Gonti, Lord of Luxury

Gonti, Lord of Luxury Commander Deck

Primer Intro Cover Hello and welcome! Over the past ~9 months I have been primarily focused on building a mono color deck of each color which each play somewhat uniquely but also tickle my fancy in some unique way. This is a hidden commander deck built primarily surrounding doomsday excruciator as our wincon. This card presents us with a number of challenges, as it is a symmetrical effect which hurts us just as much as our opponents. However, I have found that it is an incredibly engaging and challenging deck to win with, that somehow doesn't feel too oppressive in its execution. This deck is decidedly bracket 3, but has boasted over an 80% win rate throughout my playing it. It achieves this by playing to abuse decks that are greedy with their card draw, as the commander format requires. Suddenly having a rhystic study is a death sentence. If you like this deck but don't want to pay for the manabase, I have made a $25 version of it which I will update over time as well. A link to it is found here: https://moxfield.com/decks/6eTdLbwvCESIpqAvHu5ydw Additionally, If you like this deck, you might like my other mono-color lists Mono white - Nadaar, selfless paladin - tempo / stax - https://moxfield.com/decks/EQzjEQthN0OEn8rhzmFwdg Mono blue - Kiora, the rising tide - reanimation - https://moxfield.com/decks/8WHwwGV0NE64otAdtQc5eQ Mono red - Zurzoth, chaos rider - aggro / burn - https://moxfield.com/decks/-ZDziA4IpESKTLwKcBlGBg Mono green - Shigeki, jukai visionary - Creatureless control - https://moxfield.com/decks/6Y2N7WPiNUukrzfIb2MLFQ Colorless - Dawnsire, sunstar dreadnought - midange - https://moxfield.com/decks/e9H5QXwsfUOhX4kEgC4tZQ The hidden commander Goal Our entire gameplan and our best chance of winning all center around Doomsday Excruciator, one of the coolest rares that wizards has printed in recent memory. Casting him sets everyone to having 6 cards in their deck, and keeping him around afterwards ensures that we will deck out twice as fast as our opponents. This provides us a unique challenge to most other decks: how do we take advantage of our opponents having only 6 cards left in their deck? Additionally, how do we build a deck without any typical draw engines, as those would guarantee we lose once we cast the excruciator? The answer is simple: forced card draw! Black has a large suite of cards which read "target player draws x cards and loses x life," such as sign in blood, blood pact, etc. Each of these allows us to dig in the early game for whatever cards we need, and then allows us to bring our opponents much closer to death after playing the doomsday excruciator. Even better, excruciator serves as a way to punish the greed piles that commander is becoming. With commander-focused design being at the forefront, most players build card draw engines to draw 5+ cards a turn cycle. This is suddenly a death sentence once the excruciator comes down. Also, unlike most other hidden commanders, we really don't care what happens to it once it comes down. This means we can redirect a lot of the standard protection cards which are ran in most hidden commander decks. Why Gonti Goal Unfortunately, our doomsday excruciator isn't legendary, so we need a commander for this deck. Luckily for us, gonti, lord of luxury is the perfect foil to the excruciator. Gonti does three major things that benefit our gameplan: value accrual, defense, setting the bottom of our opponent's library. Gonti shores up a lot of the weaknesses of mono black, namely the lack of ramp, by stealing from the greedy green players at our table, allowing us to play some of the best removal and some of the best ramp in the game at the same time. Need a counterspell to handle the control player? Start digging through the blue players' deck. Need ramp early game because you aren't hitting your ramp? Start digging through the green player's deck. Need removal? Look at the mardu player's deck and I'm sure you'll find some. While doing this, we also get to put 3 cards on the bottom of our opponent's libraries, which helps us determine how threatening players will be once the doomsday goes off. What if you could set someone's deck to be just lands? This deck lets you do that! To top it all off, gonti has deathtouch. While hes untapped on the battlefield, most people will just leave us alone so they don't lose any creatures. How to play gonti: Gonti is the cornerstone of most of our deck's strategies, with our chances at winning directly correlating with how many times we can play him. Because of this, we want to focus on getting him down as much as possible, usually utilizing our sacrifice effects paired with our feign death effects to reap more etbs. In the early game, we typically want to steal from the green player in order to try to find more ramp. This deck is very mana hungry, so every piece of mana advantage we can get is well needed. If you know your pod and know there is a power outlier at the table, stealing from them early can be a strong play as well, as their card quality will effectively elevate this deck's power. Towards the mid to late game, focus on trying to gonti people to set up the bottom of their decks. At this point, its not the most important that we get cards we actively want, since forcing our opponents into bad draws when they need cards is more important than whatever value we can get from gonti. Once doomsday excruciator comes down, gonti is purely a resource denial card. Not only does he remove one card from their deck, but it is usually guaranteed to be the best card in the rest of their deck. General Gameplan gameplan Early game - Pre-doomsday In the early game we focus everything we can on ramping and getting our gonti engine going. Focus on trying to steal cards from green or blue players, as they will have critical ramp and interaction which we will need. Try not to get focused super hard, although sometimes that is unavoidable. Try to mulligan for at least 3 lands and one board wipe. Additionally, don't feel bad burning a few of the card draw spells at this point. We need to see as many cards as we can in order to find one of our wincons. Mid-Late game - Pre-doomsday In this phase of the game, we take a more controlling stance while we dig for our doomsday excruciator. If we are officially in the lategame with no sign of him, pivot to one of our other wincons. The following are your other (lesser) ways to win: Steal something from an opponent with gonti - this is a longshot, but I have stolen cards like torment of hailfire which is a very solid win given our dedication to ramping Exsanguinate - barring any crazy pulls from gonti, a massive exsanguinate will be our next best option. Gray merchant of asphodel - a great flicker target, but it can be hard for this deck to get the requisite devotion (unless we also have doomsday excruciator, but this is presuming we don't) Meathook massacre ii + board wipes - this card is so slept on, often times people will pay all of their life down to prevent us from getting their creatures, but when they do they become much more succeptible to our other wincons Damnable pact - this is just a big ass burn spell for late game at the worst case. Combos well with meathook massacre ii above. This also applies to all of our forced card draw spells, almost all of them have some type of burn associated with them, allowing us to burn out opponents who are very low in life. brainstealer dragon - this card is so nuts when combined with some of our other theft effects, and we can protect it from removal with the feign death effects If you are in the midgame and have found the excruciator, or a way to find him, then start to sandbag your card draw spells. Post-doomsday Once we drop our doomsday excruciator, the game dynamic will change drastically. Typically, because it is symmetrical, I have found that you won't immediately become the villain of the game, since you are in the same predicament as everyone else. Focus your card draw spells on those who have the best chances of winning the game at this state. For example, someone who has a rhystic study out is not an issue in the slightest, but a guy with a massive board threatening to swing it at you is a major issue. At this point you should know what some people have at the bottom of their decks, and that should help inform your decision. Card selection budget Every card in this deck has been meticulously chosen and refined for my local meta. However, if you were to adapt this to your own you might need to make some swaps of your own. As such, I have rated every single card in the deck using a 1-5 scale. The scale is as follows: Fantastic card, core of the deck, you should never cut this Generally good card, is replaceable if you don't have it or want to experiment Cuttable / replaceable A description of every card (at the time of writing this) is listed below. Most (if not all) changes and other cards under consideration will be listed in the following section. Hopefully in reading this, you can gain more understanding of the deck than just skimming through the list. Planeswalkers Liliana of the dark realms - 4 - extremely solid ramp (in that it draws you a land drop every turn) and removal card ob nixilis, the hate-twisted - 4 - cool forced draw on a "body" which also doubles the damage that our large draw spells deal and can serve as removal. Currently testing it out Creatures aclazotz, deepest betrayal - 4 - solid beater with flying/lifelink that eventually ramps us. I play this for the land, not for the discard, although getting incremental discard throughout the game is never a bad thing. If you need a cut this is probably a good one beamsaw prospector - 4 - good chaff to die in the early game that eventually rampant growths us. Good food for victimize and the like boggart trawler - 3 - its a land that can be a creature sometimes. When it is powerful its reaallly powerful brainstealer dragon - 5 - one of the other reasons this deck was made. This card is so unbelievably powerful. If it sticks for a few turns you have won the game burnished hart - 5 - great ramp card. Works extremely well with our feign death effects if the game is slow enough crabomination - 3 - mainly just played as a form of hand disruption that is also a demon for demonic counsel. When you hit with this, it is remarkably funny though since you get the free cast. Basically never emerge this doomsday excruciator - 10 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dh7LJDHFaqA faller's faithful - 4 - in general, the creatures which have this effect are more important than the spells since we can reanimate them in the late game once their effect can be used to kill people. That being said, this is just a solid removal piece at all stages of the game. If a creature is dangerous enough, you won't care how many cards someone draws from it dying. Can also be used as a way to sacrifice gonti while drawing 2 cards after feign deathing it fell stinger - 4 - has deathtouch, but can't be used to remove opponents creatures. Similarly powerful to faller's faithful gray merchant of asphodel - 5 - an alt wincon that can get nasty with all of the pips we run. Typically this is my first choice at alt wincon if doomsday excruciator gets countered or milled. We can reanimate the excruciator + play gary which leads to minimum 8 devotion. Very powerful perigee beckoner - 4 - two-for-one feign death effects, plus lets us get some incremental damage in with our commander rune-scarred demon - 3 - another on-theme way to tutor for our boy. There are definitely better options you can run if you want to power the deck up, but I haven't found that necessary. The mana cost is usually not an issue, and having a blocker for the shenangians we are about to pull is well worth it. Its also nice that this can get any card, such as darkness scampering surveyor - 4 - basically always used as a tutor for urzas cave, which can find us any of our insanely busted lands. As a tutor for urzas cave, this card is extremely good solemn simulacrum - 5 - great ramp card and incentivizes opponents to not attack us unscrupulous contractor - 4 - another great version of the etb forced draw effects, this time with plot. It is great to plot it early game, and then use it in conjunction with the excruciator so that we can sacrifice him after he comes down (saving us from the forced draw) Spells Sorceries atrocious experiment - 4 - this is a top 3 way to kill someone once the doomsday comes down, and should probably be held for that. The mill is somewhat risky when targetting ourselves, but it can be used as such in a pinch blasphemous edict - 5 - probably the best board wipe in the deck unless someone at your table has a big token spam deck coiling rebirth - 4 - this is primarily used as a wincon in the post-doomsday phase, as it can reanimate one of our creatures like fell stinger twice, forcing up to 5 cards drawn. We can also use it on ourselves to trade an opponent drawing 1 card for us drawing 4 damnable pact - 5 - this is a pet card of mine, having a black fireball is really fun and it has won me a fair share of games with both the burn and the card draw. However, don't hesitate to use it on yourself while you are digging in the early game damnation - 4 - a very solid board wipe. Can be easily replaced if its too expensive for you demonic counsel - 5 - bang-for-buck wise this is the best way to tutor for doomsday excruciator, and is the most on theme to boot. If you wanted to power the deck up, replacing this with demonic tutor or something along those lines wouldn't be a bad idea. exsanguinate - 5 - good alternate wincon in decks focused on ramping a lot insatiable avarice - 5 - unconditional tutor + forced card draw in the same card, so it is useful in all phases of the game scrounge for eternity - 4 - great card in the early game, as it gives us a sacrifice, a reanimate, and a ramp all in one card sign in blood - 4 - the most mana efficient of the forced draw cards, also just a classic toxic deluge - 5 - great board wipe for the cost victimize - 3 - good in that it gets us a sacrifice and a reanimate for our value creatures, bad because it requires us to already have used a few to get value. praetor's grasp - 5 - solid swiss army knife. This is typically played in cedh as a way to steal opponents wincons for ourselves, however we can use it for many different purposes. Opponent playing a black deck that you know has a coffers in it? All of a sudden its your coffers. Multiple blue players at the table? Find a counterspell to protect your combo. Need a board wipe? Your opponents will kindly oblige. Try to hold off on playing it until you really need something. More people should recreationally play this card. It's sweet, and the power scales to your opponent's powerlevel. Late game this can be a clock for doomsday, taking the best of the remaining 6 cards Instants archenemy's charm - 4 - a good utility piece that can get back our cards. baleful mastery - 5 - a great removal spell that also forces a card draw? blood pact - 4 - instant speed forced draw! We love these! consumed by greed - 5 - instant speed removal + edict + forced card draw + recursion for our combo pieces, this card is fantastic darkness - 4 - fogs are lifesavers, and this is no exception. dark ritual - 3 - a good single instance ramp card for our pieces. I have found that it isn't necessary, but I have found it to be incredibly useful with our card advantage through gonti that burning a card for 2 extra mana isnt that big of an issue erebos's intervention - 3 - played primarily for the lifegain, but it doubles as a solid graveyard hate piece if need be fake your own death - 3 - one of the better recursion pieces, primarily because it pays for half its cost with the treasure AND gives the damage buff. Generally just a solid card feign death - 3 - another recursion card, creature comes back with a counter which is very nice. If a better version is printed then this can easily be replaced. fell the profane / hagra mauling - 5 - removal that is also a land. Hell yes flare of malice - 4 - good 3-for-1 removal piece that also lets us sacrifice a creature for free. Very solid card when paired with a feign death effect grisly spectacle - 5 - creature removal in the early game, player removal in the late game. Great card that gets a chance to shine in this deck malakir rebirth - 5 - this is the best of the feign death effects, mainly as it just doubles as a land. Its a great card, but is easily replaced with a cheaper version if you don't want to pay for this outrageous robbery - 5 - this is a pet card of mine, and it works great as a kill spell here once doomsday comes down, but its good even without that case. Its essentially draw x for x+2 mana, which has some great implications even before the doomsday excruciator comes down given our amount of mana output sacrifice - 5 - great ritual effect that also sacrifices our creatures. With gonti, this becomes a culling the weak at minimum. Very good card saw in half - 5 - double trigger of any of our etbs that we want to get more of (or 4x with panharmonicon!) sudden spoiling - 5 - this is just another fog, but it has the added benefitt of playing well with some of our wraths like toxic deluge. supernatural stamina / undying malice - 3 - just more feign death effects, can be replaced with others if there are others you like more. Being 1 mana is important Artifacts All of the rocks were selected almost across the board to help with casting stolen cards. Because our stolen cards are essentially colorless, cards like thran dynamo provide a lot more mana for their cost than usual. We rely on our lands to cast doomsday excruciator. jet medallion - 3 - one of the better pieces of ramp in the deck, even though it doesnt help us cast stolen cards or doomsday excruciator arcane signet - 3 - its a rock sol ring - 3 - its sol ring worn powerstone - 3 - its a rock everflowing chalice - 3 - its a rock thran dynamo - 3 - its a rock (although probably the best of them) coveted jewel - 5 - really fun in this deck as a way to prevent yourself from being attacked panharmonicon - 5 - doubles your etbs! what more could you want? Enchantments cunning rhetoric - 4 - good ghostly prison effect, its lethal once we drop the excruciator, but it doesnt manage to kill if they don't have a deck. The stolen cards are decent Court of Locthwain - 4 - A good general value engine, essentially letting us draw cards from our opponent's decks. This also introduces the monarch to the game, which is a downside once doomsday comes down. If you keep the monarch, this still helps you. heartless summoning - 5 - one of the best ramp cards in our deck, this card is so cracked the meathook massacre - 5 - insanely good boardwipe that heals us meathook massacre ii - 4 - great wincon that lets us "flicker" our etb cards when they die Lands bojuka bog - 4 - when its good its great cabal coffers - 10 - its cabal coffers, this card will help us ramp into doomsday and should be the first card tutored for with our land tutors deserted temple - 5 - if you have never played this card in a coffers deck, you owe it to yourself to. You get to double your coffers mana minus 3 emergence zone - 3 - this is a bit of a pet card of mine, it allows us to flash in our doomsday excruciator. I have yet to "get" someone with this, but it seems funny. Also allows for us to flash in some forced draw late game if people are doing math on how many cards they can reasonably draw before decking out high market - 4 - one of the best forms of free sacrifice you can get in a deck. For just 1 mana + high market we can flicker our gonti at instant speed myriad landscape - 4 - ramp on a land. We need swamps for our cabal coffers, so this helps us get them. nykthos, shrine to nyx - 4 - a much less good version of coffers, however we often do get at least 4 devotion out, making this a net positive. Helps us filter our colorless mana into black mana phyrexian tower - 5 - high market but better. This time it ramps u polluted delta / verdant catacombs - 4 - fetch lands are nice in this deck since they allow us to deck thin a bit. Will eventually include the other two in here as well sanctum of eternity - 4 - if we have no other way of replaying gonti, this is a great way to replay him once a turn spymaster's vault - 5 - great digging tool for us, especially with the feign death + board wipe, allowing us to dig 10+ cards deep into our deck for doomsday excruciator or whatever else we might need susur secundi, void altar - 2 - meant to serve as a decent way in the early game to get value from our creatures coming in just to die, allowing us to dig cards to find our win cons. Ultimately though this is maybe the most cuttable card in the deck swamp / snow-covered swamp - 100 - theyre swamps. The snow covered swamp was initially included for all-fates scroll, which has since been cut. You don't need any snow lands for this deck thespian's stage - 5 - another cabal coffers if one wasn't enough. Can also be used to copy opponents' good lands as well if need be urborg, tomb of yawgmoth - 5 - combos great with coffers, should be tutored for second after the coffers itself. Also helps our colorless lands filter into black urza's cave - 5 - land tutor on a land, what more could we want? Always tutor for coffers then urborg then thespian's stage in that order vesuva - 5 - just like thespian's stage, this is another copy of cabal coffers or the best land our opponents have Cards for your consideration budget On top of the cards listed above, there were many cards that were considered but not included in the deck for one reason or another. Additionally, if the above descriptions dont match the current decklist, the new cards are most likely from the below list. Most of these cards will be in the considering of the decklist, with the ones I am most interested in testing being in the deck's sideboard. Potential includes - planeswalkers liliana, the necromancer - 3 - good way to get our creatures back, but there are better options Potential includes - creatures vault plunderer - 3 - I so wanted to include this, but forcing 1 draw is just a tad bit too weak. soldevi adnate - 4 - this card is fantastic and more black decks need to run it. Sacrifice is just slightly better in my opinion, although there is a very big argument towards running this instead dauntless scrapbot - 3 - I was extremely high on this card when it first came out, but it just in general feels worse than you would think. If your meta is a lot of graveyard decks, this should be your first card in phyrexian delver - 2 - reanimate on an etb, easily abusable given the etb package in the deck. The life loss is a bit concerning, however Spells Potential includes - sorceries deadly cover-up - 4 - a well costed board wipe which can double as a sneaky mill card. Fun fact - this can target basic lands. If (for some reason) our mono blue opponent has an island in their graveyard, this will let us both wipe their board and exile all the islands from their library. This also works late game if we know that there are a few basics in our opponent's libraries with gonti. I hope to try this out in the future life's finale - 4 - a somewhat poorly costed board wipe which helps us hate out other combo decks or mill people in the post doomsday casting. I hope to try this out in the future heartless conscription - 3 - this was originally in the main deck, but it proved to be too mana intensive to be worth casting most of the time beacon of unrest - 5 - cool reanimation card that can bolster our deck size after we doomsday, it just generally wasnt good enough as a reanimate in my experience. Preventing us from decking out once we doomsday excruciator might be worth running it depending on local meta bubbling muck - 3 - good ritual card, however we just sometimes don't have enough swamps painful lesson - 2 - another forced card draw spell, however this one is a sorcery and just not as good as the others torment of hailfire - 2 - this card would go well in this deck, I just generally think its unimaginative and kinda lame foreboding fruit - 3 - another of the forced draw suite, this time coming with a food. This deck can tend to get focused down a bit so the food is sometimes meaningful. Cut to try out some other options Potential includes - instants not dead after all - 4 - this is genuinely probably one of the best versions of this effect, I just really hate that it makes a unique token. return to action - 4 - I really like this one, particularly because it gives lifelink, but the 2 mana cost makes it just slightly not playable enough abnormal endurance / demonic gifts - 3 - these two are decidedly worse than the two above undying evil - 4 - good recursion piece, but it has negative synergy with some of the other pieces like feign death culling the weak - 3 - good ritual, but a little pricey and situational, especially since we don't make that many tokens march of wretched sorrow - 2 - this is a great lifegain piece, but the combination of it not targetting faces and us not having the biggest hand all of the time limits its usefulness imp's mischief - 4 - good counterspell protection if that is heavy in your meta unseal the necropolis - 4 - good recursion piece to get back the doomsday excruciator, and good once the doomsday excruciator comes down due to the milling. wail of war - 3 - similarly good like unseal the necropolis, however with a mode that is good against token decks. If you are in a token meta this is worth playing wretched confluence - 3 - forced card draw spell which can double as recursion or removal. In general I found the modes too lackluster to justify including a 5 mana instant Potential includes - artifacts crawlspace - 4 - strong defensive piece since our commander has deathtouch. I've never tried it, but it should theoretically be very strong against more go-wide and faster strategies. Doesn't help much against voltron, however. Potential includes - enchantments dead man's chest - 4 - good way to kill people once the doomsday comes down, but the value is very matchup dependent

Decklist

• Aclazotz, Deepest Betrayal
• Arcane Signet
• Archenemy's Charm
• Atrocious Experiment
• Baleful Mastery
• Beamsaw Prospector
• Blasphemous Edict
• Bloodstained Mire
• Boggart Trawler
• Bojuka Bog
• Brainstealer Dragon
• Burnished Hart
• Cabal Coffers
• Changing Loyalty
• Coiling Rebirth
• Consumed by Greed
• Court of Locthwain
• Coveted Jewel
• Crawlspace
• Culling the Weak
• Damnable Pact
• Damnation
• Dark Ritual
• Darkness
• Deadly Cover-Up
• Decorum Dissertation
• Demonic Counsel
• Deserted Temple
• Doomsday Excruciator
• Emergence Zone
• Erebos's Intervention
• Everflowing Chalice
• Expedition Map
• Exsanguinate
• Fake Your Own Death
• Faller's Faithful
• Feign Death
• Fell Stinger
• Fell the Profane
• Flare of Malice
• Forever Young
• Gray Merchant of Asphodel
• Hagra Mauling
• Heartless Summoning
• High Market
• Insatiable Avarice
• Jet Medallion
• Liliana of the Dark Realms
• Malakir Rebirth
• Maze of Ith
• Meathook Massacre II
• Myriad Landscape
• No Mercy
• Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
• Ob Nixilis, the Hate-Twisted
• Outrageous Robbery
• Panharmonicon
• Perigee Beckoner
• Phyrexian Tower
• Polluted Delta
• Realmbreaker, the Invasion Tree
• Rune-Scarred Demon
• Sacrifice
• Sanctum of Eternity
• Saw in Half
• Scampering Surveyor
• Scrounge for Eternity
• Sol Ring
• Solemn Simulacrum
• Spymaster's Vault
• Sudden Spoiling
• Supernatural Stamina
• 16× Swamp
• The Meathook Massacre
• Thespian's Stage
• Thran Dynamo
• Toxic Deluge
• Unscrupulous Contractor
• Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
• Urza's Cave
• Verdant Catacombs
• Vesuva
• Witch's Cottage
• Worn Powerstone