01 / The diagnosis
Chainer, Dementia Master is a five-mana black legendary creature with an expensive but potent ability: pay three black mana and three life, then put a creature card from a graveyard onto the battlefield under your control. The creature becomes a Nightmare. When Chainer leaves the battlefield, all Nightmares are exiled.
That last clause is the trap. You can spend turns assembling an incredible board, only to lose every stolen creature to one removal spell.
02 / The prescription
Rather than pretending the weakness doesn't exist, we build around it. Fill everyone's graveyards, make abundant black mana, and sacrifice Chainer's Nightmares for value before Chainer disappears. Sacrificed creatures enter a graveyard instead of being stranded on the battlefield when Chainer leaves, allowing later reanimation.
The cards that make it work
Viscera Seer and Carrion Feeder are inexpensive sacrifice outlets that can cash in Nightmares in response to removal. Buried Alive searches for threats and fills your graveyard. Gray Merchant of Asphodel helps stabilize your life total while pressuring every opponent.
03 / The game plan
Early: Establish mana rocks and put useful creatures into graveyards. Midgame: Resolve Chainer with enough black mana to activate him, ideally with a sacrifice outlet already in play. Late: Reanimate high-impact threats and sacrifice them when needed, rebuilding after removal rather than going all-in on one fragile board.
04 / The weaknesses
Graveyard hate, instant-speed commander removal, life-total pressure, and the triple-black activation cost can all shut the plan down. Save interaction for the threats that prevent the deck from functioning, not just the creatures that look biggest.
05 / The starter prescription
This is an incomplete sample core, deliberately not represented as a tested 100-card deck or a price-verified $100 list. Use it as a starting point for brewing and testing.
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Our verdict
Rescue potential: promising, but untested. Chainer gives you a plan that really requires your commander. The aim isn't to build a generic black goodstuff deck; it's to play a game no other mono-black legend plays quite the same way.