Lagomos, Hand of Hatred - Midrange Value and Control

User avatar
darrenhabib
Posts: 1812
Joined: 4 years ago
Pronoun: Unlisted

Post by darrenhabib » 1 year ago

Image

Lagomos, Hand of Hatred - Midrange Value and Control

Planeswalkers (1)

Approximate Total Cost:

The 5 creature clause at first seems like Lagomos, Hand of Hatred ability to Tutor for a card would be hard to activate, but this is Commander and every player plays creatures and so a single "each player sacrifices a creature" effect is going to allow you to use his ability more often than not. So let's say it's a 4 player game and you cast Merciless Executioner. That's 4 creatures that die and then with the token you create with Lagomos you sacrifice that at end of turn, and now you have the 5 creatures that died.
Each player sacrifice creatures include Innocent Blood, Fleshbag Marauder, Gravelighter, Merciless Executioner, Plaguecrafter, Rankle, Master of Pranks.
There is also Grave Pact and Dictate of Erebos that can at least trigger with sacrificing the token at end of turn.
Obviously in a 5 or more player game you'll get the search library ability immediately with these "each player" effects.

Rather than a combo deck, looking to say tutor quickly for Ad Boreseam, I wanted to utilize Lagomos ability to create a 2/1 token creature each turn for value.
There are sacrifice creature to draw with Dockside Chef, Vampiric Rites, Witch's Cauldron, Yawgmoth, Thran Physician.
Then there are further draw for when your creature dies and I've specifically chosen ones that trigger with the tokens Lagomos creates with Dark Prophecy, Morbid Opportunist, Erebos, Bleak-Hearted, Liliana, Dreadhorde General.
Skullclamp is a powerful draw with the 2/1 tokens.
Additional value triggers include creating treasures with Pitiless Plunderer and Mahadi, Emporium Master.
Mayhem Devil can ping for damage.
Attrition can be used to kill non-black creatures.

There are a number of cards to bolster the above value cards to make them more consistent.
Bloodghast, Reassembling Skeleton, Squee, Goblin Nabob, Squee, the Immortal are creatures that you can get back from the graveyard.
Bitterblossom and Liliana, Dreadhorde General create tokens.
Field of the Dead, Kher Keep, Sokenzan, Crucible of Defiance are lands that create token creatures.

There are creatures that can sacrifice for value with Viscera Seer, Woe Strider, Yawgmoth, Thran Physician that don't require mana to activate.
These can be useful when an opponent goes for a creature board wipe and you're deep into the game with 5 other creatures you can sacrifice them and then activate Lagomos. If you have 4b available then you can search for Thrilling Encore to get all the creatures that died that turn. If you don't then you could go for Balthor the Defiled to get your creatures back on subsequent turn(s).

Harmonic Prodigy is particular nice as Lagomos is a Shaman so both the 2/1 token and the search ability will trigger each time twice.

The deck is rounded out by staples for mana, draw and control.

So what do I search for each time with Lagomos, Hand of Hatred?
As I said rather than a combo deck that is looking for specific cards, this is much more of a grind them out with value type of play style.
So really it's going to depend on what seems to be the best card for that stage of the game .. wow thanks Captain Obvious.
But often setting up mana is going to benefit you the most during those first parts of the game so I'd probably be going for Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth and Cabal Coffers so that you can do a lot of the things that you'd like to do. Drawing additional cards each turn is great of course, but the bottleneck is mainly going to be mana.
There is also Deserted Temple to activate Cabal Coffers again if you get deeper into the game.
As far as the best engine cards, Rankle, Master of Pranks gives you the "each player sacrifices creature" each turn. Grave Pact and Dictate of Erebos do this as well. I am used to 4 player games, so in these instances I need one further creature to die, so having another token generator or recursive graveyard creature is beneficial. It might just be Bitterblossom for consistency of not having to invest mana. Bloodghast is also another pretty easy to get value with all the fetch lands in the deck. Same with Field of the Dead once you have 7 different lands in play should provide consistent value.

I'm pretty rusty with card sets over the last year and keen for advice on cards that you think would go nice with Lagomos, Hand of Hatred or the strategy I've gone for.

Tags:

Return to “Decklists”