Now before you all that this is just a worse version of a competitive Breya, Etherium Shaper list, we are just going to get right into the deck and what it's trying to do. This is going to be a relatively short description of the deck so I can get it posted and get some feedback, but there will be a longer description to come.
This deck is essentially a fast combo deck that is trying to go off as quickly as possible. It is fairly fragile, as the two main combos rely on utilizing the graveyard, so it is heavily filled with protection. I chose to focus on two main combos with some redundancy rather than jamming as many combos into one deck as possible so that you can focus on assembling and protecting the combos rather than trying to luck into one. The fact that we are in black means there is an abundance of tutors to make this happen.
The reason that I compared this deck to a competitive Breya list at the beginning is that both commanders provide a sink to win the game if you can generate infinite mana; Breya can sac herself and one of her thopters to lava spike everyone on the board, while Xantcha, Sleeper Agent can donate and drain each of your opponents while simultaneously drawing you cards. The drawing of cards can be both a blessing and a curse, which we will discuss later.
Keep in mind that I have not been able to play test this yet, but I would love to get this out there and get some feedback. So lets just get into the list...
The combos
As mentioned earlier, this deck is trying to win with a few different combos to generate infinite mana. The first combo includes using Worldgorger Dragon, and one of our three enchantment reanimator spells (Animate Dead, Dance of the Dead, Necromancy). If you are unfamiliar with this combo, check out this link. Essentially this allows us to generate infinite mana as long as our mana sources come into play untapped and tap for mana without damaging us (such as a Blood Crypt). Once we have infinite mana, we can cast our commander, giving it to a player of our choice, and use the mana to drain them to death while drawing through out deck. Once their death is completed, our commander will return to the command zone, and we can do that to the remaining players, winning us the game.
The intermittent card draw can help us protect ourselves against other players who might happen to be slow rolling any sort of disruption. However, because we can hold priority after our commander resolves, we can put enough triggers on the stack to kill whomever we give it too if their disruption happens to be a removal spell, as opposed to a counter spell.
The card draw can be a curse as well though, because we might mill ourselves out of the game. That's why there are cards in our deck such as Reito Lantern, which allows us to keep casting cards with our mana and putting them back into our deck so that we never truly mill out, if it comes to that. Elixir of Immortality provides the same effect, while also gaining us 5 life on every iteration. The main situation that it would come to is if we chose to use Doomsday to assemble our Worldgorger combo. A typical Doomsday pile with this deck could be as follows:
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The catch here is that you need to be able to animate another creature from someone's graveyard to stop the loop after you have generated mana. This can be a creature in your hand you have discarded to faithless looting, or one in an opponents graveyard. The last card must be a card that you can always cast, such as a Lightning Bolt, so that you can keep putting it back into your deck with the Lantern so you don't mill out as you drain your opponents. Keep in mind that this pile was just off the top of my head, and if there is a better one I would love to hear it.
The other main combo of the deck is using Nim Deathmantle with Ashnod's Altar, and either Murderous Redcap, Priest of Gix, or Priest of Urabrask. The Redcap is a way to keep shocking your opponents to death, while the two priests net you one mana on every iteration of the combo. This combo is not as streamlined as the first, as it requires three pieces instead of two, but it is a backup plan if our dragon gets permanently exiled or something like that.
The last card in our combo category is Walking Ballista, which is another way to win the game with infinite mana. While it is unlikely that we are unable to recast our commander or use it to win the game, there are always cards like Song of the Dryads which could do so, which is why it is nice to have another mana sink. Unlike other cards like Comet Storm, this is more easily tutorable, as Imperial Recruiter can hit it and it achieves the same effect.
Conclusion
Anywho that is the main purpose of the deck. I will get around to a description of all the groups of cards in the deck, but essentially it is filled with tutors, draw, ramp, disruption, and protection to make sure that we can get our combo off safely before anyone else can. There are a lot of filler spots so there are some weird picks like liliana of the veil, but I already had here and it seems fine if the ol' dragon is stuck in our hand. Also I keep writing this description as if we are playing together but whatever.
The bottom line is the fact that we are two colors means we can play cards like Blood Moon and Magus of the Moon and not worry about it, but losing white and blue makes this deck a lot more fragile and less consistent. However, it cuts out a lot of the non-budget cards from Breya such as a reliance on dual lands, LED, expensive counters, etc, which is something to consider. This is a great commander for a somewhat jank combo deck that is crazy, but it just might work. And I truly mean that because I haven't played this deck at all.
TODO: More in depth description...
