Evelyn: Tribal or Blink?

[Cyberium]

Evelyn, the Covetous

Before you say "why not both," the question is more about how to run Evelyn as efficiently as possible.

Evelyn's wording suggests that the more vampires you play, the more cards you can steal. However, because Evelyn only allows you to cast one spell from collection each turn, you don't get to exhaust the pile as quickly as you steal them. This is all the more true when Evelyn gets targeted and killed repeatedly, delay you further. The benefit of going vampire tribal though is that your options expand more quickly, more likely to hit an answer you need, that's definitely a plus. PWs like Ashiok, Nightmare Muse would love to use all those exiled cards.

And what if we play Evelyn in a blink-focused deck? It would focus less on vampires (if at all), but you will still get to steal four cards per turn on the basis, and you can fill the deck with EtB creatures, allowing versatility beyond traditional vampire tribal. While Evelyn's collection grows slower in this approach, tutors/Top/JtMS would always put the best card on top of your library, balancing quantity of cards with quality of cards.

[DirkGently]

Take the vampire token producers and a bunch of tutors to find them. Way more efficient than blink.

[Cyberium]

Take the vampire token producers and a bunch of tutors to find them. Way more efficient than blink.

Curious enough, there aren't too many vampire token generators, though there's also obviously no lack of vampires in general.

[TheAmericanSpirit]

I would just play her Maelstrom Wanderer Style: fill the deck with ramp and a dozen ways to bouce/blink/sac/make vamp tokens for her. Then just keep spamming her and the cards she steals. Who cares if she costs 11 when you have 16+ mana available?

[Cyberium]

I would just play her Maelstrom Wanderer Style: fill the deck with ramp and a dozen ways to bouce/blink/sac/make vamp tokens for her. Then just keep spamming her and the cards she steals. Who cares if she costs 11 when you have 16+ mana available?

I think the biggest problem would be getting that much mana consistently without green, compare to Wanderer..

[kirkusjones]

I would just play her Maelstrom Wanderer Style: fill the deck with ramp and a dozen ways to bouce/blink/sac/make vamp tokens for her. Then just keep spamming her and the cards she steals. Who cares if she costs 11 when you have 16+ mana available?

I think the biggest problem would be getting that much mana consistently without green, compare to Wanderer..

You've got rituals in black and red and all the artifact shenanigans you could want in blue/red to make mountains of mana.

[Mookie]

Looking at Evelyn, the Covetous, a few things stand out to me when compared to the most obvious comparisons, Gonti, Lord of Luxury and Edgar Markov.

Firstly, Evelyn is a five-mana creature that needs to be on the battlefield to function - you won't get triggers if she isn't on the battlefield, and you can't play the exiled cards either. As a result, you'll probably want to devote some cards to protecting her - cheap blink / recursion effects like Undying Evil and Essence Flux are great for this.

Secondly, Evelyn is once-per-turn, but not limited to only your turns - this means flash enablers like Leyline of Anticipation go way up in value. I'll also call out that you can play lands with her, unlike Gonti.

Thirdly, Evelyn works with tokens, which means you can run stuff like Bloodline Keeper // Lord of Lineage, Call the Bloodline, and Rite of Replication.

Fourthly, the majority of the cards exiled with Evelyn will belong to your opponents. This means that if you're relying primarily on her for card advantage, then the bulk of your cards will not be particular synergistic.

I'll also note that losing access to white (and gaining blue) means you won't have as many go-wide enablers or anthem effects, which pushes for a less aggressive, more controlling strategy. As a result, I don't know that I would want to go all-in on vampire tribal - I would probably just want enough cheap vampires to make sure there is always something to play. More Evelyn triggers is certainly better, but you don't need that many triggers for her to be good. Also, because of the once-per-turn limit, I think that running lots of cards you can play on your opponents' turns is a good idea, given that you'll probably often be using your own turn to play a stolen land or other sorcery-speed effect.

[Stapler]

Here's my first pass at Evelyn; maybe it'll give you some ideas for directions you can take the deck.

SPOILER

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Evelyn's Flashy Knife

DecklistCMCManaPricesChartsDraw 7

Commander

1 Evelyn, the Covetous

Vamp Engines (5)

1 Call the Bloodline

1 Bloodline Keeper

1 Glass-Cast Heart

1 Maskwood Nexus

1 Bloodghast

Vamp Filler (6)

1 Viscera Seer

1 Yahenni, Undying Partisan

1 Dusk Legion Zealot

1 Callous Bloodmage

1 Anhelo, the Painter

1 Cormela, Glamour Thief

Ramp (12)

1 Dark Ritual

1 Nightscape Familiar

1 Mana Crypt

1 Sol Ring

1 Fellwar Stone

1 Arcane Signet

1 Izzet Signet

1 Dimir Signet

1 Rakdos Signet

1 Talisman of Creativity

1 Talisman of Dominance

1 Talisman of Indulgence

Card Selection (13)

1 Vampiric Tutor

1 Mystical Tutor

1 Demonic Tutor

1 Intuition

1 Mystical Teachings

1 Cling to Dust

1 Brainstorm

1 Siphon Insight

1 Pulse of the Grid

1 Fact or Fiction

1 Prosper, Tome-Bound

1 Nymris, Oona's Trickster

1 Mystic Confluence

Counterspells (10)

1 An Offer You Can't Refuse

1 Arcane Denial

1 Counterspell

1 Cryptic Command

1 Deflecting Swat

1 Fierce Guardianship

1 Force of Negation

1 Force of Will

1 Mana Drain

1 Memory Lapse

Board Interaction (10)

1 Act of Aggression

1 Ray of Command

1 Domineering Will

1 Toxic Deluge

1 Blasphemous Act

1 Cyclonic Rift

1 Submerge

1 Expel from Orazca

1 Drown in the Loch

1 Hagra Mauling

Recursion and Re-Triggering (7)

1 Reanimate

1 Archaeomancer

1 Malakir Rebirth

1 Ghostly Flicker

1 Thassa, Deep Dwelling

1 Sakashima, the Impostor

1 Stunt Double

Land (36)

1 Bloodstained Mire

1 Clearwater Pathway

1 Command Tower

1 Exotic Orchard

1 Fetid Pools

1 Flooded Strand

1 Gemstone Caverns

1 High Market

6 Island

1 Marsh Flats

1 Misty Rainforest

1 Morphic Pool

1 Mystic Sanctuary

1 Path of Ancestry

1 Phyrexian Tower

1 Polluted Delta

1 Scalding Tarn

1 Shipwreck Marsh

1 Sunken Hollow

1 Sunken Ruins

5 Swamp

1 Underground Sea

1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

1 Verdant Catacombs

1 Volrath's Stronghold

1 Watery Grave

1 Xander's Lounge

Approximate Total Cost:

Other Considerations

DecklistCMCManaPricesChartsDraw 7

More Vamp Filler

1 Blood Artist

1 Bloodthrone Vampire

1 Cordial Vampire

1 Bloodline Necromancer

1 Champion of Dusk

1 Patron of the Vein

More Cheap Protection

1 Swan Song

1 Essence Flux

1 Misdirection

More Flash Shenanigans

1 Rewind

1 Chemister's Insight

1 Aetherize

More Bloodghast

1 Entomb

Approximate Total Cost:

I think Evelyn lends herself best to a control deck with a lot of counterspells to protect her (especially free ones), since you don't get the cards if she's not in play. Lots of instants also work well to mitigate her once-per-turn restriction.

I ended up being almost mono-Dimir, so I reduced red down to a splash and gutted most of the red from my manabase almost entirely (still have the new triland that I can grab with a fetch to help cast those few red spells). Partially so I didn't have to put my Volc, Badlands and Sea in the same deck, partially just because I could. Evelyn's non-restrictive mana cost is a lot of fun.

I'm unsure about the new vampires from the set, although Anhelo, the Painter with Bloodghast looks incredibly sweet. Bloodghast in general seems like a key part of making Evelyn trigger consistently, though it does require running some sac outlets to ensure you can keep looping it. The sac outlets also work nicely with the steal-and-sac subtheme in the deck, with all the instant-speed Ray of Commands functioning as removal as well as permanent theft in concert with Thassa, Deep-Dwelling and Ghostly Flicker.

These flicker effects pull double duty, retriggering Evelyn while also allowing you to cast an additional spell off of her for the turn, since she's a new object. I almost certainly need to make room for Essence Flux, but unfortunately I think it's probably the only other flicker effect currently worth running. The deck doesn't have a lot of other ETB creatures, and flickering creatures you steal with non-Ghostly Flicker-type flickering is a big nonbo. The other Ghostly Flicker-type flicker cards feel too clunky, and the 2 mana Essence Flux-type ones like Teferi's Time Twist and Planar Incision are 1 more mana than I want to be spending on an effect that really only has synergy with my commander.

For win conditions, the deck has a couple of non-obvious Ghostly Flicker infinite combos, but really my plan is to durdle around with my opponents cards and find some sweet synergies between them before the game ends; that's all I want to do in EDH.

[Cyberium]

I'm unsure about the new vampires from the set, although Anhelo, the Painter with Bloodghast looks incredibly sweet. Bloodghast in general seems like a key part of making Evelyn trigger consistently, though it does require running some sac outlets to ensure you can keep looping it.

Of your discard packages, I would also consider Forbid, and if we increase discard outlet maybe even Squee, Goblin Nabob can be of use. Reality Scramble might make a nice discard fodder + turning Bloodghast into more creatures.