It is not enough for others to understand fear. Sometimes, they need to be shown.
This is my first deck, made in collaboration with a good friend of mine who's much better at deckbuilding than I am so thanks, dude! I've been recently besotted with the number and range of alternate-win/-loss cards across MTG, and I wanted to explore an alternate win condition that didn't promote stalling and non-interactive play like Azor's Elecutors or a single-card win like Door to Nothingness. This has led me to build a deck around Triskaidekaphobia, and while it does include stalling elements such as Will-o'-the-Wisp, the intent behind this deck very much plays out like a combo.
Mainboard
Triskaidekaphobia is our win condition. Whilst seeming like a difficult feat to achieve, at least reliably, the rest of this deck is designed to burn and blast the way to a swift victory, whist ensuring that we don't fall to our own fear ourselves.
Goblin Fireslinger, Blaze & Lava Spike are our primary burn cards, all designed to strike your opponent's face in order to get them down to 13 life as quickly as possible. Consume Spirit is to be used to control the board, but a side function is to keep our life as far away from 13 as possible. Of course, that will very rarely happen because:
Will-o'-the-Wisp will be our main stalling card, costing only a single mana to play and regenerate so it remains efficient throughout the game. It may have 0 attack, but that is crucially replaced with the Flying keyword, making it effective against the vast majority of creatures. Against larger threats, Wisp can be used in conjunction with Tragic Slip in order to completely remove almost any threat from the opponent's side of the board while negating the downside of a lost creature with Wisp's regenerate. If somehow that doesn't work, we have Typhoid Rats to truly make our opponents suffer.
Tree of Perdition reeks of Stilton, but does allow us to achieve a swift victory by instantly putting our opponent's life at 13. It also allows us to have a (potentially) 0/20 blocker on the board very quickly! Win via this card, and maybe our opponents will be suffering from Tree skaidekaphobia. I am not at all sorry.
Now, by playing Triskaidekaphobia, it will become obvious to your opponents what your strategy is and may look to deliberately offset our plan. Since the card's effect only applies at the beginning of our upkeep, our opponent is afforded one last turn to save themselves. The chances of our opponent disrupting our plans is reasonable, be it via healing or employing self-ping to deliberately put themselves below 13 life, and should make this entire strategy completely unreliable. This is where Final Fortune comes into play. This card completely negates the opponent's ability to save themselves (lest they have Counterspell or its variants) and can secure victory at the cost of two . This card can also potentially kill you, which to me makes this card in combination with our win condition the most horrifying in the deck: you live or die by 13, and that is how it should be.
Sideboard
Rain of Gore is an excellent card for the sideboard if your opponent is running any form of heal, turning them into completely dead cards or, if attached to a creature or enchantment/artifact/land, only increases their fall to 13 (or 0!) if they dare play it.
Diabolic Intent is handy when you need a card in a pinch. Burning your opponent down to 13 life is surprisingly easy, meaning that Goblin Fireslinger quickly becomes obsolete, so the sacrifice isn't so bad. Plus, this sacrifice has the added bonus of synergising with Tragic Slip which allows you to deal with pesky Unblockable or Landwalk creatures.
Chandra Nalaar is for when you just need to blow your opponent up.
If you made it here, you've either been a dedicated reader or the deck is too terrifying to even inspect! I would really appreciate your feedback, constructive or otherwise. Happy fearing!
