Plus40
God of Wrath (Brawl & Commander)
11 Aug 2020 - 10 min read
The Hexdrinkers are proudly sponsored by
Athreos is back and better than ever in the recently-released Theros, Beyond Death. As a commander, he represents a resilient threat that’s able to provide ungodly amounts of value over the course of a long game. In this edition of Plus 40, we’re going to take a look at what kinds of cards compliment him and his powerful end-of-turn triggered ability in a Brawl and EDH setting.
Oh, and this is Oakley here by the way. Nice to meet you and thanks for tuning in.
On Removal
Removal in all forms is such a pivotal and emblematic part of running a deck helmed by Athreos, Shroud-Veiled . Lucky for us, his color identity comprises perhaps the two colors best known in Magic for their effectiveness in creature removal, black and white.
Ideally, we want removal that only kills a single creature to be instant speed. Nothing groundbreaking here but instant speed removal serves the auxiliary purpose of giving us an extra target every turn cycle that’s been marked by a coin counter. This helps us set up for much larger turnarounds using our opponent’s creatures against them.
One of the best ways I’ve found to utilize this is to kill an opponent’s creature after they’ve declared attackers but before blockers are declared. Then, once that creature returns under your control, use it to ambush block another creature attacking you. Another form of spot removal I’d like to discuss here isn’t instant speed but provides other forms of synergy with Athreos, and that would be “O-ring” type effects:
As we’ve discussed here before, targeting someone’s commander in Brawl or EDH with one of these cards generally results in the commander being sent back to the command zone. Along these same lines, when a creature with a coin counter is hit by an O-ring spell, rather than being temporarily trapped by the enchantment the creatures are exiled and instantly return to your side. I had considered various “flicker” spells for similar reasons, but found them to be too useless when Athreos wasn’t on the battlefield.
Moving on to larger forms of removal, boardwipes are some of the most value-centric spells in the game. With Athreos’ coin counters this power is turned up to eleven, giving a single wrath effect the power to twist an unfavorable board state into a crushing victory:
Thanks once again to Athreos’ triggered ability affecting creatures that are exiled, the pool for boardwipe options broadens to include cards like Extinction Event and Cry of the Carnarium . I’m not exaggerating when I say that cards like these are so powerful in this deck that we want to run at least four if possible. In general I like to go with the ones that can hit the widest range of creatures but between the lower life totals and lower opponent count in Brawl compared to EDH one can easily justify running something like a Ritual of Soot too.
The Landbase
The most striking thing about this iteration of Athreos is perhaps his mana cost, which is now double that of his previous form. Hitting land drops for the first five to six turns is imperative in this deck, as our curve is going to be steep and a turn without playing a land could spell doom to an aggressive or midrange deck. Though it may seem excessive, I would recommend running 26-27 lands to diminish the chances of missing a land drop until after we’ve resolved Athreos at least once.
Thankfully, our mana base is relatively simple in this two-color deck. The auto-includes should be obvious- anything in Standard that can tap for both black and white is fair game, including of course:
We’ll be running a few “color-hungry” cards in this deck as well, so fetch lands like Fabled Passage and Evolving wilds are welcome. I’d argue that even Scoured Barrens and Orzhov Guildgate deserve a spot. The important thing is that we’re hitting a land every turn early on, not necessarily that every land we’re playing is coming in untapped. And while Castle Locthwain may be a worthy include for some much-needed card draw, I’d advise against running utility lands that can’t tap for any color of mana. Field of the Dead may be enough of a menace that you’d want to run Field of Ruin just in case but missing out on that colored mana can come back to haunt you when you’d least expect it. Rest assured, we have other means of dealing with hordes of creatures.
Mana Accelerants
We want to get our big spells out early in Brawl or some decks will be able to run us over before we can get the ball rolling. For this reason, ramp spells in the 2-4 mana range will be our target:
The theme here is ramp spells that do things for us besides just add mana. This deck values a long game with its ability to recur creatures and spells that trade one-for-many. Solemn Simulacrum , already a format staple, ticks off every bonus box for us being a four mana creature that gets us to six mana the following turn in addition to having an ETB and a dies trigger, all qualities Atheros can take advantage of. Orzhov locket is a nice mana sink during long games thanks to our high land count and we need all the card draw we can get given the limited options we have to work with. Altar of the Pantheon is an enigma, at a glance it may seem like a perfect fit for the deck, but after playtesting I found that more often than not it was actually slightly less useful to have enough devotion for Athreos to be a creature. Despite being a great blocker, he becomes vulnerable to much more common forms of removal as a creature. This is not to say that having the extra devotion is a downside necessarily, but I wouldn’t consider it a plus either. Still, Altar only adds a single devotion and the lifegain afforded by it isn’t negligible against aggressive decks so it’s probably still worth the inclusion. Overall it would be more detrimental than anything for us to try and limit ourselves to using permanents with less mana symbols just to try and keep Athreos as an enchantment-only.
Creatures and Finishers
Creatures with strong ETB and/or dies triggers are going to be quintessential to our success with this deck. Mentioned before, Solemn Simulacrum is a paragon example of what we want to maximize the value of Athreos’ ability when our opponents are running few or low-value creatures.
In general we’ll want to keep most of our creatures in the higher CMC range to maximize the value of the coin counters we end up putting on our own creatures. Being able to resolve a boardwipe before any of your creatures even hit the battlefield for the first time is also a great way to roll out the red carpet for them. The on-color Cavaliers both provide fantastic value when recurred multiple times, and Massacre Wurm/Girl are both creatures that will at least partially wipe the board every time they enter the battlefield, which is almost always good for this deck.
This isn’t to say that you should discount creatures that aren’t as synergous as the above. There are plenty of creatures that are good enough on their own merits to be worth an include:
This article was constructed deliberately to leave some slots in the deck up to the reader. Listed above are some of my favorites that I found when experimenting with the deck. The main similarities between them is that they’re all hefty, evasive creatures that can help us close out a game quickly once they’re in play.
Bonus: “Gotchas”
I wanted to take a minute to highlight some cards that definitely should NOT be put into this build despite seeming like possibly great additions at first:
It truly is a shame how poorly Athreos and his pup synergize with each other. The flavor of Kunoros is great and all but he really doesn’t belong beside his master for the purposes of this deck. Having creatures unable to be recurred by Athreos because Kunoros won’t let them back out of the graveyard after they’ve died is not going to help us win any games. Heartless Act ticks many of the boxes that define a good removal spell but is unable to outright kill any creature with a coin counter on it, making it a terrible choice for this deck specifically. Lastly, Cling to Dust is a superb graveyard hate card but an undeniable part of its draw is its escape ability which we’ll be unlikely to ever activate due to how few cards will accumulate in our graveyard over the course of the game. If things are going well for us hardly any cards will be in our graveyard at all and if they are then Cling or any other escape card in black and white for that matter isn’t going to be the pivot that we need.
Eternal Upgrades
Athreos shows the potential to shine in Brawl, but what about EDH? Can his powerful synergies keep up with multiple opponents with more life each?
Travelling back through older sets reveals to us plenty of cards that would go well with Athreos:
Strionic Resonator allows us to double down on our coin counters every turn, giving us more great removal targets and more potential allies after a boardwipe. Ashen Rider proves itself to be an exemplar amongst the many new options we have for value creatures, exiling permanents of our choice both when it enters the battlefield and when it dies. Merciless Eviction , Wrath of God and Austere Command are only a few of many examples of stellar wrath effects sprinkled throughout Magic’s history that we’d want to acquire when upgrading to EDH.
Efficient removal is something we don’t see as much in modern Magic as the focus of card creation has shifted from “answers” to “threats” over the years. We want to take advantage of the good answers printed in old sets, the prime examples of which are Swords to Plowshares and Path to Exile . One thing the black and white colors seem to lack in the current Standard is good unconditional card draw, but luckily we can supplement this weakness with cards like Phyrexian Arena and Read the Bones . Finally, Ashnod’s/Phyrexian Altar can allow us to cash out early on creatures we own to potentially get another “enters the battlefield” trigger as well as some much-needed mana to cast our larger spells.
Disenchant and Crush Contraband are great cards that would be available for our Brawl build if desired, but where they really shine is in EDH where we have the potential to face much more oppressive artifacts and enchantments than those that exist in Standard. Smothering Tithe embodies exactly this type of oppressive card, it will be an auto-include in many of our opponents’ white EDH decks due to its extremely high ramp value when pitted against multiple foes. Definitely play a copy of your own if you’re able to get your hands on one.
Deck(s)list
There’s over 25 years of Magic cards to sift through when choosing how to upgrade your Athreos, Shroud-Veiled Brawl deck so try new things and see what works best for your meta! Here’s a full list I put together that I enjoyed playing a lot in one of my playgroups: Full Decklists
More Entries in Plus40:
See All...