Commissar Severina Raine its just really clunky and paying two to sac is painful. In general this deck also doesn't do much attacking so the other part of the ability is also hard to manage.
Vraan, Executioner Thane I have looked at it a few times but that limitation of once a turn just doesn't work well with how this deck operates.
Ok, I got two more games in with the deck and won both. This deck is sort of evil in its ability to set up game ending situations and I think some people are starting to catch on to that as I did experience a lot more interaction in these games. I played a bunch of games so I will do my best to outline but I am not sure how well I can remember everything.
Game 1:
I got going with an early setup of
Illuminor Szeras into
Honor-Worn Shaku. I got another legend into play from this I can't remember which but then we got swept. I built back up and used
Braids, Arisen Nightmare to eat my own
Mana Crypt to draw as I was getting a lot of colorless from the
Honor-Worn Shaku. I got set up with
Mondrak, Glory Dominus,
Yahenni, Undying Partisan, and
Ojer Taq, Deepest Foundation which allowed me to split Mondrake into 3x copies and then Ojer Taq into 8 copies. From here any legend I split became something like 52,000 tokens.
Bastion of Remembrance closed out the game without the need to attack. Someone did try a
Everybody Lives! but I just pointed out I could continue the cycle on my next opponents upkeep no problem and it was game.
I did in the last turns see
Wernog, Rider's Chaplain but it was in the last turn or two so I had more important things to do which resulted in the end of the game so I won't hold that against him. I still want to see him more to test. I did also manage to play
Miara, Thorn of the Glade in the rebuild phase in part because she was contributing to my
Honor-Worn Shaku mana but I didn't manage to sacrifice her and draw from it.
Game 2:
I opened with
Ayara, First of Locthwain into
Honor-Worn Shaku and
Illuminor Szeras turn 4. One of my opponents hit me with a
Darksteel Mutation on
Illuminor Szeras while I didn't have my commander or a sac outlet annoyingly. Annoyingly it takes the legendary part off too. I cast a
Liliana, Dreadhorde General planning to use my indestructible bug on defense and uptick her making a zombie.
My enchantress opponent is jamming out hard with a
Gaea's Cradle and a few dorks in play
entombs and
reanimates Doomwake Giant and then chains a few more enchantments to strip my creatures and attacks Lilliana for 6 putting her at one loyalty. My other opponent plays a
Bane of Progress eating 9 targets from the enchantress player and my
Honor-Worn Shaku.
I make another zombie with Liliana and cast
Elas il-Kor, Sadistic Pilgrim and
Teysa, Orzhov Scion just preping to defend Lilliana and keep draw going. The enchantress deck plays a
Replenish and drops back into play with a bunch of
Doomwake Giant triggers. Luckily for me though Teysa lives one extra tick and my other two creatures die giving me three white creatures which I use to exile
Doomwake Giant. He attacks and kills my Lilliana now that I have no blocks but he can't repeat his annoying doomwake trick.
I flounder around for a few turns lacking much for draw or sac outlets after this. I do use
Braids, Arisen Nightmare on an artifact to draw some cards at one point but I lack a consistant sac outlet or really a good payoff for a few turns in here. I
Diabolic Intent off a
Field of the Dead zombie but I lack good draw, a sac outlet, or a payoff really at this point so I go and get
Teysa Karlov figuring that it gives me more bodies in case of deaths and the tokens will have lifelink as my life is down to about 20 now.
After floundering a few turns I have
Lifeline in hand but no sac outlet.
Braids, Arisen Nightmare has drawn me a few cards and
Boromir, Warden of the Tower is protecting me. Someone split him already via a swords and I am annoying the enchantress player with a
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben as he is chaining tons of draw. I also am rocking
The Kenriths' Royal Funeral which drew me 3 cards and the cost reduction is going a long ways to allow me to play more things to play.
As I am about to be overrun by the enchantress player who has both
Serra's Sanctum and
Gaea's Cradle with a
The One Ring and numerous enchantresses I manage to assemble the last piece. I draw a sac outlet and in a convoluted turn which should have been simpler except I overlooked how hard it was goign to hit so I passed and did it during the enchantress player's turn I played out
Gandalf the White and
Yahenni, Undying Partisan allowing me to split
Thalia, Guardian of Thraben in response to a
Swords to Plowshares target on her. In response to that we went deeper and the enchantress player tried to
Nature's Claim my
The Kenriths' Royal Funeral which forced me to play my
Kokusho, the Evening Star from hand with the last of my mana. The other opponent has some odd trick but he can't really stop my board and I allow the 3x Thalias to come back before sacing the Kokusho chain which is 4x Kokushos hitting for 15 life per due to 3x death triggers.
Sooooooo the deck obviously works and it has a lot of lines to victory. I was glad in that instance that I kept
Kokusho, the Evening Star over the other top end given the interaction with the extra death trigger effects. I totally forgot it was going to hit that hard in the middle of everything until the last second otherwise I could have executed it sooner with less pain in the ass.
The draw was definately better but even with that I could have used more. I saw a few pieces of the deck across both games and I was overall fairly happy with them but I think I want to look at my sac outlet options and maybe boost it up. I also would have liked more draw but I don't know where to go for it. I do think that its possible that some of my generic removal like
Swords to Plowshares and
Living Death might not be quite for this deck. Its really hard for me to pull off a
Living Death setup with this deck and if anyone is playing blue I feel very uncomfortable full committing into it which was my issue last time I saw it in hand.
I saw
Mikaeus, the Lunarch in these games but the more I play this deck its totally an aristocrats deck rather than an attacking deck so I will probably at a minimum turn him into
Ashnod, Flesh Mechanist for testing as I was also thinking of testing her out.
Well, just getting my game report in for now but I will mull some things over and come up with a changes later this week. Offhand I suspect I might cut some of the interaction and recursion and try to get more ramp / sac / draw. This deck is just showing me a lot of how it can just ignore everything and win and I don't think its wrong to lean into that. I still want some interaction but some amount of my interaction just lacks synergy with the rest of the deck and with how many pieces need to work together I would rather focus more on assembling winning boardstates.