I took 3rd place at the pre-release event yesterday and learned some tricks that I hadn't known about prior to holding these cards in my hand. I wasn't exactly sure what the best strategy was for Fabricate, but I have a much clearer idea now. This deck wants to decimate the table all at once and can do so in glorious fashion rather quickly with a few very powerful interactions.
The head honcho here is Demon of Dark Schemes with his Massacre Wurm-type ETB effect. He doesn't have the same second ability where your opponent loses life whenever one of their creatures die so we have to be a little more creative if we want to win by dropping this bomb. Zulaport Cutthroat came to mind immediately when I realized the best way to handle this situation was to Fabricate a bunch of Servo tokens and then blow them all up with the Demon. The cool thing is that you gain a bunch of energy when this happens too and the Demon can buy creatures back from the dead. Anybody's dead. It's pretty cool. However, in one of the bonus packs that I opened from my prize for finishing 3rd I got an Aetherworks Marvel. This also gives you energy whenever a creature dies and this one lets you buy a creature from the top of your library sort of like Collected Company except it's ANY one card that you can choose to cast for free. Holy crap. This could be another Demon for a Languish of -4/-4 to the table which should finish off anything else that survived the first one and you are left with a pair of 5/5 Flyers. It could also be a Diabolic Tutor so you can search for any card and put it into your hand. It won't matter if you had enough on the board plus one or two Cutthroats.
Another bomb that ramps up what the Cutthroat does is the Marionette Master. You can get 3 Servos at once and with 3 toughness he would survive the Demon. If those were your only two cards your opponent would lose 3 life when the Servos die and you would almost gain enough energy to use the Demon's third ability. If you get a second one the best option is to take the +1/+1 counters this time because now every time a servo dies your opponent will lose 5 life, one each from the first Master with 1 power and then four each from the second who has 4 power. It's pretty gross. He is the best target to gain the +1/+1 counter when
Lawless Broker
dies and whenever you cast Subtle Strike.
Slight change, I overlooked that a Marionette Master would have 0 power if it didn't have any counters on it because of the -2/-2, so if you don't have a Cutthroat you'd want to consider taking the counters first so that you'll be able to deal 2 damage per creature death. Hopefully you would have played a Weaponcraft Enthusiast and some other creatures before then dropping a Demon for maximum damage. Eliminate the Competition becomes more valuable because you can pick off any targets without weakening the Master and still get full value.
MAJOR oversight, Fabrication Module in place of Subtle Strike to give me counters for energy completely changes the game. See the "Epiphany" I had about this in the Updates below.
Weaponcraft Enthusiast
is amazing for 3 creatures for 3 mana and helps flood the board. You'll pretty much always want to Fabricate Servos with this guy, it's pretty much like casting
Hordeling Outburst
.
Decoction Module allows you to bounce your ETB creatures to replay them and gain more energy for the Marvel and dig for a Demon, or if you don't have a Demon but you do have a Cutthroat and/or a Master you could find that copy of
Eliminate the Competition
. This will allow you to blow up your board while blowing up their board and they also lose a ton of life. It's magnificent. There's only one copy in the main board because of Diabolic Tutor and the Marvel being so efficient at getting there.
Carrier Thrall
is wonderful here because he dies to everything and replaces himself with a Scion to give you a little ramp if your not hitting your land. This doesn't trigger the Master because it's not an artifact, but it does trigger the Cutthroat, Demon, Module, and Marvel when it or the Scion dies. He is probably the best target for Subtle Strike to get the death trigger and ETB trigger from the Scion and then put the +1/+1 counter onto the Marionette Master so that when you drop a bomb it adds an extra damage for each Servo that dies.
Hedron Crawler takes this spot away from the Thrall in addition to the change out of Subtle Strike. It worked before, but these two card changes make a DRAMATIC upgrade to both speed and power. I still can't believe I didn't see it before. Ramp and the added bonus of being an Artifact to trigger the Marionette and get things moving a turn sooner make the Hedron Crawler the better choice. Now I don't need to use Scion tokens either :)
Live Fast is Read the Bones without the Scry, but gaining two energy instead fits like a glove to make it even easier to use the Demon's reanimation ability or the Marvels "CoCo" ability. Cantrips are always good.
Fortuitous Find and Mortuary Mire are even more ways to dig things back out of the graveyard so you can care even less about things getting destroyed, even the bigger guys. I like that it can dig up an artifact and a creature so you can get back a Module or a Marvel and then something else useful like an Enthusiast or a Cutthroat, or even a Demon.
The sideboard has a few fun tricks that fit pretty good with the theme going on here. Die Young allows you to sink your energy into a huge power drain if you lost your Marvel and need to deal with something huge and/or indestructible. If nothing else it does give you 2 energy for 2 mana.
Essence Extraction helps burn down a target creature while giving back a little life. This might be good since there is a chance you'll need a little time to get set up and gives you some targeted removal to slow down your opponent.
Gonti, Lord of Luxury takes away whatever your opponent was going to draw over the next 4 turns and gives you some insight into what they might be playing if it's a new deck/player. I like the idea of stealing land away from them, but since you can play anything you Exile with any color of mana then stealing a creature or a board wipe or some kind of protection or whatever are all on the table. I like how the rest go on the bottom of the library so they won't ever know what might have been. Decoction Module would allow you to do this multiple turns in a row once you reach 8 mana.
If you do exile land, can it be played? Sadly, no. No you can not.
Harsh Scrutiny is
Ostracize
with Scry nailed onto it. It's a solid first turn card that could be swapped in place of the Fortuitous Find since there are other ways of digging creatures back. The reason for this in side and Find in main for now is that even though your opponent might not be killing your stuff, you are definitely going to be killing your stuff. I love how this is a classic black card though, right up there with Diabolic Tutor getting back to their roots.
Remorseless Punishment
is one of those cards you want to combo off of playing a Demon and then using the energy to activate the Marvel and then pull this for free on the same turn. It would be truly devastating, much like
Eliminate the Competition
, especially if they just lost all of their creatures and can't discard.
Sifter of Skulls
is another interesting means of replacing Thralls, Cutthroats, Enthusiasts, and Brokers with Scion tokens so that you still have blockers behind and another wave of creatures to die to a second Demon drop. Since they are Scions they give you ramp that also grants Energy if you have a Demon and/or a Marvel (which you should) so you can activate either of their awesome abilities.
And there you have it, an updated variation to Aristocrats that can be much more explosive and can pull it off with just one color. No need to splash Green or White here, just good old fashioned Black Magic. Thanks for reading, let me know what you think in the comments below and don't forget to vote!
UPDATE:
As much as I like Diabolic Tutor, I've been playing around with Essence Extraction in the main board instead for the targeted damage and life gain and it has proven to be more valuable more of the time. It also lowers my curve slightly which helps speed me up just a little. On that note, I was also considering finding room for Hedron Crawlers because they are artifact creatures that help ramp me a little faster, but I'm not sure where they fit. I might try replacing the Carrier Thrall, but they are nice early damage or chump blockers to accomplish the same goal. Not sure, just a thought since it's repeatable mana.
Still need to continue testing to find out how to be more consistent. I won every game where I found my stride, but lost all but one where I didn't. It comes down to either hitting every mana drop and then getting to play a Master on turn six followed by a Demon on turn seven or getting a Marvel on turn four and then enough energy to use it by turn six. It happens most of the time, but not quite enough for me to be satisfied. It's close, and it's very fun. A few times I forced scoops when I stole their best creature from their graveyard with the Demon. Very satisfying.
