Primarily this is a
Hollow One
deck, but using
Soulflayer
as a backup plan, with the option (even if unlikely with 18 land) to eternalize the
Adorned Pouncer
if no Soulflayer is available. The three mentioned cards all hit power 4, hence the rename. Soulflayer could hit as early as turn 2 as a flying, lifelink double strike, obviously
Burning Inquiry
is still key to the Hollow One rush and pumps
Flameblade Adept
nicely.
This is also primarily a red deck, no matter what the colour wheel says, mana sources that don't provide red should be kept to a minimum. If you don't have a red source in your opening hand then you need to muligan. This is essentially true for almost any Hollow One deck, unless you are being cute and using
Magus of the Bazaar
or some such...
At first glance
Chancellor of the Dross
is an odd choice, I'll never cast it, but it has two relevant abilities to feed Soulflayer and it's also handy in your opening hand due to the life drain, so a dead card with an upside, the downside is that it tempts you to keep hands you otherwise wouldn't. I opted not to use
Zetalpa, Primal Dawn
, while it is ideal fodder for Soulflayer, it's also a completely dead card, however it is a lot of keywords on one cards, so testing. If I cut the Chancellor, it's likely to be for
Spark Trooper
or
Oketra the True
, again I want to keep my options playable and both of them have a certain appeal as does
Vault Skirge
. I also toyed with
Odric, Lunarch Marshal
as a one of fun of reverse Soulflayer (perhaps, technically better since it has more keywords) which needs to be removed...
I cut 2x of
Goblin Lore
from this version for
Cathartic Reunion
as I think it's more important to control what is discarded in this build.
Risk Factor
, is perhaps worth trying, but the slot it's in could well be
Lingering Souls
or
Boros Charm
...
The idea behind the sideboard is to switch to a more burn orientated play, switching out Soulflayer for
Vexing Devil
and Chancellor of the Dross or Adorned Pouncer for
Lightning Helix
. With
Alpine Moon
,
Fragmentize
and
Rest in Peace
match-up dependent.
I do play a more traditional Hollow One deck; Zombie Hollow One, which this is essentially spun off from to test. In addition I have two rough outlines for an izzet and gruul Hollow One decks; Izzet One / deck:gruul-one-1, hey I just like the golem...
Dredge is an awful matchup so +1
Rest in Peace
and +2
Rakdos Charm
