If you are going to play this competitively you might as well just spend the extra $20 to get the commander. You do realize the average cost of a card in this deck is 20 right? If you can't spare that much money you really shouldn't be playing commander.

This deck isn't very strong competitively because:It is commander reliant

The commander is clunky

The deck cannot protect the commander

The deck is inconsistent

The combo pieces other than the commander are clunky

The deck is graveyard reliant

The deck has no non creature removal

Several of the winning combos require very large creatures to go unblocked

I don't suggest playing this competitively unless you want to take a look at his non budget variant

But the best part about playing any sort of budget deck competitively is beating players with super expensive cards with absolute trash. This deck is brilliant. I can vouch that it has killed my entire playgroup. It is definitely vulnerable but that is because it's all jank, and that's why I love it.

Hey Sleazebagi tried using magiccardmarket.and i used the filters, but the filters removed all my options for angus mackenziehow do i remove the filters? thanks

I would just expect the deck to be closer to the stated price. It also isn't on the list when ordering from tgcplayer.

This deck is fun to play. I have been playing with it off and on for a awhile now. I've added a few of the less budget friendly cards since I had them laying around in my collection. It's the kind of deck that you can build and leave sit. Don't worry about blowing it apart to build other decks. That's the pleasure of have it so inexpensive. When the deck was first built, Mikaeus was $3-4. but as he has risen and some of the cards in the original build have gone up, he has made necessary changes. Still with the commander it sells for far less than a pre con EDH deck. And it is better than those. And this deck you can actually take to a commander night and win a few games. The pre cons.. Well not so much.

Mikaeus was cheap? What kind of meta was that?

Maybe since I mostly plan on playing with friends I can proxy him. But it would be nice to take to the game store and play on Fridays.

Thanks so much for making this deck. Although I have been playing for a few years I have never played Commander and would love to try it out without wasting a shed load of money. I am however concerned, I wont get to play the deck as people will refuse to play with me though! But for the cash, I'm willing to take the risk! Furthermore, I was forced to remove Mikaeus, the Unhallowed from my Modern zombie deck so now I get to play him again!

total_euphoria depending how big your shop is and how many you frequent it'll probably last anywhere from two weeks to a month before you start getting a bad reputation. Though I did have a friend of mine physically threaten me the first time I played it lmao. IMO it's still worth the price to build it, especially if you already have Mikaeus, but I would look into building another budget deck as well or just buying a precon.

AlfrescoHotshot thanks for the advice. I'm such a newby when it comes to Commander I really have no idea where to begin when making a deck. What kind of mechanic would make a fun but also strong deck? I like the idea of Orzhov using Athreos, God of Passage and cramming full of sacrifice and lifefgain/lifedrain cards. But I fear this would also give me a bad reputation.

If you want a good reputation in commander run something like this:

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/commander-clash-s2-episode-5-hungry-hungry-hippos Hugs of Death

It wins by group hugging everyone with massive card draw, then using cards that capitalize on large hand sizes.

The way to get a bad reputation in commander is: Group Slug/Hate, lethal combo threats every turn, board wipes that affect lands (Scrambleverse is considered a board wipe), Oloro, Ageless Ascetic, lockdown enchantments, Rhystic Study, enchantments that make it hard to attack you (if your Ghostly Prison ever turns off people will suddenly throw everything at your face)

Good reputation: Janky bullshit (Endless Whispers), Group Hug, weird thematic stuff

Everyone has different opinions though. Once I dedicated my life to destroying a GR Omnath deck because I was jealous of his ramp

Haha, this EDH malarcky sounds considerably political chosenone124. I actually really like the look of Oloro, Ageless Ascetic :( What are your views on Athreos, God of Passage or Teysa, Orzhov Scion. Would people likely want to punch me in the face with their themes?

I've only played against Athreos, God of Passage a hand full of times and my thoughts were that the deck was good but it never really seemed overpowered. The big difference with Athreos vs Mikaeus is that Athreos has a lot more interaction between his opponents where as Mikaeus just kind of jerks off onto the table not really caring what anyone is doing. Also if you want advice on how to build Athreos, God of Passage let me know.

Athreos is very similar to Rhystic Study. People who don't want to pay will make everyone focus you, people who do pay will focus you down to avoid losing life.

Teysa is a great political tool. You can threaten people with the exile to get political points, and you can disrupt game ending combos

AlfrescoHotshot, I like the idea of athreos but most deck techs I've seen have been very control orientated with loads of removal and board wipes. I don't really want that. My other option could by thraximunder zombie sacrifice.

Or the other option is Oloro. His colours would give me access to the best say spells for zombie tribal. Although I appreciate he's not in flavour with the theme.

you have to count the commander as part of your deck price

Oloro is an excellent way to make people focus you.

It doesn't matter that life gain tends to be irrelevant due to the prevalence of infinite combos, commander voltron, and the occasional smattering of infect decks.

The fact is the moment Oloro is unveiled as your commander, you immediately gain an advantage over every other player before they even make a move. Additionally, Esper colors create so much disruption potential people will want to kill you to fire off their own combos. Esper colors come with one card combos, because you can't really stop a combo piece when said piece is in the command zone, which means people will want to focus you to prevent you from comboing off.

Additionally, commander politics tends to encourage players to focus the player with the highest life total. As an Oloro player that is you. If you are at a low life total, they will still focus you because if they don't, the damage they invested in you will become irrelevant.

Your only hope as an Oloro player is to invest in lockdown effects, such as Propaganda, in order to force your opponents to ignore you, and cards like Consecrated Sphinx and Rhystic Study to take enough card advantage to overcome group hate. You don't have to appease group politics anymore, granting you an arsenal of powerful cards that would get any other deck annihilated on the spot.

Basically, Oloro makes you the tiger in a cage of lions.

I see where you're coming from. I just really want to run grimgrin and athreos in the same deck and Oloro is the only way to do that. Perhaps Thraximundar is the better option after all?

There are plenty of viable Esper commanders other than Oloro. Zur the Enchanter can call Athreos from your deck. Sen Triplets works with a rainbow mana base and a counter spell or two. Ertai, the Corrupted works in a sacrifice and recycle strategy. Or you could check out the 5 color commanders

I use a slightly-not-so-budget version, and I've won so many times with Tatterkite + Grinding Station / Blasting Station + Undying Evil. If I get the right tutors, I can get that combo off sooner than I can even afford to cast Mikaeus, the Unhallowed.

I use Sidisi, Undead Vizier as my commander, since it can tutor for whatever missing piece of combo I need.

The idea of my version is that the only thing it does is get combo ASAP. Every nonland card in the deck is either a combo piece, or it tutors for a combo piece.

It's so super-consistent, but really only works if your opponent(s) aren't control-heavy vs. combo.

Such a fun deck. It's so big and black!

MagnusMTG: I haven't really had that much time to set off to answering questions on this decklist lately (fortunately other people are really good at doing that for me, thanks), but when I saw you mention Undying Evil I couldn't help but reply, I'm afraid it doesn't work as well as you think it does.

You cast Undying Evil on the creature, say Tatterkite. It gains undying.You sacrifice the Tatterkite, it dies, undying triggers, it returns to the battlefield.Tatterkite is now for all intents and purposes a brand new tatterkite, it has no memory of its previous state. It no longer has undying and sacrificing it again will not return it to play. The reason it works with Mikaeus is that he is a static ability that gets applied to the new tatterkite.

Undying Evil is still really good in Sidisi as you can cast it in response to her exploit trigger, returning her and letting you tutor again, like a 1 mana Demonic Tutor, but it doesn't enable any infinite combos.

Well, shucks. I guess it was too good to be true.

I'll have to apologize to my friend whom I keep winning against using that trick.

I don't know why I didn't consider the 'new object' on the field part of the scenario.

Thanks for clearing that up before I actually tried to use the deck competitively!

Would Retribution of the Ancients work here?