Meren's Macabre Masquerade

Commander / EDH Aristocrats BG (Golgari) Dredge Midrange Multiplayer Reanimator

BjornIronside

Lands (33)

• 1x Barren Moor
• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Evolving Wilds
• 10x Forest
• 1x Hissing Quagmire
• 1x Llanowar Wastes
• 1x Polluted Mire
• 1x Slippery Karst
• 11x Swamp
• 1x Tainted Wood
• 1x Temple of Malady
• 1x Temple of the False God
• 1x Tranquil Thicket

Miscellaneous (6)

• 1x Archfiend of Depravity
• 1x Deathrite Shaman
• 1x Eternal Witness
• 1x Leyline of the Void
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Spore Frog

Dredge (5)

• 1x Dakmor Salvage
• 1x Golgari Grave-Troll
• 1x Golgari Thug
• 1x Life from the Loam
• 1x Stinkweed Imp

Tutors (5)

• 1x Buried Alive
• 1x Fauna Shaman
• 1x Jarad's Orders
• 1x Razaketh, the Foulblooded
• 1x Sidisi, Undead Vizier

Enablers (9)

• 1x Blood Artist
• 1x Creakwood Liege
• 1x From Beyond
• 1x Grim Flayer
• 1x Panharmonicon
• 1x Pawn of Ulamog
• 1x Ramunap Excavator
• 1x Sifter of Skulls
• 1x Zulaport Cutthroat

CardAdvantage (8)

• 1x Birthing Pod
• 1x Deathreap Ritual
• 1x Disciple of Bolas
• 1x Evolutionary Leap
• 1x Phyrexian Arena
• 1x Skullclamp
• 1x Smothering Abomination
• 1x Underworld Connections

SacOutlets (6)

• 1x Ashnod's Altar
• 1x Carrion Feeder
• 1x Grim Backwoods
• 1x High Market
• 1x Sadistic Hypnotist
• 1x Viscera Seer

Removal (5)

• 1x Acidic Slime
• 1x Caustic Caterpillar
• 1x Putrefy
• 1x Strip Mine
• 1x Tragic Slip

ForcedSac (3)

• 1x Dictate of Erebos
• 1x Fleshbag Marauder
• 1x Merciless Executioner

Commander (1)

ManaRamp (6)

• 1x Birds of Paradise
• 1x Golgari Signet
• 1x Primal Growth
• 1x Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1x Satyr Wayfinder
• 1x Sol Ring

Reanimation (6)

• 1x Animate Dead
• 1x Dread Return
• 1x Liliana, Heretical Healer  ^Flip
• 1x Living Death
• 1x Sheoldred, Whispering One
• 1x Victimize

Finishers (5)

• 1x Avenger of Zendikar
• 1x Grave Titan
• 1x Gray Merchant of Asphodel
• 1x Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
• 1x Triskelion

Boardwipes (2)

• 1x Bane of Progress
• 1x Damnation

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Maybeboard

NeedToGet (9)

• 1x Blooming Marsh
• 1x Greater Good
• 1x Kokusho, the Evening Star
• 1x Maelstrom Pulse
• 1x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
• 1x Overgrown Tomb
• 1x Twilight Mire
• 1x Verdant Catacombs
• 1x Woodland Cemetery

MightInclude (4)

• 1x Crux of Fate
• 1x Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder
• 1x Hermit Druid
• 1x Tempt with Immortality

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This is my Meren of Clan Nel Toth commander deck, the first deck I ever had for EDH and I've loved it ever since. The deck started it's journey as a simple precon, though after nearly a year of upgrading, any precon looking to duke it out with her now would almost certainly be eaten alive. It's still not competitive of course, just working towards the high end of casual.

Meren's ability to reanimate creatures for free is absolute gold, costing nothing and being able to easily scale with the game. Her competition usually tends to be Karador, Ghost Chieftain and this is a fair comparison to make as their effects are similar. I find both of them to be fairly balanced in their power level, while having access to white mana is nice I don't feel it is really necessary for a good reanimation deck as the card pool in B/G is plenty deep. An important distinction to make between the two is that with Karador you have to cast the creature from your graveyard, thus making sure you have enough mana to cast Karador AND pull a creature from your graveyard is key. While Meren on the other hand will simply grab something for free, regardless of mana cost provided you have enough experience counters, and if you don't she will still bring it back to hand, giving you recursion every time you end your turn at the very least. However because of her experience counter set up requiring the death of your creatures she lends herself to a sacrifice strategy a bit more than Karador does, and so on that note lets get into the deck and stop the idle chat!

Piloting the deck

So you want to know how to pilot this deck eh? Well this is the place to learn it so let's get into it.

Your first priority should be to set a sacrifice engine up, the sooner the better. Cards like Viscera Seer and Carrion Feeder are some of the first cards you'll wanna put onto the board as both are only 1 cmc and allow for instant speed, cost free sacrifice for a minimal amount of advantage. After that try to establish a board with creatures that benefit from death, such as Blood Artist or Pawn of Ulamog, these will give you more fodder or drain effects when you start sacing dudes. Now that you've done that it's time to set up a token generator such as card:Creekwood Leige or From Beyond to get you the fodder you need. And finally it'll be time to bring in Meren and put that fancy new sacrifice engine you've built for her into use to immediately start racking up experience and allow you to pull things from your graveyard the turn she comes into play!

Alright, so onto phase two in our dastardly plan! So now that we've got engine one online it's time to get engine two firing on all sixes and take over the game, and that engine is none other than the infamous dredge. Now unlike some other formats there's no crazy combo in this deck to dump our entire deck onto the battlefield, but it is quite important that you manage to get this part of the deck online as it is by far the fastest way to dig into your deck and find creatures to pull back into play. It's possible to run more, but in this deck I've only included the best and I've found that the amount in the deck is fine. The dredge pacakge in this deck includes Golgari Grave-Troll, Golgari Thug, Life from the Loam, Stinkweed Imp, and Dakmor Salvage

So now that you've gotten the deck online it's really up to you what you want to do with it! Continue reading the primer to take a look at all the shenanigans you can pull off with the deck.

Reanimation

Now while Meren's ability is quite powerful a bit of redundency never hurt, espically with the fact that because so many creatures are being dumped into the yard Meren can get a bit overwhelmed so she'd probably be grateful for some help. To that end I run Liliana, Heretical Healer   who once she transforms provides great repeatable reanimation. Sheoldred, Whispering One, for being a gigantic, costly, phyrexian spider abomination thingy, pulls her weight quite nicely. She provides not only reanimation at the beginning of our upkeep but also chops down opponent's boards at the beginning of theirs.

For single instance reanimation I run Dread Return, Animate Dead, and Victimize to quickly bring back a key creature you may need without having to jump through the hoops to get a repeating effect. Finally the deck runs Living Death to preform a mass reanimation and a boardwipe simultaneously. This can end up backfiring if an opponent's graveyard is chock-full of creatures so graveyard control is important, there's a Bojuka Bog and Leyline of the Void in the deck, but use the Living Death wisely and make sure you'll come out ahead.

Win Conditions

There's a couple ways to win in the deck, usually I end up winning through drain effects or ending the game through combo. Combat damage caaaan be used to win if the right conditions come up, but a typical win comes from draining over a few turns with cards like Zulaport Cutthroat and Blood Artist and smashing heads in quickly with a cast of Gray Merchant of Asphodel and a couple reanimation cycles of it. If should you pull this off with the enabler of Panharmonicon on the field you can do it even more efficently Gray Merchant of Asphodel + Panharmonicon

If you'd prefer to either end the game in a more spiky way there's the infinite damage combo of Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Triskelion . Simply dump them both in with card:Burred Alive and pull them out with Victimize and boom! Next game.

Any card suggestions are greatly appreciated as while I'm not really new to the format anymore I'd hardly say I know every single effective card in the format. "Budget" cards are probably what I'll consider putting in most, although price is ultimately not an issue! (Don't say bayou though because of course literally any deck would benefit from having original duals in it :p) As a side note most of the cards in the maybe board are either cards that I think might be good but don't know if they really warrant an include or cards that would simply be good upgrades to the deck, mainly the land base as it's not bad but more duals wouldn't hurt.

Date added	8 years
Last updated	7 years
Exclude colors	WUR
Key combos	Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Triskelion Gray Merchant of Asphodel + Panharmonicon
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	7 - 0 Mythic Rares 31 - 0 Rares 23 - 0 Uncommons 18 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.38
Tokens	Eldrazi Scion 1/1 C, Eldrazi Spawn 0/1 C, Emblem Liliana, Defiant Necromancer, Experience Token, Plant 0/1 G, Worm 1/1 BG, Zombie 2/2 B
Folders	My EDH decks, Maybe