U/B budget control with tap/untap shenanigans, a king and some gold.
Court of the Dark King
Looking at King Macar, the Gold-Cursed, I knew I had to built a (thematic) deck around him. So much flavor! While he is too slow for most formats, I think tap/untap shenanigans are a lot of fun in casual. My only concern was (and is) that this should be an affordable deck. There are good options available to build a B/W deck around Macar with lots of exiling and attack-tap triggers going around, or a classic U/B Dimir control. I chose the latter because of control options.
Enablers
Rathi Trapper and Niblis of the Breath are the rank-and-file tappers in this court, usable to tap away hostile critters for the assassin or to set up Macar himself. Thornbite Staff allows the king to untap himself, especially during other players' turns. It's a good alternative to the powerful but pretty expensive Staff of Domination. Finally, Freed from the Real is the ultimate enabler, allowing Macar to tap and untap several times per turn if set up properly (and if enough tokens have been generated).
As to who's getting tapped: Night Market Lookout adds a bit of lifegain to the affair. He's probably targeted early on, but that's OK. Now Daring Thief is where it gets interesting since lesser members of the king's court - even Gold tokens - can be replaced (and permanently so!) by a juicy critter or artifact someone else put on the battlefield.
Banishing Knack and Hidden Strings allow for some additional tap combinations. If the High Priest manages to generate a demon or two, those make really good cypher targets for Hidden Strings.
Defense
The big deterrent against massive attacks is Propaganda, making it harder for opponents to field their army. Turn Aside prevents opponents from sniping away vital members of the king's court. If that happens anyway, Soul Salvage allows you to recover.
The VIPs
Now, the center of this deck obviously is King Macar, the Gold-Cursed, busy exiling creatures and creating gold tokens to help paying for the tap/untap engine. He is followed by the Royal Assassin and the 'opportunity control' Skirsdag High Priest, who can utilize untapped creatures to make 5/5 tokens. While this normally is a steep price to pay in a deck, in this deck it's perfect because Macar, the Thief and the Lookout actually want to be tapped as often as possible. Three birds, one demon.
Have Gold, Need Cards
Costly Plunder gives you some card draw, putting Gold tokens to good use.
This is what I've got so far. The deck is still pretty vulnerable. I am trying to find a way to utilize the Gold tokens for more than just paying costs, but none of the 'sacrifice an artifact for X' cards I've seen so far really fit. I even removed Revel in Riches because it competed with Macar's CMC slot and confused the deck, even though the secondary win condition is still nice. Also, even though it's expensive (for a budget deck) I should probably include Intruder Alarm somehow because holy cow would that combo off.
I appreciate all ideas and comments you guys might have!
