For me, one of the joys of the Commander sets lies in using the cards in 60-card casual environments! My group plays more 60-card games than Commander games and this has been a boon for us. Getting to switch formats on a regular basis is a good thing. Our 60-card decks are truly casual. While some of us will buy some cards to round off a deck, many in the group simply use the cards they have to best effect, leading to games with all sorts of interesting interactions!

One of the decks I use puts cards from an older Commander set together in a way that was never intended. The legends from C15 were all about the experience counters. The idea was that every time you did something and your commander was in play, you would get an experience counter. Your commander would get a benefit and be better and better with more experience counters. Daxos, the Returned is a prime example. Cast an enchantment spell and get an experience counter. Then Daxos could put out tokens that would be as big as the number of experience counters.

Experience counters have proven to be annoying, since, much like emblems, there is no way to interact with them. Killing the commander doesn't cause them to reset, so once you've let the number of counters get too big, these commanders become very difficult to deal with.

When I looked at the legends, I didn't look at them as commanders, but as creatures in a 60-card deck. This means there would be no color restrictions, so I could put different ones together! It didn't take long to see that Daxos didn't play well with the others. Mizzix of the Izmagus was the only one focused on instants and sorceries, so that was out too. Kalemne, Disciple of Iroas seemed like fun, but once I looked at the other two remaining legends, I knew I had my pairing.

Ezuri, Claw of Progress and Meren of Clan Nel Toth both share Green in their casting cost. This meant that the deck would only have to be three colors and with Green as the primary color, mana fixing would be easy. Both focus their abilities on creatures and Green again is a great creature color. The pairing goes well beyond that though.

Ezuri adds experience counters whenever a creature with a power of two or less enters the battlefield. This means he can add experience counters early in the game. Once he starts piling up counters, even those small creatures get awfully big fast.

Meren adds experience counters when creatures you control die. This means Meren isn't adding counters as early as Ezuri, but it doesn't take too long. The key is that even with just Ezuri adding experience counters, Meren can return creatures with significant mana costs to the battlefield at breakneck speed. This just seemed like a great idea!

The focus of the deck would be smaller creatures that would easily hit the graveyard. A card like Sakura-Tribe Elder is perfect in this deck. With Ezuri and Meren out you can cast it for 2 mana and add an experience counter. Then you sacrifice it to get a land onto the battlefield and another experience counter due to Meren. At the end of the turn Meren can fetch it out of the graveyard and back on the battlefield, adding another experience counter from Ezuri. The net was three experience counters, a land, and you still have the Elder in play to chump block and you can sacrifice it in response to get another land, and another experience counter.

Bone Shredder is another low cost card. It enters the battlefield and destroys a creature. If it survives to the next turn, you can choose not to pay the echo cost and let Meren bring it back at the end of the turn to destroy another creature and add more experience counters.

Eternal Witness becomes a nightmare for your opponents. It enters the battlefield and can get an Ezuri or Meren from your graveyard if your opponents are trying to stop you. Then it sits there as a chump blocker, but your opponents know that if it dies, Meren is going to bring it back and it will bring yet another card from your graveyard to your hand! As the game progresses, Eternal Witness becomes a nice target for the Ezuri counters that come at the beginning of combat. Even four experience counters makes for a 6/5 Witness! It becomes big enough that opponents have to try and stop it, which often means killing it. Oh good! More experience counters!

Another fun card is Mulldrifter! When a deck recurs cards as much as this one does, it doesn't need much in the way of card draw, Mulldrifter does a great job. I never worry about the casting cost, since I just Evoke it out for three. I get to draw two cards, and Ezuri adds another experience counter when it enters the battlefield, and Meren adds a counter as soon as it leaves. Getting to five experience counters is not difficult, so Meren can usually bring it back to the battlefield (adding another experience counter), giving me a 2/2 flyer and adding four card to my hand in a single turn.

Spore Frog is not something most people expect. This old-school Nemesis card is there to be sacrificed for a Fog effect. Add in the single Green mana cost and you have a card that works with Ezuri and Meren with almost no effort at all. The curious part is that this often works too well! No one wants to attack a player if they think the attack is just going to be wasted. This means that quite often the Frog just sits there waiting. I've had games where I sacrificed it at the end of a turn, just to get another experience counter.

Tree of Perdition is a card I wanted to try out and it has had mixed results. It is a great blocker and has proven its worth against life gain decks more than once. The problem is that it can be a bit of a dead card in the deck in some matchups. It was curious to see it with eight +1/+1 counters on it as I battled against a few wither creatures.

Korozda Guildmage is a card that just makes sense in the deck. It gives evasion to creatures to hurry the beat down or sacrifices a creature to add Saprolings. With Ezuri and Meren out, just sacrificing a Mulldrifter means three experience counters. Realistically, you are sacrificing a creature with four or five +1/+1 counters on it that is about to die in combat. This would give me about six Saprolings, so it means adding seven experience counters. The Guildmage is the ultimate enabler!

I have an artifact/enchantment removal package that I still haven't streamlined. Acidic Slime offers the most utility, but it costs five mana. Reclamation Sage has the best cost, but it doesn't do much else other than chump block. Bane of Progress wipes everything clean, but the cost can be an issue and once it is big, it has no evasion. Finally Trygon Predator is repeatable removal, but only works if it can actually hit the opponent with the enchantment or artifact. Until I decide, I'll continue to run all four.

Thief of Blood and Managorger Hydra are two larger creatures that can demand answers immediately. In the last game I players, Thief of Blood ended up with 22 counters, while the Hydra was a 10/10 by the time it could attack. Hydra Omnivore and Griselbrand are two other all-stars. I had one game where the Omnivore attacked as a 20/20 and that isn't particularly unusual.

Merzuri | Casual | Bruce Richard

• Creatures (32)
• 1 Acidic Slime
• 1 Baleful Strix
• 1 Bane of Progress
• 1 Eternal Witness
• 1 Griselbrand
• 1 Hydra Omnivore
• 1 Lotleth Troll
• 1 Managorger Hydra
• 1 Reclamation Sage
• 1 Thief of Blood
• 1 Trygon Predator
• 1 Wonder
• 2 Korozda Guildmage
• 2 Mulldrifter
• 2 Spore Frog
• 2 Tree of Perdition
• 3 Bone Shredder
• 3 Ezuri, Claw of Progress
• 3 Meren of Clan Nel Toth
• 3 Sakura-Tribe Elder

• Enchantments (4)
• 1 Awakening Zone
• 1 Deathreap Ritual
• 1 Pernicious Deed
• 1 Thopter Pie Network

• Lands (24)
• 3 Island
• 4 Swamp
• 6 Forest
• 1 Bojuka Bog
• 1 Temple of Deceit
• 1 Temple of Malady
• 1 Temple of Mystery
• 1 Vivid Creek
• 1 Vivid Grove
• 1 Vivid Marsh
• 4 Opulent Palace

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This deck has been together now for a couple of years and the results have been great. Even in games where only Ezuri or only Meren come out to play, the experience counters mean that the deck just never stops. In fact, not getting both often proves to be better, since it means the deck runs a little more slowly and draws less attention. Once the experience counters get to four, creatures start to get out of control. Any of your creatures become 5/5 creatures at the start of combat and now you start imposing yourself on the board state.

It is important to remember to spread the +1/+1 counter wealth around. Loading it all up onto one creature is appealing, but probably not the right play. Multiple 8/8 creatures demand a board wipe as an answer, while one big creature can be stopped in so many ways.

I also try to build up as much redundancy in hand as possible. When the mass removal hits, following it up with another copy of Meren is just backbreaking. Many times I won't play out both Meren and Ezuri until I have another copy of one of them in hand. Getting the experience counters up is essential, but racing to do it, then not seeing another one for a few turns while you are getting smacked is frustrating.

As far as fighting the deck, opponents absolutely must exile your cards or your graveyard regularly to stop the deck. The other key is to take out Meren first. Taking out Ezuri first may stop an ugly attack for that turn, but Meren will just bring Ezuri back on the end step to try again on the next turn.

The problem for opponents are the experience counters. Once there are four counters, Meren can return Ezuri and most other cards in the deck. It takes a series of exiles to shut the deck down, since there are six copies of Meren or Ezuri. This means you almost always have one in your hand and the experience counters allow them to be good immediately. At some point the focused removal runs out and the "Merzuri" combo overwhelms.

I would love to hear your suggestions for improvements to the deck. Many of the cards are the standard cards you'd expect and I'd love to hear about some off-the-wall suggestions that could fine tune the Merzuri engine!

Bruce

@manaburned