to end out the game once we've fully stabilized

In some sense it's the Cryptic Command of equipments and the versatility provided at such a cheap cost is what makes it so good. That said, it is not a card I will typically spend a tutor on (lockdown or the Living Plane combo is almost always the better find). Topdecked however, it is usually quite strong! I recommend giving it a try if you haven't already.

Profet93

I've more or less migrated everything here, so go ahead and take a look! There are some sections I plan to add in the coming weeks, but the bulk of the material is now here.

Could Ramunap Excavator or Life from the Loam be useful or are you looking to win before it would be relevant?

also Sylvan Safekeeper

Minister of Pain seems not great here. Why not Viscera Seer? It's a cheap and free sac outlet that provides card advantage (sorta).

MarvelousBreadfish

We don't really run any combos around Ramunap Excavator or Life from the Loam so we can't really max out their potential. Typically the creatures I'm trying to find room for are those that either accelerate us out of the gates (high-value mana dork), or offer some way to oppress our opponents more quickly/reliably (or in a new/different way). These do neither, so although I think they could be useful in a vacuum, I don't know how well they would actually help secure a win outside of some niche situations.

Good call on the Sylvan Safekeeper! It has been on my "Maybe's" list for a long time (though I didn't put it up here), but I haven't yet been convinced on it. It does protect Meren, but in many cases I'd rather her just die than sacrifice our own lands. Since we stall out the game pretty hard, opponents using removal (aka turns, under Winter Orb or the like) on Meren means (a) they aren't actively advancing their own win condition, and (b) we have more time to advance the rest of our boardstate. I'm hesitant to sacrifice lands to protect her since we operate quite well without her and lands are arguably even more important. Plus, with many mana dorks, stax effects, and tutorable Gaea's Cradle, we typically curve out faster than our opponents (we can't recast her indefinitely, but recasting her once or twice is much better than losing one or two lands and giving up the competitive edge).

Permafrost

Check out my section on "Win Conditions"! Minister of Pain combos with Living Plane for a powerful one-sided Armageddon. At other times, there are enough utility creatures running around (mana dorks, Dark Confidant, tokens, etc.) that he is still useful as a mini-boardwipe. I was unsure about the inclusion at first because -1/-1 seems subpar in theory. But in practice I have been surprised at his effectiveness, often tutoring him up even without the combo ready since the wipe is very useful. And, if the combo does land, that usually means it's Game Over.

Compare this to the popular Necrotic Ooze + Phyrexian Devourer + Triskelion combo that relies on cards with no real play value except the combo itself... they still see play despite being useless without the assembled trio! Minister of Pain is very useful on his own AND fits nicely with our combo, so he fits quite naturally in the list.

Viscera Seer is OK, but only once you have some sort of boardstate established. If we had a few extra slots then maybe it'd be here, not sure. But as it stands, I prefer to devote 1-cmc to mana dorks to accelerate hard, then 2-3 cmc to stax pieces to ensure our threat density is high enough to actually stop our opponents from winning immediately T3. Opening-hand Viscera Seer doesn't really do either of these for us!

I'm new to stax, and somewhat new to EDH, please don't think my suggestion is dumb... But would Pestilence be an acceptable inclusion to this list?

Well, you've convinced me to try out Jitte. I'll see how it works in my own playgroup!

fhowe36

Not a dumb suggestion at all! In fact I used to run Pestilence in this very list, but found it was a little too slow for what I needed (my Changelog is one of the few things I haven't had a chance to add to the main post quite yet). Ultimately, Yahenni's Expertise ended up taking that slot - I found that a very efficient one-time wipe with a free spell tacked on was so much faster and more efficient than having the option to continuously wipe the board. Also consider that the first wipe for -3/-3 ultimately costs 7 mana on Pestilence! So, I don't run it anymore, but you might give it a shot to see if you have similar experiences to me (test it out against things like Yahenni's Expertise and Infest to see what gives you the best results).

smiffdemon

Best of luck :)

What about Cryptolith Rite? It turns all your creatures into rainbow dorks and is only two CMC. Also, why no Fatal Push or Tragic Slip? I would think that that would be very useful to this deck. Finally, what would you recommend about enemy Planeswalkers? My playgroup often uses them, and I'm only really seeing one possible answer to them.

All that ETB's and no Panharmonicon?

Shadow12721

I recently cut Earthcraft which is, in most cases, a better Cryptolith Rite (Earthcraft effectively bypasses summoning sickness to all your creatures!). I've recently removed it, but I'm not sure yet whether I'll put it back. Two things I was considering at the time: (a) I run a lot more dorks than I used to, and for those creatures it offers no benefit since they already tap for mana; and (b) I was in need of additional fast spot removal. Earthcraft / Cryptolith Rite are very strong, just a bit slow, so I'm not sure yet on whether one will come back! I will make an update post if I do.

I'm running Dismember over Fatal Push and Tragic Slip for two reasons: (a) it's less restrictive on colors (usually we're tight on so conserving them where possible is helpful), and (b) a little more flexible on valid targets (permanents dying or leaving the battlefield can be restrictive, especially if trying to do this as a combat trick). These two are definitely in consideration! Just haven't decided whether I need more creature spot removal yet - my playgroup tends to run a lot of noncreature combo, so Abrupt Decay, Maelstrom Pulse, Beast Within, etc. are serving me well there. Don't forget that the board is typically wiped pretty clean between all the symmetric sacrifice effects (like Merciless Executioner) so spot removal is usually only needed for the most troublesome or worrisome creatures.

Re: Planeswalkers - I mention it in an above comment, but in short, combat damage. We keep field wiped pretty clean of enemy creatures so simply attacking into planeswalkers is the easy way to go and I've never found myself needing PW-specific removal. Planeswalkers are also pretty uncommon in CEDH in general so it's not something I pay a lot of specific attention to. If your opponent has planeswalkers and lots of defenders out, then something went wrong earlier in the game and that's where you should direct your attention/tuning (as opposed to putting in PW removal).

Paladin_11111

I only run ~8 ETB effects! There are lots of creatures but not many are actually triggered on ETB. Panharmonicon is fairly slow & high-CMC, but most of all, it relies on other cards to have any effect at all - which is a big risk to take when our goal is to take over the game by T3 (and therefore can't afford to draw any duds in opening hand). I think it might have a better place if we were running a lot of degenerate creature combos here, but for the same cost we could just cast 1-2 other spells and have a guaranteed immediate effect instead! So in summary, it's less what Panharmonicon can do for us, and more about what we have to give up for that card slot and 4 mana.

Why no Damnation, or Dark Depths / Vampire Hexmage combo, or Sidisi, Undead Vizier? Also no Sylvan Tutor,Buried Alive, Corpse Connoisseur Traverse the Ulvenwald, Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger, Thief of BloodRune-Scarred Demon,The Abyss, Sheoldred, Whispering One, Earthcraft, Bane of Progress, Krosan Grip, Yawgmoth's Will...

Missing an alarming amount of meren staples and combos for a meren list.. :/

goblinguiderevealpls

Long story short, that's because this deck is alarmingly different from the herd and that is the whole reason I've gone about writing this primer :)

Virtually every other Meren primer is some blend of midrange / goodstuff with most of what you've listed. I've tested and tried out all of those options and I just don't think this is the strongest way to build her... it results in a slow and slogging list without much potential to tango with fast combo. But, Meren can be so much faster and more potent if you are willing to step out of the comfort zone of "normal" and try this list out!

In regards to the recommendations - most of those options are just not fast enough. Turns 1-4 are where CEDH games are largely set, and focusing on accelerating hard, locking down those turns, and transitioning reliably out of them, is what I've found to win games - much more than goodstuff. The "standard" Meren staples (Bane of Progress, Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger, Sidisi, Undead Vizier, etc) are strong in theory but they just don't land quickly enough and you simply lose a lot of games because of it. Even The Abyss falls into this category - it hurt me to unsleeve it, but at this point the CEDH format and the rest of this list outpaces it so much that it's just not worth the 4cmc and long payoff period. Regarding Damnation specifically, it isn't there because Yahenni's Expertise is often the more efficient choice vs. the lists I see (i.e. Yisan swarm, etc).

Typical Meren lists are lucky to break an average 3.5 CMC, or 3.0 if they're lucky. Compare this to fast combo in CEDH which often hovers right around 2.0 or even lower - it's no wonder conventional Meren lists have a hard time keeping up! With the list in this Primer we're hovering right around 2.2, which means we're actually fast enough to keep pace with combo but still have the card quality and value engines to give us great control in the mid to late game.

It looks different because it is, I encourage you to give it a shot!

So you're saying a turn 2 marit lage isnt fast? I play meren stax with the above cards as well as most of thia list, and my meren deck is very fast, not to mention, the creatures may be 5+ cmc but the entire point of meren is to cast them for FREE. Its very easy to get 9 loyalty counters before turn 9 and reanimate a sheoldred, damnation is 100x better than black sun, and you're missing the "fastest" combo in the deck.

Turn 1 Dark Depths

Turn 2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, Vampire Hexmage, marit lage.

You say the cards are slow but meren has never cared about creature cmc since he gets them for free, and you're missing most of the "fast" combos

Stax isnt fast. The entire point of stax is group slug and slowing the game down by denying your opponents.

If you want to build him different thats fine, but i dont really see any wincon just removal and mana dorks, and what a primer is is a guide on how to play the deck as its intended, so running a "different" build automatically negates the point of a primer.

You can build it any way you want, but if you want to tag it as a primer it needs to be built the way it is supposed to, if the build isnt 100% optimal or maximized, calling it a primer is false advertising. So i would recommend changing the name because this is not even close to a primer :/

Build it strictly worse than its potential if you like, just don't advertise a primer if you dont understand how to use his ability, when you have 15 loyalty counters by like turn 6, reanimating a 1-3 cmc creature is extremely weak when you could be reanimating a Blightsteel Colossus or Sheoldred, Whispering One for free, but its a stax list, being fast is absolute lowest on your priority list.

Best of luck.

I came here looking for ideas on my stax list, and the only one i found is Living Plane, for a budgetless primer thats relatively disappointing :/

But if your meta is turn 2 combo based i guess i can see why they're too slow, i feel like you can easily get enough loyalty to cast the creatures for free before midgame, but you do have to make it that far in the first place, That much is True

Jeez my playgroup must be slow as hell if i can run those effectively than -.-

goblinguiderevealpls

Think you're going a little overboard here, I'm not trying to offend you if you play Meren differently, it just looks like there are a few things we disagree on is all.

This is a "Primer" specifically because no one else builds Meren this way, and thus it deserves some extended discussion on construction and play. The whole point of making this a Primer is to show why it is different than the norm - not to do more of the same! If I were running largely the same build as everyone else, there would be no reason to make a Primer, there are enough of those already for midrange Meren. But since this is more or less completely different, I've taken the time to explain and share it with everyone.

Beyond that, the best way to judge the list is via actual playtesting - I've played plenty of games with "standard" Meren and plenty with the list here. If you (or anyone else) is on the fence about which to pick, theorycrafting is not the way to go. Proxy & sleeve up both versions and see for yourself which you like better!

On Speed: Stax may not win quickly, but it must still be fast. You need to start locking the game at T2-T3, and then consistently be causing more oppression in the subsequent turns if you don't want your opponents to just play through it and win anyway. There isn't time to durdle around placing a bunch of counters on Meren and not locking the game - if you do this, someone will just win in the meantime. Consider even your Vampire Hexmage + Dark Depths combo - in a 4 player game, that's a 6-turn clock at best to deal 120 damage - assuming no chump blockers, no exile removal, no bounce, etc. (and 6 turns is an eternity). So even though the combo "lands" quickly, even at its best it (a) doesn't actually win the game quickly, (b) doesn't accelerate your boardstate, and (c) doesn't lock the other players out. That's why I'm not playing it! In my meta, if you are not interacting, then there is almost a guaranteed combo win T2-T5 (unless there's an atypically unlucky draw). Such is the pace of CEDH combo and there is no room for 6+ cmc fatties in an opening hand if you want to remain relevant.

As to the rest, all I can say is that I think you should try the list before you criticize it how you have. I think you will find that it's much stronger and more oppressive than the "norm" you are referring to! Good luck!

Thanks, and sorry if I was rude

Yea, I think i disagreed/misunderstood because of a different playgroup, I did get a bit ahead of myself there. I only have 2 or 3 opponents and its not always tier 1 games, and I am aware that stax needs to pull ahead before it can start group slug or it will suffer from it as much as the rest of the table

Thanks for the patience and logical explanations of your reasoning, ill use this as reference for upgrading my deck.

+1

FireStorm4056 would you consider Smokestack? Love the deck man!

Thanks for the kind words Paladin_11111 :)

I used to run Smokestack, but took it out - I discuss it a bit in my "Individual Card Selections & Notable Exclusions" section under the "Stax" heading, but long story short waiting a full turn cycle for it to turn on PLUS costing 4 is what drove me away. I think if it cost 2-3 with the wait clause, or cost 4 but started immediately with a counter, it would probably be here, since it would be quick enough to really be running smoothly. I'm not totally convinced yet that cutting it was the right choice considering how much acceleration we have (so it can land T3 pretty regularly), but so far I haven't been missing it too much and it's made for a lot less clunky early hands!

...Fingers crossed they someday unban Braids, Cabal Minion (at least in the 99), since it's exactly what we'd want from Smokestack... starts working immediately (instead of waiting a full turn), very tutorable as a creature, and easily recycled with Meren!