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Welcome to the first ever deck tech on playedh.com!
The name ‘Explosive Engineering’ came up before we relaunched our Twitch channel (we ended up using “Inventors’ Fair” there instead). Deck tech articles by Mods and Mentors was something we’ve had on our mind for a while. Grab a drink and enjoy the read!
~ The PlayEDH team

If you’ve ever played with me on PlayEDH, it won’t surprise you that Dimir is my favorite guild. Watching people's plans trying to unfold, knowing I'd either stop their plan, or steal their plan, has always been my approach to playing Magic.

When Araumi of the Dead Tide initially got spoiled I didn't think much of her at first.

“Sorcery speed, summoning sickness, needs a full graveyard to function, completely see-through game plan where all decks will feel samey, probably not my thing”, I told myself.

A few weeks later, Commander Legends launched and I bought a box to play sealed on the server. Open six packs, and get Araumi twice, once in etched foil, which caught my eye as being ‘neat’ compared to the other foiling methods they tried in the past.

“Let’s see if we can actually do something with Araumi, no harm in trying, right?”

One week later I put together 5 Araumi decks on Moxfield, all of them functionally different enough to not seem like they’d grow stale on me quickly (and at the time of writing this article, the counter stands at 11 as I’m building several iterations for training purposes for PlayEDH staff, on what pushes a certain deck from one power level into another).

I’m not the type of player that keeps the decks they build on a shelf to replay them. I spend more time building and coming up with decks than I do playing them most of the time. Since picking up EDH, Araumi is one of the few decks that has survived my compulsive ‘have to clean and sort that away’ tendencies.
Most decks don't survive more than two months before they’re disassembled and put back in storage boxes.
Part of this is caused by how easy it is to find people to play with. Clicking some buttons on Discord over physically traveling to the store where you can play once a week means you have the option to play more often and some decks that ‘seemed fun’ at first quickly turn out to not be as enjoyable to pilot as anticipated, or have just ‘reached their goal’ and then it’s onward to the next challenge.

I’ll be going over the Low Power version of Araumi, the deck that kicked off the relaunch of our Twitch channel, together with the launch of the website and Patreon. That game turned into a close to four hour stalemate, where Araumi eventually came out victorious (I’d say “spoiler warning” but Twitch footage auto deletes after a few weeks so it’s no longer available anyhow).

I’ve provided an untagged and a tagged version of the deck.
There’s also a 57 minute Spotify playlist attached for those interested.
The tagged version and the deck write-up both use the song titles as their categories, so if metal music is something that interests you, feel free to queue the playlist as you read on.
(Yes, I literally handed you my mixtape in 2021).

Araumi needs several things to function well. She’s a slow engine that needs a large graveyard to function, time to fill said graveyard, mana to keep activating her, all while trying to hold off opponents while hoping to fly under the radar long enough to get worthwhile recursion targets.
Adding to this, she needs enough stopping power and a game-ending plan outside of the encore mechanic, because as soon as an opponent is knocked out, encore immediately becomes less efficient.
Ending up 1v1 late game is less than ideal, and the goal of the deck was to build it in such a way it could potentially take out all opponents in one go. For the late game, this means potentially needing to activate Araumi more than once, or relying on game-ending spells over relying on Encore.

1. Speed Metal Messiah (Ramp)

You need mana to ‘do the thing’, so, let’s start with the less interesting part of the deck first.
Most of these felt like no-brainers. There are several suboptimal ones in here, which is fine for Low Power.
Commander’s Sphere and Mind Stone got added to potentially ‘draw a card and fill the yard’.

This will be a recurring theme in the deck. From deliberately overdrawing to discard, loot, and other mechanics where our hand stays card-neutral or goes up in cards, while simultaneously putting cards in the graveyard.

Each Araumi activation eats 4 cards from the graveyard (assuming a full pod), so recycling some ramp we may have needed early, to restock the graveyard for the mid to late game. The first version of the deck had an Expedition Map, but there’s only one to two non basic lands it ‘needed’ to fetch, and no means of consistently finding Expedition Map so it got cut in the end.

I don’t really have fast mana, rituals or other similar types of effects so I put Songs of the Damned in the ‘ramp’ category. It often gives 5 to 7 mana in the mid to late game, and I’m a sucker for older cards.
Reliable? Not always, but I’m allowing myself some pet cards here and there when building for Battlecruiser and Low Power specifically. Quite an efficient card if I’m unable to stop a boardwipe and need to rebuild.

Playing the deck more and more often, I quickly learned getting boardwiped isn’t that terrible for this deck either. Thanks for putting all these encore targets back in my graveyard where I want them, I guess.
If people have played against Araumi decks before, they’ll mostly hold off on boardwiping until they have graveyard exile effects.

2. Break The Cycle (Funky Encore Synergy)

Encore being an activated ability instead of a spell meant I could finally use a card I’ve had in my collection for a while, but not really used before. Embalmer’s Tools reduces Encore cost by 1 mana. It's not a whole lot, but over a course of a game, it adds up. At first I disregarded the second part of the card.
"I'm not building a zombie tribal list so I don't think it'll be that useful".
It's only when the deck was finished I noticed it had 5 zombies in it, so ~17% of the creature base did benefit from this, and it helps me self-mill some.

Sundial of the Infinite is here to cheat-keep creatures. Sometimes you really wish to keep some encored bodies on the field. While most creatures serve a single purpose - ‘enter the battlefield, but in threefold’ - getting to keep them as blockers can prove quite beneficial.
I initially put in a Teferi’s Veil to double up on this type of effect, but it didn’t make the current version of the deck. Teferi’s Veil meant I lost access to sacrifice targets on ‘not my turn’, so it had to go.
Veil also stops synergy with Syr Konrad, the Grim.

Konrad got added in a more aristocrats-type Mid Power version of the deck first. After noticing what he sometimes did on his own, I decided to slot him in the Low Power version too.

Encore: Exile at least one creature from the graveyard (+ 1 trigger)
Potentially exile 3 more creatures if we don’t have another choice, again, assuming a full pod ( +3 triggers)
End step, sacrifice the tokens (+ 3 triggers).

A potential 7 triggers each activation, and a repeatable mill activation that does not tap down Syr Konrad to fill our graveyards before the turn starts, on a 5/4 body. One of the few creatures I’m hard casting in this deck, over wanting the card to be in the graveyard. He can be a deterrent for graveyard exile effects too.
Are you really going to Bojuka Bog the Araumi player with a Konrad on the table and 10-15 bodies in the graveyard?

Panharmonicon is my win-more card and I’m not going to deny that. Apparently in a singleton format, making a card’s ETB (enter the battlefield) effect happen three times was not good enough for me. Turning that into ‘make it six’ felt like a good idea at the time. There are some high value bodies further down where I’ll highlight this card's potential.

3. Perennial (Reactivation and Protection)

Freed from the Real and Minamo, School at Water’s Edge to re-activate Araumi in the mid to late game. If it’s not clear by now, this is quite the commander-centered deck. I’m banking quite hard on the assumption Araumi will stick around, which means ‘doing the thing more than once’ should always be a goal.
‘Why not Pemmin’s Aura’ is swiftly answered with “because I didn’t have the card at hand at the time”. A swap to Pemmin’s with the potential to give Araumi shroud until end of turn is likely happening at some point.

Freed from the Real is also the only enchantment in the entire deck, which to me felt incredibly weird at first.
I catch myself too often going “Aha yes, blue, so Rhystic Study, Mystic Remora, Propaganda because you need them, right?” Falling into the auto include trap is a slippery slope to boring and samey deckbuilding, and you should remind yourself from time to time not to do exactly that.

Spark Double allows for two Araumis - Araumii? - Arauma? - and there are plenty of creatures in the deck I don’t mind having more than one of permanently. After all, the deck is designed to want several copies of creatures to begin with.

Swiftfoot boots over Lightning Greaves, because I don’t want to run into the risk of not being able to target my own commander. The amount of times I’ve seen someone punt because they had no bodies remaining on the battlefield to unequip lightning greaves is not zero. Greaves also prevent Freed from the Real from enchanting and Minamo from targeting.

4. Scraping The Barrel (Drawing, Looting, Discarding)

I put all these categories into a singular block, as most effects that draw cards in this deck are multipurpose.
Deliberately overdraw to discard worthwhile creatures for this or next turn. Draw, then discard. Draw, then discard unless you sacrifice. All of these effects give us more options in hand, and more options in the graveyard, which is where some cards want to be in the first place.

Moving forward, I’ll separate the creatures from the non-creatures in the rest of the article. Close to every creature in the deck wants to be in the graveyard and encored out to abuse the fact it either gets haste, or it has a solid ETB effect that can make quite an impact in threefold.
When looking at a creature, remember to multiply its ETB by three.
Very few bodies want to get cast from hand as is.

Creatures:
Baleful Strix is a great blocker that replaces itself. I have little more to say on this.

Cephalid Broker is 100% a pet card. A throwback from when I still played standard (from Prophecy up until Fifth Dawn). Tap to loot two, or six depending on how it entered. I’m always happy to give some ‘old’ cards a new home. This got slotted over Frantic Search, Thirst for Knowledge and Careful Study.
Is it better? Not really. Sometimes. Maybe? Potentially, with encore, or if it sticks around for a few turn cycles. I didn’t aim for ‘strictly better’, I aimed for ‘nostalgia’ with this one.

Liliana’s Standard Bearer draws a solid amount of cards after a boardwipe, or with encore draws at minimum 3. My personal record is 17 cards drawn after a damnation. People don’t expect you to run this card, and, it’s likely too situational to be a solid staple, but it hasn’t failed to deliver for me yet.

Priest of Forgotten Gods does a lot on one card. It’s a sac outlet, a mana generator, semi-removal on our opponents’ end, and it draws cards. It could have gone in any of those categories, but let’s put it in the weird ‘combined’ draw category for now. Some fun encore synergy here: you can sacrifice two of the copies to another copy if you want, meaning you’re body-neutral and don’t technically lose boardstate.

Taigam, Sidisi’s Hand got recommended to me by Cryptic (one of the server Admins). Repeatable Glimpse the Future or Strategic Planning on a body seemed nice enough to try out. You might notice the lack of Brainstorm, Preordain and Ponder type cards. These would likely be added in a Mid Power version of the deck, where mana curve and mana value matter more.

Watcher for Tomorrow filters 4 and gives 1 card in hand or filters 12 and gives 3 cards in hand.
A prime example of a body that wants to die after it got encored, instead of being kept around with Sundial.

You get the gist by now, and for smooth reading’s sake I’ll no longer mention ‘but multiply that by three!’.
Moving forward, just keep it in the back of your head.

Non-Creatures:
Costly Plunder and Village Rites both draw cards while putting bodies back in the graveyard. I also run some artifacts I may want to turn off situationally, hence Costly Plunder over Altar’s Reap. Reduce, reuse, recycle.

Fact or Fiction is the most lazy auto-include in the entire deck, but I’m allowed to run at least one, right?

The other cards all draw, then discard. The deck has some targets I’d rather not put visibly in the graveyard if I can’t use them that turn, so sometimes draw and discard gets the preference over straight up mill.

After I built the deck I compared the cards I used to the EDHREC lists and noticed Read the Runes, at the time of writing this article, is only in 8 decks (0.002%) with Araumi at the helm.
In comparison, Ancient Excavation is in 760 decks (32%).
Either I’m incredibly weird for slotting it, or people haven’t caught on to this card for Araumi yet.

Granted, Jumpstart had some availability and printing issues, so that may have something to do with it.
It recently got reprinted on ‘The List’, so, I’m hoping more people will find a home for it.

The option of sacrificing a permanent over discarding, meaning we can recycle bodies already on our battlefield in our opponents’ end step, made this card a nice include for me. Ancient Excavation is also in my deck though, it just felt weird seeing such a large discrepancy when comparing both cards.

Windfall was not in the first version of the deck, as the original brew had Narset, Parter of Veils and Notion Thief in it. I’m not a fan of hand-stripping, especially not in Low Power. Narset and Notion Thief got cut some versions later, which reopened the possibility to include Windfall.

5. Cemetery Gates (Mill, Self-mill)

As I playtested more and more, I noticed how graveyard hungry Araumi actually was. A singular encore activation means the graveyard is down 4 cards. The initial version ran way less (self)mill than the deck does in its current state. I’m still trying to find the balance in more mill versus more draw, so some of cards mentioned below may get taken out in the future.

Creatures:
Deranged Assistant over Millikin because I like the flavor text on Deranged Assistant more. I have no different explanation for slotting one over the other. Repeating again, I’m allowing myself pet cards more often than not in this deck.

Stitcher’s Supplier can mill a grand total of 18 cards with encore (or 27 with Panharmonicon) , and is one of my favorite ‘opening hand’ cards in the entire deck. I deliberately didn’t slot ‘big overdraw/mill’ spells such as Peer into the Abyss and Traumatize because of their steep cost, and they’re not tied to a creature.
Stitcher’s Supplier being a singular mana and potentially milling a quarter of the deck does the job at a way cheaper cost.

Non-Creatures:
Even though there’s a category for ‘sac outlets’ coming later in the article, the main purpose of Altar of Dementia is milling myself. Three copy tokens + one altar = dig quite deep. Can be turned into a ‘mill your opponents!’ card mid to late game too if they got greedy with a Hermit Druid or other similar types of cards.

Mesmeric orb… remember when I mentioned artifacts with Costly Plunder?
I thoroughly enjoy Mesmeric Orb, but it catches hate from the table quite easily, or it can accelerate another graveyard-matters deck. On top of that, if the game drags on, we run the potential risk of decking ourselves.
Never mill without an out, that’s a lesson you learn quickly when you play mill often enough. In decks where you’re not just milling yourself, but also your opponents, it’s always smart to have several killswitches in place. You’ll find more of those safety-valves further down.

Perpetual Timepiece not only mills, but gives the option to shuffle cards we don’t want to be in the graveyard back into the deck, and prevents us from decking out in the late game.

Ashiok, Dream Render will target myself more often than not. Another graveyard killswitch, and it stops people tutoring for responses or wincons of their own. Quite ‘high on the kill list’ for our opponents too, so this can alleviate some damage pointed towards our face towards Ashiok instead.

6. Sin And Sacrifice (Sac outlets)

Creatures:
Ah, Viscera Seer. The cheapest CMC … I mean ‘mana value’ sac outlet on a creature, and it provides us with top deck knowledge in return. What’s not to like.

Non-Creatures:
Ashnod’s Altar recycles copy tokens into more mana to cast something better, or throw non-encored creatures into the graveyard to encore them out again.
This list seems short, but remember that Altar of Dementia and Priest of the Forgotten Gods already got mentioned earlier. I’m also not focused on Aristocrat / Leave the battlefield type effects outside of Syr Konrad, so 4 sacrifice outlets, in combination with several one-offs like Costly Plunder, Read the Runes and Village Rites felt like plenty.

7. Joker And The Thief

It wouldn’t be my deck if I played Dimir without some jokey-stealy cards.

Creatures:
Agent of Treachery, a card that quickly became a staple in decks where I’m doing ‘silly blue things’. Worth mentioning, you can stack the beginning of end step sacrifice triggers from encore, and Agent’s beginning of end step draw trigger, so that you draw 9 cards in your end step.

Gonti, Lord of Luxury … is a little weird to resolve over webcam, but I just let my opponent reveal 4. You lose the surprise factor to the table, but I’m ok with that. The first iteration of the deck ran Atris, Oracle of Half-Truths, but resolving that card over webcam was even more awkward. I’m definitely slotting Atris back in for real life LGS play.

Diluvian Primordial gets 3 free instant or sorcery casts, encore 9 or 18 with Panharmonicon. Due to mesmeric orb, opponents graveyards should be quite full, whether they want it or not.
Sepulchral Primordial follows the same 3 9 18 pattern but for bodies in graveyards.

I realize both primorials synergize poorly with the graveyard killswitches mentioned earlier, and all of these theft cards can easily be replaced with better options like Grave Titan, Kokusho, the Evening Star; Noxious Gearhulk or Cavalier of Night, but I like stealing cards because I’m a horrible Dimir person, OK.

8. Die With Your Boots On (Removal)

If people slot proper interaction in their decks, like they should, we either need to prevent them from stopping us, or take out some cards on their board. Look, it’s counterspells and removal, there’s no real interesting story to go about why these cards are needed.

Battlefield removal:

Creatures:
I didn’t want the deck to be ‘creature removal stapled onto bodies’ tribal which I’d already built in a Rankle, Master of Pranks deck a few months before. Fleshbag Marauder and Plaguecrafter for singular removal, Massacre Girl for mass removal. There are way more options here like Demon’s Disciple, Merciless Executioner or Ravenous Chupacabra, and if you know your pod to be creature-heavy, it’s worth considering adding more of these.

Non-Creatures:
Compelling Deterrence and Perilous Voyage are some ‘return to hand’ cards I just found in my box before considering slotting more. Winds of Rebuke can be a replacement for either of them, and I’ll likely swap this in in the future.
The deck is fragile to graveyard and ETB hate, such as Leyline of the Void, Rest in Peace or Torpor Orb, and up until recently, dealing with enchantments or artifacts was quite the struggle in Dimir colors, outside of ‘return to hand and counterspell it later’.

WOTC, thank you so much for printing Feed the Swarm. I should cut a card to slot in Ravenform later.

Rapid Hybridization to destroy someone with more problematic creatures than our own. Pongify can easily be added, again, pending creature density in your pod.

Stack removal:

‘Oh, you have two blue open, hmmm’ for Counterspell, Drown in the Loch and Negate.

Sinister Sabotage gets a surveil trigger to help accelerate our graveyard, or provides top deck knowledge.

9. Children Of The Grave (Haymakers, big value, finishers)

The bodies and spells that intend to close out the game, or provide us with a sizable advantage on board after they ETB.

Creatures:
Reef wurm! In my collection for a while, never actually used much. 3 0/1s that become 3/3s that becomes 6/6s that become 9/9s, all of which are fuel for the altars. Provides up to 9 bodies in one go with a sac outlet. Total Altar of Dementia mill power 54 (0, 9, 18, 27), and hence potentially a game finisher in the mid to late game.

Solemn Simulacrum finally feels like it's more than 'OK' to include here. Another card that sees play in many EDH decks yet in my eyes, too often and for the wrong reasons. Encore solemn, ramp 3, draw 3. Throw Panharmonicon into the mix, Ramp 6, draw 3, for 4 mana. Happy robot noises.

Onward to 'The big finish'. These are encored out when I'm hoping to close out the game.
It's worth remembering a token copy of a creature has all the values of that card copied onto it. This includes values such as mana cost.

Encore Gray Merchant means at its minimum threshold, these will hit the table for 7 life per Gray Merchant (Araumi + 3 Gray merchant copies), draining the table for 21 and gaining me 63 life . Rarely is that 'all black devotion' on board though, and it's won quite a few games in the past.

In the same boat: Massacre Wurm. -6/-6 And lose 6 life per creature you control that dies please.

Vindictive Lich is one of those situational cards that had no home prior to this deck. While not as great as the other two, in an Encore situation, it deals 15 damage, kills 3 creatures and discards 6 cards from our opponents in total. I expect to see this one come up in Tergrid decks more often soon.

Non-Creatures:
<Rite of Replication, Mystic Reflection>
These will primarily target the creatures mentioned above. With Rite of Replication, Making 5 copies of Gray merchant, Massacre wurm or Vindictive Lich hits all opponents quite hard.
Remember: the goal is to end take out all opponents in one go, not whittle down opponents one by one.

The recently printed Mystic Reflection from Kaldheim immediately caught my eye and found its way into the deck quite quickly. Target a creature to encore, with the encore ability on the stack, holding priority, cast Mystic Reflection targeting something else. All three encore copies now enter as whatever Mystic Reflection pleases. Use low CMC bodies in the graveyard to bring out way better targets already present on the board. Some Mentors and Mods may get flashbacks reading this (right Lars?).

10. Again And Again (Recursion)

Why use something once when we can use it more than once? Isn’t that the whole theme of the deck so far?

Creatures:
<Archaeomancer>, <Doomed Necromancer>, <Peregrine Drake>, <Thassa Deep-Dwelling>
There are a total of 20 instants and sorceries in the deck, and milling one of the finishers is absolutely unpleasant. Archaeomancer gets those back, or puts more draw and more removal in hand.

Doomed Necromancer is almost always encored out, as for 6 mana total (3 to encore, 3 to sacrifice), 3 higher value targets now come back.

Even though there is no Deadeye Navigator in the deck, Peregrine Drake has the potential to untap 30 lands (encore + Panharmonicon) and put all that mana in some of the higher mana value bodies mentioned above, or used on a draw X spell to dig very deep into the deck.

With the amount of ETB value the deck already had, something to flicker the best value bodies in their regular, non-token copy form to get more ETBs come to mind. Thassa Deep-Dwelling serves as a backup commander if Araumi becomes too expensive to cast. If there’s graveyard hate on the table, being able to reuse our ETB creatures rather than sacrifice them or mill them away is preferable.

Non-Creatures:
Victimize. Two for one, and then encore the body that got sacrificed. Other recursion/reanimate cards like Animate Dead, Thrilling Encore or Dread Return again fill that ‘auto-include’ category for me too much, but are a nice way of powering up the deck in the future.

11. Finders Keepers (Tutors)

I deliberately did not slot any of the go to instant/sorcery tutors like Mystical Tutor, Personal Tutor and Merchant scroll as that would mean the deck got too consistent at too low mana, seeing how both Rite of Replication and Mystic Reflection are the go to finishing spells.

Creatures:
That said, Burning-Rune Demon finds us ‘any card’. This 6/6 flier is also amazing encore and sundial material. The trick is to give the opponent a choice in which they always lose. Gray Merchant or Massacre Wurm? Rite of Replication or Archaeomancer? Swiftfoot Boots or Minamo?

I’m still finding fun two card combinations to make my opponents choose from, but so far responses varied from “Does it matter what I pick?” to “I feel there’s no right choice here”.

Gravebreaker Lamia to find the best encore bodies. Sadly, her second ability (spells you cast from your graveyard cost 1 less to cast) does not apply to the deck.

Tribute Mage only got added in the final version of the deck. It can find a total of 11 targets, but Altar of Dementia, Mesmeric Orb, Perpetual Timepiece and Sundial of the Infinite will close to always be the go to cards here.

Non-Creatures:
Buried Alive … I’m still not sure on what the ‘best’ three cards to get are. I’ve cast it early to find a Solemn Simulacrum, Stitcher’s Supplier and Tribute Mage before, but in the mid game it can find our haymakers just as easily. Something about ‘tutoring for cards that tutor you more’ never really felt right to me, even though situationally it can be the best thing to do.
Logical strong upgrades here are Vampiric Tutor and Entomb, yet, for the sake of speed and consistency, these were held back for Low Power.

12. Land of Confusion (Lands)

I’m always a strong advocate for putting more interaction and utility in your land base, especially in BC and Low, seeing how lands should be relatively safe there. Let’s go over these quickly as they’re not the most interesting part to explain ‘why x over z’ either.

Color Fixing: Clearwater Pathway, Command Tower, Exotic Orchard, Fabled Passage, Prismatic Vista, Underground River, Watery Grave.
Draw/Knowledge: Castle Locthwain, Castle Vantress.
Recursion/Mill: Mystic Sanctuary, Port of Karfell.
Killswitch: Bojuka Bog.
Sac outlet: Phyrexian Tower.
Greedy max hand extender for when I really don’t want to discard my hand: Reliquary Tower.
18 Basics: 9 Islands, 9 swamps.

And that concludes ‘Araumi of the Dead Tide - ETB times three!’

Were you upset that I put some covers in the Spotify playlist?
It’s almost as if our deck makes token copies of permanents and I tried to weave that theme into the playlist too.

‘But Exxaxl, don’t you regularly recommend ~34 lands and ~10 ramp?’
I do, but I’m also a value Timmy who wants more goodstuff in his deck and is rather OK with whiffing if that means I can cast more pet cards over consistently winning every game.

Feel free to discuss everything Dimir and/or metal with me on the PlayEDH discord at https://discord.gg/playedh. You can find me in Battlecruiser and Low power chat most often.

“This article is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC.”

Araumi of the Dead Tide - Low Power - DEPRECATED