The thesis of the deck is to kill things and win by generating supreme card advantage. Every single card in the deck does one or both of these.
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The Removal
**Murderous Cut, Abzan Charm and Crackling Doom are each in the Top 5 best removal spells in the format. When Murderous Cut only costs one mana (which is often, given our capacity of easy-to-cast spells and fetchlands) it facilitates us casting multiple spells in a turn, which can become very difficult for a lot of decks to keep up with.
Fiery Impulse, Silkwrap, Complete Disregard and Utter End are all on the lighter side of the removal suite, but they each kill very important things that demand to be answered. Wrap and Disregard each started as 2-ofs, but have since been reduced given that Impulse kills Mantis and Jace pretty well and Hangarback is not as ubiquitous as before.
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The Card Advantage:
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If you really look at it, nearly everything in the deck generates card advantage in some way, whether it's by drawing extra cards, allowing us to do multiple things, or by costing very little. Abzan Charm and Outpost Siege are the core here, and they both keep our hand full long throughout the game (which is a necessity in a deck that doesn't win quickly).
The Planeswalkers are one-ofs mainly as a way of me gauging their viability. Ob Nixilis seems to contribute more to our gameplan than Sarkhan, but the latter still functions well enough. These are both additional ways to gain incremental card advantage and potentially win the game.
Admittedly, this deck started as a budget pile of "decent cards I owned," which explains the Elvish Visionarys. Still, as an early blocker against aggressive decks, a way to smooth our draws, and a surprisingly frequent attacker, given how often we keep our opponent's side of the table empty, this card has remained in the deck through testing. We definitely want early plays, and there might be something better, but for now Visionary is sufficient.
I must say, too, that the 1-of Greenwarden of Murasa started as an experiment, but I've loved it every time I've cast it. It's exceptional in the late game, as it can rebuy a good card, and then either trade with one of their threats and get you another card, or just attack for 5 (which at this stage of the game serves as a proper clock). Not sure if it's a good idea to add more, but I really like this card so far.
**The Win Conditions:
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The deck originally had two Kolaghan, the Storm's Fury, which eventually dropped to one, then was eventually cut entirely. It was actually a fine finisher, but there were times where it was awkward.
There are surprisingly many ways to win the game with this deck, but the three cards that facilitate it the most are Outpost Siege, Siege Rhino, and Shambling Vents, in that order. As a rough estimate, I probably win 80-90% of the games where I resolve an Outpost Siege. If I'm at a healthy life total and a reasonable board state and Siege draws me 2-3 cards, it's so easy to start absolutely burying my opponent in card advantage. I don't have statistics, but looking back on my testing, I can barely remember an instance where I wasn't happy to resolve Outpost Siege.
Rhino doesn't need explaining. Once I start chaining Rhinos the game starts sliding in my favor a little bit at a time. I love this card.
Possible Changes:
The two main cards I'm considering for the deck are Kolaghan's Command and Painful Truths. The former probably deserves a slot as a 1 or 2, but the latter could be redundant when faced with Abzan Charm and Siege. I do have two Truths in the sideboard for grindy matchups, and I love casting it, but I'm not sure if I should make the jump to mainboard.
Please let me know what other suggestions you might have. Are there other cuts I should make? Other glaringly obvious cards I've missed? This deck has indeed performed satisfactorily in testing.
**The Matchups:
**I don't have any hard numbers, but I've probably jammed 50+ games with this deck on MTGO. Considering the more prominent decks in the format, I can confidently say that my only clearly bad matchup has been against Jeskai Black. While it seems like we'd do well against it, I haven't won any 3-game matches against it. It doesn't help that I'm intimidated by the deck. Maybe that fear carries over to my play?
Against Abzan Aggro/Midrange, it's close, but our deck performs at its most optimal against creature decks. We have good, efficient removal (and lots of it) for any of their threats, and once we start dropping Rhinos and Greenwarden the game is not hard. We can lose to an aggressive start on their ends, but we also have ways of suppressing that.
I like our matchups against Control, too. We have so much card advantage built into our deck we can definitely gain the edge in game one, though a lot of our removal is dead. Postboard, though, we get Truths, Duress, and Transgress, each of which help immensely.
We are also afraid of Ramp's explosive starts (who isn't?), but with disruption and a good combination of removal it's not hard to have our card advantage eventually overwhelm them, despite their gargantuan threats. Ugin is scary, but I've grinded through the Spirit Dragon before.
Atarka Red is not so much of a problem. Game one we have great removal, early chumps, and some minor lifegain to push through most of the time. Post board we get some mass removal and more cheap removal. We still fold to bad hands vs aggressive starts, but this doesn't happen very often.
Lastly, tokens decks can be scary since it renders a lot of our removal obsolete, but grinding through their Planeswalkers is not impossible. Rhino goes a long way Game 1 as well, and postboard we have mass removal and disruption on our side.
Sorry for the long post, but thanks for reading! I look forward to your comments! I really love this deck a lot right now and feel that it can grind through nearly anything!
