Commander Mondays (9/2/13): Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord

This is a new article I'm going to write for the last Monday of every month. September is an exception right now, because there are eight sets currently in Standard. For five weeks, we will be tackling five of the guilds, one for each Monday this month.

Ideally, the idea behind these Commander decks is that they will wind up using legendary creatures from Standard (possibly some from older sets, or from the actual Commander decks sold by Wizards of the Coast), and will hopefully use only cards from Standard, or at least the past couple of years. The idea is to make this a beginner's guide to Commander with some awesome decks using cards you already have or can easily get.

The primary goal of each of the Commander/EDH decks this month is to be able to show off some of the key elements of the two-color pairs, which includes several cards of the mechanic related to them from the RTR Block.

For the introductory week, I took a D20 and pulled up all RTR block legends on Gatherer. As the title indicates, I rolled a 6 which indicates Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord.

Legendary Creatures x1 Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord (Commander) x1 Varolz, the Scar-Striped Creatures x1 Acidic Slime x1 Blood Artist x1 Champion of Lambholt x1 Corpsejack Menace x1 Darkthicket Wolf x1 Dawntreader Elk x1 Deadbridge Goliath x1 Deathrite Shaman x1 Desecration Demon x1 Elvish Mystic x1 Garruk's Packleader x1 Ghoultree x1 Gravetiller Wurm x1 Korozda Guildmage x1 Lifebane Zombie x1 Liliana's Reaver x1 Lumberknot x1 Predator Ooze x1 Scavenging Ooze x1 Slime Molding x1 Slitherhead x1 Sluiceway Scorpion x1 Stonefare Crocodile x1 Strangleroot Geist x1 Thragtusk x1 Trestle Troll x1 Vampire Nighthawk

Instants x1 Abrupt Decay x1 Gnaw to the Bone x1 Golgari Charm x1 Murder x1 Tragic Slip Sorceries x1 Bramblecrush x1 Deadly Allure x1 Down // Dirty x1 Increasing Savagery x1 Jarad's Orders x1 Killing Wave x1 Lair Delve x1 Make a Wish x1 Maw of the Mire x1 Rain of Thorns x1 Revenge of the Hunted x1 Spider Spawning Enchantments x1 Contaminated Ground x1 Dark Favor x1 Deadbridge Chant x1 Death's Presence x1 Exquisite Blood x1 Feed the Pack x1 Gutter Grime x1 Into the Wilds x1 Mark of the Vampire x1 Primeval Bounty x1 Sanguine Bond

Artifacts x1 Golgari Cluestone x1 Golgari Keyrune x1 Inquisitor's Flail x1 Ring of Kalonia x1 Ring of Three Wishes x1 Ring of Xathrid x1 Tablet of the Guilds Planeswalkers x1 Garruk Relentless/Garruk, the Veil-Curse x1 Garruk, Primal Hunter x1 Vraska the Unseen Lands x1 Golgari Guildgate x1 Grim Backwoods x1 Rogue's Passage x1 Shimmering Grotto x1 Overgrown Tomb x1 Transguild Promenade x1 Woodland Cemetery x13 Swamp x13 Forest

So, for this deck, the idea is to focus on the first two abilities of Jarad: getting counters from creatures in the graveyard, and opponents losing life because of sacrificing creatures. This strategy involves Blood Artist and Exquisite Blood (which creates a loop with Sanguine Bond allowing you to cause an opponent to die by sacrificing a creature, opponent loses life, you gain life, so they lose, you gain, et cetera).

  

As some backup strategies, Varolz, the Scar-Striped has been added in order to scavenge creatures for their mana cost, as well as creatures entering the battlefield to pump Champion of Lambholt and add counters to keep it from being blocked.

  

There are many sub-strategies in this deck allowing you to do some pretty cool things, and where one strategy fails, another may prevail, but the primary strategies involve creatures in your graveyard and adding counters to creatures.