Caltrops, used by the ancient Romans, the ninja, and even to this day, are multi-headed spikes designed to be tossed on the ground and to always land with at least one spike facing upwards and used for anti-personnell, anti-cavalry, or anti-vehicle capacities. This deck is caltrops.
Every time our opponent drops a guy, we want them hurting for it. So Suture Priest and the super-creepy Blood Seeker are our caltrop dispensers. We also utilize Impact Tremors along with Basilica Guards as a sort of reverse Soul Sisters mechanic--damaging our opponent every time we land a guy. To that end, we have some token producers in Krenko's Command,
Raise the Alarm
, and Beckon Apparition. Pharika's Chosen is useful for its deathtouch--something we can get out fast and easily to trigger Tremors. If we lose it, just Beckon it back for more, this time as a flier. Same with any of our caltrop dispensers, or our opponent's creatures. This will help a little against Delve as well.
Twin Bolt
is some cheap, adaptive removal, Rootborn Defenses gives everybody Indestructible (and gives us another token), and
Touch of Moonglove
ensures we take with us anybody that brings down a caltrop dispenser. Also added a Nantuko Husk to chomp down on tokens after they've triggered Tremors to swing in for big damage.
Our easy matches are aggro and tokens: they'll be hurting themselves more than they hurt us. Stompy and control have the advantage. Stompy produces dudes too big for our main removal methods and not in so many numbers that our caltrops hurt enough. Control, or anything that doesn't use many creatures, undermines our main win-con.
In a way, this is control in that you're not stopping your opponent from doing things, you're just making it to where they often don't want to. Also, this deck is stupidly cheap. For just $8 you can have your opponents stepping on Legos all game long.
Still open to suggestions on how to further increase effectiveness.
