I am working on a "Cat in the oven" deck. The idea is to manage to go nuts with Bolas's Citadel, Skullclamp and tons of effects that make opponents lose 1 life.
The deck has 62 cards right now, I have to take out two.
The most surprising card in there is Grafted Wargear ...I didnt expect much at first but the card fits very well, it boosts my cats to allow them to deal significant damage, I can sacrifice them for two foods to feed my engine and I can use them to sacrifice creatures when I have no other sacrifice outlet (I equip the creature and I move the equipment)...it is useful when I already gave persist to the creature and I want it to die for it to come back and cause loss of life for my opponents.
The other cards are pretty obvious.
I want a better replacement for Reassembling Skeleton ...2 mana to play it and another 2 to bring it back is too much so I always end up spending my mana on something else.
Deck looks sweet! Has a bit of a funk curve though; 21 lands and a slew of 4-6 drops doesn't seem great even with Rituals and Clamps. Might want to cut some of the fat or add another land or two. I do love the Unwinding Clock though, seems hilarious with the Cat Oven combo in multiplayer.
For Reassembling Skeleton you kinda have to bite the bullet and shell out for Bloodghasts. You can buy playsets on Ebay for 40 shipped or wait for an 8% coupon on TCG to get around that. Gravecrawler is your next best bet but I'd spring the extra couple of bucks on Bloodghasts and get it over with. It's way too good at what it does. Turn 1 Dark Ritual + Ayara, First of Locthwain into turn 2 Bloodghast is bonkers but even just Clamp + Ghast is obscene. 1 mana for 2 cards each circuit, no fuss, no muss. Card is also nuts with Konrad. I know that these cards aren't exactly budget-friendly but once you have Bloodghast your life becomes so much easier because it's basically always going to be an automatic 4-of in these monoblack devotion shells. All of them.
With respect to Stitcher's Supplier I tend to play 4 in every graveyard matters deck. It's too good at what it does, especially when you have things like Clamp and Oven to sac it for the full 6 cards by turn 2. They're still reasonably affordable and it's by far and away the best thing to be casing on turn 1 every game. Milling 6 cards + providing an X/1 body for Clamp + fodder for Ayara/Attrition on and on and on make it a must-have.
I'll +1 the Grafted Wargear and preemptively take credit for it since it's a card that I've been pushing for over a decade. It turns your useless dorks into legitimate beaters because "infinite" 4/3 cats that drain for 1 are no slouch.
While you may need to cut them to make room for better stuff I'll quickly note that Carrier Thrall > Butcher Ghoul unless you have Gravecrawler. The mana helps and you'd rather have have X/1s in your Clamp deck.
Cauldron of Souls makes no sense to me in a deck full of X/1s. What's the idea here? I know that it combos with Butcher Ghoul but that's way too cute. Neither card is especially good on its own so I'd rather see them both cut.
Cauldron of Souls can push things "over the fence" in several situations.
If you have Cauldron + Unwinding Clock, every turn you can sacrifice cats to the oven and they will come back and die once more when sacrificed to add one extra trigger.
If you have Cauldron + several creatures, you can give persist to each of them and wipe your board one by one by doing something like moving your Grafted Wargear around for several triggers.
The persist ability with Syr Konrad, the Grim will trigger both when the creature dies and when the creatures leaves the graveyard.
If you have Cauldron + Butcher Ghoul, you can sacrifice the Ghoul to something, it comes back with a +1/+1 and then give it persist, sacrifice it again to something, resolve the persist instead of the undying ability, it comes back to die again and comes back with a +1/+1 counter. Overall, you had a creature that died 3 times, left the graveyard 2 times and came into play 2 times....the various triggers add up and the creature is still in play so you can repeat something similar on the next turn.
Plus Cauldron allows to protect your partner's creature in multiplayer games.
I have 3 Bloodghast in another deck and I have been thinking about moving them to this one before I saw your answer. Especially since the Stitcher's Supplier could toss them in the graveyard for me.
I'm just not sure how I would replace them in the other deck. It's a mono-black deck that runs on Skullclamp with a lot of 4 drops (Abyssal Persecutor and Phyrexian Obliterator) but does little in the early game. Maybe I could replace the ghasts with Dark Ritual.
Cauldron of Souls can push things "over the fence" in several situations.
My concern is that it doesn't help the deck win games that you'd otherwise lose and comes across as being win-more. I've played these kinds of decks for years in a variety of formats and I'm never worried about the games where I have all of my combo pieces alive and well. Sometimes you go turn 1 Gravecrawler, turn 2 Wayward Servant, turn 3 Phyrexian Altar and win the game then and there. We take those. Still, the games that I lose are the ones where my Priest of Forgotten Gods and/or Ayara are killed, I have next-to-no removal and I lose to random beats with my board of anemic recursive threats. Cat is fun and all but it only blocks 1 attacker and gains 1 life each circuit so you're still trivially easy to kill if needed. That's why I don't like to build these decks with a bunch of expensive cards that rely on other expensive cards and other "nondurable" threats. It never seems to work out. Rather, I try to build them in such a way that I still have game even when people are interacting with my key permanents and overall denying me from assembling a critical mass of permanents in play. I'll win either way if they don't so I just have to figure out a way to assemble a decent board and ride it to victory.
I'm just not sure how I would replace them in the other deck.
Do what I do. Sleeve all of your decks in Black Matte Dragonshields and move cards around as needed. That single playset of Ghasts can be used in all of your decks. Just replace them with basic mountains (who would ever put a mountain in their deck amiright?) with "Bloodghast" sharpied on them and move them around to remind yourself which cards are missing. If you switch back to the other deck slot your proxied mountains into this deck to remind yourself to grab your Ghasts before playing it again. I'll stress that you don't have to play with the proxies, they're a reminder for you to get your real Ghasts.
Is this a deck that gets more powerful by going Orzhov colors, instead of just mono black? Seems easy to play cruel celebrant over zulaport cutthroat
Adding a couple of Athreos, God of passage as part of the payoff?
Also, is there a way to turn this into double triggers via Teysa karlov yet another reason to splash white Chittering witch seems to have replaced Sengir autocrat unless you have room for copies 5-8 anywhere in the curve or in Ascend decks
The color that I was closest to adding is red, for Mayhem Devil, which would trigger damage both when the food is sacrificed and when the cat is sacrificed.
I tried the deck friday, it was very strong...
Turn 1: Cat,
Turn 2: Cat and Oven
Turn 3: Dark Ritual, Grafted Wargear, Zulaport Cutthroat
Turn 4: Unwinding clock
...and everyone else died at that point
I dont think white would significantly improve the deck...Athreos, God of Passage would actually prevent my Bloodghast from going to the graveyard, which would be a problem for me.
I removed the Myr Retriever ...2 is a bit expensive for a creature in my deck...it must offer a great advantage or it just slows things down. The option of recovering an artifact from my graveyard was not that interesting when I playtested it. I'd rather use that 2 mana to clamp 2 creatures and draw 4 cards.
I removed one Syr Konrad, the Grim, 5 is expensive to play and Zulaport Cutthroat is more interesting for the price and can also be used as clamp fodder if I need to draw cards. I will surely add 2 more cutthroat when I can get my hands on them.
I am unsure abut the Stitcher's Supplier ...the only cards left that interact with it are the Bloodghast, Cabal Ritual and the cats...maybe I should replace them and the cabal ritual with something else.
I am looking for a creature that would cost 1 and that would provide two creatures...like a black version of Doomed Traveler if that exists. Maybe Unearth or Animate Dead would be interesting if I mill myself so much.
The closest I found to a Doomed Traveler that I can include in my deck would be a playset of Myr Servitor...which would hopefully return the ones that I self-milled at the beginning of my upkeep to have multiple creatures for a cost of 1 mana but it won't happen if someone kills the Myr I have in play and they arent black, so they dont trigger Ayara, First of Locthwain
You forgot Clamp lol. Turn 1 Supplier, turn 2 Clamp + Equip is basically your nut draw. Mills 6 for Cat/Ghast to hopefully put a recursive threat in your yard and digs you into further action.
Maybe Unearth or Animate Dead would be interesting if I mill myself so much.
Animate Dead is always amazing. Not only is it disgusting with Supplier since it can res things like Konrad on turn 2 or 3 but it can also res opposing threats when needed.
OOC what don't you like about Supplier? I want to cast it on turn 1 every game so I couldn't imagine being disappointed with them. It's one of the best Black cards that Wizards has printed in years and it's brought an immense amount of speed and consistency to our GY-based strategies. The fact that it pitches to Clamp is icing on the cake because we're ecstatic to pay 2 mana to draw a card and mill 6. I would happily play 8 whereas you seem reluctant to play 4 so something doesn't seem right to me.
It's just that, most of the time, I dont do anything with the cards that it put in my graveyard
Statically you're a favorite to be milling over a relevant threat every other game. After all, assuming 4 Cats and 4 Bloodghasts you're 60% to hit one or more every time that you mill 6 cards. Otherwise, it boils down to "what's a better thing to be doing?" and the answer is "nothing." The only 1/1s for 1 that do things when they die are insignificant trash-heaps like Shambling Goblin. By comparison, the upside of milling over a Bloodghast is utterly insane when your deck has access to things like Oven, Clamp and Ayara. I realize that you don't always hit one, sometimes you hit 3-6 useless spells/lands, but you're a favorite to hit something relevant and that value, albeit inconsistent, vastly exceeds what the alternatives offer. Still, there's always Gutterbones and Bloodsoaked Champion if you're desperate for something different but I would much rather have Suppliers myself.
4 Cauldron Familiar
2 Stitcher's Supplier
4 Butcher Ghoul
3 Reassembling Skeleton
3 Ayara, First of Lochtwain
1 Crypt Ghast
3 Syr Konrad, the Grim
1 Sol Ring
4 Witch's Oven
4 Skullclamp
2 Myr Retriever
2 Grafted Wargear
1 Unwinding Clock
2 Cauldron of Souls
2 Bolas's Citadel
1 Attrition
Spells (5)
4 Dark Ritual
1 Liliana's Triumph
Lands (20)
2 Castle Lochtwain
18 Swamp
The deck has 62 cards right now, I have to take out two.
The most surprising card in there is Grafted Wargear ...I didnt expect much at first but the card fits very well, it boosts my cats to allow them to deal significant damage, I can sacrifice them for two foods to feed my engine and I can use them to sacrifice creatures when I have no other sacrifice outlet (I equip the creature and I move the equipment)...it is useful when I already gave persist to the creature and I want it to die for it to come back and cause loss of life for my opponents.
The other cards are pretty obvious.
I want a better replacement for Reassembling Skeleton ...2 mana to play it and another 2 to bring it back is too much so I always end up spending my mana on something else.
Thank you for your advices.
For Reassembling Skeleton you kinda have to bite the bullet and shell out for Bloodghasts. You can buy playsets on Ebay for 40 shipped or wait for an 8% coupon on TCG to get around that. Gravecrawler is your next best bet but I'd spring the extra couple of bucks on Bloodghasts and get it over with. It's way too good at what it does. Turn 1 Dark Ritual + Ayara, First of Locthwain into turn 2 Bloodghast is bonkers but even just Clamp + Ghast is obscene. 1 mana for 2 cards each circuit, no fuss, no muss. Card is also nuts with Konrad. I know that these cards aren't exactly budget-friendly but once you have Bloodghast your life becomes so much easier because it's basically always going to be an automatic 4-of in these monoblack devotion shells. All of them.
With respect to Stitcher's Supplier I tend to play 4 in every graveyard matters deck. It's too good at what it does, especially when you have things like Clamp and Oven to sac it for the full 6 cards by turn 2. They're still reasonably affordable and it's by far and away the best thing to be casing on turn 1 every game. Milling 6 cards + providing an X/1 body for Clamp + fodder for Ayara/Attrition on and on and on make it a must-have.
I'll +1 the Grafted Wargear and preemptively take credit for it since it's a card that I've been pushing for over a decade. It turns your useless dorks into legitimate beaters because "infinite" 4/3 cats that drain for 1 are no slouch.
While you may need to cut them to make room for better stuff I'll quickly note that Carrier Thrall > Butcher Ghoul unless you have Gravecrawler. The mana helps and you'd rather have have X/1s in your Clamp deck.
Cauldron of Souls makes no sense to me in a deck full of X/1s. What's the idea here? I know that it combos with Butcher Ghoul but that's way too cute. Neither card is especially good on its own so I'd rather see them both cut.
Other sweet cards to keep in mind include Priest of Forgotten Gods, Zulaport Cutthroat, Weaponcraft Enthusiast, Grave Pact, Chittering Witch, Rankle, Master of Pranks, Braids, Cabal Minion, Dictate of Erebos and well a ton of stuff lol. There's no way to fit in every thing but if you find yourself losing to specific cards or strategies odds are there's way to improve the MUs.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
If you have Cauldron + Unwinding Clock, every turn you can sacrifice cats to the oven and they will come back and die once more when sacrificed to add one extra trigger.
If you have Cauldron + several creatures, you can give persist to each of them and wipe your board one by one by doing something like moving your Grafted Wargear around for several triggers.
The persist ability with Syr Konrad, the Grim will trigger both when the creature dies and when the creatures leaves the graveyard.
If you have Cauldron + Butcher Ghoul, you can sacrifice the Ghoul to something, it comes back with a +1/+1 and then give it persist, sacrifice it again to something, resolve the persist instead of the undying ability, it comes back to die again and comes back with a +1/+1 counter. Overall, you had a creature that died 3 times, left the graveyard 2 times and came into play 2 times....the various triggers add up and the creature is still in play so you can repeat something similar on the next turn.
Plus Cauldron allows to protect your partner's creature in multiplayer games.
I'm just not sure how I would replace them in the other deck. It's a mono-black deck that runs on Skullclamp with a lot of 4 drops (Abyssal Persecutor and Phyrexian Obliterator) but does little in the early game. Maybe I could replace the ghasts with Dark Ritual.
My concern is that it doesn't help the deck win games that you'd otherwise lose and comes across as being win-more. I've played these kinds of decks for years in a variety of formats and I'm never worried about the games where I have all of my combo pieces alive and well. Sometimes you go turn 1 Gravecrawler, turn 2 Wayward Servant, turn 3 Phyrexian Altar and win the game then and there. We take those. Still, the games that I lose are the ones where my Priest of Forgotten Gods and/or Ayara are killed, I have next-to-no removal and I lose to random beats with my board of anemic recursive threats. Cat is fun and all but it only blocks 1 attacker and gains 1 life each circuit so you're still trivially easy to kill if needed. That's why I don't like to build these decks with a bunch of expensive cards that rely on other expensive cards and other "nondurable" threats. It never seems to work out. Rather, I try to build them in such a way that I still have game even when people are interacting with my key permanents and overall denying me from assembling a critical mass of permanents in play. I'll win either way if they don't so I just have to figure out a way to assemble a decent board and ride it to victory.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
Do what I do. Sleeve all of your decks in Black Matte Dragonshields and move cards around as needed. That single playset of Ghasts can be used in all of your decks. Just replace them with basic mountains (who would ever put a mountain in their deck amiright?) with "Bloodghast" sharpied on them and move them around to remind yourself which cards are missing. If you switch back to the other deck slot your proxied mountains into this deck to remind yourself to grab your Ghasts before playing it again. I'll stress that you don't have to play with the proxies, they're a reminder for you to get your real Ghasts.
Note that Sticher's Supplier dumps both Cauldron Familar and Bloodghast into your bin. Also fuel for Myr Retriever. It's utterly insane in these shells.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
I needed something to remove anyway =)
Adding a couple of Athreos, God of passage as part of the payoff?
Also, is there a way to turn this into double triggers via Teysa karlov yet another reason to splash white
Chittering witch seems to have replaced Sengir autocrat unless you have room for copies 5-8 anywhere in the curve or in Ascend decks
Not only does White enable things like Athreos and Teysa but it also means that you can field interaction like Swords to Plowshares, Generous Gift, Anguished Unmaking, Vindicate, Utter End, Vona, Butcher of Magan, etc. This makes it easier to deal with opposing strategies while also supporting your own.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
I tried the deck friday, it was very strong...
Turn 1: Cat,
Turn 2: Cat and Oven
Turn 3: Dark Ritual, Grafted Wargear, Zulaport Cutthroat
Turn 4: Unwinding clock
...and everyone else died at that point
I dont think white would significantly improve the deck...Athreos, God of Passage would actually prevent my Bloodghast from going to the graveyard, which would be a problem for me.
I changed the deck a bit, I added 2 more Stitcher's Supplier, a Cabal Ritual and some Zulaport Cutthroat...I will post a new decklist soon, I have to go.
4 Cauldron Familiar
4 Stitcher's Supplier
3 Bloodghast
2 Zulaport Cutthroat
3 Ayara, First of Locthwain
1 Crypt Ghast
2 Syr Konrad, the Grim
1 Sol Ring
4 Witch's Oven
4 Skullclamp
2 Grafted Wargear
1 Unwinding Clock
2 Bolas's Citadel
1 Attrition
Spells (6)
4 Dark Ritual
1 Cabal Ritual
1 Liliana's Triumph
Lands (20)
2 Castle Lochtwain
18 Swamp
I removed the Myr Retriever ...2 is a bit expensive for a creature in my deck...it must offer a great advantage or it just slows things down. The option of recovering an artifact from my graveyard was not that interesting when I playtested it. I'd rather use that 2 mana to clamp 2 creatures and draw 4 cards.
I removed one Syr Konrad, the Grim, 5 is expensive to play and Zulaport Cutthroat is more interesting for the price and can also be used as clamp fodder if I need to draw cards. I will surely add 2 more cutthroat when I can get my hands on them.
I am unsure abut the Stitcher's Supplier ...the only cards left that interact with it are the Bloodghast, Cabal Ritual and the cats...maybe I should replace them and the cabal ritual with something else.
I am looking for a creature that would cost 1 and that would provide two creatures...like a black version of Doomed Traveler if that exists. Maybe Unearth or Animate Dead would be interesting if I mill myself so much.
You forgot Clamp lol. Turn 1 Supplier, turn 2 Clamp + Equip is basically your nut draw. Mills 6 for Cat/Ghast to hopefully put a recursive threat in your yard and digs you into further action.
Cabal Ritual can go but I do not recommend cutting Supplier. The card is insane in GY-based Clamp decks.
Do you have the 4th Bloodghast? Card is nuts in Clamp decks because it's literally "1 mana draw 2 cards" every circuit which is obscene.
Doesn't exist sadly. Supplier is the only decent 1 drop that we have access to.
Animate Dead is always amazing. Not only is it disgusting with Supplier since it can res things like Konrad on turn 2 or 3 but it can also res opposing threats when needed.
OOC what don't you like about Supplier? I want to cast it on turn 1 every game so I couldn't imagine being disappointed with them. It's one of the best Black cards that Wizards has printed in years and it's brought an immense amount of speed and consistency to our GY-based strategies. The fact that it pitches to Clamp is icing on the cake because we're ecstatic to pay 2 mana to draw a card and mill 6. I would happily play 8 whereas you seem reluctant to play 4 so something doesn't seem right to me.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold
Statically you're a favorite to be milling over a relevant threat every other game. After all, assuming 4 Cats and 4 Bloodghasts you're 60% to hit one or more every time that you mill 6 cards. Otherwise, it boils down to "what's a better thing to be doing?" and the answer is "nothing." The only 1/1s for 1 that do things when they die are insignificant trash-heaps like Shambling Goblin. By comparison, the upside of milling over a Bloodghast is utterly insane when your deck has access to things like Oven, Clamp and Ayara. I realize that you don't always hit one, sometimes you hit 3-6 useless spells/lands, but you're a favorite to hit something relevant and that value, albeit inconsistent, vastly exceeds what the alternatives offer. Still, there's always Gutterbones and Bloodsoaked Champion if you're desperate for something different but I would much rather have Suppliers myself.
Guilds of Ravnica - Commander 2018 - Core 2019 - Battlebond - Dominaria - Rivals of Ixalan - Ixalan - Commander 2017 - Hour of Devastation - Amonket - Aether Revolt - Commander 2016 - Kaladesh - Conspiracy 2 - Eldritch Moon - Shadows Over Innistrad - Oath of the Gatewatch - Commander 2015 - Battle for Zendikar - Magic Origins - Dragons of Tarkir
Green - Blue - Red - White - Gold