So I finally played this last night. I noticed a few things, and had some awkward top decks. I also noticed a definite weakness to edicts, which suggests my prior version with the disposable bodies is a much more correct direction (threaten effects would not have helped at all); Squee, Bloodghast, Bloodsoaked Champion, Nether Traitor, even as far down the list as Reassembling Skeleton & Bitterblossom would all go so far in shoring up this very, overly glaring weakness. And I'll explain why.
Three way game, I on Greven versus
Kodama of the South Tree (lolwut whhhyyy? but I digress), and
Whisper, Blood Liturgist (whom was never cast either). So, I knocked Kodama out quick courtesy of
Volcano Hellion (whom, fun fact, is
not like
fire covenant and in fact only kills one guy >_>. Still great, but that did affect some math here) and
Combat Celebrant. I drew 10 cards this turn after my celebrant's attack. This was my t5, thanks to my chrome mox. Then I turned to Whisper. Things got a bit dicey and drawn out as he started running out pawn of ulamog, gonti, and then with a tortured existence a fleshbag began getting looped. Now, I had a basilisk collar and was at 65 life so I didn't feel endangered at any point, but it was a clear cockblock to our strategy here. It got worse when he ripped a plaguecrafter for redundancy. He also had a skullclamp to keep digging through the deck. But my life was still never pressured, at least not that I felt. Ultimately, I won when I top decked a
Withering Wisps and just annihilated his board one
B at a time, which he conceded to.
I had both imp's mischief and bolt bent stuck in my hand all game with nothing to target. Srsly, zero targeted spells came from either deck. I'm not sure if these were just bad decks, or if they were
those people that cling to the "spot removal is bad" false ideology.
I got to utilize
Doom Whisperer a lot, and the clear best surveil ever was dropping both Bob and Anger into the yard, in response to a Gonti trigger (I got Gonti'd three times).
Had I been playing
Mijae Djinn, I couldn't have played it for a number of turns. As I suspected, I only had
RR available for a number of turns, which makes sense as I slanted the mana much more heavily towards
B.
Even with all my mana rocks, I only saw the mox and astrolabe and it made my early turns feel lackadaisical and wasted. I bet if I had more action, like the disposable bodies, I could make use of aggro creatures like
Kjeldoran Dead and
Spined Fluke, both of which being attractive with their very lucrative power :: toughness ratio. I suspect
Cinder Wall would also be very strong as a draw3 for
R. This kinda goes against the all in strat you've established, but, I think as the game last night taught me, playing this all-in is very risky and too prone to getting cockblocked out of the game.
Whew. Lastly, I suspect we are developing this deck far more than the average player, or even seasoned player, develops their deck, leading to an over-optimization where players begin to refuse play with you, citing, "you take this game too serious". Well, as if it weren't obvious.