Reaper King

[WitchHunt]

When I first started playing Magic, I came across this gem thinking it was the coolest card in the world. And you know what? Years later I come back to it and decide, "This is still one of the coolest cards ever". I had a buddy build a pretty sweet casual deck with Reaper King already, so I decided I'd rather step up and try a commander deck with him.

[deck]Commander: 1
1 Reaper King

Creatures: 26
Scarecrows:11
1 Pili-Pala
1 Scarecrone
1 Straw Soldiers
1 Tatterkite
1 Heap Doll
1 Hoof Skulkin
1 Scuttlemutt
1 Grim Poppet
1 Chainbreaker
1 Jawbone Skulkin
1 Fang Skulkin
Changelings: 10
1 Changeling Titan
1 Taurean Mauler
1 Woodland Changeling
1 Ghostly Changeling
1 Shapesharer
1 Avian Changeling
1 Moonglove Changeling
1 Mothdust Changeling
1 Chameleon Colossus
1 Mirror Entity
Utility Creatures: 5
1 Adaptive Automaton
1 Planar Guide
1 Solemn Simulacrum
1 Etched Monstrosity
n1 Ulamog, the Infinite Gyre

Instants: 6
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Ready//Willing
1 Faith's Reward
1 Ghostway
1 Harrow

Enchantments: 2
1 Legion's Initiative
1 Maelstrom Nexus

Sorceries: 13
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Ancestral Vision
1 Genesis Wave
1 Twilight's Call
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Beck//Call
1 Wrath of God
1 Martial Coup
1 Decree of Pain
1 Patriarch's Bidding
1 Explosive Vegetation
1 Search for Tomorrow
1 Cultivate

Utility Artifacts: 15
1 Selesnya Signet
1 Simic Signet
1 Orzhov Signet
1 Golgari Signet
1 Dimir Signet
1 Sol Ring
1 Prototype Portal
1 Mimic Vat
1 Coat of Arms
1 Door of Destinies
1 Calderon of Souls
1 Cloud Key
1 Semblance Anvil
1 Darksteel Forge
1 Ashnod's Altar

Planeswalkers: 3
1 Tezzeret the Seeker
1 Venser, the Sojourner
1 Xenagos, the Reveler

Lands: 34
1 Exotic Orchard
1 Great Furnace
1 Drowned Catacomb
1 Vivid Creek
1 Seat of the Synod
1 Evolving Wilds
1 Rootbound Crag
1 Fire-lit Thicket
1 Fetid Heath
1 Tree of
Tales
1 Graven Cairns
1 Dragonskull Summit
1 Isolated Chapel
1 Terramorphic Expanse
1 Glacial Fortress
7 Forests
5 Islands
3 Plains
2 Mountains
2 Swamps [/deck]

I've been messing with this off and on for the past few weeks while playing it at a league every Sunday. No one's ever really thrilled to play against it since Reaper King essentially makes a lot of my creatures Vindicate on a stick, but in the league everyone basically runs some form of G/B/X or G/W/X so wipe spells are the bread and butter of pretty much everyone there so no one is every really worried about Reaper King and his band of heroes. I'm trying to change that.

Main Win Cons

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Using Reaper King to cripple the opposing player's boards and bash them to death.
Play Coat of Arms and profit
Play Door of Destinies and profit
Play Planeswalkers and profit

Main Deck Tricks

---

Flicker Effects (Ghostway, Planar Guide, Legion's Initiative, Venser)
Return
to the Battlefield Effects (Twilight's Call, Calderon of Souls, Patriarch's Bidding, Faith's Reward)
Vindicate on a stick using said deck tricks
Aside from these by themselves, the deck itself features quite a few things it can do when paired together. The one's I've had the most fun with so far are things like Calderon of Souls paired up with Ashnod's Altar, or wipe effects paired up with flicker effects. When looking at the list it shouldn't be too hard to see what other shifty things the deck is capable of.

Mana Ramp/Fixing

---

5 Signets
1 Sol Ring
4 Land Search Spells
1 Tezzeret
1 Xenagos
1 Ashnod's Altar
1 Solemn Simulacrum (Flickering this guy and returning him from the graveyard is great.)

Tutors

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Enlightened Tutor (Legion's Initiative, Maelstrom Nexus, Calderon of Souls, etc)
Mystical Tutor (Genesis Wave, Return to Battlefield Effects, Flicker Effects,
etc)
Tezzeret (One man army, artifact lands, scarecrows, utility artifacts, and a win con)
Diabolic Tutor (Whatever I need)

Let me know what you guys think, I'm definitely open to suggestions as well, especially if there's something I'm blatantly missing that should be in here. Appreciate the feedback!

[WitchHunt]

Reserved

[Pendulum]

Yes, Reaper King is one of the coolest cards ever.

The RK deck I ran for years and years was, at its heart, a very adaptive deck; having access to anything I wanted allowed me a lot of play in which type of strategy I wanted to try out from session to session, and I could switch out key cards to change the archetype as I wanted/the skill level of my opponents changed.. thus any advice I would have should be taken with that in mind. That being said:

General advice, I found that using real, playable lands like duals, shocks, and all of the other two-types-of-mana-producing-but-actually-worth-money lands were a liability to the deck; since so much of the deck depends on colorless mana and you need weird color combinations every so often, you might want to consider scrapping out the Dragonskull Summit, Isolated Chapel, and anything else that only produces 2 colors and replace them with Vivid lands and other lands you can
find in the common bin. Similarly, the Signets are probably also a waste of time, stuff like Phyrexian Lens, Coalition Relic et al. seems like it would be better in most situations.

Card suggestions:
Having a Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker is one of the key parts of the deck, as most of your guys are utility (all of them are if your General is out); even silly stuff like copying a Heap Doll every turn becomes a terrifying experience in the right circumstances. In the same vein, Clone effects, even the shitty ones, are awesome here. Temporal Adept and/or Hell's Caretaker and/or Coffin Queen can give you a slower version of the same shenanigans, and are just annoying fuckers for your opponents to play around in the meantime, and since you specifically mentioned blink effects I'll say that
Mistmeadow Witch has always been a pet card of mine specifically for her utility in my RK deck.

Since you're playing 5 colors, you might want to consider Conflux as the ultimate tutor.

Evacuation is an amazing card in a deck like this.

Trinket Mage and Treasure Mage should get some consideration here; I'd say that Trinky is an auto-in 'cuz he can find artifact lands as well as any number of utility cards, but I'd probably want to try them both; finding a Grim Poppet or Darksteel Forge is something you're going to want to find in most any game anyway. If you do put Trinky in, you also might want to consider Pithing Needle in, it's a great utility card even though it doesn't go with the theme.

Now for the sad part, taking some stuff out:
As much as it does pain me, you're probably going to find that
most of your "true" scarecrows are just pointless. Nobody's going to start sweatdropping because you played a Fang Skullkin. Scarecrone, Heap Doll, and Grim Poppet are usually going to be the only one's you'll ever want to draw (although of course you have to keep the Straw Soldiers in, that is some mad tech right there). I'm also not impressed by the Door of Destinies; it's just too slow and situational.. truth be told, I'm wary of the Coats of Arms as well, you'll have to be pretty clutch about when you drop that onto the board. Trust me, trust me, I tried to overwhelm the board with scarecrows with many a build, hell I built an MP3player playlist of various versions of "Dance of the Marionettes" just for the creep factor so I want you to live this dream, but scarecrows just isn't a rush build.
I don't like Maelstrom Nexus; I get that you can put a Darksteel
Forge on the top of your library with Enlightened Tutor and then play back-to-back Nexus into your general for profit, but it's pretty Magical Christmasland to hope for.

I'll hold off more suggestions for now; there's plenty of other stuff you can do, but it depends on factors like budget and the competiveness level you're looking to construct... I mean, really, just because my build had an Imperial Recruiter and a foil JTMS in it isn't any reason you should too.

[Wraith223]

You should throw in [card]painter's servant[/card], chaotic backlash, and grindstone. Insta-win with grindstone and epic burn with chaotic backlash.

[Helios]

Servant is banned in EDH, assuming you're following the official rules.

[WitchHunt]

@Pendelum: Appreciate the thoughts there dude. More than anything, I really just like swearing, "Don't you fucking kill my pili-pala". Same with my scuttlemutt. You'll also probably notice none of my scarecrows cost more than three minus Grim Poppet, there's a definite reasoning for that (Don't like my vindicates costing more than three at the most). Of course I'm not opposed to cutting hoof skulkin and some other scarecrows, sure their utility's not the greatest or even really... okay, but you know how that is haha. I like the idea for Conflux, I spaced that card entirely to be honest.

Also something worth mentioning, I don't focus on rushing people down with my scarecrows. It's pretty much only if I have the tactical superiority, I basically build up my scarecrows and focus on flickering them and the like until I gain a reasonable amount of board advantage and then play Coat of Arms or something like
Mirror Entity. Door of Destinies is something I'm not above cutting either, as you say it's slow and situational, I've basically been treating it like my poor man's Coat of Arms more than anything else. Usually playing it draws some fire anyways, it's just kind of a way I've been trying to make my scarecrows not suck haha.

I've never put Maelstrom Nexus and things like Darksteel Forge in the same thought process, to be honest I use it for cards that cost 2, that way I cascade into either one of my scarecrows, my utility creature, one of my tutors, a sol ring, and potentially an ancestral vision. I get more steam out of this card than the one shot cascade spells. Even with 3 mana cost isn't too bad since the things I can cascade into are another scarecrow, a changeling, a utility creature, a utility enchantment, a signet(My only kind of meh bit here), a tutor, card draw, and by some off chance(and it has happened) my martial coup.

@Wraith: As much as I'd love to toss in Painter's Servant and
Grindstone, we do operate using the ban list and I won't get far with a banned Painter's Servant haha.

[Wraith223]

I forgot Painters Servant was baned. LAME!

[Azrael]

Seems like you've identified the power of reanimating gigantic waves of scarecrows at once with stuff like Pyrrhic Revival, Patriarch's Bidding (which you have already), Twilight's Call, Death or Glory, etc. Supplementing those with a Hermit Druid package would add a lot of consistency and power. They can mass-remove afterwards (unless you run also start running haste effects like Concordant Crossroads, Mass Hysteria, Fervor, Hammer of Purphoros, etc., which would be somewhat silly), but most of the damage will already be done.

I suppose just bringing them back one at a time, even, would be good if you can do it once or twice per turn. Debtor's Knell, for instance, or Sun Titan, which you could grab with Unburial Rites and/or Dread Return from the yard.

Concentrating more heavily on reanimation also gives you some good potential backup win potential apart from your general - just include some other ridiculous
reanimation targets like Craterhoof Behemoth.

You'd also want to run quite a few tutor effects, to get that engine running smoothly - the more the merrier, but 4-5 good ones would do.

EDS:

Another way to go, would be to just grab a bunch of Rebels/Mercenaries/Skyshroud Poacher/Mogg Catcher/Seahunter, and fetch your changelings while Reaper King is in play. As a backup win con, you can simply Rebel or elf chain your way into a bunch of guys and then finish them off with Mirror Entity.

For example: Skyshroud Poacher ---> Deranged Hermit/Trostani's Summoner ---> Mirror Entity ---> Profit.

Don't forget Bound in Silence or Big Game Hunter for removal, either.

Those two strategies probably go pretty well together, but the elf/ rebel-chain style of play is probably an easy $10 fix that will give you a very noticeable edge. It's also less susceptible to disruption and countermagic, which pose a more serious problem if you're relying heavily on resolving a big reanimation spell.

nAlso, if you like that Prototype Portal, consider Soul Foundry.

34 lands also seems low to me, despite all your non-creature sources. The only deck I have that's fewer than 38 lands is a Krenko, and the rest of my decks (somewhere over a dozen) average 38 lands with about 18 slots of ramp, with some as high as 24. I usually pack in a lot more card draw, also, but even if you lack card draw, 34 lands is like running 20 lands in a control deck (both would be 33% land ratio), and rationalizing it due to running lots of mana rocks. It's just not enough to give you consistent critical mass on mana consistently without trouble. As a general rule, 38 is a better number. It's more like running 22.5 lands in a 60 card list, instead of 20.

[DarthStabber]

I start a commander deck at 40 lands as a default, and that number has never fallen lower than 38, and the deck with 38 had 5 ramp spells and 10 mana rocks. The problem is ensuring you get your rocks out, and remembering that ramp and rocks are mana accelerants not land replacements. Everytime you play a rock and miss a land drop you are effectively paying for a land drop, not where you want to be. While they can help you recover from bad starts, it's not the reason you are running them, you are running them to play more and bigger spells ahead of curve, if you were just running them to stay on curve you would do better to run more lands instead to save your mana and use it for spells.

[Pendulum]

@WitchHunt: Oh God yeah, I respect that. Hell, I think every Reaper King deck I've ever seen someone build starts off because of the flavor of the tribe, and one of the nice things about the build is that you can have stuff people wouldn't usually consider using. I'm just saying that you gotta cut something, and since flooding the board is a rarity for Scarecrows, that's where I'd hedge my bets.

Also, adding onto Az's comments, I had pretty good success with Enduring Renewal, of all things, since it's so easy to reanimate/search for most of your key targets; it's a gambit to be sure, and it'll simply null some of your draws, but it sure is fun chaining a Heap Doll into "1: destroy target permanent, exile a card from a graveyard" and it turns their removal into a straight-up liabiiity.
@Az: also to be considered is [c:
2pwa5vt0]All Hallow's Eve[/c], because A) it's solid mass reanimation and B) because it's Harvest Time.

[mercury01]

Suggestion: Scarecrone + Thornbite Staff + Composite Golem = infinite mana of all colours.

[WitchHunt]

The league I'm in doesn't allow any infinite combos unfortunately, otherwise I'd be down.

[DroppinSuga]

The league I'm in doesn't allow any infinite combos unfortunately, otherwise I'd be down.

I like your league.