I love synergy decks, especially ones where the different pieces are scattered throughout Magic history so you have to discover them on their own. With that in mind, this is a fun little casual brew I thought up.
The Strategy:
-Run a bunch of expensive creatures with incredibly powerful activated abilities. Find ways to replicate those abilities a bunch of times.
The Cards:
-
Skill Borrower
,
Necrotic Ooze
, and
Havengul Lich
can all gain other creatures' activated abilities. Borrower and Ooze let you cheat them out early, while Lich is more valuable in the late game. Who wouldn't want to bring back
Avatar of Woe
and kill an extra creature while you're at it? The best bit is that Lich's ability is activated, so if he's on top of the library or in the grave Ooze / Borrower can get it too.
-
Avatar of Woe
,
Arcanis the Omnipotent
,
Tree of Perdition
: Our primary payoff cards. Tree's ability is just really stupid if you give it to a 3-4 toughness creature. Avatar is our primary removal; she gets the nod over
Visara the Dreadful
since this deck tends to fill up its grave and even if it doesn't in multiplayer casting her for BB is laughably easy. Arcanis is card advantage, plus protection for Ooze or Borrower in a pinch if they need it.
-
Civilized Scholar
and
Merfolk Looter
: Card filtering. Draw / discard plays really well with Ooze, Avatar and Lich, and is always welcome. Scholar and Ooze in particular play really well together; if Scholar is in the grave, Ooze gets his ability; but since Ooze can't transform, he can essentially untap and draw/discard as often as you like, provided you're always discarding a creature card. This gets large amounts of creatures into your grave very quickly.
-
Illusionist's Bracers
: Makes basically all of our creatures better, but also has a neat little combo with Scholar. If you activate his ability while Bracers are equipped, you can discard a creature card to each activation and transform him twice, ending up with him untapped and ready to activate again. Again, it's a way to get large numbers of creatures into our grave quickly.
-
Thousand-Year Elixir
: Our best abilities are all {T} abilities, so this thing is awesome.
