Tainted love is a value engine deck based on life gain and creating tokens.
Oh, the 80s...
Anyway, welcome to Tainted Love, a Regna/Krav deck I've maintained since Battlebond first came out. This is at it's heart a life-gain/token creating/engine deck where two pieces of the engine are usually available since they are (obscenely expensive to cast) commanders. Always loved the flavor between these two characters and this deck always seems to over perform even though realistically, I could run... almost any other orzhov commander already in the deck. It offers a weird mix of defense, offense, and payoffs that always seems to crap its way somehow to a win.
Before I get started, I suppose I should say that I tend to not run tutors in my decks - I know this would have access to a bunch that might be helpful, but it helps cool things down in my playgroup so I avoid it if possible. That being said, lets talk about demons and angels and how they like to smoosh.
The Commanders
So I guess the best way to kick off is to address the elephant in the room. These two are expensive to get started. Krav is a 3/3 with no board impact for five when he lands, and Regna might be worse as a 4/4 vanilla flyer for a fat stack of six. That being said, I can't help but love them. The synergy between their two abilities is great, and if I can keep them alive, things can get wacky fairly quickly. Seriously, if both stay online, its very easy to get yourself into a solid loop where you're just gaining life to make tokens to cash in to gain more life and draw cards and watch krav get giant... As stated above, if someone wanted to build something similar I'm almost positive the deck would be better suited with... sincerely almost any other orzhov commander that would be cheaper. Legit it's hard to find an Orzhov leader that doesn't work in this shell either as a pay off or a beneficiary, but I like the flavor and gimmicky nature of these two to ever consider swapping it.
Strategy
As I allude to above, strategy for the deck winds up being fairly fluid, but the one pretty consistent bit is early game. Typically a "good" hand of this should include some combination of lands, ramp, and some type of "any time" life gain to hopefully start proc'ing more triggers off Regna. Our best case for this is usually one of the decks many soul sister effects (Attendant, Warden, Auriok Champion, etc), although there are several other cheap spells that can work for this too (Blood Artist being obvious, Keeper of the Accord is great to stabilize if we're holding a land heavy hand and get a slow start, and even Chalice of Life can be useful). The important thing is that we get some type of life gain going early to build a buffer since even though we can be relatively creature heavy, we're not always going to be super aggressive. The really important thing is that we either get enough mana to start getting krav and regna both down ahead of curve, or we build up enough of a "life shield" to not get aggro'd out early on.
There are some obvious exceptions like Skullclamp, which can eat many of our smaller creatures to give us a boost. Authority of the Consuls is pretty much 100% our best turn one play against a more aggressive table because it lays the groundwork for our life gain pretty early and has the added benefit of slowing down the rest of the table.
As the game moves towards mid, our strategy gets pretty straightforward (and if I'm being honest, a little bottlenecky). Unless we have a very odd combination of 3-5 drops, we're pretty consistently going to be moving to cast Krav one turn, then doing something the turn after that to pad our our mana one more, then dropping regna. The reason is we really want at least one extra black mana when regna hits the table so that we have the option to pay a black so that Krav can eat our board and crap out a bunch of cards and life should someone do something drastic.
And lets be fair, if they've just sat there and watched you get both pieces up, something drastic should be occurring.
Some of the top plays for this "skip" turn include basically anything here that costs five that's going to impact our game plan once regna does fall. Obviously drain cards like Artist or Falkenrath Noble will set us up exceptionally well (not to mention Kambal, Consul of Allocation), pieces like Sunscorch Regent or Regal Bloodlord are both great picks to add fuel to our fire when we do start going wacky next turn. The usual suspects are also great here - I doubt I need to explain how good a Smothering Tithe is here, but there are plenty of other things that can fall here, and honestly if you have a removal heavy hand, it's not bad to take a turn off just to gauge where the rest of the table is.
Now once Regna does land is where the real synergy of the deck comes into play.
It seems like here is a good time to explain why we want so many goddamn sisters effects here - Regna's ability triggers at each end step, meaning that rather than have bursty lifegain, we typically want piecemeal shots that trigger during our opponents' turns which get us two boys, which also have the added benefit of giving us two more life. Likewise, it may seem like Krav's ability is just card draw, but it's repeatable nature each turn gives us wild amounts of flexibility in how we use it. In the turns after Regna lands, it basically is either a)a 1 mana ability that draws us a card and makes regna dump two more bodies which gains us more life, or b) a way to cash in basically our entire board to rebuild our hand after a wipe or an otherwise brutal removal. It also allows us to use any of the decks many many board wipes in the same way to cash in everything for cards and life before blowing up the board. From here on out, we're basically never ending a turn without at least one black mana available, and if we can help it, multiple is always good.
So that's mid game... what happens when we move to the end phase, so to speak?
Well... honestly mostly anything. If both commanders (or some of their stand ins that can sacrifice for advantage or produce tokens) live for more than a turn or two, the deck has a number of ways it can finish a game. A Cathars' Crusade means that each round across the table, you could be adding between 12-16 counters a turn to all your creatures. The typical finishers like Avacyn and Elesh are both here which can likewise spawn a horde. On the flip side of things, saccing everything to Ashnod's Altar to power a game winning Torment of Hailfire or Debt to the Deathless is very doable. Aetherflux Reservoir is usually good for at least one kill a game, more depending on deck setup, and finally there is some graveyard recursion like Agadeem's Awakening and Whisper, Blood Liturgist as a "break in case of emergency" after our boy Krav has had to eat the board in order to fill your hand. General drain off some of our other effects can be another win con, and if things have somehow silly enough that we're gaining a lot of life each turn (coughAlhammarret's Archive) then some of our big life gain pay offs like Resplendent Angel or Valkyrie Harbinger can step up to shine. The deck is very much designed to be able to play into whatever status is left after those two have been on the board for so long, and is surprisingly resilient because of it's baseline ability to get cards in hand to get back in the game after a wipe... especially if it engineered that wipe itself.
The key is flexibility and playing to your board and your hand, which leads to some really fun play patterns.
A final passing note about the rise of Vampirism in our Fair City
Eagle eyed (or not-so-eagle eyed) viewers may have noticed the classic infinite "I win" button that is Exquisite Blood + Sanguine Bond
, so it feels worth its own little blurb here. I'll be honest, I tend to not be a huge fan of hyper consistent decks or winning in the same infinite loop every game. So why include this? Short version is that I've had the realization that I might not like it, but a games gotta end sometimes. I specifically built the combo into the deck because both parts benefit the overall strategy of the deck independently and as a stopgap from a game ending on turn 17. The only real redundancy I have to it is keeping Vizkopa Guildmage around as a replacement for bond. It's there if its there, and if its not there its at least a little by design.
Conclusion
So that's pretty much an overview of the deck as it is expected to run. I always have a blast with this deck because of how many ways it can make things go sideways, and how despite it has several nice cards, always has a very specific "janky" feel to it because of the commanders. I know there are some cards here that some would call dated (Vindicate comes readily to mind), but in some of those options I'll admit... I may be cheaping out a bit. Still very much on board with hearing any suggestions. I'm honestly not looking for much out of this deck, but am always looking for ideas and notes. Please feel free to comment or ping on any of it, or even if you just want to point out to hate it.
As a final note, I'll especially ask if anyone has any formatting tips or suggestions I'd appreciate it. I have many (19) other decks, but this is the first time I've really dedicated to doing a write up on any of them. That being said, I work a job with a lot of downtime, so I'm thinking of making this into a little project where I describe my decks in more full detail to see if I could start some discussion here. Am I doing something wrong with the format? Is there something I could do better? Those notes especially would be appreciated either in comments or by just pinging me.
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