Nightmares From Guul Draz

Why hello again!
Today’s Maniacal scheme Is an Elder Dragon Highlander Deck—if you have never played EDH before, then let me give you a quick run down: Elder Dragon, is the Ultimate Timmy Format. It makes use of a 99 Card Singleton Deck(meaning that you can only have 1 of any card except for basic lands) With 1 General—The General decides what type of cards you may play based on its own mana cost and must be a Legendary Creature. You also begin with 40 life, and 21 damage total ‘general’ damage will cause you to lose the game just as well as any other conventional way would. If you want more info—link to the Elder Dragon Homepage is on the sidebar!

Now, on to the main course! As I stated before, today your evil genius(and please, feel free to refer to me as such in conversation) has prepared a concoction—and I assure you it is only the first of many; which will blow your brains. So, better put your helmet on to keep everything in its proper place eh?

The Deck

As you can see, it’s Mono Black with a heavy Theme on Vampires—no surprise there right!? Look, I’m evil, Vampires are evil… it works. Now I am sure the next thing you will notice, at least if your an EDH veteran is: Where are the auto includes!? Necropotence, Sensei’s, Plague wind instead of Damnation!?” Well, how to put this…

Only people who want to ruins everyone fun play this format to break it, or make exclusive use of the so called ‘auto-include’ list. I mean come 'on guys! It’s a Timmy Format! if you want to play EDH, let your Spike go!…

at least for a little bit?
Maybe?
Please?

Alright thanks, I appreciate it.

The General idea here (hehe, get it?), is to make use of Vampires and their rather ridiculous abilities as of Zendikar especially. The General, Kalitas is not only a 5/5 beater, but also has a much MUCH better royal assassin type ability. For 3 swamps and a tap you get one less creature on your opponents side of the field and one more on yours—if that isn’t plain cool I don’t know what is. But not only that, a careful look at its ability reveals that the creature also happens to be a Vampire now!

Now just imagine how much damage that Malakir Bloodwitch will do…

But let’s get specific!

The Cards

Now all the cards that are in this deck, fit with the theme rather well… After all, Guul Draz is a spooky swamp with who knows what kind of horrors there!

Gatekeeper of Malakir – A utility vampire, plain and simple. Most of the time you will want to play him with the kicker—I actually can’t think of a reason why you would want to play him without a good kicking.

Vampire Hexmage – This is one of those cards which I absolutely adore no matter the format… the ability to eliminate those pesky planeswalkers is simply invaluable, especially I find in EDH.

Liliana Vess – This has got to be my favorite planeswalker. It has 3 of my favorite abilities; Discarding, Tutoring and Recursion on Steroids. This lady here allows you to do some very remarkable things… just imagine activating that 3rd ability late game with a Mephidross Vampire on the table and… I don't know, maybe a Coat of Arms too, or play Malakir Bloodwitch? She really is your best friend in this deck if you can get her on the table… But beware, once your buddies figure out just what you can do with her… Well, that target on your forehead for playing Liliana just got that much bigger.

Lim-Dûl the Necromancer – This is a card I stumbled upon while using the gatherer… I was struck by the lack of vampires I wanted to put in this deck, I really wanted to go hardcore Tribal Vampire originally. However, this was not a possibility so i decided to loosen up my restriction a bit but made sure to stay close to the nightmares of Guul Draz… so I suddenly stumbled upon this gem, which also happens to work beautifully with…

Xathrid Demon – This is another one of my favorite Cards, and as I said before, works well with The Necromancer… Simply fish out the creatures you want from his Graveyard, Sacrifice it, rinse and repeat. If you don’t want him anymore, just toss him on the Carnage Altar and show him that Demon’s make Wonderful Sacrifices too! Speaking of which…

Carnage Altar – I like draw power. I really like draw power. It is something I find invaluable, especially in my playgroup, and the ability to Sacrifice a creature which is getting in the way or which is not my own in the first place (which will be a common occurrence, trust me) to draw an extra card is fine by me. It was one of my motivators in putting Breeding Pit into this deck.

Coat of Arms – Look… with cards like Kalitas and Mephidross vampire, it would be insane not to make use of this card. Few EDH decks that I have played against are Tribal, and trust me, even if you do end up playing against another Tribal, the good outweighs the bad.

Measure of wickedness – Another one of my favorites and a riot when it hits the table with me and my friends… Why? well, because of it’s effect! When this card enters play, you WANT to throw something in the graveyard as fast as possible or take 8. You’d be surprised how much fun it can be to watch someone struggle to figure out just how to avoid that 8 point life loss!

Death Cloud – Bwahahaha! If there is a card that is evil, it is probably measure of wickedness… or more than likely this guy. This Card is absolutely brutal, and I recommend you treat it similarly to how I treat the card Obliterate; A Planet killing Nova Bomb from Starship trooper. Seriously, it’s a last resort type card. Threaten with it, but don’t use it unless the entire battlefield is infested by Bugs. Sweeping offensively is just plain rude.

There are plenty of cards in this deck which I did not mention that will help you out in some dark way; Sadistic Sacrament is definitely at the top, and Caustic Rain gets rid of some of the more annoying non-basic lands you will encounter. For the most part, cards like Wrath of God should not scare you too much—there is enough recursion in this deck to make a decent recovery after various sweeps. Zombify, Rise from the Grave, Death Denied… All ways to refill your hand or the battlefield with creatures—and if all else fails, just call in your general and take some of your opponents creatures… or you could just swing for five general damage, but where is the fun in that!?

If you haven’t figured this out yet, I am definitely a Timmy/Johnny type. I like flashy and offbeat, and would much rather win half the time in a grandeur fashion, than all the time in a simple dull one… it’s why I love EDH, it is the perfect format for that type of attitude!

Well, I hope you enjoyed reading my article as much as I enjoyed writing it. Remember, Knowledge is power, power corrupts—study those magic cards hard and be evil.