Artaud wrote: ↑4 years ago
I don't see
Ancient Tomb here and adding fetches will also allow to pump Greven a little.
You will need ways to restore your life total as you won't be fastest deck on a table usually. You already use
Loxodon Warhammer but including
Batterskull provides repeatable sac fodder beside lifelink and
Kokusho is always great sacrifice target.
No off color fetches is personal preference for multicolor lists, so those are unlikely to make an appearance. Tomb is a reasonable call, probably over a basic. I agree that more lifegain is probably a good plan. At the moment, it's Warhammer and
Whip of Erebos. I'm not sure where I want to go next on that. Batterskull is definitely a reasonable card here, though I'm not sure what the cut is yet.
Basilisk Collar is another one I'm considering for that role. Kokusho is one I may revisit in the future. I'm not a huge fan of the card, especially because it's 6 CMC. I also don't have sac outlets outside of Greven in the list which makes Kokusho a lot less reliable as lifegain.
As is, the deck doesn't have much use for sac outlets. There are relatively few ETB/LTB effects on the creatures and few death triggers. Without some kind of payoff for sacrificing creatures beyond what's on the outlet, I'm not super interested in doing it. There's definitely potential with Greven for something that goes further into that, but it's not happening in this deck as built right now.
I'm hesitant about adding too many more ways to damage myself before I have the chance to play the deck a little. There are already a lot of things doing that, not the least of which is Greven. The hope is that all of the burn and Greven beats take out opponents before it all adds up to take me out - there are around 10 ways to make Greven a 3 turn clock unassisted, several more that will do the same with things like continued land drops or mana investment, and a few that will make him into a 2 turn or 1 turn clock. The thing I'm trying to avoid is leaning really heavily on Greven and taking out 1-2 players, then being cold to whoever's left. I'm starting with less ways for explosive Greven kills on the assumption that a bunch of small effects and the trigger will stack up anyways, then leaning on burn for additional reach late. From that standpoint, the stuff like
Manabarbs and
Ankh of Mishra is appealing, but the rest of it may wait for a bit until I see how quickly my life total is dropping in game. I'll probably still play
Doom Whisperer too, because I love that card and it's a great fit here. If it constantly gets seen as a potential
Hatred, I may need to rethink it.
Vilis in particular I'm skipping because I'm trying to stay lower curve. He feels a lot more like a reanimation target to me, which I don't have a ton of support for. Drakuseth is already pushing it pretty hard.
In the interest of making my playgroup love me even more, I'm also debating the merits of
Pox|ICE and
Wildfire. I think I'd need to go heavier on mana rocks for both of those, which was already proposed earlier in this thread.
and I agree that this is a deck that needs playing because toying with our own life total is trickier than other strategies. Finally, i think that the instant speed Hatred like cards can be the most explosive when deciding to kill an opponent with commander damage
