addendum to above q: I'm also missing imperial seal. would merciless/fauna/manglehorn/runic armasaur be okay in place? can't think of any good subs for seal.

Hedronz that card's cool, i haven't seen that yet. for cards to help you dump cards Necrogen Mists , Pox , Smallpox , Collective Brutality , Sinister Concoction or fauna shaman are some cards off the top of my head which do not completely suck. from a budgetless perspective, having razaketh in the deck means that drawing a hulk piece is no dealbreaker; activate raz, crack LED in response, discard hulk, razaketh resolves fetching necromancy.

pao2 sorry to say it but you need LED. L//D on its own is bottom of the barrel reanimation, i'd say it's even with exhume. razaketh without both L//D and LED isn't good enough; reanimating razaketh with permanents in play must win the game. out of the replacement options you mentioned i'd choose tanglewire and fleshbag #3. replacing imperial seal with a fauna shaman or armasaur makes sense, you have to maintain a reasonable ratio of card selection and advantage effects but they're largely interchangeable.

i'm sick of answering questions on tappedout so i'm going to add a permanent invitation to the meren discord at the top of this bastard. let me know if it doesn't work.

Hey just wanted to say I really enjoyed your primer, deck is sweet.

Meren is my favourite. My friend got me into magic with the precon.

My deck runs a necrotic ooze combo: in the graveyard > Channeler initiate + devoted druid + bloodright invoker On the battlefield > necrotic ooze

1) Tap ooze for mana using devoted druid mana ability 2) put -1/-1 counter on ooze and untap it with devoted's second ability 3 tap ooze to add mana with channeler's ability which removes the -1/-1 counter

Repeating above steps to generate arbitrary amount of mana and use bloodright's ability to drain the table. (Bloodright will be a walking ballista eventually)

Sorry, i'm only slightly familiar with the cEDH meta, but is Mindblade Render a personal meta call, or are there that many warriors at high tiers?

I understand how much advantage it can generate, but do people attack in this level of play?

Not_a_Goat I can attest to Mindblade Render being surprisingly fantastic value, there's usually someone who you can poke at with and the potential extra draw from other players is just gravy

Sooo the first time I typed out the Body Snatcher/Riftsweeper/Gray Merchant infinite line I had forgotten about Body Snatcher's ETB effect which slightly changes the timing on the targeting of its dies trigger, so here is a cleaned up version that I shared in the discord:

1. hulk dies, get phyrexian delver (PD) and viscera seer
2. PD reanimates hulk, lose 7 life.
3. sac hulk, find mikaeus.
4. sac PD, undying, reanimate hulk, lose 7 life.
5. sac hulk, undying, find gray merchant.
6. sac gray merchant, undying, sac it again to get it in the yard.
7. sac hulk, find body snatcher and riftsweeper.
8. body snatcher ETB on stack, respond by saccing to viscera seer. stack BS undying so that it resolves over its dies trigger, which will target gray merchant.
9. BS undying resolves and puts a BS ETB trigger on the stack over the first dies trigger. respond by sacrificing BS again to create dies trigger #2, targeting hulk.
10. BS dies trigger #2 resolves, exiling BS and reanimating hulk. BS ETB trigger #2 resolves, don't discard. BS dies trigger #1 resoves, reanimating gray merchant. BS ETB trigger #1 resolves, don't discard.
11. sac riftsweeper, undying, shuffle BS back into the deck, sac again to get it in the yard.
12. sac gray merchant, undying, sac again to get it in the yard.
13. sac hulk, undying, finding BS.
14. BS ETB on stack, respond by saccing to viscera seer. stack BS undying so that it resolves over its dies trigger, which will target riftsweeper.
15. BS undying resolves and puts a BS ETB trigger on the stack over the first dies trigger. respond by sacrificing BS again to create a LTB trigger #2, targeting gray merchant.
16. BS dies trigger #2 resolves, exiling BS and reanimating gray merchant. BS ETB trigger #2 resolves, don't discard. BS dies trigger #1 resoves, reanimating riftsweeper, shuffling BS back into the deck. BS ETB trigger #1 resolves, don't discard.
17. sac gray merchant twice to get it in the yard. you now have a board that is PD with +1/+1 counter, viscera seer, mikaeus, riftsweeper.
18. repeat steps 8 to 17 infinitely

my bad, last step should be repeat steps 7 to 17 infinitely. d'oh.

What about Grave Titan or Sheoldred, the Whispering One? Or Woodfall Primus ? nice deck!

Not_a_Goat i was trying it last time i updated the deck and cut it since then, only najeela reliably has warriors. too many blockers about for sally to get through until i'm already looping fleshbags.

darth87 i always entomb sheoldred in my casual meren. here, sheoldred would never be entombed because reanimating hulk or razaketh wins the game. i don't think grave titan is good enough for casual decks, i would rather have a massacre wurm or reaper from the abyss. woodfall primus is mainly used for comboing with mikaeus, large scale spot removal is a job better left to terastodon and in either case i would prefer a true win condition.

i'm a bit surprised to see Bloodthrone Vampire in the list. I get the cost-free sac outlet, but what about Ashnod's Altar in its place? or something else. Is there another reason for it?

thewyzman Blood throne is run over ashnods due to it being a creature and 2 mana vs 3.

thewyzman - much easier to tutor for in this deck (Survival, Worldly), recurrable with Meren, adds 1 devotion to black, and most important of all 2 CMC. Also doesn't get shut off by Null Rod. Dross Hopper is also in this list which is even worse than Bloodthrone, but still better than Ashnod's.

ashnod's is indeed garbo but altar of dementia is pretty good because it enables infinite mill through cursed totem. once the new set hits i'm going to replace bloodthrone with finale of devastation, it's 1 extra mana to get a sac outlet but the toolbox is real.

Top Ranked

• Achieved #13 position overall 4 months ago
• Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH BG (Golgari) 1 month ago
• Achieved #1 position in Commander / EDH Stax 1 month ago

holy crap, thanks everyone.

Hi, I love this list, and cannot put into words how much I appreciate that you have a "finite" kill combo; as a fellow Meren player (who doesn't have one though?) who refuses to put an infinite combo into any of their decks, this semantic note is incredibly important to me.

I actually had a question on meta, and a stax list seems like the perfect place to ask it.....generally mana denial is effective, but I've noticed that there seems to be a sharp divide between cEDH and more casual tables, where things that are good in one are garbage in the other.

An example I would point to is Null Rod or Carpet of Flowers , where these seem better in the known meta of cEDH (where islands and fast mana abound) but might be wasted slots slots if you're going in blind (side note, just realized carpet is still a BoP if even one island present).

Your list seems more proactive than most cEDH lists I have seen, so I figured this would be a good place to ask, sorry for long question, thoughts?

Not_a_Goat stax is and always will be meta dependent. Certain things like null rod are simply de rigueur and you run them in any green deck regardless of how greedy if it doesn’t stop your primary win condition, but overall Meren’s strength lies in card denial. Mindslicer is our best card and literally no other deck, not even Nath, runs it. I don’t care how casual and value-oriented with a plan to go off turn 8 the table is, mindslicer them and they will feel it.

If my carpet is a dead card in cEDH it’s Christmas.

Thanks for the compliment, you are literally the only person to have ever expressed appreciation for the cute distinction between infinite damage and 120 life drain.

So I’m running a very similar (and entirely inspired, thanks for the help btw) list to this. I’ve had the (dis)pleasure of running into Ashiok, Dream Render and have really struggled to deal with it and am a bit clueless on how to deal with it and what cards to include without just making the deck too janky. Any help is much appreciated, thanks!

Judas13 you're welcome, I appreciate it. Ashiok dies to damage, put in 1-2 Minister of Pain effects and swing. I made this dumpster fire largely to explore the idea, it has all of the playable cards in that category except Plague Mare because I couldn't find mine. Please don't use that deck though, consider it a very rough first draft.

Part of the new Modern Horizons set includes a null rod variant on a creature in Meren's colors; is it preferential to have a stax piece that can be recurred, or safer to use a less vulnerable artifact? It may be worth mentioning that the creature is 2G as opposed to the 2 mana rod.

it's 1G and it's good, the bad part is that instead of spot removal it probably forces a Toxic Deluge - it'll probably see play alongside Null Rod, but not replacing it.

i'm definitely running the ouphe. updating it now...

Love the deck! Why not run Natural Order ? It seems like the best choice for Hulk tutor instead of Eldritch Evolution and Finale of Devastation .

Kira0077 natural order doesn't get razaketh; switch pattern of rebirth for natural order in a hulk-only list. eldritch evolution gets mindslicer, not hulk, and finale gets either viscera seer or a utility creature.

here's a challenge for folks who enjoy them: come up with a razaketh line that uses Priest of Gix instead of LED. you start hellbent with no mana and are restricted to golgari color identity, but you can have as many creatures with no abilities, tapped lands, and life as you need. off the top of my head, here's one that requires a starting state of four creatures: sac for lotus petal, mana crypt and priest of gix, hardcast priest, repeatedly reanimate priest (like eye witness), after netting BBBB or more sac priest and last creature for hulk and BS, hardcast BS discarding hulk, sac it for anything returning hulk, sac hulk :/ as usual you can adjust the ratio of creatures to lands but it remains very crappy, someone outdo it...

Gotcha. Do you think Razaketh is still worth running without LED? I know it'll be slower but he's so good I can't see taking him out. Also why no Sidisi? She seems like an auto include. I also like Damnation over Yahenni's Expertise although I think that can go either way based on your playgroup.

Great primer, this is the list I came to after giving up on Muldrotha. But I do have to agree with Kira0077, I'm surprised Sidisi isn't in the list. I'd also like to get your opinion of Priest of Forgotten Gods and 2 cmc reanimation spells like Stitch Together . I also noticed the inclusion of Oppression, and was wondering how you feel about including a full discard suite, with Liliana of the Veil , Bottomless Pit , and the like.