I feel like I should call this column Nostalgia: the Gathering. It seems like I’m always starting these things with rambling trips down memory lane. I could probably write a whole other column about personal growth through Magic – maybe one day I will. Introspective musings aside, today’s column is about reviving dead decks and reviving dead creatures.

Way back in 2009 I played in my last competitive Standard tournament. It was Alara Reborn game day and I won a full-art Mycoid Shepherd for making Top 8. I had a lot of fun playing with a Black/Red home brew, but it wasn’t enough fun to lure me into becoming a competitive player. Instead, I decided to explore this new “EDH” format I had been hearing about. EDH sounded promising, it sounded like it would give me the chance to play a lot of cool Magic without the pressure of keeping up with the competitive scene.

I took a while to settle on a Commander, but eventually I went with Sedris, the Traitor King. Sedris seemed like a solid, open-ended Commander that encouraged enough direction to shape a coherent strategy. I built the deck around the idea of using the creatures in my graveyard to generate advantage.

The deck had cards that let me discard creatures into my graveyard and cards that brought them back. Since Sedris’ Unearth ability didn’t lend itself to long-term advantage, I focused on creatures with “enters the battlefield” effects instead of the more conventional fat beaters. If I was getting a benefit every time something entered the battlefield, it wouldn’t matter if they couldn’t attack effectively. My game plan proved to be pretty effective, and I felt like Sedris was a good first attempt at a Commander deck. Good, but not great.

I was a capricious and changeable deck builder back in ’09. There were a lot of cards I wanted to play and only so much time and money I could put into Magic. Eventually I was overcome by the desire to build something new and because of budgetary constraints, I had to sacrifice Sedris to fuel my passion for the next flavour of the week.

Six Steps Closer to the Grave

Flash forward to 2015. At this point, I have settled into a comfortable Magical rut of playing Commander, Kitchen Table drafts, 60 – card brews with my partner, and the occasional pre-release. I have a solid stable of Commander decks that I use on a regular basis, with two lists that stand above the others in terms of quality and history. These two lists are Rakdos, Lord of Riots and Dralnu, Lich Lord.

Riot Maker

[deck]
[Commander]
1 Rakdos, Lord of Riots
[/Commander]
[Lands]
1 Akoum Refuge
1 Badlands
1 Blackcleave Cliffs
1 Blood Crypt
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Cabal Coffers
1 Command Tower
1 Dragonskull Summit
1 Graven Cairns
9 Mountain
1 Rakdos Guildgate
1 Reliquary Tower
1 Sulfurous Springs
12 Swamp
1 Tainted Peak
1 Temple of Malice
1 Temple of the False God
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
[/Lands]
[Spells]
1 Beseech the Queen
1 Black Sun’s Zenith
1 Chandra, the Firebrand
1 Chaos Warp
1 Commander’s Sphere
1 Damnation
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Dreadbore
1 Exquisite Blood
1 Exsanguinate
1 Killing Wave
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Liliana of the Dark Realms
1 Living Death
1 Pandemonium
1 Phyrexian Arena
1 Phyrexian Reclamation
1 Punishing Fire
1 Pyrohemia
1 Rakdos Charm
1 Rakdos Signet
1 Sol Ring
1 Sulfuric Vortex
1 Terminate
1 Torrent of Souls
1 Vandalblast
1 Vedalken Orrery
1 Wild Ricochet
1 Wound Reflection
[/Spells]
[Creatures]
1 Abhorrent Overlord
1 Artisan of Kozilek
1 Blind Zealot
1 Blood Artist
1 Bloodgift Demon
1 Burnished Hart
1 Butcher of Malakir
1 Cunning Sparkmage
1 Heartless Hidetsugu
1 Hellrider
1 Inferno Titan
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
1 Kozilek, Butcher of Truth
1 Massacre Wurm
1 Mogis’s Marauder
1 Myr Battlesphere
1 Ob Nixilis, the Fallen
1 Ogre Battledriver
1 Overseer of the Damned
1 Purphoros, God of the Forge
1 Rune-Scarred Demon
1 Sepulchral Primordial
1 Solemn Simulacrum
1 Soul of Shandalar
1 Spiteful Returned
1 Stuffy Doll
1 Vampire Nighthawk
1 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Zealous Conscripts
[/Creatures]
[/deck]

I originally built my B/R Commander deck back in the summer of 2012. I decided to play red and black because I wanted a deck that would make every game exciting. In the beginning it was led by Lyzolda, the Blood Witch, but it got a facelift and a new leader when Return to Ravnica came out. For a long time Rakdos was a fixed point in an otherwise shifting roster of Commanders. He became the deck I was known for, the deck that meant serious business. It wasn’t until Christmas of 2013 that I built Dralnu and found a second set-in-stone Commander.

The Iron Price

[deck]
[Commander]
1 Dralnu, Lich Lord
[/Commander]
[Lands]
1 Command Tower
1 Darkslick Shores
1 Dimir Guildgate
1 Drowned Catacomb
1 Halimar Depths
13 Island
1 Jwar Isle Refuge
1 Nephalia Drownyard
1 Reliquary Tower
1 Sunken Ruins
13 Swamp
1 Tainted Isle
1 Temple of the False God
1 Watery Grave
[/Lands]
[Spells]
1 Acquire
1 Aetherspouts
1 All Is Dust
1 Arcane Denial
1 Beseech the Queen
1 Blue Sun’s Zenith
1 Brainstorm
1 Breakthrough
1 Bribery
1 Bubble Matrix
1 Chromatic Lantern
1 Counterspell
1 Curse of the Swine
1 Cyclonic Rift
1 Darksteel Ingot
1 Desertion
1 Diabolic Tutor
1 Dominate
1 Fabricate
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Fated Return
1 Future Sight
1 Illusionist’s Bracers
1 Jace, Architect of Thought
1 Leyline of Anticipation
1 Lim-Dûl’s Vault
1 Memory Plunder
1 Mindbreak Trap
1 Praetor’s Grasp
1 Preordain
1 Psychic Intrusion
1 Reanimate
1 Rise of the Dark Realms
1 Rite of Replication
1 Sol Ring
1 Sorin Markov
1 Spelltwine
1 Stifle
1 Sudden Spoiling
1 Swan Song
1 Swiftfoot Boots
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Sword of War and Peace
1 Thousand-Year Elixir
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Trading Post
1 Windfall
[/Spells]
[Creatures]
1 Academy Elite
1 Baleful Strix
1 Burnished Hart
1 Diluvian Primordial
1 Grave Titan
1 Herald of Leshrac
1 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
1 Nightveil Specter
1 Notion Thief
1 Phyrexian Metamorph
1 Puppeteer Clique
1 Solemn Simulacrum
1 Sower of Temptation
1 Talrand, Sky Summoner
[/Creatures]
[/deck]

Dralnu was a hard contrast to Rakdos, but was no less fun. Where Rakdos was a visceral deck, one that played a white-knuckle game and usually ended things when it was sitting at five life itself, Dralnu was instead slow and purposeful. Playing a U/B control deck that focused on maximizing its resources was a complex exercise in strategic thinking. The aggro deck and the control deck balanced each other well; I had the deck I played with my gut and the deck I played with my head. Having two strong and reliable Commander decks was great, but it wasn’t enough – I kept exploring and building.

I didn’t know if I was exploring towards any specific end goal, but over the next year I built quite a few decks and found myself playing them more frequently than Dralnu or Rakdos. The months of experimentation would eventually produce Ob Nixilis, Hazezon Tamar, and Intet, the Dreamer – decks which I have already covered in these columns. My desire to play Rakdos and Dralnu was waning. I knew they were good, but that wasn’t enough.

Unearthing the Past

During this year of fevered deck building, I started writing about Magic. Writing can be an introspective pastime; the most effective storytelling is driven by a writer’s own experiences. The more I meditated on my time playing Commander, the more I wanted to see what Sedris would look like built by a more seasoned me. Eventually the urge overcame any doubts I had, and I scrapped Dralnu and Rakdos for their component parts (mostly their mana bases). From the ashes of my two best Commander decks reemerged Sedris, the Traitor King:

Bring Out ‘Yer Dead

[deck]
[Commander]
1 Sedris, the Traitor King
[/Commander]
[Lands]
1 Badlands
1 Blackcleave Cliffs
1 Blood Crypt
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Command Tower
1 Crumbling Necropolis
1 Darkslick Shores
1 Dragonskull Summit
1 Drowned Catacomb
1 Graven Cairns
5 Island
1 Izzet Boilerworks
1 Izzet Guildgate
5 Mountain
1 Polluted Delta
1 River of Tears
1 Sunken Ruins
7 Swamp
1 Swiftwater Cliffs
1 Tainted Isle
1 Tainted Peak
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Watery Grave
[/Lands]
[Spells]
1 Aetherspouts
1 Arcane Denial
1 Bitter Revelation
1 Breakthrough
1 Buried Alive
1 Chaos Warp
1 Chromatic Lantern
1 Commander’s Sphere
1 Cyclonic Rift
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Dreadbore
1 Entomb
1 Exhume
1 Faithless Looting
1 Firestorm
1 Forbid
1 Gamble
1 Insidious Dreams
1 Living Death
1 Memory Plunder
1 Palace Siege
1 Pandemonium
1 Phyrexian Arena
1 Praetor’s Grasp
1 Rakdos Charm
1 Rakdos Signet
1 Reanimate
1 Rite of Replication
1 Sol Ring
1 Stifle
1 Swan Song
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Wake the Dead
1 Wild Ricochet
[/Spells]
[Creatures]
1 Baleful Strix
1 Big Game Hunter
1 Body Double
1 Bogardan Hellkite
1 Burnished Hart
1 Diluvian Primordial
1 Duplicant
1 Fleshbag Marauder
1 Frost Titan
1 Grave Titan
1 Inferno Titan
1 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
1 Massacre Wurm
1 Merciless Executioner
1 Molten Primordial
1 Mulldrifter
1 Overseer of the Damned
1 Phyrexian Delver
1 Phyrexian Ingester
1 Phyrexian Metamorph
1 Rune-Scarred Demon
1 Sepulchral Primordial
1 Shriekmaw
1 Solemn Simulacrum
1 Sower of Temptation
1 Zealous Conscripts
[/Creatures]
[/deck]

The first thing I noticed when I had completed my reconstruction of Sedris was that the last six years had been really good to Grixis reanimator decks. When I first built this deck, my big finisher was Bogardan Hellkite. Now there were Titans, Primordials, Massacre Wurm, Rune-Scarred Demon, and so many more. Kids growing up with Siege Rhino will never know how lucky they have it – I remember when Flametongue Kavu was the best it got (oh god, I’ve become a crotchety old man).

The second thing I noticed was that my choices of support cards were very different from the choices my younger self had made. Enablers like Firestorm, Forbid, and Insidious Dreams are far more nuanced than cards like Psychatog and Stinkweed Imp. The younger, greener me immediately focused on the Magical Christmas Land of using the Imp to dredge into my five best creatures with Living Death in hand. Playing to the one-in-a-million shots can make for explosive wins, but doesn’t do much for consistency.

I made similarly esoteric choices when selecting my permission spells. A year-and-some of playing Dralnu taught me how easy it can be to become pinched on blue mana – especially when you need to counter multiple threats before you can untap again. So instead of running all the “best” counters, I focused on hard counters that had only one blue in their casting cost. Stifle is a choice that raises a lot of eyebrows, but it is surprisingly good at stopping graveyard hate, which is this deck’s Achilles Heel.

The third thing I noticed was that I really needed a second set of the U/R lands since Intet was using my first.

The fourth thing was not something I noticed, but something I experienced. The rebuild played far better than the original version. Yes, there were better cards to put into the deck now, but even taking those into account, it felt like a better-built machine than the clunky beater I assembled all those years ago. Piloting the new Sedris felt right. I had spent years searching for my deck, but it turns out that I was on the right track from the very beginning. I just needed a few years experience, a more robust collection, and a long hard look at my Magic-playing past to see it.

Last Words

It may seem a little silly to wax so poetic about a pile of valuable cardboard that I keep wrapped in plastic sleeves, but Magic is like any hobby – the better you get at it, the better you feel. A lot of self-worth is drawn from reflecting on the things that you are good at. Looking back is important because it lets us appreciate how far we have come.

I’m sure that most veteran Magic players have come across an old decklist they concocted while sitting in a boring class. That list, scribbled in a looseleaf margin, was probably pretty bad. Looking at that deck through the eyes of an experienced player can be humbling, but in the moment where you look back and go “what was I even thinking!?”, you are acknowledging your own progress. The kid who wrote that decklist would probably be pretty impressed if they could see the player they grew into.

That’s it for this week’s episode of Nostalgia: the Gathering (of cliches). In this article, I spent some time talking about my very first EDH deck – what it was, and what it is now. The best writing might come from experience, but I am getting mighty tired of talking about myself. For the next little while, I am going to broaden the scope.

Commander can be a daunting format to tackle for a newcomer. The lexicon of the format can be almost as intimidating to a veteran Standard player as it is to brand new convert to Magic – I mean, what the fuck is a Voltron? It’s time I started imparting a little practical knowledge. So, starting next with my next article, I am going to make sure that when the time comes for you to select your Weapon of Choice, you are making an informed decision.