Commander 2015 Review 3

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Happy Monday MTG peeps,

MTG Realm is back yet again with another Commander 2015 review.  We have already provided a brief review of the Magic: the Gathering pre-constructed Commander 2015 products for the Black / White 'Call the spirits' deck lead by Daxos the Returned, as well as the 'Wade into Battle' deck lead by Kalemne, Disciple of Iroas.

The Black & Green coloured 'Plunder the Graves' deck has Merren of Clan Nel Toth as the Commander with choices of Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest or the previously printed Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord as your 'back-up' Commander.  This decklist showcases what what Black and Green ('Golgari' colours) do best - graveyard shenanigans and uses just about every vector available to fill up the graveyard.  One can sacrifice creatures to your benefit, whether is is part of a paid cost to an activated ability such as Viridian Zealot or as a by-product of a spell such as Mulch or one of our favourite common card-draw spells, Altar's Reap.

The idea which you will readily appreciate is to fill up that yard rapidly, even with seemingly un-beneficial chump blocks in order to set up the punch line.  Recycle and reuse the fallen with the likes of Wretched Confluence, Rise from the Grave or Meren of Clan Nel Toth herself.  A number of creature cards in this decklist also have rather nice 'enters the battlefield' effects such as Satyr Wayfinder which means it is definitely encouraged to double dip and have it cycle as many times as possible.

The new card, Merren of Clan Nel Toth collects those new experience counters for each time one of your critters bites the dust.  The pay-out here is the ability to be able to retreive a creature in your graveyard equal to or less than the number of experience counters at your end step.  

The second legendary creature, Mazirek will garner +1/+1 counters on each creature you control every time a player sacrifices.  Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest is also decent in this list but we would personally consider this a secondary character and not optimal in the current list as its Commander without some modifications first in the theme.  There are almost 20 or so cards with a sacrifice clause in the mix and we would likely want to pump that number up a bit more.

Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord is your third legendary in the list and great support card as well.  Again, we would want to modify the list a titch should we want to have Jarad act as Commander here.  When Jarad was in standand format, we had a definite liking to what this card could do - first and foremost - sacrificing huge critters to kock life off each opponent.  We also liked the power / toughness pump with each critter in your graveyard but often found that we wished Jarad had evasion and would be chump-blocked till the cows came home unless we had a combat trick or spot removal.


All in all, a solid list - our compliments to Wizards of the Coast staffers (Ben Hayes, Dan Emmons, et al.) - love the theme, and the fun factor while playing.

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