So, I've been playing Magic for a year now, came into it from playing Yu-gi-oh competitively and immediately fell in love with the game. While i'm generally a Spike player when it comes to the more competitive constructed format, EDH has always been the format where i got to just play the cards that were the most fun to me, without having to really be serious with it. I like being orginal when it comes to my lists and enjoy playing with decks and commanders that are more off the beaten path, and don't require that much of a monetary investment. With that in mind i'd like to share my current EDH deck, Seizan, Perverter of Truth.
You may be asking yourself, why would I want to play a commander like Seizan? Well, let me convince you as to why Seizan is one of my favorite commanders to play with, and why it might be yours too.
Play Seizan if you:
-Like Black, because you're gonna be running alot of that color playing a mono-black general.
-Like LOTS of card draw
-Want A Commander that doesn't have a target on his back (I'm looking at you, Kaalia of the Vast)
-Want A Commander that isn't inherently broken or underpowered
-Like More card draw
-Play fair cards
Don't play Seizan if you:
-DON'T Like Black.
-Want to win quickly
-Want to do degenerate things
-Dislike drawing cards
With that in mind, let's take a look at the deck. The name of the game here deck is redundancy, we want plenty of additional ways to make your opponents draw, and plenty MORE ways to punish them.
I'd like to take this time to talk about a few themes in this deck, and why certain cards are in here.
Draw Effects: These cards are our enablers for the shenanigans to follow, you generally want in your opening hand a way to grab at least one, or accelerate into them.
Seizan: Our general and the card that we're building around. A double-Phyrexian Arena each turn for each player. Some groups will have that one guy who will draw off of Seizan and then immediately kill him in order to prevent the rest of the group from benefiting, but most players will let him be if you don't swing with him. I mean drawing cards could never hurt you, right?
Font of Mythos and Howling Mine: Aside from Seizan, these two cards are the bread and butter of the deck. Making every opponent draw additional cards may not seem like a plan that would be very powerful, but when we take into account all of the different cards that punish the opponent for drawing cards, they make for a very subtly powerful game plan.
Memory Jar: This card works double duty in our deck. With Psychosis crawler or Underworld dreams on the field, it's a free 7 damage to each opponent while also seeing fresh cards. With Megrim, Geth's Grimoire, and an active Bloodchief Ascension, it does extra by giving you the option of drawing plenty more cards at the end of the turn, as well as dealing an extra 14 damage to each opponent.
Mikokoro: While this is generally the weakest of the effects, as it requires constant mana to activate, it is still fine in the deck as our enablers are few and we want to be able to hit them.
Punishment: These cards, as the name implies, punishes your opponent for the cards they draw, by their effects AND yours, and are our main win-condition in the deck.
Underworld Dreams: Probably the most important card in the deck. With just Seizan on the field, every turn your opponents will be losing 5 life, which is massive. Add in Font or Mine and it gets even more degenerate. Most EDH decks have a sort of engine to draw out their win conditions, and this card punishes a lot of them. Tired of seeing Azami all over the place? If you can stick this card their ridiculous card draw becomes a liability.
Iron Maiden, Black Vise, Viseling: This type of effect is the reason why I personally settled on Seizan. So many times i'd see games where opponents have a bunch of cards in their hands, and the more cards the better for us. Generally we'll see these dealing about 5 damage to the effected players each turn, and the damage adds up quickly.
Ebony Owl, Misers' Cage: While these cards aren't quite as powerful as the aforementioned punishers, they still deal a fair amount of damage. Misers' cage is definitely the weakest of the group, and probably the first to cut, but redundancy with this kind of deck will lead to victory.
Megrim, Bloodchief Ascension, Geth's Grimoire: After all of the unwanted card draw, unless our opponent is running spellbook effects, they're going to have to discard, right? that's where these guys come in. Whether it's only a couple points of damage, or a crap-ton, these cards get in work. With all of our damage and life loss effects, Bloodchief Ascension is incredibly easy to crank up, and let's be honest, gaining bunches of life every time a creature dies, a card is discarded, played, milled, destroyed, it adds up quickly. And Geth's Grimoire will be drawing us plenty of cards throughout the game.
Psychosis Crawler: While not a punisher per-say, it does have a similar role in the deck that the rest of these cards play. Whener we draw a card, it makes every opponent lose a life. and we will be drawing PLENTY of cards throughout the game.
Disruption: These are generally our kill spells and wrath effects needed to keep our creature-based opponents off of their win conditions. Unfortunately for us, black isn't exactly known for Artifact/Enchantment destruction, which is where we are weakest.
Damnation/Sacrifice-esque effects: These cards buy us time. We aren't going to be as fast as a riku deck, or go over the top with eldrazi or a million little guys, but that doesn't mean that we have to let our opponents do so.
Kill Spells: Obviously there are going to be some very aggravating creatures in a mid-long game like we're going to be playing, and killing them is essential. There are way too many creature-based combo decks for us not to have some answers to them, and as we're in black, killing things is our specialty.
Others: These cards will be our alternative win-cons, tutors, card draws, ramping effects, etc. The glue that holds the deck together and makes it run smoothly. Without these we're relying on a lot of luck in order to secure victory, and while luck will always be a factor, we want consistency too.
Tutors: These cards fetch us our wraths, our enablers, our disruption, whatever we need at the time. Black is the color of tutors, so we have plenty in this department: Brainspoil, House Guard, Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Liliana Vess, Increasing Ambition, Night Dealings, all grab us important pieces to the puzzle that is our deck.
Card draw: Outside of the group card draw that enables the deck, we have multiple other effects that will net us more draw, these are to ensure that we can always get a healthy amount of cards in our hand and make sure that we have constant gas to continue the game with.
Beacon, Reclamation, etc: Our Recursion spells are very important to maintain a good board state, whether that is bringing back Fleshbag marauders a million times to keep our opponents in check, or using beacon to bring back the Iron Maiden or Font of Mythos that was just destroyed.
Sanguine Bond/Exquisite Blood: This is a 2 card infinite combo that is very very open to this style of deck. While Exquisite blood on its own is incredibly powerful for our deck, having the option to just win outright is very relevant. While i'm usually opposed to infinite combos as they make the games less fun, having a backup win-con is never a bad thing.
i suppose the 2 mana counter is to counter whatever they're snapping back? idk. very narrow counter-spells rarely see play. and a Bone to Ash reprint with a less relevant effect is AMAZING... =/
crypt creeper is exactly what zombies wanted. a Solid 2-drop that does something. I'd play it over highborn ghoul because it hates out alot of the meta, and doesn't just fold to gut shot or tragic slip
i'm gonna piggyback off of this question to pose another, Do you have to cast the miracle card when you draw it? or is it just that after triggering miracle you can now cast it for its reduced cost?
people see him as ****ty because he IS ****ty. he's a card that has 0 impact on the board state, gives your opponents plenty of time to make the card completely useless, what's worse is it's a card that you commit resources towards in the attempt to make it do something.
I LOVE having my decks rely on variance, please. Stop trying to squeeze blood from a stone. "Oh, if i happen to draw a miracle card, it can not discard that card" or "you MIGHT discard a land card" please.
i love when wizards prints blank cards that are never going to see play in any format. When are you going to WANT to discard a random card from your hand for no advantage whatsoever? having to sit on the board for 3 turns in order to MAYBE deal enough damage to be worth the 2 mana cost commitment? Garbage. And insurrection that has to sit for 5 turns and expect it not to be dead--or you-- before then. Top it all off, in order to do ANYTHING you have to have random looted for 4 turns. What were they thinking?
meh card is meh. Agree with many points about needing to be 1 CMC less to be good. side note, Jace's Ingenuity>This walker IMO. instant speed so i can leave counter-magic up and draw end of their turn, and i'm guaranteed to draw 3 cards. Sure, your opponent has 3-4 creatures in play you can draw that many cards, but unless you have another way to protect her that's all you're doing with your walker. Comparing her to Ajani Vengeant is asinine. Ajani costs 1 less, the +1 was more or less the same, sure they had to be tapped to use it, but the permanents you usually hit were so, and Ajani's -2 is always good. Lightning helix is a card that still receives extensive play, if her -2 was a card i doubt anyone would play it outside of some ludicrous EDH combo. The only reason why she might see play at all is because she's blue, and in the blue decks that plan on casting a 5cmc card (outside of some delver lists with batterskull), she has a TON of competition.
I feel like naya is in a great spot for birthing pod right now, partially because the potential power level of Huntmaster of the Fells in pod is massive. It feels like Huntmaster brings alot of what pod is looking for in a single card. You have 4 power worth of creatures on two seperate bodies which is both good and bad, and if you're allowed to flip him the card advantage is massive. Even without flipping him you have a solid 4 drop that leaves behind card advantage. and in non-black pod varients the 4 drop was a pretty open spot.
Naya also has the benefit of 2 G/x scars lands to get the deck rolling, as opposed to BUG which has none, Bant which only has Razorverge, and RUG which only has Copperline.
Edit: JK Monsters v Heroes
Arbor Elf over Llanowar didn't tip you off to that already?
You may be asking yourself, why would I want to play a commander like Seizan? Well, let me convince you as to why Seizan is one of my favorite commanders to play with, and why it might be yours too.
Play Seizan if you:
-Like Black, because you're gonna be running alot of that color playing a mono-black general.
-Like LOTS of card draw
-Want A Commander that doesn't have a target on his back (I'm looking at you, Kaalia of the Vast)
-Want A Commander that isn't inherently broken or underpowered
-Like More card draw
-Play fair cards
Don't play Seizan if you:
-DON'T Like Black.
-Want to win quickly
-Want to do degenerate things
-Dislike drawing cards
With that in mind, let's take a look at the deck. The name of the game here deck is redundancy, we want plenty of additional ways to make your opponents draw, and plenty MORE ways to punish them.
COMMANDER:
Artifacts:
Creatures:
Enchantments:
Instants:
Sorceries:
Planeswalkers:
Lands:
Swamp x27
I'd like to take this time to talk about a few themes in this deck, and why certain cards are in here.
Draw Effects: These cards are our enablers for the shenanigans to follow, you generally want in your opening hand a way to grab at least one, or accelerate into them.
Seizan: Our general and the card that we're building around. A double-Phyrexian Arena each turn for each player. Some groups will have that one guy who will draw off of Seizan and then immediately kill him in order to prevent the rest of the group from benefiting, but most players will let him be if you don't swing with him. I mean drawing cards could never hurt you, right?
Font of Mythos and Howling Mine: Aside from Seizan, these two cards are the bread and butter of the deck. Making every opponent draw additional cards may not seem like a plan that would be very powerful, but when we take into account all of the different cards that punish the opponent for drawing cards, they make for a very subtly powerful game plan.
Memory Jar: This card works double duty in our deck. With Psychosis crawler or Underworld dreams on the field, it's a free 7 damage to each opponent while also seeing fresh cards. With Megrim, Geth's Grimoire, and an active Bloodchief Ascension, it does extra by giving you the option of drawing plenty more cards at the end of the turn, as well as dealing an extra 14 damage to each opponent.
Mikokoro: While this is generally the weakest of the effects, as it requires constant mana to activate, it is still fine in the deck as our enablers are few and we want to be able to hit them.
Punishment: These cards, as the name implies, punishes your opponent for the cards they draw, by their effects AND yours, and are our main win-condition in the deck.
Underworld Dreams: Probably the most important card in the deck. With just Seizan on the field, every turn your opponents will be losing 5 life, which is massive. Add in Font or Mine and it gets even more degenerate. Most EDH decks have a sort of engine to draw out their win conditions, and this card punishes a lot of them. Tired of seeing Azami all over the place? If you can stick this card their ridiculous card draw becomes a liability.
Iron Maiden, Black Vise, Viseling: This type of effect is the reason why I personally settled on Seizan. So many times i'd see games where opponents have a bunch of cards in their hands, and the more cards the better for us. Generally we'll see these dealing about 5 damage to the effected players each turn, and the damage adds up quickly.
Ebony Owl, Misers' Cage: While these cards aren't quite as powerful as the aforementioned punishers, they still deal a fair amount of damage. Misers' cage is definitely the weakest of the group, and probably the first to cut, but redundancy with this kind of deck will lead to victory.
Megrim, Bloodchief Ascension, Geth's Grimoire: After all of the unwanted card draw, unless our opponent is running spellbook effects, they're going to have to discard, right? that's where these guys come in. Whether it's only a couple points of damage, or a crap-ton, these cards get in work. With all of our damage and life loss effects, Bloodchief Ascension is incredibly easy to crank up, and let's be honest, gaining bunches of life every time a creature dies, a card is discarded, played, milled, destroyed, it adds up quickly. And Geth's Grimoire will be drawing us plenty of cards throughout the game.
Psychosis Crawler: While not a punisher per-say, it does have a similar role in the deck that the rest of these cards play. Whener we draw a card, it makes every opponent lose a life. and we will be drawing PLENTY of cards throughout the game.
Disruption: These are generally our kill spells and wrath effects needed to keep our creature-based opponents off of their win conditions. Unfortunately for us, black isn't exactly known for Artifact/Enchantment destruction, which is where we are weakest.
Damnation/Sacrifice-esque effects: These cards buy us time. We aren't going to be as fast as a riku deck, or go over the top with eldrazi or a million little guys, but that doesn't mean that we have to let our opponents do so.
Kill Spells: Obviously there are going to be some very aggravating creatures in a mid-long game like we're going to be playing, and killing them is essential. There are way too many creature-based combo decks for us not to have some answers to them, and as we're in black, killing things is our specialty.
Others: These cards will be our alternative win-cons, tutors, card draws, ramping effects, etc. The glue that holds the deck together and makes it run smoothly. Without these we're relying on a lot of luck in order to secure victory, and while luck will always be a factor, we want consistency too.
Tutors: These cards fetch us our wraths, our enablers, our disruption, whatever we need at the time. Black is the color of tutors, so we have plenty in this department: Brainspoil, House Guard, Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, Liliana Vess, Increasing Ambition, Night Dealings, all grab us important pieces to the puzzle that is our deck.
Card draw: Outside of the group card draw that enables the deck, we have multiple other effects that will net us more draw, these are to ensure that we can always get a healthy amount of cards in our hand and make sure that we have constant gas to continue the game with.
Beacon, Reclamation, etc: Our Recursion spells are very important to maintain a good board state, whether that is bringing back Fleshbag marauders a million times to keep our opponents in check, or using beacon to bring back the Iron Maiden or Font of Mythos that was just destroyed.
Sanguine Bond/Exquisite Blood: This is a 2 card infinite combo that is very very open to this style of deck. While Exquisite blood on its own is incredibly powerful for our deck, having the option to just win outright is very relevant. While i'm usually opposed to infinite combos as they make the games less fun, having a backup win-con is never a bad thing.
seeing as how AVR is a stand-alone set don't see that happening
do YOU want to see instant speed elesh norns? cuz i don't
Naya also has the benefit of 2 G/x scars lands to get the deck rolling, as opposed to BUG which has none, Bant which only has Razorverge, and RUG which only has Copperline.