Playing around with the idea of deathtouch for a simple budget aggro deck.
Strategy
Basic idea is to go on the offensive each turn with our deathtouch creatures. Opponent will have to use removal on them or trade (assuming blockers don't have some invulnerability). Best case is they allow damage to go through. We should then follow up with another creature on the turn, presenting another blocker for them to consider if they want to retaliate on their turn.
Having Throne in play would further enhance this: Either spend removal, trade or otherwise basically take an extra point of damage for each attacker.
The other alternative is use throne + harvester + crew with lookout to chip away their health while hiding behind a wall of deathtouch creatures.
*PS. I liked the idea of having Pathway Arrows, which would make deathtouch that much more effective but it'll be rotating out soon. As such, this is my attempt to keep the deck rotation proof while testing it out.
Creatures
Night Market Lookout is a good pilot for Aethersphere Harvester, doing double duty of draining 1 while crewing the harvester.
Aether Poisoner
might get us an early servo, which we can also use to pilot the harvester.
Decided to use
Dhund Operative
instead of
Wasteland Scorpion
as we don't have any real synergies with cycling and that the operative is cheaper and has better stats since we should be having throne, harvester or even a servo out early.
From what I hear, Gonti, Lord of Luxury is just fun to play with and you'll never know what you could steal off your opponent.
Of course, who could forget our favorite bird Bone Picker. I think it just has value and I consider it as a 1cmc cost creature.
Aethersphere Harvester is another great all-round vehicle and allows us to have an outlet to tap creatures without attacking for triggering throne.
Enablers
Throne of the God-Pharaoh to get in that extra damage. Would probably work best when all out attacking but might also be handy when crewing with multiple creatures.
Update: Decided to just have 1 Throne as it's legendary and between putting that down on turn 2 versus a creature, I'd rather play the creature. Might be helpful in grindier games but as good as it sounds, I'm not sure if it'll be useful overall. Most aggro decks out there do not include this in the deck.
In place, I've added
Live Fast
for some card draw. The 2 energy is not bad of a bonus as poisoner could use it to make another servo or harvester for lifelink.
Removal
Cartouche of Ambition to help us return Trial of Ambition for extra removal even though it's just an edict effect. Granting our creatures lifelink along with deathtouch can help us in the grindier games.I reduced the cartouches to 2 and added 1 more Gonti instead.
Never for more specific removal if our trials can't do the job.
Lay Bare the Heart to pick out possible board wipes/wraths from our opponents hand.
Finally, I'm trying out
Ifnir Deadlands
to shrink down opponent's walkers which would hopefully help us win the race.
Challenges
I think the biggest problem would be opponent's creatures with first strike. This would pretty much render deathtouch useless and slow down our aggro strategy. I would thus save the removal for such creatures.
