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Coram, the Undertaker

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Coram, the Undertaker

At a glance

  • Commander: Coram, the Undertaker
  • Colors: Jund
  • Archetype: Jund mill / graveyard grind control
  • Power tier: mid-high

Cards

Commander

Coram, the Undertaker — Legendary Creature — Human Warrior

Real printed oracle text:

Coram gets +X/+0, where X is the greatest power among creature cards in all graveyards. Whenever Coram attacks, each player mills a card. During each of your turns, you may play a land and cast a spell from among cards in graveyards that were put there from libraries this turn.

Oracle confirmed (commander_oracle_ok = true). Important nuance vs. the scout’s paraphrase: Coram does not let you freely cast “a card from any graveyard once per turn.” He only lets you play a land and cast a spell from cards that were milled this turn (put into a graveyard from a library this turn). So the deck is built to manufacture mill now — Coram’s own attack mills all four players, and a stack of self-mill effects feed you fresh fuel to immediately recast. He also grows: every fat creature in any graveyard pumps his power, so a few attacks turn him into a real clock.

Gameplan

A grindy Jund control deck that turns the entire table’s libraries into its resources.

  1. Stabilize with cheap removal, a heap of card advantage, and Pestilence/Crypt Rats as repeatable board control.
  2. Mill everyone — Coram’s attack mills all players each combat, and our own self-mill (Crow of Dark Tidings, Mire Triton, Satyr Wayfinder, Glowspore Shaman, etc.) drops castable spells into graveyards this turn.
  3. Cast off the top of the graveyard — Coram lets you replay a milled land + a milled spell every turn, so each mill effectively draws extra cards out of the shared pile.
  4. Win by inevitability — Pestilence and Crypt Rats are repeatable pseudo-wipes that grind small boards to dust and can point damage at faces; recursion (Gravedigger / Unearth / Macabre Waltz / Tortured Existence) means we never run out of bodies and value while opponents deck-thin and run dry. A pumped Coram closes the door.

Key synergy lines

  • Self-mill into Coram cast: play a mill creature (Crow, Glowspore, Satyr Wayfinder) → spells hit your yard this turn → Coram’s clause lets you immediately recast a land + a spell from those milled cards. Free velocity.
  • Pestilence + dredge walls: Stinkweed Imp and Golgari Brownscale block all day and Dredge refills the yard (more Coram fuel + bigger Coram). Pestilence sweeps under them.
  • Crypt Rats as a black X-wipe: with the deck’s land/ramp count you can dump a big X to wipe the board (and ping faces) as a one-sided-ish reset, then rebuy bodies.
  • Sac-for-value loop: Costly Plunder / Deadly Dispute / Village Rites / Bone Splinters eat creatures you can just recur (Gravedigger, Unearth, Cadaver Imp, Macabre Waltz), converting a dying body into cards or removal repeatedly.
  • Coram beatdown: the more bombs in graveyards, the bigger his +X/+0 — he routinely swings as a 5–8 power evasive-enough threat while milling the table.

Role breakdown (with counts)

  • Lands: 37 (22 nonbasic + 15 basics). Heavy on fixing for a three-color manabase.
  • Ramp / mana fixing: 10 — Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, Commander’s Sphere, Manalith, Chromatic Star, Rampant Growth, Cultivate, Kodama’s Reach, Harrow, Eccentric Farmer (Cultivate/Reach/Harrow/Farmer all double as color-fixing).
  • Card advantage / fuel: 10 — Costly Plunder, Deadly Dispute, Eviscerator’s Insight, Fanatical Offering, Village Rites, Sign in Blood, Read the Bones, Night’s Whisper, Faithless Looting, Big Score.
  • Spot removal / interaction: 14 — Terminate, Cast Down, Feed the Swarm, Annihilating Glare, Wretched Banquet, Bone Splinters, Lightning Bolt, Flame Slash, Vraska’s Fall, Pharika’s Cure, Tragic Slip, Abrade, Disfigure, Last Gasp. (High end on purpose — this is a control deck and several of these double as fuel/sac fodder.)
  • Mass / pseudo-wipe: 3 — Crypt Rats (repeatable black X-wipe + reach to faces), Pestilence (repeatable sweeper + reach), Splatter Goblin (edict on death).
  • Mill / recursion / graveyard payoffs (the engine): self-mill creatures (Crow of Dark Tidings, Mire Triton, Satyr Wayfinder, Wailing Ghoul, Glowspore Shaman, Ainok Wayfarer, Returned Reveler, Deathcap Marionette, Eerie Soultender, Eye Collector), Grapple with the Past, dredge walls (Stinkweed Imp, Golgari Brownscale), and recursion (Gravedigger, Cadaver Imp, Pit Keeper, Warren Pilferers, Vampire Soulcaller, Undertaker, Macabre Waltz, Unearth, Disentomb, Grim Discovery, Pulse of Murasa, Tortured Existence).

Manabase / fixing note

37 lands: Command Tower + a true Jund tri-fixer (Geothermal Crevice) + Twisted Landscape/Jund Panorama fetches + all three Jund Guildgates + all six Jund taplands + colorless any-color lands (Crumbling Vestige, Painted Bluffs, Shimmering Grotto), plus utility (Bojuka Bog, Mortuary Mire, Haunted Fengraf). Combined with 10 ramp/fixing sources (many fetch basics), that’s ~24 fixing sources so all three colors stay castable.

Pilot notes

  • Don’t rush Coram into a board you can’t protect — he’s a value engine first, a clock second. Hold removal for blockers, then start the mill-and-recast loop.
  • Sequence self-mill before you want to cast from the yard — Coram’s clause is “put there from libraries this turn,” so mill on your turn, then replay.
  • Crypt Rats wants a big mana turn; Pestilence wants creatures to stay on board (it sacrifices itself if no creatures exist at end step) — keep a dredge wall down to hold it.
  • Use cheap removal and sac outlets to feed the recursion loop; a creature you recur is “free” card advantage.

Weaknesses

  • Graveyard hate (exile effects) is the obvious soft spot — much of the engine routes through the yard. Mitigated by the sheer volume of self-mill and that Coram still mills + grows regardless.
  • Fast aggro / wide go-wide can race the slow start; Pestilence/Crypt Rats help but you must survive to ~5 mana.
  • No hard counterspells at common, so a resolved bomb must be answered with the removal suite rather than prevented.
  • Helping opponents fill their graveyards (via Coram mill) can occasionally enable their own recursion — usually a fine trade for our engine.

Decklist

⬇ Download as .txt — paste into Moxfield, Archidekt, or MTG Arena.

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