"Through the blood of the wicked, we shall be redeemed. Let us pray."
-Vito's flavor text.
This deck is built around exploiting Vito's ability that all life gained translates into loss for an opponent. Virtually every creature in the deck provides a life-gain ability. This is supplemented by a number of cards listed as "Life Gain by Other Means." Then there are a few cards for removal, but that's just to stay alive long enough to get Vito dealing out pain.
I know all about the infinite kill-loop with Exquisite Blood - see below. This deck doesn't go that way. The game-plan is to tutor for and play Necropotence. With all the life you'll be gaining, it's cheap to always end your turn with 7 cards in hand and burn through your deck faster. The same can be achieved with Greed except you spend 2 life instead of 1 for each card. Font of Agonies helps to ease the pain of burning through life points. Anyway ... the more spells you can draw the more life gain when you play stuff for gain or attack with lifelink. But, life gain alone is not the end-game here, it's all about Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose, Sanguine Bond, or even Defiant Bloodlord being on the battlefield so your opponents lose life at the expense of your gains. If you draw enough you will find enough ways to gain life and thus go after your opponents life totals. And that is the goal after all, killing off all the "wicked" for "redemption," right? It says so right on the card!!
Specifically, for the categories shown:
- Creatures with Lifelink - each creature in this group has lifelink, the "engine" of the deck.
- Life Gain by Other Means - each card here gains life in some other way, usually through a triggered ability or coupled with removal/damage, to supplement the "engine" with other gain as you work to build up creatures.
- Removal - it does what it says. These cards remove things. Black isn't very good at removing artifacts or enchantments or lands, so the focus here is on creatures, obviously. And one of my favorites for Commander is Oubliette. And Font of Agonies uses the life you pay for Necro or Greed and turns it into creature removal.
- Miscellaneous Support:
- Bad Moon boosts your army (be careful about boosting other black players too - but since you get lifelink that's more life for each creature which your opponent doesn't get)
- There are no black cards that allow you to return an enchantment to your hand that I could find. Skull of Orm gets this done. That allows you to get back Necro if destroyed, since this deck really slows down without it.
- Sanguine Indulgence gets you creatures back you need again
- Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots should just about be considered for every deck anyway.
- Dash Hopes will let you counter something really bad happening to you unless of course your opponent is willing to give up 5 life which really just means you did 5 damage for BB. Fair enough. Black isn't exactly the realm of counterspells.
- Darksteel Plate and other indesctructibility effects are good for the big lifelink-swingers so they can keep hitting or even blocking and not die, generating more life with each turn and triggering Vito reliably.
- Phyrexian Obliterator a 5/5 with trample that forces additional sacrifices? Hard not to sign this guy up in a mono-black deck for BBBB is not a tough cost to bear.
- Card Advantage:
In a more competitive game, the end-game would be to get to one of the tutors and pull out Exquisite Blood. If either Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose or one of the same effects are on the battlefield, it's game over. One drop of blood, um, I mean life, and the infinite loop kills all opponents. But given this deck's ability to win quickly if you get Exquisite Blood out with either Sanguine Bond or Vito, for casual play I typically don't run Exquisite Blood, and this is why it's listed on the Sideboard only. Infinite Combos aren't so fun with casual play.)
