Disappointed with MTG’s Spider-Man set? Hate that there’s Spongebob fighting Sonic at your commander nights? Tired of being killed turn 5 by Slicer, the transformer you don’t even remember from your childhood? Think nothing positive came out of universes beyond? Well this Mister Negative precon is for you!
If you haven’t heard, the Professor at Tolarian Community College posed a challenge for fans to create a precon for the Spider-Man set, which strangely isn’t shipping with any. He’s already posted lists for Peter Parker, Norman Osborn and Gwen Stacy, so those are off limits. Maybe some folks will build a Carnage or Doc Ock deck – but not me, not today. We’re going to build a deck around Mister Negative, whom I’ve never heard of before this set was released.
This deck is an ode to the old, to the disgruntled; those who haven’t seen Spider-Man since Toby McGuire was Peter Parker; those whose idea of heroes and villains in MTG include Liliana, Gideon, Gerrard, Urza, Nicol Bolas and Elesh Norn; those who recall battlecruiser EDH with commanders with crazy casting costs; those who do not simply enter, but enter the battlefield; those who are Mister Negative when it comes to UB; here’s to you!
Check out the decklist here: https://archidekt.com/decks/16029278/mister_negative_tcc_lost_precon_submission
Mister Negative
Mister Negative is an Orzhov 5/5 commander for a whopping 7 mana with a potent enters the battlefield trigger: Trade lives with an opponent and, if you lost life this way, draw that many cards.
On the surface, the two primary ways to build around this commander:
-Play with the intention of drawing cards, meaning you’re gaining life while draining opponents
-Play with the intention of playing hot potato with your life total, sending your opponent’s life total to just a few points.
This build around attempts to do both, as a precon would; give you a good shell to play either way, but leaning more towards the lifegain strategy initially and having a few ways to close out the game once your life is low.
Rules Lawyering – Well, actually, you don’t gain life (and you might die)
I always like to say Magic is a game of “Well, actually” – there are so many rules it’s hard to get them all right. We’re going to teach all these new kids a thing or two about “well, actually” in this deck – we’re going to try to occasionally break Mister Negative with rule 701.10c:
701.10c When life totals are exchanged, each player gains or loses the amount of life necessary to equal the other player’s previous life total. Replacement effects may modify these gains and losses, and triggered abilities may trigger on them. A player who can’t gain life can’t be given a higher life total this way, and a player who can’t lose life can’t be given a lower life total this way (see rules 119.7–8).
That’s right! If they can’t gain life, then trading lives with them when you’re at a high life total just sets your life to theirs, but they don’t gain any. Additionally, if they can gain life, they are susceptible to replacement effects like Tainted Remedy! So if you’re at 60 life and an opponent is at 25, Mister Negative’s ability would set your life to 25. If Tainted Remedy is out, instead of your opponent gaining 35 life and being at 60, they would lose the difference (35) and be at -10 (25-35) life instead, likely taking them out of the game.
If you’re into this type of degeneracy, there are other cards that prevent lifegain – just be sure not to prevent yourself from gaining life unless you want to live on the edge. I don’t believe there are other ways to turn life gain into life loss in these colors, however, so Tainted Remedy and False Cure are your primary must haves. Just keep in mind the latter would cost you a total of 9 mana since you’d have to cast it on the same turn as your commander.
Early and Mid Game – Life Gain, Drain and Ramp
Lands and Ramp
A seven cost commander in non-green is no joke, so we can neither skimp on lands nor ramp in this deck. I’m running 39 lands and 11 ramp spells, mostly the stuff you’d expect to find in precons. You could run more ramp but you do want there to be life spreads when your commander enters so he makes an impact.
Passive Gain and Drain
In the early and mid game, we’re looking to try and stay healthy while draining opponents as much as possible. I have both soul sisters in this deck – Soul Warden and Soul’s Attendant – as they both trigger off any creature entering, not just yours. Speaking of opponent’s creatures entering, Blood Seeker and Suture Priest drain opponents when their creatures enter. I also included a Distinguished Conjurer, as she heals you when your creatures enter and gives you the option to blink your commander or some other creatures later.
Kambal, Consul of Allocation (remember when this card was cheap?), Liesa, Shroud of Dusk, and Rug of Smothering do a great job of punishing your opponents for playing the game, the first two gaining you life as well. Twilight Prophet nets you a card, lifegain and drain on your upkeep provided you have ascended. Conversely, Painful Quandary will do a fantastic job of eating removal or destroying your opponents’ hands and life totals.
Marauding Blight-Priest and Starscape Cleric provide drain every time you gain life, which actually can trigger surprisingly often. Note that in a deck with life swings so vast, cards like Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose and Sanguine Bond make a natural fit, as are all of their combo pieces. I opted not to include any, trying to keep some uniqueness to this commander as well as keep the deck bracket 2. But they do make natural upgrades to the deck!
Lastly, we have a few lifelinky beaters in the deck to help keep a life spread available when the commander enters. Elenda, Saint of Dusk can start the game pretty large and can be as big as a 10/10 menace lifelink can’t be swords’d for 4 mana. Qarsi Revenant is the newest pushed version of Vampire Nighthawk and makes for a good offense, defense and is even useful in the graveyard. We run the aforementioned Liesa, and of course we run Gary for a big swing in life in our favor. Gary can be blinked by Distinguished Conjurer and pairs nicely with Panharmonicon and other flicker effects.
Casting Mister Negative
At some point we’ll look to cast Mister Negative the first time, ideally when we have a large life lead over at least one opponent, to draw a boatload of cards in exchange for our life. We did talk a bit earlier about how we can prevent our opponents from getting life (or just killing them) – note that we’ll still draw the cards since the ability only cares about the life you lost.
Ensuring Low Life Opponents
In case the life gain/drain tricks above didn’t pan out, Sorin Markov and Tree of Perdition can guarantee one opponent will be at less than a third of their starting life total.
Keeping the Cards In Hand
Since we’re drawing 6-60 or so cards when casting our commander, and we spent a whopping 7 mana to so, it’s unlikely we’re going to have a ton of mana sitting around afterwards, meaning all these cards will get played next turn. We’ll want to try and keep the cards, so we’re running lands and ramp that allow us to do so. Note that if you are casting your commander and haven’t played any of these, try not to play a land until after you’ve drawn your cards, as you might be able to draw and play Reliquary Tower.
Staying Alive After First Cast
There’s a few ways to try and ensure 3 opponents don’t team up to kill you once you have 10 hp and 40 cards in hand. Firstly, if you have lifelinkers on board, make sure to cast your commander first main and lifelink some back during combat.
Second – try and keep a white mana open after you cast your commander so you can play Cloudshift or Ephemerate. Doing so allows you to blink in your commander, stealing life back from an opponent – Ephemerate being particularly nasty since you can just draw another huge chunk of cards on your upkeep. Both of these also pair well with Gray Merchant of Asphodel. Along the same lines, having a Panharmonicon on the battlefield before casting your commander allows you to swap lives twice, drawing cards and staying healthy.
Lastly, Tainted Sigil is a sweet card that allows you to regain all the life you (and your opponents’) lost on a particular turn. Crack it on the end step after casting your commander and swinging for combat damage to maximize its lifegain.
While this won’t keep you alive this turn, next turn you can pour mana into a Morlun, Devourer of Spiders to deal damage to an opponent, potentially knocking them out of the game, and gaining that much life back. Same goes for an Exsanguinate and Debt to the Deathless, though neither are in the deck. Good sidegrade options!
Finishing the Game
At this point it’s turn 6-9, ideally you’ve drawn a third of your deck, your opponents are low on life, you’re high on life. You might be able to win the game by standard combat damage, life gain/drain triggers, bringing your commander back out, etc. I won’t cover those in detail but there are a few other ways to close out the game worth covering.
Same-Turn Game Enders
Psychosis Crawler and Sickening Dreams are both great ways to close out games. If Psychosis Crawler is on the field when you trade lives with an opponent, he could single handedly dish out enough damage to close out the game. Sickening Dreams allows you to discard cards from your hand to deal damage to all creatures and players. Note if this gets counterspelled, you’ll still lose the cards. But say you cast your commander, have 2 mana left over, drew 30 cards, and cracked a Tainted Sigil, you could discard 30 cards to deal 30 table damage potentially closing out the game.
Well, Actually, Having 0 Life Doesn’t Kill Me
A lot of black mages like to repeat the quote, “The only point of life that matters is the last one.” Well, Actually, sometimes you don’t require life at all!
Pact Weapon, Lich’s Mastery, Cloudsteel Kirin and Phyrexian Unlife are all in this deck as a way to stay alive under 0 hp. Do note that Lich’s Mastery is risky to cast before trading life to draw cards, as you’ll end up having to exile that many cards or permanents, but also note that it pairs remarkably well with Gray Merchant of Asphodel.
Being at negative life allows us to flicker or recast our commander to instantly kill an opponent and gain their life; it also allows us to cast Repay in Kind to bring everyone’s life total negative for a compleat victory.
I added Wall of Blood and Unspeakable Symbol as ways to drain your own life quickly, but do note that you cannot pay life you do not have, so if you have less life than is required to active the ability you cannot activate it. However, you can pay your last life for the activation. If you like this drain-myself play style, there are plenty of other cards you could add: K’rrik, Son of Yawgmoth, Blood Celebrant, Necrologia, Doom Whisperer and more. As previously mentioned, as a precon, this deck aims to give you a taste of what is possible, but leave it up to you in the direction you want to take it.
End Step
At the time of writing, this deck comes out to about ~$160 USD minus the 3 Spider man cards which don’t yet have prices. It has a few nice chase cards, gives you a taste of the two primary ways to play the deck, gives you spicy rules breaking ways to manipulate the downsides of the deck, has no game changers and is not high on salt. I was surprised in how many different ways you could take this seemingly straight forward commander – I guess the blessing of being 7 mana is your deck really does need to function potentially without the commander in order to play in today’s EDH games.
Thoughts? Would you pick this precon up? Let me know in the comments below!
Another link to the decklist here: https://archidekt.com/decks/16029278/mister_negative_tcc_lost_precon_submission