The Most Wonderful Time of the Year
By Shay Muscarella
Chainer, Nightmare Adept
That's right, it’s Halloween, the spookiest of seasons! In honor of the holiday, we have a horror themed deck tech lead by Chainer, Nightmare Adept. We're going to turn our opponent's wildest dreams into their darkest nightmares. And who is the King of Nightmares? Freddy Krueger from Nightmare on Elm Street! If you haven't seen it yet, take a moment to add it to your Halloween must watch list, then continue on for a spooky Rakdos deck tech!
There is no escape from Freddy when all he needs to do to find you is for you to fall asleep, and you can't stay awake forever, no matter how much coffee you drink. Just like Freddy’s victims, your opponents can't escape your creatures no matter how many times they send them to the graveyard. At the small price of discarding a card, we can cast a creature from our graveyard until the end of the turn. Chainer's second ability means these creatures we cast also have haste. This ability can only be used once a turn, but as you may suspect, we've got some devious plans in store for our opponents on each of those turns.
Hellish Landscapes
While murky swamps and burning mountains are pretty scary places to get cornered by our horror movie villains, let's take a tour of the other lands our victims will find themselves in. Dragonskull Summit, Blood Crypt, Rakdos Carnarium, Graven Cairns, Sulfurous Springs, and Tainted Peak are perfect color fixing for us to summon all our monsters. Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth is all flavor. I can just feel the spooky oozing off of it. Dakmor Salvage is exactly the type of place I'd expect to find some old skeletons lurking around, and it helps us throw more stuff in our graveyard so Chainer can bring them back to torment the table. With all those creatures just waiting in the graveyard for their turn to play, Crypt of Agadeem can potentially add us a metric Crypt-load of black mana. Witch's Cottage is perfect for luring little Hansel and Gretel back from our graveyard right to the top of our deck. Nothing screams horror film you shouldn't watch alone like a bunch of creepy nuns, so just hearing about Westvale Abbey should make your hair stand on end. It can make us some little clerics for us to sacrifice for all sorts of shenanigans, and once we have enough, we can make a mass sacrifice to summon the great demon Ormendahl, Profane Prince. High Market is a deceptively clean place, but that's how we lure in the innocent. A little life for a little life. Arcane Lighthouse is both tragically underplayed and very haunted. Have you ever seen a lighthouse without at least four ghosts? Yeah, neither have I. Finally, Bojuka Bog makes sure Chainer remains the king of nightmares and no one else will be messing about with their graveyards while we're around.
Necromancy, it's a Heck of a Good Time
Almost every good scary movie starts with one of the character's messing with something they probably should have left alone, and that's how our opponents’ nightmares will start too. Some, such as Disciple of Griselbrand, are just looking for a little immortality, even if they have to make a few sacrifices to get there. Soldevi Adnate just wants to be powerful, so killing off a few creatures for mana barely registers on her conscience. Others still are looking for that sweet eldritch knowledge. Magus of the Wheel got the spell a little wrong and ended up dying, but we learned plenty from it. Plus, he'll probably be back later to try again. Ayara, First of Locthwain on the other hand, is a professional. Not only does she learn stuff by killing off the other weaker creatures, but she can also drain our opponents of their life force and give it back to us. Now for the real necromancers. Chainer, Dementia Master, Whisper, Blood Liturgist (sick name), Doomed Necromancer, Apprentice Necromancer, Hell's Caretaker, Balthor the Defiled, and Garna, the Bloodflame are all the pieces we are going to need to bring back the dead time and time again. If Chainer is the King of Nightmares, then Liliana is our Queen of Necromancy. There's a lot of good options for Liliana cards in this deck, but Liliana, Death's Majesty is perfect. We can make zombies to sacrifice with her +1, and her -3 can continue building our army of the dead. Your creatures will be coming back to play more times than Jason on Friday the 13th!
Rituals and Black Magic
Ain't no party like a necromancer party cause a necromancer party don’t stop! Malakir Rebirth can keep one of our more important creatures from dying for too long. You just can't keep a good zombie down! In a pinch, we can play it as Malakir Mire, a tapped land we can tap for black. Victimize gets rid of one of our meaningless pawns in exchange for two baddies in our graveyard. Animate Dead is a classic necromancy spell returning something monstrous from beyond the grave. Phyrexian Reclamation can keep returning what we discard to Chainer's ability back to our hand, at the cost of a little blood, something we're quite accustomed to. Thrilling Encore is a spell only the greatest necromancers could pull off, mass reanimating our whole team after we sacrificed them for greater power. Vampiric Rites and Burnt Offering are some traditional sacrificial rituals all the cults are performing these days. Chainer's Edict ensures your opponents won't go missing out on the fun! Buried Alive lets us find whatever three creatures we desire and save them in a coffin for later use, you know, like normal people. Cabal Ritual uses the power of the dead to give us more mana for summoning our nightmares. Before you ask, yes you have to play the promo version that also has Whisper in the art. Sorry, I don't make the rules. While we're bringing all these things back to life, sometimes we have to take a few lives. Feed the Swarm will let us use our blood magic to kill off any pesky creature or enchantment getting in our way, and In Garruk's Wake clears our monsters’ path to victory. Where do we learn all these dark spells? Well from our very own Grim Tutor of course!
Something Special
Sometimes, the best rituals require some specific and difficult to find items. Things like human souls and Daedra hearts. But where does a little apprentice necromancer find these things? Well you could try the Black Market. Sure somebody, or a lot of somebodies, have to die but a little death never stopped Michael Myers and it certainly shouldn't stop you. Just don't let your opponents find out about the Market, or they’ll send the fun police to shut you down. Trust me, you don't want to explain to them you've been killing stuff for mana, it's a whole ordeal. If you can't find it there, then check out the Trading Post. Everything you need is there. A little immortality juice? If you've got a spare card to discard, then you're all set. Need a sacrificial lamb (err...goat)? Pay a little life for one and off you go. Check out their clearance rack if you get the chance!
This is Madness!
Anje Falkenrath is a good little disciple of the nightmare king and she's ready to dive into the madness! Discarding something we either don't want or something we want in the graveyard is pretty good on its own, but being able to draw a new card is pure gold. Untapping her if it’s a madness card? Busted. Dark Withering is way over costed for its ability, but paying one for it sure seems like a good deal to me. Big Game Hunter only kills our opponents’ bigger creatures, but that’s okay since they're usually the ones we want to kill anyway. Grave Scrabbler gives us both a body for sacrificing and returns something valuable to our hand for future plays. Call to the Netherworld can get us most any creature to our hand for free if we discard it to any of our discard outlets. Remember, you can still activate Chainer's ability and pay for their madness abilities. Two for one special! Lastly, we have Anger and Squee the Immortal. While not technically madness cards, they are great discard fodder. Anger is a backup way to give our creatures haste if we don't bring them out of the graveyard with Chainer in play. Squee is super immortal. I don't know where he got his powers but I'm pretty sure he's from one of the spoof scary movies and he's just too dang powerful. Discard him to Chainer or Anje or our Trading Post over and over and he just keeps coming back for more.
Evil Minions
Our minions are here for us to use, sacrifice, and bring back to be used again. Ingot Chewer is a repeatable way to kill artifacts and Shriekmaw can kill some of our opponents’ creatures. With their evoke ability, we can cast these cards for super cheap from the graveyard by discarding something to Chainer's ability. For the things we can't target, we can repeatedly return Merciless Executioner and Plaguecrafter to play, keeping our opponents in check. These cards are a phenomenal removal package getting around things like indestructible and hexproof. Cast them enough times and we'll soon see our opponents’ creatures fighting for their own survival. Ravenous Chupacabra is straight out of folk lore and it's not here for a good time. It's hungry and it'll start ripping your opponents’ boards to shreds the moment it gets the chance. Dockside Extortionist is... well not that spooky, but it's a really good card so he goes in here anyway. Just think of him as the Leprechaun and he fits right in. Grim Haruspex isn't much of a threat to our opponents, but it feeds on the deaths of our creatures to help us churn through our deck. Weaponcraft Enthusiast is our brute. Sure we can make him a 2/3, but he does much better if he creates a few tokens for us to sacrifice for evil intentions.
Ancient Artifacts
Evil necromancers are in love with old creepy artifacts so let's see what Chainer has waiting for us in the depths of our dreams. Bontu's Monument gives a little bit of cost reduction for most of our spells, but the ability to drain our opponents for one when black creatures enter the battlefield comes in handy with some of our shenanigans later on. Expedition Map is sort of like an old Ouija board that tells us all kinds of secrets. With our deck so light on ramp, finding the perfect land in any situation is actually really useful. Little known fact, evil sorcerers LOVE hats. That's why Skullclamp is an absolute must have in our deck. Ideally, we can sacrifice tokens to it and there are also quite a few one toughness minions we can clamp to draw ourselves into more cards. Finally, we've got Thornbite Staff. The shaman clause and the ping ability are not super relevant to us, but the ability to untap a creature when stuff leaves the graveyard is just too good. Whisper and Hell's Caretaker can bring multiple things back to the field each turn as long as we have the creatures to kill off.
Call from the Underworld
We've got all this power and demonic knowledge, so what hellish monsters are we going to call from the depths to wipe out our opponents? Harvester of Souls is just waiting for other things to die so he can fill our minds with that sweet, sweet forbidden knowledge. Etali, Primal Storm lets us pull knowledge straight from our opponents’ decks and use it to our advantage. Their deepest darkest secrets will come back to haunt them. Overseer of the Damned, Massacre Wurm, and Sheoldred, Whispering One can help us keep other boards under control and each one gives us a little bit of advantage with either tokens, recursion, or just hurting our opponents when their creatures die. Vilis, Broker of Blood rises from our graveyard and just starts smashing. An 8/8 flyer is nothing to laugh at, but his ability to draw every time we lose life is insane. Get attacked? Sure I'll draw five cards. Pay two life for Phyrexian Reclamation? Easy draw two. The more you play, the better he gets. Next, Gray Merchant of Asphodel can swing our life totals out of range for our opponents to kill us with combat, and reanimating it multiple times spells doom for our enemies. Grave Titan and Abhorrent Overlord can make us bunches of tokens, but we'll come back to these in the next section.
Last One Standing
The end of our spooky movie is quickly approaching and we have our last few mortals facing off against our powerful demons. They shouldn't stand a chance, but we aren't going to test our luck so let’s finish up this game quickly. Every good scary movie has some secret plan involved and this is shown by Conspiracy allowing us to make all our creatures into demons. Then signing Liliana's Contract really just seals the deal. As long as we have both those cards and four creatures in play at the start of our next turn, we automatically win! If you're concerned about that being too many conditions to meet, well then you aren't living on the edge. But fine. Let’s say “Hi!” to our friends Whisper and Thornbite Staff again. Whisper can sacrifice two creatures and then you need to return Weaponcraft Enthusiast, Grave Titan, or Abhorrent Overlord. These create us at least two tokens, and untap Whisper. Sacrifice one token and the token creator to bring anything back (like Ayara to drain your opponents). Whisper untaps, sacrificing the newly brought back creature and the final token to get your token generator back, starting the loop all over again. It's a little convoluted, but it works. Just to clarify, you can't target the creature you sacrifice to Whisper to bring back which is why you have to go through so many steps. If you've got Abhorrent Overlord as your target, you likely make more than two tokens and you'll have a loop ending with infinite tokens in play. Give them haste with Chainer or Anger and you're set. Without them, you'll need to have Bontu's Monument in play to ping your opponents to death. Hell's Caretaker can replace Whisper as long as you perform this loop during your upkeep.
Creature (34)
1x Abhorrent Overlord
1x Anger
1x Anje Falkenrath
1x Apprentice Necromancer
1x Ayara, First of Locthwain
1x Balthor the Defiled
1x Big Game Hunter
1x Chainer, Dementia Master
1x Disciple of Bolas
1x Disciple of Griselbrand
1x Dockside Extortionist
1x Doomed Necromancer
1x Etali, Primal Storm
1x Garna, the Bloodflame
1x Grave Scrabbler
1x Grave Titan
1x Gray Merchant of Asphodel
1x Grim Haruspex
1x Harvester of Souls
1x Hell's Caretaker
1x Ingot Chewer
1x Magus of the Wheel
1x Massacre Wurm
1x Merciless Executioner
1x Overseer of the Damned
1x Plaguecrafter
1x Ravenous Chupacabra
1x Sheoldred, Whispering One
1x Shriekmaw
1x Soldevi Adnate
1x Squee, Goblin Nabob
1x Vilis, Broker of Blood
1x Weaponcraft Enthusiast
1x Whisper, Blood Liturgist
Land (36)
1x Arcane Lighthouse
1x Blood Crypt
1x Bojuka Bog
1x Cabal Stronghold
1x Command Tower
1x Crypt of Agadeem
1x Dakmor Salvage
1x Dragonskull Summit
1x Emergence Zone
1x Graven Cairns
1x High Market
9x Mountain
1x Rakdos Carnarium
1x Sulfurous Springs
10x Swamp
1x Tainted Peak
1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1x Westvale Abbey Flip
1x Witch's Cottage
Sorcery (7)
1x Buried Alive
1x Call to the Netherworld
1x Chainer's Edict
1x Feed the Swarm
1x Grim Tutor
1x In Garruk's Wake
1x Victimize
Planeswalker (1)
1x Liliana, Death's Majesty
Artifact (10)
1x Arcane Signet
1x Bontu's Monument
1x Coldsteel Heart
1x Expedition Map
1x Rakdos Signet
1x Skullclamp
1x Sol Ring
1x Talisman of Indulgence
1x Thornbite Staff
1x Trading Post
Enchantment (6)
1x Animate Dead
1x Black Market
1x Conspiracy
1x Liliana's Contract
1x Phyrexian Reclamation
1x Vampiric Rites
Instant (5)
1x Burnt Offering
1x Cabal Ritual
1x Dark Withering
1x Malakir Rebirth
1x Thrilling Encore
Deck-stras!
So what can we do to make this deck strike even more fear into the hearts of our opponents? Adding more draw into our deck will certainly make it function better, just as in every deck. Cards like Read the Bones, Siphon Mind, and Faithless Looting help us refill our hand early game. A lot of our draw spells require us to sacrifice creatures or have something die and that's not always available to us until late game. Then streamline the deck in whatever direction you want it to go. If big Demons is more your style, throw in a few more cards like Entomb, Exhume, and Reanimate to pull those creatures out as early as possible. As fun as signing Lily's Contract would be, it is a lot to ask for so you can lean into your combo win. Getting more tutors into your deck make finding the combo much easier and throwing a Goblin Bomardment can add an additional way to sacrifice infinite tokens to insta-kill the table.
Shay has been playing Magic since way back in 8th edition and played mostly Modern for a long time (filthy Tron player). These last few years though he's been all about Commander. Outside of Magic he is a career firefighter who's currently trying to get his whole department in on the addiction...errr game.
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