Look at that art of Oloro, Ageless Ascetic. I don't care what the lore says. That's not the look of a man who possesses the secret of eternal life. That's a man who is in a losing battle with the meat sweats. He's gorged so much that he's not even wearing pants.
This deck is built in honor of this man's man who, in daring to push his stomach's natural limits, teaches us what it truly means to be alive. Neither this deck nor Oloro take themselves too seriously. Infinite combos are intentionally left out as are easy instant-win conditions like Test of Endurance. Here's what it can do.
Building enough resources to win the game is going to take time. Fortunately, a certain ageless ascetic has that in droves. Oloro should keep our health total up as we build up our mana base and find our combo pieces. Other life gain tools include
Whip of Erebos,
Kambal, Consul of Allocation and
Shattered Angel.
If the sociopaths at your table insist on swinging creatures in your direction, Ghostly Prison, Revenge of Ravens, Archon of Absolution, Gwafa Hazid, Profiteer, Sphere of Safety and Baird, Steward of Argive should persuade them to spend their time elsewhere. You likely won't need all of these out at once, but the redundancies mean we should always find something.
The deck also features plenty of pinpoint removal, including Mortify, Kaya, Bane of the Dead, Swords to Plowshares and Far / Away. Our life total and defenses should keep us alive against most attacks, so we don't need a ton of mass removal. Heliod's Intervention can be either life gain or remove key combo pieces.
Remember, don't burn all your counter spells to stop your opponent from doing something cool. You'll want a Negate or Sinister Sabotage to protect your own winning combo when the time is right. Grand Abolisher can secure a win, too.
With our defenses in place, we'll need to build up a winning board state. While tutors would do the trick, I personally find they take away from the randomness that makes Commander fun. The only one I run is the budget
Diabolic Tutor.
Instead, we're going with card draw. Azor, the Lawbringer, Bloodgift Demon, Bolas's Citadel, Alhammarret's Archive and Dawn of Hope should help us dig through our deck. If we're in a real bind, we can cast Oloro from the command zone and use his second ability to dig through our deck.
While Oloro can gradually bleed our opponents to death, even he has better things to do with his time. To hasten the pace, we have Debt to the Deathless and Revival / Revenge. These powerful sorcery spells can give us massive health boosts capable of immediately killing one or more opponents. Once we have enough mana and life, we could also use Bond of Agony to close out the game.
This deck is more interested in playing defense, but sometimes the best defense is a good offense.
Serra Avatar lacks evasion, but she can get massive and make your life total get insane if she gets lifelink (looking at you, Whip of Erebos).
Sunscorch Regent can get burly, too, if left on the board long enough. The dragon has evasion, as do some less beefy creatures including Azor, Bloodgift Demon and
Drogskol Reaver.
Observant readers may have noticed I didn't include
Tree of Perdition among our deterrents earlier. Surely that was an oversight on my part, right? This simple four-drop makes for an excellent political tool, after all.
Well, yes, it DOES do that. But it also enables the silly finisher of Triskaidekaphobia. If you ever manage to knock out a single opponent this way, forget winning the game. You'll have won at life.
This is intended to be a budget deck. While some of these cards have higher price tags now, the only card I paid more than $5 for was Oloro thanks to some savvy purchases and some luck in limited.
This deck has been dramatically reworked since I first put it together years ago. It likely needs further improvement, including more consistent card draw. Thoughts, encouragement and jokes are welcome.
