Lurking In The Shadows

We all have some Commander decks sitting deep in that deck box that haven’t really been touched much in quite some time. Don’t you think it’s time to bring
that thing out and give it a good once-over?

I do!

So let’s do precisely that!

I rocked this for y’all a couple of weeks back with my Oros deck. It’s time for
me to re-varnish another of my Commander decks and get it ready for another run in the sun.

The next deck to get the treatment is…

My Commander Shadow deck!

I discussed this deck for you back in 2011. Since
then, it’s gotten just a little love and that’s it. The deck is designed to use and abuse a variety of self-recursion creatures in black.

Here’s the current deck:

Sheoldred, Whispering One

Abe Sargent

Test deck on 12-08-2014

Commander

Creatures (34)

Lands (36)

Spells (30)

Now with the release of Commander 2014 and its mono-black Commander deck (Sworn to Darkness), perhaps there is something there to unearth. Meanwhile, we’ve
seen better support and thematic cards hit the street over the last few years.

Before we do anything else, have we found a better leader for this deck than Sheoldred? She’s never been a strong commander for the deck, and she’s often
too expensive to matter. Now sure, having a copy of The Abyss on a stick that self-reanimates goodies is a strong choice for this deck. But she’s too
expensive and unreliable. She’s often win-more.

So who would better fit the deck?

What about Ob Nixilis of the Black Oath? His ultimate works very well with my deck. His +2 can keep me alive while I do fun stuff, and his -2 can provide
bodies for my engines or protection for my people. That’s not a bad choice if I can reliably get to ultimate levels.

I could really see Mikaeus, the Unhallowed here too. Meanwhile, Ob Nixilis, Unshackled could get big from my sacrifices until getting to a lethal level of
consideration, and Ghoulcaller Gisa is an adequate sacrifice engine I suppose. I’m not a fan of other guys that were printed (Erebos, God of the Dead; King
Macar, the Gold-Cursed; Hythonia the Cruel).

Mike is clearly the best choice to lead my deck ever. Here’s the problem, he feels like a combo general. Flipping him tells the board that I’m likely
running some janky infinite combos. Then when they start seeing stuff like Blasting Station, it removes all doubt. Even though it’s not in this
deck, Dark Mike has a dark reputation that might get this deck too much attention, when it’s just a fun Nether Shadow deck.

So perhaps one of the Obs is a better choice. Or even Gisa I suppose. One of the Obs is a hoser that might get killed before getting too big, the Gisa is
underwhelming, and that leaves…

Welcome oh dark lord! We could swap him out if he under-performs.

The next place I want to explore is my land base. This might be a mono-black deck, but it’s certainly not a Cabal Coffers deck. There’s just no way to
abuse having that many Swamps. So Swamp-centric cards, such as Liliana of the Dark Realms or Nightmare just don’t fit this deck’s theme at all. I just
don’t see value in Crypt of Agadeem or Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx here. I don’t even see Vesuva or Thespian’s Stage in our future.

The deck has already been tricked out with stuff like Volrath’s Stronghold, Bojuka Bog, and the cyclers. So I could add in something like Dust Bowl, Myriad
Landscape or some other utility lands, but that’s about it.

Let’s do precisely that and some Swamps as well, because we need some lands!

Then we add 25 Swamps.

What about my self-recursion stuff? Have there been any changes to my Nether Shadows? The number of greats that come right back into play from my graveyard
without costing resources like sacrifices are pretty small – Nether Shadow, Nether Traitor, Reassembling Skeleton, Bloodghast, and Ashen Ghoul.

Bloodsoaked Champion looks pretty useful. It’s easy to get its raid trigger when you can attack suicidally with junk like Nether Shadow and then use his
raid ability to return him. Note that if you’ve attacked, you can bring him out, sacrifice him, and then bring him out again and again as long as you can
spend two mana. So he’s got some long-term strength. I like it.

The next question is Gravecrawler. What about it? If I have enough zombies, then it’s a potent choice, we have to admit! But we don’t. Prior to changes,
our deck runs nine zombies. I’d run Gravecrawler if I had a cheap zombie commander since I don’t have the volume of zombies to do it on the other end. But
Ob Nixilis is not even a little bit like a zombie.

So no Gravecrawler.

It’s expensive to reuse with three-mana a pop, but let’s add in that extra Endless Cockroaches I got from Commander 2013.

These are the creatures the deck runs around. So we like stuff that comes back.

The next set of dorks that I care a lot about are creatures that can come out of the graveyard, perhaps to your hand, perhaps to the library, or maybe with
a cost like a sacrifice. We ran seven of them in the previous iteration of the Commander Shadow deck. I suspect we’ll pull a couple of these out, so I need
to unearth one or three to add back in.

An absolute darling was recently printed: Champion of Stray Souls. You can use its first ability to sacrifice creatures that we don’t care about to bring
back creatures that we do. Swapping a Nether Shadow for a Shriekmaw is a pretty good deal. Doing it en masse is even better. We could toss tokens,
creatures, or Bloodsoaked Champion into the bin for stuff like Butcher of Malakir and Avatar of Woe. That’s pretty keen. And if the Champion is dead, we
can restock the library with it for some mana.

I’ve always loved Necrosavant/Nim Devourer in this sort of a deck. But they are always a bit slower due to the mana guzzling and upkeep-only ability. If
Necrosavant could be used later or if it required little to no mana, then I’d like it more. Meanwhile, at 4/1, the Devourer tends have too small of a board
presence.

So I’m pulling them both. That leaves us six adjuncts:

We also have creatures with graveyard abilities, such as Filth and Carrionette. Another nasty one was from Magic 2015, Soul of Innistrad. It easily fits
the theme of the deck, and we’ll toss it in as well. I thought about Soul of New Phyrexia as well, but I’m not convinced that it’s the right answer for us:

After that, we simply add in creatures that assist us by supporting our theme with sacrificing, tutoring, or death triggers. Our current deck runs stuff
like Butcher of Malakir, Stronghold Assassin, and Iname, Death Aspect. All of those cards are key supports for this deck.

This is an area where Shadow Commander could use more support. We have too many Big Game Hunter-esque cards and not enough thematic cards. I could add in
card drawing like Grim Haruspex or Harvester of Souls. Both are useful choices for this sort of deck. There are tons of other powerful triggers, such as
Blood Artist or Falkenrath Noble, that bring different goods to the table.

There have been some quality sacrifice effects recently printed too. Take a look at Flesh Carver from Commander 2014. It can sacrifice a fellow creature to
swell itself, and the intimidate is super sweet. The only issue is the mana cost to sacrifice, so it can’t be abused over and over again, but it’s still a
nice fit for deck like this.

We have a variety of options for the deck. So what makes the cut, and what gets cut?

Grim Haruspex is strong for card drawing and for rocking a cheap body to play early. It’ll make the cut. The Harvester is probably a bit too expensive, as
is the Noble. Both Blood Artist and Flesh Carver have some fun, cheap antics to bring! But for now, we’ll steer away from both and just use the Haruspex
for some critical card drawing.

The next area we have to look are those artifacts, enchantments, or other non-creatures that support the theme. We have some downright essential cards for
this deck, such as Entomb and Buried Alive.

This is where we dig up the best triggers for this Commander deck. We have discarding (Mind Slash), creature removal (Attrition), artifact removal (Gate to
Phyrexia), card-drawing (Carnage Altar, Infernal Tribute), damage doling (Blasting Station), and don’t forget creature stealing (Helm of Possession).

This flexible suite of sacrificial effects gives us the ability meet a variety of needs at the table. For example, perhaps you can finish a problematic
creature with an Attrition. But if not, you can steal it. If a planeswalker is too much of a trouble, Blasting Station the owner a few times and peck it to
death.

I also adore Grave Pact here. There is no question that Dictate of Erebos is joining the deck. Very little else was recently printed that matches the deck
that well though. Unfortunately, that means this corner of the deck won’t see many new faces.

Every deck has some cards that are not precisely the theme, but they match things so well that you can’t yank them. This deck is totally unbothered by mass
removal of creatures. Very few decks can shrug it off as easily as this one. So we have some mass removal in the previous version of the deck. Cards like
Damnation just fit. Meanwhile, Living Death can be set up to smash massively by simply sacrificing everything before it resolves.

If we wanted, we could enhance the mass removal capabilities of his deck considerably. From Life’s Finale to Mutilate to Decree of Pain, you can delve into
a lot of directions for removal that cover each other. (For example, Mutilate would take out indestructible creatures).

There are some cards that don’t fit into other schemes but which are just vital to the deck, like Reito Lantern or Tortured Existence.

We have a few interesting new choices to consider. Because it is a cheap discard outlet that can fill the graveyard with the right cards (and reuse a card
that returns to your hand, like Krovikan Horror), Pack Rat is a very intriguing consideration. Meanwhile, since you are killing your opponent’s creatures
with ease via Grave Pact and Attrition, Grave Betrayal is in the conversation as a potent adjunct.

Commander 2014 has another powerful card to bring into this conversation: Overseer of the Damned. The fact that it’s one more mana than current entry Dark
Hatchling seems to be worth +2/+2 in size plus a useful death trigger for opposing stuff!

Synergetic graveyard-friendly cards, such as Mortivore, Nighthowler, or Bonehoard seem like they would be good. But this deck is not as good at filling up
graveyards as you might think at first. It keeps pulling stuff out of the ‘yard. Oversold Cemetery, self-recursion, Living Death, Reito Lantern,
Junktroller, and more. Considering all of that, I just don’t see too many more of those in the deck besides Sewer Nemesis.

Every deck needs some support cards to function, mana-making, creature removal, card drawing, and more.

We were running Syphon Mind, which has always been a brilliant card in multiplayer, but Bitter Revelation has more synergy with this deck since it dumps
stuff into your graveyard. Is the lower card advantage worth the increased synergy? I think so!

I like Burnished Hart more than Expedition Map. This is not a deck with a broken non-basic like Cabal Coffers it seeks to fetch up. I’d rather run the
extra creature, with a self-sacrifice ability that the deck yearns for, that can fetch me two lands. The Hart is heading on in.

While we have a lot of strong creatures that kill things, like Bone Shredder and Big Game Hunter, we have way too many. Combine the sheer number of
Nekrataal’s this deck runs, along with Grave Pact/Dictate of Erebos and damage dealing sacrifices via Krovikan Horror/Blasting Station and Attrition. Do I
really need that fourth or fifth creature with an enters-the-battlefield trigger to kill something? I think we can keep the best two and then open up some
space for some new cards, including lands and recently printed hotness.

Sure, Solemn Simulacrum has a fun death trigger, but in this deck, Liliana’s Shade is probably a better choice if you want a body to fetch a Swamp. I’d
rather have the Shade pump ability than the death trigger. Since we need the extra lands, out heads the sad robot for a humble Swamp.

I do like making tokens en masse from Endrek Sahr. He fits the deck. But the Autocrat isn’t that hot anymore. I’m pulling him for some space as well.

There have been a few adjuncts that saw print recently you can lean on. Here are some cards printed since I built the deck that jump to my mind:

In some cases, I don’t own a copy, and in others, I choose to head in different directions

Let’s take a look at the whole deck:

Ob Nixilis of the Black Oath

Abe Sargent

Test deck on 12-08-2014

Commander

Creatures (32)

Planeswalkers (2)

Lands (40)

Spells (26)

And there’s the new hotness. We’ve touched up the deck considerably. Out went weaker engines like Skull Catapult and fun-but-not-that-great-in-this-deck
stuff like Urborg Uprising. In went solids from Soul of Innistrad to Phyexian Plaguelord, Overseer of the Damned to Champion of Stray Souls. From an
improved manabase to some heightened tricks, the deck has improved from a variety of angles.

See you in three years for another refit, Commander Shadow!

I hope you found some cards and ideas in here for your next Commander deck!