Dope deck! Very powerful damage control deck. Thank you for leading me on to Saving Grace. I will search for the card and swap it with Pariah in my own deck.

I have a couple thoughts to share

Brash Taunter + Guilty Conscience and Godo + Helm are the best combos in the deck. Adding Thalia's Lancers to tutor for Godo is on curve and gives you a 4/4 first strike body. Imperial Recruiter and Recruiter of the Guard tutor for Brash Taunter.

Cards like Coalhauler Swine are awesome and janky as hell but you might find its hard to pull off a useful combo because you need a pariah effect out, and its 6 mana cost makes it hurt when opponents remove it. Replace it with Fervent Champion and equip something for free to start drawing cards from Akiri.

Gideon's Sacrifice is an awesome card to have in the deck, but if you take out Coalhauler Swine it won't have nearly as much of an effect in the deck. Replace it with Martyrdom. You can control any amount of damage from any source until end of turn. The three mana cost is well worth overcoming the restrictions of Gideon's text.

Just some thoughts, again, dope deck!!

Hey corndiggitydog

Thanks for dropping by! And glad you like the deck :). Let me go over your suggestions:

• You are right those 2 combo’s are very strong and that adding more tutors to fetch those combos is the right thing to do if I want this deck to become more competitive. However, they are so powerful that I fear they will overshadow some of the more janky combos, for example with Wheel of Misfortune . Notice that I’m not running Helm of the Host for this reason. I prefer a play style where I don’t have such consistency in finding “the best” combo, so I can have fun exploring some of these other card interactions.
• I fully agree Coalhauler Swine is slow and janky. I might do as you say later and swap it out for something leaner, but I want to at least play with it in a few games to try and pull off a combo with it ;).
• I don’t fully follow what you say about Gideon's Sacrifice . That card and Saving Grace are basically the same card. Both are great to combine with any of the damage cards in the deck, from board wipes like Blasphemous Act to Wheel of Misfortune and Volcano Hellion . I do see now that Martyrdom allows me to redirect damage that would be dealt to permanents other than mine, which I glanced over before ;). But I disagree taking out Coalhauler Swine impacts the inclusion of Gideon's Sacrifice .

Thanks again for your comment and upvote!

Great minds think alike! Here's my list with essentially the same strategy in mind, if you care to take a look: https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/dynamite-with-a-laser-beam-2/

You might consider these: Justice, Gratuitous Violence, Frilled Deathspitter, Shifting Shadow

Thanks for stopping by king-saproling! Will look at your list soon. I like Justice and Shifting Shadow but I don’t understand the relevance of Gratuitous Violence. Is it because of the combo with an indestructible Boros Reckoner?

Frilled Deathspitter seems more at home in Pyrohemia-type decks. Or is there a synergy I’m glancing over?

Thanks again!

Hey Beebles, yep Gratuitous Violence allows you to deal an arbitrarily large amount of damage with an indestructible Reckoner.

Frilled Deathspitter goes infinite with indestructible + Guilty Conscience, or indestructible + Justice + a Pariah effect. It's no Reckoner, but I figure Deathspitter is worth noting if you ever wanted to maximize the number of combo pieces.

Heliod's Pilgrim might be worth noting too.

Nice! Lots to ponder on king-saproling, thanks :)

Hey king-saproling,

I’m going to test Embermaw Hellion as a similar effect to Gratuitous Violence. Next to a combo piece it’s also a creature with evasion that can be equipped to trigger Akiri.

Justice and Deathmaw Spinner I’m going to leave on the maybe bord for now, as they are kind of worse versions of cards already in the deck. And I don’t want to overburden the deck with combo pieces that do nothing without their counterparts. I might still find a spot for Shifting Shadow later :).

Nice deck. You gave me some ideas for mine : Scorching Winds. I went a bit more control than you did with Boros, so made use of things like Fork and Mana Tithe.

I've had some interesting uses from creatures like Shaman en-Kor and Dawn Elemental to use as redirects or damage outlets once they are buffed with damage gathering enchantments or equipment.

Hey freezerboy, thanks for your comment! Shaman en-Kor looks like an interesting and versatile card. However I don’t like that it does not have evasion to gel with the main game mode of this deck. Most of the time in a match, this is just a regular equipment Akiri deck, so most combo pieces need to also work in that plan. Dawn Elemental does have evasion, but doesn’t do a lot for this deck because we can just make any creature indestructible with our commander and have a similar outcome. And I’d much rather fling that damage to an opponent than soaking it up like that :).

I figured you could use Shaman en-Kor as a permanent redirect option, but he would require a bit of mana and an outlet for the damage redirection so you have a good point about the evasion. At least your deck gave me some nice ideas. The size of your maybeboard does intimidate me a bit though. Could basically make another deck as an alter option for this one and pit the two against each other.

Haha yes, the maybeboard could use a cleanup ;). I’ve been trying out a lot of different things before ending up at the current version, so it has grown a bit out of proportion. Cool idea to make another deck out of that, even if it’s only for one game :).

Hey Beebles!

Just wanted to say that I love the deck. It inspired me to build something similar. I started out with Akiri in the deck, but then I ended up just going for creatures that are always indestructible and enchantments that make creatures indestructible to cut out the extra step. I switched the commander to Tajic because he gave me a creature to target with damage and then I put in en kor creatures to redirect damage. It also allowed me to cut out the equipment aspect of the deck. With arcbond and the en kor creatures it is straight up lethal! Check it out https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/akiri-you

Nice KitesailFruitbooter! Glad you like the deck and got inspired to build your own take on the concept :). Sounds like a cool direction, making use of all those old school en-kor creatures!

I went through your primer and couldn't find any mention of it, so I'll just ask: Are you aware that Brash Taunter with Blazing Sunsteel...simply win?

Sunsteel simply keeps on targeting Taunter, triggering itself and Taunter infinitely, which in turn results in a win. This seems like a combo you might like to mention.

Ah, I wasn't aware of that interaction yet seshiro_of_the_orochi :), thanks!

You're welcome :)

This style of gameplay is called 'aikido'.

Hey 9-lives, thanks for stopping by to leave a comment. I don’t think I agree with your assessment though. This deck does not apply Aikido gameplay.

Aikido, which on this site has been reworded to “Tactical Appropration”, is a strategy “…that attempts to turn the opponent's actions against them with steal, copy, or redirect effects like Control Magic, Phyrexian Metamorph, and Deflecting Palm".

I see why you would think this deck fall into that strategy, since cards like Brash Taunter can in theory redirect opponent’s attacks back to them. However, that is not what this deck attempts to do at all. This is an aggro deck, and uses that aggro to power draw engines to dig for an infinite combo, which are all based on self-inflicted damage (and not damage generated by our opponents). So it’s an Aggro + Combo strategy, and not an Aikido one.

Also, Aikido decks tend to have reactive gameplay: awaiting the best moment to cast that Deflecting Palm, or await a good target for that Control Magic. This deck has proactive gameplay: attacking from te get-go and dig for combo pieces. If it threatens to redirect opponent’s damage, it will be an incidental side-effect, and will function more as a deterrent than actually redirecting opponent’s moves (so more similar to a Pillowfort effect).