[]Grist, Master Of The Decayed[]

So this deck is sort of in the wheel house of things I like to do when I am playing Commander/EDH, or just MTG in general. I basically made a list of commanders I wanted to make. Had my wife look them over; and then I had her select 3 she liked the most. She is still new to this game and her choices were based on the pictures and a little on what the cards do. This deck will be the first of a series of three decks I am designing based on her three choices. I already loved Grist, the Hunger Tide and really wanted to make a deck around him. I will not lie though this was a little bit of challenge to find where I wanted to take this deck and really took a lot of play testing and time to hone it into what I love.

Theme

This deck is not your typical Golgari Graveyard deck. It is this strange mix of value and self mill. It is also a Token Swarm deck while also being a type of Aristocrats deck. The biggest thing to know when you play this deck is this: "Do not be afraid to activate Grist +1 every turn." Things in your graveyard, this is fine. Even if you look at the thing and think, "Hell, I really wanted that." This deck will likely give you a way to bring it back to the deck or to your hand. It also has a soft Self Discard theme planned in the "Maybe" card section and a "Self Land Destruction" theme as well. This deck was not, and I cannot stress this enough, not built around infinite combos and combo redundancy. You are basically feeding the swarm, but you are feeding it yourself until you reach a critical mass. Then the swarm consumes all.

Combos

Infinite Death Triggers: Phyrexian Altar + Ant Queen + Parallel Lives

• How Does It Work: This is about as complex as it gets in the form of the combos this deck has. You have the Ant Queen who makes 1/1 Green Insect Tokens. Parallel Lives makes you create two of those tokens. Phyrexian Altar then lets you sacrifice them to make the mana to loop it back around.

Synergies

Grist, the Hunger Tide + Conspiracy / Maskwood Nexus: Grist wants you to put insects into your graveyard so you can make more insects. Both of these cards allow you to keep that up. They add the Insect creature type to your creatures. This means if you hit something other then an insect, which there is a small few, you do not stop the grist train.

Mazirek, Kraul Death Priest + Iridescent Hornbeetle: This goofy ass duo was found by accident when I play tested. Mazirek puts a +1/+1 counter on all your creatures when a player sacrifices another permanent. The Hornbeetle gives you 1/1 Green Insect Tokens for EACH +1/+1 counter put on creatures this turn. It also doesn't care about the timing with which it has seen these counters. It will retroactively see all the counters that have been placed this turn. Whether the creatures that had them are still on the battlefield or not. If you placed 15 counters across 3 creatures and then they died, play the Iridescent Hornbeetle and you will have fifteen 1/1 Green Insect Tokens on your end-step.

Zulaport Cutthroat + Any Sac Outlet: Pretty self explanatory here. You sac a creature to something like Phyrexian Altar or Phyrxian Tower or Grist, the Hunter Tide or Plumb the Forbidden or Deadly Dispute or Devouring Swarm or Izoni, Thousand-Eyed or Liliana, Dreadhorde General or Vraska, Golgari Queen. You ping each player for 1 and maybe gain one life.

Syr Konrad, the Grim + Grist, the Hunger Tide / Gravepurge / Forever Young / Haunted Crossroads: Syr Konrad, the Grim brings an extra dose of spice to this deck. He will ping on a trigger from Grist, the Hunger Tide's +1. You hit 5 insects, you hit each opponent for 5 damage. He will also hit off of you recycling your insects from your graveyard back to the top of your library as well.

Ramunap Excavator / Life from the Loam: Inevitably you will mill away some of your lands. These will let you play them from your graveyard but in different ways depending on what you are trying to have happen. Ramunap Excavator will let you play the lands, which can be helpful. It allows you to play the filtering lands, like Verdant Catacombs, Prismatic Vista, Evolving Wilds, Fabled Passage, and Blighted Woodland; again. This is helpful because the less lands you have within the deck means the more likely you are to mill away insects to Grist. Life from the Loam helps you return lands to your hand and play them again, but the spice comes form the dredge. If you want to load up your graveyard with more creatures and try to tailor what you can fill the top of your library with this helps you achieve that.

Gravepurge / Forever Young / Haunted Crossroads: We covered this a little in the Konrad synergy, however it needed its own little elaboration. This deck loves, specifically, putting insects from your library into your graveyard. You library, for all intent and purpose, is a finite resource. Even more so it is limited to the ratio of card types you can have in it. Currently I have 27 creatures in this deck, of which I would guess 85% are insects. This allows you to whiff on the Grist, the Hunger Tide +1. Gravepurge and Forever Young allows you the ability to recycle your insects back to the top of your library. Be it as a tell or as a surprise, you can even get to draw a creature you want off of these two cards. Haunted Crossroads though, is the real MVP here. For just a single Black Mana you can move a creature at instant speed to the top of your library. This allows you to tailor your topdeck for Grist. If you have a way to draw cards you can return an important creature and then draw it. You can protect your graveyard creatures from a Bojuka Bog or Tormod's Crypt. It really is kind of the "Golden Pig" of this deck.

Conclusion

I did not cover all of the synergies because well... there is a lot of them in this deck. Everything kind of works with everything to allow for several ways to play the deck and to respond problems. It does not boast a lot of removal because you want to be milling away insects, chances are you will mill away the removal that will answer the problem a lot of people at the table are facing. This deck really just want you to eat away at yourself until you can suddenly consume the whole table without warning. There is a small maybe list, Skirge Familiar and Squandered Resources. Skirge is in here for when you need to get insects or lands out of your hand that are not useful at the moment for mana. Squandered Resources are similar, when you have lands on the battlefield that are useless or you want to cycle around with Life from the Loam and it. I unsure if they are worthy of being put in and I am not sure what I would remove for them, possibly Izoni, Thousand-Eyed and probably Mortal Combat.

Leave a comment and I will try to get back to you as soon as I can, enjoy and have a wonderful day/night GLHF <3