General Deck Introduction
This Ayara, First of Locthwain list is a medium to high powered casual combo / aristocrats deck, and probably my personal favorite deck (just because I put so much work into it). When goldfishing, it can typically threaten a turn 6 - 7 win (turn 5 wins are also not uncommon), which puts it a pretty fast for casual but keep in mind that interaction will slow this down (go to the combo-less section in order to depower the deck). Your aim when playing this deck is to sacrifice your self-reviving creatures and bring them back in order to gain value, often creating infinite loops. The value gain normally takes the form of card draw (e.g. Grim Haruspex), mana generation (e.g. Pitiless Plunderer), removal (e.g. Dictate of Erebos), opponent life drain (e.g. Blood Artist), or token generation (e.g. Blight Mound). Token generation effects also trigger drain from Ayara, First of Locthwain. You will typically win by draining out your opponents with these triggers. I tend to value the trigger types from most to least valuable in this order:
Mana > Tokens > Removal > Card draw > Life drain
However, this priority may change depending on game state. For instance, the value of your life drain cards shoots up in value if you either have no other drain effects or the addition of one more drain effects enables a lethal turn. Removal matters less if the board contains few threatening creatures. Card draw tends to matter more early (especially the first card draw engine) in the game to ensure you get access to enough value pieces to win. Tokens and mana are generally premium since they make your sacrifice loops more efficient.
Originally this was built as a Teysa Karlov deck, but I found I kept cutting a majority of the white cards so I made the transition from Teysa Karlov to Ayara, First of Locthwain. By making that transition, I found there were 4 major benefits.
Not only are the lands cheaper budget wise, but the chance of color screw is greatly reduced (can still happen with colorless sources). Because you have to spend a lot less resources on color fixing, you can instead opt towards some more utility lands (e.g. High Market) without worrying too much about not having the right colors. Do still keep in mind Ayara has a triple black casting cost so you don't want too many colorless sources of mana. I ended up not including as many utility lands as I expected to because I valued the consistency of basic lands so much.
A lot of cards have been printed give a lot of mana if you either A) have a lot of devotion (e.g. Nyx Lotus) or B) Have a lot of (basic) lands that tap for a specific color (e.g. Gauntlet of Power). Black has even more of these cards than other colors via cards like Crypt Ghast and Cabal Coffers. While usually these cards require more time to set up (they cost more mana to cast / activate and count the permanents you already have), they reward you with massive heaps of mana. This deck can very easily dump all the additional mana into sacrifice-revive cycles to get massively ahead (or outright win). That being said, I have found myself cutting more and more of these due to their high mana costs, but enough exist to make this a real benefit.
Ayara, First of Locthwain provides 3 pivotal things that helps your deck get established right away 1) A drain effect, 2) A sac outlet, and 3) a draw source. This means that with only a single self-reviving creature, the deck can basically start doing its thing, while drawing into more pieces to help increase the efficiency. This decreases the chance that your deck will draw into pieces it can't utilize and stall out. Even if this does happen, you can simply sacrifice less useful creatures to her in order to try to dig towards more relevant components. In contrast, Teysa's effect will only activate if you are ALREADY doing your thing (have a reviving creature, a sacrifice outlet, and triggers when they die), making her far less reliable. Additionally, many of the effects that we are triggering are not death triggers (e.g. Desecrated Tomb), so she is only doubling a portion of the triggers. The reliability Ayara, First of Locthwain brings to the deck is simply far more valuable than this.
This is a silly reason, but looking at more colors means looking at more cards which makes cutting decisions more difficult. By reducing the card pool, I found it a lot easier to condense the list down to 100 cards. In future this will also make considering new sets easier. We are losing out on some really good cards for us like Requiem Angel, Divine Visitation, Cruel Celebrant, Teysa, Orzhov Scion, and the best removal spells in commander, but there is more than enough good black cards to fill out a deck. Decision making is hard sue me.
Card Breakdown by Function
The two biggest considerations when it comes to these is 1: mana cost to cycle, and 2: ease of accessibility. I will further subdivide these into 2 categories based on whether you should ever be thinking of tutoring them to the graveyard.
Reassembling Skeleton: Of the good tutor targets, this one is the most versatile. At the typical revive cost for our deck, it provides the ability to do a sacrifice cycle at instant speed with no restrictions. While we don't have a ton of instant speed, there are certain cards that can make use of it (e.g. Attrition, Dictate of Erebos, & Blasting Station), as well it is useful for dodging removal and not discarding any draws at end step. Additionally, this is an activated ability, meaning it cannot be counterspelled. Pick this one if no other obviously good candidates exist, you want to dodge counterspells, or you want to be playing at instant speed.
Oathsworn Vampire: The condition to revive this one isn't too bad for our deck (we gain life pretty easily), and it counts as a spell cast, meaning it benefits from cast reductions (e.g, Gravebreaker Lamia) and cast triggers (e.g.Aetherflux Reservoir). Think about tutoring this card if you have something that cares about spell casting.
Gravecrawler: If you have a zombie in play, it is a super efficient self-revive. Otherwise you can play it on turn 1 for a one-off sacrifice trigger (Which is still not terrible). Only tutor if you have a zombie in play, or will soon have one.
Nether Traitor: If you have a card that generates tokens on death, this is a super efficient sacrifice cost. However, keep in mind that if you only have limited sac outlets, this card will require more sacrifices to actually cycle with just tokens. Even if you lack token generators, this card can make getting sacrifices with other self-revive creatures slightly more efficient. Think about tutoring this card if you have something that creates tokens on cycle or if your sacrificing is being bottlenecked by mana. Avoid tutoring this card if you are being bottlenecked by sacrifice outlets.
Bloodghast: This is our deck's equivalent of those cards that repeatedly make a token every turn for value. While Bloodghast cannot infinite, tutoring it early is excellent for mana efficiency, allowing you to set up more engine pieces while still getting some sacrifice value early. The sheer extra value this thing provides early game make it one of my most frequent tutor targets. This card is best to tutor early in the game, if you are mana screwed, or if you already have an effective self-reviving creature. As a niche case, it's also quite good if you are being counterspell walled.
Golgari Thug: This one always feels pretty weird to play, but it has a lot versatility and is quite good when used well. As a straight up sacrifice fodder, it cannot be cycled more than once a turn unless there is additional card draw (think of it as -1 card draw). What it does bring is the ability to retrieve cards from our graveyard back to our hand, which has three generally good uses. The most straightforward good use is to directly get a high value or combo piece from our graveyard to our hand. The second use is that if we have a lot of potential Golgari Thug sacrifices, we can repeatedly dredge the deck in order to hard dig for a specific combo piece. The third use is to repeatedly fix our draws in the event that the board gets devastated. Furthermore, because this card can return itself to the top of the library, it can combo with Bolas's Citadel to cost 2 life instead of 2 mana, enabling very easy cycles. Because the card can put itself at the top of the library, you can make it evade a lot of graveyard hate. Also the card is cast, so you will gain benefits from cast triggers. This can also be used to work around some forms of persistent grave hate such as Weathered Runestone and Grafdigger's Cage since it returns to the top of the library instead of the battlefield. Don't worry if you don't absorb all this information, it's a lot of thought for one card. This card should be given extra consideration if you need something from your graveyard, already have an additional draw effect, or Bolas's Citadel. I'd suggest avoiding the card if the "-1 draw" is going to really hamper you, or if you don't want to think too hard (it happens to all of us).
Silversmote Ghoul: Out of all the tutor cards, this is the one you're least likely to want. Like Golgari Thug, it has a lot of potential applications, but I find it easier to think about when this card is applicable. Typically speaking, this card should only be considered for tutoring when things are going wrong. This card is good when you are either being bottlenecked on mana (not as good as card:Bloodghast for this, bottlenecked on sacrifice outlets (but mana must be good for this application), or bottlenecked on card draw (but mana must be good for this application). The only other two niche applications for this are if you have a Gravecrawler somewhere, as this counts as a zombie for it, or if you have Soldevi Adnate, as being able to tap it for is quite strong. For any of these applications, you will need to be gaining 3 or more life consistently on a turn. You should only consider tutoring this card if you have one of the synergistic cards or if things are generally going wrong with your game state. Once you do this, ask yourself two questions: "Will Silversmote Ghoul help get me out of this" and "Can I reliably bring back Silversmote Ghoul".
Bloodsoaked Champion: Turn 1 sac fodder is good. It revives easily enough by itself, just don't forget to swing with it first. If it gets removed or you really want to get sac value but don't have the mana to bring it back, a token swinging in can still easily get it back.
Cult Conscript: Turn 1 sac fodder is good. Best with a token generator so it can more easily revive itself. Don't be too scared to remove a value engine in order to get access to the sacrifices if it will advance your game state.
Tenacious Dead: Turn 1 sac fodder is good. It also can play at instant speed much like Reassembling Skeleton. However, it is vulnerable to removal if you don't have mana open. I would avoid sacrificing this without reviving if it is the only self-reviving piece you have access to, unless you REALLY need the value.
Persistent Specimen: Turn 1 sac fodder is good. 3 CMC reviving is not so good. Unconditional revives though so I guess we'll take it. It mostly is here as better alternative are not really out there (there's other stuff that costs 3 CMC, but it generally costs more black mana). Our worst revive cycling option, but it'll work in a pinch. The deck would be stronger if you replaced this with a to-hand tutor.
Attrition: As a sacrifice outlet, this card looks really bad when goldfishing, as it makes our cycles cost more. In game, it takes your kind of fast-paced combo / drain deck and shifts you into a more controlling role. If you have non-black creature reliant opponents, this slowdown is worth it. Think of each sacrifice like a
Murder cantrip.
Blasting Station: This is like Attrition, but doesn't reduce your cycling efficiency at the cost of weaker control. Your control potential is limited by toughness, meaning you are going to be better at killing small effect creatures rather big beat sticks. Very nice for picking off commanders.
Yawgmoth, Thran Physician: This card does everything we need, so it can be comfortably classified as insane. It is much better at picking off small creatures than large ones. Best played when you need a bit of everything. Having a single life gain per cycle will greatly increase how hard you can go with this card.
Priest of Forgotten Gods: She requires some setup to use effectively, can't tap right away, and can't force which creature your opponent sacrifices. But if you have 2 creatures you don't mind dumping, she value grinds HARD. Staxing out your opponent's creatures plus gaining mana and card advantage means if she taps for multiple turns you probably win.
Grave Pact: Absolutely oppressive against creature decks, absolutely dead against non-creature decks. It's more valuable to get your other value engine pieces going until your are directly threatened by creatures because the more sacrifices you can do, the harder this oppresses.
Dictate of Erebos: Grave Pact but slower and instant speed. I normally don't get that much value out of the instant speed on this card, but it has the potential to surprise opponents. Same general thoughts as Grave Pact.
The Meathook Massacre: Can be a solid board wipe for a large mana investment. Dodges indestructible and hexproof which is nice. Often times you're just playing it for the drain though. Versatility is still nice to have.
Blast Zone: A land that can remove problem permanents for a large mana investment. It's awkward to use, but it's one of our only ways to affect non-creature permanents. Plus a colorless land isn't a huge penalty for a mono color deck.
Hagra Mauling
: A tap land that can alternatively be an overpriced kill spell. I like the modality of this card, but both sides are kind of bad. Our deck really dislikes tap lands, and 4 mana for a kill spell is pretty awful. Might be better to just put a swamp instead, but I felt our deck was really light on removal otherwise.
Oblivion Stone: A wipe all nonland spell with no alternative use. I figure if we're in a spot where the board is really needed, we'd rather wipe out everything instead of just creatures since in theory our deck can deal with the creatures already. Also in theory, we might have an easier time rebuilding since we have access to graveyard resources and a fair number of draw effects.
Combos
This deck contains multiple game winning combos that you should be aware of when piloting. Importantly, all of the combo pieces are individually useful to the sac-revive deck plan even without the full combo enabled. You will find as you play that you will doing the typical aristocrats plan, and notice that you suddenly have access to a combo then quickly pivot in order to enable it. and Depending on how you like to play the game or what your playgroup etiquette is, you will want to know about the combos in order to remove them from the deck, avoid playing them, or actively aim to enable them (by drawing into them or adding some tutors into the deck to fetch them). These cards will still provide a lot of value to the deck if some of the combo is missing.
This is the staple Ayara, First of Locthwain combo. As long as you have more health than your opponents (which is likely because you will be draining them) you can pay more life into the spell than they have total. The ETBs from the rats with Ayara will then drain them out completely. Even if you cannot directly kill from the ETBs, the life swing from the rats plus any other potential sac value effects will likely end the game that turn (I'm half tempted to almost list any drain effect with this as a combo). The nice thing is that you only need to decide how much life to pay as Plague of Vermin resolves, so if Ayara, First of Locthwain dies at instant speed, you can adjust how much life to pay accordingly (I would still suggest pay some, as the rats have value as sac fodder). However you have to be careful if any of the opponents have instant speed damage, as they can cheese you out of the win if they burn you before the Ayara, First of Locthwain triggers resolve. If this is a concern, just leave some health as a buffer.
This is the most common type of combo simply because there are several cards that can lead into this loop. The main limiting factor is going to be the black mana requirement, so the major infinite enablers to look out for are Pitiless Plunderer, Carnival of Souls, Phyrexian Altar and K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth. Of the four, K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth is the hardest to infinite with because unlike the other three cards, token generators won't fill the requirement of the second mana source / discount. While a four card combination may seem convoluted, about 1/3 of the deck fills one of the four requirements, so you will stumble on this combo very easily. If you have one of these black mana enablers, you should take a second look at your cards to ensure you don't already have the combo win, and keep an eye out for cards that enable it.
Even before you're able to activate any of the two card combos with it, Exquisite Blood will put in work absolutely padding your life total, making it much more difficult to kill you off. Do keep in mind that Exquisite Blood is one of the most well known combo pieces, so this will often draw a lot of attention towards you when it hits the field. If you want to include more combo synergy alongside this, you can include Defiant Bloodlord, Sanguine Bond, and Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose. I didn't include these as these cards since they are far weaker for the deck if they are not paired with the combo. Typically we are only gaining one life at a time, so I'd rather be pinging everyone for 1 instead of pinging a single player for 1 damage.
Without the combos, Bolas's Citadel can use your life total to absolutely rip through your deck at monster speed, often drawing into another combo. With Golgari Thug or perhaps another reviver that returns to the top of the library like Dark Revenant (granted locking up your top card draw is normally pretty bad), you can cut out the mana cost and have "free" infinite sac fodder (essentially do combo #2 from our established combo list). All you need is enough life gain per sac-revive cycle, and you win. Additionally, including Sensei's Divining Top can allow you to dig super hard until you hit Aetherflux Reservoir, and storm out to win. However, the top is pretty expensive money wise and only mediocre in the deck without the combo, so I have decided not to include it. I guess fixing your draw is cute, but there is usually way better things to do with our mana.
This is essentially the same style of combo as section #2, but I wanted to separately highlight the Thornbite Staff combos, because otherwise Soldevi Adnate and Priest of Forgotten Gods may not immediately register as combo pieces. If you want to remove these combos, remove Thornbite Staff and replace it with another repeatable sacrifice outlet. If either of these creatures are equipped with a Thornbite Staff, they will untap as they sacrifice the reviver for mana. Depending on the sac fodder you choose and what kind of engine value pieces are available, you can usually go infinite, or at the very least get a lot of sacrifice triggers. Before fully investing into the combo, make sure you're going to get enough resources back from each sacrifice cycle to pay for the revive. Priest of Forgotten Gods will need you to generate at least one token per sac cycle to make it possible, whereas Soldevi Adnate just needs enough mana back to revive the creature. Other cards I'm considering that can also make use of Thornbite Staff to infinite are Whisper, Blood Liturgist, Hell's Caretaker, and Ghoulcaller Gisa.
Possible Inclusions to Consider / Directions to take the deck
This section goes over some other card choices and strategies I have considered while creating the deck. I mostly included this section here so 1) you can see more about my thought process with card selection, and 2) to give you possible directions to take the deck if you want to season it to taste. Since Ayara, First of Locthwain is a rather generalist commander, you can customize how you run her a LOT.
Cabal Coffers ,
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth,
Nirkana Revenant,
Magus of the Coffers,
Extraplanar Lens,
Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx,
Doubling Cube,
Deserted Temple,
Caged Sun,
Black Market,
Gauntlet of Power
These cards are typically excluded for 1 of 2 reasons, either they are too expensive money wise, or they are too slow to come online. Because of the activation cost of the two coffers cards, I feel like their inclusion necessitates including Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth. That being said, they only start getting large amounts of value when a lot of lands are in play and can be very dead in your hand if stuck there early. Additionally, you would likely want to add some tutors into the deck to ensure you have Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth with the coffers cards, but if you use tutors, why not just tutor out combo pieces? Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx has the same activation cost of Cabal Coffers, but has 2 major benefits: 1) It can still tap for a colorless, and 2) It is far easier for this deck to stack devotion than it is to stack swamps. Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx would probably be included, but I don't feel like the upside is large enough to justify the price.
Without another land that taps for a bunch of mana, Deserted Temple functions as a Wastes (an expensive Wastes at that). If you bring this in, it is necessary for you to bring in other lands (minimum of 2) that tap for multiple mana (e.g. Cabal Coffers, Cabal Stronghold, Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, Lotus Field, Scorched Ruins, etc.). This will make your mana base much more expensive money wise, and probably reduce the early game consistency of the mana. If you decide to include Deserted Temple, you may consider bringing in Rings of Brighthearth to gain access to potentially infinite mana. I will discuss this later in the Other Combo Packages section.
These are good includes, but you should compare them directly to the self-revive cards before putting them directly in. While these guys (typically) don't cost mana in order to put their tokens into play, they can only put a limited number of tokens into play a turn, so cannot truly replace cards like Reassembling Skeleton which can create sac-revive loops. This makes these cards more similar to our limited free revivers like Silversmote Ghoul and Bloodghast. The major pro of token generators is that they far more reliably create turn-to-turn fodder than the conditional revival cards like Silversmote Ghoul and Bloodghast. Additionally they ignore grave hate, which can otherwise be problematic for this deck. However, the major con of token cards is that they do not benefit from a lot of our value cards like Grim Haruspex and Desecrated Tomb. Additionally, they are much more vulnerable to traditional removal spells (this is less true for artifact and enchantment token generators). Because of how many triggers are missed due to sacrificing tokens, I think these cards are generally weaker. I'm considering adding one or two in order to make the deck more resilient to grave hate. Ophiomancer comes across to me as stronger since creating a token at each upkeep means you are given a LOT more fodder than the others, but it is also slightly high for my budget. Dreadhorde Invasion is cheap mana cost-wise and budget wise, so that is the second most appealing. Ghoulcaller Gisa is a card I'm now starting to look at since it has some potential combos that may come with it.
This uses the same logic as Plague of Vermin, where you're looking to dump a bunch of creatures and proc Ayara, First of Locthwain a ton of times, and leave some token around as sac fodder later. It would likely sacrifice some of the engine potential of the deck and give it more sudden burst damage. Being able to turn the corner out of nowhere like that in commander is extremely useful (why sudden combos are very powerful). If you do include these cards, I would suggest that you find ones that can 1) Create a lot of tokens, 2) Create them quickly for a quick powerful life swing, and 3) do it at an efficient mana rate. If you don't have all these components, you're likely better off just investing more into making the sacrifice-revive engine better. I'm likely to do some testing with Abhorrent Overlord and Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder in future and see how I feel about it.
I wanted to include this card directly below the mass token generation section, as it is very similar (sudden huge life swing). He however has the downside of only leaving himself as fodder instead of a bunch of tokens. He is great to directly compare to Abhorrent Overlord, since he essentially functions the same, but costs 2 less and leaves no token bodies. Since I'd ideally want to play the card as a curve-topping haymaker, I think the extra 2 CMC on Abhorrent Overlord is worth it to have the tokens. Additionally, since the drain effects by tokens triggering Ayara, First of Locthwain count as separate lifegain instances, they interact far better with cards like Epicure of Blood and Marauding Blight-Priest. I would consider mass token-making effects before including this one.
I have a lot of thoughts about tutors in this deck, so I want to address them in turn. Do keep in mind I have a bias as I don't particularly like playing with a lot of tutors. First of all, I think direct to graveyard tutors are generally mediocre in this deck (the absurdly low mana cost of Entomb may create an exception). A lot of our self-reviving creatures are pretty interchangeable, and we are otherwise pretty limited in our graveyard recursion. Gravebreaker Lamia is run because it also has a cost-reduction attached to it, making it an exception to this rule. Tutors (especially low CMC tutors like Demonic Tutor) will make the deck much more powerful. However, you will also be making the deck much more linear and combo-centric. You should double check your that your play group is alright with that, and be okay with the fact that the deck will feel a tad more same-y when you play it (the more tutors you include, the more true this will be). If you do include them, I strongly suggest keeping the CMC of your tutors low. Tutors signal to the rest of the table you're a threat, and they will often turn their attention to focus you. If you take a turn off late in the game to tutor, you will often have your tutored card answered or be straight up dead to focus fire. But yeah, ensuring that you have that combo piece, the perfect engine piece, or the right removal is extremely strong. If you want to make it a bit more casual while including tutors, I suggest changing some of the combo pieces out.
The combos already included as part of the deck are there because they also perfectly align with the strategy the deck is already implementing. Each piece can be played without the full combo and still works to efficiently implement the sac-revive drain plan of the deck. If the combo appears here, the individual cards are likely suboptimal without the full combo assembled. Keep in mind that these combo packages will become stronger if you include tutors in the deck. Be sure to check that your playgroup is okay with combos before including any of these. Because so many combos exist in magic (I expect I'm probably missing some good ones to mention), I'm going to further subdivide this section.
Without considering combos, Nim Deathmantle can convert any creature into an inefficient self-revive creature (4-cost is pretty steep) or protect an engine piece we like. But importantly, that cost contains no black mana, so is much easier for us to go infinite with (essentially do combo #2 again). We can also include specific cards like Workhorse, Su-Chi and Priest of Gix which make infinite cycles of this very easy. I am however partial against these cards. Su-Chi and Workhorse act only as colorless mana batteries without the combo (which seems like a pretty lackluster way to spend 4+ mana) and are not black so don't trigger Ayara, First of Locthwain. Priest of Gix may be black, but is even worse because it still lack the mana generation to infinite with Nim Deathmantle on its own and we can't even control when we access the mana! A good card to pair this with is Abhorrent Overlord. While it cannot infinite with just Nim Deathmantle, it can enable Ashnod's Altar, Sifter of Skulls and Pawn of Ulamog to go infinite. Additionally, saccing and recurring Abhorrent Overlord is going to cause some fat life swings that the opponent likely can't cope with. Overall, I'm on the fence about including Nim Deathmantle, but I'd likely replace a weaker self-reviving creature like Persistent Specimen if I do.
Without combos, we have a lot of ways to activate Rings of Brighthearth but we usually get very little return. We can pay to draw an extra card with Ayara, First of Locthwain pretty consistently, and I guess that is kind of cute. We can double some of our sac outlet triggers which is normally pretty bad. Or we can revive a creature twice to save on some which is alright but seems mostly corner case. Without combos, Rings of Brighthearth is a fairly goofy include. But there are a lot of potential combos.
If you have Deserted Temple and a land that taps for 4 or more mana, you now have infinite mana (you can even color fix depending on your lands, or draw cards if you have a land like War Room). You may potentially be running Deserted Temple anyhow for the big mana potential, so this isn't too bad. If you include Sensei's Divining Top, you have a mana dump draw engine (which can now draw your deck thanks to your Deserted Temple infinite mana). You may already want to include the top anyhow for the Bolas's Citadel combo, and this can also work to storm off with Aetherflux Reservoir. If we include Basalt Monolith, you get another potential source of infinite mana. Without Rings of Brighthearth, Basalt Monolith acts as a mana battery, which is pretty meh. With Voltaic Key and / or Galvanic Key and a big enough mana rock, we can once again create infinite mana. We already have a big enough rock with Nyx Lotus, but we can include more like Empowered Autogenerator and Chromatic Orrery.
In summary, most of the Rings of Brighthearth combos create infinite mana (and sometimes card draw). If you manage to get infinite , there is a high chance you win on the spot. However, individually the cards range from mediocre to bad for the deck, contributing very little to your deck strategy. Without tutors in your deck, I think you will often be staring at these cards dead in your hand. The only saving grace for this may just be the sheer number of possible combinations. This would be an expensive package to include and probably weaken the deck's consistency.
I mostly included this section to tell you not to play the card. You happen to run K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth who combos with this card, and you may trick yourself into thinking that this means you should run it just for another combo option. Not only is drawing the combo very unlikely, but K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth can already do essentially the same combo but better with the self-reviving creatures. You're wasting a card slot by including this.
Miscellanous combo packages
Most other combos available to you are going to be so off your deck strategy that it would make no sense to run them. If you want to run the combo, you have to seriously consider if this is the right deck for it. It is possible I happened to miss a very good combo to include, if so please give feedback.
My sac outlets in this deck tended to prioritize 3 things. 1) Costs 0 mana to activate, 2) Can potentially sac an infinite amount of times a turn, and 3) Low CMC. There are exceptions I have to this, such as Ashnod's Altar because the sacrifice benefit is so large, but I genuinely think that you are best off trying to keep the CMC low for ease of access (you're generally playing them for the sacrifice trigger, not the sacrifice effect).
Smokestack,
Magus of the Abyss,
Sheoldred, Whispering One,
Rankle, Master of Pranks,
Anowon, the Ruin Sage,
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet,
Contamination,
Opposition Agent, etc.
Too many of these effects and you're unlikely to get a second game at a casual table (I'd especially try to avoid Contamination and Smokestack to avoid bad feels). As a side note, if your group hates grave pact effects, you will want to cut Dictate of Erebos, Grave Pact and Butcher of Malakir from the deck). Because you're limited to black, you stax effects will be mostly limited to creature and hand hate, leaving you vulnerable to artifacts and enchantments that a blue or white stax player could typically deal with. If you want to build a full out stax deck, I suggest picking a different commander with access to either white or blue. That being said, a soft lean into stax could definitely be strong for the deck, but you should check to make sure your play group is okay with this.
I generally dislike having a bunch of pure removal cards in my deck (especially targeted removal). Removal spells don't progress you towards winning, only slow the opponent from winning. But sometimes you do just have to clean up the board or get that one pesky permanent. The majority of removal sources in my deck also progress my win condition (usually either by creating a sac outlet, or creating a repeatable creature kill effect that acts as a form of light stax, e.g. Dictate of Erebos and Attrition. If you are including these effects, my deck actually has a mediocre amount of removal, but it requires some set up.
My deck has almost no on-demand spot removal. It had Meteor Golem because it could also target artifacts and enchantment which the deck is more likely to struggle with. However, he's also a big goofy creature that costs and would just stare me in the face during opening hands. Even if I got to , often there was just better things to do with my mana. The biggest loss when cutting white from the deck was access to some of the best removal in commander, and trying to replace it with a doofus that costs isn't a good idea. If I'm really struggling that hard against the board, I'd rather just wipe it and be done. My one dedicated board wipe is Oblivion Stone since it can hit the potential artifacts and enchantments that we may otherwise be struggling against, and we often have enough mana to activate it the turn we put it down. The fate counters it places has the potential to maybe save some key pieces of our engine before we board wipe, but I've honestly never used that feature.
If you don't find the currently existing pieces of removal to your liking, I suggest first trying to add ones that also progress your win-con (I suggest look at the potential stax creatures first). Otherwise I think you should prioritize board wipes over targeted removal, since you lose the card disadvantage penalty. The first ones I'd consider are Toxic Deluge and Boompile.
Honestly yeah, on average the deck (ignoring draw effects and early mana effects) will hit the first four land drops then stall on turn 5. I think it would be best to aim for around 39 lands in order to hit my land on turn 5 consistently since 5 mana enables the majority of the deck. If I want to make the (somewhat reasonable) assumption that I will be likely drawing at least one extra card before turn 5 (by sacrificing a creature), I can get away with a land count of 36 and still mostly be fine. Still, 39 lands is likely better, and I should decide what cards to cut to make room. Suggestions on what to cut would be super helpful!
As for the early mana rocks, there are 2 big things we want to avoid: rocks that cost more than 2 and don't produce a ton of mana and rocks that cost 2 and produce a colorless mana. This is because we have a bunch of cheap spells that require specifically . Rocks like this usually fall into 1 of 2 categories: either they cost a lot of real world money, or they come in tapped. If you plan to splurge, I would prioritize Chrome Mox since it is so good early on, and doesn't blow up the bank as hard as Mox Diamond.
An alternative route I tried before were ritual spells like Culling the Weak. It works pretty well, and can give some faster wins, but also increases the variance of the deck. If you are looking to make this deck more competitive / faster, I would definitely look into these.
In general these cards are going to be weaker than the drain effects included like Zulaport Cutthroat, since each trigger will represent only 1 damage instead of 3. The ability to target only a specific player may give you a political edge, but the loss of 2 damage per trigger is pretty hefty. Blood Artist and Falkenrath Noble have the additional benefit of triggering any creature that dies (not just your own), but this is only a marginal benefit since we expect our creatures to be dying much more frequently than the opponent (this can screw over other aristocrats decks though). Blood Artist is a potentially good include simply because the CMC reduction may be worth the lost damage, but I highly suggest avoiding Falkenrath Noble.
Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose, Sanguine Bond, and Defiant Bloodlord trigger on life gain, and more importantly, have the ability to go infinite with Exquisite Blood. However, they will again generally ping for less damage, and have the added downfall of making your deck more commander reliant (to get reliable gain life triggers). These cards also synergize very well with Aetherflux Reservoir, potentially pinging for absurd damage. If you plan on cutting Exquisite Blood for budgetary reasons or because you don't like combos, then you should avoid all three of these cards. However, if you plan on keeping the combo and adding tutors, these cards should be considered more. Even if you don't cut Exquisite Blood I would suggest avoiding Defiant Bloodlord simply because the mana cost is very high, and it will feel bad if your 7 CMC card is only pinging for 1 damage. Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose is the most appealing of the 3, since it has a low CMC, is a creature we can potentially reanimate, and has an active that can potentially be useful to pad life or end games.
Change Log
Meteor Golem is over-costed for the effect, and we have no good ways of exploiting it. Swamp will help get the turn 5 land drop more consistently. The effect of Witch of the Moors is very powerful, but also a bit too straight up and honest. We can only trigger it once per turn, and graveyard recursion effect on the card isn't something we care too deeply about. Ideally Witch of the Moors wants a very long controlled game where it can eek out value over time, which makes it a bit underwhelming for a 5 mana spell. Our other top end control spells like Dictate of Erebos can essentially board wipe the opponents if we have our engine really humming. In contrast, Bolas's Citadel is not an honest card. The turn it comes down we want to be ripping through the top of our library at extraordinary speeds and hopefully either find a combo or cheat in enough value the turn it comes down to outright win. This far quicker effect is ideally what we want for one of our top end spells.
The goal of this change was to make the early game more consistent by cutting large CMC cards and increasing the number of sac-fodder cards in the deck. Except for Embalmer's Tools, all the cards cut had good effects, but were too expensive to justify. Embalmer's Tools was removed due to being too situational. Carrion Feeder, Viscera Seer, and Grave Pact were brought in as lower CMC variants. I wanted to increase the number of sac fodder cards from 11 to 14, that way we could consistently have access to one on turn 2 76% of the time (ideally when we'd want to play it) and on turn 4 86% of the time (the latest we'd want to play it) assuming we have no draw effects. Realistically (including Ophiomancer), we have 4 fodder cards that cost more than 2 so we actually have a 63% chance to be able to play one on turn 2 (assuming we don't draw and we ignore sol ring ramp). Gravecrawler feels very iffy to me, since we don't have many zombies in the deck, but it costs just so I'm going to give it a whirl and our other options at budget are mostly very bad. If it ends up too bad, I'll use Nim Deathmantle or break budget and go Bitterblossom.
They printed a new self-reviver in Persistent Specimen and it looks pretty good. Also, Entomb just can get us our best revivers in our yard. Both are better than the token generators for us so we cut out those. I am kind of iffy about bringing Entomb into the deck because I don't want to bring too many tutors into the deck, but it is very good. I may cut it again if I find myself not enjoying it. Cabal Stronghold and Reliquary Tower have too small of an upside to justify losing the consistency of a basic land, so they are getting replaced by basics. I'm also keeping my eye on High Market, but it largely depends on how reliably I can find sac outlets. Butcher of Malakir was just way too expensive at 7 CMC to justify for the effect. Caged Sun, Black Market, and Gauntlet of Power all have the potential to accelerate our game into an absolutely absurd state, but they come down late, requires us to untap with it, and draws a TON of hate from the table. I found the 4 CMC big mana cards (Crypt Ghast and Nyx Lotus) share the same problems, but come down early enough to have a higher chance not to be dealt with or hurt as bad from the investment loss. Some early mana cards have been brought in place of these, as I've found that just getting the setup pieces early can substitute for having big mana. I went heavier on the rituals because I wanted things that give specifically , I dislike the 2 CMC rocks that come in tapped (they aren't bad, just a preference), the 0 CMC rocks are absurdly expensive, and rituals seem kind of fun and I don't play with them often. If I end up disliking them I'll replace them with 2 CMC tap rocks.
I found that a frequent problem for the deck was not having a sacrifice source. After looking at the hyper geometric calculator, it seemed to confirm that I should increase my repeated sac outlet count by about 2 if I want consistent access to a repeated sac source by turn 5. Spawning Pit and Bloodthrone Vampire costs only 2 mana, giving us more early plays. Getting tokens off of Spawning Pit is also kind of neat. Bloodthrone Vampire was included over Altar of Dementia because we don't care about the activated effect anyhow, and Bloodthrone Vampire is cheaper budget wise. Panharmonicon is commander reliant, doesn't provide a super unique effect, and costs a lot of mana for our deck, so gets the cut. As for Stronghold Assassin, it was a much harder choice, since it represents one of the only sources of targeted removal in our deck, while also acting as a limited sac outlet. The biggest two problems with the card are the 3 CMC cost, which conflicts with a lot of cards in our deck, and the fact that it is limited and requires a turn before it starts tapping. There are many cases where it serves practically the same purpose as our commander, and we'd often just prefer to have the commander. This may come back in if I find I am missing out on a lot of board control, but we'll see.
Fixed typos and edited sections to reflect the current state of the deck. I removed the "Big X Spell" section from the possible other directions because I think it went from being kind of bad in the deck to being very bad in the deck, and I don't want to mislead people. Also yay drop down menus! I can look at this now without my eyes glazing over! I also added a replacement cards section.
I'm just playing around with different utility lands, there's a decent chance these come right back out after testing them. Blast Zone hides a second form of possible artifact / enchantment removal in our land base, but the mana cost and time to set up and activate it may be a bit too prohibitive for our deck. I'm guessing that this will be worse than a Swamp in most games, but at least it gives us a second insurance policy against awful effects for us like Rest in Peace and may be useful in games that get grind-y. It remains to be seen if the consistency loss is worth the insurance policy.
Castle Locthwain in contrast has very little downside. The only major drawback is that it doesn't count as a swamp for Crypt Ghast or Bubbling Muck. However, effectively 4 mana to draw a single card is only going to be useful to us if games get extremely grind-y (but in theory we should be doing sac-revive triggers with that mana). The only place where I see this card shining is after all non-land cards get wiped. I suspect most of the time where activating this is the best play we lose the game anyhow. Since the benefits and drawbacks of this card are so marginal, I will have to keep an active tally for how many times it loses me 1 mana and how many times I activate it (and how many times the activation actually did anything). Just put the Swamp back if you want to save the money.
The real lands I want to add are Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx, Phyrexian Tower, and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, but they are too expensive currently to justify me buying them at the moment. I probably will never bother with Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, but Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx looks very appealing as a card, and I may end up just getting it at the end of the day (I've seen Nyx Lotus absolutely make multiple hands pop-off). Phyrexian Tower will just act like High Market but a lot better, so I know it's good in the deck.
I knew for awhile that I wanted to put in Unmarked Grave, but I wasn't sure whether to cut Endless Cockroaches or Silversmote Ghoul in the revive slot. The problem with Endless Cockroaches is simple, per revive cycle is resource intensive, meaning it is harder to infinite or value game with. This outperforms Silversmote Ghoul when we are doing very badly and all we can do is repeatedly cast Endless Cockroaches (although that game would end up likely being a loss anyhow), and when we are doing very well where we can sacrifice the card a ton or infinitely (although this card will immediately be outclassed as soon as we have almost any other unlimited revive creature, which you are likely to draw into).
Analyzing Silversmote Ghoul is however more difficult, since it acts as an inconsistent mediocre band-aid in a variety of scenarios. It can help us play a value game by giving us 1 free sac fodder a turn or supplement a lack of card draw / sacrifice sources with its activated ability. As for more fringe cases, this card makes card: Soldevi Adenate tap for 3, which absolutely slaps, and is the only self-reviving zombie that can pair with Gravecrawler. I suspect with the now 3 graveyard tutors in the deck, the Gravecrawler instance is going to become far more relevant. To access any of this, we need to be gaining 3 life a turn, which is doable, but not exactly trivial. In the worst case scenario, Silversmote Ghoul is a one-off sac fodder for 3 mana, which is really bad but still something. This means that Silversmote Ghoul is most valuable when our deck is performing moderately. Even if we sac Silversmote Ghoul early on for very little value, once our deck starts recovering, it will come out of the graveyard and start assisting with that recovery.
Very hard decision, but I think that ultimately it is better to cut Endless Cockroaches.
I admittedly haven't been playing much magic recently, but when I do, I've found that the players I've been playing with now have found the degree at which this deck combos out to be unfun. I decided it was then pressing to finish off the section about replacement cards (with a special emphasis on the "combo-less" section for personal use). I also cleaned up the description a bit while I was at it.
After some testing, I think that Dark Ritual and Culling the Weak are a bit worse than just straight up mana rocks. The rituals look best when slamming Bolas's Citadel or Plague of Vermin early. But the rocks will give us a more consistent early development, which means less variance and potentially an easier time setting up combo types 2 and 4, since they require several smaller pieces. This also means we will have to mulligan less starting hands.
While working on the description, I decided to try and add an extensive list of all the possible combos and HOLY CRAP that was a bad idea. Quite frankly, the list of possible combos was far too extensive. I started out by typing it and that took forever. Mid-way typing it I was considering putting together a basic python script to generate a list of all the combos in a form that tappedout would like (would require me to re-learn how to python again). However, that idea was quickly scrapped because when I went to save what I had, it didn't even display properly. After some testing, I suspect the reason it wouldn't display is sheer volume. The whole thing is pointless anyhow, because nobody is going to remember an extensive list of combos. I think there was something like 132 possible combinations of just Bolas's Citadel combos, and there would be WAY MORE type 2 combos than that. And if I ever changed the deck afterwards, the whole thing needs to be updated. I think it's much better to leave the general framework of the combos like I already have, which will help players identify the combos in game, assuming others even look at or try out this deck. Even if not, I enjoy cataloguing this thing even for just myself. If you're not me reading this, then hi :).
Haven't touched this deck (or magic) in awhile because life got in the way. However, seeing Cult Conscript and Defiler of Flesh come out made me want to revisit this.
After reviewing all the self-reviviers to find a spot for Cult Conscript, I realized I've been reading Gutterbones wrong the entire time. It actually returns TO HAND instead of the battlefield, making it a lot worse than I thought (sorry for all the games I accidentally cheated). Cult Conscript goes directly to field (I double checked) for just two mana, so it's good. A bit harder to sac a non-skeleton than cause life loss, but still quite doable to trigger.
Defiler of Flesh is like mini K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth, and so is absolutely excellent for our deck. The problem however, is that it's really hard to cut any of the mana sources I have. After hemming and hawing, I decided to instead look at cutting one of the four cost card draw effects, as they represent some of my least played cards, since I can still draw with my commander, and they are rather pricey mana-wise. Once I came to this realization, I decided that ALL of my 4 cost draw effects were overpriced, so I replaced them with cheaper repeatable draw alternatives. Black Market Connections is an insane amount of value out of a 3-cost enchantment and quite frankly I'm embarrassed I didn't add it earlier. I added Dark Confidant and Keen Duelist as cheap draw alternatives. It was close between adding them and Morbid Opportunist, but I decided the saved mana value was worth it.
With the switch, I still had no more room for Defiler of Flesh, so more thought had to be put in. I decided that my target was the tapped mana rocks, as I found that they were the most awkward, and I found rituals more fun anyhow. So I cut them both, and added back in Culling the Weak, as it allowed for more explosive turns than Dark Ritual.
I've always been eyeing replacing Vindictive Vampire with Blood Artist, but could never stomach the massive damage loss per cycle. However, the more I think about it, I'm still able to target one person with the same level of damage output (the most threatening), the tempo advantage cannot be written off, and because it looks at all death triggers, it counters other aristocrat style decks. I don't know if I like it, but I think it's the smarter choice.
Decided to eat the cost of adding card: Nkythos, Shrine to Nyx and Phyrexian Tower, which just make the deck almost straight up better. Cut High Market for being Phyrexian Tower at home. Also cut Tectonic Edge because it's been more of a liability than a boon. If I want land answers, I'll just go straight for Strip Mine because the cost and restriction on Tectonic Edge has been painful.
Changed my mind about Blasting Station vs Woe Strider in this deck. Because of the redundancy of effects, I think the bonus of board control ends up being more relevant than graveyard recursion. Dross Hopper is still getting a look just because mana value.
A host of exchanges, let's take them one at a time.
Jet Medallion is really good for us, but have to find the right thing to cut for it. Crypt Ghast seemed like the right cut because of the mana cost. It requires a turn to go around to be truly effective, and less reliably leads to the win than Nyx Lotus if it gets that time.
I don't know why I stuck out so long on this one. Epicure of Blood is too much mana to justify, even if it pings everyone. Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose is just much cheaper to get down, still does the combo, and even has the potential for an alternative wincon with its lifegain swing ability.
Buried Alive is a card I skipped out on too often. It just makes sense to stuff a cycle creature or two in the yard, along with some of the value creatures like Bloodghast. Because this card adds a ton of value to Silversmote Ghoul I am far less tempted to cut it. That left Persistent Specimen and Cult Conscript as the worse. I decided that the increased cycle cost was worse than the harder revive condition, so the adjustment was made. Less turn 1 plays however always sucks.
This was the hard one. Sanguinary Priest seems absolutely dominant for the deck, even if it is on the high end of the mana curve. However when you look at the draining cards, there is no obvious candidate to cut. If I were to cut a drainer, I decided it was down to either Blood Artist or Bastion of Remembrance. Blood Artist is the cheapest to go down and can potentially counter other aristocrats decks, but can only drain 1 deck at a time. Bastion of Remembrance has the exact effect our deck is looking for and even gives us a 1/1 white body to freely sac, but it's at that 3 cmc spot our commander wants. After a lot of thinking my eyes drifted over to the mana section and spotted Bubbling Muck and started really thinking about it. We don't get the same value that your typical High Tide player would get since we don't untap our lands. That being said, it can really push our mana mid game to get us either that big drop or those extra revive cycles to close a win. This card only starts getting strong value once we get 4 lands into the game, which is a bit late. I am not confident this is the right choice, but I am cutting Bubbling Muck for now. Special attention will be paid to these 3 cards to see which is relatively underperforming, and I may put muck back in.
The other card I have been eyeing is Contamination, but this seems too cruel to add to my table. I may change my mind.
Can confirm, Sanguinary Priest is too much mana, suspected as much. Replacing with Dark Ritual as it allows for earlier pop-offs than Bubbling Muck (Equal mana gain at 3 swamps + mana source, usually 4 swamps). The main downside is that Bubbling Muck can later on just add more value and is more likely to lead directly to a win based on pure value. In future I may add both.
In my current list, the cards I am keeping an eye on are Blasting Station as I have found myself using the one and two drop sac outlets more, so may just prefer a straight Dross Hopper. Black Market Connections is also doing slightly less than I expected, as I find I'd rather play an engine piece in most circumstances. That being said, I've just not drawn it much so more testing is needed. I have noticed that the panels are now broken, and are dumping paragraphs outside of the appropriate panels despite no change to previous sections. I'm assuming that this is some kind of strange temporary bug and I don't want to bother fixing it right now.
I've now had several games where I've wanted to be able to easily get an infinite sac outlet. With the grave tutors now added Woe Strider looks a lot better now. Cut Black Market Connections because I never played it in favor of an engine piece.
Closing
In the future, I hope to add the following sections to the description
1) Breakdown of card sections and individual card choices
2) Mulligan guide as well as expand on basic gameplay guide
3) Weaknesses of the deck (including cards to watch out for)
4) Extensive breakdown of all possible combos. Mostly thinking about how I'd format it.
5) Update sections that are no longer true with changes to the deck
Feedback is welcome!
