Hi, welcome to my deck tech. I will be doing a breakdown on my deck. DISCLAIMER: "I watched and read many other people deck tech before I eventually came up with this so it may not be that original."
You can only include 100cards in this format, I picked the ones that are more relevant to my synergy. I shall skip the explanation of lands, kill/removal spells, mana ramp and card draw in this deck as it pretty much straightforward.
Generally, a scarecrow tribal is the ideal way to combo off Reaper King nuking ability but because half of the scarecrows have a bad ability, shapeshifter changeling became a very good substitute. However, there will still be a weak creature board presence because 3/4 of the scarecrows and changeling have a weak body, they are just there for nuking purposes. So in order to make the game even and unpredictable for your opponent, I added 3 alternate winning methods.
1st (Method 1, Winning with white): The First method is winning through Felidar Sovereign. Since it's a white spell and Reaper King have all colours embedded into him, why not include that extra winning method.
2nd (Method 2, Winning with a Contract): The Second method is winning from Liliana's Contract. All changeling is all creature type in addition to its own type which means it can also be a demon as well when it's also a scarecrow. Have 4 changelings in play and pull out Liliana's Contract and you win at the beginning of your next upkeep because your control 4 different demons. Most of the time your opponent won't see that coming.
3rd (Method 3, Winning with Lands): Yes you heard me right, the third method is winning from Maze's End. A slow but funny way to win. Obviously, this move is so straightforward n obvious your opponent will start to destroy your guildgate lands when you have 8-9 of them out. But it's just pure funny to win like this so its a include since reaper king plays all 5 colours. Alternately, you can consider running Door to Nothingness if you have the mana to spare, creating so much politics on the board and this will be a funny way to remove someone from the game as well.
4th (Nuking your opponent until they pee in pants): Reaper King + Rite of Replication + Panharmonicon. Use Rite of Replication, kicked it on Reaper king to make 5 token copies of him. With the legendary rule applied, only the original Reaper King survive while the rest of its copies gets removed. However, the trigger ability of Reaper King will go into the stack giving you 25 times the chance to destroy target opponent permanent. Imagine having Panharmonicon trigger on the stack that means 25X2=50 nuking opportunity. If you want to add Doubling Season, you do the math for the stack trigger and pretty much you get the idea. However, if your opponent's board run out of stuff for you to nuke, you will have to start targetting yourself with the remaining triggers because you can't target an empty board. But of cause, we do not want to target ourselves so here is a solution. As all the triggers are put on the stack simultaneously, they will also resolve at the same time. So if you have 25 nuke trigger and your opponent only have 10 permanent on the board, just split the 25 triggers among the 10 permanent. Then after the declaration, all stacks will resolve at the same time and your extra triggers placed on the same target will fizzle off, thus you won't have remaining triggers and won't have to nuke your own permanent.
Since Reaper King's ability already allows us to destroy target permanent therefore for the removal spells, I did not put in boardwipes, just removal spell that performs exile, sacrificing and damages to dealt with things that are indestructible.
5th (Things that aged him nicely): Hedron Matrix / Ring of Xathrid / Journey to Eternity
/ Padeem, Consul of Innovation / Shell Skulkin / Trailblazer's Boots. The moment Reaper King enters the battlefield, it's most likely going to be taken out by your opponents, therefore we need to give him some form of protection to stay longer on the board. If he gets destroy by boardwipe, Ring of Xathrid allows us to regenerate him while Journey to Eternity
give him a second come back. Everyone deserves a second chance, even our ex. Padeem, Consul of Innovation give him hexproof and Shell Skulkin give him shroud which means his less likely to be target by exile unless your opponent plays a board exile that targets all.
If you have noticed, Reaper King cmc is 10 which makes Hedron Matrix so good to be placed on him to give him +10/+10. When your badboy becomes 16/16, swinging your opponent in the face is so great and Trailblazer's Boots comes in handy as in a commander game, your opponent will bound to run a nonbasic land, making Reaper King unblockable.
I am still testing this deck atm, so the list might change once I test play a few times. I am going for a budget build so the majority of the cards in this list cost $1.50 and below, only a few handfuls cost $4 and above, therefore those cards were picked. All suggestions are welcome, especially if you knew ways to give Reaper King Protection. If you knew of any cards that has the same ability as cards from my list but cost cheaper, let me know. Thanks for reading, Have a great week ahead.
Check out my other deck techs in my profile, I run:
- Olivia Voldaren EDH
- Grimgrin, Corpse-Born EDH
- Athreos, God of Passage EDH
- Atogatog EDH
