Araumi of the Dead Tide - Two Years Later - Low Power Deck Tech
Araumi’s deck tech was my first article on our website. The site and PlayEDH as a whole have changed a lot since then. We have a dedicated writing and editing team, we branched out to host leagues and tournaments, we started streaming on Twitch, have a podcast, host AMA’s with WOTC’s designers and artists as live events on our platform, we started receiving preview cards and the 400,000th game launched through SpellBot is bound to happen this year (my guess is between April 6th and April 10 2022, by a rough estimate of 370 games played per day).
Araumi’s deck tech is due an overhaul - and it shows. The formatting looks dated, the image design had not yet been adapted to be more accessible to mobile viewers, image galleries were ‘click to view more’, a lot of the text I’d rewrite to be more concise now. We simply didn’t have the experience yet to make things look nice and coherent. Rather than editing a two-year-old article, I opted to just write a brand new one.
The deck as a whole has undergone some changes, but the base principles are still the same. Mill cards, bring them back threefold, rely on strong enters-the-battlefield (ETB) abilities to try and close out the game. Let’s dive back into this deck, two years later. All my previous deck techs had a playlist to go with them, this one will be no different - I hope you’re into metal. It’s 2023 and I’m still handing you my mixtape. The full deck can be found embeded at the bottom of this page.
Mill
Araumi needs cards in the graveyard for her to be useful. A good opening hand should have a way of getting some cards in the graveyard on the earlier turns. She’s 3 mana to cast and has summoning sickness, so racing out Araumi early is usually not the way to go and you don’t want your graveyard to be empty by the time you have the mana to cast her.
Most of these cards will look familiar if you’ve played a self-mill deck before. Stitcher’s Supplier is probably my favorite turn 1 play - unless I manage to get a Sol Ring + Mesmeric Orb in my opening hand, much to the dismay of the rest of the table. I will say Mesmeric Orb is currently on my watchlist of cards to cut in the (near) future. It has the potential to accelerate other graveyard centered decks at the table and giving my opponents resources is not something I like to do.
Out of the Tombs came out with the Warhammer 40,000 Commander precons and it does about the same job as Mesmeric Orb, but it only mills myself and not others. If people aren’t playing graveyard recursion, Mesmeric Orb often get mentioned as the reason I’m getting attacked or focused on ‘because you’re milling all my cards away’. What’s supposed to be an accelerant for myself, can be a big hindrance for my opponents and all ‘everybody discards/mills’ cards have to be considered before playing them.
Loot
“Is looting useful?” This one feels so obvious to me, yet it’s a recurring question that people have asked on our Discord. Looting cards is great, because now you get to select which cards go into your graveyard. Milling cards from your library without topdeck knowledge could mean any number of things end up in your graveyard beyond your control. Looting allows you to not just sculpt your hand, but your graveyard too.
Vohar, Vodalian Desecrator loots and has the potential to recur instants and sorceries from the graveyard as well. I like how he allows me to loot away instants and sorceries I don’t currently need to get them back later - your sacrifice will be remembered.
Note how Frantic Search and Read the Runes are instant speed. Draw and discard before your turn, putting your payoff threat in the graveyard right before your turn begins, turning the ‘He doesn’t seem to have anything’ comments to ‘Oh no, that’s bad’.
Last time I mentioned the card, Read the Runes was in 0.002% of Araumi decks on EDHREC - this statistic didn’t change. The flexibility of this card which allows you to sacrifice already resolved early game creatures to reanimate them again threefold makes this card criminally underplayed in my eyes.
Return/Reanimate
I run a lot of ‘back to hand/field’ recursion in regards to my graveyard, yet I chose to not play the immediate go to staples. Some of these play a big role in ‘The Lesser Evil’ part of my deck, more on that later.
There are several high value instants and sorceries in the deck so Archaeomancer felt like no-brainer. While four mana seems steep, keep in mind we’re looking to gain the ETB effect 3 to 4 times (one on hard cast, three times from encore recursion).
The big difference between this card and Vohar is that Vohar casts them from your graveyard, which means cards like Drannith Magistrate and Soulless Jailer can prevent Vohar from working properly. Neither of these hinder Araumi from operating by the way - encore is an activated ability, not a spell cast, but you’re still susceptible to other graveyard hate cards like Ashes of Abhorrent.
The deck runs 14 artifacts, several of those which will be on people’s ‘that has to go away now’ removal list, so over time Archaeomender and Rootwater Diver found their way into the deck. The odd one out here is Rootwater Diver, which sees close to no play in EDH at all. In my deck, with encore giving creatures haste, it’s 1 mana return 3 artifacts from your graveyard to hand with one Araumi activation which is pretty solid.
I know I’m light on non-commander related reanimation. There’s no Reanimate, Animate Dead, or Dread Return in the deck. While it’s likely smart and good to add these cards, I already have way too many Dimir decks that have these cards as ‘easy auto-includes’ in the 99, and I wanted my deck to be reliant on its commander to do most of the heavy lifting. Dread Return’s flashback cost adding more fuel in my graveyard has made me consider the card before several times. It’s not in the deck due to a self implied deck building limitation of trying to step away from the same 10 cards that find their way in all of my decks.
I do run Victimize, Doomed Necromancer, and Port of Karfell as more suboptimal reanimation. All three of these also put cards back into my graveyard upon cast/activation, and Araumi is quite card hungry, especially if I’m looking to activate her more than once per turn.
Enters the Battlefield
Whichever creature comes back threefold (assuming a pod of 4 players) has to be impactful. It has to be something that people absolutely don’t want to see three of hit the battlefield at the same time. This is where the least changes have been made over time.
Gray Merchant of Asphodel, Massacre Wurm and Vindictive Lich still take the cake here. And yes, token copies keep their mana value and count towards devotion - another question that pops up regularly. Three Massacre Wurms can take out a table if people are going wide, and Vindictive Lich can drain one opponent for 15 life, make them discard their hand or lose 3 creatures, if I choose to not spread the death triggers equally.
The Lesser Evil
‘I’m going to give you a choice and you’re going to like neither’. This was the design idea I started with in the first iteration of this deck, and that has not changed. In fact, more of those effects got added. Originally I had Burning-Rune Demon and Fact or Fiction - now with 100% less Jace in the art! - and I was very happy to see Hostile Negotiations get printed in The Brothers’ War.
The first time I got to cast this card, my face down pile had a Fact or Fiction which got put into my hand, leading to one of the more funny ‘Oh yeah, that’s probably never happening again’ occurrences, the kind of interaction that happens which makes me appreciate the EDH format as a whole.
Where before Burning-Rune Demon always tutored two ETB threats at the same time, I shifted my playstyle to recursion based choices instead. Archaeomancer or Rite of Replication? Doomed Necromancer or Junji, the Midnight Sky? Vohar, Vodalian Desecrator or Saw in Half? Regardless of what you pick, I will eventually get whatever you put in my yard back into my hand or on the battlefield, you’re simply deciding on how many hoops I have to jump through to get both cards.
Copy
If you’ve read any other article I was involved in you know I like copying things - be those spells, permanents or triggers. Spark Double, Mystic Reflection, and Rite of Replication were in the first version of the deck, and with the release of Unfinity, Saw in Half went in without hesitation.
I don’t care for the power and toughness of my copied creature. I just cloned a creature twice and put the original in my graveyard, which means I can recur it again - now there’s 5 of them. It’s like Rite of Replication, but with extra steps. Sorry for the long turn I’m about to take, but Peregrine Drake is in my hand ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°).
Maybe
I don’t think an EDH deck is ever truly ‘finished’. There are several cards on my ‘maybe’ list. Undead Butler seems quite potent. An ETB mill and when-dies return to hand clause on the same card with encore means I’ll get both effects in one turn. Kairi, the Swirling Sky can bounce 18 mana value worth of permanents my opponents control back to hand, or mill 18 then put up to 6 cards from my graveyard back into my hand. That’s quite a solid investment for 6 mana.
Cemetery Tampering has been on my radar for a while as a potential replacement for Mesmeric Orb, since it only mills me and can’t accidentally accelerate other players. Court of Cunning looks interesting too, though this again has an ‘any number of target players’ option which might mean people see it as a threat towards their own library as opposed to an accelerant for myself. If Mesmeric Orb gets cut, that likely also means Drown in the Loch will get replaced.
I’m very low on enchantments in my current deck and it’s always smart to spread out your threats and permanents a little so a board wipe of one type of permanents means you still have other cards left on the field, so I’m looking to make those swaps relatively soon after some playtesting.
Speed
This is my favorite and most played deck so far, and the fact that it has to fit both PlayEDH and my local game store’s meta - which is luckily, relatively in line with Low Power on PlayEDH - makes it hard to just ‘put more/better/faster’ of the same effects in. It has to work within our curated power level system, while being fun for the store as well which is a restriction I always have to keep in mind. While it’s true I could have two lists that are similar and make some swaps depending on where I play, I tried to balance my deck for both playgroups instead.
Sure, Araumi likely wants to have cards like Entomb, Buried Alive, Vile Entomber and Oriq Loremage, I’m just choosing to not run tutors outside of higher mana value ETBs as that’s what my real life playgroup would prefer. More reanimation not tied to my commander, more ‘the table gets to not play the game’ cards like Dictate of Erebos, Grave Pact or Sadistic Hypnotist are probably great in this deck but not in line with what I’d find enjoyable on my own end to play with and against.
Hands
Showcasing some bad, good and great opening hands is something I’ve seen happening more and more in deck techs recently so I thought I’d start using that feature here too. I simulated some opening hands through Moxfield’s playtester and then edited the card images to be a visually pleasing representation of an opening hand. If you want to see more of these in future deck techs, do let us know.
Hand 1: Absolutely unkeepable. No ramp, no early mill, an ETB doubler for 4 mana and 2 late game payoffs for 6 mana. You’re limited to ‘land, pass’ for the first 3 turns unless you somehow draw a low mana value card. You have the mana for a turn three Araumi, and Minamo can activate her ability twice per turn, but you have no graveyard to work with. Your Drown in the Loch also has no chance to actually be useful. Never keep hands like these - that doesn’t just go for this deck. You get one free mulligan per game, and I feel people don’t use it often enough.
Hand 2: At first glance this looks OK but you lack access to blue. Yes, you get a turn 1 Stitcher’s Supplier into a turn 2 Altar of Dementia, but Syr Konrad will sit in your hand for a while, and you can’t cast Tribute Mage without a blue source. There’s also no point getting the early game body + sacrifice mill outlet out if you can’t guarantee reanimation will come out, which you currently don’t have in hand and you lack the Island to cast Araumi. Turn one Stitcher into turn 2 Altar is a great way to catch most of the aggro from the table for a few turns too. If the Bojuka Bog was an Island instead, this would have been keepable. The kind of hand that makes you go ‘I really shouldn’t keep this, but…’ - you won’t draw that Island, don’t do it.
Hand 3: Not great at first glance, but the turn 3 flexibility is what makes this keepable. Early Watcher for Tomorrow with a sacrifice outlet, Ashiok as a repeat mill engine, Feed the Swarm for removal and all the mana you need for the early turns.
This would be turn 1 Prismatic Vista for an Island (blue is the more dominant color for instant speed responses and card draw, unless the first draw turn 1 would have been a double black pipped card then find a Swamp), turn 2 Watcher for Tomorrow, turn 3 flexible.
Altar of Dementia if I really wanted the Hideaway card in hand; Ashiok, Dream Render if there’s tutor-heavy decks at the table (this includes green Rampant Growth/Kodama’s Reach type cards) or if another reanimation player was already able to put some threats into the their graveyard early, use Ashiok to exile their graveyard. Alternatively, turn 3 Araumi if I wanted to do a turn 4 Altar of Dementia, sacrifice Watcher for Tomorrow, encore Watcher for Tomorrow, depending if I managed to draw another land by turn 3 to guarantee myself 4 mana turn 4. Math, not just for blockers.
Hand 4: The best opening hand from the set. Turn 1 Watery Grave shocked into Sol Ring into Mesmeric Orb. Turn 2 Castle Locthwain untapped thanks to Watery Grave, Solemn Simulacrum finds our third land which makes for a turn 3 Fabled Passage, which brings a land into play tapped which untaps and gives me enough mana to cast Junji, the Midnight Sky.
If my math is correct, 6 cards in my graveyard due to Mesmeric Orb untaps by turn 3 and two creatures I won’t mind blocking with. Turn 4 Araumi with 10 cards in the graveyard. If people haven’t voiced concerns about the early game plays or haven’t caught on what exactly Araumi does, they’re about to see what the deck is capable of. There’s bound to be something great in the graveyard with 1/10th of the deck in there already.
In Conclusion
As I said earlier, this is my favorite Commander deck of all time. I hope that you’ve enjoyed this updated deck tech. If you have any card recommendations or comments in regards about it, let us know on Twitter! If you’d like to check out more PlayEDH content, you can find more articles here or tune into the PlayEDH Radio 903.1 podcast here.
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