Bloodlust

In Magic, when you think of ampires, you usually think mono-Black. Of course, Black get’s all the cool vampire “Lords” like Vampire Nocturnus or Captivating Vampire. However, the Innistrad block allowed vampires to bleed over into Red (pun fully intended!). Now that the block is complete, I found myself wondering if a mono-Red vampire deck was possible. There are definitely enough red vampires to build a deck, but would it be any good?

Here’s a theoretical list I came up with:

4x Stromkirk Noble

4x Bloodcrazed Neonate

4x Falkenrath Exterminator

3x Crossway Vampire

3x Erdwal Ripper

3x Rakish Heir

2x Markov Blademaster

2x Falkenrath Marauder

4x Lightning Bolt

3x Vampiric Fury

3x Volt Charge

2x Blade of the Bloodchief

1x Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle

2x Teetering Peaks

20x Mountain

This deck is the essence of pure aggro. It does not seek to play a long, interactive game. It just wants to hit you with Vampires until you are dead. Blade of the Bloodchief is pretty silly, but it’s on-theme mechanically AND flavorfully, so it’s too perfect not to add. Plus, it’s super-cheap to cast and equip and gives us something to do Turn 1 if we don’t have a Noble in our opening hand.

Volt Charge is also a cutesy trick, as every single creature in the deck has the ability to give itself +1/+1 counters. It’s also a good way to clear a blocker out of the way.

Then there’s Vampiric Fury, which I included just because Red seems to have a lot of good  three-drop Vampires, but not too many two-drops… that said, I think Fury will actually be pretty relevant a lot of the time.

Markov Blademaster should probably be a 3x or 4x, but I wanted to give the other Vampires at 3 CMC a chance before cutting them for the Blademaster, which I already know is quite good.

Planar Deck

Bloodhill Bastion

Edge of Malacol

Feeding Grounds

Grove of the Dreampods

Kilnspire District

Stensia

Sokenzan

Shiv

Turri Island

Undercity Reaches

The choices here are all pretty obvious. Most advance the aggro plan in some way or another. Bloodhill Bastion and Sokenzan let my vampires hit harder AND faster. Kilnspire District, Grove of the Dreampods and Turri Island let me cast them earlier or cheat them out. Undercity Reaches keeps my hand full of gas. Edge of Malacol can slow my attacks to a crawl, but I have a few Haste-y Vampires already, but Malacol artificially charges up my Vampires in the mean time. Stensia is just a gimme.

This deck probably has little chance of winning a 4-way Multiplayer game, but if your opponents all happen to be playing slow-ish decks, you just might pull it off. Unfortunately there isn’t really much of a Plan B. You just have to swing every single turn and hope it works out in the end. But that’s pretty much the modus operandi for Red anyway, right?

If nothing else, this deck should satisfy your bloodthirst.

Enjoy!

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier... Politician?

Here’s the last of my updated decklists. This one is less of a new deck, but just a minor retooling of my existing Edric deck. The original intent of the deck was to spy on players by peeking at their hands and libraries in a variety of ways. That way I could always know what everyone was up to and plan accordingly. Of course, this plan sounded better when I was expecting to play against a lot of random people with unknown decks. As it stands, however, I’m still pretty much only playing at home with my regular playgroup. Thusly, the “spy” angle was somewhat less useful in that I already pretty much know what to expect from the friends I’ve been gaming with for years.

Hand peek effects are still fairly useful, but I wanted to repurpose the deck to play better with an established and familiar metagame – meaning, less spying on people and more political manipulation.

Edric has proven to be a very effective political tool, in that players often will take the bait and attack someone else to get the card draw, even if they know they’re playing right into your hands. The promise of card advantage is just too great a temptation to pass up some of the time, but when you compound that aspect with other, similar effects such as Propaganda, that encourage opponents to attack one another instead of you, it’s pretty easy to manipulate players into leaving you alive.

Of course, once it’s down to just you and one other player, all bets are off, and that was the issue I had with the initial build. I could all but guarantee that I’d survive to the endgame, but once there I had trouble finishing off that last opponent. Coming in “second place” consistently is fine, I guess, but I’d like the deck to have a fair to middling chance of actually winning. I don’t want to make it TOO good at winning, because I want to continually reinforce the idea that finishing me off last is the best strategy… but having the potential is important to me as well.

The end result was that I got to cut a lot of really weak cards, and replace them with better stuff that still isn’t too scary. This deck is meant to be unassuming and unthreatening, while still being able to interact with the game in various ways. Playing defensively can get boring, though, so I wanted to make sure the deck could be proactive too, without doing anything so alarming that I become the #1 threat. Most players won’t really freak out over an Ohran Viper attacking them once or twice. Thada Adel might be a little more scary to some folks, but it all depends on what they have in their decks. Your best bet is going for things like Sol Ring or Lightning Greaves, rather than huge bombs like Mindslaver or Blightsteel Colossus. Unless it’s the endgame, of course.

Anyway, here’s the revised list.

Master of Intrigues

Edric, Spymaster of Trest

Agents and Minions

Phantasmal Image

Snapcaster Mage

Willbender

Trinket Mage

Thada Adel, Acquisitor

Vendillion Clique

Phyrexian Metamorph

Body Double

Mulldrifter

Infiltrator il-Kor

Vesuvan Shapeshifter

Scavenging Ooze

Fauna Shaman

Ohran Viper

Acidic Slime

Eternal Witness

Primeval Titan

Coiling Oracle

Cold-Eyed Selkie

Trygon Predator

Winged Coatl

Edric, Spymaster of Trest

Mystic Snake

Duplicant

Schemes, Plots and Conspiracies

Pongify

Seal of Removal

Psychic Surgery

Twincast

Redirect

Counterspell

Propaganda

Vow of Flight

Dream Fracture

Jace Beleren

Lay Bare

Rite of Replication

Cryptic Command

Bribery

Acquire

Treachery

Evacuation

Time Spiral

Knowledge Exploitation

Lignify

Plummet

Tangle

Constant Mists

Moment's Peace

Krosan Grip

Beastmaster Ascension

Vow of Wildness

Cultivate

Beast Within

Windstorm

Voidslime

Gadgets and Gear

Sol Ring

Simic Signet

Sensei's Divining Top

Glasses of Urza

Aether Spellbomb

Proteus Staff

Skullclamp

Lightning Greaves

Cloak and Dagger

Base of Operations

Island x9

Forest x9

Breeding Pool

Flooded Grove

Hinterland Harbor

Misty Rainforest

Yavimaya Coast

Command Tower

Simic Growth Chamber

Evolving Wilds

Lonely Sandbar

Halimar Depths

Moonring Island

Tranquil Thicket

Riptide Laboratory

High Market

Homeward Path

Mystifying Maze

Mikokoro, Center of the Sea

Reliquary Tower

A word on Proteus Staff. I dislike the card for the fact that it can be used to deny your opponents access to their General. That’s a strategy I’m pretty much adamant about avoiding. I hate “tuck” effects, and only occasionally use cards like Chaos Warp or Oblation because they can fill critical gaps in their respective colors and are almost always relevant against non-General permanents. Here, though, Proteus Staff is a bit more like a Nuke, in that I hope I never HAVE to use it, but I’m willing to use the THREAT of  it as a deterrent. Walk softly and carry a big stick, as some dead president was quoted. It’s also perfectly fine for getting rid of non-General threats like Primeval Titan, Consecrated Sphinx, etc… but decks like Thraximundar that rely heavily on general damage wins will likely shy away from attacking into an active Proteus Staff, so it’s likely to be effective as a deterrent without ever being activated.

To a lesser extent, this is the same role Seal of Removal and Aether Spellbomb play. In EDH, as in most formats, answers are usually better when the opponent doesn’t see them coming a mile away. You usually want them to swing their  Akroma right into your Path to Exile. But in this deck, we’d rather gain a sort of card advantage by having some of our answers just sit there and threaten away would-be attackers. Using a Path on an Akroma is great, but once the Path is in your graveyard it no longer has the ability to ward off further attacks. Meanwhile an almost strictly worse Seal of Removal can have the same effect on multiple creatures over multiple turns. Players will almost always be compelled to send attackers at easier targets. When you finally are forced to use the Seal of Removal, it’s effect is nowhere near as powerful as Path to Exile’s, but by that time you likely have gotten FAR more value out of it by simply directing attackers elsewhere.

Questions, comments and suggestions welcome, as always!

Enjoy!

Rith, the Token Awakener

Well, this deck certainly got some love from AVR! Sure, the number of new cards added might not be all that much, but each of them has quite a significant impact on the deck. In short, here are the new additions:

Champion of Lambholt - I fell in love with this chick at the prerelease, and luckily she seems right at home in a token deck. Making tokens makes here huge, while her getting huge makes my tokens harder and harder to block! Win-win!

Craterhoof Behemoth - I have already played a game where I swung for 71 damage on Turn 7 thanks to this guy.

Cathars' Crusade - Duh.

Reforge the Soul - As always, I need more draw, more gas. This works nicely.

Burn at the Stake - For when getting through the Red Zone is more trouble than it's worth... can easily take out one player out of the blue, or kill just about any size creature that needs killin'.


(will finish up later)

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A while back, I did a crossover article with CommanderCast, where I outlined a possible WRG Token deck with Rith, the Awakner as the General. It was an idea spawned by a friend who’s Rhys the Redeemed deck wasn’t performing to his standards, and he was looking at maybe adding a third color to the deck as a way to power it up a bit.

Well, he never did anything with it, after all that. I think he just dismantled it and built something completely different instead. So, when it finally came time for me to get some new deck ideas brewing, it seemed natural to resurrect an earlier idea I’d already drafted, and bring the project to life myself, since my friend never got around to it. No point in wasting a good idea, right?

Even better, I happen to have a bigger, deeper card pool than he did, so a lot of stuff I had to leave out of his version, I could easily add to mine. So I started with the list I’d drawn up for him, then figured out what high-end stuff I’d want to add, then fine-tune it down to 100 cards. Simple as that, and I’d have a deck.

Well, it turns out it’s not quite so simple, as between Green, White and Red, there are a LOT of cards that you might want to play in a token deck! Fortunately, though it’s still fairly easy to separate the chaff from the wheat. Red has a lot of ways to make tokens, but most of them aren’t nearly as efficient as Green and White’s methods, so we’re mostly relying on those two colors for token production, but Red does open up a lot of avenues to exploit and get value from those tokens.

In the end it was still fairly easy to trim this beast down, and while I don’t think it’s 100% perfect, it’s really hard not to be happy with the list as it appears now.

Creatures

Token Producers
Twilight Drover
Emeria Angel
Darien, King of Kjeldor
Dragonmaster Outcast
Kazuul, Tyrant of the Cliffs
Chancellor of the Forge
Ant Queen
Rampaging Baloths
Avenger of Zendikar
Hornet Queen
Rhys the Redeemed
Selesnya Guildmage
Dragon Broodmother
Rith, the Awakener

Here we have our token generators. There is some unnecessary redundancy – for example, King Darien and Kazuul both trigger off being attacked, and I’m not sure we want or need both of those, but I’ve never really used either card, so I just threw ‘em both in to see which turned out to be better in practice, rather than try and theorycraft an answer. They might both prove their worth, or not.

There were about 100 million other creatures, especially in Green, that could be playable here, but I tried to pick a mix of proven powerhouses (Avenger of Zendikar) and untested-but-cool cards (Chancellor of the Forge). With such a huge field of diverse choices, I was less concerned about picking the “wrong” cards, and just played what I wanted to play, knowing that if something like Chancellor of the Forge turns out to be utter garbage, there are countless other cards waiting in the queue to take its place! This is the kind of deck were you can rely on the strength of a few cards, like Avenger, to make up for any subpar inclusions you want to run just for the hell of it.

Token Supporters
Suture Priest
Mentor of the Meek
Mirror Entity
Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
Moonveil Dragon
Vigor
Sigil Captain
Juniper Order Ranger

This group contains creatures that feed off the token-production aspect in some fashion. Suture Priest turns tokens into lifegain, Mentor of the Meek turns them into cards, and Mooveil Dragon just turns them into firebreathers! None of these should be particularly revelatory or wildly original. Elesh Norn? Duh. But still, you can’t always play with the formula just to be different – sometimes things just work because they do, and messing with a sure thing is a dumb idea.

Misc. Utility
Academy Rector
Wood Elves
Eternal Witness
Dauntless Escort
Primeval Titan

The usual suspects, of course. Academy Rector is there almost solely to fetch Doubling Season or Parallel Lives, though I can see it getting Mirari’s Wake or Aura Shards a fair number of times. Also suitable targets include Beastmaster Ascension or Shared Animosity. Dauntless Escort is anti-Wrath tech – board sweepers are the number one bane of all token decks!

Spells

Token Producers
Martial Coup
Decree of Justice
Elspeth Tirel
March of Souls
Storm Herd
Fresh Meat
Garruk Wildspeaker
Artifact Mutation
Aura Mutation

I always love it when the usually-boring utility spells manage to land squarely on-theme and suddenly seem way less boring! Aura Mutation and Artifact Mutation are prime examples here. Ordinarily I would just run Indrik Stomphowler and Acidic Slime, and be content to do so, but here these two spells just fit perfectly. Sure, there will be times when you draw Aura Mutation but really need to kill an Artifact, but that’s alright, because we’re happy that we have utility spells that are actually thematically appropriate.
Fresh Meat is another anti-Wrath card, but I think it can be so much more – imagine sac-ing a whole army of 1/1’s to Goblin Bombardment, then replacing them all with 3/3’s. It’s definitely going to catch your opponents off guard a few times, and they will have to get used to playing around it. Eventually just bluffing that you’re sitting on a Fresh Meat will discourage them from casting that Damnation.

Token Supporters
Intangible Virtue
Congregate
Shared Animosity
Goblin Bombardment
Vicious Shadows
Fecundity
Parallel Lives
Doubling Season
Aura Shards
Fires of Yavimaya
Mirari's Wake
Glare of Subdual
Sarkhan Vol
Titanic Ultimatum
Phyrexian Altar
Skullclamp
Eldrazi Monument

This section is bloated, I already am aware. There is just too much stuff that has potential, but too little of it has been proven to be either good or bad, so sometimes redundancy just occurs when I can’t decide which of two cards is better, so I decide to throw ‘em both in and see what works. On the other hand it doesn’t feel redundant at all to have both Parallel Lives and Doubling Season, as both of those will be HUGE targets for removal, so having a back up copy seems like a wise move. Haste is super-important to getting maximum benefit out of your tokens – being able to attack even once before a Wrath comes down is often all you need to have made the investment worthwhile. To that end both Sarkhan Vol and Fires of Yavimaya are in, despite the slight redundancy. It’s just that important.

A lot of people will see Phyrexian Altar and immediately think “infinite mana combo”. Well, I don’t think there is any such combo in the deck, but I don’t need there to be – theoretically the Altar will just be “a lot of mana” and that’s actually good enough for me.

Misc. Utility
Swords to Plowshares
Path to Exile
Wheel of Fortune
Blasphemous Act
Cultivate
Kodama's Reach
Beast Within
Harmonize
Sol Ring
Darksteel Ingot

Good stuff is always important, and we shouldn’t be such a slave to our theme that we’re unwilling to include a few key spells – like removal, mana fixing, or card draw! All three of these types of spells are there to help your deck run more smoothly and give you ways to interact with your opponents beyond swinging into them. Nothing up there in this category is particularly inventive – Blasphemous Act is probably the most “tech” thing up there, as it’s basically always going to cost “R”. I suppose you could target one of your own permanents with Beast Within, while Doubling Season is in play, to turn a chumb-blocking 1/1 Saproling into two 3/3 Beasts. But that’s probably not the best use of the spell – usually you want to hold onto it until someone drops a Planeswalker.

Lands

Sacred Foundry
Stomping Ground
Temple Garden
Fire-Lit Thicket
Rugged Prairie
Wooded Bastion
Boros Garrison
Gruul Turf
Selesnya Sanctuary
Clifftop Retreat
Rootbound Crag
Sunpetal Grove
Jungle Shrine
Command Tower
Reflecting Pool
Vesuva
Gaea's Cradle
Khalni Garden
Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree
Kher Keep
Windbrisk Heights
Temple of the False God
Yavimaya Hollow
Kor Haven
Kessig Wolf Run
High Market
Gavony Townsip
Plains x3
Mountain x3
Forest x4

Here we have our mana base. Kessig Wolf Run might seem odd at first, but when you consider that: First of all, our General needs to deal combat damage to a player to be relevant, and second of all, we also have Gaea’s Cradle in the list, then the Wolf Run starts to make sense. He helps Rith get through for damage, and later can turn any measly token into a huge threat.
The rest is pretty standard stuff. Lands that make tokens: Check. Lands that put +1/+1 counters on stuff: Check. High Market: Check.
And that’s the deck. Hope you like tokens, cause that’s what you’re getting with Rith in charge.

Enjoy.

The Zombie Apocalypse

With the influx of quality Zombie cards the current block has given us, along with a cool new Zombie Legend, it’s no surprise that everyone and his mother has some sort of Zombie-tribal list. Fortunately, the tribe has been supported well enough since Magic’s earliest days that the sheer number of Zombie cards is enough to build a dozen decks.

Okay, that might be overstating it a bit, but you get the idea. I’ve seen mono-black decks helmed by Balthor, the Defiled or Geth, Lord of the Vault. I’ve seen U/B builds with Grimgrin, and… well just Grimgrin, and finally there is no shortage of Thraximundar decks with minor zombie themes.

I’m of the opinion that three color decks are usually the way to go, and Grixis happens to be one of the strongest color-trios out there. It also happens to be that Thraximundar is one of my favorite generals of all time, and he’s a Zombie! However, I’m also on a kick right now of trying not to do what everyone else is doing, at least to an extent. While it might not be the slightest bit original to go Zombie tribal right now, I think you’ll see that what I’ve cooked up isn’t entirely without a few original ideas…

Starting with the general, I made the surprising decsision of going with Sedris as my general (I even surprised myself, as I’d pretty much assumed that I’d be using Thrax initially). The primary reason for this was that I wanted to combine the Unearth and Flashback mechanics into one highly synergistic machine of a deck where using every creature and spell twice would provide the back-breaking card advantage that would lead me to victory. That ended up being WAY too much to fit into one deck, and the Unearth creatures out there are almost entirely unplayable in EDH.

So I changed tracks a bit, picked Sedris as my new general, and scrapped most of the Flashback stuff, filling out the deck instead with zombies and zombie-related things. In the end, I was able to keep a few of the original ideas – such as breaking River Kelpie and Flayer of the Hatebound in half by recurring shit tons of creatures. Also, it means I get to play Zombie Apocalypse, one of the coolest cards in this block so far!

Here’s how it all shaped up:

Creatures

Zombie Lords
Cemetery Reaper
Death Baron
Diregraf Captain
Lord of the Undead
Undead Warchief

Obviously, we want as many Zombie Lords as we can get. I don’t have Zombie Master, the original Lord of the tribe, because I don’t think I even own one, and the lack of the +1/+1 to all Zombies element makes me a little sad. Also missing is Lich Lord of Unx, which I’d like to run because he’s cool, but didn’t because he’s terrible.

Heavy Hitters
Balthor the Defiled
Geth, Lord of the Vault
Havengul Lich
Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
Sedris, the Traitor King
Thraximundar

These Zombies are the nukes of the deck. They are all powerhouse plays with enormous, swingy effects, and these six cards represent the biggest part of why I am so excited to play this deck. Having all six of these badass mofos in one place is pretty damn awesome.

The Undead
Anathemancer
Coffin Queen
Corpse Harvester
Deathbringer Thoctar
Fleshbag Marauder
Graveborn Muse
Gravecrawler
Lightning Reaver
Noxious Ghoul
Unbreathing Horde
Vengeful Dead
Withered Wretch

Behold the shambling hordes of undead. It’s not a long list, I admit, but it’s full of really good cards, and while I’d like to implement a slightly larger Zombie count, this was the best I could do for now. Keep in mind, though, with the Lords and Heavy Hitters (who are all Zombies!) I do have 23 Zombies in the deck, and a few of the non-Zombie creatures in the next section can become Zombies…

The Living
Body Double
Duplicant
Flayer of the Hatebound
Grave Titan
Mulldrifter
River Kelpie
Shriekmaw
Solemn Simulacrum
Spitebellows

These are the essential non-Zombie creatures I felt I just had to run. As previously mentioned, Flayer and Kelpie are there to make Unearth as busted as possible since the Exile clause makes Unearth itself just a tad weak. Grave Titan is an obvious pick as it shits out Zombies like mad, while Body Double can become a copy of any Zombie in my ‘yard. I really, really want Phyrexian Metamorph in here too, but I had to leave him out to make room for more thematic cards. As always, once cards in the list reveal themselves to be underperformers, I will start adding in these leftovers like the Metamorph.
The Evoke guys are all really good cards on their own, but are even better with Sedris or Mikeaus in play. Synergize! Like a boss!
Sad Robot and Duplicant should require zero explanation.

Spells

Apocalyptic Events
Damnation
Decree of Pain
Living Death
Patriarch's Bidding
Zombie Apocalypse

These are the mass removal and mass reanimation spells, obviously. I also wanted Blasphemous Act in here, as it’s a card I’ve really started to appreciate more and more. It’s almost always a straight up Wrath of God for one single red mana. Alas, the black spells have more flavorful connections, and are slightly less conditional.

Tribal Support
Army of the Damned
Cruel Revival
Door of Destinies
Endless Ranks of the Dead
Ghoulcaller's Chant
Rise from the Grave
Rooftop Storm

Obviously, these all reference Zombies in some way, and are supportive of the tribal theme. Rooftop Storm is another of those cards that just makes me smile. It’s such a cool, flavorful design, and the mechanic is stupid good, too. I’m almost equally as excited to be playing Endless Ranks of the Dead finally. Army of the Damned is probably the worst card in this group, overall, but how can I not play it? Then again, casting it with Vengeful Dead on the board will likely make my opponents think twice about casting a Wrath effect right away…

Utility
Cackling Counterpart
Deep Analysis
Demonic Tutor
Profane Command
Rite of Replication
Slave of Bolas
Terminate
Teferi's Veil
Wheel of Fortune

Boring old good stuff, mostly. Teferi’s Veil is interesting though. It’s one of the very few ways I can cheat around the Unearth exile effect. As long as the Unearthed creature keeps attacking every turn, it’ll always be Phased Out before the Unearth exile effect can find it! Cackling Counterpart has proven to be a strong card in almost any deck, but here I’m most excited about the potential to cast it targeting Vengeful Dead in response to a Wrath effect. Or, alternately, targeting Flayer of the Hatebound with my own Patriarch’s Bidding on the stack.

Of the 30 or so cards that could and probably should be in this group, but isn't here, the one that I want most is Warstorm Surge. Second to that, Grave Pact. If I can find a way to get those in, I'll be very happy.

Artifacts
Nim Deathmantle
Skullclamp
Sword of Light and Shadow
Mimic Vat
Sol Ring
Dimir Signet
Izzet Signet
Rakdos Signet
Coalition Relic

Nim Deathmantle is an obvious choise as it is on-theme flavor-wise, and it can turn one of my few non-Zombie creatures into a Zombie! Putting the Deathmantle on a Grave Titan seems pretty sexy. It came down to Sword of Light and Shadow versus Sword of Fire and Ice, and I’m still not sure if I chose correctly, but the recursion aspect plus the more relevant protection colors makes me think I picked the right tool for the job. Ideally, though, I’d run both!
Mimic Vat and Skullclamp should both be eye-rollingly obvious choices, but you can’t deny that they are both clearly good enough to warrant their inclusion. In fact the deck is pretty light on draw power overall, so the clamp is actually of crucial importance.

Lands

Blood Crypt
Steam Vents
Watery Grave
Terramorphic Expanse
Scalding Tarn
Cascade Bluffs
Graven Cairns
Sunken Ruins
Crumbling Necropolis
Command Tower
Reflecting Pool
Dragonskull Summit
Drowned Catacombs
Sulfur Falls
Bojuka Bog
Halimar Depths
Creeping Tar Pit
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Temple of the False God
Volrath's Stronghold
Tolaria West
Unholy Grotto
Phyrexian Tower
Minamo, School at Water's Edge
High Market
Vesuva
Swamp x4
Island x4
Mountain x4

The mana base is terminally boring, I admit. Volrath’s Stronghold is painfully obvious, as is Unholly Grotto. Phyrexian Tower, Minamo, High Market and Vesuva are also staples that I play in virtually every deck that can run them. Yawn. In fact, the only real interesting thing is what’s missing, rather than what is here. You see Urborg up there, yes, but no Cabal Coffers!

Relax, I’m not trying to be some Magic hipster, refusing to run cards just cause they are “mainstream”. Obviously, if that were the case, half a dozen or more of my lands up there would also be missing. No, I just felt that Coffers didn’t really add all that much to the deck. The only X-mana spell in the deck is Profane Command, and while Coffers does do wonderful things for that card, it’s not worth reusing a card most people are sick of seeing just to power up one spell.

*(Plus, I couldn’t fit in Expedition Map to help find the Urborg/Coffers pair, and drawing Coffers without Urborg always sucks ass.)

Enjoy!

Auras of War, Finished List

Finally! Of all the new deck projects I’m working on, this was the toughest to crack. I started out with a pool of nearly 100 cards, not counting lands, that I wanted for the deck. Obviously that meant I was going to have to cut well over 30 cards, and to do so without neutering my own strategy was an immensely difficult task.

As I reminder, here are the objectives laid out by myself, which I had to always keep in mind while making cuts and additions during the building process:

Objectives
1. To avoid linear, repetitive gameplay (a la Uril the Miststalker)
2. To avoid over-reliance on my General
3. The deck should be creature-oriented and avoid combo or heavy control
4. To make the deck viable within a metagame that is heavy on sweepers and spot removal

Objective number one was the biggest sticking point. While it was completely necessary, it also made the deck that much harder to build. If I were willing to just go all-in on Voltroning up Jenara as the primary purpose of the deck, it would have been considerably easier to make cuts, but that would have lead to a boring, repetitive deck that functioned like a slightly weaker version of a Uril the Miststalker deck. I’ve already done the Uril thing, though, and while that was fun initially, it got old pretty quickly. It was imperative that I avoid doing that here.

So I tried to include creatures other than Jenara that would be worth enchanting with my Auras, as well as broadening the Enchantment theme to include a wider range of effects that extend to ALL my creatures – instead of running Shielding Plax to give Jenara Hexproof, I went with Asceticism to give all my creature Hexproof. I wanted to make it so that any creature could potentially be a viable threat.

Only by playing the deck will I know for sure if I succeeded in hitting all my objectives, but for now this is the final list I plan on rolling into battle with.

Creatures

Enchantresses
Argothian Enchantress
Femeref Enchantress
Kor Spiritdancer
Mesa Enchantress
Verduran Enchantress

- Simple, obvious card advantage. Gotta do something to compensate for the two-for-ones I’ll be giving my opponents.

Other Enchanters
Academy Rector
Faith Healer
Hanna, Ship's Navigator
Sovereigns of Lost Alara
Totem-Guide Hartebeest
Umbra Mystic

- Just some Enchantment-specific utility creatures. Some find Enchantments, some recur them, and Faith Healer is the all-important sac outlet. Faith Healer + Rancor + any Enchantress = “G: Draw a card and gain 1 life.” Fun!

Other Creatures
Cephalid Constable
Dauntless Escort
Drift of Phantasms
Drogskol Reaver
Duplicant
Eternal Witness
Frost Titan
Jenara, Asura of War
Rafiq of the Many
Reveillark
Sun Titan

- These are either non-specific utility creatures, or plausible targets for buff auras. Or both.

Auras - Buffs
Angelic Destiny
Armadillo Cloak
Bear Umbra
Eldrazi Conscription
Gaea's Embrace
Rancor Shield of the Oversoul
Steel of the Godhead
Favor of the Overbeing
Spirit Mantle

- This is the one section I’m not 100% happy with, but it’ll work for now. Favor of the Overbeing is their just to complete the cycle, while Spirit Mantle made it in mostly because I set 10 as the minimum number of “buff” Auras I was willing to run. Any less and I’d have to consider cutting Kor Spiritdancer, which was something I wanted to avoid.

Auras - Answers
Cage of Hands
Confiscate
Faith's Fetters
Lignify
Treachery
Volition Reins

- These are Auras you typically don’t want to put on your own guys! They’re more for dealing with things that I’d rather not have to deal with. Lignify is a great way to shut down problematic Generals, since killing them just means the player can recast them later. Fetters also does this job well, and can also turn off Planeswalkers or annoying lands like Volrath’s Stronghold. Cage of Hands is mediocre, but it’s reusability makes it a potential draw engine with an Enchantress out.

Enchantments
Asceticism
Aura Shards
Copy Enchantment
Enchanted Evening
Enchantress's Presence
Finest Hour
Fertile Ground
Holistic Wisdom
Karmic Justice
Land Tax
Mirari's Wake
Oblivion Ring
Rhystic Study
Sigil of the Empty Throne
Sterling Grove

- I made a last minute decision to put Finest Hour in, in place of True Conviction. Ideally, I’d like to have both, but space issues didn’t allow for that. Also missing Martyr’s Bond, but with Karmic Justice already in, I felt like it was an acceptable loss.

Other Spells
Cleansing Meditation
Creeping Renaissance
Eladamri's Call
Enlightened Tutor
Idyllic Tutor
Replenish
Sol Ring
Three Dreams
Wrath of God
Winds of Rath

And, these are the only 10 cards that aren’t a Creature or an Enchantment. I wanted to keep this category as low as possible, but there were some obvious cards here that were just to crucial to pass up. Replenish might just be one of the most important spells in the deck, considering how fragile my game plan really is. Winds of Rath is hilariously techy, and I hope it actually works out. It could be a dud, but we’ll see…

Lands

Serra's Sanctum
Kor Haven
Mistveil Plains
Secluded Steppe
Halimar Depths
Tolaria West
Lonely Sandbar
Llanowar Reborn
Yavimaya Hollow
Tranquil Thicket
Vesuva
Command Tower
Reflecting Pool
Seaside Citadel
Misty Rainforest
Evolving Wilds
Flooded Grove
Mystic Gate
Wooded Bastion
Breeding Pool
Hallowed Fountain
Temple Garden
Glacial Fortress
Sunpetal Grove
Hinterland Harbor
Plains x4
Island x4
Forest x4


Closing Thoughts…
Enchanted Evening is in the deck, for now at least, to combo with Aura Shards and more importantly Cleansing Meditation. With Enchanted Evening in play, Cleansing Meditation will destroy ALL permanents in play, then if I have threshold (and I almost certainly will at this point!), I return all of MY permanents destroyed this way to the Battlefield.

There is some slight anti-synergy with that play, because any Auras returning to the battlefield will be returning AT THE SAME TIME as any creatures returning, and because they’re happening simultaneously, the Auras will not be able to target the creatures, as the creatures aren’t technically on the battlefield yet.

For this reason, and others, I considered Retether as well, but couldn’t find room. Should playtesting reveal any cards that need to be replaced, Retether is at the top of the short list for adding in later.

That’s pretty much the deck in a nutshell. Play Enchantments, draw cards, stick a suitable threat, and go to town.

Enjoy!

Updates

After my post a few days ago, wherein I graded each of my current EDH decks on performance, I came to the conclusion that most of my decks were NOT living up to my expectations and it was time to rebuild.

After brainstorming over the weekend, I've come up with the following plan:

1. Three decks will remain in the line-up - Edric, Wrexial and the deck led by Ghost Council.
That W/B deck would undergo some changes and become a Vish Kal deck.
Wrexial remains virtually unchanged, with the exception of a few minor card swaps.
Edric would undergo minor but significant alterations to play better with a stable playgroup.
Instead of being a "super spy" deck, it's more of a "political advantage" deck, but  remains roughly the same deck overall.

2. Four new decks will be added to the roster - Agrus Kos, Jenara, Sedris and Rith.

Agrus Kos will be a "Battle and Warfare" theme deck, but will largely resemble both the Jor Kadeen and Ruhan decks that I ran before. It will include and Equipment theme with an emphasis on Sunforger and an appropriate package of targets for that powerful Equipment. None of this is groundbreaking or anything, and the deck will simply replace Jor Kadeen's artifacts-matter emphasis with an emphasis on cards like Crescendo of War and Fight to the Death - R/W spells that flavorfully reference battle and Warfare. Expect the Battlecry mechanic to replace Metalcraft.

Jenara will be the Enchantress-themed deck already posted about last week, but it's still undergoing development and revisions. I expect to finish this before I move on to Agrus, but it depends if I can solve the issues I'm currently having with trimming the decklist down to a manageable size.

Sedris will be a bit of a Zombie tribal deck mixed with an Unearth/Recursion theme, and seeks to exploit the Unearth mechanic's synergy with stuff like River Kelpie and Flayer of the Hatebound. We'll see if I can manage to fit both of these themes into the limited deck space. I'm actually making good progress on this one, so it should be more or less finalized within a few days.

Finally, Rith the Awakener will be a token deck, based off the article I did for Commandercast Crossover Week. A member of my playgroup had an underperforming Rhys the Redeemed token deck that he wanted to improve upon by adding a third color. Brienne of CommanderCast covered adding Blue to the deck, while I worked with Red as the third color. That player ended up doing neither option and built a Grixis deck with Thrax at the helm instead. LOL. So, rather than waste a good idea, I decided to go ahead and sleeve up that Rith token deck, with some updates and changes of course.

There's already a "finished" list on the CC website for the Rith deck, but it was built with my friend's collection in mind, not my own, so I think I probably have the card pool to improve upon that list quite a bit. I'll start working with it as the base as soon as I finish up the other In-Progress lists!

Stay tuned for more lists!

Vish Kal's Coup

In a surprising move this weekend, the Ghost Council of Orzhova  was ousted from power by their lieutenant, Vish Kal, the Blood Arbiter. The notorious vampire instigated the coup and successfully overturned the Ghost Council’s rulership, cementing his command over the Orzhov legions.

Along with the Ghost Council themselves, Kal dismissed a number of the Council’s most loyal followers, including Elesh Norn, Hero of Bladehold, Pawn of Ulamog, Phyrexian Plaguelord and a number of other token-producers.

Unsurprisingly, Vish Kal filled those vacancies with his own loyalists, particularly a number of vampires such as Vampire Nighthawk and Bloodline Keeper.

In a statement to the press, Kal outlined the plan for his reign, which would focus less on token producing and Grave Pact effects, and would carry the pre-existing theme of “life and death” over into the creature base, by including a number of creatures with Lifelink and Deathtouch (such as the aforementioned Nighthawk, and newcomer Wurmcoil Engine).

**********

Okay, that’s about enough of the cheesy fanfiction bullshit. Here’s the scoop: My Orzhov deck was moderately successful under the Ghost Council’s command, but it was not a complete home-run. The deck’s two themes felt inorganic and at odds – the “duality of life and death” theme was explored through mirror-image White and Black cards, as well as the presence of a high number of creature removal and reanimation. The deck was seemingly all about killing things and reanimating them. Yet, to make Ghost Council work as a general, I had to shoehorn in an awkward token-making subtheme. Many times, though, I was forced to blow up my own token armies with Wrath effects because my opponent’s creatures would outclass my measly tokens.

So the token aspect was not fully working out, both in flavor terms and in gameplay terms. I decided to swap out Ghost Council for Vish Kal as my general, and retool the deck to eliminate the token stuff and emply more useful and synergistic effects. However, I had a bit of a hard time coming up with what to put IN the deck. In short, the deck needed an identity, and it proved difficult to come up with one. I was still really enjoying the way the deck played out other than the tokens, so I wanted to keep the Life and Death theme very much intact. But I couldn’t figure out how to make the creature base gel with what the non-creature stuff was doing.

Then it finally dawned on me. Lifelink and Deathtouch. It was so obvious – both abilities have my thematic keywords in their names! Lifelink and Deathtouch... simple as that. I started with the obvious two choices – Nighthawk and Wurmcoil - then I knew I had my deck’s identity. It’d be a life-gain deck mostly, but with a minor emphasis on Deathtouch, removal and reanimation effects.

Another exciting moment came when I stumbled upon Cradle of Vitality – a card that was janky and useless before, but seemed almost tailor-made to go into a Vish Kal deck. With the Cradle out, I don’t have to sac my dudes to power up Vish Kal – just hit somebody with him, and pay 1W to give him 5 counters. As long as I can gain life in any fashion, the Cradle will keep Kal powered up and ready to neutralize threats all day long.

Once I cut the majority of the token-makers and any other cards that just didn’t make sense for the deck’s new direction (for example, Butcher of Malakir – yeah, he’s a vampire, and he’s good, but without the token fodder to sac, he’s just less appealing), I focused on making the creature base more thematically resonant with various life-gain creatures, a few Deathtouch-ers, and a healthy dose of generic “Good stuff” like Akroma, Deathbringer Liege and Mirran Crusader. Though, many of these seemingly random “good stuff” cards were in fact chosen for how they could interact with some other cards (for instance, I still haven’t had Akroma and True Conviction in play at the same time yet).

Battlegrace Angel was an obvious pick, and Mirran Crusader followed from that choice as the Angel’s bonuses are great when applied to a Crusader attacking alone. The Crusader is also one of the best guys you could equip with a Sword of Stuff and Junk.

Elspeth got the boot in favor of the weaker but more appropriate Ajani Goldmane. So many of the deck's creatures already have Flying, yet almost none have Vigilance, so Goldmane just felt like the right call, despite the obvious power of Elspeth.

I managed to keep Martyr’s Bond in the deck, and it’s now sort of mirrored by Black’s Sanguine Bond (okay, they don’t really do anything similar at all, but they’re both Enchantments with the word “Bond” in their name… give me some slack!).

I kept the draw engines in place – Land Tax + Scroll Rack, Bloodghast + Skullclamp, and of course every “Arena” effect I could find.

Also joining the party is Sword of War and Peace – a good-stuff inclusion that also manages to be relevant as it gain me life!

Finally, as one of the other efforts to really give the deck a defining theme, I managed to tweak the numbers a little to bring the White and Black cards into perfect balance! There are 12 White creatures and 12 Black creatures. 9 White spells and 9 Black spells. This, in my mind, makes the deck a more fitting representation of the “Yin and Yang” – light and dark in perfect balance – opposite yet equal. Two sides of the same coin, etc. Okay, okay, I get you - less hyperbole and more decklist!

General

Vish Kal, Blood Arbiter

Creatures

Serra Ascendant

Weathered Wayfarer

Suture Priest

Mentor of the Meek

Mirran Crusader

Academy Rector

Wall of Reverance

Emeria Angel

Battlegrace Angel

Karmic Guide

Sun Titan

Akroma, Angel of Wrath

Bloodghast

Fleshbag Marauder

Vampire Nighthawk

Dimir House Guard

Falkreath Noble

Bloodline Keeper

Graveborn Muse

Shriekmaw

Puppeteer Clique

Bloodgift Demon

Geth, Lord of the Vault

Sheoldred, Whispering One

Stillmoon Cavalier

Deathbringer Liege

Divinity of Pride

Angel of Despair

Solemn Simulacrum

Wurmcoil Engine

Duplicant

Spells

Land Tax

Swords to Plowshares

Path to Exile

Cradle of Vitality

Wrath of God

Ajani Goldmane

Martyr’s Bond

True Conviction

Return to Dust

Phyrexian Reclamation

Vampiric Tutor

Demonic Tutor

Phyrexian Arena

Damnation

Unburial Rites

Sanguine Bond

Decree of Pain

Profane Command

Mortify

Vindicate

Sorin, Lord of Innistrad

Debtor’s Knell

Expedition Map

Sol Ring

Orzhov Signet

Skullclamp

Sword of Fire and Ice

Sword of Light and Shadow

Sword of War and Peace

Scroll Rack

Mimic Vat

Lands

Godless Shrine

Fetid Heath

Isolated Chapel

Marsh Flats

Caves of Koilos

Tainted Field

Orzhov Basilica

Command Tower

Terramorphic Expanse

Phyrexian Tower

Volrath’s Stronghold

Kor Haven

High Market

Temple of the False God

New Benalia

Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

Cabal Coffers

Leechridden Swamp

Bojuka Bog

Plains x9

Swamp x9

**********

Alright, so that’s the deck as it stands now. I am missing one extremely obvious and important card – Vault of the Archangel. This land was already one of my most anticipated Dark Ascension cards, and unfortunately I haven’t acquired one yet. I have, however, witnessed the card in action a couple of times. And folks, let me tell ya, it’s a beast. It has the potential to completely reverse the outcome of a game – one match I witnessed included a Ghave deck that appeared to be dead in the water against a Thraximundar deck that was using Thrax and Sheoldred to absolutely dominate the game. Topdecking the Vault, the Ghave deck was able to use the threat of Deathtouch to hold off Thrax from further assaults, while Lifelink allowed Ghave’s Grave Titan to race the unblockabe Sheoldred with ease.

So, yeah, I’ll definitely be getting a Vault for the deck ASAP. Other than that, though, I think the deck looks great. I haven’t played it yet though, so we’ll see how it goes. One thing I might do is replace Sheoldred. For one thing I already have Debtor’s Knell, and Geth, and Puppeteer Clique AND Phyreixian Reclemation… so as good as Sheoldred is, I think she might just be a bit TOO redundant. I thought about putting Rune-Scarred Demon in her place, but ended up not doing that. What do you all think?

Leave me a comment if you have any questions or suggestions, especially about what Sheoldred’s slot should actually be (keep in mind, it needs to be a Black creature to preserve the Yin/Yang balance!).

Enjoy!