Needs more Nim Deathmantle. It's decent for beats but helps in that you need your commander to actually die.

Very cool idea! I see the potential for a lot of lifegain in the deck, immediately makes me thing Karlov of the Ghost Council and Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim. They could be great assets!

Holy shit that maybeboard! :D

Some thoughts:

Immediate +1 for Elspeth ;)

I'm glad you already know about Hatred. That would have been my first suggestion.

Cathars' Crusade will useful. Make 10 tokens from Elenda and they all get 10 +1/+1 counters. Just pure value.

Well of Lost Dreams. Lifegain seems to be a secondary theme here, but having this around to draw some extra cards will always be good.

Eldrazi Monument. Just a nice way to buff all your tokens.

Edict effects go hand in hand with sac outlet decks. Dictate of Erebos, Grave Pact.

Mentor of the Meek. Again, more card draw.

Sigil of the New Dawn. Return Elenda to your hand immediately.

I'm considering making an Elenda build. One avenue I was thinking was graveyard hate. Really unconventionl strategy here but maybe it'll work. Planar Void, Purgatory(could choose the 2 life over 2 mana. Good deal), Mortuary, Cremate(also draws you a card), Withered Wretch, Thraben Heretic could all be useful. Just some thoughts.

Hope some of this helps! I'll keep following this with interest.

Yooooooo we back!

Mimic Vat might be another one to consider if you have a consistent way of buffing Elenda up.

Thrown out a lot of ideas atcha but I know it's early in development so hopefully you don't mind. Can't wait to see where this goes!

enpc: Hmmm, I've been considering it for a while now (infinite combo with Ashnod's Altar is a thing, haha), but I feel I'd rarely have 4 mana available at the right time?

shiftertjc: Ooh, Ayli especially, since she's a sac outlet! I'll try and fit her in off of the maybeboard XD

Suns_Champion: No, I don't mind at ALL!!! I have so much exploration to do on the direction of this deck, and I love hearing your thoughts :) With respect to your specific suggestions:

Cathars' Crusade could be super good, I'm just worried about whether it's good enough to warrant taking away all of Turn 5 (where I presumably just got Elenda onto the field).

Oddly enough, I didn't really like Well of Lost Dreams even in my several dedicated lifegain decks. It just seems...conditional, somehow.

Eldrazi Monument could definitely be great, and it protects my tokens from my own boardwipes haha.

Dictate of Erebos and Grave Pact are probably my most obvious missing pieces. I have a copy of each somewhere in my collection, but I need to dig them out.

Sigil of the New Dawn seems risky, since I don't know if I'll have 1W available when she dies (if someone else kills her).

I've seen a lot of people suggesting GY hate as an avenue for putting Elenda back into the command zone, but I feel it's sorta...inefficient? I'd just rather play Reanimate to get her back to be honest.

I'm worried about sticking Elenda underneath a Mimic Vat, since if it gets destroyed I lose access to her forever. That plan seems very all-in. However, the card might still be awesome for when my opponents sacrifice something I want to steal!

Thank you again for your comments! Is there anything you think might be worth cutting from this list to open up space?

Cool cool, good thoughts.

Tombstone Stairwell seems way expensive and that's before considering the cumulative upkeep cost haha! Could also be more useful to opponents with graveyard strategies like, say, Karador.

Sacred Mesa also seems more conditional than the other token producers, maybe it's good idk. Never used it myself.

Death Match could benefit your opponents too, especially more robust token decks.

Vampire Hexmage seems to play a little too narrow of a role for anything but a sideboard choice.

Not a huge fan of Dark Ritual in EDH personally.

Those were they only things screaming "cut" to me.

Suns_Champion: As always, thank you for your thoughts!

To be honest, I don't care about the DAMAGE I can do with Tombstone Stairwell - I care more about the fact that it creates a HUGE number of death triggers very quickly for Elenda (a number of counters equal to the total number of creatures in all graveyards, each turn).

Sacred Mesa is not playing very well in my initial playtests (and doesn't work at all under Contamination), so I agree that it is a likely cut.

But I've always wanted to run Death Match in a deck thoughhhhhhh XD

Vampire Hexmage is intended to murder opposing planeswalkers (and is a vampire for minor tribal theme stuff). But I could definitely see your point.

Daedalus19876: generally with Nim Deathmantle, you're not leaving 4 mana open in case somebody reomves your stuff. You're using 4 mana in a loop to get value. I get if you're playing stax that 4 mana can be hard to get though (as in that might be your entire turn).

I really like the Pox cards to abuse your tokens. Have you considered something like Smokestack to continue the sacrifice? Genesis Chamber ostensibly helps everyone but just ends up feeding Elenda and gives you more tokens. Maybe some ways of handling noncreature permanents as well.

I haven't observed the full list, but I vote Martyr's Cause to be the most flavorful card and also recommend Unhallowed Pact as another reanimation tool. I'll be back later to give this a better once-over.

I love a lot of the cards in this deck. Necropotence is a favorite of mine. Not sure what to suggest, but this is getting an upvote from me. Looks like a lot of fun to play.

Back! Love the new Primer!

have you thought about Strionic Resonator?

Elenda's death trigger would be the main target obviously, but you also have enough other targets, Anointed Procession, Sun Titan, Luminarch Ascension, Massacre Wurm, Reaper from the Abyss etc, to make it a solid inclusion.

Some folks don't like it because they say "it makes stuff cost 2 more" but if the effect is good, isn't that worth it? :)

Also Mentor of the Meek might be really good. I know it would die in a board wipe pre-Elenda trigger, but you have enough other token generators to draw you some cards.

I would definitely include him if you aren't running Well of Lost Dreams.

elgosu1337: Oh, those are both great suggestions! I'll try to get my hands on a copy of them so that I can test them out :) Also, if you like the deck, you're welcome to +1! ;)

TheRedGoat: Huh. Why Unhallowed Pact? Beyond the awesome flavor, heh.

Suns_Champion: Thank you!! I agree that I may not have enough draw effects in this list; it's one of the major things I'm trying to improve, haha. And while I'm generally not too much of a fan of Strionic Resonator, I'll test it here just in case it manages to change my mind.

vasarto77: Thank you for your upvote! And yes, Necropotence is amazing haha.

The Pact is redundancy for the Sun Titan combo.

TheRedGoat: Ooh! I didn't see that! That sounds super good actually. Thank you!!

You are most welcome. I would also look into Angelic Renewal for the same reasons, but I'm not sure if you're wanting to go that deep on combo plays, so whatevs.

Mimic Vat isn't for spamming elenda copies, it's to get her to the command zone with imprint at the low cost of free.

Adarkar Valkyrie makes a cool tech play for your commander because they die and come back, plus there is the whole element of working together in there somewhere.

Awesome deck! I am running something similar, check it out, maybe you will have some insight I just don't see Elenda, the Black Rose

Conartistry: Fair enough, but I'd usually rather have her in my GY than in my command zone...

JHowlett: I do like this idea, but I'm worried about her being a 6-drop who can't have any real effect until summoning sickness wears off...

SlavicGhaespar: I'll take a look! Any particular cards that you've found to be amazing that I'm not running?

Though I am missing one in my collection, Reveillark is something I think is awesome with Elenda. Oh, and Sadistic Hypnotist works great.

I'm not super familiar with Stax, but since you've got so much land destruction, maybe add a single (potentially) big mana rock like Gilded Lotus, Gemstone Array or Everflowing Chalice to keep whenever you Cataclysm? Could in the same vein add greedy lands like Orzhov Basilica, Dowsing Dagger  ^Flip (bonus: extra death triggers!) and Lotus Vale. There's also Black Market and/or Revel in Riches which are more on-theme in terms of death profit but I dunno if they'll draw too much hate.

Also, Forbidden Orchard for an extra death trigger every rotation?

Anyway, cool thing you've got going on here, will keep an eye on it.

Volrath's Stronghold is a pretty decent way of getting elenda and your other creatures back in a pinch.

Sorry for the double post, but Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx works well with all that black devotion you have there.

SlavicGhaespar: Could be interesting, I'll consider it :) I'm trying to avoid infinite combos in this deck, however - this is my deck for when people complain about the infinite combos of my The Locust God list - so I want to avoid the Karmic Guide loop.

Coward_Token: Yeah, this list COULD use a few more mana rocks...And while I will 100% consider Dowsing Dagger  ^Flip and Forbidden Orchard, multi-mana lands with downsides are sorta bad in my meta, where everyone runs Strip Mine and friends :/

Conartistry: You're right, I need a Volrath's Stronghold (and a Phyrexian Tower, too...). I'm not quite convinced on Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx (how often will I have 4+ devotion?) but I'll pay attention to my devotion over my next few games :) Thank you for your comment!!