Motionless Mover of Death

Commander / EDH Mono-Black Reanimator Spirits

woekie3

EvilSpirit (20)

• 1x Banshee of the Dread Choir
• 1x Crypt Ghast
• 1x Graveborn Muse
• 1x He Who Hungers
• 1x Horobi, Death's Wail
• 1x Infernal Kirin
• 1x Kagemaro, First to Suffer
• 1x Keening Banshee
• 1x Kokusho, the Evening Star
• 1x Kuro, Pitlord
• 1x Kyoki, Sanity's Eclipse
• 1x Lost Legion
• 1x Midnight Banshee
• 1x Patron of the Nezumi
• 1x Pus Kami
• 1x Revenant
• 1x Seizan, Perverter of Truth
• 1x Spirit of the Night
• 1x Thief of Hope
• 1x Yargle, Glutton of Urborg

Land (35)

• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Cabal Stronghold
• 1x Castle Locthwain
• 1x Crypt of Agadeem
• 31x Swamp

Grave as-resource (4)

• 1x Crypt of Agadeem
• 1x Revenant
• 1x Songs of the Damned
• 1x Tombstone Stairwell

Recursion (4)

• 1x Animate Dead
• 1x Chainer, Dementia Master
• 1x Profane Command
• 1x Victimize

Ramp (17)

• 1x Bontu's Monument
• 1x Bubbling Muck
• 1x Cabal Ritual
• 1x Caged Sun
• 1x Charcoal Diamond
• 1x Coldsteel Heart
• 1x Crypt Ghast
• 1x Dark Ritual
• 1x Expedition Map
• 1x Jet Medallion
• 1x Mind Stone
• 1x Sacrifice
• 1x Skull of Ramos
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Soldevi Adnate
• 1x Songs of the Damned
• 1x Wayfarer's Bauble

Draw (7)

• 1x Graveborn Muse
• 1x Mind Stone
• 1x Phyrexian Arena
• 1x Read the Bones
• 1x Seizan, Perverter of Truth
• 1x Sign in Blood
• 1x Underworld Connections

MassRecursion (5)

• 1x Balthor the Defiled
• 1x Grimoire of the Dead
• 1x Living Death
• 1x Patriarch's Bidding
• 1x Twilight's Call

Wipe (3)

• 1x Kagemaro, First to Suffer
• 1x Midnight Banshee
• 1x Mutilate

Commander (1)

Tutor (8)

• 1x Beseech the Queen
• 1x Brainspoil
• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Diabolic Tutor
• 1x Expedition Map
• 1x Mastermind's Acquisition
• 1x Mausoleum Secrets
• 1x Wishclaw Talisman

Drain (6)

• 1x Consume Spirit
• 1x Devouring Greed
• 1x Exsanguinate
• 1x Gray Merchant of Asphodel
• 1x Lotleth Giant
• 1x Profane Command

Removal (5)

• 1x Brainspoil
• 1x Keening Banshee
• 1x Kuro, Pitlord
• 1x Profane Command
• 1x Pus Kami

Other (1)

• 1x Bolas's Citadel

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Sideboard

Other (1)

• 1x Mortal Combat

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Maybeboard

Other (6)

• 1x Conspiracy
• 1x Dimir House Guard
• 1x Elixir of Immortality
• 1x Feldon's Cane
• 1x Kami of the Waning Moon
• 1x Rend Flesh

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Iname, Death Aspect is a unique and very interesting commander in a couple of ways.

It does something somewhat unique to black. While black graveyard strategies are all over the place in EDH, few are as focussed as Iname. Putting any number of spirit cards into your graveyard on ETB is unheard of, it is a very large yet selective number of cards to put into a graveyard. This gives us a lot of options to play with a huge graveyard pile.

The commander is also interesting in the sense that it has an obscure yet interesting backstory that also makes it fun to build around. I will provide information on this in the lore block.

There are not a lot of decklists for this commander so there is not that much to go upon. Please do not hesitate to provide me with advice. This deck is a budget deck so I try to build this deck for as little as possible, therefore, cards like Cabal Coffers and Demonic Tutor have been excluded.

Lore

It took a lot of effort to search for the lore of this spirit because the officia Magic took down the official Kamigawa lore articles. They do however still exist in archive.

In the kamigawa lore Kami are the beings that created the universe. Iname, Life Aspect was the first being to create life, in the form of a child. The child would go on to create worlds full of life. Iname, in time came to be consumed by jealousy and fear of loss. In a fit of rage he gave in to his dark urges and destroyed his child, becoming Iname, Death Aspect.

Thus a cycle of creation and destruction was born, Iname, Life Aspect would create life only to be overcome by jealousy and rage, proceeding to destroy all life, becoming Iname, Death Aspect only to be overcome by grief and starting the cycle anew. To me Iname, Death Aspect represents the essence of black mana, selfishness, fear and anger. This is precisely what makes black interesting, it is a very 'real' imperfect aspect of life and that fascinates me. Iname embodies this aspect perfectly and his mechanics tell his story in an interesting way.

Archive Link Show

http://web.archive.org/web/20080302122114/http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=magic%2Fchk%2Finame

So how do we play this deck?

Ramp

Well, first of, we want to get out Iname. Most spirits in the deck are extremely expensive for what they do and are thus rather lacklustre to cast regularly. We thus want to ramp out Iname in order to get a lot of spirits in the graveyard so we can use them.

We want to ramp as soon as possible. For this we use cards such as Dark Ritual, Bubbling Muck, Sol Ring, Wayfarer's Bauble and the like (see the Ramp section). Dark Ritual and Sol Ring are particularly explosive, allowing us to cast Iname as early as turn two.

We are also running some midgame ramp. Crypt Ghast is an amazing ramp card and it’s a spirit so we can tutor it. Caged Sun does the same as crypt ghast in our deck but cannot be tutored and is a bit more expensive to cast.

Recursion

The most obvious thing to do with a graveyard full of spirits is to bring them back to wreak havoc. Balthor the Defiled, Grimoire of the Dead, Living Death, Patriarch's Bidding and Twilight's Call all let us return all our spirits to the battlefield. While most spirits are not extremely strong in terms of power and toughness, 15+ of them is going to be a large amount to deal with. Mass recursion is extremely strong in this deck, patriarch bidding in particular lets us have a huge amount of value while denying most of our opponents anything similar.

To get these mass recursion cards out, we are running 4 tutors.

1. Beseech the Queen allows us to tutor from turn 4 or so on
2. Brainspoil is a mediocre removal card that can be transmuted for living death or patriarch’s bidding.
3. Diabolic Tutor is rather expensive but lets us find whatever we want.
4. Mausoleum Secrets lets us get whatever we want at instant speed after playing Iname.

Soldevi Adnate and Sacrifice allow us to play mass recursion spells right after playing Iname by sacrificing it. Songs of the Damned makes a ton of mana after Iname has done its trick allowing us to cast a mass recursion spell and still having 15+ mana left. Cabal Ritual also gets a lot better after playing Iname.

We are also running 4 recursion spells that do not recur everything at once.

1. Animate Dead is cheap and lets us either get our best spirit or take something from an opponent.
2. Victimize lets us sack our commander to get two spirits out at once.
3. Profane Command is extremely flexible, acting as lifegain, evasion, removal and recursion based on whatever we need.
4. Chainer, Dementia Master is most of all just a very fun card to play. It lets us get back a creature from any graveyard rather cheaply and at instant speed. Combining this with Songs of the Damned essentially turns Chainer into a mass recursion spell.

Evil Spirits

So what do we do once we get out our spirit army from the grave? Well, attack, obviously. With a few exemptions most of our spirits are not that huge, but they can still hit pretty hard. In this section I’ll go over some specific spirits and some other tricks we can do once we get our spirits out.

1. Crypt Ghast essentially doubles our mana.
2. Kagemaro, First to Suffer is a board wipe, that evades indestructability, on a stick
3. Kokusho, the Evening Star is super cool, also it drains quite a bit and can get us a lot of life if it dies. It’s also a 5/5 flyer which isn’t bad.
4. Infernal Kirin can be a nasty discard effect if we have some spirits in hand
5. Midnight Banshee is great at slowly getting rid of our opponents creatures and also has wither which isn’t bad.
6. Pus Kami is a removal spell on a stick which is extremely expensive to cast but cheap to activate once we cheat it out.
7. Seizan, Perverter of Truth is an unexpected group hug card that gets us cards and has sick art.
8. Yargle, Glutton of Urborg has a big fist and a small butt.
9. Banshee of the Dread Choir is a pretty nice attacker since it has myriad.

There is also a very nasty combo in the form of Horobi, Death's Wail + Kuro, Pitlord . Horobi, Death's Wail kills any creature when that creature becomes a target, Kuro, Pitlord lets us pay 1 life to give TARGET creature -1/-1. These two let us kill everything that can be targeted for a modest sum of life.

Than we have a few tricks to use when we have a full board.

Devouring Greed lets us deal a huge amount of damage if we are willing to sacrifice our spirits. It’s also arcane which is nice since some spirits care about that. Gray Merchant of Asphodel is also a huge bomb if we cast it with a full board since our devotion will be huge.

But what if we fail?

But, dear deckbuilder, what if we cannot get out our spirits? What if we don’t have a recursion card or it gets countered. Fear not, dear reader, we have some tricks for that too.

First off, Crypt of Agadeem and Songs of the Damned let us get a huge sum of mana if we have a grave full of spirits. We can use this mana to cast a devastating Consume Spirit or Exsanguinate, potentially winning outright if we have both the crypt and the songs.

Revenant and Bonehoard become huge monsters if we have a lot of cards in the graveyard.

Tombstone Stairwell is a weird old card. It gives every player a 2/2 zombie with haste on upkeep for each creature they have in their graveyard, than destroys those at the end of the turn. With 15+ creatures in our graveyard, that will be a huge source of damage. It does have a cumulative upkeep of 2 which will become a problem if it stays around for too long, but that shouldn’t be too big of a problem.

Lastly, Lotleth Giant would like to have a word with our opponents.

I hope to have enlightened you on the art of playing obscure mono black spirits commanders. If you find the deck interesting, please upvote it. I will be updating this page if the deck changes.

Date added	5 years
Last updated	4 years
Key combos	Horobi, Death's Wail + Kuro, Pitlord
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	4 - 0 Mythic Rares 34 - 1 Rares 19 - 0 Uncommons 12 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.83
Tokens	Copy Clone, Zombie 2/2 B w/ Haste
Folders	EDH Models