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A wicker man the size of a giant turns toward you and with a creak opens its mouth, spilling forth a murder of crows. Rendmaw, one of the few legendary Scarecrows inMagic: The Gathering, fills the battlefield with a growing army of Birds. But these are wild animals, not under your control.
Rendmaw, Creaking Nest brings an element of chaos to the table and encourages combat by providing everyone at the table with a growing flock of birds that must attack every turn, but can’t attack you. As your opponents are forced to fight each other, you may bide your time and swoop in for the kill.
Sample Decklist
Rendmaw, Creaking Nest’sblack/green color identitygives it access to all kinds of Golgari goodstuff.
Scene of the Crime
Yavimaya, Cradle of Growth
The Commander
Rendmaw, Creaking Nest is a 5/5 legendary Scarecrow. It has reach and menace, so like any good Scarecrow it can block fliers. It costs three generic mana, plus one black and one green to cast, and has an enter effect that also triggerswhenever it enters or whenever you play any other card with at least two card types.
Whenever you trigger Rendmaw’s last ability,each player creates a tapped 2/2 flying Birdcreature token. All of those tokens are goaded, sothey have to attack every turn and can’t attack youunless there are no other valid targets. That means that your opponents will have to attack each other every turn with all the birds you give them.
If you give your opponents enough Birds, you won’t have to do much else, becausethey’ll be forced to fight among themselves. You can encourage this behavior in a couple other ways, like giving out even more tokens or making attacking you with non-goaded creatures an unattractive option.
One major flaw to this strategy is that once two players are eliminated,your last opponent can attack you with the Birdsyou’ve gifted them. Therefore, playing with Rendmaw requires that you have a way to block, destroy, or gain control of your final opponent’s creatures.
How To Build The Deck
Rendmaw, Creaking Nestrewards you for playing cards with two or more types. The types it checks for are:
By building a deck full of cards that can trigger Rendmaw’s effect, like artifact creatures and kindred instants you can consistentlyflood the board with enough black Birds to convince your opponents that they’re in an Alfred Hitchcock movie.
As your opponents are forced to deal with the growing swarm of Birds,you can move into a more defensive posture, putting down blockers and effects that will protect you from their attempts to stop the flood by removing you from the game. You could also encourage the carnage by buffing your opponents' creatures as they attack or giving them even more Bird tokens.
Once the game is down to yourself and a single opponent,you need a way to deal with the murder of crows that you giftedthem. You know all the properties of these creatures: they’re all 2/2 black Birds with flying that have to attack every turn. That means you caninclude a variety of budget cards to disable them, while leaving yourself safe to swoop in for the kill.
Ramp
Cards that look for multiple types, like Rendmaw, Creaking Nest,make niche cards incredibly good, and there are a lot of options for them in a deck that only cares about the number of types, not the specific types that appear.
Solemn Simulacrum was a staple in the early days of Commander, but has fallen out of use thanks to theabundance of other mana-fixing options. Four generic mana for one basic land isn’t a great return, unless you’re using blink effects to keep triggering it. But with Rendmaw, Creaking Nest, youget the tapped land and advance your strategyby giving out Birds at the same time.
Burnished Hart is in a similar situation: it costs six mana (over the course of two turns) for two lands, but since it’s both an artifact and a creatureyou and your opponents get Birds, too.
The Birds are a big enough bonus to make up for summoning sickness on artifact mana dorks. Twitching Doll is particularly good, since it canmake both colors of manathat you need while accumulating counters that you canredeem later for a swarm of Spider tokens.
Twitching Doll makes Spider tokens based on how many counters it has, butdoesn’t care about the type of counter. Adding +1/+1 or other counters will contribute to your Spider swarm later.
Enduring Vitality is an easy addition: for three mana (one generic, two green) you get a 3/3 enchantment creature thatmakes all of your creatures mana dorks, triggers Rendmaw to stir up more birds, and recurs itself when it dies.
Draw
Idol of Oblivion is a good draw optionin any deck that consistently makes tokens, since it allows you to tap for a card each turn that you do. That value stacks up pretty fast, and later in the game when you don’t need as many cards you can trade it for a 10/10 Eldrazi.
Dockside Chef costs you two mana and a creature to draw a card, but it doesn’t tap and doesn’t have that bothersome “only as a sorcery” line, which makes it a solid draw option. You won’t miss your Bird tokens if you’re getting ready to kill them all anyway, and you can use it toturn board wipes into draw opportunities.
The decklist includes a lot of enchantment creatures, soEidolon of Blossoms and Enchantress’s Presence give you ample opportunity to drawextra cards.
Your opponents will all have to deal with wave after wave of Birds, and they’ll certainly try to kill them or sacrifice their own in order to minimize their threat profile.Compost turns that back in your favorby rewarding you with a card every time one of your opponents' black creatures dies.
Species Specialist is just as good in this deck, because it allows you to draw a card each time a Bird dies, regardless of who controls it.Between Species Specialist and Compost you could easily draw every card you needwhen someone finally blows up the board.
Deck Tech
Baba Lysaga, Night Witch has excellent synergy with Rendmaw, Creaking Nest: you’ll be playing a lot of permanents with multiple types, so it will be pretty easy to sacrifice three types in order to pay for her ability. Three cards plus life drain already makes her great in the command zone, and she slots easily into the 99 for Rendmaw.
Giving things to your opponents means you may rely on them to have specific permanents, soPygmy Kavu is an excellent way to draw a ton of cards. For four mana you get a 1/2 Kavu and draw a card for each black creature your opponents control. This counts both the Bird tokens you’ve given them and all of their own black creatures!
Rendmaw, Creaking Nest creates symmetrical swarms, giving each of your opponents a Bird at the same time you get one.Beastmaster Ascension upsets that symmetryby turning all of your 2/2 Birds into 7/7s after a couple turns of attacking.
Echoing Courage gives every creature with the same name as one you target +2/+2until the end of the turn for only two mana.
This can be a killing blow for token decks, and this is no exception: Using it on one of your own Birds after an opponent has declared their mandatory attack will buff the entire flock, doubling the size of their swarm fora killing blow that will come as a surprise to both the attacker and defender.
If you really want to encourage bloodshed, you may make all of those Birds even bigger. Bad Moon is an inexpensive enchantment thatgives all black creatures +1/+1, a 50 percent boost to the damage output from all the Birds.
Even better, Coat of Arms is a classic typal deck enabler that gives all creatures+1/+1 for each other creature that shares a type with it. If you have Coat of Arms and each player only has one Bird, they each get +3/+3. It will only take a few Rendmaw triggers to turn your small Birds into flying behemoths.
There are better cards for your 99, to be quite frank, but Commander is supposed to be fun, and this is too perfect of a thematic fit not to include.Revenge of Ravensdrains one life from your opponents when they attack you with any creature, which can have a huge impact if you’re being targeted with all of their non-crows.
Phase Three
The final phase of this strategy is to turn the game into a head-to-head matchup, but this is also where it becomes most dangerous. The Birds you’ve spent the whole game providing to your last remaining opponent have no other target to attack, which means they can go after you.
You have two advantages: First, thatyour opponent’s Birds should all be tappedfrom attacking whoever he knocked out the previous game, and second thatyour deck includes several options to murder a murder of crows.
Echoing Courage is part of a five-color cycle, and its black sister, Echoing Decay, is just as useful.Echoing Decay gives all creatures that share a name -2/-2until the end of the turn. If the birds haven’t been buffed (or if only yours have), this can wipe out your opponent’s creatures instantly.Massacre Wurm has a similar effectattached to a 6/5 body.
Remember to attack before wiping out your opponent’s Birds. They should already be tapped, so you don’t need to worry about them as blockers.
Ezuri’s Predation can have a similar effect, giving youa huge pile of 4/4 Phyrexian Beastsand using them to fight all of your opponent’s creatures.This scales by how many opponents you have, in case you’re targeted and need to deal with all three at once, and gets a big boost from Parallel Lives or similar effects.
Raking Canopy is one of those cards that is so situational that it doesn’t have a place in most decks. Here, though, it becomes your sanctuary. This enchantment dealsfour damage to any flying creature that attacks you, wiping out your opponent’s unbuffed Birds before they can deal any damage while leaving yours safe.
