Raphael - Devilish Aristocrats

Post by **ISBPathfinder** » 1 year ago

So, you might see Raphael, Fiendish Savior and think tribal. I was interested in the fact that he is both an engine to make tokens as well as an anthem that made those very tokens very relevant in combat. I did throw in some on tribe creatures because adding lifelink to them seemed good but for the most part my goal with this build is to trigger him on each player's turn to make more tokens. He can make a token per player per turn rotation if things are going well so I went heavy on sac outlets and recursive threats.

Decklist

Approximate Total Cost:

Arebennian · Post by **Arebennian** » 1 year ago

Tortured Existence?
Might not be worth the mana for the activation each turn. But 1 black mana for the token seems reasonable.

I've seen a bit of hype around Delayed Blast Fireball. Do you think it is worth it if you can't cast it straight from exile and have to foretell it? From my quick glance, you don't seem to have that many of the red draw/exile effects.

Post by **ISBPathfinder** » 1 year ago

Arebennian wrote: ↑
1 year ago
Tortured Existence?
Might not be worth the mana for the activation each turn. But 1 black mana for the token seems reasonable.

I've seen a bit of hype around Delayed Blast Fireball. Do you think it is worth it if you can't cast it straight from exile and have to foretell it? From my quick glance, you don't seem to have that many of the red draw/exile effects.

Tortured Existence - Ohh I like that. It is still a little wonky in that I need to get something to graveyard but with all my sac outlets I think its very doable. I guess the question is going to be how well the rest of the deck can maintain creating tokens because I have a lot of triggers for ETB / death and the downside of this is that it doesn't trigger any of those. I still want to pick up a copy and try it out but I guess the ultimate performance of it comes down a little to how hard it is to pull off getting a trigger every turn otherwise.

Delayed Blast Fireball - For me a lot of it is just instant speed clearing opponents tokens and uility creatures while not clearing my own. I can also sacrifice the Devil tokens to add the damage up if something has 3+ toughness that needs to die but for me its really about efficiently lowering the number of creatures in play at instant speed without hitting my own board. I could even do this mid combat to do some interesting blocks depending on when I execute it. Tokens are unreasonably popular where I am at and if you don't intentionally pack things to deal with tokens you die fast where I play. My expectation 90% of the time is to use it as a Pyroclasm that doesn't hit my things at instant speed.

EonAon · Post by **EonAon** » 1 year ago

Only a few I can say you might want are Body Dropper Deadly Dispute Abhorrent Overlord and Victimize

You may want to reconsider on Judith since she does say non token in her effect damage since you're mainly going to be saccing tokens more than base creatures at times.

Post by **ISBPathfinder** » 1 year ago

EonAon wrote: ↑
1 year ago
Only a few I can say you might want are Body Dropper Deadly Dispute Abhorrent Overlord and Victimize

You may want to reconsider on Judith since she does say non token in her effect damage since you're mainly going to be saccing tokens more than base creatures at times.

Thanks for dropping in and leaving some thoughts. I have a lot of thoughts roaming around for this list but I generally stick to my build outside of something glaring I missed out on until I can get some playtesting in. I am hoping I can get around to playing this deck some this week depending on when cards show up. I often try to get a few plays through on a new deck to really get some exposure on the cards in the deck as well as what is and isn't working. There are a lot of concepts and consistencies I am far from convinced I have right with this deck but I need to wait for some testing before I start poking too many things in the list. It also takes a lot of dang time for cards to come in the mail anymore so small tweaks annoy me to no end as they often take like a week and a half for me to get and alter on my lists.

Body Dropper - Its alright but its kind of %$#% as a sac outlet mostly making it just this growing powered lifelinker which I am not super fond of.
Deadly Dispute - Its ok as cheap draw but why this over Village Rites (which I also don't run)? I opted to not really worry about much for single situation sac because of how many repeat sac outlets I chose to include. I could also potentially go harder on card draw but I felt that some of my resources will probably be tied up just pushing creatures through play on each players turns doing things like Reassembling Skeleton and or Nether Traitor recursions. I do think my card draw, or tutors for the better draw could all be looked at yet but its something I was waiting to see how the deck as a whole functioned before I started making assumptions on that front.
Abhorrent Overlord - Well, I have a strong hatred for expensive cards as well as cards that are slow to perform. Its true that this effect is on an ETB but its a seven drop that makes tokens which feels glacially slow to me.
Victimize - Maybe, I have had a harder time with this card of late just because the number of mass reanimate effects has gone up a lot. There is some good value to this card with so many sac outlets plus access to cheap recursive creatures and token production. I do think there is a bit of a question to ask as to why this specific card even though its cheap there are just a lot of variations of mass reanimation popping around these days. I do think the three mana part of it is appealing but given I get to share around some spicy lifegain with this deck concept running something like Command the Dreadhorde might just be better. I think I have a decent bit of graveyard reliance already and I don't like dipping too far where getting hit makes it feel like I am out significant resources which is why I opted to go a little lighter on some of the dedicated rez that isn't tagged onto self recursion to start with but its something I should investigate assuming I enjoy this concept.
Judith, the Scourge Diva - I did see that but I felt like I was still going to be moving a lot of recursive creatures in and out of my graveyard so I figured that it was still reasonable value. I felt like her anthem was still good with the devils and power only upgrade on them seemed not to bad given the commander already powers them up decently. I am not sold on her for the long run but I wanted to get her at least to testing the deck which looks like it should hopefully happen soon as my cards should show up early next week. I tend to get a little gummed down with some ideas before I can at least get some initial testing up and running so I see what you are saying and perhaps I cut her but I also don't think her synergy is bad for the concept so I want to get her to testing at least.

Just for fun let me outline a few cards on the peripheral that I am thinking about for this deck.

Buried Alive / Vile Entomber - More options to get some of the recursive creatures to grave might be worthwhile.
Manabarbs - This card with some tribal lifelink could be very good. I kind of expect it to get panic swated like immediately but its hilarious if it could live in a deck full of lifelinkers lol.
Spellshock - Maybe slightly less concerning than Manabarbs but there are a lot of decks that just chain card draw and its good to hate on them.
Homura, Human Ascendant - I have all these sac outlets and tokens. It seems like it could be good here.
Puppeteer Clique - Lots of bodies go through play and with the sac outlets it even plays some grave hate effect.
Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose - With lifelink as an anthem this could be a funny nuke. Its on a creature as well so when he does die (which he will) he at least triggers to make me a token.
Gamble - I had a friend who jokingly calls this card red Entomb (he had a bad string of luck). That said, its not bad especially with a recursive deck.
Stinkweed Imp - I don't have a lot of good flyers so a recursive graveyard filling flyer who can defend me seems alright.
Altar of Dementia - Sac outlet and graveyard filling option. It seems ok.

EonAon · Post by **EonAon** » 1 year ago

Honestly Whip of Erebos might be a card to consider if you're wanting lifelink on an army if you cant get the big guy out. Another card that and I say this knowing its not the greatest but still on theme is Hoard Robber.

Body Dropper is more it can sit there growing to be a threat earlier on, but I also am fond of going a bit lower to the ground in Commander so I personally like 2cc drops or 3cc drops that can develop. To each their own.

Deadly is there mostly for draw and or when mass removal happens. It fits your theme even if it's only a one off. When I was looking through your deck you had some draw but not alot to really speed yourself up enough unless you hit necro. Also it leaves behind mana fixing that the other 1cc instant does not. The treasure token it gives alongside the cards drawn never hurt. And as a out for exile on artifacts and creatures its decently utility.

Abhorrent is there to switch out the Showstopper. You have some demons and devils and so on, but not enough that the 50/50 from flipping wont occasionally nuke yourself. Really you would need to really double down on the selected tribes so that the showstopper won't stop you. Yes Abhorrent is expensive and at worst its only giving you 2 flying tokens. But itself flies and on average its likely going to be five creatures+.

Manabarbs is a no. Not that it isnt a fun card but this isnt really group hate (which it fits in better). Spellshock is definitely a meta choice if your group is draw draw draw all the time. You said you disliked higher CC plays and you want Homura in? I would not play him since most of your tokens are sac bait and while all your other creatures are there most of them are tech ones that you would rather not have destroyed in battle.

Vito is good but that ability costs five. Gamble is well eh, your in black and you have access to three of the best tutors in game.

Post by **ISBPathfinder** » 1 year ago

@EonAon I have never really understood the idea of having redundancy for an effect your commander gives. If my commander has died I would rather replay them or ramp to get them faster / recast them rather than try to set up redundancy for them. I guess if you expect them to be thefted or transformed redundancy might be ok but with all of the sac outlets I am running my hope is to sac out of that happening. I could even slot in recursion, shroud / hexproof, or even a redirect instead. I have just always had a hard time with the idea of backing up the commander partially with a card that is redundant if I have my commander in play.

Beyond that, Whip of Erebos' mass lifelink only covers like 1/4th of what my commander does and a big focus of what I want to aim for is the token production from them. I think I am more likely to add some mass recursion or ramp over something like Whip personally.

Body Dropper - Keep in mind you won't always find it early and its slow to grow and dependent on the commander being setup for it to grow as well as you want it to. Even when it does grow well though it still lacks evasion making you spend resources and mana to try to give it menace which is still not that hard to block (I play against a hell of a lot of token decks personally). I get the appeal of the card but I also think that it is going to take time to setup the commander, recursive threats, and a sac outlet which makes me not that interested in this card given the setup it feels like he needs.

Card Draw - I can't say for certain but I suspect we should be looking more at cards that will draw us cards multiple times. Erebos, Bleak-Hearted for instance might end up drawing a TON of cards for the mana invested at the cost of some life which we can recover with all the lifelink we have. I have been looking at some of these draw per death cards for this concept especially since when this deck gets going correctly it should have at least four deaths per turn rotation if not more which is a lot of card draw for the mana if you break it down. I think I would rather boost up my count of cards that fall into this category personally rather than pushing for one shot draw like Sign in Blood or whatever variations of sac and draw one shot. I agree that my draw does probably look a bit light I was hoping to get some test games in and see where I stood but I think you are right that I am probably a little light on the draw still. I will have to look at what other versions I can get away with along these same lines because I know a few of them specify non tokens dying and I would rather go for ones that trigger on any death or sac personally.

Rakdos, the Showstopper - I love playing more controlling and I like what he does. He won't hit my commander or the tokens I am making so for me the only real question is if he kills my sac outlets which several can protect themselves by sacing to go indestructible. I want to give him a shot and see what he does. The goal is mostly to trim my opponents board positions while keeping mine mostly intact. The fact that he can be a 7/7 flying trampley lifelinker is also ok in my mind. I just prefer more of a control feel to my builds as a personal preference. I have no clue if he works out or not but I think its a cool on theme effect I have always wanted to try out but never felt it was all that on theme with what I was doing.

Manabarbs / Spellshock - They are mostly just thoughts for now. What I was thinking of is that I have several effects that already lower opponents life total as well as means to recoup life so if I played those effects out they would further pressure their life total and make playing big splashy things like chaining extra turns or ramping to the moon painful. The nature of the Devil tokens and aristocrats can all put pressure on opponents life totals and I think these effects can work. I am going to hold off on them for now but they could come in depending on how aggressively I am hitting opponents life totals.

Homura, Human Ascendant // Homura's Essence - Its interesting that you like Abhorrent Overlord but dislike Homura. Both cards require me to have some level of boardstate to really pull them off but Homura in the same situation gets buffed from the tokens that the commander makes where as the Abhorrent does not. Its also likely that playing and sacing Homura results in 10+ damage directly to opponents the turns he is played just from his immediate anthem and evasion buffs. My issue with Abhorrent is that it has no real immediate impact on the board as well as the fact that I am playing a two color deck with a token focus which feels like it doesn't play well to a devotion black concept. I didn't plan on adding Homura right now because I think it requires a lot of setup and mana but in my book it still registers far above Abhorrent Overlord for this type of deck.

Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose - I don't need to activate the ability, my commander already gives most of my creatures lifelink.

Gamble - Wait..... did I forget a Vampiric Tutor....... well %$#% I gotta fix that now...

So outside of those cards we were talking about I think I might be a little bit light on card draw and possibly a tad heavy on payoffs for sacrificing. Ultimately my goal is to get the commander into play and loop creatures through play to make tokens and getting extra gravy on top of that might be a touch greedy. I also think that some of my payoffs might be a little worse than I was hoping from them. Zulaport Cutthroat for instance is alright but my commander buffing and giving lifelink to imps can mimic a lot of what functionality this does already. I think I am going to trim some of the more offensive payoffs for some more draw.

DECK CHANGES:

Zulaport Cutthroat → Vampiric Tutor Ooops forgot Vamp Tutor. I should probably fix that. I opted to keep Bastion of Remembrance in the deck given that it comes with a disposable body and is harder to remove while doing the same thing. Keeping one in the deck will let me feel it out a bit to see if I want more of this or not.
Hellrider → Erebos, Bleak-Hearted Hellrider is really aggressive but it is also not impressive if I am not set up well. I want a bit more draw and hopefully that will help me setup better.
Tormod, the Desecrator → Dark Prophecy Tormod looked cute but it also looked like it was going to need a lot of setup for him to work out in the 99. The tokens he makes are mostly just going to help me make more tokens with my commander but he is also dependant on things beting setup for my commander to function. So.... lets just slot in a bit more draw instead.
Havoc Jester → Liliana, Dreadhorde General I think Havoc Jester can be good but its still a mostly worse Mayhem Devil for more mana. Liliana does a lot of things this deck can make use of and even if everything isn't working for me her Barter in Blood -3 effect can still be really good even when my deck isn't firing well but making zombies and drawing on creature deaths are all really good.
Descent of the Dragons → Command the Dreadhorde I could probably use a little more backup for when my commander dies and I like what Command brings to the table.

I think I might also contemplate cutting Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger as well but I want to try to play it first. I own one and I think its a cool card that I haven't seen played much in commander and I want to play it for now even though I don't think it really fits all that great here.

EonAon · Post by **EonAon** » 1 year ago

On redundancy, if you're counting on lifegain or recoupment from all the ping you do to yourself and to others while having your commander on the field, it's a 5cc commander then a 7cc and so on if it gets destroyed over and over you cant always count on it. Ill give you whip isnt giving you every option but if you need lifegain and cant afford the commander in chief, its a option.

Yeah the draw your adding will definitely help you. Havoc Jester was one of those ok its on theme for both sides but kinda felt awkward. I was wondering that I missed something about Kroxa in this deck. It felt counter to what the deck wanted out of the yard but I also didn't know if I missed a interaction that benefitted from losing 5 utility creatures out of the yard.

Tempted to give a suggestion as a alternate for Kroxa but you're not going to like it. It works but its still a devotion card and looking at the mix now it could work decently but not spectacular. I regularly use it in my Showstopper deck.

Post by **ISBPathfinder** » 1 year ago

Ok, I got to play one game with this deck tonight. Then I ended up against some less sweaty players and I ended up playing my budget walls deck essentially the rest of the night. Interestingly enough a player opening hand started a Leyline of the Void which is an absolute BEATING for this deck. I realized that my deck was 5 cards short of 100 so I ended up throwing a few things together at the last second to test some things out.

Opening hand was decent with some recursive stuff but a lack of sac outlets. It didn't matter though due to the dang leyline lol. I ended up playing a Bolas's Citadel (one of my five test added cards) on turn four off of a Mana Crypt. From there I topdecked a Diabolic Intent which I used the Ophiomancer token to tutor up Chaos Warp and walked right into a Deflecting Swat which I couldn't cast off the top. I pass figuring at the least I can use the swat to protect my citadel if need be. I proceed to take a bunch of random attacks for good reason. The next turn I end up topdecking a few reasonable cards and push Yahenni, Undying Partisan and Woe Strider and maybe something else I can't recall into play. I walk into a Bolt Bend on top which gets me stuck again. I cast Jeweled Lotus from hand which the blue player decides to try to counter but I Bolt Bend it back to him (I am down to like 18 life at this point lol). I cast my commander and pass as my life is getting low and I think the Horde of Notions player is going to possibly destroy my Citadel or the Void soon as he made some comment about turn six which it is.

Horde of Notions player plays a Bane of Progress and blows out my fun toys but also enables my commander to work. My hand is down to being mostly just Chaos Warp and Deflecting Swat but I have Ophiomancer, two sac outlets, and Bloodghast in play. I start scrying every turn while making tokens.

From here the game stagnates a little. I end up killing some junk defensively with the devil tokens while also swinging heavily with them. I go up to something like 8 of them but then lose like half in the attacks. I end up scrying until I find a Doom Whisperer which with my new high life total starts kind of almost tutoring for me as I have a lot of life to work with now. The game gets a bit out of control from here as my opponents don't deal with my sac outlets or my recursive token production. The Horde of Notions player tries to topdeck tutor an elemental and I wait for it to resolve to Chaos Warp his Ancient Greenwarden which shuts him down SUUUUPER hard.

From here I just start enabling turns of big rolling death. I managed to pump them up using Castle Embereth which isn't in my list either which I guess I need a copy of. I ended the game off of using Deflecting Swat on a Time Warp to super wreck the last dregs of those alive.

This was just one game but the amount of interaction / removal as well as how aggressive it could be was all very interesting. I need a lot more testing but the first game was impressive. I liked leveraging my life total for resources. Some other random cards I was thinking about adding might be Burnished Hart, Heraldic Banner, and Bolas's Citadel. Sorry for how randomly this is organized just putting a few thoughts down quick while they were fresh.

At the lowest I ended up using my life and got down to maybe 12 or so life but then I swung back up to over 100 by the end of the game when it ended. The lifegain was very relevant but I also did notice it can be hard to get fully set up with all the right pieces. I definitely need more testing as I am nowhere near sufficient on my testing so far.

duducrash · Post by **duducrash** » 1 year ago

Ob Nixilis, the Adversary has been dominant across multiple formats have you considered him?

Post by **ISBPathfinder** » 1 year ago

duducrash wrote: ↑
1 year ago
Ob Nixilis, the Adversary has been dominant across multiple formats have you considered him?

I put a lot of considerations into Devil tokens. There are a number of reasonable cards that spawn them in addition to Ob Nix which you mentioned there are also Zariel, Archduke of Avernus, Burn Down the House, Zurzoth, Chaos Rider (is in my list currently), and Devils' Playground. In the end I decided to just leverage my commander's ability to make tokens rather than rely on these cards. If I can assemble recursive creatures and a sac outlet I can potentially make up to four Devil tokens per turn. I also felt like even if I include other means of making devil tokens I have the issue that I am still susceptible to removal on my commander cutting my power in half on these tokens mid combat. I felt like ultimately the power of these cards seemed lower than my commander and yet still they seemed reliant on my commander for buffing. Ob Nix can potentially frontload me a few tokens but even if he does he is going to be inconsistent in making the tokens and his plus ability seems not great in this format as a whole and less good with access to good lifegain. A big part of why he has been seeing good play in other formats is just how many bodies he covers making him very hard to spot remove. His saving grace is potentially his -7 ability and the fact that I could run some 6/6 demons and sac them to bring in and ult the copy but even then I don't think its that impressive of a move when I could just as easily run something like Disciple of Bolas.

So, I have been giving it some thought and I think I might want to run some ETB and draw based demons. There are some random demons like Rune-Scarred Demon that while I haven't run one in a good long time getting a demonic tutor and a super powered Baneslayer Angel stapled together isn't really so bad. I am going to give some of the demons a second pass through and potentially cut some of the token / aristocrat payoff concepts just because if my commander is working that is most of the time enough payoff for me. I will probably still keep some of them that give me some removal and ramp elements but some of the ones that just do damage to opponents or siphon life feel less good to me than having a card advantage demon who is also huge with flying and lifelink. I still don't want to blow up the top end of my curve so I am going to not go tooooo crazy on this but I think I want to cut some of the aristocrat payoff out and just make the deck a little more consistent with more draw and big fatty demons that are good even if the rest of my deck isn't necessarily firing. I have a bunch of things to figure out yet but I figured I needed a bit longer to browse some of the changes I want to do. It might be something like a 10+ card change to the deck so I will figure that out soon I just figured I would iron out some of my initial thoughts.

EonAon · Post by **EonAon** » 1 year ago

These are the probable what you're looking for cards
Burning-Rune Demon
Kothophed, Soul Hoarder
Demonlord Belzenlok
Varragoth, Bloodsky Sire

These are the could be useful likely not going to get great traction cards
Hidetsugu, Devouring Chaos
Bloodgift Demon
Harvester of Souls

the too high CC cost ones
Vilis, Broker of Blood
Rune-Scarred Demon

Post by **ISBPathfinder** » 1 year ago

I did manage to play three games with this deck this weekend. I didn't win any of the games and I will be honest there was more than one game where I was annoyed at the power level the table was playing even though I knew ahead of time I didn't really have anything super fast and hard hitting to play against them which left me on occasion just playing this deck because I wanted to test it more.

First of all, it takes a hell of a lot of setup to get things to sac consistantly + a sac outlet + my commander to play. When I did though my commander did perform fine its just that it takes sort of a lot of time to set that up as well as cards. I did really like some random demons I added to test things out and I think I will continue to explore this. I haven't updated my OP with anything yet but my current list is lighter on the aristocrat payoffs and it might get even leaner given my experience with some issues getting set up especially getting beyond set up with my commander. My commander can also take a lot of heat in the form of removal and I think my solution is likely going to be to lean a bit more into recursion like Victimize even though I didn't think I was going to go that direction earlier. If I go further into recursion it might also push me into running some red looting potentially (we will see) like Faithless Looting at least lightly.

I really wanted some sources of haste with a lot of the demons so I can transition them to offense to gain the life quickly. I might bring anger back which would also make some of the entomb stuff more interesting as well. I will also probably lean into some of the red haste based lands.

The noncreature sac outlets - Its worth mentioning that the Altars / Goblin Bombardment are more of mass sac outlets / things you want to do in numbers probably on your turn. The nature of this deck wanting to sac like one creature one each players turns makes a lot of these worse. I am not really sure but I might be removing some of these.

Sorry I haven't updated the OP yet, its a bit in flux right now and I am moving in a few days so my time is a bit tighter and my list is definitely moving about still.

@EonAon Rakdos, Lord of Riots might be reasonable too for the cost reduction / stats / lifelink setup. I could see it curving well with a sac outlet / recursive creature enabling you to cast it as nobody is really expecting that taking a few damage to a bad creature to enable him to pop out from the 99.

EonAon · Post by **EonAon** » 1 year ago

Im torn. On one hand if any deck could plug in Lord of Riots, an aristocrat's deck would be the one. It really helps develop the post parts of the aristocrat plays, i.e. sacrificing to ping and disrupt. You should be able to get him out regularly. The downside is you said your setup was developing slowish which really hurts getting riots out consistently when you draw/get him. Keep Goblin Bombardment in if you put Riot in. I would definitely try it out especially since your adding the larger demons to the mix. Stabilizing the engine would be first priority. Another way to cheat creatures/spells out would be Dream Devourer since foretell is an ability and devourer wont need to be on the field to fortell those cards later on and as a bonus cant be countered.

Found all the haste barring boots and greaves which are obvious:
Footfall Crater I think this is a really good play if your trying to get haste as a semi backup as well as a bit of draw if the other option is up
Mass Hysteria Would not play. It hits everyone, only put it here cause its semi relevant.
Need for Speed Dunno dealers choice but probably not.
Determined Iteration Interesting in that your going to sac a token anyway so included it
Dragon Tempest this is a personal fav but your deck does not have enough flyers in its current iteration. Maybe the larger demons variant can use it. I mean yeah your barely using the second ability but all flying creatures get haste at 2cc with little downside.
Fervor It does the job but meh 3cc
Hammer of Purphoros mostly used for the top rather than the bottom but the create token ability might be good in landflood and endgame situations

Hall of the Bandit Lord Mainly your two choices and I'd play Hanweir more than this since hall always asks for three life to gain 1 mana.
Hanweir Battlements

Flamekin Village is a probably not considering taplands aren't that good and its always etb tapped.

Zariel, Archduke of Avernus If your looking for haste and devils.....might as well.

Couple cards that may make some of the ETB effects pop or keep Raph on the board more are:
Undying Evil
Malakir Rebirth // Malakir Mire
Supernatural Stamina

Since your Aristocrats those can be used both defensively and offensively.

Post by **ISBPathfinder** » 1 year ago

I am going to drop a list here that is sort of what I am thinking of shifting to. Some of my physical changes have already been along these lines and I won't update the OP yet because I am not totally convinced. It does have a lot less payoffs for the aristocrats thing working in part because I have had some trouble getting set up without getting 3v1ed. For some reason this deck attracts a hell of a lot of interaction responses from my opponents which seems a little odd to me but I guess the devils are kind of removal. In almost all of my games I played recently I ate like most of the played removal and took most of the attacks which seems a bit odd to me. I did have some decent starts though.

This build has a little more setup emphasis for getting my recursive creatures going. I didn't have as many ways to get them going previously and I felt like it hurt me for not having them more consistently. There is an increase in random big demon setup which can hopefully give me some card advantage and some big lifelinkers for when my token production isn't always great not to mention some flying defenses. I also pushed harder on draw and recursion than I did previously. I didn't know that Morbid Opportunist was a card but he does draw on token deaths too which is really good since this deck objectively moves a creature per player's turns. I also brought in a little more recursion than I previously had.

I brought in Wild Magic Surge because Leyline of the Void / Rest in Peace / Dauthi Voidwalker can really jack with this deck hard and I wanted something that could answer most any problem that could also be tutored. I did have Chaos Warp already but I wanted a little more density considering how hard countered I felt when these things happened.

I am not sure what my availability to play is going to be for a while as I am moving to a new area and I don't know if and where people play. I did want to leave where I stood for now and see if anyone had feedback. Its also a bit odd as I am making changes some of which might be local meta changes as I change meta. It should be interesting to see how the deck does going somewhere else assuming I can find another place.

Decklist

COMMANDER (1)

1 Raphael, Fiendish Savior

CREATURES (29)

1 Carrion Feeder

1 Viscera Seer

1 Bloodghast

1 Juri, Master of the Revue

1 Nether Traitor

1 Reassembling Skeleton

1 Ophiomancer

1 Woe Strider

1 Yahenni, Undying Partisan

1 Anger

1 Body Launderer

1 Erebos, Bleak-Hearted

1 Falkenrath Aristocrat

1 Golden Guardian

1 Immersturm Predator

1 Rakdos, Lord of Riots

1 Solemn Simulacrum

1 Vile Entomber

1 Yawgmoth, Thran Physician

1 Doom Whisperer

1 Burning-Rune Demon

1 Kothophed, Soul Hoarder

1 Rakdos, the Showstopper

1 Rune-Scarred Demon

ARTIFACT (9)

1 Jeweled Lotus

1 Mana Crypt

1 Skullclamp

1 Sol Ring

1 Arcane Signet

1 Sword of the Animist

1 Heraldic Banner

1 Sword of Hearth and Home

1 Bolas's Citadel

ENCHANTMENT (3)

1 Goblin Bombardment

1 Dark Prophecy

1 Necropotence

INSTANT (10)

1 Entomb

1 Tragic Slip

1 Terminate

1 Chaos Warp

1 Delayed Blast Fireball

1 Fire Covenant

SORCERY (9)

1 Reanimate

1 Victimize

1 Command the Dreadhorde

PLANESWALKER (2)

1 Lolth, Spider Queen

1 Liliana, Dreadhorde General

LAND (37)

1 Arid Mesa

1 Badlands

1 Blood Crypt

1 Hanweir Battlements

1 High Market

1 Marsh Flats

2 Mountain

1 Strip Mine

10 Swamp

1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

1 Verdant Catacombs

1 Volrath's Stronghold

1 Wasteland

1 Wooded Foothills

Approximate Total Cost:

EDIT: I swapped my OP with this list and added what used to be the OP into the below spoiler. The changes are somewhat high to highlight every card swap but a lot of things weren't really working out because I had too much setup for payoffs and not enough draw / and setup for the sac to reliably get set up especially given disruption.

Old List

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This was my list before the above large overhaul. You will notice I had a lot more payoffs for sac in this but I felt like Raphael was my best payoff and the one I wanted to focus on. I opted to lower my payoffs in deck and increase the consistancy I have in setting up sac loops to generate tokens from my commander. I also added some sort of goodstuff level of demons and additional draw engines.

Decklist

COMMANDER (1)

1 Raphael, Fiendish Savior

ARTIFACT (9)

1 Jeweled Lotus

1 Mana Crypt

1 Skullclamp

1 Sol Ring

1 Wayfarer's Bauble

1 Arcane Signet

1 Sword of the Animist

1 Ashnod's Altar

1 Phyrexian Altar

ENCHANTMENT (5)

1 Goblin Bombardment

1 Bastion of Remembrance

1 Dark Prophecy

1 Necropotence

1 Tombstone Stairwell

INSTANT (10)

1 Entomb

1 Tragic Slip

1 Vampiric Tutor

1 Plumb the Forbidden

1 Terminate

1 Chaos Warp

1 Deflecting Swat

1 Delayed Blast Fireball

1 Fire Covenant

1 Bolt Bend

SORCERY (5)

1 Command the Dreadhorde

PLANESWALKER (1)

1 Liliana, Dreadhorde General

LAND (37)

1 Arid Mesa

1 Badlands

1 Blood Crypt

1 High Market

1 Marsh Flats

2 Mountain

1 Strip Mine

12 Swamp

1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

1 Verdant Catacombs

1 Volrath's Stronghold

1 Wasteland

1 Wooded Foothills

Approximate Total Cost:

EonAon · Post by **EonAon** » 1 year ago

I still think you should put in Zariel, but Lolith is definitely a good choice as well. The changes seem like they really improved the deck.

I would take out Cabal Stronghold since you only have 10 swamps and Urborg doesn't change the lands in play to basic swamps but just swamps as per the gatherer:
Urborg's ability causes each land on the battlefield to have the land type Swamp. Any land that's a Swamp has the ability "Tap: Add Black." Nothing else changes about those lands, including their names, other subtypes, other abilities, and whether they're legendary, basic, or snow.

So it counts things differently than Coffers.

Post by **ISBPathfinder** » 1 year ago

So........... I won a game last night and I guess it was an alright game. My issue with this deck is it just takes too many pieces to do something cute while drawing too much attention to itself. The game I won last night I was at 3 life left just because well everyone was poking life totals and my own draw effects were tearing through my life a little unintentionally. Beyond that though it just feels like whenever I get going even a little bit with this deck I end up drawing too much attention and getting squashed by answers. I ended up winning the game last night off the back of a Living Death + Anger + ulting Lolth, Spider Queen and swinging like 12 creatures to do a ton of damage.

I am mostly just making this post to say that I don't really know what my intentions for this deck are but I am leaning towards retiring it from the standpoint that I have had too many issues getting it to do its thing and as soon as I am sort of doing the thing I usually get mobbed to death by answers or my opponents creatures. My overall concern is that the complexity of assembly is too high as well as the perceived threat of what its doing seems to be not going so well. This game I am talking about was a brand new meta first game so opponents didn't really have a perception of me personally but I drew a lot of attention still based on what I was doing. It worked out alright but when I win with this deck it always feels like I had to draw all the damn cards to squeak something out barely. Its a cool commander I just think that perhaps its a little unwieldy. Its possible I could just add some more random demons like Abyssal Persecutor and just beat in on people with lifelinkers but my plan of setting up sac loops on opponents turns has been tough.

EonAon · Post by **EonAon** » 1 year ago

My first question would be what was the meta like overall. What commanders saw play and what strategies were at the table?

Post by **ISBPathfinder** » 1 year ago

EonAon wrote: ↑
1 year ago
My first question would be what was the meta like overall. What commanders saw play and what strategies were at the table?

The game I played was a three player game against Kambal, Consul of Allocation and Lathril, Blade of the Elves. Both ended up having some level of life syphoning to them. I don't know the meta well by any means as I sat down and played two games total and while I was there I saw at least 5 other pods of players so I didn't exactly get a good take of what the meta is like.

As soon as I got set up to make some tokens using Ophiomancer and Demonic Tutoring for Viscera Seer to have a sac outlet. As soon as I got this set up I got swept. I luckily had a draw on death trigger which drew me up and I spent the turn after ramping a bunch of lands and just playing to the board to keep from discarding. The turn after that we saw a Death Cloud for 5 which only didn't wreck me due to the amount of ramp I had been pushing that whole game. I ended up getting a Sword of the Animist on like turn 3 on my T2 Ophiomancer and I pushed it into quite a bit of ramp advantage. The only real reason I was in this game was the amount of ramp and draw I was pushing.

After the Death Cloud I dropped my Living Death and barely squeaked out my win with a few health left. My big issue so far is it feels like anytime anyone has interaction it always gets used on me at the most inoportune time. The deck looks mennacing when its setting up and people throw like.... all removal at it. This was a brand new meta I was playing in and I still kind of ate all the removal. I powered through it just barely off the back of draw and ramp but considering I drew half my deck it shouldn't have been as close a game as it was.

EonAon · Post by **EonAon** » 1 year ago

Thats a lot of group hate two different ways. This deck may have to tighten the token production to mass zombies or goblins to fight through such a meta since those are the only tribes that spam tokens. Which I get isnt the way the deck wants to behave. I say play a few more games when possible, to get a better overall feel for the meta before totally canning the deck. It could also be that you got the worst matchup from the meta. That and since both decks were syphon types add more ways to gain back life lost.

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