1) Get Scroll of Fate onto the field
2) Manifest a big, deadly creature or other highly advantageous noncreature permanent
3) "Blink" the manifested card to reveal the high-cost permanent at a massive discount!
The true starting point of this deck was an extended art Tevesh Szat, Doom of Fools a friend of mine gifted to me with a challenge, "I can't wait to see what you do with this guy"! Innocuous, but I felt the need to flex my creativity anyway. That's why I'm avoiding things more commonly done with Szat like aristocrat strategies, and why this deck is a bit convoluted.
Why Manifest?
There are certainly more straight forward ways to cheat the costs of high CMC permanents than this, so what are the benefits of manifest? For one, you can cheat the cost of ANY permanent type, lending a great amount of flexibility to the payoff cards included. This approach isn't limited to merely artifacts or creatures, Kiora Bests the Sea God and Tezzeret, Master of the Bridge are equally fair game. Second is style. Atemsis, All-Seeing and Phage the Untouchable may be in the realm of "achievement unlocked" win conditions, but playing them face down and swinging across can create for some tense blocking choices and potentially memorable closing turns! This is my attempt at capturing the stealth and subterfuge of the Dimir, cloaking your moves until the last possible moment and springing the trap (cards) at any opponent that crosses you. There's a certain satisfaction of laying your tricks on the board, hiding in plain sight, rather than simply holding them in your hand.
The Pledge
Placing complete faith in the Scroll of Fate is asking too much of one's deck, even for me. So some redundancy is called for in the set up stage:
Qarsi High Priest
Scroll of Fate
Dream Halls
Marshland Bloodcaster
Primordial Mist
Bolas's Citadel
Omniscience
This collection provides a variety of ways to slip past the check out line on paying for your spells. Three of them key off of playing a card off the top of your library, which leads to the other half of The Pledge.
Scheming Symmetry
Sensei's Divining Top
Lim-Dul's Vault
Scroll Rack
Varragoth, Bloodsky Sire
Insidious Dreams
These help us find our Scroll, another Pledge piece, or a proper payoff once the Pledge is in place. The addition of these and other tutors free us from having to rely on less desirable manifest cards.
The Turn
Malakir Rebirth
Cloudstone Curio
Ghostly Flicker
Release to the Wind
Cauldron of Souls
Conjurer's Closet
Rescue from the Underworld
Deadeye Navigator
Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
With a combination of flicker and recursive black spells (along with a sacrifice outlet) we can recapture the manifested card to reveal its true form. This is where Tevesh Szat, Doom of Fools relates to this strategy as a sacrifice outlet in the command zone. It's worth saying too, defending a planeswalker commander is a little more interesting due to your defensive creatures being obfuscated should your opponents want to cut Szat short of an ultimate. That 2/2 could very well be Meishin, the Mind Cage.
Back to the Turn, Release to the Wind actually brings instants and sorceries into play as viable manifest targets, the likes of Expropriate and Rise of the Dark Realms. Rescue from the Underworld is interesting in that it has a relatively unique wording: "Return that card AND THE SACRIFICED CARD to the battlefield..." Similar cards reference returning CREATURE cards, but this instant is agnostic of card type. I had some trouble finding a definitive ruling, but my understanding is that the 2/2 sacrificed will return to the battlefield regardless of whether it's a creature or not. I'd be happy to know if anyone can confirm or deny this interpreation.
The Prestige
Atemsis, All-Seeing
Nezahal, Primal Tide
Phage the Untouchable
Stormtide Leviathan
Omniscience
Tezzeret, Master of the Bridge
Kiora Bests the Sea God
Meishin, the Mind Cage
Razaketh, the Foulblooded
Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
While not comprehensive, these illustrate the type of cards I'm looking to get a discount on. There are an array of options, aggressive, defensive, various combo pieces are all possibilities.
That's the general structure of the deck. It feels a little clunky in its current form, and I have to admit I spent a lot of time trying to find a combination of these three stages while managing a suitable mana curve and the necessary redundancies in place. Happy as always to hear about any other approaches to this idea within this color identity, and any omissions or other cool tech to leverage the manifest mechanic!
Decklist
Approximate Total Cost: