In this experiment, we use our experience and build a bridge.

I realized I hadn’t built a Commander deck in a while, so I decided to look through the Commander (2015 Edition) legendary creatures and pick one to build around. But what I ended up is yet another sixty-card list! Oh well.

Meren

Meren of Clan Nel Toth is my easy favorite for new legendary creatures—it fits perfectly into my Karador, Ghost Chieftain deck, though a deck of her own would be far too similar to that deck for me to have two. However, I think a deck that can run multiples of cards has potential to be really interesting with her.

You see, to optimize Meren, we want to have the potential to return something of note on turn four, just after we cast her. There are no 1-mana spells that make more than one token (though Blisterpod is one card that can act as two creatures), and we’ll have to spend our 2-mana spot on the Altar. Then on turn three, there are a few options that can give us two creatures, but we’d need significant for Spectral Procession to make three. Pawn of Ulamog can do some work—that’s a potential of five creatures total to sacrifice on turn four when combined with Blisterpod.

Play a turn-one, Blisterpod, a turn-two Altar of Dementia, a turn-three Pawn of Ulamog, and a turn-four Meren of Clan Nel Toth. Then, sacrifice the Blisterpod to the Altar, making an Eldrazi Spawn and an Eldrazi Scion. Sacrifice the Pawn for another Spawn, and then sacrifice the three Eldrazi tokens to the Altar as well, for a total of ten cards milled and 5 experience counters.

That’s a best-case scenario with very few interchangeable parts: We really need those specific cards to make that happen, and it’s not even super-exciting. So I decided to look around a bit for more options.

Deadbridge Chant

And then I found this awesome card that I love a lot because it’s amazing.

Deadbridge Chant can do all the milling on its own, so we don’t need the Altar of Dementia to do it. However, that does mean we’ll need creatures that can sacrifice themselves, which means we won’t be using cards that generate multiple tokens for a multiple-experience-counter-for-one-card ratio. But we’ll just have to live with that. And Pawn of Ulamog will still be around to help out.

Mana Creatures

The common theme you’ll see among many of these creatures is that they sacrifice themselves for mana, making them kind of like Dark Rituals in creature form. The downside, then, of course, is that they create card disadvantage, which I very much dislike. That said, we can hope Meren and Deadbridge Chant will recoup all of that value we’re losing.

Blood Pet — We need 1-drops to accelerate as much as we can for as much velocity as we can. This can give us 1 mana and 1 experience counter on the turn we want to “go off” with Meren.

Wild Cantor — We’re not playing red, so this is essentially the green version of Blood Pet, though it also has the upside that it can sacrifice for instead of when we want it to.

Manaweft Sliver — I wouldn’t be playing this in the deck but for the following card, but it can add a bit of not-sacrifice-based mana acceleration. It’s inefficient for that purpose, as Llanowar Elves would easily be better if that were our only goal, but then there’s . . . 

Basal Sliver — This is the Sliver version of Blood Vassal, which barely missed the cut. This lets us gain an experience counter and 2 mana when we’re going off. It also taps for 1 mana before we sacrifice it if we have Manaweft Sliver (or Gemhide Sliver if you prefer Time Spiral and aren’t expecting Sliver opponents). Similarly, it lets us sacrifice the Manaweft Sliver for after we tap that one for mana.

Call the Scions — This is a spell, but a couple of these help round out the acceleration. It provides 2 mana and 2 experience counters, so it seems worth a shot.

Pawn of Ulamog — As described in an example earlier, this can do a lot of work toward providing more experience counters. We won’t be able to sacrifice it for that last experience counter, as we could when we had Altar of Dementia around, but we gain Eldrazi tokens when we sacrifice either of the 1-drops and either of the Slivers.

The Payoff

After building in a lot of the engine of the deck, I still had to make room for the payoff. We’re hoping to gain a lot of experience, so we want big things worth returning, and Deadbridge Chant will be giving us free stuff as well. That said, I’m not sure the best numbers in terms of converted mana cost to run.

With low values, we’ll have a better chance of reaching the mana or experience needed to bring the thing into play, but we risk not gaining enough payoff for all our card disadvantage. And if we go too high on the mana cost, we may only rarely be able to bring out the creature in question. Because of those issues, I spread out the numbers a bit and avoided four-ofs.

Wolfir Silverheart — One of my concerns is keeping Meren of Clan Nel Toth around, as she’ll have a big target on her forehead. Wolfir Silverheart can take her out of burn range and protect her in many combat scenarios. And at only 5 mana, we have the potential to bring it into play with either mana or experience on turn four.

Greenwarden of Murasa — Eternal Witness almost found its way into the deck as a way to bring back more copies of Deadbridge Chant or a card later on the list, but then I remembered there’s a recently printed big version. It’s only a 5/4, but I’ll take it.

Devouring Strossus — This is a big payoff creature that has the subtle upside of letting us sacrifice our creatures. Sacrificing Greenwarden, for example, will let us use its triggered ability again by putting it onto the battlefield again. (That second triggered ability on the Greenwarden is the kind I’m unlikely to take advantage of unless I’m trying to immediately win the game or am about to immediately lose it.) Oh, and Devouring Strossus is still very big and has flying and trample—and can regenerate.

Archetype of Endurance — This is around as another way to try to keep Meren alive. It’s also reasonably big.

Rise of the Dark Realms — Finally, we have a card that can’t be brought out with Meren (though Deadbridge Chant can randomly hit it to return to our hand). But that’s what the Greenwardens are around for (also because Eternal Witness is awesome), and this card can let us go wide instead of just tall with our creature-reanimation plan.

A couple honorable mentions are Grizzly Fate and Kalonian Behemoth. Grizzly Fate is a leftover from the tokens plan, as it has the potential to make four 2/2s for only 5 mana. With Deadbridge Chant, that becomes more likely, and we’d even have the potential to cast it multiple times (without even using flashback) with the Chant and the Greenwardens. Kalonian Behemoth is like a Devouring Strossus that doesn’t fly and doesn’t have trample, but it also doesn’t require that we sacrifice creatures, it’s a bit cheaper, and it has shroud. I could imagine a deck like this just running four Behemoths as the payoff (maybe keeping the Silverhearts), but I don’t like the lack of evasion, as it could take a while to grind through chump-blockers, and we might not have time to do so if the opponent is attacking us on other fronts (flying, Wrath of God, milling, etc.).

The Deadbridge Experience ? Casual | Andrew Wilson

• Creatures (31)
• 1 Archetype of Endurance
• 1 Devouring Strossus
• 2 Wolfir Silverheart
• 3 Greenwarden of Murasa
• 4 Basal Sliver
• 4 Blood Pet
• 4 Manaweft Sliver
• 4 Pawn of Ulamog
• 4 Wild Cantor
• 4 Meren of Clan Nel Toth

• Spells (7)
• 1 Rise of the Dark Realms
• 2 Call the Scions
• 4 Deadbridge Chant

• Lands (22)
• 5 Forest
• 5 Swamp
• 4 Llanowar Wastes
• 4 Overgrown Tomb
• 4 Woodland Cemetery

Buy This Deck

So I went over an example scenario of the tokens plan, so let’s do the same with the list I’m actually presenting.

Turn one: Forest, Wild Cantor

Turn two: Swamp, Wild Cantor, Blood Pet

Turn three: Swamp, Pawn of Ulamog

Turn four: Swamp; Meren of Clan Nel Toth; sacrifice Wild Cantor for , making an Eldrazi Scion and gaining 1 experience counter; sacrifice the other Wild Cantor for , making another Eldrazi Scion and gaining another experience counter; sacrifice Blood Pet for , making a third Eldrazi Scion and gaining a third experience counter; sacrifice the three Scions for 3, gaining 3 more experience counters; cast Deadbridge Chant, milling Wolfir Silverheart (or Greenwarden of Murasa), among others; return to be battlefield the Silverheart at the end of the turn, pairing it with Meren

From there, we can return potentially bigger and bigger creatures each turn with Meren while also gaining cards with Deadbridge Chant. We also have an 8/8 and a 7/8 ready to attack on our next turn.

So if you love Jund Shamans who go Grixis, if you love Sliver subthemes, or if you just love Deadbridge Chant as much as I do, give this deck a try.

Andrew Wilson

@Silent7Seven

fissionessence at hotmail dot com