KEPHRI, THE SCARAB GOD. ETB Toolbox Reanimator (Commander / EDH MTG Deck)

KEPHRI, THE SCARAB GOD. ETB Toolbox Reanimator

Commander / EDH Battlecruiser Mill Multiplayer Reanimator UB (Dimir) Vorthos

BRAZATO

Creature (35)

Planeswalker (2)

Land (37)

Enchantment (2)

Commander (1)

Artifact (9)

Instant (9)

Sorcery (5)

Maybeboard

Creature (30)

Instant (14)

Artifact (4)

Enchantment (3)

Land (10)

Sorcery (8)

KEPHRI, THE SCARAB GOD TOOLBOX REANIMATOR (EDH - MULTIPLAYER)

BASIC DATA
Construction date: 01/11/2018
Power level: 7,5
Format: Multiplayer EDH, non competitive
Budget: High (Mainly due to foil and promos)
Build restrictions: Non tribal, no expensive tutors.

INTRODUCTION
This is my own The Scarab God deck as I currently run it on cardboard (Card versions and foils included :3). Is one of my main decks of EDH, and is a non-zombie reanimator version. I love ancient Egypt myths and MTG graveyard strategies, so I fell in love with this legend as I met it. Although I got my fist Scarab God at Hour of Devastation standar, I didn´t assemble this deck until Novemver 2018, more than one year before, just because I was busy with other EDH projects. After some years enjoying it and improving it, I finally got my The Scarab God

invocation to lead the deck.

POWER LEVEL AND BUDGET
This deck is designed to fit into my Multiplayer EDH playgrouop power level, which usually is a 6-7-8 Tier (non-competitive optimized decks wich usually win at turns 8-12). We usually don´t abuse of early combos and we don´t have super-expensive cards (besides foils and promos). We also try to avoid "Non-fun strategies" (I know, this is a very subjective matter) like mass-land destruction, stacks or very specific hate cards. We also avoid using powerful tutors (specially the most expensive ones). About the budget of this concrete deck, ignoring promos and foils is very affordable, and you can always replace expensive cards (specially lands) for budget versions and still defend yourself in a 6-8 Tier multiplayer meta. It has some invocations and foils to bling it a little (in fact Consecrated Sphinx

, The Scarab God

and Entomb

invocations are one of the most expensive pieces I own), but they aren´t essential. In fact, I recomend to ignore the most expensive part of my list by more budget friendly and unfamiliar cards: Better experiment with an The Scarab God ETB Renanimator deck without paying to much, to see if you really enjoy this version.

WHY CHOOSE THE REANIMATOR SHELL?
As you can see, this deck is an "Enter the Battlefield Toolbox - Reanimator" version of The Scarab God, rather than the more common zombie tribal strategy. Personally the zombie theme don´t catches my attention: almost all Scarab Zombie Tribals have very similar decklists and rely on the survival of their zombie legions in table to really have effect on the game. They sacrifice the possibility of abuse the ability of The Scarab God to "eternalize" a lot of your awesome creatures with very powerfull abilities that don´t match into a zombie tribal shell, so I prefered this non-tribal path. With the ETB reanimator version you play cards always getting effects without risking losing a big board too much, an in late game you'll have a very varied arsenal to be reanimated.
I´m also a big fan of graveyard strategies and classic reanimation decks. Once in table, The Scarab God offers a cheap reanimation effect at instant speed!!! Doing it with one of your zombies or with your enemie's dead creatures is great, but having the certainty of eternalize a powerful creature of your choice (Like Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur, Consecrated Sphinx

or Massacre Wurm), or simply an opportune ETB creature (Like Draining Whelk or Meteor Golem) is awesome.
Having all blue-black (and colorless) creatures of al MTG history to choose (and the new ones that will come), rather than a more limited zombie list, gives you a lot more personalization for you Scarab God army. Also, being lore faithful, The Scarab God is the controler of the eternal army creation. In the official story he doesn't relies on normal zombies, he only accepts he most powerful warriors of Amonkhet's Trials, and some of the most powerful creaures of the plane, to incorporate them in it's eternal army.

A photo of my Scarab God deck ready to play. As you can see, I´ve fabricated some eternalize custom transparent tokens, that can be put above the creature card you eternalized with your Scarab God. Although the eternalized tokens are black, I prefered to make a custom lazotep-like frame to represent the nature of those tokens, indicating in the text that they are black. Here I share with you the PNG frames of these tokens, if you want to print them for your deck:

STRATEGY

1- PREPARE THE EXPEDITION
The Scarab God isn´t a very cheap commander, it´s ability is very mana hungry, and requires some set-up to really be useful in table. We are playing Dimir, so we´ll have to use mana rocks and colorless ways o search lands to ramp.
- Sol Ring, Talisman of Dominance, Dimir Signet, Arcane Signet and Wayfarer's Bauble will accelerate our first turns. Notice all this mana rocks have a lower than 2 mana cost. I've useed more CMC-expensive mana rocks in the past but realiced that in this slowed the deck and complicated the opening hands. Also, small mana rocks usually attract less focussed hate.

- As we are a reanimator deck, our ramp also has a creature-based section. Pilgrim's Eye, Burnished Hart and Solemn Simulacrum will get the job, also giving us bodies to block in early turns and once in graveyard being useful reanimation targets to keep growing. This creatures also search for lands instead of generating mana themselves, so your mana base will be more resilient to removals. Special mention to Crypt Ghast, a creature that will generate us tons of mana, specially if we have in play Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth.

- Early turns we can also play Baleful Strix, Champion of Wits or evoke Mulldrifter to drawing more resources.

- Also notice that Ancient Excavation basic land cicling can be very helpful early turns.

2- FUNERARY RITES
Our next step is to fill our graveyard wih resurces that we'll get access later thanks to The Scarab God and other reanimator and graveyard recovey card.
- Champion of Wits, Ancient Excavation, Dream Eater, Frantic Search or Doom Whisperer will help to start filling our graveyard by looting or using surveil while we search for suittable cards to keep in our hand. Teferi, Master of Time is also a great looter planeswalker with nice defensive capacities, and a threat on his own.
- Buried Alive, Corpse Connoisseur and Entomb

will tutor our most desired creatures putting them in the graveyard, or sometimes put there a noncreature card we can recover later too.
- Although this deck is not focussed on winning by mill, Ruin Crab, Mindcrank, Windfall and Consuming Aberration

will also help to fill our opponents graveyard to later use their dead creatures.
- Altar of Dementia is a must have, giving us a free sac-outlet to protect our creatures from exile or control magic and milling in the process.
- Liliana, Death's Majesty is a very suitable and flavorful necromancer advisor for our deck: She can fill our graveyard, create zombies to block or help trigger the first The Scarab God ability, reanimate creatures, and can become a great mass removal.

3- SCHEMES
Our deck doesn´t seek to win fast: our strategy is to simulate a low profile and disrupting our enemy plans, gaining time and wearing down them until we can take control of the game. In a multiplayer format, doing noise is gathering enemies. If we start playing our Scarab God and eternalizing our best creatures, we will lose a lot of resources a probably be hitten by a mass removal or numerous creature attacks. That´s why our deck uses a lot of ETB creatures that act like a helpful and discrete toolbox.
- Shriekmaw, Ravenous Chupacabra, Phyrexian Ingester and Meteor Golem will remove dangerous targets by ETB. Dream Eater can bounce dangerous threaths at flash speed to give the table time to deal with them while we keep going our graveyard engine. Hagra Mauling is a simple instant removal but can give us a tapland in case we are mana locked.
- Gonti, Lord of Luxury, Hostage Taker, Vizier of Many Faces and Clever Impersonator will use or copy enemie´s resources in our advantage. Our clones also can copy our ETB creatures to repeat their effects.
- Negate, Disallow, Sinister Sabotage

and Draining Whelk will counter dangerous enemy plays.
- Massacre Wurm is a great mass control card that can also be mortal for our opponents in some situations. Life's Finale is a nice mass removal too and also can extract from our opponents library their best creatures to steal them later.
- Tidal Barracuda can fool our opponents with the poisoned gift of assymetric flash, and giving us free of nuisances turns.
- Archaeomancer can help us to recover some sorceries and instants, as Scholar of the Lost Trove (JMP)Heartstone (PDS) *F* will also recover our key artifacts or spells.
Other creatures benefit from the graveyard sinergies too: If in the excavation process Wonder ended in our graveyard, all our creatures will have flying, gifting us with a great combat advantage. Vengeful Pharaoh will discourage our enemies to attack us even dead. Avatar of Woe

can be very cheap if the graveyards are filled with creatures and is a repeatable removal. Champion of Wits and Vizier of Many Faces can mummify themselves and Kederekt Leviathan can unearth himself to work from the graveyard.

4- RISE ETERNAL

Once you have a full graveyard, a large amount of mana and a your enemies have been using their resources, is the time to play The Scarab God. In late game you will still have enough mana to use its eternalize ability one or two times the same turn you played it, or even defend it by reanimating a Draining Whelk or a Kira, Great Glass-Spinner. As all we know, if the Scarab God dies, probably will return to our hand at the end of turn so people will usually refuse to spend "destroy" removals on it.
Our goal is to raise a big eternalized army composed of a mix of our own creatures and the most powerful enemy ones, and use it to take control of the board. Training Grounds andHeartstone

will cheap our eternalize cost a lot, but I recomend play those cards when you are close to use The Scarab God ability: our enemies would remove them in early game.
- Not only The Scarab God reanimates creatures: Animated Dead (EMA), Sheoldred, Whispering One, Living Death and Liliana, Death's Majesty can help us doing it in case of our commander is offline.
- Some of our best eternalize targets are Diluvian Primordial and Sepulchral Primordial. Both use our opponets graveyards to take great advantage and even closing games.
- Grave Titan

, Overseer of the Damned and Gray Merchant of Asphodel are also nice targets to reanimate or play in late game, and their zombie subtheme helps trigger the first ability of our commander.
- Consecrated Sphinx

and Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur are powerful draw engines that can give us tons of card advantage.
- Sidisi, Undead Vizier can be used to search for a defensive response or a finisher card, or even sacrifying your commander avoiding it from being exiled or controled when you eternalize her.
- Living Death is one of our most powerfull spells in late game, and a great mass removal in some situations.
We can also steal one of our opponent´s most powerful creatures. We will exile that creature forever in the process so this act as graveyard hate too. I recomend not to be totally reliant on our enemies resources: What if our opponents don´t play many creatures?, or they play a tribal deck?. Thats the main reason my deck is full of useful creatures: never be lack of a good target to reanimate even if we are playing against noncreature decks.

5- MANA BASE AND UTILITY LANDS
The mana base is very similar to any other dimir commander deck. Only mention that in my personal deck I have more blue early drops than black ones, so I have more blue mana sources to make more easy find them in the right time.
- This deck also includes the classic Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and Cabal Coffers land pack, a very powerful and classic combination that will give us tons of mana. The deck includes cards like Expedition Map and Tolaria West to help gather this two cards in play.
- Duskmantle, House of Shadow also can give us little mill effects if we have spare mana or we need to mess with our enemy's libraries, and Geier Reach Sanitarium can be used as an auxiliary loot engine.
- This deck can give a nice amount of card draw, so Reliquary Tower can be useful many games.
At last, mention Phyrexian Tower, a classic sacrifice outlet land that can produce us mana, put again creatures in our graveyard from play, protect us from control magic and avoid The Scarab God from being exiled or stealed, triggering it's "return to your hand" ability.

6- MAYBEBOARD AND CUSTOMIZATION
This version of The Scarab God has the advantage to be very variable and customizable. There are lots of awesome U/B creatures in MTG to eternalize and the ones I show in my decklist are only the ones I prefer (and own!). The same about defensive spells like counterspells, removals, and mill engines. In fact, you can make a big pool and bring a different The Scarab God decklist very time you play with your friends, surprising them in every new game. In the Maybeborad section I've compilated a list of cards that aren't in my main deck now but that have been in the past or could be added in the future. I´ll analyze some of them:
- Nirkana Revenant and Liliana of the Dark Realms are powerful mana doublers, if you want even more mana with the Urborg - Cabal coffers - Crypt ghast pack, those two are more options.
- Razaketh, the Foulblooded is an awesome tutor engine and also a great sacrifice outlet. He can seal games by searching the right cards. Maybe should be used in a more heavy token version of this deck.
- Noxious Gearhulk is a great lifegain engine and removal. Kokusho, the Evening Star can give you a lot of lifedrain, but you'll need to sacrifice it.
- Duskmantle Guildmage can look unharming, but he will combo with Mindcrank. I didn't want to use combos in this deck but if you like to have an alternate wincon, this guildmage could help.
- Mesmeric Orb is a destructive mill engine. I don't run it because it drags to many attention to you, and that's never good in multiplayer games. But is a powerful option.
- Gate to the Afterlife and God-Pharaoh's Gift are a combination of two very flavorful cards related with our commander, and that can make its same effect. It loses it's instant speed and it is limited to your graveyard, and you'll have to sacrifice two slots of your deck to run it, but if you want to play like a real Vorthos, you'll enjoy them. I also recomend to play a more heavy low mana and efficient creature deckbuild, with more sacrifice engines, to really take advantage of theses cards.
- Panharmonicon is a great artifact in any ETB deck, doubling those effects. I want to prove mine in the future and see if is worthy run it with all the ETB creatures I play in this deck. At the moment don't run it because I wan it's space for more fun creatures.
- If you like to play more instants and sorceries, a build with Torrential Gearhulk, Mnemonic Wall, Snapcaster Mage and Spellseeker will give you a nice creature base for a more spellslinger core.

THE SCARAB GOD LORE
In the MTG lore, The Scarab God is one of the three forgotten gods (Alongside The Locust God and The Scorpion God) that dissapeared long ago when the dragon Planeswalker Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker arrived at the plane of Amonkhet for the first time, conquering the plane, enslaving their gods and citizens, and modifying all their culture creating a cult around him as Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh.

The final plan of Bolas was to use Amonkhet´s society, composed by humans, avens, nagas and khenras (or jackals), to create a strong military fanatical army and use it in their wars among all the Multiverse. He impossed a martial culture wich trained their warrior through overcoming five Trials (like Trial of Zeal) regulated by the five monocolored gods of Amonkhet (Bontu the Glorified, Hazoret the Fervent, Kefnet the Mindful, Oketra the True and Rhonas the Indomitable), deities that were fooled time ago by it´s magic. But there was a problem with a living mortal army: Only Planeswalkers and other special living beings can travel between planes. Nicol Bolas needed to create an army that could avoid that obstacle.

Amonkhet was a world full of death-associated magic. Bolas corrupted this natural aspect of the plane creating the "Curse of Wandering", for wich any living being that died in Amonkhet will raise as an undead. The Amonkhet people learned to coexist with this curse, embalming their deads by creating servile mummies (as represented in cards like Anointer Priest or Those Who Serve, and using the Hekma (Protection of the Hekma), a magic barrier, to isolate their cities and oasis (specially the city of Naktamun, their capital) from the wandering hostile undeads (like Lord of the Accursed) of the wild deserts of the plane.

But due to the limitation of the Curse of Wandering, that lasted only until no flesh remained in the undead body, Bolas needed a way to make their undead army everlasting. He studied the properties of lazotep (Stone Quarry) an discovered that this blue mineral interacted with necromantic magic in very powerful ways. First he created the lazotep cartouches (Like Cartouche of Knowledge), that were given to the successful initates of the Trials as poisoned gifts. This cartouches will take control of their will once dead, event that would occur at the end of the last trial, the Trial of Zeal, when the goddess Hazoret herself executed the worthy champions (Deem Worthy). Second, he achieved the way to cover up the undead warriors coming from the Trials with melted lazotep (God-Pharaoh's Gift), creating and advanced mummifying method, and making the eternals (like Khenra Eternal or Neheb, the Eternal), the superhuman undead warriors that would last forever thanks to the conservative properties of the lazotep, and that could travel between planes thanks to their inorganic covering.

Outside the protected city of Naktamun, lost into the perilious sands of the Amonkhet desert, an inmense hidden crypt (Crypt of the Eternals) became the place of the creation of Bolas's eternal army. Nicol Bolas kept there the three forgottten insect gods, and assigned to the enslaved The Scarab God the task of overseeing the creation of the eternals. Once Bolas army was completed, Bolas released these corrupted Gods, among the eternals and others horrors from the desert over Naktamun, erasing any possible resistance from the citizens of Amonkhet. The other two insect gods also had a role in Bolas´s scheme: The Locust God receibed the task to use it's locust swarms to destroy the magical defenses of the Hekma, letting the sands and monsters of the desert invade Naktamun. The Scorpion God receibed the task of using it's mortal poison to kill all of the five monocolored gods, preventing them of betraying Bolas, and allow them to be eternalized later. It almost compleated it's task until it was defeated by the goddess Hazoret the Fervent and the warrior Samut, Voice of Dissent.

The Scarab God and The Locust God survived the destruction of Naktamun. These insect gods were not eternalized gods (since they haven´t the "zombie" type in their creature card), and due to that, they remained in Amonkhet during the invasion of the plane of Ravnica in War of the Spark (As they were still organic living beings uncapable to travel to other plane of the multiverse. Now they could probably be free from Bolas's control, after the dragon planeswalker's defeat at Ravnica.

We don't really know how The Scarab God and the other insect gods looked like before Bolas corruped them. The only thing we know is that the planeswalker Nissa, Steward of Elements had a vision during her visit to Amonkhet, were she discovers that there were eight total gods of Amonkhet forming part of the plane's natural order, but Bolas corrupted three of them, warping their appaerance and nature and creating these insect forgotten gods. Maybe The Scarab God was some kind of death and resurrection god, that controlled the natural life and death cycle of Amonkhet. Fans had suggested many theories about this matter (For example, what kind of non-insect animals these gods were: Maybe a falcon, a ram or minotaur, a hyena, an hippo... or another animal found naturally in Amonkhet). I can't wait for a future "Return to" Amonkhet set to explain all those mysteries.

ANCIENT EGYPTIAN FLAVOR: THE CULTURE OF DEATH AND THE GOD KHEPRI, THE SCARAB.
I find Ancient Egypt breathtaking. Since I was young the egyptian aestethics captivated me, with their inmense buildings, their mysterious hieroglyphs, their strange religious rites obsessed with the death, and their peculiar gods and mithical beings. I´ve had the luck to travel to Egypt, visiting their infinite ruins, tombs and pyramids, reinforcing my admiration for this ancient culture. MTG hadn´t yet any set with real "egyptian flavor" until 2017, with the release of Amonkhet. Amonkhet Block was a long awaited crush to me, and from all legends of this plane until now, the Scarab God is, in my humble opinion, the most flavorul from an ancient egyptian cultural perspective. I'll try to express my point of view:
Khepri is an ancient egyptian scarab headed solar god. In fact, he was one of the multiple aspects of Ra, the Sun's god, that changed his appearance and attributes as the Sun made its daily journey through the sky in his solar barque. Khepri's ("ḫprj" in ancient egyptian) name meant "develop" or "create".

Photo of Nefertari Tomb (QV66) interior, located in the Valley of the Queens, Luxor, Egypt, showing various egyoptians deities. The scarab-headed god Khepri is depicted at left of the central gate.

The species Khepri is based is the Sacred Scarab (Scarabeus sacer). This scarab is famous for collecting dung into almost perfect balls, rolling them with their back legs and burying them, to consume it later or use them as a nest for reproduction. This behaviour was know by ancient egyptians, who associated the carrying of the scarab's ball with the rise of the sun at dawn, and the birth of new scarabs from the balls as creation and rebirth.
Scarab amulets became very popular in ancient egypt, specially from he Middle Kingdom (around 2000 BC). Although these amulets and seals had an strong religious meaning, were also used in many cotidian aspects, as impression seals and jewelry. But one of the most known scarab amulets are the "Heart scarabs", created for funerary purposes. These heart scarabs were carved with hieroglyphs of the deceased name and spells to help him/her to overcome the trials necessary for reaching he aferlife. In a manner of speaking, this an other funerery amulets were in fact cheats that would help the dead to reach the afterlife.

Photo of the pectoral Khepri Scarab Amulet found on Tutankhamun tomb. Nowaday resides in El Cairo Egyptian Museum.

Although the design team of Wizards of the Coast always searchs to make original stories to avoid associate their material with real religions and historic characters, they also clearly try to honor these inspiration sources. The Scarab God is not depicted as the benevolent solar deity that Khepri is, but in it's mechanics and colors represents very well the ancient egyptian funerary rites: MTG Blue color represents well the magical and ritual knowlegde needed to face the journey to the afterlife, and MTG Black covers very well all the funerary egyptian culture and the ritual tricks and cheats that ancient egyptians would use to overcome any trial in this travel.

Some cards of this deck are selected to try to fit into an ancient egyptian flavor:
- Ancient Excavation and Expedition Map could represent an archaeological expedition to unravel the Scarab God secrets.
- The original Dimir Signet from Ravnica, City of Guilds, always resembled to an scarab amulet.
- Sphinxes were very frequent in egyptian art as guardians of temples and tombs, represening the combination of human intelligence with the lion strengh. Consecrated Sphinx

, Dream Eater

and Scholar of the Lost Trove *f-pre* represent well these mythical creatures.
- Vengeful Pharaoh is a fun representation of the classic popular stories about the Curse of the pharaohs.
- Baleful Strix could represent ell the "Ba", one of the parts of the human Soul in ancient egypt religion, normally represented as a bird. Specifically the Ba represented the personality of a person.
- When Liliana appeared in Amonkhet as Liliana, Death's Majesty *f-pre* I couldn't avoid seeing a reference in her about one of the most famous egyptian female rulers like Pharaoh Hatshepsut or Queen Neferiti. (All we know Cleopathra is clearly depicted as Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons).
- Mindcrank

represents very well one aspect of egyptian mummyfication: The extraction of the brain from the cranial cavity thanks to surgical tools.
- Although Ravenous Chupacabra it's not a proper jackal, I find its art very fitting to some kind of eerie canine, representing the relation of canids and death in ancient egypt, like the famous Anubis, or Duamutef, (one of the minor gods that protected the mummy's organs kept in the "canopic jars").
- Solemn Simulacrum and Meteor Golem could represent "ushabtis", funerary figurines that would act as servants in the afterlive.
- Champion of Wits *f-pre* and Sidisi, Undead Vizier

could represent snake gods like the goddess Wadjet, (protector of Lower Egypt), Renenutet (goddess of nourishment) or Meretseger (guardian goddess of the Thebas Necropolis).
- Fishes also had their representation in egyptian myhts. The Medjed or Oxyrhynchus was a worshipped fish, famous for eating the virile member of Osiris after he was killed by his brother Set. Tidal Barracuda and Mulldrifter could represent this being.
- Massacre Wurm looks like some kind of horrible desert monster (Have you read Dune? :D) you could encounter during your afterlife journey, or a subtle reference to Apophis, the giant serpent that represent the ancient egyptian primordial Chaos. Ah, and talking about Dune, Pilgrim's Eye

is another subtle reference to that book.

CONCLUSION

The author fooling around at Karnak Temple (Luxor) during his travel to Egypt.

That's all about this EDH Deck. I hope some of my deckbuilding ideas help you if you want to revise your The Scarab God decks or you want to build one. Wish you found the ancient egyptian flavor and lore sections interesting and inspiring (and at least not boring). I'm also open to your suggestions and constructive criticism about improving the deck, considering always my playgroup power level and budget, of course! Thanks for all!

RA_HORAKHTE.

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93% Casual

Competitive

Date added	4 years
Last updated	2 years
Splash colors	UB
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	11 - 0 Mythic Rares 43 - 0 Rares 20 - 0 Uncommons 10 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.87
Tokens	Champion of Wits 4/4 B, Copy Clone, Vizier of Many Faces 0/0 W, Zombie 2/2 B
Folders	Dimir (UB), Maybe Buy..., 1- BRAZATO EDH DECKS, Cool Decks, favorites - cool/effort/presentation
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