But reading EDHREC's article on "The 600" made me realize - waitaminute, Acerak can actually do this in monoblack?
- Heartless Summoning gets Acerak down to just . So does Urza's Incubator naming Zombies. Those are the two rockstar cards with Semblance Anvil as plan B, but we can also use any combination of two other reducers (Bontu's Monument and Jet Medallion are best, but there's also Herald's Horn, Undead Warchief, and Cloud Key).
- Having to still pay B is meh - but we can get around that too, and not just from the odd treasures out of our dungeons. One way to do that is with "one of the worst cards in Magic's history" - Carnival of Souls. Assuming we wait to go off until the moment we're ready, we can use this as a reducer - or, with other reducers, effectively cast Acerak as many times as we have life. Lost Mines and Mad Mage kick a bit of life back, Bontu's Monument keeps us even at base (and eventually kills the table). We can also enter escape velocity and gain eventually infinite life with Aetherflux Reservoir too.
- Alternatively, we can generate a ton of tokens with Genesis Chamber, Diregraf Colossus, or Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder. Now, those tokens are a bit awkward with Heartless sometimes without support - but if that wasn't our plan and we assembled other reducers, we can feed those tokens to Phyrexian Altar to keep going forever. Or, with Heartless out or with some other solid sacrifice outlet we can instead keep going with help from Pitiless Plunderer.
- Finally, we're gonna be drawing cards with all our ventures, and can draw more cards with Vanquisher's Banner, turning them into more mana with Skirge Familiar if we must.
- With infinite ventures, we do just eventually kill with Bontu's Monument, Aetherflux Reservoir, or even just Phandelver triggers. We can also speed stuff up with a variety of other EtB/dies effects, or by making a giant storm count and then doming people with Tendrils of Agony (we like Rituals anyways to help us pump out more ventures, so being a straight Storm deck isn't a terrible idea).
Now, I can hear you all reading - "but wait Hawk! All of those "infinites" are like 3-4 card combos! Even with Acerak in the command zone, and even with many of them having tons of redundancy, this deck feels super sketchy!" And to you all, I say - sure, true, but there's a few mitigating factors:
- We're in monoblack, and thus have all the best tutors in Magic at our fingertips. In addition to the inherent redundancy of the deck, we can fudge stuff further with stuff like Demonic Tutor, Vampiric Tutor, and Beseech the Queen.
- Dungeon of the Mad Mage draws so many cards and scrys through so much chaff that it's pretty good even if we're taking the "slow path" and just venturing 2-5 times per turn.
- We're also in the color of Cabal Coffers and Crypt Ghast, and as a monocolored deck we're primed to utilize Jeweled Lotus, Caged Sun, Dark Ritual, and Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx to bootstrap our mana - it's not hard to imagine us being able to complete Dungeon of the Mad Mage every turn (possibly even multiple times per turn) even without an infinite at our disposal, which is just a ton of value.
Here's my first draft of the deck:
Acerak's Carnival of Annihilation
Approximate Total Cost:
As a few notes:
1. This deck is still 11 cards to completion. I'm having a hard time figuring out what I want - a few things I have in mind:
- Mana doublers like Crypt Ghast, Gauntlet of Power, and Caged Sun to make it easier to churn Ventures without a combo engine out.
- More cost reducers! I skipped some of the ones I felt were bad or too slow like Undead Warchief, The Immortal Sun, Planar Gate, and Seal of the Guildpact, but it may be so important that it's just worth running them all.
- More warm bodies, especially tribal zombies or creatures that have a 0: Sacrifice a creature-type effect.
- I tend to think that we have enough, but could also be convinced to run even more draw/tutor effects (like Imperial Seal, Tainted Pact, Necropotence, or Grim Tutor), more fast mana (notably Chrome Mox but also possibly Mana Vault, Grim Monolith, etc.), and more storm-centric stuff like Mishra's Bauble and Urza's Bauble and Yawgmoth's Will .
- I could also see a world with a more stax-y bent to disrupt opponents with stuff like Opposition Agent or Winter Orb although I personally think that's totally bleh for a deck that already seems unfun.
