DISCLAIMER: this deck is not a derivative of SaffronOlive's Insolent Red deck.
This is a deck I built to abuse
Skin Invasion
. My goal was to build a deck that turned combat into a decision-making nightmare for its opponents. The idea is to use
Skin Invasion
as a life insurance policy on your creatures and use Menace abilities to push damage through or flip Invasion. By reducing the downside for yourself, you increase the downside and complexity for your opponent, making mistakes more likely. The deck is a pretty straight forward beater, here's what's in it:
Skin Invasion
- my build around. The intent of the spell in this deck isn't to remove enemy creatures, but to create a BIG downside to killing your creatures for your opponent.
Goblin Glory Chaser
- if you let him through he gets bigger and harder to block. The menace he gains with renown is an important part of keeping damage going through against weenie decks.
Insolent Neonate - he's guaranteed to die if he's blocked, and can be used to turn a madness spell into a cantrip or flip Invasion on demand.
Bloodmad Vampire
- a huge threat if you can cast it early, and menace creatures can help create openings that will add counters.
Lightning Berserker
- the dash ability combined with cheap power pumping makes this a great card for quick, repeatable combat damage.
Scourge Wolf
- an efficiently costed first strike creature, and it can add value to discarding when it gains double strike.
Goblin Freerunner
- French vanilla menace to help force damage through against a wide field. The upside here is that you shouldn't have to hard cast it. This gets the least benefit from
Skin Invasion
.
Madness Sub-theme:
Lightning Axe
- cheap creature killing madness enabler. The madness sub-theme was used to ensure that this card was being maximized when played.
Fiery Temper a nice utility card since it can do damage to players, creatures, or planeswalkers. Used together with
Lightning Axe
can do 8 damage to a creature for 2 mana.
Avacyn's Judgment
- I like the versatility of this effect, but I like it even more with madness. The ability to go wide at instant speed is good against Wx weenies, and Insolent Neonate's ability gives you a lot of choice when to cast this. The hope is to use this to do enough damage to the face to win around turn 5 if you don't need it as a board wipe.
Tormenting Voice - the discard here isn't really a cost since it turns a madness card into a cantrip and draw another card for 1R.
Other Cards:
Westvale Abbey
- a secondary win condition. The proliferation of cheap creatures in this deck make flipping this a bit easier.
Brute Strength
- an efficient way to force damage through during combat.
Titan's Strength
- sometimes you don't need trample and could benefit more from scrying.
Side Board
Impact Tremors
- for when you feel the need to kill your opponent a little faster.
Scab-Clan Berserker - swap these for
Goblin Freerunner
s against spell heavy decks since the menace will be less useful anyway.
Burn from Within - it's not a perfect answer to Archangel Avacyn
since it would be 6cmc to kill her outright, but it's the best chance to kill her before she flips.
Exquisite Firecraft
- for when you need burn that can't be countered.
Tears of Valakut
- in case of Esper Dragons.
And that about wraps it up. I really enjoy this deck, and I hope you give it a try. My sincere thanks to the people who helped this deck crack the top 20 - your upvotes mean a lot!
And, as always, suggestions and upvotes are greatly appreciated!
