The top of the curve is not actually the best place to look for activated abilities. Geth, lord of the vault springs to mind. Plenty of busted etb's, of course, and Rakdos loves that sort of thing too.
{c]Feldon of the Third Path[/c] and Coffin Queen might be up your alley, considering you like big creatures that kill creatures; these get those back.
Geier Reach Sanitarium is screaming to be used with Waste Not and especially Geth's Grimoire. Frankly it feels extremely good to me to have that on the land slot.
Please wotc, give me more reasons to build my miserable christmas-land Greel, Mind Raker deck...
Card advantage is relative; my vote goes to Pernicious Deed.
Non-facetious answer: Evolutionary Leap can put some crazy work into most builds that have good creatures; you can run it as raw CA/removal nixing, or as a pseudo-toolbox in a creature-light deck that will always find something impactful. Thinking about switching Jarad to Gitrog, taking out all the creature based ramp and having a 6/6 subtheme, and this would mean I always have an insane threat ready to go, never whiffing on a BoP or Wood elves or something that I don't need late-game. Also, tokens.
Uh, ok...I'd probably go with pseudo-combo Jarad, which is my most tuned.
Ignore Arcum Dagsson - I don't have too much trouble with stax; i'm largely a value/combo reanimator strategy. Bane of Progress and unravel are easily tutored.
Cooperate Azami, Lady of Scrolls - simply because she can't tutor her pieces quite so easily.
Eliminate Oona, Queen of the Fae - by process of elimination.
I think I'd still be the underdog of the group, no doubt.
Currently using it in Hazezon Tamar. It's ridiculous that Hazezon himself exiles for 8 MANA, tap one more and you can replay him. It's one of my chief methods of trigger stacking for him; it also recycles my defunct wood elves into 4 mana. This is really just ludicrous.
There are tons of decks that can use food chain well. The ones that can use it REALLY well are those with a high creature count, or ones that can easily generate an army.
If you're playing against 3 people, and you have at least some control, they'll be tapping down without landing too much board presence.
In my experience, after turn 7 geyser can routinely go off for 15+ mana, which is enough for a really brutal, if not outright game-ending Exsanguinate, Comet Storm, or Epic Experiment. Or, alternatively, you can play your hand of huge beaters/Darksteel Forge + Nevinyrral's Disk/bustedplaneswalkers/etc.
I also really like Fork effects for what they add to grixis. Doubling down on a huge exsanguinate is insane, as is hitting multiple players with Cruel Ultimatum.
Ob Nixilis should be going into just about every black EDH deck ever.
I dunno, I can think of 4-5 other cards I would rely on before him for that kind of incremental draw, and all of them are less vulnerable or easier to recur depending on card type. Lots of better removal too. He really only goes in a deck that can interact with his PW traits, or one that absolutely needs to fit repeatable draw and kill functions onto one card.
I always see these threads about powerful black cards in a specific category, and it is always shocking to me how every time people completely forget to invite Gary to the party. With a solid board, Gary can outright kill multiple players out of nowhere. In my black red deck, I frequently resolve him for 20+ damage, and I'm not running particularpy much devotion
I agree...He's currently the #1 clone/reanimate target in my meta, it's horrible. What kind of boardstates give you that much power? I run him in Jarad and feel like I always cap out at 6-9 which is fine if I do it more than once; it'd be nice to have the burst capacity though.
Edit: Sickening Dreams is a card I've heard of people playing. Sewer Nemesis is good friends with a lot of generals and a great fling target.
{c]Feldon of the Third Path[/c] and Coffin Queen might be up your alley, considering you like big creatures that kill creatures; these get those back.
No way man, she was born to play the drums.
Might wanna check the creature types on Restorer...
That being said, sub out lodge for Maze of Ith and you can make infinite mana during the combat phase!
But I'll grant that's an extreme(ly expensive) edge case.
I can't believe I haven't seen Fleshbag Marauder posted yet, is it just that obvious?
They seem like they could do serious work as the generals of a more grindy/controlly/staxy zombo deck.
Please wotc, give me more reasons to build my miserable christmas-land Greel, Mind Raker deck...
Non-facetious answer: Evolutionary Leap can put some crazy work into most builds that have good creatures; you can run it as raw CA/removal nixing, or as a pseudo-toolbox in a creature-light deck that will always find something impactful. Thinking about switching Jarad to Gitrog, taking out all the creature based ramp and having a 6/6 subtheme, and this would mean I always have an insane threat ready to go, never whiffing on a BoP or Wood elves or something that I don't need late-game. Also, tokens.
Uh, ok...I'd probably go with pseudo-combo Jarad, which is my most tuned.
Ignore Arcum Dagsson - I don't have too much trouble with stax; i'm largely a value/combo reanimator strategy. Bane of Progress and unravel are easily tutored.
Cooperate Azami, Lady of Scrolls - simply because she can't tutor her pieces quite so easily.
Eliminate Oona, Queen of the Fae - by process of elimination.
I think I'd still be the underdog of the group, no doubt.
NEXT - A random sampling of my playgroup
Dralnu, Lich Lord - Raw control, 16+ counters.
Hazezon Tamar - Craterhoof Beatdown / Lark combo
Kurkesh, Onakke Ancient - Combo / Eldrazi turbo-ramp
There are tons of decks that can use food chain well. The ones that can use it REALLY well are those with a high creature count, or ones that can easily generate an army.
If you're playing against 3 people, and you have at least some control, they'll be tapping down without landing too much board presence.
In my experience, after turn 7 geyser can routinely go off for 15+ mana, which is enough for a really brutal, if not outright game-ending Exsanguinate, Comet Storm, or Epic Experiment. Or, alternatively, you can play your hand of huge beaters/Darksteel Forge + Nevinyrral's Disk/busted planeswalkers/etc.
I also really like Fork effects for what they add to grixis. Doubling down on a huge exsanguinate is insane, as is hitting multiple players with Cruel Ultimatum.
I dunno, I can think of 4-5 other cards I would rely on before him for that kind of incremental draw, and all of them are less vulnerable or easier to recur depending on card type. Lots of better removal too. He really only goes in a deck that can interact with his PW traits, or one that absolutely needs to fit repeatable draw and kill functions onto one card.
Definitely stick him in superfriends, though.
I agree...He's currently the #1 clone/reanimate target in my meta, it's horrible. What kind of boardstates give you that much power? I run him in Jarad and feel like I always cap out at 6-9 which is fine if I do it more than once; it'd be nice to have the burst capacity though.
Edit: Sickening Dreams is a card I've heard of people playing. Sewer Nemesis is good friends with a lot of generals and a great fling target.