Pharika, God of Affliction and Enchantments
Pharika, God of Affliction
Approximate Total Cost:
About the deck
The deck either wins through combat damage or one of the Vraskas' ultimate abilities (followed by combat damage). This deck really is just going to win by turning creatures sideways. I suppose it wouldn't be unreasonable to put something like Exsanguinate in the deck as mana production isn't a huge hurdle so you could pull off a moderately sized X value (this deck isn't ramping insanely though but sometimes a card like that doesn't have to be instantly lethal). There are a number of cards that chip away at the enemy life totals like Poison-Tip Archer and Pestilence which can also be a major source of damage over the course of a game.
Cards like Gift of the Deity or Lure can help Pharika pull opponent's blockers for the rest of your field to get damage through. Pestilence also works wonderfully with Pharika as long as you are able to keep her in her creature state you can just keep pumping mana into Pestilence to throw damage around, giving you a clear board to swing through for commander damage. Sometimes the win is just a slow grind of swinging with Pharika, God of Affliction while keeping the board cleared.
Pharika gives you repeatable grave-hate (for creatures), which can be incredibly helpful in many cases. If you are facing graveyard oriented decks, it can be wise to play a little slower and leave mana available for a Pharika activation just in case. Giving the opponent a snake is rarely a big deal and if you get Illness in the Ranks in play then there is no downside.
This deck gets a good amount of card draw from various enchantment ETB effects and runs a health amount of recursive cards as well. Ramp is generally not a huge problem either.
Issues you may have
Further Notes
Living Plane is amazing with Doomwake Giant, I don't have a copy of it myself and don't plan on getting one anytime soon.
At the moment I don't use any of the black tutors like Demonic Tutor. Those cards can absolutely have a place in this deck, probably at the expense of recursive cards, but I haven't really missed them. I'm definitely not opposed to their inclusion (I have those cards in plenty of other decks).