The main card of the deck is, of course, Alesha, Who Smiles at Death. With her, you can bring back anything you need from the graveyard. What will you be bringing back? Cards like Pia and Kiran Nalaar and, the money card, Hornet Queen will bring tokens along with them, so even if they're immediately removed it's no big deal.
Firemantle Mage
will give your creatures Menace, and it's best to bring it out after you have a few tokens already, and Drana, Liberator of Malakir will attempt to get your creatures out of Lightning Strike range and buff your tokens. Cathartic Reunion, Satyr Wayfinder, and Noose Constrictor will be your ways of getting those bombs into the graveyard while also granting a reward, such as drawing cards, grabbing lands, or creating a huge attacker. Fatal Push is simply the best removal in the format and Eldritch Evolution is a good way to grab Alesha, Who Smiles at Death if you're not drawing her. Finally, I recently made Blossoming Defense mainboard, as Alesha, Who Smiles at Death is simply too fragile and too important to the deck.
The sideboard is pretty easy. Caustic Caterpiller is good not only against Artifact based decks but also for when they bring in the post-board Tormod's Crypt. Murderous Cut is just good removal in case you find their creatures too difficult to deal with. Kolaghan's Command is a good card that you could consider for the mainboard. It Shocks a creature, gets your Alesha back if your opponent has a large amount of removal, as well as making your opponent discard and destroying those pesky artifacts. If you're on a budget and care mostly about getting back a dead Alesha, I like
Gravedigger
. The last slot is dedicated to stopping Planeswalkers, which are a huge threat in this format. The obvious defense for that is
Ruinous Path
.
Let's look at what the best possible turn order would look like. While this may be the best possible, similar things are not too uncommon in games. It would look like this;
Turn 1:
Land
Turn 2:
Land, Satyr Wayfinder, grab a third land and dump some high-quality creatures (such as a Hornet Queen)
Turn 3:
Land, Alesha, Who Smiles at Death
Turn 4:
Attack, bring back Hornet Queen, get four tokens
Turn 5:
Land, Eldritch Evolution to kill your Hornet Queen and grab another one, attack, and bring back the first Queen. Now you have 12 tokens and a wasp.
This is definitely a stretch, but even the first Queen will practically win you the game most times. I've had both Grim Flayer and Smuggler's Copter suggested to me for this deck, with good arguments for them. Feel free to let me know what you think. Any suggestions or comments are more than welcome.
