capitacommunist wrote: ↑6 days ago
Just some thoughts from my
Gisa the Hellraiser deck:
- If budget is not a problem (presumption given Bazaar is in here), Candelabra of Tawnos is definitely great as a mixed acceleration piece / crime committer in mono black.
- If you feel you're short on enablers, the following are all good additional options: Merrow Bonegnawer, Agatha's Soul Cauldron, Attrition, Codex Shredder, Retribution of the Ancients, Withered Wretch.
- My list goes much heavier in on artifact accelaration than yours, but if you would go further on that route Voltaic Key / Manifold Key also become interesting options, as they can also commit a crime in a pinch by targeting your opponents artifacts.
- Would definitely add the cheap reanimators that can hit your opponents graveyards, Reanimate, Animate Dead, Dance of the Dead.
- No necropotence? Palantír of Orthanc is another card draw option that also commits a crime on your endstep.
Hope this helps!
It both is and isn't budget. If I really wanted a
Candelabra of Tawnos, I could buy one but realistically I don't feel like spending that kind of money on a single piece of cardboard. I haven't ever spent more than $300 for any card including my Bazaar. I think Candelabra is an ok card but its also a card I would play extremely scarcely just in that it really only pairs with big mana making lands like coffers and cradle and I don't build that many decks with those cards to justify that purchase. To be fair, I am not even convinced that Bazaar fits here but I own one and I love trying it out.
Crime Enablers - I am going to boost my count a little but I really don't have enough testing in to say that I am having an issue with my crime enablers offhand. I suspect that my deck was a bit clumpy and if anything I maybe could have used a little more draw as a whole. I thought that with the commander's recast stuff I would be swimming in spellcasting but too often I couldn't jumpstart the crime chain which is odd but again I felt like I drew a bunch of lands and weird creatures who couldn't trigger crime in those two games. I have a lot of crime triggering effects that weren't seen in those two games so its probably me jumping to conclusions but I will increase my count a little to see.
Artifacts in general are something I am trying to downplay since I have synergy with recasting black cards. I made some exceptions especially for crime committing artifacts that can cantrip but I don't think I want to go so deep as to running the untappers.
Reanimation - The hard part with reanimation is just how many different strategies there are these days and how few decks are running generic goodstuff ETB like creatures. You get equipment decks, aura decks, token decks, spellslinger decks, tribal decks. I have had a lot less success trying to rez opponents creatures just in that their creatures are often weird when you don't have their commander. Its cool that they could trigger crimes and be reused so maybe? I just know that historically of late I have had a hard time with opponents creatures outside of a few standouts like assuming a red deck might have
Dockside Extortionist offhand.
Necropotence?
Palantír of Orthanc - I.... why the %$#% don't I have necro..... well I guess we fix that now. Palantir I didn't think about because I was so focused on trying to cull artifacts but its cheap enough, triggers soon after play, and the mill is useful. Yea I am game.
The land slot utility is a tough call. I am not against having a little utility but the utility effects also hurt the coffer basic consistency. This deck is also very spell chaining black mana intensive so colorless mana can hurt when trying to multi cast spells with nothing but black pips to them. I tend to play my mono black decks with a little less land utility to them to push coffers to working a little harder and sooner.
Strip Mines - I will probably pass for now just because my wincon is aristocrats rather than voltron. I tend to try to get to a few strip mine effects when running voltron just in case a maze effect is opposing me and in general I try to run at least one but I am abusing a lot of big mana lands in this deck myself that encourage me to be greedy with my landbase.
Rishadan Port - mayyyybe I am not as excited about the utility of what it does though I would rather see utility like
Tower of the Magistrate which I might add as a way of taking out equipment especially pro black swords or indestructible equips.
Shizo, Death's Storehouse - Its fine. I don't plan on attacking with my commander so its mostly a land that taps for black, enters untapped, and has a crime option that has a slight downside of not being an actual swamp for the sake of coffers. I can probably add it and see how it performs.
DECK CHANGES:
- Mirkwood Bats → Palantír of Orthanc Mirkwood was decent but the fact that it only hits opponents, gives no life back, and doesn't trigger crime were all kind of problems for me. It was good offensively but not so good in keeping me going. I wanted to make more room for some draw and Palantir being sort of mill, crime triggering, and sort of draw all sound good to me.
- Wayfarer's Bauble → Jet Medallion I do think that wayfarer's is fine in a coffers deck but I am multi casting enough that I wanted the medallion more. Bauble isn't that impressive of ramp until and unless you also find a coffers effect where as medallion has more stand alone value for me.
- Promise of Aclazotz → The One Ring promise felt like a card that could be amazing if I was fully set up but its performance when I was like half setup wasn't amazing. I needed more draw and I originally thought I would be fine without one ring but damn its sooo good. I just can't help myself. Why isn't this dang card banned yet?
- Sheoldred's Edict → Deadly Rollick swapping some removal around. Rollick triggers a crime and its honestly really good removal so long as opponents don't have hexproof.
- Word of Command → Necropotence I do love word of command and I got to cast it against someone who panicked and burned their turn which was funny. I need some more draw though so in comes necro.
- Vesuva → Tower of the Magistrate vesuva has the liability of needing to come after a coffers land is in play and being somewhat of a liability before that time. Tower gives me a crime option that plays well to black's removal suite in that it can strip protections and indestructible.
- 1 Swamp → Shizo, Death's Storehouse still a land entering untapped that provides black and can commit crimes. It is a small ding to the coffers consistency but I am willing to test it.
Tinybones, the Pickpocket is on a close watchlist for now. I came close to cutting him but I just didn't have anything else I was really psyched to add. Its true that I could have a
Withered Wretch instead I just paid a bit of money for him to cut him so soon. So I guess this is me being a bit stubborn because of the money I spent on him so I am going to test him a little longer. Some of my annoyance with him was topdecking him when I didn't have enough draw in the deck which hopefully I just addressed with three strong draw engines being added and a few more ways to commit crime.
