Ever since NDE was spoiled, I knew I had to build a deck around it. The obvious inclusion was Angel's Grace, but I knew I needed more. I had tried many iterations of the deck, including one that utilized pingers with Basilisk Collar for defense and adjusting my life total. Another version included weird Tree of Redemption interactions, including Turn to Frog. After a number of only somewhat successful decks, I had put it aside.
Eventually, when my brother and I were challenging each other to build decks based on objectively terrible cards, he brought up Blood Celebrant. It took a while to realize that it had a particularly potent ability: to lose as much life as you want! It took quite a bit of thinking to figure out how to utilize this feature. I kept asking myself, "If I could lose as much life as I wanted, how could I turn that to my advantage?" Then it hit me! Near-Death Experience! That old card I had been trying to figure out a couple years earlier. By now, Innistrad had come and gone and gave us the underused Fateful Hour cards. I quickly put two and two together. The deck, however, was still missing something. Fortunately, someone shortly thereafter had posted decent results in modern featuring a combo deck utilizing Angel's Grace, Spoils of the Vault, Death's Shadow and Rite of Consumption. It fit perfectly.
You're going to win in three ways with the deck.
------------WIN CON 1------------
A fun start is:
T1) Blood Celebrant
T2) Go down to 5 life, Gather the Townsfolk
T3) Thraben Doomsayer. You now have 20 power on the board. No one saw it coming.
------------WIN CON 2------------
Your other win condition is Death's Shadow. They're strong enough to simply beat down your opponent, but there's a neat little Modern-worthy combo with them: With Death's Shadow on board, play Angel's Grace to keep you from losing this turn. Play Spoils of the Vault naming Rite of Consumption. Hopefully you've hit at least -7 life if your opponent is at full health (bringing Death's Shadow's P/T to 20/20). You can attack if you like (Faith's Shield can give it the protection to get through in addition to it's primary use of simply Fogging) and then sacrifice it to the Rite draining them. If you got really unlucky and didn't finish your opponent, you'll at least replenish your life before Angel's Grace wears off.
------------WIN CON 3------------
Finally, the title card Near-Death Experience. There are certain decks that just simply can't avoid losing to this and a well timed Angel's Grace.
One of the things I like most about this deck is that it uses cards that would be simply awful anywhere else. Namely, Plunge into Darkness. You can use it to adjust your life total after a Gather the Townsfolk, or a few uninteresting turns with Thraben Doomsayer. Mostly, I use it to pay 15 life to trigger Fateful Hour and pick the one card I need to finish the game. This may be the only deck in which it is an all-star.
Dismember is the kill-spell of choice as early game the life loss doesn't matter, you don't have to lose the life if you don't want to, and it can drop your life from 5 to 1 if you're planning to win with NDE.
I suppose if you wanted to make it modern-legal you could replace Blood Celebrant for Wall of Blood. The Wall plus Rite of Consumption seems like it could be really funny.
So there you have it. My favourite casual deck in all it's glory.
