Budget Commander: Iname Mass Reanimator | $60, $150
Hey friends and welcome to Budget Commander! This week we are building around a highly underrated powerhouse: it's Iname, Death Aspect!
Spirit Mass Reanimator
Despite being incredibly underrated (only 298 registered decks on EDHREC), Iname, Death Aspect has an absurdly powerful ability: when it ETBs you get to put any number of Spirit cards from your library into your graveyard. Note that there is no limit to how many Spirits we can dump into our graveyard with this ability, so we can literally put ALL our Spirits from our library into our graveyard, and that's exactly what we plan on doing!
We're going to build a deck with a whole bunch of Spirits, then cast Iname to put all of them in our graveyard. With 20+ Spirits in our graveyard we can then easily win the game various ways!
The first way to win is via mass reanimation: cards like Living Death, Patriarch's Bidding, Haunting Voyage, Twilight's Call, and Balthor the Defiled can put all our Spirits from our graveyard directly onto the battlefield. With 20+ Spirits now on the battlefield, winning is pretty trivial! A Gray Merchant of Asphodel or Crashing Drawbridge will finish off opponents on the same turn, or worst case we can just attack for lethal next turn.
Alternatively, we can just win the game by putting the Spirits in the graveyard: Syr Konrad, the Grim will ping each opponent for 20+ damage when we mass Entomb our Spirits with Iname, and Mortal Combat literally wins us the game on our upkeep if we have 20+ Spirits in there!
This deck is ideal for when you're looking for a quick game. While it boasts a variety of win conditions, the play pattern of casting our commander to immediately fill our graveyard is consistent and linear, setting you up to pop off around turn 6 and demands an immediate answer from the table. So if you're looking for a quick and simple Reanimator deck that you can whip out as the final game of the night, this is the deck for you!
Other Sweet Tech
It turns out when your commander can immediately dump 20+ creatures into your graveyard you've got a lot of really cool cards to play that you don't see elsewhere! Here's some of my favorite unique tech in the deck:
- Soldevi Adnate, Illuminor Szeras, Sacrifice, and Culling the Weak can sacrifice our random spirit creatures for tons of mana to cast Iname or our win conditions
- Once we've got a full graveyard, Songs of the Damned and Crypt of Agadeem tap for 20+ mana!
- Horobi, Death's Wail and Kuro, Pitlord reanimated together lets us kill any creature for 1 life! And our opponents lose 1 life for each creature of theirs that dies with Patron of the Nezumi
- Nether Traitor is haste and virtually unblockable; cast Soulshriek with a full graveyard for 20+ damage!
$60 List
The $60 list plays out pretty simple:
- Cast Iname, Death Aspect, putting all 20+ Spirits into your graveyard.
- Win either via Mortal Combat or a mass reanimate spell like Patriarch's Bidding.
Everything else in the deck tries to support that goal. The first turns we just want to hit land drops, ramp, maybe cast some Spirits to sac for ramp with cards like Soldevi Adnate.
I actually run almost no card draw in the deck (just a Necrologia I intend to cast for 15+ life and fill the GY with), because most of the cards in our deck are bad (just random spirits). Remember, we don't care for Spirits in our hand, just in our graveyard. Instead I run a ton of tutors to find the handful of good cards we need to combo with Iname or to wipe the board (e.g. Oblivion Stone).
$150 List
The $150 list plays the exact same except we've picked up some serious upgrades: we've got the remaining best Spirit cards, most notably Kokusho, the Evening Star to drain opponents. We have better tutors with stuff like Diabolic Intent, and even more explosive ramp potential such as Culling the Weak to win faster.
Further Upgrades
Since the deck is so reliant on tutors, I think the next great pickups would be Vampiric Tutor, Demonic Tutor, and Grim Tutor.
For ramp I think Jet Medallion and Cabal Ritual are very strong additions to the deck. For lands I'd pick Ancient Tomb as the biggest upgrade, with runner-up Cavern of Souls since having our Iname, Death Aspect get countered can be devastating. Cabal Coffers is always a good pick in Mono Black too, even though this deck wants to pop off before Coffers really gets going.
That's All, Folks!
I hope you enjoy this take on Iname, Death Aspect! The deck is pretty linear and pops off reliably fast, so it's the perfect deck to pull out if you've only got time for a quick game.
Next week's Budget Commander has already been chosen, so check back next week for that one! And as always, feel free to suggest future commanders you want to see covered!
