The Cycle of Toxicity - Hapatra EDH

Commander / EDH* BG (Golgari) Counters Multiplayer Primer Tokens

smashadams83

Creature (26)

• 1x Ammit Eternal
• 1x Archfiend of Ifnir
• 1x Carnifex Demon
• 1x Channeler Initiate
• 1x Craterhoof Behemoth
• 1x Devoted Druid
• 1x Eternal Witness
• 1x Fauna Shaman
• 1x Fiend Artisan
• 1x Generous Patron
• 1x Hooded Blightfang
• 1x Midnight Banshee
• 1x Necroskitter
• 1x Obelisk Spider
• 1x Ohran Frostfang
• 1x Poison-Tip Archer
• 1x Reclamation Sage
• 1x Sakura-Tribe Elder
• 1x Scavenging Ooze
• 1x Seshiro the Anointed
• 1x Soul Snuffers
• 1x Species Specialist
• 1x Ulvenwald Tracker
• 1x Wickerbough Elder
• 1x Yawgmoth, Thran Physician
• 1x Zulaport Cutthroat

Artifact (6)

• 1x Arcane Signet
• 1x Golgari Signet
• 1x Lightning Greaves
• 1x Skullclamp
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Sword of Feast and Famine

Land (35)

• 1x Barren Moor
• 1x Blooming Marsh
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Forbidden Orchard
• 9x Forest
• 1x Geier Reach Sanitarium
• 1x Llanowar Wastes
• 1x Nurturing Peatland
• 1x Oran-Rief, the Vastwood
• 1x Overgrown Tomb
• 1x Polluted Delta
• 1x Shizo, Death's Storehouse
• 9x Swamp
• 1x Tranquil Thicket
• 1x Twilight Mire
• 1x Undergrowth Stadium
• 1x Windswept Heath
• 1x Wooded Foothills
• 1x Woodland Cemetery

Enchantment (10)

• 1x Animate Dead
• 1x Beastmaster Ascension
• 1x Cryptolith Rite
• 1x Earthcraft
• 1x Evolutionary Leap
• 1x Growing Rites of Itlimoc  ^Flip
• 1x Nest of Scarabs
• 1x Survival of the Fittest
• 1x Tortured Existence
• 1x Wild Growth

Planeswalker (1)

• 1x Vraska, Golgari Queen

Commander (1)

Sorcery (11)

• 1x Black Sun's Zenith
• 1x Diabolic Intent
• 1x Dread Return
• 1x Driven / Despair
• 1x Eldritch Evolution
• 1x Finale of Devastation
• 1x Harvest Season
• 1x Pact of the Serpent
• 1x Primal Growth
• 1x Triumph of the Hordes
• 1x Victimize

Instant (10)

• 1x Abrupt Decay
• 1x Assassin's Trophy
• 1x Beast Within
• 1x Chord of Calling
• 1x Force of Vigor
• 1x Heroic Intervention
• 1x Nature's Claim
• 1x Noxious Revival
• 1x Sudden Spoiling
• 1x Veil of Summer

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Maybeboard

Creature (9)

• 1x Banewhip Punisher
• 1x Dusk Urchins
• 1x Grismold, the Dreadsower
• 1x Hornet Queen
• 1x Meren of Clan Nel Toth
• 1x Oakhame Adversary
• 1x Razaketh, the Foulblooded
• 1x Regal Force
• 1x Toski, Bearer of Secrets

Land (3)

• 1x Gaea's Cradle
• 1x Nesting Grounds
• 1x Westvale Abbey  ^Flip

Enchantment (9)

• 1x Attrition
• 1x Blowfly Infestation
• 1x Carpet of Flowers
• 1x Concordant Crossroads
• 1x Deathreap Ritual
• 1x Flourishing Defenses
• 1x Gift of Doom
• 1x Parallel Lives
• 1x Pattern of Rebirth

Artifact (6)

• 1x Idol of Oblivion
• 1x Relic Vial
• 1x Slate of Ancestry
• 1x Springleaf Drum
• 1x The Ozolith
• 1x Throne of the God-Pharaoh

Sorcery (6)

• 1x Dark Deal
• 1x Decree of Pain
• 1x Maelstrom Pulse
• 1x Natural Order
• 1x Nostalgic Dreams
• 1x Torment of Hailfire

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"If you fear poisons, it is because you are ignorant of them." - Hapatra, vizier of poisons

Why play this deck?

You might like Hapatra if:

•You like as a color combination.

•You like token, toolbox, and reanimation strategies.

•You enjoy creature based combos.

You might not like Hapatra if:

•you don’t like decks that heavily rely on their commander.

•Like Indiana Jones, you have a severe phobia of snakes (Ophidiophobia).

Overall Deck Strategy

Hapatra is typically built as a combo centric commander as she, herself, is a combo piece which enables many infinite combos. This particular deck build deviates from the combo construct and takes a more toolboxy approach to Hapatra. However, there are a few combos in the which will be identified later on.

Of the many games I’ve played with Hapatra, I learned that I normally won games that included the following:

1. Creating large amounts of tokens.

2. Casting spells that place mass -1/-1 counters (which usually nets us the large amounts of tokens).

3. Playing against opponents who play a good amount of creatures (other token decks are nice opponents for Hapatra) as the more targets out on the board, the more snakes we can produce.

This deck aims to produce a critical mass of tokens by spreading -1/-1 counters around the board and then winning with the following:

1. A big anthem effect such as Craterhoof Behemoth or Triumph of the Hordes and attack.

2. Good old Zulaport Cutthroat life drain. It’s not uncommon to have 20/30/40 snakes on the battlefield and if you untap with this many creatures, chances are you should win the game with zulaport on board. An opponent casting a board wipe would cause them massive damage and your board state will be able to win if left unchecked by one of the above noted win-cons.

3. Combo win con involving many different pieces which will be explained below.

One of the most important aspects of this particular deck build is Archfiend of Ifnir . The archfiend has a very powerful effect as it only places -1/-1 counters on our opponent’s creatures. This deck has a whole package included to tutor up the archfiend and abuse his ability with discard and cycling effects. You might think that inserting a package to abuse one card in our deck would be detrimental to its overall effectiveness, but this isn’t the case here. With a total of 8 cards, its important to note that each of these cards replace themselves when activated (as they either draw or tutor) so we are not losing card advantage by playing them. Let’s take a closer look at the “ifnir package”:

1. Cycling/Discard Tutors (2) - Survival of the Fittest & Fauna Shaman – These cards are powerful in their own right. Even without archfiend in the deck they would warrant a spot as they can tutor up utility creatures at instant speed. It’s important to note that they can find the archfiend if we need to get him into our hand and then, once he is on the battlefield, they allow us to abuse his ability and continually find us more creatures/fuel to trigger his ability.

2. Cycling lands (3) - Barren Moor , Slippery Karst , & Tranquil Thicket . These lands allow us to discard at instant speed to trigger the archfiend. They are also nice to dig into our deck late game if we need more draw power.

3. Other Discard Effects (2) – Slate of Ancestry & Grier Reach Sanitarium . The slate can draw us a ton of cards while simultaneously netting us multiple archfiend triggers if we have more than 1 card in hand. And if we draw so many cards that we need to discard down at the end of turn it could be a one sided board wipe for us. Sanitarium is a simple looting effect.

Yawgmoth, Thran Physician - for BB we can discard at instant speed AND proliferate !

Card Choice Discussion

Ramp

Carpet of Flowers - great if you have blue in your meta but not so great without it.

Channeler Initiate – produces snakes and ramps; perfect for our strategy. Once she is depleted of -1/-1 counters, she becomes a 3/4 body and more importantly, a sponge for more counters so we can produce more snakes and ramp further.

Devoted Druid – similar to channeler initiate, druid can ramp us and then untap by placing counters. Its significant to note that he can be used more than once a turn which is amazing value here. Unlike channeler, however, he can only produce green mana. Important to note that Druid goes infinite with hapatra on the battlefield and Ivy Lane Denizen .

Earthcraft – huge fan of this card; it can just be insane in any token deck giving huge amounts of ramp. Earthcraft’s ability can be activated by any untapped creature, regardless of whether it has summoning sickness or not. This is amazing value in this deck as its not uncommon to pump out more than 10 creatures in a single turn. Note that we want a decent amount of basic lands in this deck to abuse earthcraft. I’ve found that 12 seems to work well and also a few fetchlands to find them.

Cryptolith Rite – similar to Earthcraft but weaker/less explosive as your creatures cannot have summoning sickness to use this ability. Note that this can allow us to tap for any color mana whilst Earthcraft can only untap basic lands.

Gaea's Cradle - insane ramp here as our deck can explode with tokens.

Golgari Signet – simply to help color fix and ramp.

Growing Rites of Itlimoc   – auto include in a token deck as its easy to flip and provides a ton of value once it does.

Harvest Season – many think of this card as weak as its floor is pretty low, but the ceiling is really high. I have never cast it for less than x=2 and at that point, its still better than Kodama's Reach or Cultivate as harvest season places all lands onto the battlefield instead of a split between your hand/battlefield. Since we are running tap effects, ( Earthcraft , Cryptolith Rite , Chord of Calling ) we can tap our team and then cast harvest season to sometimes grab all the basic lands in our deck! Additionally, it’s easy to activate Harvest Season with deathtouch creatures as they are normally left unblocked for obvious reasons. With that being said, I feel that Harvest Season is an auto include with hapatra as it’s so easy to get lands into play with our snakes.

Sol Ring – no explanation needed, format staple

Tutors not listed above

Chord of Calling – Fantastic value in a token deck as we can sometimes cast it for free since we usually have a lot of creatures on the battlefield. Note that it also enables us to tap our creatures for a Throne of the God-Pharaoh win or to help buff up our x value for a Harvest Season . Great utility card for finding ETB creatures and gives us a toolbox approach.

Diabolic Intent - easy to sac a creature here and grab any card we need.

Natural Order – we have plenty of green tokens to sac and this card is great for finding craterhoof for a win, Hornet Queen for an instant boardstate, or Regal Force if we need draw power.

Razaketh, the Foulblooded - pure value with our snake tokens as sac fodder we can grab anything at instant speed.

Lands

Cycling Lands: see above section labeled “Overall Deck Strategy” for explanation as to why these are included.

Forbidden Orchard – fantastic card in this deck as we want our opponents to have creatures so we can turn them into snakes. Oftentimes we play Hapatra on turn 2, attack on turn 3, but there isn’t any other creatures on the board. This either forces us to place a -1/-1 counter on Hapatra (which we really don’t want to do) or we have to choose not to place a counter, thus we don’t get a snake token. This land fixes that problem by giving us targets for our -1/-1 counters. Remember we don’t really care much about opposing creatures, as ours normally have deathtouch.

Ifnir Deadlands – extra token production, comes in untapped and can also produce . note that there are a few other deserts in the deck if we really need some counters.

Oran-Rief, the Vastwood - pumps our green tokens so they won’t be so fragile to Black suns zenith type effects.

Shizo, Death's Storehouse - helps Hapatra get damage through this comes in handy so often.

Volrath's Stronghold - recursion utility is always welcome, especially when we are dumping creatures into the graveyard with our discard effects.

Westvale Abbey   – easy to flip with all our tokens and becomes a token producer if we have nothing else going on.

Yavimaya Hollow – protection mostly for Hapatra or the archfiend but a strong effect to save our creatures, this card should be included in any green deck.

The other lands in the deck are self explanatory. fetches and duals to fix our land base. Note that we have 12 basics to allow Earthcraft and Harvest Season to be worthwhile.

Creatures

Other Spells

Combos

1. Devoted Druid + Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons + Ivy Lane Denizen generates infinite green mana and infinite snakes. This combo also works with Flourishing Defenses as a replacement for hapatra. Nest of Scarabs does NOT work as a replacement for Hapatra since nest makes black tokens.

2. Blowfly Infestation + Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons and 2 creatures with 1 toughness (usually 2 snake tokens). This combo will produce:

1. infinite tokens.

2. infinite counter placement.

3. infinite death triggers.

Nest of Scarabs or Flourishing Defenses can both replace hapatra in this combo. Note that we also want Zulaport Cutthroat or Obelisk Spider in play as this will create infinite life loss for our opponents as well as infinite lifegain for us.

3. Archfiend of Ifnir + Generous Patron - this combo involves a loop if we move to our endstep/cleanup step with 8+ cards in our hand. Here’s how it works:

1. We are forced to discard down to 7 cards in hand.

2. Archfiend will trigger since we discarded putting a counter on each creature our opponent’s control.

3. Generous Patron will trigger since we placed counters on opponents’ creatures drawing us more cards.

Repeat since we have to discard down to 7 cards again. This loop repeats until all our opponents’ creatures are dead.

This sequence will:

1. Be a one sided wipe.

2. Net us a ton of tokens if we have hapatra/flourishing defenses/or nest of scarabs on board.

3. Draw us a ton of cards so we can sculpt our hand to potentially put us in a position to win the next turn.

Be careful with this as if your opponents have creatures with high toughness we could end up decking ourselves.

4. Necrotic Ooze - this creature is a great combo piece and with all the utility creatures that have activated abilities in our deck, it can provide us with a combo win con if needed. The main combo involves: Channeler Initiate + Devoted Druid in the graveyard and Necrotic Ooze on the battlefield. This allows us to gain infinite mana and infinite -1/-1 counter placement since ooze will have both Druid and Initiate’s abilities. With hapatra/nest of scarabs/flourishing defense on the board when we have this combo, it will yield infinite tokens. And conversely with Obelisk Spider on board we will achieve infinite lifedrain. Survival of the Fittest is a great engine to a. Find the pieces of this combo and b. Dump the appropriate pieces into the graveyard. Another nice aspect of this combo is that both Devoted Druid and Channeler Initiate are easy to get into the graveyard from the battlefield if needed and they also serve as ramp in addition to being combo pieces. Druid can essenstially kill himself with his own ability and Initiate becomes a 0/1 creature when she is cast if you choose to place the counters on her with her ETB ability.

Additionally, here is a list of all the creatures with activated abilities currently in the deck: Carnifex Demon , Channeler Initiate , Devoted Druid , Fauna Shaman , Razaketh, the Foulblooded , Scavenging Ooze , Wickerbough Elder , Ulvenwald Tracker , and Yawgmoth, Thran Physician .

5. Nest of Scarabs + Yawgmoth, Thran Physician and any one creature to sacrifice : This is a great combo which is similar to the archfiend+generous patron combo above as it will kill all opponents creatures and potentially draw cards equal to their toughness if you want.

Sacrifice any creature to put a -1 counter on any opponents creature. Now, the nest of scarabs will trigger and create a 1/1 insect token. We can sacrifice that token to draw a card and put another -1 counter on an opponents creature. You can repeat this until you have enough cards in your hand, run out of life to use, or your opponents run out of creatures. Add Zulaport Cutthroat to offset the life loss and add hapatra to go infinite.

Weaknesses:

This deck struggles with boardwipes and flying creatures. It also has a difficult time without Hapatra on board. We really need her or our “backup commanders”, in Nest of Scarabs and Flourishing Defenses , to get the tokens rolling and increase our chances of winning.

Kill on site cards: elesh norn, Illness in the Ranks , Plague Spitter and similar effects are terrible for us.

Deck stats:

Ramp - 10

Tutors - 7

Draw - 11

Removal - 11

Recursion - 6

Shoutout to noshadowkick for collaborative efforts in refining this list.

Top Ranked	Achieved #53 position overall 6 years ago Achieved #34 position in Commander / EDH 5 years ago Achieved #6 position in Commander / EDH Primer 5 years ago
Date added	6 years
Last updated	3 years
Key combos	Channeler Initiate + Devoted Druid Devoted Druid + Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons + Ivy Lane Denizen Blowfly Infestation + Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons Archfiend of Ifnir + Generous Patron Nest of Scarabs + Yawgmoth, Thran Physician
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	6 - 0 Mythic Rares 47 - 0 Rares 18 - 0 Uncommons 11 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.77
Tokens	Beast 3/3 G, Emblem Vraska, Golgari Queen, Insect 1/1 B, Snake 1/1 G, Snake 1/1 G w/ Deathtouch, Spirit 1/1 C
Folders	Commander Decks, decks i wanna build, Commander, to consider, z. EDH: Hapatra, other peoples decks, Hapatra, Hapatra Help, decks for inspiration, Primers only