Should I Rebuild Meren, or Something Else?

[yeti1069]

So, I'd had a Meren deck for a loooong time. The first commander deck I built was Savra, Queen of the Golgari, which got changed over to Meren a year or two later, when I picked up the Commander Anthology. Figure 8+ years with Meren. When LotR came out, I found Sméagol, Helpful Guide to be intriguing, and didn't want to build a second Golgari deck, so I retired Meren and scrapped it for parts.

I always liked the playstyle of Meren--self-mill and discard to reanimate for value; ramp and removal (heavy on the edict creatures and Grave Pact effects. I like graveyard strategies. I liked how resilient the deck could be--once got Mindslaver'ed, had all my creatures sacrificed, about 40 cards milled from my library, most of my hand discarded, and then my graveyard exiled...and I still pulled out a win! I'd had a convoluted combo line, but had been moving away from that a bit, cutting tutors, and making it harder to assemble, but it was still worth having in as a finisher for long games, or in advance of someone else obviously going off. That said, I do also have a bunch of green tutor effects that I like playing, and need a home.

The problems I had with Meren were that it is pretty high on the Kill-on-Sight list, so I'd often get hammered early and often, even if I wasn't doing much, and I had like 200 cards I wanted to slot in the deck, but only so much room, and no desire to build multiple versions of the same deck...even though that's essentially what I have going into other colors, with a variety of black-based decks that work out of the yard in different ways.

Well, the itch is back, especially with so many new cards that work within the Golgari graveyard style of deck, and I am wondering whether I should shelve Smeagol and rebuild Meren, or build something else in (/x). I've played with Nethroi, Apex of Death on Arena a fair amount, and enjoy that deck, but I'm not sure that's the direction I'd want to go either. I know a few people here really like Karador, Ghost Chieftain.

I guess I'm seeking suggestions here on a Golgari self-mill graveyard deck. Ideally, it's strong, but doesn't lean too heavily on fast combo wins. I'd prefer incremental value, and I always like a degree of board control, because I'm mean.

[PrimevalCommander]

Meren sounds like exactly what you want to do. Do your playgroup a favor, leave out Spore Frog and Protean Hulk

[yeti1069]

Meren sounds like exactly what you want to do. Do your playgroup a favor, leave out Spore Frog and Protean Hulk

I...don't think I'd leave out Fog Frog, but Hulk doesn't need to go back in. I had a Hulk line that didn't use Triskelion, because I don't love 2 card combos, and Triskelion is a pretty bad card outside of the combo, but the version I had took more steps, and therefore took longer, which everyone found annoying.

[toctheyounger]

You could try Tayam, Luminous Enigma? It's a pretty bizarre deck, but it's VERY resilient and grindy, plays a lot in the same sort of space as Meren, but maybe with a little more potential for variety. Tayam works at most sort of power levels, so you don't need to feel like you're spiking out if you don't want to, and it's super easy to build in subthemes, like stax, enchantress, reanimation, counters etc. Very, very versatile commander.