@EonAon I have never really understood the idea of having redundancy for an effect your commander gives. If my commander has died I would rather replay them or ramp to get them faster / recast them rather than try to set up redundancy for them. I guess if you expect them to be thefted or transformed redundancy might be ok but with all of the sac outlets I am running my hope is to sac out of that happening. I could even slot in recursion, shroud / hexproof, or even a redirect instead. I have just always had a hard time with the idea of backing up the commander partially with a card that is redundant if I have my commander in play.
Beyond that,
Whip of Erebos' mass lifelink only covers like 1/4th of what my commander does and a big focus of what I want to aim for is the token production from them. I think I am more likely to add some mass recursion or ramp over something like Whip personally.
Body Dropper - Keep in mind you won't always find it early and its slow to grow and dependent on the commander being setup for it to grow as well as you want it to. Even when it does grow well though it still lacks evasion making you spend resources and mana to try to give it menace which is still not that hard to block (I play against a hell of a lot of token decks personally). I get the appeal of the card but I also think that it is going to take time to setup the commander, recursive threats, and a sac outlet which makes me not that interested in this card given the setup it feels like he needs.
Card Draw - I can't say for certain but I suspect we should be looking more at cards that will draw us cards multiple times.
Erebos, Bleak-Hearted for instance might end up drawing a TON of cards for the mana invested at the cost of some life which we can recover with all the lifelink we have. I have been looking at some of these draw per death cards for this concept especially since when this deck gets going correctly it should have at least four deaths per turn rotation if not more which is a lot of card draw for the mana if you break it down. I think I would rather boost up my count of cards that fall into this category personally rather than pushing for one shot draw like
Sign in Blood or whatever variations of sac and draw one shot. I agree that my draw does probably look a bit light I was hoping to get some test games in and see where I stood but I think you are right that I am probably a little light on the draw still. I will have to look at what other versions I can get away with along these same lines because I know a few of them specify non tokens dying and I would rather go for ones that trigger on any death or sac personally.
Rakdos, the Showstopper - I love playing more controlling and I like what he does. He won't hit my commander or the tokens I am making so for me the only real question is if he kills my sac outlets which several can protect themselves by sacing to go indestructible. I want to give him a shot and see what he does. The goal is mostly to trim my opponents board positions while keeping mine mostly intact. The fact that he can be a 7/7 flying trampley lifelinker is also ok in my mind. I just prefer more of a control feel to my builds as a personal preference. I have no clue if he works out or not but I think its a cool on theme effect I have always wanted to try out but never felt it was all that on theme with what I was doing.
Manabarbs /
Spellshock - They are mostly just thoughts for now. What I was thinking of is that I have several effects that already lower opponents life total as well as means to recoup life so if I played those effects out they would further pressure their life total and make playing big splashy things like chaining extra turns or ramping to the moon painful. The nature of the Devil tokens and aristocrats can all put pressure on opponents life totals and I think these effects can work. I am going to hold off on them for now but they could come in depending on how aggressively I am hitting opponents life totals.
Homura, Human Ascendant // Homura's Essence - Its interesting that you like
Abhorrent Overlord but dislike Homura. Both cards require me to have some level of boardstate to really pull them off but Homura in the same situation gets buffed from the tokens that the commander makes where as the Abhorrent does not. Its also likely that playing and sacing Homura results in 10+ damage directly to opponents the turns he is played just from his immediate anthem and evasion buffs. My issue with Abhorrent is that it has no real immediate impact on the board as well as the fact that I am playing a two color deck with a token focus which feels like it doesn't play well to a devotion black concept. I didn't plan on adding Homura right now because I think it requires a lot of setup and mana but in my book it still registers far above
Abhorrent Overlord for this type of deck.
Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose - I don't need to activate the ability, my commander already gives most of my creatures lifelink.
Gamble - Wait..... did I forget a
Vampiric Tutor....... well %$#% I gotta fix that now...
So outside of those cards we were talking about I think I might be a little bit light on card draw and possibly a tad heavy on payoffs for sacrificing. Ultimately my goal is to get the commander into play and loop creatures through play to make tokens and getting extra gravy on top of that might be a touch greedy. I also think that some of my payoffs might be a little worse than I was hoping from them.
Zulaport Cutthroat for instance is alright but my commander buffing and giving lifelink to imps can mimic a lot of what functionality this does already. I think I am going to trim some of the more offensive payoffs for some more draw.
DECK CHANGES:
- Zulaport Cutthroat → Vampiric Tutor Ooops forgot Vamp Tutor. I should probably fix that. I opted to keep Bastion of Remembrance in the deck given that it comes with a disposable body and is harder to remove while doing the same thing. Keeping one in the deck will let me feel it out a bit to see if I want more of this or not.
- Hellrider → Erebos, Bleak-Hearted Hellrider is really aggressive but it is also not impressive if I am not set up well. I want a bit more draw and hopefully that will help me setup better.
- Tormod, the Desecrator → Dark Prophecy Tormod looked cute but it also looked like it was going to need a lot of setup for him to work out in the 99. The tokens he makes are mostly just going to help me make more tokens with my commander but he is also dependant on things beting setup for my commander to function. So.... lets just slot in a bit more draw instead.
- Havoc Jester → Liliana, Dreadhorde General I think Havoc Jester can be good but its still a mostly worse Mayhem Devil for more mana. Liliana does a lot of things this deck can make use of and even if everything isn't working for me her Barter in Blood -3 effect can still be really good even when my deck isn't firing well but making zombies and drawing on creature deaths are all really good.
- Descent of the Dragons → Command the Dreadhorde I could probably use a little more backup for when my commander dies and I like what Command brings to the table.
I think I might also contemplate cutting
Kroxa, Titan of Death's Hunger as well but I want to try to play it first. I own one and I think its a cool card that I haven't seen played much in commander and I want to play it for now even though I don't think it really fits all that great here.