pie chart

Life's A Fillet 'O Fish

Commander / EDH* Aggro BRGW Enchantment Group Slug Jank Lifegain

DPenguin22

Edit Live Edit
Edit
Upvote 0
0
Deckcycle Feature Queue
Feature Queue
Playtest v1
Similar Deck Space Card Recommendations

Creature (19)

Enchantment (18)

Land (36)

Instant (10)

Artifact (5)

Commanders (2)

Commander: foil Tana, the Bloodsower
Commander: foil Tymna the Weaver

Sorcery (9)

Planeswalker (1)

Maybeboard

Instant (2)

Creature (2)

Enchantment (2)

Sorcery (1)

Artifact (2)

This is a really cool idea for a deck that may or may not be really powerful. This deck uses your life total as a tool and your opponent's life total as a toy, which allows for some really fun dynamics at a multiplayer table. It's extremely political, and just as fun and clever of a strategy. Let me break down how the whole thing is supposed to work, first by discussing why I chose the commander that I did.

The first thing that we need to do to make this deck work is to choose who will lead this crazy deck. The most common color that you find cards that manipulate life totals is white, and the second most common is black. However, neither of these colors individually would be able to fill out this deck the way we want it to. The simplest color combination would be black/white, but even those colors lock us out of some really cool cards. If that's the theme that you're going for, though, I would recommend Vona, Butcher of Magan, Tymna the Weaver, or Obzedat, Ghost Council. Going into three color combinations, we have Mardu, Esper, and Abzan that could also include black and white, and this is what I think about those colors. Mardu might be a good option, especially with Licia, Sanguine Tribune, but green is still just as important if not moreso than red. You could go Abzan and give yourself access to green, but the only real commanders you could work with are Anafenza, Doran, Ghave, Karador and Teneb, none of which synergize with life gain at all. Furthermore, you wouldn't have access to some really good cards in red. Oloro, Ageless Ascetic is maybe the best life gain commander, but blue is definitely the color with the lowest number of cards that fit into this strategy, so I would say no to him to. In my opinion, the only way to go is 4-color. This gives you a couple of options, of which I chose Saskia the Unyielding. She is political, aggressive, and plays with other people's (or your own...) life total. Other options, however, include Tymna the Weaver with Tana, the Bloodsower which would let you use your life total as a weapon of mass card advantage and fill your board with tokens, Sidar Kondo of Jamuraa with Vial Smasher the Fierce who really don't offer any synergy in this deck, and Ikra Shidiqi, the Usurper with Bruse Tarl, Boorish Herder who give you lots of life and apply pressure to your opponents in combat. I know that Ravos, Soultender and Akiri, Line-Slinger also fit into the colors, but if you want an explanation on why I didn't consider them, we can talk about it later. The short of all this, is that I think that Saskia the Unyielding is the best commander for this build. Lets move on.
Calling this section "Anti-Life Gain" might be a bit of a misnomer, but its a cool way to put it. The deck was inspired by Tainted Remedy , and other cards with similar effects, like Rain of Gore or False Cure . It could make kind of a fun Group Slug build, where you give your opponents anti-life link and then give them a ton of life. Kind of fun. However, there aren't enough cards with this kind of effect to make an entire 99-card commander deck out of this idea alone. So, I decided to research other cards that do silly things with life totals. And this is what I made :) The deck has 3 subthemes that I want to address in order to explain how it all works. Each of these themes can by personified with a specific card. Here they are:
Phyrexian Unlife is a fun card because it means you don't lose for running out of life. There are drawbacks, of course, in the form of gaining infect counters and having to worry about that, but combined with the right cards, Unlife gives you cool opportunities to pillowfort that are, shall we say, unconventional. Melira, Sylvok Outcast and Solemnity are two cards that keep the infect counters off of you and keeps you comfortably numb at a life total of 0. Transcendence is another card with a similar yet different effect. Basically it keeps you from losing all of your life, but adds another risk to the equation that has to be dealt with. Fortunately, we'll discuss the way to pull that off a little bit later. Other cards that build our pillowfort are Pariah , Palisade Giant , Protector of the Crown, or Pariah's Shield paired with Darksteel Plate , Eight-and-a-Half-Tails, or Ghostly Possession . Obviously these are pretty complicated, fragile combos, but we'll get to solving that problem a little bit later. Just trust me for now that it's all gonna work out.
Axis of Mortality is a sweet new card from Ixalan that puts you in charge of who has what life total. There are a couple of other cards in the deck that do pretty much the same thing, including Reverse the Sands , Soul Conduit, Magus of the Mirror , and to a lesser extent Tree of Perdition and Tree of Redemption . This could do a handful of things for you. First, Tree of Perdition could do what it obviously does best, and combo with Triskaidekaphobia . These cards could also go really well with some of the pillowfort combos from the last section. For example, your life total drops to zero with Phyrexian Unlife on the battlefield, so you just switch with the guy with the most threatening board state, and voila you've killed two birds with one stone. This is one of the most interesting parts of this deck, in my opinion, because not very many decks focus so much on everyone's life totals. I think it makes it really fun.
I told a lie with I said that there were only 3 subthemes that I wanted to talk about. However, Everlasting Torment is the perfect embodiment of all of the other ones that I want to cover, so I just grouped them all into one section. Besides, you can't even really call most of these "subthemes". They'll be subsubthemes. Everlasting Torment 's text outlines them for us:

1) Players can't gain life:

  • Erebos, God of the Dead, Sulfuric Vortex, Witch Hunt , Havoc Festival , and Leyline of Punishment are all cards that have mostly the same effect. They keep our opponents from getting out of control with Oloro, Ageless Ascetic or other life-gain strategies. It also puts pressure on our opponents and makes the game go a little bit faster. It has a negative side effect, though, of making you a target. Good thing its a pillowfort deck :)

  • Earlier we talked about Transcendence and how we would complete the pillowfort combo with it later in the article. This is how. If we can't gain life, then Transcendence can't kill us when we get back up to 20, so just go ahead and let these cards make us a target. We can take it.

  • Finally, it should be noted that these abilities don't counter out the original inspiration for the deck. As a quick reminder, Tainted Remedy and other such decks are what made us want to build this thing in the first place. But how can our opponents lose the life they gain if they never gain it in the first place? Good question. Fortunately, Tainted Remedy 's ability is a replacement effect and your opponents will lose life instead of gaining life. No life is ever gained, and therefore no synergy is lost.

2) Damage can't be prevented:

  • This is perhaps the least important of the three abilities, but it does increase the pace of the game. If you can't just stop damage, then the game goes by really fast. This is great, because if people like you playing this deck, they get a chance to cheer for you to play it again. However, if they hate it, they get a chance to play another game against one of your less creative decks.

3) All damage is dealt as though it's source had wither:

Basically, all of these cards combined with Tainted Remedy combine to make this deck a pretty unique life strategy. I'll explain some of the other cool parts of the deck as well, but this is pretty much the bulk of how it goes. If you don't have time or interest to read the rest of this description, I hope you at least got this far, because that means you got the important part. If you do have a few minutes, though, read on.

  • There comes a time when running this deck, that you will want or need to bring your own life total down a ways. For example, say you've got Everlasting Torment on the battlefield, Transcendence in your hand, but 25 life. You could wait for your opponents to bring your life total down a little ways and hope they'll spare you, or you could take matters into your own hands. This is why cards like Necropotence and Razaketh, the Foulblooded are valuable. You can keep your life total where you want it, and simultaneously use it for a resource that you already need. Now, I see the disconnection between cards like this and the very pillowfort combo it enables. Refer to the Troubleshooting section. I'll worry about it down there.

  • Since damage often can't be prevented in this deck, sometimes you just need to redirect it to a new target. For this reason there are cards like Kor Chant and Captain's Maneuver.

  • Eternity Vessel just in case you wanna switch life totals with someone and then do it again next turn.

    • Logistics Show

    -There are a few combos that disrupt other combos in this deck. I tried to pretend like there wasn't, but there are. There's not a lot we can do about it, but if you're willing to play through it, the deck is still really fun. Here are a few that I found as I was testing it. Let me know if you find more in the comments.

    -Sometimes this deck becomes its own worst enemy. What I mean by that, is that if a combo doesn't have all of its pieces, or an opponent takes out an important one, this deck could take you out really fast. For that reason, I think you need to run a lot of enchantment removal. You have to be willing to ditch a combo at almost any time, because of the danger that one rogue enchantment poses to you. Enchantments are notoriously difficult to remove anyways, so keeping a fail-safe in your back pocket could also turn into a valuable bit of removal for an opponent's enchantment. The ones that I included in this deck are Aura Shards because of its reusability, Krosan Grip because no one can say anything about it, Sylvan Reclamation because it can also help fix your lands, Bane of Progress because you get a big nasty creature with it, Consign to Dust because you can target multiple things, Acidic Slime because it's so verstile, and Nature's Claim because of its synergy with Group Slug. Hopefully that's enough. If not, feel free to add more.

    • Also, if you ever can't seem to get rid of your enchantment that's gonna kill you, give it away to someone else with Harmless Offering.

    • These combos, as we mentioned before, are pretty complicated, involving a lot of cards, and pretty fragile. In order to make sure that they stay together for you, you need a few cards to use as security. I chose Greater Auramancy , Sterling Grove and Karmic Justice .

    After all that, if you have any thoughts, opinions, suggestions, comments or cares, go ahead and leave me a note in the comments section. Thanks for reading and I hope you like this little gem of a deck :)

    Suggestions

    Updates Add

    Spoiler Timeline
    Card Odds v1 Draw hand
    Add to folder Copy
    Download / Export / Embed Code

    Comments

    Attention! Complete Comment Tutorial! This annoying message will go away once you do!

    Hi! Please consider becoming a supporter of TappedOut for $3/mo. Thanks!

    Important! Formatting tips — Comment Tutorial — markdown syntax

    Please login to comment

    Revision 1 See all

    (3 years ago)

    Date added 6 years
    Last updated 3 years
    Key combos
    Legality

    This deck is Commander / EDH legal.
    Rarity (main - side)

    13 - 0 Mythic Rares

    47 - 0 Rares

    13 - 0 Uncommons

    6 - 0 Commons
    Cards 100
    Avg. CMC 3.84
    Tokens Saproling 1/1 G, Snake 1/1 G, Snake 1/1 G w/ Deathtouch, Soldier 1/1 W, Spirit 1/1 W
    Folders maybe some day...
    Votes
    Ignored suggestions
    Shared with
    Views