Original Post:
Recently, I've been brewing decks faster than I can playtest them. I probably should slow down and get some serious games in with Ebondeath, Dracolich, but self-restraint is for losers, the wheel of progress stops for no man!!!!
Anyways...
Part One, why Orca, Siege Demon is a bad Aristocrats commander
The more I look at Orca, Siege Demon the more befuddled I become. On the surface it looks like a pretty straight forwards aristocrats payoff: play Bloodghast → profit. But if your plan is to only use orca as a payoff for aristocrats, then he's woefully underwhelming. for every 1 creature you sac, you get 1 damage.
Garna, Bloodfist of Keld give you 3 damage per kill, in the same colors for MUCH cheaper. and Juri, Master of the Revue is the same rate, for only instead of a whopping !
So why is Orca so ridiculously expensive to cast? Well, part of it is that he's probably overcosted, he could probably safely be reduced to , MAYBE even without being over-powered. Additionally, Orca has both the ability to hit creatures, AND the ability to divide his damage up, unlike the cards I compared him to. However, the biggest thing justifying that 7MV is the body, he's a 5/5 with Trample.
And the stats also increase the efficacy of his ability, if Juri, Master of the Revue dies before you get any counters on him, you only get 1 damage, if Orca, Siege Demon dies without any counters, you get FIVE damage. So he has to be expensive.
Of course, if you deck is built around your commander, you're going to be getting lots of triggers for your commander, I've seen 20/20 Juri, Master of the Revue's before, so that base +4/+4 on Orca, Siege Demon isn't all that impressive and DEFINETELY not worth
So, running Orca, Siege Demon as a aristocrats commander doesn't make a lot of sense. You could also try running him as a control commander, unlike Juri, Master of the Revue, Orca, Siege Demon triggers off of your opponents creatures dying as well. So, fill your deck with Fleshbag Marauder's and Grave Pacts and spot removal, make a giant Orca, Siege Demon, and fling it at your opponents.
I like this idea more... but it's still laughably inefficient, you're essentially regulating your commander to just being a wincondition, in which case there are so many cheaper AND faster options.
Part 2: The alternatives
ALL of that is to say, I want to build my deck around squeezing as much value as possible out of the second ability rather than the first. A Boulderfall is already a potent effect, so let's try to trigger that ability as many times as possible rather than increasing the damage when it does trigger.
Basically, we play Orca, Siege Demon like he's Kokusho, the Evening Star's little brother. He deals a third of the damage Kokusho, the Evening Star does in a 4-player game, he costs more, and he doesn't gain you 15 life each time he dies, a key aspect for allowing Kokusho, the Evening Star players to fight through the hate they will garner. However, he does have some advantages over Kokusho, the Evening Star as well:
- He has a second color. It's pretty much always an advantage to be duo colored over mono colored (it's usually never a disadvantage to have more colors until you're at 4-5 colors, and even then, in a high power format like commander it's debatable). But red is particularly compelling for Orca, Siege Demon since it comes with clone effects and damage doublers.
- He can hit creatures, Kokusho, the Evening Star can only burn people's faces as fast as possible and hope that he can ignore everything your opponents are doing. Orca, Siege Demon can kill off anything that's bothering him, and send any remaining damage upstairs.
- Even though the focus is on the second ability, the first ability can still be good, Ideally, you can somehow get Orca, Siege Demon back on the battlefield to "see" the creatures he killed die, buffing him up for the next round). The Ozolith is going to be a hero in this deck.
- Orca, Siege Demon's second ability only cares about power, that power doesn't have to come from the first ability, meaning we can play equipment/ buff spells to increase his power and therefore his damage as well.
Finally, rather than looping Orca, Siege Demon as fast as I can, I'd rather play Orca, Siege Demon, and hang out, pressuring your opponents with Orca, Siege Demon beat-down, hopefully setting up a cloning engine, then waiting for my opponents to try to remove Orca in order to Sac-Reanimate it. While I do think draining you're opponents removal is a compelling reason to play this way, the main reason it simply a matter of preference, I play slow and patient and I'm planning on building the deck in a way that allows me to do that.
Whew, that was a lot of words, now let me actually brew something.
Copy Every Turn
Only Copies When Orca ETBs
First of all, turns out a couple of red copy effects specify non-legendary, so no Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker, and no Fable of the Mirror-Breaker // Reflection of Kiki-Jiki, bit of a let down, but Oh well.
All of the copy every turn options look good, except maybe Splinter Twin, I think it still might be okay, but I definitely prefer the other options.
The only one-time copy effect I'll consider is Cursed Mirror as it has a lot of utility, the others are just worse than reanimation spells.
The ETB effects are a bit more complicated, how many times do I expect them to trigger in a game? I already said I'd prefer to wait until my opponents try to interact rather than looping Orca, Siege Demon, as fast as possible. I think I can safely discard the ones that require mana to copy, but Mirror March and Molten Echoes might be good.
On the one hand, Undying Evil effects are generally more efficient, most of them only costing 1. And you can stack the triggers in such a way that the returning Orca, Siege Demon sees the creatures that die to the old Orca, Siege Demon's trigger, so you get a couple "free" +1/+1 counters for your trouble.
On the other hand Undying Evil effects require you have the card and the man up when Orca, Siege Demon is about to die, whereas Reanimate is always rearing to go. Additionally, I see all the Reanimation spells serving double duty as way to get baclk the clone effects, and while both kinds of reanimation can do that, the ability to get back a clone effect in the late game, even if it died in the early game, is very appealing to me.
As I said earlier, slow but resilient is my preferred playstyle, so I'm going to favor the true reanimation effects to the Undying Evil ones. Still, a couple might make the list.
Probably needs a couple more cuts, but I filtered out a lot of the chaff already. Malakir Rebirth // Malakir Mire makes the list because it can just be a land, Thrilling Encore made the cut cause I bet I can set up some epic plays by saccing Orca, Siege Demon, killing a bunch of stuff, then get him and all the stuff he killed back
Neither of these keywords are necessary, so I'll only run the ones that can give the clones the keywords, which cuts out a lot of options (when you clone Orca, Siege Demon, one of your copies dies to state-based actions and you never get the chance to do something like equip Basilisk Collar. Heck, you can't even do instant-speed stuff before it dies.
All of those are really expensive, probably only going to run one of each key-word, no need for duplicates and all
Also it's nearly midnight where I am, so y'all will have to wait for the actual deck now, sorry, lol.