Main Strategy
Meren of Clan Nel Toth is used to bring creatures from you graveyard to the battlefield through experience counters. Every time a creature you control dies that gives you an experience counter, then on your end step you bring a creature back with CMC equal to or less than the amount of experience counters that you have. Now there are many key factors to help this deck run, Recursion, Sacrifice, Drain, and the big Threats. Since Meren's ability is for creatures, most of the factors come from creature abilities.
Sacrifice
The first factor I want to discuss is the Sacrifice Outlets. The way you get the experience counters is by creatures dying and sometimes the best way to do that is by killing your own creatures. When you sacrifice your creatures you want to get benefits from it and the first creature you can get this from is Viscera Seer. Viscera Seer has a built in sacrifice outlet where you can sacrifice a creature and scry 1. This helps you organize the top of your deck so you can draw the cards you need while sacrificing creatures to gain experience counters. You can also use Viscera Seer's ability to sacrifice itself. The next sacrifice outlet is Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord. This requires mana to sacrifice a creature, but each opponent loses life equal to the sacrificed creatures power. This won't do much damage in the earlier rounds but it will help gain the experience counters you need while chipping off a little bit of damage. When it reaches the latter rounds you can sacrifice larger creatures to deal more damage and recure them again with Meren's ability. Now there is a second part to the sacrifice outlet. After a while you won't need anymore experience counters but you can still make use from the sacrifice outlets. Butcher of Malakir and Grave Pact force opponents to sacrifice a creature whenever a creature you control dies and enters the graveyard. Since you have these sacrifice outlets you can wipe the board by sacrificing your own creatures and forcing opponents to sacrifice theirs. Butcher of Malakir also activates if they die, so you can also sacrifice itself and recure it to keep the ability going. Fleshbag Marauder, Merciless Executioner, and Plaguecrafter syngergize well with these cards because they have the ETB effect that force opponents to sacrifice a creature, so you can play these cards, sacrifice them, then recure them forcing opponents to sacrifice a total of 3 creatures based off one card. Archfiend of Depravity makes your opponents pick 2 of their creatures and sacrifice the rest on their endstep. This makes it so opponents can't build up their board and being able to recur Archfiend of Depravity will help you remain in control of the game.
Drain
I find that having a couple of Drain abilities help bring your opponents life total down while boosting yours. Some of these occur from creatures dying as well. Blood Artist will drain a single opponent for 1 life whenever a creature you control dies. Zulaport Cutthroat will drain each opponent for 1 life and you will gain 1 whenever a creature you control dies. Kokusho, the Evening Star will drain each opponent for 5 life and you will gain all life lost this way whenever it dies. Gray Merchant of Asphodel will drain each opponent to your devotion to black and you will gain life lost when he enters the battlefield. All of these are creature cards so you can continue to recure and sacrifice them and continue the triggers gaining life and taking opponents life.
Recursion
This is probably going to be one of the most important factors in this deck. Even though Meren can recure a creature every turn, it is only one creature per turn so you need to more recursion abilities to bring back even more creatures. The first card is Deadbridge Chant. When this ETB's you put the top 10 cards of your library into your graveyard and then on your upkeep you take a card at random from your graveyard, if it is a creature put it onto the battlefield, if it's not, put it into your hand. This card is really good because you can bring back a creature for free, and if it isn't a creature it will usually end up being another card that will currently synergize well with what is currently on the battlefield. Disentomb takes a creature card from your graveyard and puts it into your hand. Normally I don't want it to be put into hand because it is better to put it back onto the battlefield. However, this only costs 1 black to cast so it can still be good because it doesn't use all of your mana so you still have some left to cast the creature. Eternal Witness is included because it is a creature with an ETB effect of taking another card and put it into your hand. Since it is a creature it can be brought back by Meren and when it enters the battlefield you can grab an card in your graveyard. It can be another creature or another card to help synergize with what you have. Journey to Eternity
is an aura that when enchanted creature dies return it to the battlefield, you also transform Journey to Eternity
so it becomes a land with a mana tap ability to return a creature card to the battlefield from your graveyard. Liliana, Heretical Healer
I cannot begin to describe how good this card is. It's first faze isn't that great but it transforms after a nontoken creature dies. It's transformation is a planeswalker. The +2 can be useful causing players to discard. This hurts opponents more because when we have a card in the graveyard we usually can recure it. It also has a -X which returns a creature with CMC X from your graveyard to the battlefield. And it's ultimate is a -8 which is an emblem whenever a creature dies, return it to the battlefield under your control. This is any creature! Not just your creatures but it includes opponents creatures! As an emblem it isn't removed from the game. If someone board wipes, you gain control of all the creatures that died. This only helps you and can be a game breaker. Also since Liliana, Heretical Healer
is a creature you can recure it with Meren or another recursion card. This is so helpful if you weren't able to pull off the ultimate the first time. Nim Deathmantle was a card that I hesitated to include because when running Golgari colors, you don't want to leave mana up. However if you are in the situation that mana is left up this card can be super helpful. Whenever a nontoken creature dies and is put into your graveyard you may pay 4 and put it back onto the battlefield and equip Nim Deathmantle to it. Equipped creature also gets +2/+2 and Intimidate. This isn't as important as the recursion but is still a nice bonus. Palace Siege if you choose the Khans effect, you can return a creature to your hand and beginning of your upkeep. Phyrexian Delver has an ETB effect that returns another creature from your graveyard to the battlefield. You do lose life equal to that creatures CMC but since there are Drain effects in the deck I'm not too worried about taking the extra damage. Since Phyrexian Delver is also a creature I like to think it is a 2 for 1 with Meren's ability. Because of all the sacrifice outlets forcing opponents to sacrifice creatures, Rise of the Dark Realms is included because it puts creatures from all graveyards onto the battlefield under your control. Since you have Eternal Witness you can use her ability to recure Rise of the Dark Realms back into your hand. Sepulchral Primordial has an ETB effect to recure a creature from each opponents graveyard. I like to have this because there are some other really good creatures that don't fit as well in the synergy of this deck or are different colors but if an opponent is running a creature like this you can pull it out of their graveyard. This also leaves more creatures in your graveyard for other recursion effects. You can also repeat this effect with recursion effects. Sheoldred, Whispering One is a 2 for 1. This forces opponents to sacrifice a creature on their upkeep and let's you recure a creature from your graveyard on your upkeep. Since Sheoldred, Whispering One is a creature, we can easily recure her. Victimize has you recure to creatures from your graveyard but requires you to sacrifice a creature as well. Another slight downside about this is the creatures enter tapped. This shouldn't be a huge problem though because most of the creatures in this deck have ETB or ETG triggers so it won't matter if they are tapped. We also don't care too much about having to sacrifice a creature for casting this spell because it only means more synergy with Meren and our sacrifice outlets.
Threats
Threats are cards that don't have any specific purpose for the deck, but still can synergize well with other effects. Avenger of Zendikar has an ETB effect that puts tokens on the battlefield based on how many lands you control. This gives you a bunch of tokens for chump blocking or creatures you can use for your sacrifice outlets. Recuring Avenger of Zendikar can make this nonstop and end up blocking out your opponents just based on sacrificing with Grave Pact or Dictate of Erebos. I don't care too much about Avenger of Zendikar's second ability. Yes it is always nice to get the +1/+1 counters on the plant tokens but by the time you are playing him in the game, you're not playing as many lands and you are going to be using the tokens as tribute more than them being game winners. Carnage Tyrant isn't anything super special. He is a large creature with trample and hexproof. He can't be countered either so if you are casting him from your hand he has that bonus. Craterhoof Behemoth is known as a Game Ender! Giving all your creatures +X/+X where X is amount of creatures you control and giving them trample. The important thing is this is only until end of turn and is an ETB effect so it won't work with Meren of Clan Nel Toth's ability. So if you recure Craterhoof Behemoth it will have to be a different card. Elvish Piper helps when you have large creatures in hand. This deck synergizes with playing large creatures for free from your graveyard but Elvish Piper will help put down creatures for free by tapping itself and 1 Green mana. Kessig Cagebreakers is another token generator. Whenever it attacks it creates a 2/2 wolf that's also attacking for each creature in your graveyard. This one I included because you will have multiple creatures in your graveyard so being able to recure this can create a lot of tokens. He is also easier to get out earlier in the game to help start the sacrifice triggers sooner. Nemesis of Mortals How about a 5/5 for 2 Green mana, or it can easily be a 10/10 for 4 Green Mana. This card works so well with this deck because of how many creatures there will be in your graveyard. It's originally 4 and 2 green but it has an ability where it cost 1 generic mana less for each creature in your graveyard. You then can activate Monstrosity 5 where it has the same ability for creatures in you graveyard. A super powerful card you can get out easy and quick from your hand or graveyard. Pelakka Wurm is a large creature with Trample but has an ETB trigger of gaining 7 life and a death trigger of drawing a card. Stonehoof Chieftain is a large creature with Trample and Indestructible that gives other attacking creatures you control Trample and Indestructible until end of turn. Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger How about stopping your opponents from being able to untap their lands? This card can be a pain to play against and it can work so well in stopping opponents from responding to what you are doing. He also gives you double mana which can help you play multiple cards from hand.
Tutor and Card Draw
This deck is all about getting stuff onto the battlefield, putting stuff in graveyard, and synergizing. So the tutors in this deck work accordingly. The first being Birthing Pod. This card has a sacrifice outlet, it has a tutor for creatures, and has them put directly onto the battlefield. The creature you sacrifice, add 1 to it's CMC and find a creature with the total for it's CMC. This can help you continue to find bigger and bigger creatures and put them directly onto the battlefield. We like to play creatures from our graveyard just as much as our hand, so Entomb works perfectly for this deck and just 1 black mana. However we do want to cast creatures from our hand occasionally which is why we run Final Parting. We can put a creature into our hand and our graveyard, or we can put the creature into our graveyard and in our hand take another card that synergizes with what our board state is. Protean Hulk a card that was so good it used to be banned in commander. No longer though! This card when it dies, let's you search your library for creatures who's total CMC equal 6. So you can have 1 large creature or multiple smaller ones. It's up to you, and you can recure him to just get more value. Rune-Scarred Demon has an ETB effect of tutoring for any card. Works great with our Recursion. Tooth and Nail has great value in a card. You can tutor for 2 creature cards, or put 2 creatures from your hand onto the board if you pay the entwine cost you can do both. Card Draw isn't the most important thing in this deck because we want to play from our graveyard the most, but it is still important to have cards in hand. Sylvan Library is included not so much for the extra card draw, but being able to change how your top deck works. You draw 2 additional cards each turn and you can keep them by paying 4 life per card or put and one of them back on top of your library. Since we have Drain mechanics the 4 life won't hurt that bad, but knowing what we could be drawing next or what card we would rather keep in our library to play for free with Birthing Pod can increase our advantage on our opponents. Skullclamp works great with our multiple sacrifice outlets. Just attach it to a creature and sacrifice it to get the extra card draw. Grim Haruspex works with the sacrifice outlet by drawing a card for each nontoken creature you control that dies. Since he is also a creature he can be recured.
Extra Ability Triggers
So many of these creatures synergize with their abilities, but being able to duplicate those abilities can change the game. Conjurer's Closet blinks a creature you control at your end step. So for creatures with ETB triggers, they can be blinked to use the ability again. You have to note this doesn't work with creatures that have ETG triggers because Conjurer's Closet exiles the creature. Exile does not involve the creature going to the graveyard. Strionic Resonator is such and incredible card. For 2 mana and tapping it, you can copy any triggered ability including Meren's taking an extra creature out of your graveyard. So many cards that this can synergize with.
Removal and Protection
There are some removal spells in here that are not creatures, but the rest are creatures. Assassin's Trophy is extremely good because it gets rid of any permanent. Caustic Caterpillar is a creature that can be recured with a sacrifice outlet that gets rid of an enchantment or artifact. Mindslicer is a card I've included under removal because it has an ETG effect that causes players to discard their hand which removes and answers opponents may have. For us it just puts creatures into our graveyard to be recured. Reclamation Sage has an ETB effect to destroy an artifact or enchantment. Terastoden is a big creature that can get rid of non creature permanents but it does give a 3/3 creature token to the controller of the permanent. There are also a couple of protection cards. The first being Swiftfoot Boots. I decided to use Swiftfoot Boots instead of Lightning Greaves in case I wanted to target the equipped creature. The next protection card is my favorite, Spore Frog. With a built in sacrifice outlet that can be triggered at instant speed, you can prevent all combat damage. Being only 1 CMC he can be played quickly and recured easily.
Mana Ramp
The sooner you can get Meren out and staring gaining the experience counters the better. There's not a lot of mana ramp, but some of the ones we do have are able to be recured by Meren. Farhaven Elf has you search for a basic land on ETB, Llanowar Elves is a mana dork, Sakura-Tribe Elder and Yavimaya Hollow both have a sacrifice outlet to let them search for basic lands. I've also inlcuded Oracle of Mul Daya which lets you play and extra land every turn and looking at the top card of your library you can play it if it is a land. Since Oracle is a creature you can always recure it. I've also included a couple of mana rocks Sol Ring and Golgari Signet. Then I've included Cultivate to search for some lands.
Land
There's not too many special lands but there are a couple I wanted to point out, the first being High Market. This has a built in sacrifice outlet which gains you 1 life. The life gain isn't important but it's an extra bonus. The main thing we care about it having a land that let's you sacrifice creatures in case any of your other sacrifice outlets are removed from the board. The next land is Dryad Arbor, which I included because it is a creature and a land. So it is able to be sacrificed and recured. Yavimaya Hollow has the ability to regenerate a creature. This can be useful if we want to keep a creature on the battlefield instead of going to the graveyard and recuring it. So this is an ability that will mostly be used on our Threats. The last two are Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and Cabal Coffers. Cabal Coffers + Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
is a popular combo because Urborg makes every land a swamp in addition to it's other types. This is important because if it said that lands could also tap for black it wouldn't work for the combo. Cabal Coffers let's you tap for 2 mana and itself which then creates 1 black mana for every swamp you control. Since Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth let's all lands be swamps you can generate a lot of black mana when you are only tapping for 3.
Conclusion
This deck took a lot of time to build but I think it was worth it. There are so many different aspects I had to consider when building it, and I finally decided the best way to go was finding ways to quickly build experience counters for Meren with sacrifice outlets and then having other recursion effects to always keep my boardstate moving instead of remaining stagnant. Those were the main 2 factors, but I added some bonus into those factors by including the Drain, and finding ways to copy abilities. I then included the creatures I considered as Threats knowing I would need regular creatures that could help end the game. This deck is really competitive but still has the casual play-style as well. If you compare to other competitive decks they focus on locking out opponents and playing low CMC cards so they can ramp off quicker. Personally for me I wanted a deck that had strong creatures that synergized well together, and if you look through this whole deck, every card has a purpose. It doesn't matter what you play, it will always work with another card in the deck. That is what makes this deck a powerhouse because you don't care about board wipes, you don't care about having to discard or swinging with creatures that will just die. You don't care if someone starts milling you because your graveyard is your best friend and you have answers to people who want to get rid of it. Meren of Clan Nel Toth is a commander that you don't want to underestimate because this deck will take off. Death Means Nothing to You when you are able to resurrect your creatures.
Feedback
Thanks for checking out the deck and as always give me your feedback on what you like or what you think can be improved. I am always willing to take suggestions for cards that I might have missed or not considered when building this deck. If you like the deck let me know, upvote the deck, share it, save it into your folders. It really was an awesome deck to build and I've loved playing it. It never gets old because of all the different mechanics in it. Again thanks for checking it out and I do have other decks you can look at if you're interested!
