I started playing Magic with New Phyrexia,  the spring of my sophomore year of high school. I had been playing the Yu-gi-oh! and Pokemon TCGs for quite a while, but I had never really tried to play Magic. My brother finally convinced me to actually give it a shot.

Needless to say, I played and just kept playing. I learned fast and started to play Standard. Sadly, I played when the entire format was just between Cawblade and Splinter Twin. The “fun” I wanted to have with the format was stifled, and I just didn’t end up playing all that much.

Then, during the Summer of 2011, I learned about EDH as it was being officially re-branded to Commander; 100 card singleton with a General, or Commander.

My brother had bought all 5 of the decks, and allowed me to use one of them – Counter Punch, with [card]Ghave, Guru of Spores[/card]. The first time I actually played it against was in a pod with [card]Cromat[/card] “good stuff,” [card]Child of Alara[/card] Allies and [card]Silvos, Rogue Elemental[/card] ramp. I ended up winning with the regular Ghave deck with few modifications.

After that, I aimed to build my first EDH deck from scratch – [card]Nicol Bolas[/card], because he was a bad-ass Dragon that I already owned. While I waited for the cards for it to arrive, I purchased Devour for Power while it was still on the shelves and played with [card]Mimeoplasm[/card] with my brother.

I went to the local EDH league (casual multi-player with store credit awarded to winners) at my local game store and promptly got second with my homebrew, but realized that my commander was really, really expensive. I only ended up casting him once, and he got countered.

Then, I saw [card]Sedris, the Traitor King[/card] in somebody’s trade binder and promptly picked him up for a little less than a dollar, and made changes to the deck. While I’ve changed it a lot over the years and dismantled it multiple times, I’ve always kept Grixis close to my heart.

[card]Sedris. the Traitor[/card] is a 5/5 Zombie Warrior for 3UBR that seems pretty unassuming – until you read his ability.Each creature card in your graveyard has unearth 2B.

Unearth lets a creature reanimate itself for a cost – in this case, 2B. It’s a slightly forgotten ability – the only card relevant in any formats that I can think of with Unearth would be [card]Hellspark Elemental[/card].

When I first discovered Sedris and what he could do, I automatically fell in love with it. I had already been playing [card]The Mimeoplasm[/card] so I was already well versed in reanimator decks.

As a self-admitted Johnny, I ended up building this deck as a Combo deck in my personal collection.

I chose Sedris over other Grixis commanders because of his intrinsic reanimation ability. While [card]Marchesa, the Black Rose[/card] is easier to cast and animates stuff even easier, Sedris has the ablity to pull the cards back out of the graveyard after he hits the board instead of having to already be in play.

Despite being considered one of the most degenerate cards in the format, he actually serves a very good purpose here. [card]Deadeye Navigator[/card] is the major enabler in this deck. On top of being fantastic with enter the battlefield effects, he enables a slew of combos in this deck, and saves our unearthed creatures from exile by flickering them with his Soulbond ability. However, one problem with this is that a lot of people seem to disagree about this ruling, so here’s the direct text from the rules compendium:

2B: Return this card to play. The creature gains haste. Exile it at end of turn or if it would leave play. Unearth only as a sorcery.

The other important thing to note about Unearth is that it causes a delayed trigger – the “exile it at end of turn or if it would leave play” part of Unearth. There isn’t anything in particular about Unearth referring to this in the compendium, but there’s this note on the Gatherer:

If a creature returned to the battlefield with unearth would leave the battlefield for any reason, it’s exiled instead — unless the spell or ability that’s causing the creature to leave the battlefield is actually trying to exile it! In that case, it’s succeeds at exiling it. If it later returns the creature card to the battlefield, the creature card will return to the battlefield as a new object with no relation to its previous existence. The unearth effect will no longer apply to it.

This makes every creature in the deck a major threat – being able to come back to life over and over again completely removes the downside from unearth, even if it costs us a little more mana. I used to play cards like [card]Conjurer’s Closet[/card] and [card]Teferi’s Veil[/card], but they just felt too clunky and really only worked for either a slower control build or a faster aggressive build. Our combo build is somewhere in the middle. [card]Deadeye Navigator[/card] takes up the slot of exiling to keep them nicely.

[card]Duplicant[/card] is our all-purpose removal creature that has the upside of becoming just as big as the creature you exile. It gives us an easy way to get rid of annoying creatures like [card]Iona, Shield of Emeria[/card] or indestructible creatures like [card]Avaycn, Angel of Hope[/card] or [card]Blightsteel Colossus[/card].

[card]Palinchron[/card] untaps 7 lands whenever it comes into play – essentially being a free 4/5 flyer. There’s also the fact that [card]Palinchron[/card] + [card]Dead-eye Navigator[/card] gives us infinite mana, to do whatever we like with it. At worst, you can also unearth it to untap some lands to unearth more creatures.

[card]Rune-Scarred Demon[/card] is a second [card]Demonic Tutor[/card] for this deck, allowing us to search any combo piece we need, and just be a 6/6 flyer..

Now we’re going to cover the main combos for the deck.

[card]Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker[/card] and [card]Zealous Conscripts[/card] together are one of the main win combos in the deck. Similar to [card]Splinter Twin[/card] and [card]Deceiver Exarch[/card], you can get infinitely many Conscripts for a straight win against every player at the table.

These two together are already pretty well known – 2 mana to untap 7 lands over and over again, the usual. Once you’ve gotten all the mana you need, you can always blink Deadeye to soulbond another creature and keep blinking another ETB creature.

These three together are another infinite mana combo, in the case your [card]Palinchron[/card] disappears, First, you have Deadeye paired with Zealous Conscript, and then tap [card]Gilded Lotus[/card] for 3 blue mana. You use 2 of that to blink Zealous Conscripts and untap Gilded Lotus and so on until you have all the mana you’ll ever need.

The two infinite mana combos are what enable the deck to easily finish off the game. Infinite mana gives you the ability to unearth everything in your graveyard and blink whatever you want with [card]Deadeye Navigator[/card] infinitely many times, whether it be [card]Rune-Scarred Demon[/card] to search your entire library to your hand, or for [card]Inferno Titan[/card] to burn every opponent to death.

And of course, Reanimation is our forte here.

[card]Havengul Lich[/card] gives us the ability to recast creatures out of anyone’s graveyard, and [card]Havengul Lich[/card] gets that creature’s activated abilities, as long as you cast the creature. We don’t have a ton of activated abilities in this deck, but [card]Havengul Lich[/card] gives us the ability to keep a board presence and possibly keep important combo pieces out of other people’s graveyards and keep a check on other graveyard-centric decks.

[card]Feldon of the Third Path[/card], while very new to the Commander scene, is indeed very powerful in this format. He can power out strong creatures like [card]Nicol Bolas[/card] and [card]Wurmcoil Engine[/card] with ease. In addition, the token is sacrificed rather than exiled and still gets death triggers, which is important for Wurmcoil engine.

As for our reanimation spells, it’s a pretty standard yet.

• [card]Animate Dead[/card]
• [card]Dance of the Dead[/card]
• [card]Dread Return[/card]
• [card]Necromancy[/card]
• [card]Reanimate[/card]
• [card]Victimize[/card]

Now, just because I’m a Johnny, doesn’t mean I don’t know how to attack, too.

The original Commander never left – [card]Nicol Bolas[/card] is still a very mean guy – a single hit from this guy will wipe out that players entire hand. The main thing done with Nicol Bolas is to just have him in play for one turn and hit a vulnerable player with him. Reanimation + Haste is his best friend most of the time. [card]Feldon, of the Third Path[/card] is probably the best way to get him out consistently and against multiple players.

[card]Thraximundar[/card] is a super-aggressive card. 6/6 haste that gets bigger and eats creatures on the swing is pretty strong. A decent commander in his own rite, but not what we’re going for here. For the most part, he’s here simply to counter creatureless decks like [card[Narset, Enlightened Master[/card], [card]Melek Izzet Paragon[/card] or low creature count voltron decks like [card]Bruna, Light of Alabaster[/card], [card]Sigarda, Host of Herons[/card] and [card]Zur the Enchanter[/card]. [card]Fleshbag Marauder[/card] helps with this too.

[card]Lord of the Void[/card] is about as aggro as they come. A 7/7 for 4BBB, this 7/7 monstrosity lets you drag cards out of your opponent’s library. Against creature-centric decks, this is probably one of the first things you’re going to try to get in play. Even against decks like [card]Narset, Enlightened Master[/card], exiling those cards before they can get to them can be game changing.

[card]Wurmcoil Engine[/card] is a purely aggressive card. Originally a Birthing Pod and Control finisher in standard, he’s very consistently seen in Commander these days as an all around good card. A 6/6 for 6 colorless is already easy to manage in any deck, but also having Deathtouch and Lifelink on the same creature can wipe out big creatures and combos with trample enablers (not in this deck, but still relevant with cards like [card]Nylea, God of the Hunt[/card] and [card]Surrak Dragonclaw[/card] in the format. In here, he’s pure value. You don’t get his “when it dies” trigger off of Sedris, but it’s a big and swingy enough creature to turn games in your favor and eat removal without skipping a beat.

In order to get to these creatures and combos, we need a significant amount of drawing and filtering to get to them.

[card]Careful Study[/card]. [card]Faithless Looting[/card], [card]Frantic Search[/card], and [card]Izzet Charm[/card] all draw 2 discard two at low mana costs to get us some early games to discard big hitters like [card]Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur[/card] and [card]Nicol Bolas[/card].

[card]Dack Fayden[/card], the greatest thief in the multiverse, is the only planeswalker we need for this deck. His only real purpose is to +1 and do the same as the two above cards. His -2 is also very relevant – stealing early game [card]Sol Ring[/card] and other mana rock plays. Also a very strong play against Artifact decks like [card]Sharuum, the Hegemon[/card] or [cardMemnarch[/card].

[card]Desolate Lighthouse[/card] is a basic utility card for this deck. The deck doesn’t have very many mana sinks, and this card slots right in to giving us a discard outlet even when we may not need it.

[card]Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur[/card] is a sneaky one. 10 mana is too much even in Commander, but this deck can pretty easily get him to hit the board turn 2 or 3 with an entomb and a reanimate spell. Drawing 7 and dicarding down to your maximum hand size is just as good as the other two here in most cases. [card]Wheel of Fortune[/card] and ]card]Reforge the Soul[/card] are both pretty straightforward – discard everything and draw 7. [card]Whispering Madness[/card] is a windfall with a Cipher trigger. As we can easily swing in repeatedly, it’s not uncommon that we’ll get a few uses out of it.

On to the decklist:

[deck title=Sedris the Traitor King]
[Creatures]
Body Double
Consecrated Sphinx
Dack’s Duplicate
Dead-Eye Navigator
Duplicant
Feldon of the Third Path
Fleshbag Marauder
Glen Elendra Archmage
Havengul Lich
Inferno Titan
Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker
Lord of the Void
Nicol Bolas
Palinchron
Phyrexian Metamorph
Rune-Scarred Demon
Sedris, the Traitor King
Solemn Simulacrum
Thraximundar
Urabrask the Hidden
Wurmcoil Engine
Zealous Conscripts
{/Creatures]
[Spells]
Animate Dead
Arcane Denial
Beacon of Unrest
Black Sun’s Zenith
Blasphemous Act
Buried Alive
Careful Study
Chromatic Lantern
Counterspell
Crux of Fate
Cyclonic Rift
Dack Fayden
Dance of the Dead
Darksteel Ingot
Demonic Tutor
Dimir Signet
Dissipate
Dread Return
Dream Halls
Entomb
Exhume
Faithless Looting
Frantic Search
Gilded Lotus
Izzet Charm
Izzet Signet
Life’s Finale
Lightning Greaves
Mystical Tutor
Necromancy
Pyroblast
Reanimate
Reforge the Soul
Remand
Sensei’s Divining Top
Sol Ring
Spell Crumple
Victimize
Wheel of Fortune
Whispering Madness
[/Spells]
[Lamd]
Blackcleave Cliffs
Blood Crypt
Bloodstained Mire
Command Tower
Crumbling Necropolis
Darkslick Shores
Desolate Lighthouse
Dragonskull Summit
Drowned Catacombs
Flamekin Village
Graven Cairns
island
Mountain
Polluted Delta
Reflecting Pool
Reliquary Tower
Shivan Reef
Steam Vents
Sulfur Falls
Sunken Ruins
Swamp
Temple of Deceit
Temple of Epiphany
Temple of Malice
Temple of the False God
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Watery Crave
[/Land]
[/deck]

Now, this is by no means the only way to build Sedris, but it’s the way I’ve had the most luck with. The mana base isn’t 100% optimized, but it’s pretty close. It’s what I’ve run for my entire time playing the deck.

Until next time,

David M. Rowell

[card]Angus Mackenzie[/card] is one of the legendary creatures that are simultaneously exclusive to Legends and on the Reserved List – making it extremely expensive now. I’m surprised it didn’t spike again when Tiny Leaders became a popular format.

So what does he do?

Well, for WUG, you get a 2/2 Legendary creature. Nothing too impressive, but he’s at least playable as soon as turn 2 or 3 with the right mana fixing. His ability is the real reason he is powerful – for WUG and tap, you prevent all combat damage this turn, as long as it is done before combat damage.

Due to the fact his activated ability is [card]Fog[/card], his deck tend to play more defensively – preventing the damage makes you basically invincible to damage as long as you leave 3 mana open. The most common strategy for this is for Superfriends – Bant gives you a lot of fantastic planeswalkers combined with [card]Doubling Season[/card].

Obviously, the main thing for a Superfriends deck is to play a ton of planeswalkers.

Essentially every Planeswalker in this deck can immediately use its ultimate if it comes into play after [card]Doubling Season[/card]. As a quick reminder, [card]Doubling Season[/card] only modifies the loyalty that the Planeswalkers enter with. They’re placed when a planeswalker enters play, but adding loyalty is a cost to use the activated ability of the planeswalker. [card]Doubling Season[/card] only causes twice as many counters to be “placed” when counters are “placed,” not added as a cost.

[card]Clockspinning[/card] is a more narrow card. For U, you can take a counter from any permanent or suspended card and either remove it, or add another counter of that kind to that card. As this includes loyalty counters, it’s already pretty good. It wouldn’t be worth playing if you only used it once, though – it has Buyback for 3 colorless mana, which lets you cast it and then return it to your hand if you pay the buyback cost.

[card]Gilder Bairn[/card] is the only way we really have to double our Planeswalkers after they’re already in play – for 2{G/U} and an untap (not a tap) you double all of the counters on target permanent. Fairly self explanatory. The only real downside is that it has to be tapped in order to use its ability. Luckily, Angus prevents all combat damage,

M15 has given us quite a few new tools for this deck, in fact.

[card]The Chain Veil[/card] is the newest Superfriends support card. The downside is mostly non-existent in a Superfriends deck as you should always have at least 1 planeswalker in play that you’re using. By paying 4 mana and tapping it, you get to use each planeswalker you control an additional time this turn. This can easily push certain Planeswalkers over the amount of counters that they would need to activate their final abilities.

Combined with [card]Rings of Brighthearth[/card], you can then double the Chain Veil activation to get an additional two planeswalker abilities per planeswalker you control. Even when you don’t have the Chain Veil in play, you can use the Rings to get additional planeswalker abilities (though no additional loyalty counters).

We also got two new Planeswalkers from Magic 2015 that feel almost exclusively for Superfriends. [card]Ajani Steadfast[/card] has a powerful -2 that helps out your other Planeswalkers, but his ultimate combined with [card]Doubling Season[/card] gives you an emblem that causes all damage that you or your Planeswalkers would take from a source to 1 – making it much easier to survive an onslaught even if Angus isn’t in play. [card]Jace, the Living Guildpact[/card] is fairly strong in this deck. His +1 isn’t as bad in Commander as it is in Constructed due to the size of the decks, but his ultimate at -8 is just ridiculous and it can automatically go off with [card]Doubling Season[/card].

While [card]Teferi, Temporal Archmage[/card] is allowed as a commander, he serves a much better purpose in a Superfriends deck like this. His -10 is the most notable aspect when it comes to this deck. The emblem he gives you lets you use your planeswalkers every turn, not just on your own turns. Aside from that, his +1 is solid card filtering, and his -1 is very powerful as well, untapping important artifacts like [card]The Chain Veil[/card], and whatever mana rocks you play.

[card]Seedborn Muse[/card] is already a fantastic card in Commander, and Teferi just makes it even better. It essentially lets you use each of your planeswalker’s abilities twice every turn, including your opponent’s turns. [card]Prophet of Kruphix[/card] is also very good, but Seedborn Muse is strictly better in this build of the deck due to lack of creatures and the number of permanents we’d like untapped.

Our two colorless planeswalkers (the only two in the game, to be fair) are both ridiculously powerful, especially with doubling season. Even with Karn unable to ultimate directly off [card]Doubling Season[/card], having 12 starting loyalty even at 7 mana is ridiculous (and his regular 6 still isn’t bad) and his +4, while better in 1v1 than multiplayer, can slowly whittle away player’s hands while pumping up Karn. [card]Ugin, the Spirit Dragon[/card] on the other hand does go ultimate just with [card]Doubling Season[/card]. His -10 gains you 7 life, draws you 7 cards, and put any 7 permanents in your hand into play. Very, very powerful.  His +2 is also pretty solid burn/removal, especially on a colorless permanent that gives us 2 loyalty. The -X is mostly an emergency board wipe if we desparately need it, but hopefully you won’t, as it’s very likely to kill Angus. However, it is very good against token decks, as you can -0 to kill all colored tokens in play. Just a little tip.

[card]Narset Transcendent[/card] is a new planeswalker from Dragons of Tarkir. An alternate time line of [card]Narset, Enlightened Master[/card] (who will get her own article or two in some time) [card]Narset Transcendent[/card] is a ridiculous card, especially with the ultimate. The +1 is very solid in this deck as we play only 10 creatures (plus our commander) you have about a 51% chance of hitting a non-creature non-land card off of her ability. The -2 isn’t too relevant, but it’s usable on removal like [card]Swords to Plowshares[/card] and [card]Path to Exile[/card] to get rid of a few problematic creatures. The big thing is the ultimate – opponents are unable to cast noncreature spells for the rest of the game. There’s plenty of decks in Commander that don’t play very many creatures, so this can easily completely swing a game in your favor, depending on what you’re playing against.

The rest of the Planeswalkers in the deck are simply there to have their ultimates able to be activated with [card]Doubling Season[/card] on board, mostly.

The deck essentially is a pillow fort deck – just prevent people from doing anything to you. With the planeswalkers, it constantly gives you something to do with all the time pillow-forting provides.

Without further ado, here’s the list I compiled.

[deck title=Angus Mackenzie Superfriends]
[Creatures]
Angus Mackenzie
Azor’s Elocutors
Gilder Bairn
Lighthouse Chronologist
Prophet of Kruphix
Seedborn Muse
Silent Arbiter
Spike Weaver
Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
Trinket Mage
Viral Drake
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
Ajani, Mentor of Heroes
Ajani Steadfast
Arcane Denial
Azorious Signet
Chord of Calling
Clockspinning
Constant Mists
Contagion Engine
Counterspell
Crab Umbra
Creeping Renaissance
Cultivate
Darksteel Ingot
Darksteel Plate
Doubling Season
Elspeth, Knight-Errant
Elspeth, Sun’s Champion
Enlightened Tutor
Explosive Vegetation
Freyalise, Llanowar’s Fury
Ghostly Prison
Inexorable Tide
Jace, Architect of Thought
Jace Beleren
Jace, the Living Guildpact
Karn Liberated
Kiora, the Crashing Wave
Kirtar’s Wrath
Krosan Grip
Lightning Greaves
Mirari’s Wake
Mystical Tutor
Narset Transcendent
Nature’s Lore
Path to Exile
Propaganda
Ranger’s Path
Rewind
Rings of Brighthearth
Selesnya Signet
Simic Signet
Sol Ring
Skyshroud Claim
Supreme Verdict
Swords to Plowshares
Tamiyo, the Moon Sage
Teferi, Temporal Archmage
Tezzeret the Seejer
The Chain Veil
Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
Wrath of God
[/Spells]
[Land]
Ancient Den
Breeding Pool
Command Tower
Flooded Grove
Flooded Strand
5 Forest
Glacial Fortress
Hallowed Fountain
Hinterland Harbor
4 Island
Kor Haven
Maze of Ith
Minamo, School at Water’s Edge
Mystic Gate
3 Plains
Prahv, Spires of Order
Razorverge Thicket
Reliquary Tower
Seachrome Coast
Seat of the Synod
Sunpetal Grove
Temple Garden
Temple of Enlightenment
Temple of Mystery
Temple of Plenty
Temple of the False God
Tree of Tales
Windswept Heath
Wooded Bastion
[/Land]

[/deck]

The deck also has a few cards to Profilerate.

You choose any number of permanents and/or players with counters on them, then give each another counter of a kind already there.

Viral Drake is the more important of the two due to the fact it can practically be a win condition on it’s own. As Proliferate does work with infect, a single counter from [card]Viral Drake[/card] could lead to death after a few activations of its second ability.

Contagion Engine is also a very good card, especially against decks like [card]Darien, King of Kjeldor[/card] or [card]Krenko, Mob Boss[/card] due to the fact that it puts a -1/-1 counter on each creature target player controls when it comes into play, and then has the ability to proliferate not once, but twice per activation.

[card]Inexorable Tide[/card] is another really cool card – every time you cast a spell, proliferate. Pretty much as strong as the above cards, but it’s very good with [card]Clockspinning[/card] due to the fact you can keep casting it over and over again due to Clockspinning’s Buyback.

All of t hese allow you to add counters to planeswalkers you have, as well as increase the number of level up counters on [card]Lighthouse Chronologist[/card] or the filibuster counters on [card]Azor’s Elocutors[/card]. Aside from that, the deck essentially just spams planeswalker abilities and just pillowforts as much as it needs to until it accomplishes what it needs to.

[card]Azor’s Elocutors[/card] is one of the main win conditions of the deck. For 3{W/U)(W/U), you get a 3/5 that doesn’t have any impact on the board state – or does he?

At the beginning of each upkeep, he gets a Filibuster Counter – and if you have 5 or more of them, you win. With cards like [card]Doubling Season[/card], [card]Clockspinning[/card], and [card]Gilder Bairn[/card] you can win over the course of one or two turns.

The downside is that any time you take damage from any source, he loses a filibuster counter. Luckily, our Commander just happens to prevent damage – lucky us, huh?

[card]Lighthouse Chronologist[/card] is probably the coolest level up card from Rise of the Eldrazi. He lets you take a turn after every turn that isn’t yours – if you get him up to level 7. Again, with all of our counter doubling, it really isn’t that difficult to get him up to 7.

Superfriends is a really cool concept, and I think that Angus is one of the deck options for it. And of course, this isn’t the only way to build an Angus Mackenzie deck or a Superfriends deck – but it’s what I recommend.

Until next time.

-SolemnParty