This is an especially good move is you also have Reaper King out. If you don’t have lots of resources in your hand, you can also sacrifice a scarecrow specifically to draw a card, then use Scarecrone’s activated ability to bring it right back. Thanks to its second ability, it can also get most of your creatures back from the graveyard for you. Being able to sacrifice one of your creatures to draw a card is a nice way to respond at instant speed to a targeted removal spell. Perhaps the best scarecrow in this deck that isn’t your commander is Scarecrone. Wild-Field Scarecrow can help you with mana fixing and won’t be a wasted draw later in the game because it can still help you remove a permanent. I especially like Antler Skulkin since persist can be a good way to stop you from having to recast your commander. Each of these have abilities you can target Reaper King with since it’s all five colors. This includes cards like Jawbone Skulkin and Hoof Skulkin. Some of the better scarecrows in this deck are the Skulkin cycle. When looking at the creatures in this deck, it’s important to consider them with Reaper King’s ability in mind. You may want to try ingratiating yourself to the table by offering to remove troublesome cards that players hate even more, especially any stax pieces. Your opponents won’t be happy about you destroying their permanents each turn, so they’ll likely gun for Reaper King or you before it even hits the battlefield. While Reaper King is a personal favorite, I’ll admit it comes with a pretty big downside.

While Reaper King’s anthem ability is definitely the less important of its two effects, it’s still a nice boost to most of your creatures and can help you in dealing damage once you clear your opponents’ boards. While scarecrows themselves may be largely underwhelming, the ability to blow up any permanent when they enter the battlefield makes them much more intimidating. Reaper King is worth its expensive casting cost thanks to the immense value it adds to your creatures. Your flicker spells can also serve to protect your commander from targeted removal. This is why I’ve included cards like Lightning Greaves to protect it and Spark Double to make extras. The unfortunate truth about this and most Reaper King decks is that they suffer pretty badly when the commander isn’t on the field.

Flicker cards like Eerie Interlude can be a powerful way to cash in on your ETB triggers again, and Panharmonicon effects can also improve your game a lot. Unfortunately the available scarecrow creatures at the moment make it difficult to build a deck around them entirely, and I wanted to make sure that most of the creatures you’re playing also trigger Reaper King’s ability.Īpart from scarecrows, I also included other cards that synergize well with your commander. You’ll notice that there are still a few shapeshifters in this deck. The other reason I prefer this is for theming purposes and visual cohesion. From a gameplay standpoint this makes many of your casting costs less restrictive because most scarecrows are colorless artifacts. While shapeshifters have a bit more tribal support thanks to Lorwyn, I prefer to lean more towards the scarecrow side of things.

One is the obvious scarecrow tribal, and the other is shapeshifter tribal with changeling. There are two main ways to build a Reaper King deck. I’ll go through how this deck works and talk about a few other options that you could use to switch up how this deck can be built and played. You don’t need to have all the colors to cast it thanks to its hybrid cost, though it’s more expensive the more colors you decide to cut. Even squirrels!Īnother interesting aspect is that, although this is a 5-color commander, you can easily get away with building this deck with only a few colors, even none if you want. It’s your only choice if you want a scarecrow commander, while most other tribes have at least a few legendary creatures to choose from. The Reaper King is a unique commander in a few ways. Ironically, while Lorwyn was the mini-block that introduced tribal mechanics, Shadowmoor gave us one of the most interesting tribal commanders: Reaper King. Lorwyn had a +1/+1 counter sub-theme, so Shadowmoor had a -1/-1 counter one. Reaper King 1.0 Reaper King 1.0 Reaper King 1.Back during the Lorwyn and Shadowmoormini-blocks, Wizards attempted to create two sets that were exact opposites of one another. It's harvest time it's harvest time it's harvest time It's budget time it's budget time it's budget time

Mtg scarecrow king