Controlled Burn Deck:
This deck uses a style of play I like to think of as Controlled Burn... or Obscure Combo Midrange Damage Redirection. I like Controlled Burn.
Play this if:
You like having challenging and interactive games using colors and cards you won't see in every deck. Damage redirection is not a common tactic in Magic because most of the cards that redirect are too inconsistent and have very high CMC costs. This deck combines various cheaper effects to create the redirect effect. This means there are many paths, but they all end in the same place... the Queen burns it all down.
Don't play this if:
You want to combo off in the first three rounds or if you only want to play the same cards everyone already knows in the same exact ideal lines everyone already has seen. Seriously people, the deck isn't playing blue or green... in EDH. This isn’t cEDH and doesn’t try to be. It is about finding various and occasionally obscure ways to combine effects into a wincon.
If you are still interested, let's get into it.
Gods Save the Queen
This deck will start slowly then kill suddenly. The basic idea is to slow your opponents down, make yourself too expensive to target, and then inflict lethal damage in a single round.
Never Hit a Lady
BASICS OF PLAY: Build your board state by punishing opponents who attack or target you.
- Defend with Maze of Ith, Redirect or deflect opponents' spells and abilities with various instant-speed responses, and use control enchantments to slow the game down. Be political, don't be the threat at the table.
- Use spite effect creatures (creatures that when dealt damage do that much damage to another target) to block so your opponents punch themselves if they attack you. Combining these spite effects with pariah and indestructible is the basic strategy of this deck.
- Use the Monarch ability for card advantage. If you lose the Monarch it isn't the end of the world because your commander starts creating assassins with deathtouch. These are great blockers and help dissuade your opponents from attacking. They also are good for taking Monarch back. So if you are the Monarch you get card advantage and if you are not you get creature advantage. Meanwhile, let your opponents fight for the crown amongst themselves, this buys you time.
A Queen bides her time
This deck should not attack early. Play politics, be passive, don't look like a threat. If your play-group knows what is coming so targets you anyway, you can still make it painful to attack you by using your spite effect creatures and redirect instants. Learn to use redirect spells as psuedo-counterspells by forcing spells to target the redirect spells. Once the redirect resolves it is off the stack and the spell that was forced to target the redirect spell has no target and so fizzles. Slow your opponents down further with control creatures, enchantments and well-timed a Silence to disrupt combos. Silence can also trigger nightfall, which transforms Ill-tempered Loner into Howlpack Avenger. Using Silence on the player right before you can set up howlpack for a game ending burn spell. Used correctly this deck should allow you to gradually build up a board with several spite creatures. This is when you can start doing damage, but you don't do it by attacking.
A Queen uses her people well
Once spite creatures are in play, have them serve as damage multipliers for your own burn spells. Use the spite effect to redirect damage from your own burn spells to your opponents. Spite effects allow you to inflict burn damage that normally would have been limited to creatures to players. If you can, preserve your spite creatures by using indestructible effects if you have to, but I would recommend holding on to indestructible effects for your kill shot. Once you have several redirect creatures in play, they effectively multiply the damage from mass burn spells such as blasphemous act or star of extinction. Now these mass burn spells that would normally only effect creatures can be redirected to inflict huge damage to an opponent. The same idea applies to rolling earthquake, but it already hits players once, then will hit a player again for each spite creature.
Ill-tempered Loner/Howlpack Avenger is the ideal finisher if you have a lot of creatures in play. Use a silence effect on the player right before your turn and you can force nightfall. This transforms Ill-Tempered Loner into Howlpack Avenger, which makes all of your creatures spite creatures. This isn't an infinite damage play, but it very often ends the game. Lets look at an example.
Basic Spite Redirect Example:
Play blasphemous act (13 damage per creature) or Star of Extinction (20 damage per creature) and hit all creatures on the board with burn damage. Each of your spite effect creatures in play can deal that amount of damage to an opponent, while the burn spell also clears the board. If you have two spite creatures you can do 26 damage to one opponent with blas act, or 40 damage with star. (or you could do 13 and 20 damage respectively to two opponents)
This will often knock an opponent (or two) out of the game.
If howlpack is in play and you have any sort of board state, this will probably end the game as each creature effectively gains a spite effect and these spells do so much damage each time. If you have Coalhauler Swine in play, you get to hit each opponent for the amount of damage the swine takes. But remember, coalhauler hits you too! There are pariah effects to deal with that, which we will discuss below.
When you come for the Queen, you better not miss
This deck will also use pariah effects to redirect damage from you to a spite creature and so right back at your opponents. A pariah effect is one that directs damage you would take to a target creature you control. Our pariah effects are instants or enchantments. If you can combine a pariah effect and a spite effect you can redirect any damage you would take to any opponent. If you can combine pariah, redirect and indestructible (I'm looking at your brash taunter) you can effectively make it so that any damage you take is directed to the enemy of your choice. But this gets even more fun when you can make a single point of damage go infinite. When this deck does that, I call it a kill shot.
There is no fury like a Queen Scorned
We come at last to the kill shots. This deck's final combinations make it the ultimate burn deck. You will combine a pariah effect, spite creatures and indestructible to cause infinite damage to your opponents while protecting yourself. You will be able to turn even a single damage into instant death for everyone except you. These require a lot of moving parts, but the deck is built to find the pieces necessary to kick off these final combinations.
Arcbond
If you combine Pariah effects with a spite creature that is indestructible and cast Arcbond the next time you take any damage, even if it is just a single point of damage, the damage to you redirects to the pariah indestructible spite creature and this creates an infinite damage loop. When the damage kills the last opponent the state based effect of no opponent is left to target ends the game in a win. Anything that can get both a Pariah effect and can become indestructible for the round can close the Arcbond loop. You can trigger this yourself just by playing a shock or fetch land that has a life cost.
Coalhauler Swine
Coalhauler Swine is a spite creature that hits every player, including you, whenever it takes damage. With indestructible and Pariah this spite effect creates a loop where any amount of damage to you or the Swine becomes infinite damage to each of your opponents. The damage coalhauler would do to you is redirected back to the swine via pariah, the swine then does that amount of damage to every player including you, repeat. The result is the same state-based victory condition.
Volcano Hellion
Volcano Hellion is the only card in magic that can do ANY amount of damage. You need two spite creatures in play for this one. Have a pariah effect on one of the spite creatures in play, and then play Volcano Hellion for ANY amount of damage on a different spite creature. The first creature redirects all that damage to one opponent. Then you take the same amount of damage from hellion and it is redirected to the pariah (this isn't preventing it, it is redirecting it so it works), which then redirects that damage to another opponent. With two redirect creatures in play this lets you do ANY amount of damage twice. If one of the creatures you hit is the Swine, you do ANY amount of damage to every opponent at once. If you only need to knock out a single opponent, Angel's Grace can work instead of a pariah effect.
