Develop an army of dudes, then tutor up Mirror Entity and win on the spot.
The reason I went to dig Rebels out of whatever ancient necropolis the standard decks of formats past inhabit is that I like how it seems to approach the game from a completely different angle than most other decks. You can cast a turn one Ramosian Sergeant or a turn 2
Amrou Scout
and you don't necessarily ever have to resolve another spell for the rest of the game while your little dudes tutor up a batallion of other creatures.
These are the pros. The con is that in this format it's possible to do a bunch of broken things, and this deck is electing to do none. Sadly, there is no hate-bear style rebel, so it's possible that the deck will have to evolve in a direction that shrinks the rebel engine in favor of mainboard cards like Eidolon of Rhetoric, Spirit of the Labyrinth, Rest in Peace... That hose unfair strategy.
This is very much a work in progress, and I am the first to admit my knowledge of the format is not the best, so any and all suggestions are appreciated.
Rebels
The rebel engine is the core of the deck. It's possible to tutor a number of creatures with very unique effects, or to search up more creatures that tutor. In the late game, Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero, on top of being a more efficient tutor, allows you to rebuy the cards that have gone to the graveyard. Rebels belong to one of two categories: searchers and silver bullets.
Searchers
The queen of all searchers is, of course, Lin Sivvi, Defiant Hero, which will be available to us from the command zone. I used to play pretty much all the searchers available under three mana, which turned out to be too many, The ones that I kept are just:
SIlver Bullets
There is, sadly, no incredibly powerful situational effect that our search engine can tutor. However, there are still some pretty nice ones like:
- Mirror Entity (this will likely be our wincon most of the time)
-
Bound in Silence
(tutorable removal that hits hexproof creatures? Yes please)
-
Whipcorder
(tappers are useful to set up a Mirror Entity kill)
- Children of Korilis (can set up a lock where you "freeze" your life total at its current value value)
This deck used to play tons of rebels; however it has since moved towards a less rebel-y, more value-y direction.
Other Creatures
We have currently 6 creatures in the deck. While this is a pretty control-oriented list, it still needs a fair amount of creatures to perform its combo kill. The best will be creatures that can either make creatures, so that they accelerate us into being able to perform our combo kill earlier; or, creatures that can double as removal, removing blockers from the opponent.
Noncreature spells
Removal
A few ways to get problematic creatures out of the way (on top of
Bound in Silence
. It's possible that this deck wants to be more controlly and only win in a flash with Mirror Entity rather than play the White Weenie game with a Mirror Entity possible finish. If that's the case, it will need more removal (and cards like [[Gods Willing/
Blessed Breath
etc)
Other
Lands
Since we are playing monocolored there is no actual reason not to play the fanciest lands we can since color is not a problem. We are playing 19 for now, but I feel 18 might be fine.
Sideboard
Where the Deck Might Go
As mentioned earlier, it's possible that the deck might need to evolve in a direction in which I add some or all of the unfair-hating cards in the mainboard. This will be determined by what the meta looks like around me.
Alternatively I could see 3 routes:
