The Ice King's Castle

Commander / EDH BG (Golgari) Control Discard Elves Rock Stax

dsgrave

Land (32)

• 1x Agadeem, the Undercrypt  ^Flip
• 1x Ancient Tomb
• 1x Bloodstained Mire
• 1x Blooming Marsh
• 1x Bojuka Bog
• 1x Cabal Coffers
• 1x Castle Locthwain
• 1x Cavern of Souls
• 1x Command Tower
• 1x Dryad Arbor
• 2x Forest
• 1x Gilt-Leaf Palace
• 1x Golgari Rot Farm
• 1x Llanowar Wastes
• 1x Nurturing Peatland
• 1x Overgrown Tomb
• 1x Pendelhaven
• 1x Phyrexian Tower
• 1x Snow-Covered Forest
• 1x Snow-Covered Swamp
• 2x Swamp
• 1x Swamp
• 1x Tainted Wood
• 1x Twilight Mire
• 1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• 1x Verdant Catacombs
• 1x Wasteland
• 1x Windswept Heath
• 1x Wooded Foothills
• 1x Woodland Cemetery

Instant (10)

• 1x Abrupt Decay
• 1x Assassin's Trophy
• 1x Chord of Calling
• 1x Crop Rotation
• 1x Dismember
• 1x Nature's Claim
• 1x Noxious Revival
• 1x Vampiric Tutor
• 1x Veil of Summer
• 1x Worldly Tutor

Creature (19)

• 1x Arbor Elf
• 1x Birds of Paradise
• 1x Boreal Druid
• 1x Collector Ouphe
• 1x Craterhoof Behemoth
• 1x Dark Confidant
• 1x Deathrite Shaman
• 1x Elves of Deep Shadow
• 1x Elvish Mystic
• 1x Eternal Witness
• 1x Fyndhorn Elves
• 1x Llanowar Elves
• 1x Mindblade Render
• 1x Priest of Titania
• 1x Rankle, Master of Pranks
• 1x Ravenous Slime
• 1x Sadistic Hypnotist
• 1x Scavenging Ooze
• 1x Tinybones, Trinket Thief

Artifact (12)

• 1x Ensnaring Bridge
• 1x Everflowing Chalice
• 1x Golgari Signet
• 1x Mana Vault
• 1x Skullclamp
• 1x Sol Ring
• 1x Sphere of Resistance
• 1x Talisman of Resilience
• 1x Tangle Wire
• 1x Thorn of Amethyst
• 1x Torpor Orb
• 1x Winter Orb

Planeswalker (3)

• 1x Garruk Wildspeaker
• 1x Karn, the Great Creator
• 1x Liliana of the Veil

Commander (1)

Enchantment (12)

• 1x Bitterblossom
• 1x Carpet of Flowers
• 1x Contamination
• 1x Dark Tutelage
• 1x Earthcraft
• 1x Growing Rites of Itlimoc  ^Flip
• 1x Necrogen Mists
• 1x Necropotence
• 1x No Mercy
• 1x Squirrel Nest
• 1x Sylvan Library
• 1x Waste Not

Sorcery (11)

• 1x Death Cloud
• 1x Demonic Tutor
• 1x Diabolic Intent
• 1x Finale of Devastation
• 1x Green Sun's Zenith
• 1x Grim Tutor
• 1x Maelstrom Pulse
• 1x Nature's Lore
• 1x Torment of Hailfire
• 1x Toxic Deluge
• 1x Traverse the Ulvenwald

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Sideboard

Enchantment (1)

• 1x Choke

Artifact (1)

• 1x Static Orb

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Maybeboard

Creature (9)

• 1x Big Game Hunter
• 1x Elvish Archdruid
• 1x Ezuri, Renegade Leader
• 1x Manglehorn
• 1x Merciless Executioner
• 1x Reclamation Sage
• 1x Runic Armasaur
• 1x Tarmogoyf
• 1x Wall of Roots

Artifact (4)

• 1x Geth's Grimoire
• 1x Mind Stone
• 1x Pithing Needle
• 1x Possessed Portal

Instant (3)

• 1x Beast Within
• 1x Krosan Grip
• 1x Snuff Out

Land (1)

• 1x Swamp

Enchantment (3)

• 1x Bottomless Pit
• 1x Mind Slash
• 1x Pernicious Deed

Sorcery (3)

• 1x Damnation
• 1x Dark Deal
• 1x Murderous Compulsion

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Trying another build for g/b control in EDH. I've played Savra, too durdly. Jarad is too combo focused. Maren is too face roll for me. So I started checking out Nath. Always been one of my favorite legends from my favorite cycle.

So I've looked through all the Stax primers, ect. The various cedh Nath lists out there, all of which are very cool but realistically, I play in more of an optimized or well tuned meta then truly cedh. So I've been kinda struggling to recreate the effect of a decent Nath deck when playing into more of a battle cruiser creatures sideways meta. So stuff like trinisphere isn't nearly as a good a card when a lot of decks don't have cc lower then three.. ect So with that in mind, Ensnaring bridge and No mercy have been added as ways to keep me from getting beaten to death angry critters turning sideways. I'd love The Abyss, Chains, Crandle and Nether Void but not likely to pick those up at any point.

The way Nath seems to play out is you need to slow down the whole board till you can get a bit ahead then discard off everyones resources, then win before they can top deck a answer for your lock. So being able to win quickly after you've gotten out some tokens and board state favorable is really important. I've death clouded away everyones lands, hands, and creatures, leaving me with tokens, artifacts, ect only to eventually lose cause I top decked less steam and wasn't able to kill off everyone before they could recover. Feelsbad for everyone to be sure lol. I think part of playing a stax control, or any control really, responsibly, is being able to win once you've established control and not make everyone sit there at the table for another half hour while you slowly try to clean up. I just find that not that fun to be on either side of. Either youre sitting there stressing waiting to draw into a win before they can break your lock or youre sitting there chaffing against the bonds of lock down :/

Take away being, if you get ahead make sure you can win, otherwise whats the point. Ahead also has to mean AHEAD too in a deck like this because if you just end up top deck against other decks they will likely have better card value then you assuming they arent locked out. For example, stuff like Oppression, Necrogen mists, Bottomless pit are all cards that are back breaking sometimes but if your opponents are just top decking anyways they are gonna rip whatever they can to try to get back into the game and not have to discard anything. My point being that the control effects and advantage gained from most of your stax cards is always situational and if you can keep the game state in the situation that makes it strong youre going to be in trouble. Same goes for Death cloud, Possessed Portal and anything else that is circular in nature you need to be playing it when you are able to "break" the circle or at least ignore most of it.

For now though, I think it's fair to say Tanglewire, Torpor Orb, Winter Orb, Static Orb and Ensnaring bridge are some of the biggest cards you need to play around or should be searching up to start locking people down. Torpor orb in particular just completely turns off so many decks. If there more similar effects I could run I would.

Running Dark deal in root mazes spot? I think. I kinda like it a little situational but powerful

Date added	6 years
Last updated	3 years
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	18 - 0 Mythic Rares 49 - 1 Rares 17 - 1 Uncommons 9 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	2.22
Tokens	Beast 3/3 G, Elf Warrior 1/1 G, Faerie Rogue 1/1 B, Squirrel 1/1 G, Zombie 2/2 B
Folders	My EDH decks, Decks, Black/green decks