I have to admit a lot of this deck goes against what I normally play and even what I'd determine as good cards. Rakdos? Literally in hundreds of commander decks I've never built a Rakdos commander before. Not a fan of the color-pie or legendary line-up huh?
Turning creatures sideways? For casual play exclusively. Gaining life? Jank decks only apply.
However I've dipped my feet into the colors of pain and themes that normally I wouldn't call good. But Greven changes all that. He makes these things not only great, but as brutal as the reputation that proceeds him.
There really is an exceptional Vorthos flavor to this commander. Sacrificing creatures to gain power both figuratively (draw) and literally (stats) and expressing his rage through feeding off pain (life loss), this card has a lot of his story imprinted in this card.
Master of draw
The idea is pretty simple. Use mana efficient creatures that have large power and hopefully low toughness to sacrifice to draw lots of cards. Although there is a mix that have large toughness as well so you can line up lethal or a large chunk of commander damage on opponents.
You can easily be drawing between 5-8 cards off an attack, making Greven, Predator Captain a potentially incredible card drawing machine.
The King of commander damage
I have played decks designed around killing opponents with commander damage in the past. However I would not call myself an enthusiast as often it's a hard strategy to pull off.
I've used Godo, Bandit Warlord (although that was more combo build), Ishai, Ojutai Dragonspeaker with heavy disruption, and my friends decks with Rafiq of the Many and Uril, the Miststalker. I've also got a lot of decks where the commanders can deal lethal over the course of a few turns, but the decks are not exactly designed to win this way like Zacama, Primal Calamity and Sisay, Weathlight Captain.
Now they've all been fine, they have their strengths and weaknesses, but at the end of the day they don't provide card advantages. They simply are able to apply pressure.
Greven on the other hand does both. He gives you card advantage and he applies pressure..enormous pressure. So much in fact that I seriously doubt there is a commander who can get up to the same lethal damage consistently so quickly*.
And this is what separates him from pack and why the more I play him, the more it solidifies that he is the real deal when it comes to powerful commander play.
Greven takes very little setup to do this.
With an emphasis on cards that can deal enough damage to yourself to get Greven to deal the 21 needed for commander lethal damage, there are plays and cards that have a focus on consistently enabling this.
There are a number of creatures that you can use life loss for gains in power.
Immolating Souleater and Moltensteel Dragon can be used to both draw for the increased power and the life loss you use with using .
Let's say you are on 30 life. You can cast Moltensteel Dragon for and 4 life.
You can use 20 life to give Moltensteel Dragon +10/+0. When you sacrifice it to Greven, Predator Captain, he will get +28/+0 and you draw 14 cards.
Wall of Blood can be used in exactly the same way, using your life total to draw a lot cards and power up Greven.
Volcano Hellion also allows you to spend as much life loss as you want, it can clear the way for Greven by removing a block (or simply the best opponent creature on the board) and draw you 6 cards when you sacrifice it to Greven as you won't be paying the echo.
The reason there is so much lifelink or life gain in the deck is to gain back life loss straight away during combat.
There are a number of instant cards that can do this with Alchemist's Gift, Blessing of Belzenlok, Cruel Feeding, Rush of Vitality. With so many in the deck, you have a really good shot at drawing one with Greven, Predator Captain meaning you don't necessary need one in hand when going for a big play.
Gaining life is super important in this deck as you are constantly taking damage from Greven, Predator Captain ability, while also playing cards that are specifically designed to lose you life.
If you imagine sacrificing Phyrexian Soulgorger to give Greven, Predator Captain a +8/+0, he will be a 13/5 (at the least). You lose 8 life but then gain 13 with the lifelink, putting you on a net advantage for the turn.
Any life loss will be gained back with lifelink so you can use Necropotence to actually control the amount of damage that Greven can deliver while also drawing cards at end of turn. Same with
With Ad Nauseam and Plunge into Darkness you can almost certainly draw into one of your instant lifelink cards so can aim for lethal damage.
Essence Harvest can be used as a secondary spell to lifelink to deal and gain even more damage and life for the turn.
Getting in commander damage is essential to winning and with Greven menance it's actually way more difficult for your opponents to line up blocking that isn't going to blow them out constantly, especially with your own removal. However there are some further ways to get evasion.
Shizo, Death's Storehouse can give him fear.
Filth can be discarded or sacrificed to Greven so that you can get evasion with him, which is really important down the stretch. The popular Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth will help with this.
Silent Arbiter combined with Greven menace means that he is unblockable.
Key to the City can make Greven unblockable and there is a reanimation theme, so you can discard creatures to bring back with mana efficient cards.
There is a lot of ways to protect Greven from removal, and a lot of them will be unexpected for opponents, giving you an advantage.
Imp's Mischief, Rush of Vitality, Bolt Bend, Deflecting Swat are all instant speed ways to protect Greven from a lot of targeted spells and they all cost one mana or less. This is super important as you'll often be tapping low for your creature fodder and progressing your mana.
There is also reanimation cards in Reanimate, Animate Dead, Dance of the Dead, Necromancy, Chainer, Nightmare Adept. Living Death which have duel purposes in the deck.
They can get back creatures you've sacrificed or discarded as ways to get more sacrifice fodder for cheap.
But they are also a great mana efficient ways to bring back Greven if opponents are killing him. In this way you have a lot of insurance to make sure you constantly can get Greven online even in the face of removal.
With drawing so many cards, you want to generate large amounts of mana or cheat ways to "cast cards so that you are not just discarding to hand size every turn. Sneak Attack is perfect for doing this, as you are sacrificing to Greven anyway so don't care about the creature sticking around.
Treasonous Ogre can convert your life total to make mana, and with all the life gain tricks it's possible to get enough mana via paying life to pay for spells. You can also use it to lose life for Greven power bonus.
The deck has other mana producing things like artifact mana and "rituals", that is instants or sorcery that specifically put more mana into your pool than the spells cost.
There are a couple of cards that allow you to have additional attacks. You'll be stacking the power gain on Greven each attack, so if you can imagine if you sacrifice a couple of creature and loss life, he could easily be attacking for a commander damage 21 lethal.
Combat Celebrant can be used to get an additional attack and there is plenty of ways to get haste in the deck, so you can catch opponents off guard with double Greven pressure. Do not be afraid to sacrifice the Combat Celebrant to Greven to draw cards as the exert will delay using it again for a while anyway.
Getting value from Greven is important so haste can be found with Anger, Hall of the Bandit Lord, Generator Servant, Tentative Connection, Chainer, Nightmare Adept.
It's pretty easy to discard the Anger to hand size setting you up for the rest of the game, or you can just play and sacrifice it.
Tentative Connection is normally used to steal an opponents creature, but in a pinch you can target Greven for the haste element.
It's nice to give Combat Celebrant haste as you can catch opponents off guard with a potent additional attack.
Fire Covenant and Toxic Deluge are perfect as they are mana efficient, you can control how much damage they are doing, and then you can get the potential bonus of giving Greven more power.
Same with Phyrexian Purge using the life loss to clear the path for Greven while providing the potential for lethal attacks.
So I just play out Greven and turn him sideways right? Well yes, but one of the strengths of the deck and indeed one of the complexities is actually figuring out which opponent to pressure first.
The deck consistently can kill an opponent within a two turn window and even one shot opponents. So often you've got this decision and even very early on as playing out Greven on turn three is likely. Some games this isn't enough turns to establish which opponent is going to be the most threatening.
But certainly in games where a person has played a first turn Sol Ring or more, it can be "target acquired".
In metas where you know opponents decks strengths and weaknesses, you can really dictate how the game goes by just taking out the player that is looking to get advantages by playing a self contained deck. That is one that ignores opponents for the most part, and plays lots of cards that can accelerate their own resources.
Decks that don't play out creatures and just look to ramp mana and draw, can be taken out easily. Wait for the salt as they proclaim unfair targeting, as they are "not doing anything". Remember to reply, "I know that's why I killed you, you need to play blockers".
Now if you choose a certain player to attack early, should you always follow that up by attacking the same player the next turn? More often than not yes, but sometimes you will find that the shift of power changes, and don't be afraid to leave a player alive to then refocus on a new target.
In this respect Greven is a great commander for game politics.
You can really balance out a table by killing the player who has the most explosive deck by taking them out before they can get their feet under them.
You then get the second most threatening player and then the third, etc. You can reward the jank player by being the last to be killed. You're welcome.
Please don't be distracted by playing into your own salty moves. Just because somebody attacks you or plays removal on you, doesn't mean that they then become the target for Greven's attacks. Stay the course and kill the correct threatening player.
Probably this is where I win the most games. I establish good threat assessment based on opposing decks overall power levels.
This also surprises players, as they expect retaliation (from removal or attacking you) and the player who does nothing to you feels a sense of security in not being targeted for attacks.
The player who expects to be attacked might hold up mana for removal (on Greven), where the player who is simply ramping and/or drawing is tapping out.
This does two things. It makes the player who holds up mana have a slightly less effective turn round, although they can still kill Greven, but a smart player will figure out that the targeted player (for the attack) is the one that needs to figure out an answer and that they simply can't spend their time setting up greedily.
More importantly however you show the table that you are basing your decisions on threat assessment, and this tends to make the rest of the table back off a bit and leave you to deal with "Mr or Ms cEDH".
How do game turns play out?
It is a fairly simple overall game plan however. You want to be casting out Greven quickly. Followed up by a creature that you can sacrifice to get draw. Once this happens you can pretty much have a collection of cards that you can plan for much of the game.
Drawing 3-8 cards easily means that you have options for the next series of turns. Lining up a lethal attack or making sure Greven is protected or just simply getting a mana base more setup so that you can pay for commander tax or other cards are all likely scenarios.
A very usual sequence is you cast a creature to sacrifice, attack with Greven and then you are usually hoping for one of the life-gain instant cards during the sacrifice draw. These are between one to two mana each.
With these in mind it's fair to almost always want to allocate 5 mana to this plan during those early(ish) turns. It's not necessary to cast life-gain on the first attack as your life total is still high that you can burn through it.
But on the second attack you can often setup a lethal attack by using life-loss for resources gains and so if Greven is attacking for 21 damage (or the difference you need to kill that player) then you want to be gaining that life back.
So if you're spending 5 mana a turn on this, then how much mana do you have post-combat? Not that much normally, and this is OK.
You really want enough to have mana for a protection spell Imp's Mischief, Bolt Bend.
Normal mid-game sequencing.
- Pre-combat play out mana efficient creature to sacrifice to Greven. 2-4 mana.
- During combat hopefully draw into life-gain instant spell to cast. 1-2 mana.
- Post-combat play artifact mana and leave enough mana to cast Bolt Bend, Imp's Mischief, Rush of Vitality.
Because of Greven menace it's much harder for your opponents to attack you with their own creatures. They need to leave back blockers, and even leaving two blockers back is risky for them as you do have removal. The further the game goes on, the more opponent's realize that attacking you isn't the best plan. So in this respect needing to cast creatures for blocking your own life total isn't actually as necessary as you first might assume.
The better creatures to play post-combat are Anger, Filth, Silent Arbiter if requiring blockers. Although often I am just discarding Anger and Filth due to hand size.
Combat Celebrant is another creature that you might cast post-combat to ensure you can attack with it in the following turn. Although with so much haste in the deck, you can wait a lot of games to cast it pre-combat.
The best of the rest
There are other cards in the deck. When do you cast a Whip of Erebos to get value for example?
Just because of their casting cost, they do require normally that you are further into the game. If you've got 8 mana to cast Whip of Erebos and activate it to get a creature from your graveyard pre-combat then this is going to be a solid play.
Should you tap out to cast Greven even when you have protection in hand?
This does come up. You might have 7 mana say to re-cast Greven after removal and you have something like Imp's Mischief in hand. Do you wait a turn to protect Greven or just jam him and hope?
Without doing too much of a cop out answer of "read the game" for such decisions, the honest truth is that I jam him most times.
The deck does have a lot of artifact mana, so if he gets removed and I have to spend a turn setting up more mana and other plays then sure it's not ideal but you're likely to be only one turn behind where you would have been if you forgone an additional turn to have protection up as well.
I find it's better to put opponents to the test, as you can get so much further into your game plan by not taking a turn off. Don't get me wrong I've had plenty of regrets doing this, but I'm all about statistics and setting yourself up for more winning plays by taking higher risks. I feel that I win more games because of this.
When to cast mass creature removal?
Your mass creature removal can become the more impactful cards as the game goes on, and finding the right time to cast them is super important.
Are you using them for clearing a path for Greven early on? Or are you waiting until there is more creatures on the board to get value?
We have Fire Covenant, Toxic Deluge, Phyrexian Purge, and they all are capable of getting Greven up to 21 commander damage in a single turn.
I find that I'm never really waiting that long to cast them if I have them. You can kill a player that you fear the most, while also killing off enough creatures that you don't fear the swing back from other players.
One thing to remember is that with Greven menace, if you have a player who you want to kill, you just make sure that you kill enough so that they can't double block. This can make a big difference to the math.
Remember if you keep the card draw flowing with Greven, then you are likely to draw into another creature removal spell down the not too distant line, so hording them for advantage isn't the best plan.
Other long term plans that may come into effect is Living Death. I've had one of these in hand or a tutor like Demonic Tutor to get it, and sent Greven to the graveyard upon removal with this in mind. The same with Reanimate in hand, often I'll let Greven go to the graveyard as the commander tax has crept up to uncastable amounts in the following turns.
It's slightly risky in the face of a counterspell, but I probably not going to do this if I know I'm up against a heavy counterspell deck as it'll leave Greven in the graveyard rather than the commander zone.
What to get with your tutors?
There are only 4 tutors in the deck with Gamble, Entomb, Vampiric Tutor, Demonic Tutor so it's not like you are constantly having to think about this.
If you can't afford Imperial Seal (who can?) then Scheming Symmetry is fine substitute.
Obviously an opening hand one can be invested into a Mana Crypt or Sol Ring. By the way you've never played a deck where you are hoping to lose the Mana Crypt coin flip and your opponents are hoping that you win it..true story. I have had games where I needed to lose the flip in order to get in lethal damage and opponents have been able to wipe the sweat off their brow because of a "lucky" coin flip.
There are a lot of times where an Imperial Seal or Vampiric Tutor will get me an instant life-gain card with Blessing of Belzenlok, Cruel Feeding, Rush of Vitality, Grotesque Mutation, so that you are gaining the massive life loss back straight away.
In games where there is stability, my sort of key tech cards are Sneak Attack or Necropotence depending on what might be better at the time.
Whip of Erebos is also a great card once you have mana to sink into it's ability to put creatures into play and get the lifelink permanently.
Of course there are games where you have to search immediately for mass creature removal in order to stay in the game or win.
How much mana do you need throughout the game?
When I first constructed a build I was imagining because you are potentially drawing 5-8 (even easily up to 20 sometimes) each turn, that you'd want to scale the deck up by being able to cast multiple cards each turn, otherwise what's the point of so much draw right?
I had cards that reflected this with Inner Fire, Mana Geyser, Seething Song. However it turns out that the same play pattern that I set out early above, still works just as successfully late game. Casting more and more spells each turn just isn't necessary. So the draw is more like insurance. Insurance to have land drops. Insurance to have your pick of options for creatures to sacrifice to boost Greven power and provide more draw. Insurance for protection for Greven. Insurance to make sure Greven connects to opponents life totals.
Often you are discarding a lot of cards due to hand size. And this is fine. Trust me when you are discarding cards because you have a selection to choose from, you are a favorite to win that game, and this is where I find myself a lot of the time.
There is Reliquary Tower in the deck that will allow you to keep all your cards, so this can be nice.
However the idea of ramping the deck up I found was not the way to go. As I mentioned casting multiple creatures post-combat isn't that great a play.
Don't get me wrong it's nice to get more and more mana available to you each turn, but I really have kept it to the mana rocks for this as they provide the best gains throughout the game, including at the very start when you want to get Greven out early if possible.
Use protection at ALL times kids!!
I've already outlined what you should do if you don't have Greven in play yet, and that is that you can tap out to speed the game up.
But don't be tempted to tap out to get all your artifact mana or other spells into play if you have a protection spell in hand and already have Greven in play.
This does come up often. Imagine you have a hand size of 11 cards post-combat. Now you could cast say two artifact mana spells like Rakdos Signet and Grim Monolith, but it leaves you tapped out (in this case just colorless mana), and you have a spell like Imp's Mischief in hand.
What often happens is that because you have to discard down to 7 cards, the temptation to cast out as many cards as you can AND get your mana base more setup is tempting...very tempting..like BIG RED CANDY like button tempting.
But the better play is to see if you can just cast a single mana rock if it enables you to leave up for the Imp's Mischief and do the disciplined thing of having to discard really good cards. In this case probably 3 good cards and it might be that you even discard the artifact mana that you could of had the chance to cast that turn, which seems very counter-intuitive.
But stay the course and protect Greven if you can. Even if the artifact mana would help you re-cast Greven so that you only take one turn off if he got removed, that is a turn off for your opponents when he can apply ungodly amounts of pressure instead.
I've done the "greedy" play in the past of tapping out to get more cards into play and always regretted it.