One of the strictest differences between the player psychographic profiles is their reaction to variance, or ‘randomness’. These profiles, being (in their original incarnation) Timmy, Johnny, and Spike, are confronted with the innate truth that a card game is no exact science; games will play out differently based on order of cards drawn, at minimum, and a great deal of confounding factors also exist. Timmy is fine with randomness, so long as it’s awesome, and results in something spectacular, while Spike detests the thought, only putting up with it as a fundamental part of the game. But Johnny? Johnny sees randomness as something controllable, that can be played to ones’ advantage; Johnny sees a card like Gorex, the Tombshell and says “Challenge accepted”.
As one of the resident Johnnys at Goonhammer, this is not the first time I’ve confronted the great beast of variance, sword in hand; when I covered Tersa Lightshatter, the crux of that entire strategy was pruning the pool of potential random outcomes down to their best possibilities. That challenge was a 1-in-7, while Gorex is only 1-in-3, most of the time, which means our numbers are far more controllable so long as we build for it. Moreover, just as long as we both attack and die, 2/3 of those options are recurred, meaning the likelihood of it not being random at all is shockingly high. It then becomes necessary to grapple with the question of how we get value from this recursion, and then snowball it into winning the game. When it comes to taking the turtle to bracket 2, I’m placing all my bets on killing my opponents with Ancient Cellarspawn, and I think you should too!
“Choose a Card at Random Exiled with Gorex”
Before we dive in to the wonderful world of what we’re actually doing with the turtle, it’s important to talk about what Gorex’s ability actually means. First, the upside: You can always exile more with Gorex than you need to, per the 9/24/2021 ruling on Gatherer, meaning if you believe the turtle will be sticking around for multiple attacks, you can go ahead and put 4+ creatures under him without issue. In a practical sense, this can be a way to trigger ‘leaves the graveyard’ effects, or as a means to always ensure you exile Eternal Scourge, a card worth familiarizing ourselves with. Eternal Scourge is one of a very elite class of cards that can be freely cast from exile, and the only one legal for a Monoblack Commander. If exiled with Gorex, it is still exiled face-up in spite of recurring randomly, meaning you can always cast it to remove the Eldrazi from your pool; if you’re only exiling 3 cards for Gorex, to pay its {6} max discount without added Commander Tax, that means attacking and dying with the turtle ensures you get every card from his options, removing the randomness entirely. While there are some cute combos later on with Scourge, we’re mostly aiming to play it fairly, as a way to rig the slots when getting cards back with Gorex.
The (arguable) downside with this ability however is that, if you for example Escape Gorex via Confession Dial or The Grim Captain’s Locker, those cards exiled with Escape will not be in his pool. Why is that? This is what is known as a ‘linked ability’, described in point 607 of the comprehensive rules; the two effects on Gorex don’t actually look for ‘a card at random exiled with Gorex’, they look for specifically the cards exiled with its first ability. This means that, unfortunately, you cannot get back non-creature cards, even if they’re exiled to pay for the escape cost. Still, there is some upside in Escaping Gorex via something like The Grim Captain’s Locker, as you need only exile 2 cards to pay for the altered mana cost of {3}{B}, meaning attacking and dying gives you a 100% hit rate on the ‘random’ returns. Moreover, this interaction never muddies his pool, ensuring your randomness remains at worst a 1-in-2 (for Locker). For this reason, I remain bullish on the Locker, but don’t include Confession Dial, as we have other ways of avoiding Commander Tax, and don’t play an abundance of Legends.
That’s not to say we can’t get everything we need with the turtle though, as there are some sneaky means by which we can access non-Creatures in the color via only Creature-based recursion. Both Blackbloom Rogue and Boggart Trawler are legal targets, and lands on their back side, and Myr Retriever gets back Artifacts with ease. I’ve even considered Biblioplex Assistant as a means to get back non-permanents, though it’s maybe a bit too cute. The only relevant card type we can’t finagle a way to access via Gorex is unfortunately Enchantment, but that’s just a reality of the deck. As can be seen, there’s a ton of circular paths to cards in the yard, and lots of effects worth repeating. Speaking of, Shriekmaw is great removal, and even one we can cast for lower than its printed Mana Value, which matters a ton as can be seen in our next section.
Putting the Value in Mana Value
With that preamble about the finicky rule interactions now over, it’s time to get into the other big reason you’d choose Gorex as a Commander: It has Mana Value 8. As one might surmise, that’s high, and we never intend to pay the full cost, meaning cards that synergize with high mana value (and with underpaying for it) see massive returns in a decklist like this. A few cards even seem tailor-made for the turtle, such as Visions of Dread and Stinging Study, both seeing higher value here than in nearly any other deck. Moreover, Black has a penchant for reaping greater rewards depending on the value of a Creature tossed aside: Morbid Curiosity to draw 8, or Reckoner’s Bargain to gain 8 life? Sign me up!
Beyond just our Commander, there’s a suite of Creatures we employ that similarly have ways to massively discount their high Mana Values. First is what I’ve settled on as the sole playable Delve Creature, Sibsig Muckdraggers. This has a similar effect to our Commander, adding back a Creature and costing a whopping 9 mana, but its bretheren like the iconic Gurmag Angler aren’t too far off. Between Escape and another Delve spell we’ll cover later, I didn’t want to over-invest in getting rid of our yard. Next, cards like Chitin Gravestalker, Hollow Marauder, and Huskburster Swarm count the number of Creatures in the yard (or in exile, for Swarm), getting far better as we mill and discard to fill the tombs with spare Creatures. Finally, the highest Mana Value card in our deck, Shadow of Mortality, costs a whopping 15 printed mana, going down as we trade blows and pay out life. If our deck is humming, for all of these cards, we aim to often pay no more than 2-3 mana apiece.
Once we have a few of these cards that are functionally cheap on the board, there’s also a few cards which, similar to Food Chain (though obviously less good) allow us to ramp by sacrificing cards like them. Soldevi Adnate and Illuminor Szeras each tap to potentially add 8 or more mana, and Sacrifice is a ritual that does so at Instant speed. Then, there’s Fateful Handoff, which works similarly to Morbid Curiosity, although often not with Gorex exactly. We’re usually okay with handing out one of the high Mana Value options that aren’t our Commander, but in desperate times (or if you intend to wipe the board anyway) you can pass off the turtle. Its second effect is mandatory, after all, and returns the card to its owners’ hand, meaning Gorex still accrues value if custody changes and a ‘horrible accident’ occurs.
The high cost of many of our Creatures can be used aggressively as well, however, as some Yuriko-like effects do exist in Monoblack. Two of these, Shadow, Mysterious Assassin and Ninja’s Blades, both arrived in Final Fantasy, massively increasing the pressure this type of deck can exert. There’s also Strixhaven’s Keen Duelist, which gambles on one of your high Mana Value pieces being on top; she’s definitely playable, but do we really need another draw engine? To help Gorex get in, though, there’s the oft-milled Dragon Shadow, providing devastating evasion to our Commander for free, from the graveyard. Notably Gorex is already not a great card to block and kill with anything but Tokens, so on many board states where he has someone to attack without issue, it’s often we’ll defer Dragon’s Shadow to another large Creature that actually wants to get in.
Cards in the Yard
The only time I’ve seen Gorex played, it was a one-off match on Spelltable, helming a Monoblack Cycling deck. That concept is sound, turning Gorex’s triggers into three separate cantrips, and triggering the great many discard benefits in Black. That being said, I feel mill is preferable for this version of the deck, as in Bracket 2 it’s by far the best way to simply see more of the cards we need to win the game. Regardless, some cyclers are absolutely warranted: Chitin Gravestalker, already mentioned, also has a discount effect, but Street Wraith and Horror of the Broken Lands aren’t cards we’ll ever cast, outside of a combo scenario for Horror that includes Skirge Familiar.
Beyond just pitching cards from our hand, that brings us to the final core component of this strategy, being just chucking our Library into the bin. Monoblack doesn’t have access to some of the best forms of this effect, which tend to reside in the realm of Golgari, so there are definitely some suspect choices once we get through the best options. Of course there’s the Dredgers, here Stinkweed Imp and Golgari Thug, with a mild nod to Dakmor Salvage, as well as mill-based Artifacts like Altar of Dementia and Mesmeric Orb. By using individual cyclers alongside Dredge, we can very rapidly fill the yard for Gorex to come down early, ready to swing out. The package begins to look different, however, when we move to inclusions like Dogged Detective, a self-recursive body that is both great to sacrifice, and functionally better than something like a Mire Triton for us. Also present is Polluted Cistern//Dim Oubliette, which turns our mill into a win condition (or reanimates a crucial card), and Overlord of the Balemurk, both from Duskmourn. The latter even manages to play into the themes of discounted big Creatures, critical to the next point.
Horror House
The jig is up: Gorex isn’t…entirely our Commander here. As mentioned in the intro, a second, non-Legendary Creature is secretly the card we aim to control throughout most of the game: Ancient Cellarspawn. Cellarspawn at face value provides a specific discount that only keys off of 3 other cards in our deck, but that second effect absolutely packs a punch. Any time we cast a spell for less than its printed mana cost, the difference gets shot directly at an opponent’s face; this was the crux of a short-lived Legacy deck that hinged on the interaction between this and Soul Spike, providing an 11-life swing once Cellarspawn resolved, as you held priority with it lacking a trigger on enter. While that single-player swing isn’t going to win us the game in Commander, similar ideas persist, and with both Gorex and his ilk providing easy discounts of 6, 7, or more, casting these massive Creatures puts immediate pressure on our opponents.
Discounts from already-good cards like Jet Medallion and The Darkness Crystal also apply here, and the alternate cost of a card like Dread Return costs 0 mana, pinging for 4. Due to being in Bracket 2, we only get a scant few tutors, but I’ve decided to triple up on ways to put things in the yard: Corpse Connoisseur, Buried Alive, and Lively Dirge. Coupled with our Commander, both a way to get Creatures back from the yard and a 6 mana ping with Cellarspawn, a shockingly cogent strategy emerges. And, because we aim to mill quite a lot, we can dig feverishly for Cellarspawn if we don’t find these tutors, churning through cards for our ‘Secret Commander’. Beyond just chunking opponents with our big discounts, though, Cellarspawn has a hidden purpose as a combo piece, with a card we’d otherwise already be playing: Eternal Scourge.
Discount on Winning
Of the few Horrors in this list, Scourge is one of them, meaning we ping for at minimum 1 when it’s cast while Cellarspawn is on board. This brings its functional cost to {2}, the amount of mana generated by a card I’ve talked about perhaps too much in previous articles, Ashnod’s Altar. This portion of the loop can also be substituted with Heartless Summoning or a properly-imprinted Semblance Anvil and any sac outlet. That being said, we still need to get Scourge into Exile, which requires we make use of either Mimic Vat…or the much worse Necropolis. Necropolis is in here for redundancy, and as a Creature it’s far more accessible, but I don’t love it. Importantly, it dies to our own Heartless Summoning, so just be aware of when you’ll need to default to Mimic Vat. From there, we kill the table with a loop from Scourge, and voila, our midrange damage pile produces lethal.
That’s not all, though—while this loop is fun, it’s not especially consistent (which I assume would be obvious). Rather, we’re on it as a means to finish the game when the board stalls, and enough of our cards are in the bin that we can produce a win over several turns. A faster way towards a win comes in the form of Skirge Familiar and Peer into the Abyss, or enough cards via our draw tools to start doing silly things. This isn’t strictly a combo, as it’s merely a gigantic mana engine, but between seeing ~30-40 cards and that much mana, it’s difficult not to attain a win with half your library in hand. More often than not, we aim to finish the game fairly by way of Cellarspawn’s damage and our big creatures getting in, just as Bracket 2 would prefer.
Example Decklist: Turtle Club’s Cellar
Beyond what we’ve spoken about in detail, this list has a lot of tools I feel more Black (and Mill decks in general) ought to employ. First and foremost, you’ll notice we’re on every single competent land that can mill ourselves, including the oddities like Gallifrey Council Chamber and Mariposa Military Base. Making your manabase work for you, beyond just being a mana engine, is a critical aspect of deckbuilding I feel is often overlooked; if you’re in 2 or fewer colors, you can afford more utility lands than you think, so long as the actual spells you’re casting aren’t wildly color-intensive (Looking at you, Niv-Mizzet). This is further assisted by two cards every Monoblack deck should be on: World Map and Expedition Map. We’re all aware of the power Cabal Coffers+Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth contains, and in Monoblack there’s little reason outside of cEDH to not run these fairly cheap ways to shoot your mana into the stratosphere. Especially so in Bracket 2, where Land tutors are uncapped.
Decklists are kept updated, and may change with set releases.
We’re also on the best Haste enablers in our color, being the two forms of boots, and Crashing Drawbridge, which has the benefit of being a Creature. This is integral to make sure we’re getting our Gorex value, as the only way to see all 3 cards we’ll exile to cast him, on average, we need 2 swings plus a death trigger. Without Haste, it gets a bit shaky to see all 3, as 3 turn cycles are needed to swing out twice. Beyond that, we also have a few ways to get Gorex back if he’s either too expensive, as we aim to kill him repeatedly, or bounce him to hand. Netherborn Altar feels awesome here once Gorex hits a Commander Tax of 4+, as we can usually eat the first one with his discount, and Sanctum of Eternity could in theory reset the turtle if he doesn’t have anything we need exiled, or has run out of cards to recur. This is less common than you’d think, though, given there’s tons of ways to get the turtle in the bin.
As for odds and ends, we’re only on mana dorks rather than rocks, outside of the obvious Sol Ring, as so much of the strategy keys off of Creatures. Furthermore, while we play Toxic Deluge as the single-best board wipe in Black, Living Death is our other preferred option, given we aim to have a far more stacked yard than any opponent. This, coupled with a surprisingly dense Creature-removal suite, helps stop opponents from snowballing too early. I’ve found that, against Combo decks, you want to prioritize soft looping Distended Mindbender to pick apart their hand. In my practice games, that’s been a huge factor, and influenced me to consider Abundant Maw as well, given Emerge plays wonderfully with everything else we’re doing. Beyond that, Filth is properly filthy, making our cards often just unblockable with help from Urborg. Lastly, I want to shoutout Eye of Ugin, which would be in here were it not for the random tutor mode—this would take up one of our slots in Bracket 2’s limit, in spite of being a killer combo piece with Eternal Scourge, and tapping for mana via the aforementioned Urborg.
Dry Bones, Wet Bones
It may come as a shock, but Black is perhaps the color in Commander that I’ve played the least; I’ve always been a massive fan of both Red & White, with Blue & Green trailing behind, but Black’s identity never had great appeal. This is especially funny, as nearly every deck I build has some form of Altar or sacrifice-centric subtheme, but it’s perhaps that I saw the color as being too obvious for my tastes. As a Johnny, the path least traveled is my eternal route, and playing out death loops or mill in Green & White always seemed to be chasing the role of Black in Magic, in spite of being the color’s antithesis. I’ll happily report then, through Gorex, that I’m now a fan of Monoblack. It helps as well, that in Edge of Eternities the Warp mechanic provided fun new tools to the ‘mana value matters’ theme that’s cropped up here, and while I’m not finished testing with all those new toys, Perigee Beckoner seems like one hell of a Horror.
Fighting past the inherent downside that comes with ‘random’ in card text is a thrill for me in deckbuilding, and utilizing the deep well of ‘Mana Value matters’ cards in the color made Gorex more dynamic than I initially thought. You really do get to pop off every game, by translating a chunky Creature into cards, mana, or mill, and spiral that into further value as you move down the chain. Of course, hating on the graveyard does put you out of commission most of the time, but in Bracket 2 you’ll rarely see a bona fide Rest in Peace across your pods. Once you get into Bracket 3, sure you’ll be able to play the backbreaking Game Changers Black has access to, with Bolas’s Citadel often being a flat-out kill alongside Cellarspawn, but you lose the magic that comes with limited tutor, and limited power. You can absolutely power this Commander up, as finding your secret Commander more consistently via tutors is a huge boon, but I recommend getting your zombified turtle legs wet in Bracket 2 to test the waters. Who knows, there’s a 1-in-3 chance this becomes a new favorite.
Until next time, stay out of the cellar.
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