My friends, can your heart stand the shocking facts about the grave robbers from outer space?
- Criswell, Plan 9 From Outer Space
- Criswell, Plan 9 From Outer Space
I hate Warhammer and Universes Beyond.
With that out of the way, I've always thought Szarekh, the Silent King was underrated. I remember most people being underwhelmed with him when he was spoiled and Imotekh the Stormlord is much more popular on EDHREC, but I always thought he was a real cool guy. Just a little enabler with a decent card advantage engine built in. He reminds me of Sidisi, Brood Tyrant, another card I've always liked, but due to the restrictions of his ability and being in mono-black the overall power level is a little bit lower. This is perfect for me since I've been wanting to build a casual mono-black deck but always ended up breaking the deck in half.
The rules:
1) No tutors.
2) All creatures must be artifact creatures.
3) No individual cards worth more than ~$10.
4) Total budget of $100.
These limitations keep the overall power level of the deck down and thus make it more palatable at lower-tier tables. Winning through combat and not running an absurd amount of interaction also makes it a little more fun to play against than the typical mono-black deck.
Grimdark Zombie Space Robots
Approximate Total Cost:
Commander
Why Szarekh, the Silent King? As mentioned earlier, he's an enabler of graveyard shenanigans while also being a limited card advantage engine. Nothing too threatening, but subtly powerful. A lot of Necros have Unearth, and the deck runs a lot of ways to either return creatures from your graveyard to your hand or directly put them into play. In effect, your graveyard acts as a second hand. At 4mv, he's at the sweet spot of commander mana costs since it's reasonable to be able to cast him on turn 3 with a mana rock fairly consistently. The earlier he comes out, the earlier he can start swinging and generating value. Szarekh's black-intensive mana cost has some building implications for our mana base and ramp package, but it's nothing major.
While Szarekh is a sort of lubricant that makes the deck run smoother, it's by no means reliant on him, which is another point in his favor.
Land
I kept it nice and simple. 40 is a great number for consistently hitting your early and mid-game land drops, and the density of Swamps and black-producing lands helps us cast Szarekh very easily. Reliquary Tower is probably unnecessary, but hey, at least there's a Necron aesthetic one.
Ramp
Shockingly, I'm not running 11 ramp cards in a deck with a 4mv commander. Lowering the ramp count and raising the land count makes the deck more consistent overall but slightly lowers the odds of a turn 3 Szarekh. Otherwise, there's not much more to say about 2mv rocks. Notably, I'm not running Sol Ring, because that card is a snoozefest and I don't want games of me blowing people out because of it.
Robots
25 is a reasonable number to hit with Szarekh most of the time. As this is still a mono-black deck that wants to grind people out of the game, preference is given to robots that either disrupt, generate card advantage, or protect, but there's room for a few beaters as well. The idea is to create a board that is resilient and tenacious, eventually overwhelming your opponents with sheer value.
Value
Not much to say. Cranial Plating is good in a deck with ~40 artifacts. Their Number Is Legion is a late-game bomb that can be cast from the graveyard as needed.
Draw
This is the part of the deck I'm least happy with. Skeletal Scrying, Stinging Study, and Hostile Negotiations are solid instant speed draw spells that allow you to surprise your opponents with extra cards just before you untap. Monumental Corruption and Promise of Power require you to basically tap out to draw a ton of cards, but if you untap you'll be in an advantageous position. Mask of Memory has a Necron version and is easily taken advantage of by our evasive commander and high creature count, and Mystic Forge is our low rent Bolas's Citadel. I think it's a little lopsided toward late-game draw, but given that we're mostly trying to ramp or deploy creatures in the early game, I figured it would be better to lean that way.
Recursion
My favorite part of the deck. When your commander says "mill three cards" it's time to load up on these. Phyrexian Reclamation and Skeleton Shard are de facto card draw spells in this deck, and From the Catacombs is woefully underplayed. The War in Heaven is apparently thematically appropriate and does a ton of work for us, but being a saga I worry it might be too slow.
Spot Removal
Gotta play it. I put the best 2mv removal spells in that I could find room for. I figure focusing on creatures is more important than also being able to kill planeswalkers since I'm running so many creatures to interact with them.
Board Wipe
The cool thing about running only artifact creatures is that I get to play some asymmetrical wipes. Fun! Their Name Is Death is just completely one-sided, as is Phyrexian Scriptures assuming it doesn't eat a Disenchant. All Is Dust will miss many of your creatures. Mutilate is just a reliable generic inexpensive board wipe for a deck with so many Swamps.
That's the deck. Nothing particularly exciting, but being able to bust out a $100 deck at casual tables to put things on a more even playing field that I also find enjoyable to play is something I've been sorely missing.
