Greetings everyone!
Introduction:
I’ve always wanted to build a stylish Lilly Vess Deck and this is my first attempt. At first I tried to include a lot of cards that picture Lilly or her background/story, but noticed they aren’t that effective or don’t have that much synergy alltogether (at least not enough). I am very open for discussions, tips, hints, ideas or anything that will help the deck to improve.
Theme:
Basically it should be a reanimator deck cause I wanted to go for the Necromancer idea of Lilly. When I checked the planeswalker cards, I figured Lilly kinda almost always has hand destruction abillities and so I went with that aswell and tried to combine it with zombies and reanimation. When you try to combine a lot of stuff, naturally you have to cut a lot of cards that you normally would eagerly include but simply can’t without destroying your mana base.
Zombies:
Basic idea is that they don’t cost that much and have high synergy effects that will help building up an army of dead corpses that draw cards, turn other creatures in graveyards to more zombies, add to their power, loyalty counters aso. You get the idea. I have a few cards that will hopefully create a lot of zombie tokens too, cause I plan to use those for sac effects. Mind you this is not a full tribal deck, so the usual buff artifacts for a certain creature type are not included.
Sacrifice:
I included some sacrifice effects for mana boost/ramp there and enchantments that will create zombie tokens when you discard together with the hand destruction of your opponents. I don’t know If I will get a decent amount of tokens though. Help? Thoughts?
Lilly:
Would be great to reach one of her ultimates (especially the commander one) but I doubt it. Nevertheless I included The Chain Veil to maybe boost the loyalty counters. I don’t have enough flying creatures but hopefully her faithfull dead servants (a lot of them hopefully) will protect her till her ultimate kicks in. All the other planeswalker abillites cater to the overall deck archetype aswell in my view.
Hand Destruction:
It is there. Not all of it but a decent amount (mostly enchantments). Bottom line: Your opponents can’t do anyting If there is nothing to do (no cards in their hands). Wouldn’t be much of a problem for decks that have high card draw but that’s alright. You can’t have it all.
Loops and other „interesting things“:
Phyrexian Altar +Gravecrawler Ayara, First of Locthwain + any Zombie on your side = Loop for endless life loss etc. This is just a win condition I wanted to include If everything else fails. Geth's Grimoire + Words of Waste = If you can pay for the words, you can empty your opponents hands easily. I haven’t found yet a better way of making everyone else discard their hand while you keep yours (with Lilly you always have to discard aswell). Phyrexian Altar + Gravecrawler + Contamination + any other zombie on your side = all lands produce only black mana as long as you can sacc crawler and get it back. If someone else is playing mono black, well not that good. For everyone else this combo is pretty salty.
Current Thoughts and help needed:
I am not sure I can produce enough zombie tokens to sac for all my various effects?
If I have enough zombie production/reanimation, do I have enough sac outlet or in other words: If I have my army of zombies are there enough sacc cards that will make the sacrifice worth it/have impact?
I am kinda torn wether I should include Larceny or not. It’s rather expensive but If every zombie combat damage makes my oppenents discard, is it worth it?
I feel like I’m missing removers. I probably need more? Right? And maybe more wipes? Idk.
I’m thinking about Mindcrank , just to empty decks more quickly, reduce options for my oppenents and give me more options for reanimation. On the other hand, it tends to draw a lot of aggro. I won’t include Bloodchief Ascension though cause my players already know that loop and hate me for it. Maybe Bloodchief and not Mindcrank for a lil life boost? Just in case?
I haven’t found a good way of further trying to buff loyalty with my Lillys. Proliferate does nothing for the rest of the deck and the only thing I can think of right now is, trying to get out a few Lillys and then kill em with The Elderspell to at least make one of them trigger their ultimate/emblem.
Not sure about my mana base. Enough lands? Calculator says it should be around 39? I included all the staple black mana ramp lands Ik of.
Ideas, help, thoughts highly welcome!
