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A deck based entirely around Archfiend of Ifnir, and along with that all the cycling synergies that come with it.
The default win condition is to cast Archfiend and cycle (or discard) cards until the opponent's board is weakened to the point where you can stop cycling your big spells (e.g. Striped Riverwinder, Horror of the Broken Lands) and start casting them. Or, you know, let your 5/4 flier beat the opponent. Whatever works.
Before that happens, this deck should play defensively with cards like
Vile Manifestation
(a turn-2 wall that grows rapidly over time) and Censor (a counterspell for early game, cycling food for later). The earlier you can cast Manifestation the better, because (A) it's a small bumper against aggro and (B) it puts pressure on control decks: they will have to deal with it one way or another, and counterspells and bounces aren't the answer.
This deck also has a couple 1-ofs, just because. New Perspectives, obviously. If you can get it rolling, you win almost automatically. Faith of the Devoted and Drake Haven, because they're decent payoffs, but at CMC 3 I don't want ever to have more than one at any point. Razaketh's Rite, because of its sweet 1-mana cycling cost, and because it's essentially a fifth Archfiend in the deck, in case I have the worst possible luck and never draw a single Archfiend or something.
Misc. notes:
- The mana curve and the average CMC are a bit deceiving, as most of the cards get cycled anyway until turn 5+.
-
Hollow One
is overall just a great card for this deck. With luck, you can cast it on Turn 3 if you cycle the right cards (namely, ones with cycling cost of 1 mana), but most likely it'll be sweet payoff for when you cycle two or three cards.
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Tragic Lesson
is basically the poor man's Pull from Tomorrow. Sure, you can't cast it for X=3 and draw-3-discard-1, but Lesson is much easier to cast in this deck, as it only requires one blue mana instead of two. On top of that, if, after drawing two cards you don't want to discard anything, you may instead opt to bounce a land to your hand. You may want to do that if you draw the perfect cards to win, and have plenty of lands, and don't have/need the Archfiend triggers. Or if you need two cards to reach the seven-card threshold of New Perspectives.