Lili's Revelation (Liliana Primer)

Commander / EDH CuteSnail

SCORE: 270 | 425 COMMENTS | 74150 VIEWS | IN 145 FOLDERS


EMN Update —July 23, 2016

Added Oath of Liliana and Voldaren Pariah  Flip.

Also, Updated the Primer a little bit. If I missed anything, drop me a comment, please.

Daedalus19876 says... #1

Pale Rider of Trostad seems really underwhelming in EDH, especially in a reanimator strategy.

Also, Dance of the Dead is the other Animate Dead, if you're abusing ETBs or continuous effects.

June 16, 2016 7:14 p.m.

CuteSnail says... #2

Daedalus19876 Dance of the Dead seems to have a larger drawback, but still works well with the self sacrificers. I'll consider it.

Pale Rider seems pretty decent at getting things into the grave, which makes it pretty good for reanimator, it's low costs makes it easy to return with Liliana, and it's got a decent body that can't be chumped.

Any suggestions for cuts for Season of the Witch?

June 16, 2016 7:30 p.m.

xxbad.applexx says... #3

I was wondering if Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet or Relentless Dead would be viable for this deck? Or if you ever thought to try it out?

June 19, 2016 1:19 a.m.

CuteSnail says... #4

xxbad.applexx

I was very excited for Relentless Dead when it was spoiled. But playtests at the time showed I tan too few Zombies. Now, zombies are just over a fifth of my creature count it might be better. However, it stl has 2 large flaws that makes me leery to include it.

  • It can only return zombies, which makes it the worst reaninator in the deck, because it isn't as versitile as the rest of my reanimator cards.
  • More importantly: you must have the mana open at the time of death. As it is not a spell, your opponents can see it and plan around it. They can remove your stuff when you're tapped out and your Relentless Dead is effectively useless. That isn't to say don't play it. If you run more Zombies, it'll be more beneficial, and worth running.
  • Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet on the other hand, I overlooked completely when he was spoiled. He's a Leyline of the Void on legs that gets fat. His biggest drawback here is that he's legendary. Liliana can't reanimate legendary creatures, so I tried to limit their frequency here. His abilities are neat, and can quickly create a token swarm, or become a great voltron target, but I feel, ultimately he doesn't do what this deck wants. I'm a little biased, as I don't like Leyline of the Void/Rest in Peace being used on me, so I don't like using them on my friends. Against other grave decks, I'll merely try harder to combo out, rather than ruin our fun. That may be my downfall one day.

    June 19, 2016 5:22 a.m.

    CuteSnail says... #5

    What does everybody think about From Under the Floorboards? Could be a good way to stabilize, gain a handful of life and dudes.

    June 19, 2016 5:26 a.m.

    @NecroPony how well does your deck do with mana ramp? 3 dudes and 3 life for CMC5 is decent but it's really not an include unless you can reliably trigger its Madness cost and sink a ton of mana into it.

    June 20, 2016 10:08 a.m.

    CuteSnail says... #7

    Between recurring the shit out of Burnished Hart, Cabal Coffers and or Liliana of the Dark Realms I rarely have mana issues. At most my issues are "Aww I can't cast Behold the Beyond and then combo out this turn" because even I can't hit 17 mana till late game.

    June 20, 2016 10:49 a.m.

    CuteSnail says... #8

    Thinking of removing To the Slaughter with Oath of Liliana

    July 6, 2016 12:13 p.m.

    CuteSnail says... #9

    Playtests today showed that I rely on Mikokoro for worst case scenario card advantage, and the sanitarium wasn't cutting it. I swapped them out, balance was restored. Just goes to show you that Even after a year and a half playing a deck you can run card with out truly knowing why.

    TL;DR You can learn about your deck even after years of playing it. Also I switched sanitarium for Mikokoro.

    July 22, 2016 11:29 p.m.