pie chart

Sek'Kuar, the Storyteller (EDH, MP, Group Hug)

Commander / EDH BRG (Jund) Casual Combo Group Hug Multiplayer Theme/Gimmick

ShasOBorkan

Edit Live Edit
Edit
Upvote 0
0
Deckcycle Feature Queue
Feature Queue
Playtest v1
Similar Deck Space Card Recommendations

Creature (33)

Land (36)

Enchantment (9)

Instant (4)

Commander (1)

Commander: Sek'Kuar, Deathkeeper

Artifact (12)

Sorcery (5)

Dragon Appeasement Art"The boar leads its rider to victory in battle, but it doesn't know how close it is to becoming the victory feast." - Boartusk Liege

Come now, creatures of the Gathering... Sek'Kuar want's to tell another one of his stories. Will it be of adoration or vengeance? Rebirth and growth? Or hatred and suffering?

Only time will tell, with the endless possibilities Sek'Kuar can bring around the table... hopefully fortune may have his tale favour you this time.

Try your luck a table of trouble... darkness and life, planning and unpredictability. Everyone will have so much... but yet, nobody will be able to contain the unraveling adventures this deck will pose for all then planeswalkers this side of the multiverse....

The Story

When I set out to build this deck, I set out to build something fun. Something creative. Something that breaks the mold of my deck-building orthodoxy I had gotten settled into. I wanted to build something that others would smile at when they saw it brought to the table - knowing everybody was about to have a blast, and a new story to tell...

There is something about Sek'Kuar, Deathkeeper that when I saw him I knew he could be a creative outlet. I saw murmurs about him being janky online, and I thought I could really make something special for my local meta and elevate our multiplayer experiences. The more I dove into the uncharted territory of the Jund colour combination, the more I realized there was a world of chaos, acceleration, recursion, and mania for me to explore.

I think that the featured art of this deck, that of Dragon Appeasement, really summarizes how I feel about the deck. I wanted to make something that everybody could enjoy the boon of the wild mana/draw acceleration, but yet would remain mysterious enough in its complex web of overlapping strategies. Whether it is win by combo, or win by brute aggro, or even possibly a ruthless burn, I've tried to make a deck where all players can enjoy that treacherous dancing with fate that we call Magic.

The Strategy

All good stories come in three equal parts. An intriguing beginning, a climactic middle, and a satisfying ending...

The general strategy of the deck is going to be to ramp into an early position play lots of cards drawn and leverage tokens to either pull off infinite combos, buff up swanky creatures like Scarland Thrinax, and just generally elevate the board state to chaotic levels where all sorts of moves can be made.

Tree of Redemption Art"Battered and beaten by years of salt and claw, he never ceased to walk, and to seed. Only now, in this time of rebirth, do his seeds take root." - Magus of the Vineyard

Clearly we have to have the cards in hand and mana in our tummies in order to cast out our many wild side plots and schemes. With this list I'm satisfied we will see enough of the ramp/draw power every game to keep us on a steady-enough pace to provide the novel journey our friends deserve.

One major feature of this deck, and why so many stories can be shared, is that we can accelerate to meaningful plays in quick, exciting, and fun-for-everyone ways with cards that provide additional land drops and help fill up our mana pool with the resources we already have.

Why will we need so much mana? Well, a good story is all about being unpredictable. The ramp and land acceleration in the deck is designed to bring out all the other components faster and with higher effect. Especially considering the amount of draw power we might be generating fairly quickly into the game, we will need all the mana we can get to push those cards out onto the battlefield.

Mana Ramp:

So what does our ramp look like? Our cheap, early ramp will come from the tales of a wise old man, emerge in a grim setting, or echo the sound of a beating drum...

Early Game/Cheap Ramp:

However, we will need some stronger, more consistent ramp. On this we will may rely on warm seasons, or perhaps our story will be dictated to us by the divine...

General Ramp:

It's important to bring Tangleroot, a tool which helps us take the mana edge off of playing our pool of characters who are along for our adventure.

Creature Mana Resources:

Not only do we have our friends tapping to help us under Cryptolith Rite, but we will have these less fortunate souls who can pay into our voyage. We can take advantage of our creatures as a mana resource by presenting them as sacrifices upon the altar, or as minions replacing our other martyrs.

Token Mana Gen:

Considering a lot of the bonuses popping up extra fellows will grant us, it makes sense to incorporate token sack mana generation as a way to bring out the strengths and versatility of the deck. Our unfortunate spawns can not only provide drove of mana for us, but they're more than capable of satisfying our other strategies as well.

Land Drops:

Of course, we want to explore even more settings in our story. Certainly we benefit from seeing them a lot more, and a lot quick. To this effect, we will incorporate the bizarre technology and recruit the chaotic allegiances in order to ensure we are seeing all the different land we want to adventure to in our story come onto the battlefield each turn.

Increased Land Drops:

With all the fuel we will accrue on our journey, we will need to ensure we have the card resources to spend it efficiently... Since our tales will see many characters and trinket recurring in the story, we care a lot less about discarding cards and more about making sure we have a bit of everything we may need.

First, we should pay special attention to our main stage group hug draw power engines:

The storyteller is like us, wanting to share memories of wisdom and in practice, sharing the knowledge of the library among all of us for a fun, shared-draw opportunity. The horn makes sure everybody is getting an additional double-dip into their library each turn. Rites of Flourishing does something very similar - buffing up each draw step. Fecundity just pushes it to the next level to make sure nobody is too upset about their comrades falling on the battlefield.

For more self-serving draw power, we will be leveraging the short-lived adventures of the not-so-heroic of our adventure by helping them help us with draw power. We will see lots of draw being generated from the passing of our friendly spawns and companions, and in this deck we should see that be more than efficient for our intents and purposes.

Draw on Sacrifice/Death:

All these options combine to give us serious draw power consistency... and all provide an answer to the draw inhibiting factor of Dragon Appeasement to ensure we rarely miss any opportunities to draw - if any at all.

After all, our cards will be to our story what sentences are to others... each one adding on to the tale.

Now, our deck would be nothing if it weren't for all the many different characters along for our story. We rely on our pawns and martyrs for ever facet of the deck, and so we will need to be bringing new wanderers onto our shared path as often as we can. I have added some generation which will allow us to accrue a steady-state of new victims of our cruel narrative, as well as some more active and opportune generators to populate the field with mischievous fellows.

We already have mentioned these guys in our Mana section, but it bears mentioning they do provide use with tokens that can be used for general-purpose as well.

Eldrazi Mana-Tokens:

To avoid rehashing old discussion, we can instead begin to look at our options for the steady-state token generation. I went for only a couple of steady token-generating creatures, since they will merely compliment the main course for our token schemes. They we're still very appealing additions however, since they do add a significant benefit to the deck in their own respects.

Steady Token Generation:

I especially like Dragon Broodmother, as her token generating utility is evenly matched by her aggro pushing capabilities, further aiding the multiple lines our story could wander down...

Now, these next cards will be a rather useful boon, pushing out many additional tokens to join leagues with those our storyteller card:Sek'Kuar already introduces.

High Token Generation:

Now, the power of the first two is obvious and plentiful, but to explain the boon of Sprouting Thrinax: I think once we have our mana options on the field, recurring this voracious beast will be relatively low-cost and quick to bring out new sets of Saprolings.

Our token toolkit should be sufficient with these fellows in play, as we will be enjoying all sort of different subtypes and will have the mana and draw power to get to our important token generation sources early on.

Ghirapur Orrery Art"Volcanic ash-winds batter it, climbing vines overwhelm it, dragonfire roasts it, and yet it still stands as a testament to a forgotten world." - Obelisk of Jund

We really want to keep handy options to make sure our essential pieces, and our hugs for the whole table, stay on the battlefield and keep our epic journey flowing. For this reason, the utility options I've included can ensure we always have some answers in case any grumps on our path try to end our adventure's many shenanigans.

Spot Removal

Now, every story has a couple cliches... in any EDH deck having some useful removal to keep the board state is important. Remember, we want our whole table to come on journey, so we want to use these to keep the situation stable and fun for everybody. Removal for removal's sack is likely something to avoid, we don't want to stick out too aggressively while we establish our field.

Spot Removal:

Additionally, we will want to leverage some less common spot removal. Our story is all about the friends that come and go in our tale... and what better way to utilize this aspect of our adventure than to use the characters themselves?

Evoke Removal:

Evoke is an enormous boon to us here as not only do we enjoy the spot removal we may need, but also grants us the delicious sacrifice triggers our story is built off of.

Tutors & Scry

As our deck will face many different toils and troubles, we have included many many tools to suffer these travels. Yet, the tools for our journey meaning nothing if they do not show up in our story. For this reason we must utilize versatile tutors to make sure we are pulling the essential pieces of narrative.

General/Creature Tutors:

We will additionally require access to the correct land base for our story... and instead of perhaps weaker choices like Evolving Wilds or Blighted Woodland, I opted for creatures - granting us even more triggers.

Land Tutors:

Finally, we should pay some mind to the deeply useful sacrifice-outlet that is Viscera Seer. She will help us scry through our deck if we have none of these tutors handy - enabling us to keep getting through to the cards in our deck that matter to us the most.

Blood Crypt Art"Great art can never be created without great suffering." - Blood Artist

I went for a multi-faceted set of victory approaches, so that no victory feels the same and no member of at the table is left groaning about the same cheese strategy coming out of the deck again and again... This leaves our story open-ended each time and hopefully this makes us a kinder, if equally dangerous, wanderer to walk down each path on...

Janky Tricks for Victory

As some odds stories are wont to do, some of ours will enjoy the occasional victory from some majorly janky endings. Do not worry! These are by design!

I have elected for some unique cards that, although 'victory' strategies with them are impractical (but plausible), they just seemed too fun and interesting (and possibly worth some utility!) to exclude.

Life Swap Trees:

  • Tree of Perdition = The more obvious of the two, use it to mess with other players, or combine with your aggro to win!
  • Tree of Redemption + Magus of the Mirror = Similar, more janky, more fun effect like the one above. We give up the speed and consistency of the former tree for the utility of having the alternate effect of the latter tree... while also getting a sacrifice trigger.

Our adventure should have as many twists and turns as possible. Our heroes and characters should all share in an unpredictable and rewarding narrative, created precisely by these wonderfully tasty cards...

Brute Force Aggro

I did want to enable a brute aggro strategy for those odd adventures where there isn't much in our way to stop us. Our storyteller has thus been accompanied by a couple powerful creatures - however for a victory in the complex landscape of EDH, we rest on one big, beautiful beast to help us...

Main Aggro Brute:

We can really on this magnificent beast to be quite a vicious aggro force when needed. Of course we have some meaningful alternatives (such as the wonderful Dragon Broodmother), but they're sheer power simply wont be comparable.

Yet, we might find we do not need to bolster our beast much. For if he finds aid in other strong wild companions, or some of our more dangerous persist fellows, we might find they can become a burly force to see it through to a victory. We owe our thanks for this possibility to our trusty lieges...

Buffing Lieges:

The lieges are our passive helpers, granting a happy small but wide coat of strength. In most tales, they will act merely as protection... but on the occasional chaotic journey, they may help prove our adventuring beasts to be a fatal match for fellow travelers.

Infinite Combo

Infinite combos are our escape plan once our chaos has gone on for too long. Personally I prefer more interactive victory strategies, but the building blocks all work together so well in our story even before the combos go off. They help give some edge to the deck so that we don't group hug ourselves meaninglessly and aimlessly, which is not fun for anyone. Note: the combo below is not strictly useful for winning, but has a lot of utility value as well! All the better to expand the many paths our story can follow...

Our main combo is going to rest on Melira, Sylvok Outcast and our persist creatures: Murderous Redcap, and/or Scuzzback Marauders... Or using Cauldron of Souls to give persist to everybody!

Melira + Persist Combos:

Additionally, we can achieve more convoluted loops with more pieces in play. Specifically:

How it works: Tap your 1 drop creature with Cryptolith Rite for 1 Black mana, sacrifice it with Ashnod's Altar --> triggers gaining 1 life from Deathgreeter/Blood Artist and triggers spawning a Graveborn token. Tap the token for the 1 mana of the colour required to cast the 1 drop. Sacrifice it with Ashnod's again --> gain life again. This pays for the 2 life on Phyrexian Reclamation, you have the 1 Black mana from the first creature, 4 Colourless mana from Ashnod's sacrificing, and 1 of the colour you need to recast your 1-Drop from tapping the Graveborn. Reclaim the 1-Drop, recast it with the mana from the Graveborn. End result: identical board state, gained 3 Colourless mana and potentially caused 2 Life to be lost with Blood Artist.

Use this to generate more infinite mana, or more infinite draw with other pieces of the puzzle on the battlefield. Opportunities are endless!

The story and strategy above give me hope, optimism, and excitement for the stories and possibilities of this deck and the many way it can be played out. It's interaction which each other deck will be unique and a new experience entirely, and for that adventure I cannot wait to embark... even if I am to find it knows no end...

Dictate of Karametra Art"It harmonizes with the essence of its master." - Commander's Sphere

Alas, this has been our journey so far... we have sought to make a deck, nay, a story, which would challenge the gods of Magic themselves for the fun and revelry it may bring to your local meta. It would warm my hearts to see our lovely storyteller, wise and cruel Sek'Kuar, Deathkeeper, be more appreciated and be more feared at the tables of brick and mortar shops across all the greatest planes. That is all for now my friends, I hoped you enjoyed this story, and I hope it may spawn you new ones...

Thanks for viewing my deck, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I have! Suggestions are welcome - I'm open to hearing what ideas other have to make the deck even more wild and fun for everyone! I build for and play with friends, feel free to check out the other decks on my profile as well!

Suggestions

Updates Add

Image View Timeline
Card Odds v1 Draw hand
Add to folder Copy
Download / Export / Embed Code

Comments

Attention! Complete Comment Tutorial! This annoying message will go away once you do!

Become a supporter of TappedOut and hide ads for only $3/month!

Important! Formatting tips — Comment Tutorial — markdown syntax

Please login to comment

Top Ranked
  • Achieved #57 position overall 6 years ago
Date added 6 years
Last updated 6 years
Exclude colors WU
Legality

This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)

4 - 0 Mythic Rares

32 - 0 Rares

27 - 0 Uncommons

16 - 0 Commons
Cards 100
Avg. CMC 3.44
Tokens Dragon 1/1 RG, Eldrazi Scion 1/1 C, Eldrazi Spawn 0/1 C, Graveborn 3/1 BR, Insect 1/1 G, Morph 2/2 C, Saproling 1/1 G, Spirit 1/1 C, Worm 1/1 BG
Votes
Ignored suggestions
Shared with
Views