MTG Salvation

Hello all! This is my current multiplayer aristocrat deck.

As a rakdos fanboy I've elected to pilot this with Judith, the Scourge Diva, over other options, which warrants a few preliminary comments. When considering optimal builds for aristocrat decks, it is easy to consider Teysa, Orzhov Scion and/or Teysa Karlov to be strictly better than ol' Judy. This may have been true until recently, because the only real thing red added was wheel of fortune and faithless lootings, over what white adds (enlightened tutor/sun titan/cruel celebrant/field of souls/karmic guide & Reveillark combos, etc). The addition of dockside extortionist which combos with nim deathmantle helps push red a bit more, but now we have underworld breach, which really does make the argument of Teysa vs Judith a bit more interesting.

Below is my current decklist. It has the typical aristocrat combos one would expect and a few additional bleed effects if ol' Judy isn't available. The absence of reliable recursion that white offers is strongly felt, but the potential speed and chaotic nature of this deck is spectacular. If you would like to playtest this, click here!



Average CMC = 2.78
0 cmc = 2
1 cmc = 14
2 cmc = 18
3 cmc = 13
4 cmc = 4
5 cmc = 8
6 cmc = 3
7 cmc = 1
8 cmc = 1



For a bit of history regarding this deck
v1 - Judy fist released, obligatory rakdos deck developed for her, originally started as a semi-aggro semi-combo deck. The deck has always had a nim deathmantle/gravecrawler combo style shell, but originally used Purphoros, God of the Forge along with mass token producers like army of the damned/goblin offensive to make use of Judy's +1/0. I didn't realize at this point that she didn't care about token-death
v2 - After a few weeks of poor performance, the deck was changed to be more reanimator, using big beaters like inferno titan/grave titan/combustible gearhulk/noxious gearhulk
v3 - Alas reanimation was just subpar in performance, so the deck became focused more on the combo elements. While testing, I knew that red wasn't helping much, so I decided to make a fun exception and use only Judy and bitter ordeal as the only two possible cards to win with, removing all blood artist style effects, so it could try to hyper focus and ritual out a combo.
v4 - adaptable combo build - ran necrotic ooze+mogg fanatic+kiki-jiki, mirror breaker along with zealous conscripts, dualcaster mage+twinflame+heat shimmer as alternative combos. These are some of my favorite combos, but ultimatly I took them out since I already have them in other decks.
v5 - current build - With the release of Ayara, First of Locthwain and Syr Konrad, the Grim, I see that the deck just needs aristocrat staples to function, so the rituals were (mostly) removed for stability. Also newer cards like Dockside Extortionist and Underworld Breach are making the red splash fairly relevant. While the deck still runs urborg+coffers, I've already removed Exsanguinate since I do not want the deck to need to rely on it.

Change Log
Feb 2020 - Initial post, so I'll just reference the last few changes; Read the Bones, Grim Haruspex, Viscera Seer and Desecrated Tomb removed for Gravebreaker Lamia, Dockside Extortionist, Lion's Eye Diamond and Underworld Breach

For this week, I'm currently considering allure of the unknown as a card to test with. I'm siding out open the graves to slot it in. The pseduo draw is fantastic at getting around draw-hate (narset), and there isn't much my opponents could cast from my deck that would backfire too bad for me here

As always, any and all feedback is welcome!