Welcome to Ian's House of Pain!
Ian's House of Pain focuses on impacting the board in three ways.
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First and foremost, IHAP want's to cause as much disruption and chaos as possible.
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Next, IHAP wants to pressure the board and whittle away life totals.
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Finally, IHAP wants to force opponents into tough choices to close out the game!
Why Xantcha?
First, let's chat about why we chose
Xantcha, Sleeper Agent
over
Vial Smasher the Fierce
as our Commander. Ultimately, we need Xantcha's 5 toughness booty! A key factor to success in this deck is resetting the board early and often. We want to make sure our opening hand has some way to deal with early turn mana dorks and sol rings/signets. Because many of our early game sweeps hit the board with 3 damage, Vial Smasher dies to our own wipes. Conversely, Xantcha survives and continues pressuring our opponents (because she can't attack us)!
How Does IHAP Bring the Pain?
Great! We have
Xantcha, Sleeper Agent
at the helm, now let's bring the pain!
Early Game:
We mentioned this already, but early game, we want to keep the board on curve. So it's crucial we keep a hand that let's us respond to early game ramp or set up. An ideal opening hand will include a turn-2 Xantcha as well as quick sweeps or cheap single target removal for those sol rings and mana dorks.
Mid Game:
Moving forward, it goes without saying that, we want to encourage as many Xantcha activations as possible, but not yet. IHAP is NOT a discard deck, so we don't have the tools to force Xantcha activations at this stage of the game. Instead, during the Mid Game, we are playing more of a chaos control strategy. EMBRACE THE CHAOS! The Chaos might not always work in our favor, but it's still stupid funny! Create fun interaction with the Chaos to control the board, remove threats, and sneak your way to the late game.
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Game of Chaos
,
Mana Clash
, and
Harsh Mentor
to whittle away life totals.
-
Mogis, God of Slaughter
,
Archfiend of Depravity
,
Rankle, Master of Pranks
, and
Mogg Assassin
to keep board states in check.
Force of Despair
to reset explosive turns.
-
Blood Moon
,
Stranglehold
and
Ob Nixilis, Unshackled
to prevent or discourage setting up strategies.
Blood Moon
will net a huge amount of Xantcha activations since non-red decks will be fishing for answers to remove the moon!
-
Desecration Demon
,
Shadowborn Demon
, and
Master of Cruelties
for bodies to soak removal. Ultimately, we include these for bravado. They are cheap stompers or have potent abilities that if unanswered will win you the game. Thus, if you can get value from these cards (especially
Master of Cruelties
), that's great, but don't worry about protecting these. More removal sunk into these demons means less removal for Xantcha and other pieces of your board.
Now, let's head into the late game!
Late Game:
This is where the deck gets really fun and chaotic. It's time to force our opponents into tough choices; and believe us, the choices are progressively more painful as the game goes on! We pity the soul controlling Xantcha because damn... we are about to force a helluvalotta Xantcha activations!
-
Citadel of Pain
,
War's Toll
,
Mana Web
, and
Price of Glory
play crucial roles here. We want one of these on the board in the late game! Each of these encourages or forces a player to dump their mana each turn. If they don't, they are going to take damage, lose lands (if they play during another players' turn), or just have dead turns.
-
Oppression
,
Words of Waste
,
Painful Quandary
, and
Sire Of Insanity
deny card advantage. These cards coupled with
Bloodchief Ascension
and
Harsh Mentor
will really punish opponents in the late game.
-
Archfiend of Despair
and
Erebos, God of the Dead
prevent players from gaining life to offset your taxes. Meanwhile,
Bloodchief Ascension
,
Crypt Ghast
, and
Exquisite Blood
help you replenish some life in the late game.
Sower of Discord
doubles down on all that value!
-
Choice of Damnations
forces tough choices on an opponent with the added benefit of balancing the board a little bit.
Non-Budget Recommendations
For this initial build, IHAP is a fun somewhat janky deck with a power level around the 6 range. In play testing, it won around 60% of the games. The win rate isn't too bad, even in a cEDH setting. IHAP is strong against aggro and ramp deck, but vulnerable to stax, spellslinger/burn, non-creature; non-artifact based decks.
That said, IHAP sometimes feels unfocused and too reliant on an ideal opening hand. To round out and tap into a higher level of potency, we'd recommend the non-budget upgrades below. Additionally, we'd recommend replacing the demon themes of the deck in favor of a discard/wheel theme to continually disrupt opponents' planning. This will pigeonhole opponents into tougher choices much earlier in the game. If you're not against infinite combos, we also recommend including the Animate Dead + Worldgorger Dragon
(along with variants of Animate Dead) combo.
Bloodstained Mire
Braid of Fire
Chrome Mox
City of Brass
Dark Confidant
Disrupt Decorum
Fabled Passage
Grim Monolith
Lion's Eye Diamond
Mana Confluence
Mana Crypt
Mana Vault
Mox Diamond
Polluted Bonds
Prismatic Vista
Repercussion
Smoldering Marsh
Spellshock
Sulfuric Vortex
Vampiric Tutor
Wheel of Fortune
