UL's Better Deckbuilding: Greel, Mind Raker EDH

Hey Zoners!

Sorry about the missing the last couple posts, but  your Uncle Landdrops is returning to you live with another exciting installment of Better Deckbuilding, the place on TGZ where I talk about deck design in the hopes that you will actually, "try this at home" in your own way.

Today we're going to talk about my mono-Black Commander- a most horrific Spellshaper I call "Greel-y Dan" for the same nonsensical reasons I call Lin Sivvi "Thin Lizzy."

Clearly, the only thing I like more than logic and puns is rock'n'roll. So let's rock'n'roll.

WHY GREEL?

Much like the jazz rock band from which he gets his name, Greel-y Dan has many similar qualities of its rock'n'roll namesake. He's under-the-radar, powerful, and an intriguing part of Magic's old-school, and whereas most other people will find him offensive, there's a sort of brilliance to his madness.

My inner EDH Hipster latches onto a lot of underplayed cards, but not purely for fashion or a trendy anti-social lack of caring.

Typical deck design usually starts by choosing a Commander, and the foundation for good deck design always supplies a stream of logical justifications to explain the choice. "Generally" speaking, this is what I believe is the big difference between making a deck and being a better deckbuilder.

Here, Greel was chosen for several reasons. For starters, I like this card a lot. That's an important quality for motivation to make it work and keeping a deck together.

Second, I have a soft spot for the Legendary Spellshaper and most Spellshapers. I find their abilities to be very underrated, and, being that's the place I find most comfortable to play from, there was a nice connection.

Third, Greel had all the physical characteristics I was looking to fit into my deck portfolio- Mono-Black, Discard, Non-Attacking Commander, Engine, Reanimator, Spellshaper, From Prophecy.

Match.com couldn't have come up with a better fit.

THE STRATEGY

Although Greel turned out to be much less of a challenge than I realized, the process for creating strategy was still intensive.

There are a lot of easy traps to fall into when designing discard decks. I know because I fell into them in my Magic infancy, loading up on Megrims and Liliana's Caress.

The problem with cards like this is that there is a real rigidness to the way that they have to be played, and a real flimsiness to its execution. Although Mono-Black doesn't have much to do in the early stages of the game, these weren't cards I was interested in.

Getting Greel to survive his first turn was going to be a challenge, so I took out a lot of the additional motivations people would have for killing him- Rings of Brighthearth and Illusionist's Bracers- and opted for a fairly stripped down approach.

From that point, all I had to worry about was the activation cost. Making sure I have cards in my hand is a pretty big deal, but so is making sure I had cards I wanted to pitch. This meant redundancy, access to heavy tutelage, and a lot of card draw to keep him activating, but I still needed to find a way to make my discard activation worthwhile. So I added sizeable threats and a nice Reanimate package.

Putting all of this together, I was able to come up with a really nice lose-lose strategy for my opponents.

In the deck, Greel creates a powerful ultimatum: find an answer and let me stick my threat, or lose your hand, let me discard, and proceed to get an unchecked threat on the table.

Naturally, this is the primary strategy, but the beauty is that Greel is just a huge supplement to the deck, and not always the most terrifying piece. So let's pop the hood on this bad boy and check out some of the bigger pieces of the deck.

THE TECH

The key to this deck is to draw cards. Drawing keeps the mana flowing and the deck humming along. With access to tutors, it basically provides ways to get answers and threats to get and pitch.

There are now 5 card draw spells: Night's Whisper, Sign In Blood, Read the Bones, Ambition's Cost, and Ancient Craving, shown here.

So yeah- we're losing quite a bit of life to dig. However, that really shouldn't be much of a problem. Control decks will usually wait to counter these spells when they can leverage tempo, like, when you have no cards, and Aggro decks are grateful for the self-mutilation that is occurring, even though they probably don't realize removal spells are abundant in this deck.

There isn't actually a whole lot of discard outside of Greel in this deck, and although that's mostly due to the fact that our Horror Spellshaper is a house as a Commander, it's also due to the fact that Cabal Conditioning is also super sick.

Since we're drawing a lot of cards, this is usually pretty castable, and often happens before turn 7 with access to mana rocks. It's a bomb in multiplayer, and I don't think I've ever targeted anyone for anything less than four, because it combos with Geth's Grimoire, and I proceed to drawing more stuff.

Geth's Grimoire is one of the most powerful cards in the deck as a result of both this and Greel. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention this, and more redundant if I continue to talk about it any more than I already have on the blog.

No one ever sees this coming, which is why I love it so much. It's also the kind of card I have no problem pitching to Greel if I'm in a tight spot, because I'm basically preventing my opponent from casting whatever it is they have in their hand.

Obviously, when I don't have Greel, this card is equally as awesome. I've gotten some serious mileage out of it in a couple of games, and it's usually worth the cost to play it. There are some things money can't buy; for every creature spell, there's Withering Boon.

Imp's Mischief is another card I put in here as non-creature, pitch-worthy target, though it is usually mana rocks and lands that are going to go first.

One of my favorite little pieces of tech is this here Ringwraith.

It doesn't look like much, but the incremental value in multiplayer cannot be understated. I dig this out of the graveyard about as much as I try to abuse Solemn Simulacrum, which is quite a bit.

On turn 3, casting it can usually net me a land or a bad spell. However, as the game drags on, holding up single cards becomes increasingly more vital and powerful. Getting this multiple times in a game, particularly with the Grimoire out, makes this a lot more powerful than it looks, which I think is saying something, particularly with this artwork.

For a while, this has been the primary game ender for this deck. Abusing Kokusho was too annoying for everyone, and for whatever reason, this always seemed to be the card I cast that ended the game.

I think we've all seen this card, so I think we understand how and why it's good.

Still, I think being up in arms about Kokusho and not this card is strange. It represents a significantly larger pool of damage, and is one card.

WHAT THE GODS GAVE ME

So despite winning a lot of games off the backs of thirteen undead 2/2's, I decided that I would like to have some other routes to winning in this deck.

As a result, Greel saw the most card changes when Theros dropped a couple weeks ago, and I've been pleased with the results so far. Here's what I added.

The whip has actually been the most surprising card for me. I was not a big fan when it got spoiled, because I can't stand it when an activated ability works at sorcery speed.

Sometimes though, I'm an idiot, and this was the case. The Whip covers one of my decks biggest weaknesses, giving me huge swings of life gain when necessary, and is much more powerful than I originally gave it credit for.

You can't see it, but I am holding my thumbs up at my screen as I write this. I know, I'm talented and dextrous.

To misquote GG, "This card is a meat popsicle." A big, tasty, and awesome meat popsicle. So eat it up, and love it.

My refusal to play Exsanguinate and my polite metagame boycott of Kokusho has led me to perhaps to a more powerful option, but that's okay.

It only took me one turn last week to discover just how powerful this card is. Playing and reanimating him in one turn allowed me to gain 26 life. I guess I just don't know what's fair anymore. I hope I don't get the impulse to take him out. Still wrapping my head around the fact that he's a common. This is not Highway Robber-y. It is much more.

Got Hythonia out a couple of times, and it's as good as it sounds. As a support card, it is every bit the card I thought it'd be when I talked about it as part of the Set Review.

In my Greel deck I decided to play Decree of Pain and Black Sun's versus Damnation and some of the other Wrath options I have. Hythonia's another sizeable threat that can end games and generate "all of the tempos." I like it a lot.

We'll end by talking about the man downstairs.

He is everything I predicted he'd be, and more. In conjunction with the Whip, I was able to keep my life total from not only getting into the danger zone, but also use part of my life to draw an extra card or two incrementally and proceed to victory.

The tempo that can be generated with devotion is Erebos' best quality, and with the Whip, it made for a very tough tandem to beat.

Overall, my assessment is that the Gods make Commander much tougher, and the choice of colors all the more relevant now, as Green and White have the most access to quality removal.

I hope to feature an article about how to play these guys next week.

That's all I got for Greel. My list actually needs some updating, but as always, here's my list if you want to check out what I'm playing. Feel free to leave me suggestions or +1 it if you like it.

Greel, Mind Raker EDH

Until next time, don't piss off Zeus. You know he hates it when you worship false Mimeoplasms.

-UL