The History:
So I designed this deck a few years ago for some rather silly reasons. For starters, I love the directness of some of the cards in black. Secondly, I already had most of these cards laying around in my collection. Third, I was savagely field-whipped in a previous game and was still a little sore. I had never really had the chance to make a demon deck before, so I figured.....why not?
How This Deck Plays:
The Goal of this deck is to constantly apply pressure to your opponent's board by maintaining murderous control over their number of creatures. Kill them, bring them back to life on your side, and then swarm.
Phase 1: The Party Guests
Starting out, we want to set up our board. Most of the early creatures either prepare for future cards or keep the number of opponent's creatures low (if non-existent). The goal is to maintain constant, aggressive pressure early on. We start with our low cost Deathtouch critters, like
Typhoid Rats
and
Ruthless Ripper
.
Ruthless Ripper
has the added bonus of doing life damage if flipped from a morph position (which also means that she can serve as a 2/2 if you need one).
To keep the opponents sacrificing their own creatures, I used
Fleshbag Marauder
and
Merciless Executioner
. Even though they both have the same effect, I include both in this deck to counter against strategies where opponents search your deck to remove cards from the game. Likewise, I included
Elixir of Immortality
for the purposes of refreshing my deck with kill-spells, gaining 5 life early on, and irritating "mill" decks. But back on to the subject of killing things,
Fleshbag Marauder
and
Merciless Executioner
are fantastic and flexible. If you need your deathtouch critters to block, these two critters can sacrifice themselves instead. However, when you opponent runs out of creatures, you can sacrifice the deathtouch creatures to keep the
Fleshbag Marauder
and
Merciless Executioner
on the board, allowing you to deal a LOT of early game damage with these 3/1s.
Phase 2: Start the Rave
Next are the VIPs of this sweet and grim party!
Blood Artist
is incredible for this deck, as a LOT of creatures will be dying (both yours and your opponents). So why not rub salt into the wound and leech 1 life from your opponent for each dead critter. Worried that you'll run out of kill spells?
Harvester of Souls
keeps your hand fresh and murdery, providing a drawn card for each kill.
Nefarox, Overlord of Grixis
and
Archfiend of Depravity
keep the creatures dying, even when your hand is empty.
Now, I need to spare a moment to sing the praises of the true MVP in this deck....
Royal Assassin
! The assassin has SO MANY USES and is one of my favorite creatures in the game. Owning so much as a single assassin can halt entire armies in a group match and stop tapping creature combos. Because Royal Assassin can target any tapped creature, you can kill a non-vigilanced creature the second that it attacks you. What is important is to know when to use it. Sometimes, if you haven't received aggro in a group match, it is better to wait to use this effect until the end of the last player's turn, before you turn begins. That way, there isn't a gap where it is safe to attack you. But if someone swings on you; and you cannot block with some Deathtouch, punish the culprit!
Phase 3: Start the Cleanup
Your creatures are great; but they can't kill everything. Sometimes, you need to get your hands dirty.
Murder
is great for killing anything; but we do need some lower cost kill spells. This is where
Tragic Slip
and
Go for the Throat
come in. Unless you are fighting an artifact-exclusive deck,
Go for the Throat
covers most early game threats for two mana. I prefer it over
Doom Blade
and other spells because of the limitations of their targets.
Tragic Slip
is just straight-up good. If you follow up with it after casting another kill spell (or when a creature dies for literally any another reason), it's -13/-13 for ONE MANA! This CAN and WILL kill most indestructible creatures, which most of your creatures can't handle.
But what about tokens or swarming weenies, I hear you say?
Marsh Casualties
will kill the littler armies, while sparing your demons. However, if all else fails,
Mutilate
will GET THE JOB DONE!
However, there is one card that I love the most in this deck; and that card is
Killing Wave
. Choices are painful when there is no good outcome. It is painful to an opponent when you clear their board. But it is much more painful to have each of your opponents CHOOSE WHICH CREATURES LIVE AND WHICH ONES DIE! While not as effective as Mutilate, Killing Wave is a LOT more fun, as it forces your opponent to pay X life for every creature that they DON'T want to sacrifice. Indestructibility does not save them. Protection spells do not save them. In addition, 75% of your creatures are expendable. This means that you only really need to save the demon, artist, and/or assassin. And honestly, after the next few cards are shown, you could just let your creatures die....
Phase 4: Make New Friends
Animate Dead
is a lovely card, which will let you seize a creature from your graveyard or your opponent's. This card is especially great if you had to neutralize an early-game threat that your opponent threw at you. Heck, it's their problem now!
Sepulchral Primordial
is also great, as it does this to each opponent's graveyard.
Grave Betrayal
is for the late game, as it does what Animate Dead does, only better and constantly.
Grim Return
does this as well; but is harder to play. Timing is everything with this card; but the payoff is incredible when you use it at just the right moment. Follow
Mutilate
up with this card for hilarious results.
And that is it. As of the time that this has been written, this deck only costs less than $40 to make. Give it a spin and tell me what you think. Enjoy. :)
