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Liliana, Defiant Discard

Commander / EDH Discard Mono-Black Multiplayer Pox Primer Reanimator Sacrifice Stax

rdeller

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Creature (27)

Instant (4)

Land (38)

Sorcery (12)

Planeswalker (1)

Commander (1)

Commander: foil Liliana, Heretical Healer  Flip

Artifact (12)

Enchantment (5)

Liliana has been my favorite of the new Planeswalkers since their release in Lorwyn. Her character has always been interesting, and in my opinion has the second best written story behind Elspeth. This deck has been the most fun I've had playing EDH in a long time, and every game plays out differently which is something I love as a player.

**You might enjoy Liliana if you enjoy:**

Graveyard strategies

Control strategies that aren't blue

Having a Planeswalker as your commander

All of your games to play differently

The ability to recur threats over and over again

Killing then stealing your opponents' best creatures

**This Deck Might not be for you if you enjoy:**

Infinite combos

Decks that play the same game plan every game

Interacting with Artifacts and Enchantments

Iona, Shield of Emeria on Black

Our game plan is pretty simple. We try to control the pace of the game and stall unitl we can land one of our win conditions. We do this by striping our opponents' hands away, and killing any threatening creatures they may have been able to play. Once our opponents are top decking it becomes a lot harder for them to stop us from ending the game. To that end we're a little different from most Liliana, Heretical Healer   decks in that most Liliana decks focus on leveraging her -X. Instead we focus on leveraging her +2. Our early game consists of trying to build up our mana base while also getting Liliana to flip by sacrificing a cheap creature for value. Our first tutor should be for a way to flip Liliana if our opener didn't have one. Once Liliana flips we use her +2 to take our opponents' hands out as we gain value by with either Waste Not, Madness cards, or by reanimating the best discarded creatures. Once our opponents are Hellbent, we close out the game with big value creatures like Sheoldred, Whispering One, constantly reanimating Gray Merchant of Asphodel, or the occasional Death Cloud for X=15+.

So why are we using Liliana as our general? Our deck is a control deck aiming to disrupt our opponents' game plan through hand disruption and creature removal. Liliana, Heretical Healer   is our commander because the +2 on her flip side provides us with a continual source of hand disruption from the command zone. The other three commanders to consider that bring hand disruption are Nath of the Gilt-Leaf, Nicol Bolas, and Crosis, the Purger. I prefer Liliana over these three for a couple reasons.

1. Liliana costs less. I prefer low costing generals and Liliana is CMC 3 vs 5, 6, & 7.

2. Liliana makes **each** player discard, where the other three only target one player with their discard effect. In a multiplayer format I'd rather have the smaller effect that hurts everyone over the nuke that only hurts one guy.

Avatar of Woe: Large evasive body, repeatable removal, and typically discounted since we fill graveyards fast. Great finisher that rarely disappoints.

Big Game Hunter: Spot removal on a small creature. Can be played off a discard trigger, fed to a sac outlet or Skullclamp, or just used as a chump blocker. Great creature to sac in order to flip Liliana since by he's usually done his job once he ETB.

Blood Pet: Cheap body that sacrifices itself to provide a small mana boost. Primarily used to flip Liliana.

Bloodghast: Skullclamp's best friend and strongest member of the unholy trinity. Bloodghast is the king of sacrifice fodder. If you need to sacrifice a creature this is always a good option.

Bone Shredder: Cheap spot removal on a creature. The echo is actually great because we can choose to let Shredder die in order to flip Liliana.

Carrion Feeder: Cheap Sacrifice outlet that eats fodder or itself to flip Liliana. Can save your board from a mass exile or tuck effect like Terminus or Merciless Eviction.

Carrionette: It's a cheap sacrifice fodder that becomes removal in the graveyard. The nice thing is that exiling it is not a cost, it's part of the resolution so if your opponent pays the 2 Carrionette stays in the graveyard. It didn't seem very powerful at first, but it's usefulness has come to surprise me over and over again.

Containment Construct: This gives every card in the deck better Madness. The most egregious part about this card is the fact that exiling your cards is optional. If you can play the card you discard later just exile it and play it later in the turn, if you cant throw it to the Graveyard as normal.

Coffin Queen: Repeatable reanimation from any graveyard. This might be the only 1/1 I would never consider Skullclamping.

Disciple of Bolas: Our deck runs tons of Sacrifice fodder. This guy lets us draw cards off of them.

Fleshbag Marauder: This guy is an all star, and is routinely looped to act as a mini board wipe. This guy is one of my all time favorite cards.

Gray Merchant of Asphodel: This is our strongest win condition, and easily my most common method of ending the game. Once our opponents don't have a hand my most common path to victory is playing/reanimating Gary and then sacrificing him so I can reanimate him again and drain my opponents to death.

Merciless Executioner: Fleshbag Marauder 2: Electric Boogaloo

Mikaeus, the Unhallowed: This guy provides tons of value. He's an evasive 5/5, and anthem, and provides resilience to board wipes. Be careful though as any nonhuman you steal from an opponent's graveyard will Undying back to its owner, not to you.

Mindleech Ghoul: Flips Liliana and forces a discard.

Mindslicer: Were you having trouble with pesky opponents not letting you empty their hands. Mindslicer makes it easy. Bonus points for flipping Lilly with his death.

Nether Traitor: Second member of the unholy trinity. Traitor is scrifice fodder that reanimates itself, which is great for Skullclamp abuse. Shadow's a cool ability to have as well on the off chance you run into someone who's trying to use Dauthi Trapper to voltron people out with their commander or Infect damage.

Nezumi Graverobber  : Cheap body, reusable graveyard hate, and transforms into reusable reanimation. This guy was hailed as a commander staple back in the early days of the format, but I don't see him very much anymore. He's just as good as he's always been, and really should see more play.

Pestilence Demon: Solid Finisher with a respectable 7/6 flying body. Also acts as a mana sink and a board wipe

Plaguecrafter: Fleshbag Marauder 3: Tokyo Drift

Puppeteer Clique: All around great value creature, that synergizes with our discard effects. Becomes nearly impossible to actually kill when we have our Mikaeus, the Unhallowed.

Razaketh, the Foulblooded: This guy’s insane. Huge evasive body, repeatable tutoring, and a sac outlet that requires no mana or tapping investments. You should win most games Razaketh resolves.

Rune-Scarred Demon: Demonic Tutor attached to a 6/6 flying. If you can't figure out why we play this, a mono black deck might not be the deck for you.

Sheoldred, Whispering One: One of the best black Finishers in the format. She reanimates, she kills creatures, and she's an evasive 6/6.

Shriekmaw: Spot removal on a creature. His evoke + Terror is why we run him since evoking him will flip Liliana.

Smothering Abomination: Provides us with card advantage and an easy way to flip Liliana. It's also a 4/3 Flying which is quite respectable and can get some work done. Be aware, because of devoid Abomination is not actually black so it can't be sacrificed to Soldevi Adnate.

Soldevi Adnate: This is a gem I found in a bargain bin one day, and it's been the MVP of countless games since. It both Flips Liliana and has the ability to provide absurd levels of mana early on in the game. At worst Adnate sacrifices itself to provide a small burst. At best we're sacrificing bombs like Rune-Scarred Demon & Gray Merchant of Asphodel for insane amounts of mana that we can use to repeatedly reanimate them for their ETB triggers.

Tergrid, God of Fright  : This card is disgusting, and generates so much value off a single Liliana +2. Completely game ending if you can resolve a Death Cloud without killing her.

Anvil of Bogardan: This card is an all star. It helps filter our draws, lets us fill our graveyard, and provides discard triggers on each of our opponents' turns, even if we've already wiped out their entire hand.

Crucible of Worlds: With one fetch land this guarentees we hit our land drop every turn. This also lets us pitch lands to Liliana without having to risk missing our land drops.

Expedition Map: Tutors for specific lands. We run a lot of utility lands, and this gets us the specific one we need.

Geth's Grimoire: Read Liliana's +2.

Mana Crypt: Absurd Fast mana that allows for extremely explosive openers. It should probably be ban along with Sol Ring.

Memory Jar: Crazy good value card that has multiple uses in this deck. We can use it to draw cards, create a mountain of discard triggers, or fill up graveyards in preparation for reanimation. On top of all that there’s also the creative uses like activating it in response to a bounce spell or reanimated bounce ETB to send a problem card to the graveyard instead of the hand.

Mox Diamond: Powerful fast mana that synergizes with Crucible of Worlds & Drownyard Temple.

Skullclamp: One of the best card draw cards ever printed. We have a lot of 1 toughness creatures that bring themselves back. The clamp lets us turn them into pure value.

Sol Ring: This card goes in nearly every EDH deck. It's overpowered.

Static Orb: Locks down our opponents' board and lets us stall for time while building up Liliana's Loyalty & letting us grind away their hand.

Wayfarer's Bauble: Cheap & underrated mana acceleration.

Winter Orb: Locks down our opponents' mana allowing us to get more uninturrpted use out of Liliana. When our opponents are in top deck mode this helps keeps their hands full of discard targets while also preventing them from using it against us.

Animate Dead: Cheap reanimation spell that can bring back any creature from any graveyard. Discarding our expensive Creatures and getting them for two mana makes opponents sad.

Chains of Mephistopheles: Oh you wanted to refill your hand after I made you discard everything? How about no. Thanks to my lovely wife I have finally obtained this Holy Grail of a card. I hope my wife doesn't miss her left kidney too much.

Court of Ambition: Card draw, discard, and extra damage all in one. The CMC is a little high for my liking here, but I've enjoyed it so far.

Phyrexian Reclamation: Bring back creatures to reuse, bring back cards to discard. This card is just pure value.

Waste Not: This is the best card in the deck, and the card our deck is built around. With all the discard effects we run this card gives us tons of value. The hardest part of playing against our deck is figuring out which modes to trigger, as discarding the wrong card could easily hand us the game.

Defile: Instant speed kill spell. We run on swamps so this usually kills anything for one mana. Very efficient spot removal.

Shred Memory: Graveyard hate is a must for any commander player looking to actually win. A majority of commander decks have some form of recursion in them for their best cards. Being instant speed and a spell also lets us get some nice surprise blowouts. Imagine your opponent's face when he thinks it's safe to try and Entomb + Reanimate only for you to shred his reanimate target. If you're in a game where you don't need the Graveyard hate that's okay, because Memory transmutes into the best card in our deck Waste Not. Already have Waste Not, go grab Anvil of Bogardan and enjoy those sweet triggers on all your opponent's draw steps.

Sudden Spoiling: The king of blowouts. This card has won me more games than I can remember. This card can turn player A's game ending combat into his own elimination. The last game it won me my opponent had an Avenger of Zendikar + Doubling Season with 22 0/1 plants. During his upkeep he reanimated Ulvenwald Hydra, combine with his land for turn would have given him 22 4/5s, which would have killed the table. Spoiling prevented the plants from growing since Avenger lost its landfall trigger and my opponent simply passed turn with his gambit spoiled. I won on my next turn.

Vampiric Tutor: Black's Tutors are what make it so strong as commander color. Vampiric is one of the best as it's instant speed and one mana. Late game it gets us our win cons, early game it gets us either our land drops or Waste Not. One of the best openings for the deck is turn one Vampiric Tutor into Waste Not.

Black Sun's Zenith: Mass removal is important in commander. As for why I've chosen Black Sun, one of the players I used to play with frequently would drop the combination of Avacyn, Angel of Hope + Sigarda, Host of Herons, thus causing me to develop my Sigarda/Avacyn rule which states "Sorcery speed mass creature removal needs to be able to kill Sigarda & Avacyn at the same time. Black Sun passes the Sigarda/Avacyn test.

Buried Alive: Our graveyard functions like a second hand in this deck. This gets us whatever three creatures best lead us to victory. In my experience 99% of the time you Buried Alive, one of the creatures you bury is Bloodghast.

Dark Deal: Holy mother of Waste Not triggers Batman. If you've got a bad hand, or need to fill your graveyard spin the wheel.

Death Cloud: All hail the almighty X-Pox! Death Cloud wins games. If you have a Waste Not, Crucible of Worlds, or Geth's Grimoire on the board have no fear and fire off your cloud for as large an X as you can. Death Clouds have been known to cause, groaning, table flipping, and dehydration due to excess sodium levels. Consult your doctor to know if Death Cloud is right for you. Please use Death Cloud responsibly.

Demonic Tutor: This is the card you need, when you need it.

Ill-Gotten Gains: "What do we want? Waste Not Triggers! When do we want them? Now!" -Liliana, Defiant Necromancer

Mutilate: Mass creature removal that passes the Sigarda/Avacyn test.

Read the Bones: Cheap card draw.

Reanimate: One mana to reanimate from any graveyard.

Sign in Blood: Cheap card draw.

Toxic Deluge: Mass creature removal that passes the Sigarda/Avacyn test.

Victimize: Sacrifice outlet and reanimation spell all in one.

Liliana of the Veil: This is basically a second copy of our general since the +1 is the mode we care about.

Swamp + Snow-Covered Swamp: Our basic lands. These are very important as a lot of the land hate in commander like Back to Basics or Ruination only effects nonbasic lands. Even when it comes to basic land hate the only real swamp hate card is Kormus Bell which is rare to go up against. Now why do I split my basics and run half regular and half snow? The reasoning is simple, I don't run any effects that care about having lands of the same name or having snow permanents. Sometimes my opponents do though. If my opponent is playing an Extraplanar Lens players like to bring all snow lands so that they get the benifit and their opponents don't. In my playgroup this caused people to only use snow basics. Since everyone was now using snow basics the Lens players swapped back to regular. This keeps cycling as people look to deny their opponents. By running a split though, I'm guaranteed that if my opponent is running Lens on black half of my basic lands will be able to tap for double regardless of what type of lands he's running. The second big reason for the split is the card Wake of Destruction. We're a mono black deck, so most of the time our mana base in any given game is a majority basics. If we went all regular swamp or all snow swamps Wake reads "Destroy all of Liliana's lands and maybe some of someone else's." The split helps us avoid that blowout loss.

Takenuma, Abandoned Mire: There's no real reason not to run this. It's on theme, and in general is just better than a basic land.

Bloodstained Mire/Polluted Delta/Verdant Catacombs/Marsh Flats: The fetch lands are the best lands in Magic. That said they're at their weakest in a mono color deck since we don't actually need color fixing. The only reason we play these is because we run Crucible of Worlds, as Crucible with one fetch land guarantees we hit a land drop every turn for the rest of the game.

Maze of Ith: The land drop that doesn't make mana. The reason we run this is because our commander spends a lot of time as a Planeswalker. Commander players tend to not attack other players in order to keep from making enemies, however they'll almost always attack a Planeswalker unless they need to damage a player to trigger an ability or they think they'll need the blocker. Maze helps ease the damage Liliana might take.

Ancient Tomb: The Sol land is one of the best lands in the format, providing great early game mana acceleration. Since we're a mono color deck we can afford to play a number of colorless lands, and Ancient Tomb is the best of them.

Geier Reach Sanitarium: Discard trigger on a land that can get me Waste Not triggers when my opponents have no hand. Yes please.

Phyrexian Tower: Sacrifice outlet on a land, that gives us a mana boost.

Strip Mine: Every commander deck needs some form of targeted land destruction to deal with problem lands like Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx or Academy Ruins. Can also combine with Crucible of Worlds to soft lock one player.

Drownyard Temple: an odd looking inclusion. It's a land that functions as if you had Crucible of Worlds all the time. We can discard it to Lilly and just pay the 3 if we need it to get it back, it helps us recover from Death Clouds and other And hate spells faster, and it's a land we can repeatedly sacrifice to Lake of the Dead if we have an Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth: Turns everything into a Swamp. Lets our fetch lands tap for black without having to pay the life, turns on Swampwalk, lets us sacrifice Drownyard Temple as a swamp, and lets Maze of Ith produce mana. Great utility land.

Cabal Coffers: We run over 20 Swamps and an Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth. Coffers makes a lot of mana.

Lake of the Dead: Gives us a huge amount of burst mana for the price of sacrificing lands. Crucible of Worlds and Drownyard Temple help us ease that cost.

Chains of Mephistopheles: This card is Liliana's Holy Grail. If you have it run it. Once I eventually pick one up it replaces my left Kidney.

Thanks to my loving wife there is no longer anything I wish I could add to Liliana that I do not own.

The Chain Veil: Our commander's a Planeswalker & it's thematic, why no Chain Veil? Well Chain Veil is costly. 4 to cast and 4 to activate adds up every turn, and doesn't leave us with the ability to do much else. Liliana's discard triggers don't really matter if we don't have the mana to take advantage of them.

Liliana's Caress + Megrim: I found the life loss they provided to be irrelevant. They both ended up being win more cards, only winning me games I was going to win anyway.

Necropotence: A mono black control deck that isn't running Necropotence? Well it turns out we like using Liliana's +2 not only for pitching cards out of our opponents hands, but also to sculpt our own graveyard. Necropotence makes it so everything we discard gets exiled, and unfortunately because discard is our entire strategy we lose out on the best draw spell in the game. Its drawback just hurts us too much.

Volrath's Stronghold: Was in the deck for a long time, but after 50+ games with it I never used its ability once. We just don't need it.

Entomb: This card is great, but it's just not what we need. It's very rare I find myself using Demonic Tutor for a creature. Buried Alive just does so much more for me since it gets me multiple things I need, or fetches creatures that work well in combination with each other.

Damnation: Fails the Sigarda/Avacyn test. See explanation under Black Sun's Zenith's entry

Painful Quandary: Draws more hate than it's worth, and like Liliana's Caress only won me games I was already winning.

Sidisi, Undead Vizier: a little too high a CMC for her effect. Her sacrifice is hard to reuse, Liliana's -X can't target her, she doesn't die to Skullclamp like Disciple of Bolas, and her 4/5 body isn't evasive like Rune-Scarred Demon's.

-Rotting Rats: Card underwhelmed for a long time, and I was never happy to draw it.

-Swamp

-Mind Stone: Weakest mana rock we ran.

+Marsh Flats: Finally got a replacement. Ever so slight improvement over a basic land since we run Crucible of Worlds

+Carrion Feeder: Good sacrifice outlet that's been better than rats in testing.

+Mana Crypt: Finally picked one up. Upgrade over Mind Stone.

-Grave Titan: Didn't end games well enough. Almost always wished it was another card.

-Bottomless Pit: Almost never wanted to cast it. Discarded it to Liliana nearly every time I drew it.

-Words of Waste: While it would hand me the occasional game I found over 3/4th of the time I drew it I would either pitch it to a discard effect or I'd cast it and never end up activating it.

+Winter Orb: Once Liliana gets going she only requires time, not mana. Keeping our opponents' mana locked down helps us to stall as Liliana strips our opponents' hands away and gets her closer to her game winning emblem.

+Static Orb: Even better at stalling than Winter Orb. Not only does Static Orb keep our opponents' mana locked down, but it also locks down their creatures.

+Pestilence Demon: Where Grave Titan was struggling to close out games, the demon has been very successful in testing. 7/6 Flying is great, but the activated ability absolutely wrecks token swarms and Planeswalkers.

-Jet Medallion: I've found that in most games I rarely cast more than one spell per turn & I spend more mana on activated abilities which this doesn't help.

+Mox Diamond: Stong fast mana option that lowers mana curve & has synergy with other cards we run.

+Razaketh, the Foulblooded: This guy is insanely busted, and if he’s allowed to stick around, should win games singlehandedly. The only reason he wasn’t added sooner was because I’ve been trying to figure out what to cut for months.

+Liliana of the Veil: With the planeswalker uniqueness rule being replaced by the legend rule Lilly of the Veil now synergizes with our general instead of the two of them killing each other.

-Sepulchral Primordial: After months of testing I’ve decided Primordial was the most replaceable of our finishers. Something had to go for Razaketh.

-Strands of Night: This was a much easier cut to make. I found myself barely ever casting it and almost always just using it as Discard fodder.

-Scour from Existence: A bad card that I only ran to have an out to Leyline of the Void & Rest in Peace. I do not run into those enchantments enough to justify Scour’s inclusion anymore.

+Memory Jar: It draws cards, it lets us throw away fatties to reanimate, & it causes a ton of discards to happen. What’s not to love.

Haven't had a lot of time to play commander in a while, but recently got back into it and decided it's time for updates

-Bone Shredder: weakest of our kill spell creatures

-Rise of the Dark Realms: Had been feeling very "win more" for a while and cutting this lowers the curve of the deck.

-Asylum Visitor: Has been underperforming for a while and has been on the chopping block forever.

-Living Death: I find myself in far too many cases recently where casting this is a game losing mistake, so it's time to cut it.

+Plaguecrafter: Fleshbag Marauder+? Yes please!

+Court of Ambition: Card draw engine that punishes people for having empty hands and gets people to attack me/other players over Liliana thanks to Monarch.

+Phyrexian Reclamation: Amazing value engine that's cheap to abuse.

+Chains of Mephistopheles: Holy Grail obtained. I hope my wife doesn't miss her left kidney.

Finally back into regular commander games so it's time for updates based on how the meta's shifted.

-Murderous Cut: I keep finding myself not wanting to exile cards to the delve in recent games.

-Duplicant: I just don't seem to need to cast this card ever, and the 6 mana is usually an annoying cost, especially since it doesn't add any devotion for Gray Merchant of Asphodel. With Iona, Shield of Emeria having been banned two years ago Duplicant is no longer needed.

+Defile: Will always cost one mana, will almost always kill the target, and even gets to kill Indestructible creatures unlike Cut.

+Tergrid, God of Fright  : Look at what this deck does, read what Tergrid does. If you can't figure out why she's in maybe play a different deck.

-Snuff Out: Was being discarded more often than cast.

+Mindleech Ghoul: cheap, flips Liliana, and on theme.

-Snow-Covered Swamp: The obvious choice

-Reassembling Skeleton: The recursion creature I use the least because of how mana intensive it actually is. Might come back if I find myself missing it. RIP Unholy Trinity 2011-2022

+Takenuma, Abandoned Mire: There's no reason not to be running this in a mono black deck. Card is just good.

+Containment Construct: This card is absolutely disgusting in discard strategies. Give every card in the deck better Madness, yes please.

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Casual

98% Competitive

Date added 9 years
Last updated 2 years
Legality

This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)

11 - 0 Mythic Rares

38 - 0 Rares

17 - 0 Uncommons

10 - 0 Commons
Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.02
Tokens Emblem Liliana, Defiant Necromancer, The Monarch, Zombie 2/2 B
Folders Thoughtout Black, commander, EDH, Mono Black Liliana Commander, Neat Decks, Black - Greatest Color in Magic, Interesting Commander Decks, Cool stuff, Deller's EDH, Ideas
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