Evil Dead Commander Deck · 100 Proxy Cards · MTG EDH · Groovy

A fully custom Ash vs Evil Dead Magic proxy Commander deck, ready to play straight out of the envelope: 100 proxy cards with original artworks, built around a cabin, a cellar, a book that should not be read aloud, and everyone you have ever killed getting back up wrong. This is a Jund (B/R/G) deck led by Ash Williams, Chosen One.

Why Jund? Black is the book and what comes out of it — possession, the cellar, the dead who do not stay dead and are not themselves when they return. Red is Ash: the chainsaw, the shotgun, the Oldsmobile and thirty years of solving problems by revving something. Green is the woods — the thing in the trees that is less a monster than a place deciding to be hostile, plus the raw physical stamina of a man who should have died in 1981. There is no white because nobody is saved in this story and no institution ever arrives, and no blue because Ash has never once had a plan; he has had a chainsaw and a general direction.

Targeted power level: Bracket 4 — fast mana, three tutors, Blasphemous Act and Toxic Deluge as one-sided sweepers once your board is made of tokens, and two custom infinite combos.

Deck Strategy

Deadite is the original mechanic: exile target creature card from a graveyard, then create a token that's a copy of it, except it's black and it's a Deadite Horror in addition to its other types. It reads any graveyard, so the deck's best turns are spent robbing the table — a wrath is not a reset here, it is a shopping list. Note what deadite is not: it does not return the card, it exiles it and gives you a token. The original owner never gets it back, the token dies to exile effects, and nothing ever recurs it twice. Ash himself deadites for {1} whenever another creature dies, so every removal spell at the table feeds him.

The three artifacts fight you. The Necronomicon Ex-Mortis, The Chainsaw and The Boomstick are legendary Equipment, and each one is a bargain. The Chainsaw gives +3/+0, trample and a sacrifice outlet, but the equipped creature loses all its other abilities — it replaces the hand. The Boomstick fires one shell at a time and is reloaded by discarding cards. The Necronomicon deadites for free whenever a creature dies and puts a possession counter on itself each time; at five counters it takes the creature it is attached to. Every piece of the kit has already cost him something.

That is the tension the deck is built on: deadite wants creatures to die, the Equipment wants a body left standing to hold it. Ash is the resolution — whenever a Deadite you control dies, you may attach an Equipment you control to him for free, so the corpses hand the gear back on the way past.

• The cast — Pablo Simon Bolivar, Kelly Maxwell, Ruby Knowby, Cheryl Williams, Brandy Barr, Scotty, Linda, Professor Raymond Knowby, Baal the Wearer of Faces, Eligos the Bargainer and Evil Ash, against twenty-one Deadites and the woods themselves: Henrietta under the floor, the possessed hand, the doppelganger in the mirror, Little Ashy, the Deadite horde and The Force in the Trees, which grows with every Deadite you control and taxes each opponent a land or a card when it attacks.
• The rest of the kit — The Kandarian Dagger gives deathtouch and exiles whatever it kills, The Delta 88 and The Mechanical Hand round out the Equipment, and Klaatu Barada Nikto wipes every non-Deadite creature on the table after three verse counters, which in this deck is a one-sided board wipe.
• The removal package — Terminate, Chaos Warp, Beast Within, Toxic Deluge and Blasphemous Act, plus the custom Hail to the King (a fight spell that pumps your equipped creature first), Swallowed Whole, Cut Off the Hand and Burn the Cabin Down. Dictate of Erebos, Phyrexian Arena and Sylvan Library keep the cards coming.
• Two infinite combos, both on theme. The Necronomicon Ex-Mortis + Pablo Simon Bolivar: the book deadites for free whenever a creature dies, Pablo removes a possession counter whenever a token enters under your control, so the loop is free, the counter never climbs, and every creature that dies anywhere at the table joins your board. Kill Pablo and the book goes back to eating its owner, which is the correct answer. The Chainsaw + Eligos, the Bargainer: Eligos returns an equipped creature to your hand instead of letting it die, the Chainsaw grants a sacrifice outlet, and the pair loops a death trigger for as long as you can pay {1} — infinite deaths, which with any deadite source on board is an infinite board.

Thirty-five lands, and they are the places rather than a mana base: the Knowby cabin, the cellar, the fruit cellar steps, the woodshed, the Deadlands road, S-Mart, the Elk Grove trailer park, the bridge that isn't there and a Dark Ages battlefield, on top of Command Tower, Ancient Tomb, City of Brass, Mana Confluence and the Jund shocklands. Three tokens — Deadite Horror, Beast and Blood — come in the box. Average mana value 2.80, built to start stealing graveyards on turn three.