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Symphony of the Knight [[Primer]]

Commander / EDH* Combo Competitive Infinite Combo Multiplayer RBW (Mardu)

Iraruel

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Commander: foil Edgar Markov

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OUTDATED NEW DECKLIST HERE

As the Count leaned over me and his hands touched me... a horrible feeling of nausea came over me, which, do what I would, I could not conceal.

Under maintenance

Welcome to the halls of Markov, all demons, confidants, clerics and cat folk alike are welcome to be housed with our walls. As long as all contribute, all are loyal, and all are ready to give their life for the brood, you are accepted as our valued pawns… Cough Cough clansmen… Are you willing to join the brood? If you are you’re now invite you to delve into our nausea, allow yourself to be consumed by a deep, deep Ad Nausea...

Any dream is a robust harvest. Still, I prefer the timeworn dreams, heavy with import, that haunt the obsessive mind.

The vampire overlord, to which his servants are eternally loyal and grandfather of Sorin Markov, Edgar Markov is truly a marvel of his time. The construction of the brood’s hierarchy exploits Markov’s dominance over his clansmen, easily displaying why it is said to be a rule with an iron fist. After an anonymous survey was taken of the clansmen, only 6 being executed for their valued responses, found the manor’s view towards the deck were indeed most interesting:

Pros:

  • Fast combo lines
  • High amount of on-board interaction
  • Large amount of combo lines
  • Layered combo
  • Grave and grave independent lines of winning
  • Very involved combo
  • Low to the ground
  • If all else fails you can rally the broad to murder your opponents…

Cons:

  • Mainly Grave dependent
  • Low to the ground
  • Very involved combo deck
  • Low amount of stack interaction
  • weaker initiates are inhabitants…

Very interesting findings indeed… there were several questions posed to the occupants and ideal responses were gathered thus here are some of the questions and their responses from the responders:

Why would you play Edgar Markov as a commander?

The Edgar Markov card has various text and abilities like first strike, haste and the most relevant ability Eminence. Edgar Markov’s eminence ability is a triggered ability which creates a 1/1 black vampire whenever we cast another vampire creature. This effect has historically has been abused in 1v1 commander formats to bring Edgar Markov up as a aggro-deck leading to his eventual ban in 1v1 commander as “so much of the power is tied in specifically to the eminence ability” (Wizards Apr 16th, 2018). With that noted ill leave a disclaimer, this deck is built for multiplayer CEDH (competitive commander) and with that aggro-decks can’t consistently deal 120 damage to a table, thus we use the ability in a different way. In this build of the deck we still play a selection of vampire beaters which are complimented by Tymna the Weaver but they are mostly used as fodder for spells such as Diabolic Intent or Culling the Weak. Notably this means we needed to find a different way to win the game, a faster and more efficient way, hence this is why this build runs several combos. Now the question is, ‘Ok, so you run combos but how does Edgar fit into all of this?’ Glad you asked ;) as stated before Edgar Markov’s eminence ability creates a 1/1 black vampire token whenever we cast a vampire creature spell, we can use this in addition to cards which require sacrifice as a cost to make those cards more accessible with the decks main payoff being Razaketh, the Foulblooded.

What does this deck do?

This deck abuses the synergies between Razaketh, the Foulblooded and Edgar Markov's eminence ability alongside a set of cheap vampires to create a chain of Razaketh, the Foulblooded tutors, as we net one creature every vampire cast. We use these additional tutors to find Net Postive Mana Generators (aka. Fastmana) such as our mana rocks, which are artifacts such as Mox Diamond and Mana Crypt, or rituals such as Dark Ritual or Lion's Eye Diamond. This allows us to eventually combo off with a combination of Blood Artist effects and either a Leonin Relic-Warder and an Animate Dead effect, or Oathsworn Vampire and Phyrexian Altar (With Edgar in either the commander zone or field under your control), the Oathsworn Vampire loop is only net neutral on mana but allows us to get infinite death triggers from the Blood Artist and enturn infinite life drain.

What are some of the similar philosophies and how do they differ from your lords?

The playstyle of this deck is a throwback to that of Clay_Puppington's Grenzo ft. DJ Doomsday | Competitive Primer or the more recent Mad Farm list by RiverMayCry, but with the addition of Razaketh, the Foulblooded it moreso resembles marsthesoos's Buried Alive Sidisi list, in which incorporating the two gameplans of Razaketh, the Foulblooded and Ad Nauseam allow for a more diverse and both independent and synergistic lines of play. But it should be noted that Grenzo ft. DJ Doomsday | Competitive Primer and Buried Alive Sidisi, are both decks viable in their own respects pulling advantages of their own unique playstyles. Some advantages of Edgar Markov is the broader colour identity, which gives us access to a array of removal for artifacts, enchantments and also access to cards sweepers like Rolling Earthquake, which is a slimmer than card like Toxic Deluge and doubles as a finisher, and Fire Covenant, which can be cast at instant speed. The additions of these along with like these also allow the deck to be slimmer and more interactive, seen in the difference of 0.14 (or 0.15 if you don’t include commanders) in average cmc which means we have a higher chance of seeing more cards off Ad Nauseam than Sidisi, Undead Vizier. With more recent changes to the list the inclusion of cards such as Dark Confidant and Tymna the Weaver gives us more card advantage engines and resilience, that make up for the loss of a Demonic Tutor in the command zone.

Great art can never be created without great suffering

After reanimating Razaketh, the Foulblooded you need to have at least 1 other creature and a red, black or white mana floating to begin chaining, or 2 creatures (which you can skip next line). If beginning with 1 creature and 1 mana floating, use your 1 creature to tutor and find a 1 drop vampire of the required colour such as Shadow Alley Denizen and cast it, Edgar triggers creating a 1/1 black vampire, so you are left with 2 creatures that you can sacrifice. With the first of these tutor and cast Lion's Eye Diamond. Then tutor again, but in response to the activation use Lion's Eye Diamond to float .

With the tutor search for a vampire that costs (such as Viscera Seer) and cast it netting 2 creatures. Use one of the tutors to search up more mana (such as Dark Ritual) and then keep looping vampires for more tutors, eventually filtering out enough coloured mana to cast either of you winning loops which can be found in the combo section.

Utility Notes:

If you are running low on life you can tutor Children of Korlis, which you can activate to regain the life lost from your Razaketh, the Foulblooded tutors / Ad Nauseam.

If you are able to, generate a surplus of mana and answers so you can strip or hold up answers for grave hate such as Faerie Macabre and hold up interaction for counters or removal, such as Force of Will or Abrupt Decay.

Answers include:

Example lines:

  • Sacrifice one creature tutor, play and activate Lion's Eye Diamond for .
  • Sacrifice one creature tutor and cast a cost vampire for example Vampire Cutthroat.
  • Edgar triggers on cast creating a 1/1 black vampire token creature.
  • Sacrifice a creature to tutor and cast another a cost vampire for example Viscera Seer.
  • Edgar triggers on cast creating a 1/1 black vampire token creature.
  • Sacrifice both your cost vampires to tutor, play and sacrifice the following creatures one after the other Memnite, Kobolds of Kher Keep, Crookshank Kobolds and Crimson Kobolds and then finally with the 1st of your tutors find and cast Songs of the Damned (making sure all creatures non-token creatures that were tutored, excluding Razaketh, the Foulblooded, are in the graveyard.) and then use the 2nd tutor to find Blood Artist.
  • Cast Blood Artist using the mana off Songs of the Damned.
  • Edgar triggers on cast creating a 1/1 black vampire token creature.
  • Sacrifice a 1/1 black vampire token creature, triggering Blood Artist drain an opponent, and this is where you can pick the combo you wish to use:

Leonin Relic-Warder:

Oathsworn Vampire:

  • Using your tutor and cast Oathsworn Vampire.
  • Edgar triggers on cast creating a 1/1 black vampire token creature.
  • Sacrifice Oathsworn Vampire to tutor and cast Culling the Weak sacrificing a 1/1 black vampire token creature.
  • Recast Oathsworn Vampire from your graveyard.
  • Edgar triggers on cast creating a 1/1 black vampire token creature.
  • Sacrifice a creature, tutor and cast Phyrexian Altar.
  • Sacrifice both non-blood artist creatures to Phyrexian Altar, making .
  • Recast Oathsworn Vampire from your graveyard.
  • Edgar triggers on cast creating a 1/1 black vampire token creature.
  • Loop.

Leonin Relic-warder

By using a combination of Leonin Relic-Warder and an Animate Dead-esque enchantment (includes Dance of the Dead and Necromancy) we can create a infinite death loop of Leonin Relic-Warder.

To begin this combo have Leonin Relic-Warder in your graveyard, achieved in various ways such as Pull from Eternity, Entomb and discard effects such as Cabal Therapy, and then cast your Animate Dead-esque enchantment targeting Leonin Relic-Warder, this will recur Leonin Relic-Warder to the battlefield. Once Leonin Relic-Warder enters the battlefield it puts a trigger onto the stack:

”When Leonin Relic-Warder enters the battlefield, you may exile target artifact or enchantment.”

Resolve this trigger targeting your Animate Dead-esque enchantment moving it to exile, this enturn adds another trigger to the stack as your Animate Dead-esque enchantment has left the battlefield:

”When Animate Dead leaves the battlefield, that creature's controller sacrifices it.”

Sacrifice trigger resolves sacrificing Leonin Relic-Warder triggering another ability to add to the stack:

”When Leonin Relic-Warder leaves the battlefield, return the exiled card to the battlefield under its owner's control.”

Now we return our Animate Dead-esque enchantment to the battlefield… and that’s a loop boys wrap it up… wait, so how do we win off it? Welp there’s a few ways…

Blood Artist and Zulaport Cutthroat:

Basic stack Order

There are several ways to stop and restart the loop to bring in a win condition such as Blood Artist or Zulaport Cutthroat to make the loop lethal:

Stack: (Mid-loop)

Once enough tutors are put onto the stack you then proceed to stop the Leonin Relic-Warder loop, by targeting something else other than Animate Dead or Leonin Relic-Warder, so the tutors that were put on the stack can resolve finding a combination of:

The use of Pull from Eternity or Entomb is to move your Blood Artist or Zulaport Cutthroat from library or exile into your graveyard to use Reanimate, Dance of the Dead, Animate Dead or Necromancy to bring it to field and then restart the Leonin Relic-Warder loop again by either:

Tutoring for Phyrexian Altar and another Animate Dead effect allows you to restart the combo and generate infinite mana as the stack can be as follows:

Stack: (Mid-loop)

Then once enough tutorss are put into the stack you then proceed to stop the Leonin Relic-Warder loop, by targeting something else other than Animate Dead or Leonin Relic-Warder, so the tutors that were put on the stack can resolve finding a combination of:

Then start the combo again and stack the following:

Then stop the combo again to tutor for one or both of the following in addition to interaction:

Then Proceed to cast Rolling Earthquake for a near infinite amount of mana (but not all your mana) to kill your opponents. Alternatively you can cast Praetor's Grasp to take someone else’s mana outlet and kill your opponents with them being last.

Leonin Relic-Warder combo allows us to be more slot efficient due to the redundancy of the Animate Dead portion of the combo (and arguably the Blood Artist portion) as they assist in various Razaketh, the Foulblooded lines. Another redundancy present in Razaketh, the Foulblooded lines is that with cards such as Entomb, Pull from Eternity and Reanimate, as they give us options and lines of play which would be extremely clunky otherwise. Another pull towards the Leonin Relic-Warder combo is the ability to play through Yawgmoth's Will as we can assemble to combo on board with Animate Dead exiled under Leonin Relic-Warder alongside a sac outlet, such as Phyrexian Altar or Viscera Seer, and a Blood Artist effect to initate the combo on the next untap step.

By using a combination of Oathsworn Vampire and Blood Artist and a sacrifice outlet, such as Viscera Seer, we can replay Oathsworn Vampire from our graveyard a number of times bond by our mana and each time Oathsworn Vampire or it’s accompanying token are sacrificed you can drain an opponent with Blood Artist’s ability.

As this loop is bound by the amount of mana we can funnel into Oathsworn Vampire casts as each iteration needs . To get around this cost we can use either of 2 cards, those being Carnival of Souls or Phyrexian Altar.

The benefit using Phyrexian Altar in this loop is that you don’t need an additional sacrifice outlet such as Viscera Seer as the Altar acts as one, and also corner cases such as being able to gain an infinite amount of life if an opponent casts a card such as Angel's Grace. Carnival of Souls does not have these upsides as all the life gained from the Blood Artist triggers sustains the life loss from Carnival.

In addition to this if we’re missing our Blood Artist effect but have access to a Skullclamp and additional mana we can attach Skullclamp to our Oathsworn Vampire and turn it into a 1 mana draw 2 cards for each loop. This way we can chain rituals/ other creatures till we acquire our Blood Artist effect, be it through natural draw or tutoring it along the chain.

We can do the same as the above Skullclamp chain but in this version we have to manage our life total and get to keep our vampire (unless you want a free scry each loop off of Viscera Seer which I would recommend) that means you can have a scry before and after your draw 2 which sees 4 cards rather than just 2 with the Phyrexian Altar chain.

The Idea of ‘Manual Storm’ can be quite misleading, instead we can look at it as what we can do under Yawgmoth's Will, in particular after a large Ad Nauseam or an Angel's Grace Ad Nauseam. We usually have a large amount of mana we can generate post Ad Nauseam, either from fast mana like Mana Crypt or rituals like Dark Ritual, but we also have another tool in our possession, that is the ability to use Carnival of Souls and Phyrexian Altar in conjunction to turn our creatures into rituals e.g. A 1 mana vampires turns into 4 mana ritual. This is usually strenuous on your life total and is recommended after a Angel's Grace or an activation of Children of Korlis to make sure you don’t die to Carnival of Souls. Once we have this mana there are two pathways we can take:

Whilst Praetor's Grasp is an Extremely powerful card it is highly meta dependent, as such there are multiple ways to win with this card and some targets we can find to name a few are:

By using the above cards we can either: lead into a win condition such as our own Rolling Earthquake, or, use their wincon against them. But with this line to victory we have to be careful, as if the player has the card in a zone other than their library we can’t take it with Praetor's Grasp.

Aetherflux Reservoir: Using this we are able to gain back life to eventually kill our opponent’s with Reservoir, one trick to note is that playing a spell or using an ability that deals damage to you sets your life to 1 from the Angel's Grace. This can be used to mitigate the negative life loss of the Ad Nauseam reducing the amount of triggers needed from Reservoir.

Paradox Engine/Skirge Familiar: Using cards like these allows us to build up mana for outlets such as Rolling Earthquake, this is done by playing your rocks with engine, and discarding cards with familiar, you need to reach 41 mana to kill with Rolling Earthquake if everyone is on 40 life, so thus you need to be able to generate mana equal to the highest life total of opponents + , whilst sometimes factoring in cards like Nature's Claim which could put them out of range.

Laboratory Maniac/Sickening Dreams/Rolling Earthquake/Thousand-Year Storm: These cards are also win conditions or enable win conditions, such as Laboratory Maniac winning the game after you draw a card, note that Skullclamp does NOT work under Yawgmoth's Will, or Sickening Dreams which are both usable if you don’t have enough mana or access to Rolling Earthquake or you can just take theirs. On the other hand Thousand-Year Storm is used to reduce the mana requirements for the amount you need to Rolling Earthquake for, and yes in accordance with the Gatherer for Thousand-Year Storm: ”If the spell that’s copied has an X whose value was determined as it was cast, the copies will have the same value of X.”

Method 2 was talked about above and that is using rituals (including creatures) to build up enough mana to Rolling Earthquake for lethal, remembering that we have Angel's Grace at this point so our life total will be set to 1.

Initial cost to set up creature rituals:

Usually acquired from:

And followed up by a 0 drop creature e.g. Memnite to generate mana to use with your vampires. The total amount of mana the deck can generate under Yawgmoth's Will with creatures is 45 coloured mana, with artifacts is 13, with instants 10 + Rain of Filth + Songs of the Damned, totally at approximately ~68 mana over which 1/2 is coloured and are excluding lands, with the cost of the creature ritual set up not factored (aka. - from total).

Soon to come.

Too spicey for the build and not effective enough, was a testing thing at one stage and cannot recommend it after that. But heres the doomsday piles of the deck...

Insolent Neonate

Line requires: | Insolent Neonate | 4 card in hand | 1 creature

Crack pile with Insolent Neonate ():

  1. Draw Faithless Looting

  2. Play Faithless Looting ()

  3. Draw Infernal Plunge and Leonin Relic-Warder

  4. Cast Infernal Plunge sacrificing the token from Insolent Neonate

  5. Flash back Faithless Looting()

  6. Draw Blood Artist and Animate Dead or Dance of the Dead

  7. Discard Leonin Relic-Warder and another card to Faithless Looting

  8. Cast Blood Artist then Animate Dead or Dance of the Dead targeting Leonin ()

  9. Loop

Faithless Looting

Line requires: | Faithless Looting | 3 card in hand | 1 creature

Crack pile with Faithless Looting ():

  1. Draw Cathartic Reunion and Leonin Relic-Warder, discarding Leonin Relic-Warder and another card to Faithless Looting

  2. Play Cathartic Reunion discarding 2 cards ()

  3. Draw Culling the Weak, Blood Artist and Animate Dead or Dance of the Dead

  4. Cast Culling the Weak sacrificing a creature ()

  5. Cast Blood Artist then Animate Dead or Dance of the Dead targeting Leonin

  6. Loop

Line requires: | Skullclamp | 1 card in hand | 1 creature

Crack pile with Skullclamp and one creature (1):

  1. Drawing Lion's Eye Diamond and Insolent Neonate

  2. Play Lion's Eye Diamond and Insolent Neonate {Edgar trigger} ()

  3. Activate Insolent Neonate pitching a card in hand

  4. Drawing Leonin Relic-Warder

  5. Then activate Lion's Eye Diamond for

  6. Use Skullclamp on creature

  7. Drawing Animate Dead or Dance of the Dead and Blood Artist

  8. Cast Blood Artist {Edgar Trigger}

  9. Then play Animate Dead or Dance of the Dead targeting Leonin Relic-Warder

  10. Loop

Line requires: | Razaketh, the Foulblooded on field | 3 tutors | 8 life

With Razaketh, the Foulblooded Search for and cast Doomsday

Crack pile with Razaketh, the Foulblooded Searching for Blood Artist:

  1. Cast Blood Artist {Edgar Trigger} () (4 life)

  2. Activate Razaketh, the Foulblooded, Searching for Lion's Eye Diamond () (5 life)

  3. Cast Lion's Eye Diamond and then activate it floating

  4. Activate Razaketh, the Foulblooded, Searching for Black 1 drop vampire () (6 life)

  5. Cast the drop vampire {Edgar Trigger}

  6. Activate Twice Razaketh, the Foulblooded, Searching for Pull from Eternity and Animate Dead or Dance of the Dead

  7. Cast Pull from Eternity binning Leonin Relic-Warder

  8. Cast Animate Dead or Dance of the Dead targeting Leonin Relic-Warder

  9. Loop

Tymna the Weaver Piles could be possible aswell...

Support and roasts for the deck has been plentiful from the CEDH discord, and the countless hours that people have put up with me playtesting the deck. So thank you.

As well as the contributions made in the early days of the deck by Gwent and mentor6 back in 2017 which allowed and push me towards the current shell.

Various decks have inspired this one to list a few:

Mardu discord still getting started up Here.

Suggestions

Updates Add

New releases update and considerations: — Aug. 31, 2019
Edit

Haven't been playtesting as of recent but been keeping up with card releases, these are my current recommendations and this update is relatively solid compared to the last testing update. With the new card updates we've managed to get an amazing ritual rivaling that of Songs of the Damned, a straight mana rock update, and finally another silence effect with added utility.

Addition of:

Removal of:

These are untested changes just going off feel and logic at this point, Dockside Extortionist seems like a clear include as it is one of the most powerful rituals in the format, as well as being able to act as Songs of the Damned in many cases which can require less life than those lines relying on creature chaining for Songs.

Arcane Signet does everything that Talisman of Hierarchy can do for this deck but better, as we don’t require the colourless source we just acquire a more powerful mana rock.

Mandate of Peace can stop several combos such as Najeela, the Blade-Blossom or combat based Splinter Twin, as well as acting as a second silence effect. Even more fringe scenarios such as opponents using Vampiric Tutor and attempting to draw with Tymna the Weaver *f-etch* we can disable for a turn.

Anje's Ravager: might also see some testing, but being 3 cmc might be a deal breaker.

Cruel Celebrant: With the addition of Dockside Extortionist it may be a reasonable consideration for the deck since lines involving Extortionist can generate the white mana required to cast Celebrant.

Testing changes from most recent sets: — June 25, 2019
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Change before the primer — Jan. 29, 2019
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Testing rounds: [[card:Doomsday]] — Nov. 2, 2017
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Added/Removed — Oct. 28, 2017
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Added/Removed — Oct. 15, 2017
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Casual

91% Competitive

Top Ranked
Date added 7 years
Last updated 3 years
Legality

This deck is not Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)

14 - 0 Mythic Rares

47 - 0 Rares

23 - 0 Uncommons

14 - 0 Commons
Cards 100
Avg. CMC 1.59
Tokens Spirit 1/1 C, Treasure, Vampire 1/1 B
Folders EDH, Commander 2017 CEDH Brews, Things I like, Cool Lists, cEDH decks to review., Competitive, EDH Mardu (RBW), cEDH, The New Hotness, reference
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Ma dude it's Vampenation the rise of Keith
Iraruel EDH
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