MTG Salvation

Hi,

I have never played EDH before so I definitely appreciate your thoughts and critique on the deck. I did read up on cards and whatnot so hopefully this list won't completely suck. There are a lot of neat interaction here but nothing game breaking IMHO. Notable combos include Bloodchief Ascension + Mind Crank and Magus of the Coffers + Staff of Domination (an insta-kill and infinte mana respectively). There's also a mill sub-theme besides the BCA/crank combo which tries to take advantage of red's wheel cards, combined with light but impactful discard cards such as Sire of Insanity, Painful Quandary and Void before firing off Rise of the Dark Realms.

Other cool plays include:

Olivia Voldaren + Falkenrath Aristocrat / Altar of Dementia / Trading Post to get rid of stolen creatures.
Olivia Voldaren + Death Pits of Rath to snipe creatures (ditto via deathtouch equipment)

Goblin Sharpshooter / Ronin Cliffrider + Death Pits of Rath = targeted board wipe (ditto via deathtouch equipment)

Trading Post + Ratchet Bomb / Nevinyrral's Disk (great for getting around enchantments)

Pestilence / Blasphemous Act / Crypt Rats + Stuffy Doll (potential kill con)

Infinite mana + Geth, Lord of the Vault = mill kill
Infinite mana + Exsanguinate (obvious combo) = table kill

Hey there, your list looks pretty good.

Here are some suggestions:
-1 Ronin Cliffrider: I don't think he does enough to warrant a spot.
-1 Waste Not: You probably don't have enough discard for it to be great. It is pretty amazing with Sire Of Insanity/Wheel of Fortune if you can pull it off though lol.
-1 Profane Memento: Life gain isn't really great in EDH, especially when its so minor.
-1 Ratchet Bomb: I know the Rakdos colours don't have many answers to enchantments, but Ratchet Bomb is just so slow. Great against token decks though.
-1 Wheel of Fate: Wheels are great, but the 4 turn wait probably won't do you much good. People will know its coming, work around it, make it work for them, or just counter it.

+1 All Is Dust: Great way for BR to answer problem permanents.
+1 Necropotence: Such a great card. Helps you find all your combo pieces, among other things.
+1 Liliana Vess: Repeatable tutor, can also win you the game.
+1 Sorin Markov: Makes it much easier to kill a player (or two). Is also removal and you can Mindslaver people from time to time.
+1 Lightning Greaves/Swiftfoot Boots: Protects your commander, and other creatures.
+1 Sensei's Divining Top: Is a commander staple. Maybe you left it off for budget purposes, but thought would suggest it anyway.
+1 Torpor Orb: Really good card in EDH. You only have 1 creature that's affected by it. If you'd rather not run it, you can run creatures like Solemn Simulacrum instead.
+1 Strip Mine/Tectonic Edge: Another commander staple. Some lands just need killing.
+1 Diabolic Revelation: Lets you search for your combo pieces.
Other random suggestions: Go for the Throat/Reiterate/Wild Ricochet/Karn Liberated/Memory Jar/Mind's Eye/Codex Shredder/Massacre Wurm/Nihil Spellbomb/Oblivion Stone/Promise of Power/Reliquary Tower/Steel Hellkite/No Mercy/Stranglehold/Vandalblast.

Good luck and welcome to the format

Thanks for the thumbs up dude. Some very good suggestions but yes some where left out for budget reasons. Liliana Vess is definitely going in. I do, however, want to give Ratchet Bomb a chance. I'm not quite sure what to expect in my meta but it could get rid of some cheaper enchantments quicker and can be recurred with Trading Post and that's pretty huge IMHO. Well, at least that's my logic for keeping it in the list for now at least. What do you guys think about Underworld Connections and/or Read the Bones as alternatives to Necropotence and Phyrexian Arena? I know that, off the bat, it looks like a no contest for the latter in both cases but I did read about some interesting, albeit minor advantages arguing for the former.

Underworld Connections is not mandatory. Granted I doubt people are dying from drawing into Phyrexian Arena... right? While UC requires tapping a land, it does in fact guarantee that you will not take any life loss if you absolutely must avoid doing so. Unlike Phyrexian Arena, UC can also be used multiple times in the same turn by playing some kind of untap mechanism and can ultimately net you more cards as a result. Not sure if that is a viable route, but it is possible.

Read the Bones v. Necroptoence. I know, sounds crazy. Thing is, Read allows me to essentially dig as deep as four cards down for 2 life without sacrificing my draw step. I see it as four cards at the cost of 2 life in addition to possible going down a total of 6 cards deep if Scrying. Is it better than Necropotence in the long run? Not at all. But I do believe Read is probably a better card than I thought it was when I first started building this deck. Having said that, maybe I should be considering Read over Arena instead of comparing it to Necropotence, which is undoubtedly powerful. But since I'm relating it to this deck in particular, which does, in fact, want to play Wheel effects, in addition to running Sire of Insanity, I am thinking that Read might be better than Necro given that I don't necessarily want to exile everything I discard with recursion being a minor theme here.

Or am I overstating Read the Bones?

I don't know if any of these are convincing arguments but thought I would put it out there, get some thoughts from the pros.

Very Interesting stuff guys. I'm still building this so I won't be able to test for 2-3 more weeks but I'm also tweaking as discussion progresses. I am currently thinking about dropping Exquisite Blood from my enchantment module. Granted, it could net me a decent amount of life and it combos with Sanguine Bond for an insta-kill. Having said that, there's gotta be better, or at the very least, options that impact the board in a much more significant way.

I've been about adding Contamination to the deck to basically screw any deck that doesn't focus mainly on B. What are your experiences playing with or against the card and is it worthy of a slot? In here in particular, it gives me another sac outlet, which is nice. However, other than Trading Post and/or my commander (possibly Waste Not tokens, but those are highly unreliable), I have very few ways of producing tokens.

Perhaps I'm misreading your response, A Vile Saint, but if you exile cards with Necropotence and it gets destroyed you still get the cards.

Why would you get them back though if Necropotence is no longer in play at your end step?

I believe it is because that the ability, once activated no longer cares about what happens to the permanent. Same thing if you activate a creatures ability and someone kills it in response, the ability is already on the stack and no longer cares about the creature. In any event, here is the only oracle ruling on Necropotence: Removing Necropotence from the battlefield will not stop the cards from the life-payment ability from being put into your hand in the end step.

Quote from Xamboni1996 »

I believe it is because that the ability, once activated no longer cares about what happens to the permanent. Same thing if you activate a creatures ability and someone kills it in response, the ability is already on the stack and no longer cares about the creature. In any event, here is the only oracle ruling on Necropotence: Removing Necropotence from the battlefield will not stop the cards from the life-payment ability from being put into your hand in the end step.

I see, ok thank you for clearing that up. What turns me off from Necropotence in this particular build is the first half of the text:
"Whenever you discard a card, exile that card from your graveyard."

I want to be able to abuse Trading Post, Volrath's Stronghold, and Rise of the Dark Realms. I know has access to several other powerful discard engines and I am still debating whether or not I should run Read the Bones over Phyrexian Arena, albeit I am leaning towards the latter. It just feels like Read the Bones does more quicker, which means something against aggressive strategies.

I get the reasoning behind not playing it in your deck. My Olivia deck doesn't play it due to the fact that mine is more aggro/vampire tribal. I just didn't want you to be turned off of a great card.

I'd probably run Engineered Explosives over Ratchet Bomb, so much faster. (Which you can recur as well).

Underworld Connections is alright, but there's enough Strip Mine type cards in EDH that it will die.

Read the Bones is a great card. I'd recommend you run both it and something like Night's Whisper; but not in place of Necropotence/Phyrexian Arena, but along side them. Trust me, the life loss isn't going to kill you, it's going to help win you the game. Underworld Connections is pretty sweet when you can run cards like Seedborn Muse/Prophet of Kruphix etc, but yeah. As for Necropotence, run the card before you think of dismissing it. It's amazing. At the very least it makes sure you have a full hand each turn, but it can do so much more. I don't think you should worry about the exile clause too much, instead of trying to recur things/durdle, this'll just help you win the game instead.

On Exquisite Blood: I used to run it in my Olivia Voldaren deck cause I used to have a lifegain/lifeloss subtheme + Vampire tribal. I found it to be a good card most of the time, but I'm sure there are better cards out there. In a deck thats not necessarily following that theme, I probably wouldn't bother with it though.

If you want to run Contamination, consider running Bitterblossom/Bloodghast/Reassembling Skeleton too, for a soft lock. And, if you end up running those cards, you might want to consider Skullclamp and other cards that take advantage of them. (E.g. Phyrexian Altar)

Also, in general, I'd probably want this deck to run at least 36 lands, and more mana rocks usually don't hurt =P

Hmm, Contamination sounds like it requires quite an investment both in terms of space and coin. I think I might skip that route. Engineered Explosives is an awesome suggestion though. I'm definitely going to run it. I'm gonna go ahead and make some tweaks to the OP and we can maybe take it from there.

I also stumbled on Sadistic Sacrament and Nightmare Incursion. Very intrigued by these two in here, combined with Wheel of Fortune, Dragon Mage, Geth, Lord of the Vault, Mindcrank, it really gives me the ability to completely devastate opposing strategies. I'll try to fit them in the updated list above but in the meantime would love to hear what you guys have to say about these potential additions.

Sadistic Sacrament & Nightmare Incursion are both great cards if your opponents are running a lot of combo decks. Never been a problem in my meta though.

Btw, I'd recommend fitting in some graveyard hate such as Relic of Progenitus & Nihil Spellbomb with all that discard though. Just in case your opponents plan on using their graveyards as a resource.