I like cool interactions in between cards, especially if the cards aren't designed specifically to interact with one another. I was actually building a different deck, when I stumbled upon Generous Patron, which caught my attention. One of my favorite decks at the moment is helmed by Yawgmoth, Thran Physician, so my mind immediately went to -1/-1 counters. I looked into a couple different options for commanders, among others Atraxa, Praetors' Voice, The Scorpion God and Thantis, the Warweaver, but finally settled on Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons. I decided I wanted to focus the deck more on -1/-1 counters, than counters in general, and I wanted a general that reflected that theme. I also wanted green in the deck to be able to play with the initial inspiration to the deck, Generous Patron.
Another reason I chose Hapatra over some of the other options is that she allows me to have a token sub theme. Whenever I put a -1/-1 counter on a creature I get a snake with deathtouch. To make use of these tokens I have some anthem effects to make them bigger, like Seshiro the Anointed and eldrazi monument. They can help ramping through Cryptolith Rite and Growing Rites of Itlimoc
. They can be sacrificed for cards, mana or more -1/-1 counters with Evolutionary Leap, Ashnod's Altar and Plaguemaw Beast. And then of course, the allstar of the deck: Yawgmoth, Thran Physician, which will go semi-infinate with Hapatra. I can make use of the fact that the snakes have deathtouch with Ulvenwald Tracker since they automatically kill anything they fight. My opponents will also be less inclined to block my snakes, which makes Seshiro the Anointed even better. card:throne of the god pharao and Harvest Season will also be good, since my tokens will likely surive combat. As a final touch to the token theme I added Dictate of Erebos and a couple of Blood Artist effects to get even more value out of sacrificing my creatures, and to futher dissuade blocking.
Cards that give all my creatures wither or infect (e.g. Everlasting Torment and Triumph of the Hordes) are effective since they make my snakes replace themselves, would they die in combat. Triumph is especially potent as it basicly makes my opponent block, which will kill their creatures, and all my snakes replace themselves.
Hapatra's ability only makes one token, no matter how many counters you put on one creature. So to maximize the efficiency of the token creation, abilities that put one counter on several creatures are more efficient than putting several counters on one creature, since they will create one token per creature a counter were put on. This makes proliferate very powerful. In the last year we received a couple of new great proliferators: Evolution Sage and Planewide Celebration from War of the Spark and Card:Sword of thruth and justice and card:yawgmoth, than physician from Modern Horizons.
-1/-1 counters have some great synergies. For example if a card has both a +1/+1 and a -1/-1 counter they will cancel each other out, and are both removed from the card. This makes card:mikeaus the unhallowed a great inclusion in this deck, since you can keep putting -1/-1 counters on the creatures who have been returned, and the undying will trigger again, and again. This also works the other way around, with for example Cauldron of Souls and the incidental cards that add +1/+1 counters like Sword of Truth and Justice or cards that just straight up remove -1/-1 counters such as Quillspike.
Another synergy with -1/-1 counters is that their effect adds in top of the base power and toughness, which makes Vhati il-Dal just straigt up destroy any creature with a -1/-1 counter when he taps. Which also circumvents indestructible, since the power and toughness of the creature will be 0/0.
This deck has a couple of infinate combos, non of which were intended while building this deck. Personally I usually find infinite combos quite unsatisfactory, but because I don't have any tutors (other than ramp) these combos won't be that easy to set up.
The two combos I've found both revolvs around the Lord of the Wastes. The one that is the easiest to assemble consists of Hapatra, Vizier of Poisons + Yawgmoth, Thran Physician
. This combo is quite self explanatory, you pay 1 life and sacrifice a creature to yawgmoth to put a -1/-1 counter on another creature and draw a card. This will trigger Hapatra's abaility to create a token, which you then can sacrifice to yawgmoth to draw a card, put another -1/-1 counter on a creature and create another token. Add a Blood Artist or Zulaport Cutthroat and you got the win. Hapatra can be exchanged for Nest of Scarabs or Flourishing Defenses. A weakness with this combo is that you can only loop it as many times as there is thoughness on board, because otherwise you don't have anything to put the counters on.
A secondary combo with Yawgmoth is Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Yawgmoth, Thran Physician
. As I discussed further up, the -1/-1 counters from Yawgmoth will remove the undying counters from Mikaeus, so that if you have two other non-human creatures, you can sacrifice creature nr 1 to Yawgmoth, and it will com back with a +1/+1 counter. Then you sacrifice creature nr 2 to yawgmoth to put a -1/-1 counter on creature nr 1. Creature nr 2 will return with a +1/+1 counter on it, but creature nr 1 now has no counters on it, so you can sacrifice it to yawgmoth to put a -1/-1 counter on creature nr 2, and so on. This combo works in the same way as the earlier one, as long as you have a Blood Artist or similar effect on board you can drain you opponents out (so long they dont have more life than you have cards in you're library). This combo circumvents the weakness of my opponents having to have creatures on board, since it only relies on me, putting counters on my own creatures.
This deck has a couple of cards that technically break the color identity (Kulrath Knight, card:morsel hoarder, Everlasting Torment and card:cauldron's haze. These are all hybrid cards, which are made to be either color, but by the current rules of the format count as both. I discussed this with my playgroup, and they allowed me to play with these cards, even though it is not allowed by the rules of the format.
