What is this deck about?
This deck is a mix of Grixis control and Dredge - its based around cards that discard with value ("Faithless looting", "Collective brutality", "Jace, Vryn's prodigy", "Izzet charm") and recurrent creatures. Its not closely as explosive as dredge but there are draws with heavy pressure (eg. "Faithless looting" into "Bloodghast" and "Prized Amalgam"). However its far more interactive and might find a place now that GY hate is on decline with the banning of golgari, grave throll..
Brewing history
Ever since "Collective brutality" was spoiled - I thought there must be a way to abuse it with recurrent creature cards. Turn 2 "Collective brutality": strip, destroy a creature, drain for 2 & discard "Bloodghast" and "Prized amalgam" just puts incredible pressure on your opponent and I spent days breeding over how to make this work consistently.
I first started out with an almost monoblack version including "Stinkweed Imp" and it worked quite well against creature based strategies. link to decklist here This deck however was often just to slow
link to decklist hereThis Raktos approach was powerful at times but overall inconsistent.
Testing
I have now been playing with this deck in different variations for a couple of months and tried to get it competitive. Its coming just a bit short for two main reasons:Firstly, the deck cant function well without any looting effects and wants to play blue cantrips in order to find the right mix of cards and the right answers- but it probably is not powerful/quick enough to be able to skip hand disruption - this means it needs all colours early and this puts the manabase on a strain and the deck cant really afford such a painful manabase.
Secondly, the control shell of the deck and 'Vryn prodigy' in particularly dont go well with aggressive creatures that cant block, Vryn is also the only removal target but the deck can't function without him...
Having said that- with GY hate being on decline, there might be a spot for a deck like that.I am currently testing a mardu Version of this deck... link to decklist
