Meren and the Golgari Queens (Commander / EDH MTG Deck)

Meren and the Golgari Queens

Commander / EDH* Aristocrats BG (Golgari) Infinite Combo Knights Midrange Reanimator Sacrifice Zombie

DreadKhan

Ramp (23)

Draw (11)

Steve (7)

Payoff (5)

Graveyard Hate (4)

Golgari Queen (3)

Royal Companion (3)

The Ex (1)

1x Gravecrawler

Land (28)

Sacrifice (12)

Recursion (9)

Tokens (7)

Protection (4)

Honourary Queen (3)

Wipe (2)

Commander (1)

Removal (13)

Combo Piece (10)

Tutor (8)

Beater (4)

Discard (4)

Razaketh (4)

Court Jester (1)

1x Sadistic Hypnotist

Maybeboard

Combo Piece (12)

Discard (2)

Tokens (9)

Sac Outlet (3)

Recursion (2)

Tutor (1)

1x Vile Entomber

Wrath (1)

1x Nightmare Unmaking

Card Draw (4)

Ramp (4)

Removal (4)

Card Advantage (1)

1x In Search of Greatness

Land (1)

1x Geier Reach Sanitarium

Reworking Underway

I've pulled out the Knight combo for the time being, replacing it with Chatterfang. I'm not sure how I'll rework the deck's RP elements, but the other combos/pieces are staying in (though I still want to throw in a Lotus Petal or Elvish Spirit Guide for Razaketh fuel, it's just hard to cut an actual card for either, they're way more situational than Life/Death or Dark Ritual, and Benefactor's Draught has a ton of potential upsides stapled to it).

The Theme Song Show

This is a semi-competitive Meren list, mixing control elements with combo to grind out wins. The deck can technically win early, but that's not normal, but it is normal for it to cripple the opponents' boards before I can assemble a combo. This deck is generally a toolbox oriented deck, using it's quality tutor package to remove problematic cards or pieces to win. The ideal scenario for this deck is to have a Steve, enough mana to play it, and for that to get us to casting Meren, allowing her to recur our Steve for use next turn potentially. Recurring Steves can actually make Meren quite rampy, easily making up for a lower land count while simultaneously adding XP. The Magic Numbers for Meren's XP are 3 and 5 generally, with 3 letting me reanimate a Merciless Executioner or any Steve, while 5 lets me reanimate Sidisi, Undead Vizier the turn I cast her, which should be enough to put me in very good shape, while also getting me to 7 XP which will allow me to bring back Protean Hulk to win off of.

Meren is fairly control heavy, excelling at keeping the board clear or having the best creatures out. This deck is not very fast at winning via creature damage, but the deck does have access to infinite tokens. It prefers to win via aristocrat pay offs, as this tends to be faster and harder to interfere with. The deck has some resiliency due to Meren reanimating/recurring stuff, but there is a reasonable amount of backup reanimation in here. The most versatile/powerful is Demon of Dark Schemes, it has big synergy with our combo pieces (and also with Mitotic Slime naturally), but Sheoldred, Whispering One and Hell's Caretaker complete my back up suite of repeatable drawback free reanimation. Gravecrawler is a great card when combined with Hulk, letting me generate infinite sacrifices from one Hulk pile, with easy access to the 2nd usually. Coffin Queen is a weird card that can reanimate stuff, but I prefer to use it vs opponent's creatures, since it will exile them if they die, so she can hate on a graveyard.

Gradually working on trying to get alternate art for female cards, or for cards where it looks way better. Feel free to make suggestions! This deck could also be called 'All the Pretty Girlgari', so we'll see.

This deck struggles if it truly needs a wipe, but it can usually pressure the board very hard with it's various forced sac sources, even if the deck has skimped on the budget here, running neither Grave Pact nor Dictate of Erebos, just Savra, Queen of the Golgari and creatures that force sacs on ETB. The deck has 2 wipes for smaller things, but can struggle vs a deck that has to be wiped, but if I'm truly desperate I might be able to repeatedly get Demon of Dark Schemes' trigger, if I can hit -6/-6 most stuff would be dead I guess?

For non-creature permanents I run Caustic Caterpillar and Foundation Breaker as low to the ground options. I run Visara the Dreadful because I often found myself in need of some targeted removal that didn't eat up my reanimation slot for the turn, and figured the good ol' Gorgon could do me a solid, and so far I've not been disappointed. It's very much 'what's on the tin', but that happens to be a very good label. Card draw is a tad low I think, but the deck's easy use of the graveyard gives it the feel of having a much larger hand, though there can be card quality concerns if you draw poorly (no tutors or card draw). The deck does feature 2 repeatable fogs, one that doesn't even use reanimation (but enables it via discard) in Spore Frog and Dawnstrider, an underplayed gem in a Meren deck for sure (especially if you expect you might need to fog an aggro player most games, as you can make their life difficult with forced sacs). The deck rarely feels hopeless, but it tends to have only a couple solutions to a given problem, leaning hard on recursion to get by, so if your graveyard is repeatedly exiled it will be a true slog.

I'd like to get the creature count even higher, but it's hard to cut the remaining non-creature spells. This is already an ungodly number of creatures, but the deck is also creature synergy at this point. I also wonder if I should throw in some 'high power' tutors, but do I really want Demonic Tutor over a tutor that gets 2 cards for only 4 or 5 mana? I kinda doubt it.

Suggestions

Updates Add

Should He Stay or Should He Go? — Feb. 22, 2024

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I'm curious if I should switch out Haakon (and Automaton for sure, Forsworn Paladin is suspiciously useful as a Black mana dork, and it's a 1 drop CREATURE (in this deck) to boot, but Haakon and Automaton go together, if either goes both go. I would replace Haakon with Chatterfang, Squirrel General, he's a better combo piece with Protean Hulk, just him and Pitiless can wipe the board of unwanted creatures (unless I'm wrong). The other card I'd probably toss in is Benefactor's Draught to help my Razaketh line. I have a Noxious Revival that's on the way, if I add that and Draught I can recur Draught for no mana, which is very useful in Razaketh situations.

I am unsure if Liliana's Standard Bearer goes as well, it's in because it's a Knight in part, but it's also in because of some very strong play patterns with Meren and any 'sacrifice for mana' effect (the more the merrier), this can give me the cards to use spare mana, and if I recur the Knight with Meren it might refill my hand for next turn. It's not the best bulk draw in here, but sometimes I just want raw cards, you know?

Edit: Out goes the Knights (Haakon, Forsworn and Universal Automaton), Bontu's Monument (can't be tutored with Protean Hulk, and I have several other payoffs in the deck that can), and Vampire Hexmage (until PW become a bigger issue this is defnitely staying out, as is recurring my forced sac effects that can also hit a PW is usually a much better plan anyways, so this was mostly a dead card). In went Chatterfang, Pawn of Ulamog, Benefactor's Draught, Deathrite Shaman, and Ophiomancer. Chatterfang and Pawn are combo pieces that interact better than most of my Knight stuff did, while Benefactor's Draught can draw cards, potentially lots of cards, Deathrite is graveyard hate and a 1 mana ramp card in Black that can technically make Green (incredible in this deck even without it's own Fetches, this is a risky card vs low budget decks), and Ophiomancer is a speedbump/sac fodder resource, it's just a nice synergy piece.

This deck is a mix of explosive combos, the most effective being Protean Hulk lines, but it also has a half-decent package of 'grinding' cards, the way this deck doesn't lose is to play control, and combo is usually how it wins (it's terrible at combat damage imho). The new cards offer more efficient backup plans (though they aren't as rugged as Haakon was, his ability to recur himself or any other knight made the deck tough to deal with sometimes), but the deck already has Razaketh stuff, Demon of Dark Schemes combos, straight up Protean Hulk combos, and loads of tutoring so it's possible for games to end on the quicker side. This isn't as fast as a cEDH deck, but it's the kind of absurdity that's appropriately a strong 7 or even an 8. It has too many potential combos to make it practical to actually find them all.

Edit: Well, finally up to 58 creatures in the 99... I did the switch-a-roo and traded out Harrow, a very good ramp spell in a Simic deck, for a card I pulled, Fertilid. Fertilid seems like a much better fit due to being a creature, but it can also ramp repeatedly if I want, and is technically a Steve, a very valuable resource some games. While it always looks clunky, actual testing often reveals it to be useful, so I'm thinking that while it was worse than Burnished Hart, it's better than Harrow (because I don't care about instant speed). I'm curious if I have a Morbid Opportunist kicking around or not, because this deck is a bit lean on card draw, and that is suspiciously like a Black Rhystic Study on a body (depending on your playgroup for sure). Assuming I've dug out a few lands by the time I have a Lurking Predators out, that card is going to feel absolutely incredible (I suspect), getting the next creature directly into play maybe 60% of the time sounds really sweet.

Small Adjustments — Nov. 4, 2022

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Ouphe It Out? — Sept. 1, 2022

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Meren of Many Combos — March 1, 2022

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Sizable Change On The Way — Feb. 25, 2022

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A few cards... — Nov. 26, 2021

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Inevitable Adjustments — Oct. 7, 2021

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Possible Tweaks? — Aug. 24, 2021

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Too Much Tutoring For Tutors? — June 1, 2021

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Value Vs Combo — May 3, 2021

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Card Odds v1 Draw hand

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90% Casual

Competitive

Date added	3 years
Last updated	1 day
Legality	This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
Rarity (main - side)	8 - 0 Mythic Rares 42 - 0 Rares 15 - 0 Uncommons 13 - 0 Commons
Cards	100
Avg. CMC	3.11
Tokens	Eldrazi Spawn 0/1 C, Emblem Vraska, Golgari Queen, Experience Token, Morph 2/2 C, Ooze 1/1 G, Ooze 2/2 G for Mitotic Ooze, Pest 1/1 BG, Snake 1/1 B, Squirrel 1/1 G, Treasure, Zombie 2/2 B
Folders	EDH Deck Templates, X - EDH Inspiration - GOLGARI GRAVEYARDS, Possible Builds, decks, Follow
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