If you've never seen the Living Lore+Cruel Ultimatum combo, you haven't lived. Attack with a 4-mana 7/7, inflict pain, sac the dude, cast a 10-for-1 sorcery for free, get dude back, repeat. Unless you're playing against Soul Sisters or some such nonsense, they'll be dead before you can do it a third time.
I got the idea for this from Travis Woo's deck he did some videos on last year that was an all-in Living Lore combo that also used Living Lore+Enter the Infinite to draw the whole deck, then exile 3 Simian Spirit Guide and cast Lightning Storm for the win. It was really fun but I thought it was too much of a glass cannon so I set about building something that was a little more interactive and resilient. And here we are.
THE WIN CONDITION: Living Lore+Cruel Ultimatum. Get the sorcery into the graveyard, cast the creature, attack (with haste if you have Hall of the Bandit Lord) and literally drown in value. If attacking is not possible, just ramp up with Explore and Pentad Prism and shoot some seven-mana sorceries into your opponent's unfortunate face on Turn 4.
THE SETUP: To get a copy of Cruel Ultimatum into the yard, you have lots of voluntary discard outlets in Liliana of the Veil, Collective Brutality, and Compulsive Research. Dredging Life from the Loam may also accomplish this goal. If you're not holding a copy of Living Lore, there's Bring to Light. The easiest way to do both in one easy spell is to cast Gifts Ungiven and choosing Living Lore, Cruel Ultimatum, Unburial Rites, and Raven's Crime.
INTERACTION: Three copies of Engineered Explosives are terrific in a spell-heavy 5-color deck, and we've also got Academy Ruins for recursion and Tolaria West to fetch if necessary (although the tue synergy of those lands is with the sideboard, see below). The aforementioned Lilianas and Collective Brutalities run great interference against lots of different archetypes. For creature-heavy decks, there's Damnation (castable with Bring to Light) and Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite (wrap her in a gift with Unburial Rites).
THE SIDEBOARD, PART 1: So our plan falls to pieces pretty quickly once the opponent brings in graveyard hate and Leyline of Sanctity. Many of their countermeasures can be defeated, but a simpler strategy is to simply avoid them and kill them with weapons they aren't prepared for. Some of these, such as Nahiri, the Harbinger and Sigarda, Host of Herons protect and facilitate the Living Lore combo, but for the most part they are just threats that your opponent won't be planning on. There's a lot of room for personal preference with these slots, but I favor 5-drop creatures and 4-drop planeswalkers as they best synergize with Bring to Light and the fact that our ramp cards give us the biggest lead over our opponents on Turn 3 with 4 mana.
THE SIDEBOARD, PART 2: This deck is pretty fast and pretty resilient, but there's a few decks out there that are even faster and more resilient (mostly I'm thinking of Ad Nauseam, Grishoalbrand, Living End etc). So to help us with those we've got a gift-friendly set of Relic of Progenitus, Nihil Spellbomb, and Tormod's Crypt (this is what I was talking about when I mentioned Academy Ruins earlier). We've also got three copies of Thoughtseize and a singleton Slaughter Games that can be easily found with Bring to Light. Where the graveyard hate is concerned, it's possible that the right call is Leyline of the Void, but it's close and I wanted to piggyback of the existing synergy of Academy Ruins+Engineered Explosives. Tell you what though, Stony Silence is a beating for us.
Anyway, it will take some practice to get used to it, but if played optimally this deck can hang with anything in the format.(1) Just remember, as awesome as Cruel Ultimatum is, the strongest weapon this deck has is fear. Fear and surprise. Your opponent will be rightly confused about what you are up to, and will have trouble knowing what to play around. Use this to your advantage.
(1) Except Bant Company with all those f---ing spirits. I think I have a lifetime 0% win rate against that one.
