This is my Meren of Clan Nel Toth stax competetive MTG deck. There are multiple infinite combos to win with. It consistently wins around turn 4-6. The earliest I have won with this deck is turn 2. Some obvious upgrades would be a better mana base like Twilight Mire, Verdant Catacombs, some fetch lands, and maybe even Bayou, as well as Damnation, some better tutors, Entomb, and maybe Grave Pact. Without further ado, let's get to the deck tech!
We have a number of sacrifice outlets from all across the mana curve, to make them easier to birthing pod up.
Viscera Seer - Viscera seer is arguably the best sac outlet ever printed. For a cost of one mana, you get to sacrifice creatures at your leisure and gain potent card selection, being able to scry through your deck. This is not only a combo piece, but helps us find our combo pieces. A must-play.
Carrion Feeder - Carrion feeder is another great sac outlet. While it's ability to be potentially large isn't all that relevant, our deck want's to run as many sac outlets as possible, and carrion feeder's cost of one mana makes it one of the best. Both one drops are very good because when we first play meren, we can sac them to themselves, then bring them back end step. Free experience counter! Also, there are multiple ways this deck can make this an infinite/infinite.
Spore Frog - Do not be deceived, the fog frog is the best creature in the entire deck. Just saying "NO" to all combat damage coming your way is just ridiculous. Same as the sac outlets, this can become a free experience counter with meren, and it can become a political tool late game, as you can save other players from combat damage too. You don't have to recur it every turn, either, as anyone who sees this will be dissuaded from attacking you for fear of making a completely unprofitable attack, as you will recur frog and do it again. So, the fog frog will just sit there, watching the other players fight while you recur stuff, stax them out, develop a board state, or all of the above. This card is just silly with meren and is another must-include.
Caustic Caterpillar - This is a naturalize on a creature, and creatures are what we want. Being one mana means we can recur it with a single experience counter, which it can provide itself. We can repeatedly recur this to decimate all opposing artifacts, making this card the real deal.
Sakura-Tribe Elder - Good old steve. This card is broken with meren and is our decks best ramp spell. Two mana to have a turn 3 meren and, if we have two exp counters, let us have an extra land every turn for the REST OF THE GAME? Hell yeah, I'll take that.
Blood Artist, Zulaport Cuttroat, and Falkenrath Noble - I'm just going to categorize all three blood artist effects together. All of these are combo pieces for our persist combo. We only need one, but redundancy is good, as if one is exiled, we can just search up a new one.
Priest of Titania - This mana dork can sometimes be a more expensive Llanowar Elves, but the times it isn't is totally worth it. Not only does this let us turn 3 meren on it's own, but when we have a random elf on the battlefield, be it Reclamation Sage, or a mana dork, this card can get nutty fast. A 2-mana investment to tap for 2, maybe even 3 mana per turn is great. I feel this card entirely deserves a place in the deck solely for the times that it is a 2 mana Gilded Lotus.
Lotus cobra - This card's price significantly dropped with the release of iconic masters, so it is quite affordable and a great addition to the deck. It allows for a turn 3 meren and makes skyshroud claim into free land ramp.
Satyr Wayfinder - This card was not originally in the deck, but he was quickly added. With meren out, the cards you put into the graveyard can be only described as card advantage, and with the low number of lands we are running, hitting our early land drops is of utmost importance. I confidently play it over Mulch because it is a creature, which adds a saccable body to the battlefield, and can be recurred if we are desperate for lands or want to mill over a Buried Alive for the Eternal Witness in our hand.
Melira, Sylvok Outcast - This is an important combo piece for our persist combo. Other than that it is a random hatebear that can be recurred, nullifying decks like The Scorpion God, Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons, or any deck running Triumph of the Hordes or straight up infect creatures. Play this after the opposing voltron player Grafted Exoskeleton's up their commander for maximum lulz.
Yahenni, Undying Partisan - I chose this over blood bairn for my 3 - mana sac outlet because of it's great versatility. Most of the time, it is just a decent sac outlet, nothing special, but in the right situation it can be an alternate win condition. If you have the opponent(s) on stax lock, be it smokestack, fleshbag marauder/merciless executioner, or dictate of erebos with a bunch of plant tokens, this thing can become ENORMOUS. Since they are locked down, there's nothing they can do about this dude smacking them for 12+ damage every turn until their dead, especially since he can become indestructible at any given point in time! Giving this guy indestructible, then boardwiping a full board can be both hilarious and game-ending. I'd say it's pretty good, especially since it is also a sac outlet, which is worth playing in itself!
Eternal Witness - This card needs not explanation, but here goes. This card is a duh. One of our goals is to get buried alive in our hand so we can go infinite, so if we mill it over with Satyr Wayfinder or something, we can just tutor witness up and BAM we win. This also has a ridiculous interaction with living death and is great with eldritch evolution. We can easily turn our mana dork into a win condition by Eldritch Evolutioning it to get witness, add evolution back to hand, evolution witness to get sidisi, exloit herself or another random dude to get buried alive! Elf to infinite in 3 easy steps!
Fleshbag Marauder/Merciless Executioner - These two cards are practically one and the same, and they are one of the biggest reasons I chose meren as a stax commander. This is a real lockdown to creature-heavy decks, and is an experience counter engine. Play it, sac it to it's own ability, end step reanimate it. Rinse, lather, repeat. It's a vicious cycle.
Shaman of Forgotten Ways - I was considering cutting this card, but once I saw it's application to the deck, I left behind all thoughts of taking it out. This card is actually a great win condition. With our deck, it is not uncommon that the opponent never has any creatures, because we are awful people who play stax, and it is very very easy to become formidable. Just him and meren gives us 5 power, so we need only 3 extra power, which is very easy to accomplish. After that, we run a ramp loop with sakura-tribe elder or use our plentiful elf mana to get a lot of mana. Then we just turn him sideways and win instantly, the opponents having no creatures.
Rendclaw Trow - Seeing this in the deck, you were probably like "Why the hell is that card in this deck. That has to be a combo piece". Well, you were absolutely right. One of our persist creatures for the persist combo, this is the most optimal card because of it's CMC of 3. This makes it incredibly versatile when it comes to birthing pod, being able to easily fetch combo pieces and be fetched by combo pieces. He is also good anyway for grinding out exp counters for the buried alive win, since we can double dip with our sac outlets and sac him twice. Especially good with Ashnod's Altar.
Yisan, the Wanderer Bard - I love this guy. He's like his own little birthing pod, so he can easily put together our persist combo. counter 1-viscera seer 2-Zulaport Cutthroat 3-Rendclaw trow 4-Bloodspore thrinax, go infinite. Can get them in any order, not just that one. He just needs to get a sac outlet, a persist creature, a blood artist effect, and either melira or bloodspore thrinax (keep in mind, the creature cannot have a -1-1 counter on it when the loop starts)
Bloodspore Thrinax - This card is a combo piece for the persist combo, our alternative Melira. When a creature has a +1+1 counter and a -1-1 counter at the same time, they both disappear. It is a bit more situational than melira, but is easier to birthing pod up, and can be good late game, too. Playing Avenger of Zendikar, then playing this and devouring avenger and all his plants, then reanimating him end step feels REAL good, and will most likely win you the game.
Necrotic Ooze- part of our buried alive combo, but useful on its own, too. There are a surprising amount of activated abilities in this deck, from all our mana dorks, to all our sac outlets, to even Yisan, the Wanderer Bard. He’s really useful as another four mana sac outlet, and the mana isn’t bad, especially if there’s a Priest of Titania. It’s so funny when they kill yisan only for you to play this. Mainly just for the combo though.
Dimir House Guard - A very versatile card, dimir house guard is great for our persist combo. It is easily birthing podable, being at four mana, but most importantly, we can transmute him to fetch Birthing Pod, then start piecing together our persist combo. At end step we can reanimate him to be the sac outlet in our persist combo, or add him back to hand so we can transmute again.
Puppeteer Clique - another persist creature for our combo that has added value to get more creatures to sac for more exp counters
Kokusho, the Evening Star - with a sac outlet and meren, this dragon can grind out a game and even win it if we are desperate. Hits all opponents for 5 every turn, gains us 15 life per turn in a 4-way game, and swings in the air before you sac him. If the game goes long, this card can do a lot to swing things in your favor.
Sidisi, Undead Vizier - this is a very important card in our deck because it is everything that we want. 1: a tutor. 2: a creature. She is Birthing Podable, and the main reason we run Eldritch Evolution, other than to fetch Protean Hulk. We fetch her, she fetches buried alive AND gives us exp counters. If our buried alive gets countered, we can recur her to get ewit. Very good card.
Avenger of Zendikar - good creature, good finisher, combos well with a LOT of other cards in our deck, if we have 7 exp counters and a sac outlet, spamming his etb trigger will probably grind us the game.
Mikaeus, the Unhallowed - most expensive card in the deck, but the best one by far. Letting us double dip ALL our creatures is ridiculous, goes infinite with Triskelion, Walking Ballista Rendclaw Trow, Puppeteer Clique, and probably more. I could list the other cards it combos with all day, but if you play the deck, you should figure out how insane he is real quick. Only drawback is that meren IS indeed a human, so that bit o’ flavor actually sorta punches us in the face. Still the best overall card in the entire deck period I know I said it was spore frog, but I lied.
The noncreature cards are pretty straightforward. Ramp, removal, stax cards like Smokestack, Contamination, and Dictate of Erebos. Dimir machinations fetches buried alive, can also screw over an opposing combo player if they just Vampiric Tutor up their Hermit Druid only to have us exile it from the top. Krosan Grip has split second so we can save our graveyard by killing Tormod's Crypt, Nihil Spellbomb, etc, without them eating our graveyard in response.
The combos - there are multiple combos and multiple ways to achieve each combo, and I will explain them now. These are not 20-minute turn combos, this is not gitrog monster, they are swift, abrupt ends for your opponents.
The buried alive combo - Our commander can reanimate creatures from our yard. This is easily abusible with a classic Necrotic Ooze combo. At any point in time when we cast Buried Alive with four exp counters and meren, we win on our end step. When we cast Buried Alive, we want to put these creatures in our graveyard. Necrotic Ooze + Phyrexian Devourer + Triskelion
. This way we can reanimate ooze end step, use Phyrexian Devourer’s ability to exile our entire library, then use Triskelion's ability to remove all those counters from him to decimate every opponent. This is technically not infinite, but it works nearly every time, the only time this won’t work is when an opponent has gained infinite life. We have ways of dealing with that, however.
The persist combo - This is our hardest to set up combo, as our other two require only one card to begin - Protean Hulk or Buried Alive. This is a four card combo that needs the following: 1 Blood Artist/Zulaport Cutthroat/Falkenrath Noble, one persist creature, one sac outlet, either Bloodspore Thrinax, Mikaeus, the Unhallowed, or Melira, Sylvok Outcast. All of these are very easy to get with yisan and Birthing Pod, as you can in many different ways “curve out” with them. Being able to sac a creature to pod then reanimate it end step is ridiculous and makes pod better than yisan. This combo seems difficult, but it has slain just an many opponents as the Buried Alive combo.
The protean hulk combo - Protean Hulk is not just one combo, it can slap together any of our combos. The main procedure, however, is: sac hulk somehow, get either: body snatcher, Sylvan safekeeper, and viscera seer (if you have a creature in hand), then sac body snatcher to seer, get back hulk, sac hulk, get Mikaeus and Walking Ballista, win. Or; get Phyrexian Delver and Sylvan Safekeeper or Viscera Seer (safekeeper if u already have a sac outlet, seer if u don’t), then Mikaeus, the Unhallowed and Walking Ballista. You can also get Phyrexian Delver and Viscera Seer, then Body Snatcher and Blood Artist, then Melira, Sylvok Outcast, Rendclaw Trow, and any on one drop, preferably sylvan safekeeper.
Suggestions are welcome, I hope you enjoyed this deck tech! This is my first edh deck I've posted on tappedout, so tell me what you think of it, and if you liked it be sure to upvote.
