Body Count

Instant

Spectacle {B} (You may cast this for this spell's spectacle cost rather than this spell's mana cost if an opponent lost life this turn.)

Draw a card for each creature that died under your control this turn. (Dying is being put into the graveyard from the battlefield, tokens are put into the graveyard before they cease to exist.)

Legality

Format	Legality
1v1 Commander	Legal
Archenemy	Legal
Canadian Highlander	Legal
Casual	Legal
Commander / EDH	Legal
Commander: Rule 0	Legal
Custom	Legal
Duel Commander	Legal
Highlander	Legal
Legacy	Legal
Leviathan	Legal
Limited	Legal
Oathbreaker	Legal
Planechase	Legal
Quest Magic	Legal
Tiny Leaders	Legal
Vanguard	Legal
Vintage	Legal

Discussion (6)

KibaAlpha on Forza Orzhova

7 months ago

Have you given any consideration to including Body Count for some potentially mass card draw?

CrystalQuarry on Liesa, Forgotten Archangel (Budget EDH, Combo)

1 year ago

Hey, thank you so much for commenting and taking the time to read through the deck description!

While this is intended to be a budget deck, I personally just really like foils and original printings of cards. The versions of each card listed in the deck here are what I actually have for it in paper.

Activated Sleeper is a card I have been looking at and considering adding to the deck, but it seems highly conditional given that it can only copy a creature that left the battlefield the same turn. I agree it can go infinite with Karmic Guide and Karmic Guide even helps set it up given that Echo would often force you to sacrifice it on your upkeep anyway. That said, I'm a bit worried about how effective the card is when you DON'T have access to Karmic Guide. I guess depending on the pod it could still be quite good at stealing an opponent's creature. I will have to test it a bit and see how it performs in practice.

Kaya's Ghostform is a card I've considered as well but what concerns me with it is the Sorcery speed nature of it and that it is a bit more telegraphed what the intention is. That said, the ability to bring back the creature even if it gets targeted with something like Swords to Plowshares is very cool! In the pods I've played this deck and where people have gotten to learn more or less how it works, they tend to try and remove Liesa, Forgotten Archangel very quickly, so I've found cards like Undying Evil to be essential for keeping Liesa in play. I've found the instant speed to be extremely relevant in many situations as well. That said, Legion's Landing  ^Flip is a particularly weak card in the deck and I could definitely see cutting that for testing Kaya's Ghostform.

Thran Vigil is a cool new card that I must have missed in the BRO spoilers. However, this deck isn't really all in on persist type effects. Twilight Shepherd is pretty much the only card it would strongly interact with. I would say it's pretty rare for this deck to win through combat and as such the value of the +1/+1 counters in it (even an arbitrarily large number of them) is a bit questionable. If the deck has assembled one of the infinite death engines, then it should be winning outright without the need to even go to combat. I like the interaction with Tortured Existence but it's such a shame that it only works on your turn! If you could suddenly pump up Liesa on an opponent's turn after they've already declared attackers at you, then that would make it a lot better.

Profane Tutor is a great budget tutor, but having to wait two entire turns is a major detriment to how useful of a card it is, especially as a mid to late game draw. The decks I've seen take the biggest advantage of Profane Tutor are the ones that somehow exile and cast a copy from exile or copy it from graveyard and cast the copy immediately, rather than having to wait the two turns. Mid to late game I would much rather pay a little extra mana to guarantee getting a card immediately rather than having to wait. If you get Profane Tutor in the early game, then yes it's definitely better than Diabolic Tutor or Mastermind's Acquisition for the lower mana cost. If I had a means of cheating on the suspend part of the card in Orzhov then it would warrant an inclusion over one of the other tutors in my opinion.

Vile Entomber is another card I considered and even in an earlier iteration of the deck I ran for a while. The issue I often found with it was that it only grabbed ONE card to put to the graveyard. Burning-Rune Demon and Final Parting are in the deck because they find TWO cards. With Vile Entomber I could find Karmic Guide but not another card to combo with it. With Burning-Rune Demon I can find Karmic Guide and another card to combo with it and often times whichever piece the opponent gives me is irrelevant. Blinking or reanimating Burning-Rune Demon is also significantly more value and helps assemble combos much faster than Vile Entomber can.

Bolas's Citadel is extremely powerful, but it is at least right now (12/17/2022) more than $5 which is where the line in the sand has been drawn for whether or not a card can be added to the deck. That said, even if it was a bit cheaper Bolas's Citadel would require leaning much harder into a life gain theme. While life gain is another very popular and powerful strategy, I feel it is a bit orthogonal to the direction of this deck which is more heavily focused on creature ETB/LTB triggers and the graveyard.

I've been working on a Liesa, Shroud of Dusk deck which leans very heavily into life gain/life loss shenanigans and in that deck I do run stuff like Children of Korlis. That's not to say that Children of Korlis isn't a good card in Liesa, Forgotten Archangel, but I feel like you have to already be on the life gain game plan to get the most out of it.

Plumb the Forbidden is a great card, but you need sufficiently many throw away bodies and a sufficiently high life total to manage it. Without sufficient life gain or creature token generators it runs the risk of being a dead draw. Body Count can also be a completely dead draw at times, but it has a much higher ceiling in this deck specifically than Plumb the Forbidden does. Body Count can literally draw the entire deck for 1 black mana with a death engine assembled. Plumb the Forbidden could never draw more than the greatest number of creatures in play at one moment and I must have the life available to pay for it plus 2 mana. If the deck was more of an aristocrats style build spewing creature tokens left and right and running things like Soul Warden then Plumb the Forbidden would be a much more natural inclusion I feel.

Fanatical Devotion is a really cool sacrifice outlet that can do relevant things like protect Liesa which is very important. That said, thanks to BRO another arguably much better sacrifice outlet just became budget (<$5). And that's Ashnod's Altar. I will be adding this to the deck shortly as a third sacrifice outlet.

Thanks again for reading the long description and commenting!

Leonantti on Call of Souls

1 year ago

KibaAlpha Thanks for your comment! I admit, I did misremember (and then misread again) Black Market Connections . In my head I was comparing it to Phyrexian Arena and remembering that it had a different timing when the effect triggers (Connections' trigger happens in beginning of precombat main phase and Arena's happens in the upkeep but all in all I think the timing is pretty much similar in most cases in the end that would matter to the player). Connections is Arena on steroids though and I would play it over the Arena.

Reason why I am not replacing Black Market Connections with Smothering Tithe is because I like the options Connections give me and the ability to choose what triggers I want, and with Connections I don't have to rely on what opponents might choose to do: if opponents are not drawing much cards or have enough mana to keep paying for the 2, it does nothing to me, and in my experience Thalisse relies on keeping turning out tokens that start to add up eventually. Black Market Connections ALWAYS does something to me if I choose so AND it does not just give me manaramp in exchange for life but card draw and extra creature token as well (the Treasure token and creature token then generate even more creature tokens with Thalisse!). All in all, Smothering Tithe might give a bigger payout in some situations but I like more Black Market Connections reliability to work as I want and flexibility to choose what I want. The only thing that I am worried with playing with Connections is that I might get greedy and end up spending too much life at wrong time and it comes back to bite me in the butt, but with all the pingers that make opponents lose life and me gain life I feel confident that it will get evened out and/or I will come on top with life total situation.

Body Count and Plumb the Forbidden could be fun inclusions, I can see situations where they could be really strong and draw me so many cards! Out of the two to play I think I would consider Plump the Forbidden since it could work as a additional sac engine and it does allow me to choose how many creatures I wanna sack (flexibility ftw!). I could add the card to the deck if I am able to figure out what to take away from the deck to add room for the card.

KibaAlpha on Call of Souls

1 year ago

Nice build.

May I suggest you remove Black Market Connections and replace it with Smothering Tithe. If you misread it as I did, note that Black Market Connections triggers at the beginning of your "Precombat Main Phase" so unless you flash it in on the end step prior to your turn you won't be able to get value from it until your next turn and in a 4 player game the odds of it surviving a full rotation of the table is unlikely.

Maybe consider Body Count and Plumb the Forbidden for card draw.

KBK7101 on Fascinating Cards from New Capenna

1 year ago

Pretty hyped for Determined Iteration for Feldon commander decks. Pretty excited for Illicit Shipment and Body Count as well.

Bootleggers' Stash is kind of stupid, though...

Masterful on Necronomicon | Teysa Karlov | Primer

1 year ago

kirbysan I hadn't considered Tenacious Underdog until you pointed it out, but he seems like a strong grindy card. The fact that you can just keep bringing him back to draw 2 cards apiece with Teysa and get continuous fodder seems good. The only problem is that 4 mana every time is a lot. I'm not confident enough to include him off the bat, but I'll keep my eye on him.

Body Count feels a bit win-more. It's not as strong as our other draw outlets that only require one sacrifice or also count as fodder. If we're getting a million death triggers in one turn, we're probably winning anyway.

Life Insurance feels worse than either Smothering Tithe or Black Market, and we're playing neither of those. I don't see room for these 4+ mana slow ramp spells. They're nice in grindy games, but we'd rather be developing cheap fodder in early turns and hopefully ending in mid-late game.

Thanks for your suggestions! I should hopefully have time to do the New Capenna deck update sometime soon, so stay tuned for that!

Nic44 Oh that's an interesting format idea! I love budget alternatives since the more accessible the game is, the better. I can see wanting Bloodsoaked Champion in the circumstances you mentioned. Good luck and have fun!