Mash em, boil em, stick em in a stew
Ever play hot potato? Where you throw hot potatoes like snowballs until someone breaks a window?
Yeah me neither.
But!!! Now you can!
The basic premise of this deck is to cast a lich spell or some spell that has a really big negative effect like lose the game; and then donate it to your opponent and kill them with it. Many Lich cards have positive effects on life gain and negative effects on loss of life, so I've included a sub weenie theme; that should help protect your life total.
Hot Potatoes
Here's a list of negative effects; or things that could cause someone to lose the game.
- Demonic Pact //You can use the top 3 modes before giving it away. You can flicker this with Aminatou's -1 to reset the choices if you think it's going to kill you
- Lich's Mastery //There's some life gain in the deck to allow you to benefit while waiting to hand it off to your neighbor
- Forbidden Crypt //Might want to make sure you have cards in your graveyard before casting this baby
- Nefarious Lich //Same as Lich's Mastery, but way more risky. Good luck.
- Dralnu, Lich Lord //Give this away asap. Or wait a bit; you might be able to give it away with card:wrong turns when it's about to take damage.
- card:Sinner's Judgement //the creature side is good for protecting Aminatou. The disturb side is good(read: bad) for our opponents.
- Nine Lives //You can use this a bit before handing it off. Beware of Cyclonic Rift
- Transcendence //Don't cast this when you have more than 20 life. :P Lethal to high life opponent's though.
- Immortal Coil //Make sure your graveyard is empty. :P
Donation Effects
Here's a list of cards that allow you to give Hot Potatoes away, or exchange them for something better
Panic Buttons
We are running a lot of lose the game effects; and sometimes stuff goes wrong. Here are some outs:
Life Gain
Part of the fun of Lich cards is actually taking advantage of them. In particular Nefarious Lich and Lich's Mastery can benefit a ton from life gain effects. This deck isn't a life gain deck, but I made a point of trying to include cards that could help benefit that strategy. Additionally; making your opponent lose life is super solid.
Reanimation Package
Reanimation isn't something we're trying to do; but it just sorta ended up working really well with the rest of the deck; so we slotted it in.
- Dakkon, Shadow Slayer Removal, graveyard filler, and reanimator all in one package. Late game he can be flickered with Aminatou for a double ult; although tbh, there are only a few artifacts that are truly broken to reanimate in this deck.
- Emry, Lurker of the Loch Not busted; but also not bad. Potential functions as a draw 1 or 2.
- The Restoration of Eiganjo
This card is so sick; I'm 100% behind it. Most of the time; I'll search for and play the plains, and then reanimate a 2 drop like Baleful Strix; either side can be flickered to do it all again.
- Dusk / Dawn This is honestly the best deck I've ever run Dusk to Dawn in. Reanimate everything after a board wipe. Seems slick af.
- Sun Titan
Fun Tech
Aminatou is honestly; one of the tech-y-est cards I've ever played. I just want to go over a quick rundown on what she can do:
- ETB: most people who've looked at Aminatou might have noticed this :P
- Miracles: same as above
- Planeswalkers: As flickering a planeswalker both resets it's loyalty and allows you to activate it's abilities again.
- Double-Faced Cards: This one's tricky. But double faced cards will always enter on their front-faced side when flickered. Allowing you to do tricky things with card:Alrund, God of Cosmos and Glasspool Mimic
- Manifest//Morph Cards: Similiar to double faced cards; face down cards will flicker back to their front face. Sneaky with Scroll of Fate
- Mana Rocks: If you're familiar with Brago decks you probably know where this is going; any mana rocks that are flickered will enter untapped letting you get extra mana from them.
- Exchange Effects: Aminatou flickers permanents you own; so if someone else has stolen something you can flicker it to take it back.
- Library Shenanigans: Mill; tutors; etc. When you up tick Aminatou; the card you place on top gets affected by library changes. Best example is Land Tax where you can search for lands; use Aminatou to put one on top of your library. And then next upkeep shuffle it away with Land Tax and search for more lands. Effectively, swapping your lands for other potentially useful cards.
Ever play standard during CawBlade? Well we're backkk. If you're not familiar the basic premise of the deck is to search up a bunch of ehh cards and put them in your hand; back then it was Squadron Hawk. Use Aminatou's +1 to replace them with better cards; and then search them up again; progressively generating card advantage. Same basic premise here. Unfortunately it's a touch difficult to fall behind on lands intentionally. I tried running bounce lands in this list; and it's just really awkward with most spells in the deck curving out at 2 or 3 mana.
- Cast Hakka, Whispering Raven
- Flicker it with Aminatou's -1; it'll return on the Alrund side.
- ???
- Profit!!
This is effectively a cheat card. Anything you manifest; you can flicker with Aminatou to have enter face up.
Great value engine. When flickered or bounced, it enters as a new permanent that's not connected to any tokens; meaning it can create a new token without forcing you to sacrifice the old one.
With Aminatou's +1 you can set this up; ideally you can do it with Agent of Treachery, Faerie Artisans, or card:Angel of Ruins. Once setup you can use this to get the etb; and if it's cast on your opponent's turn you can also swing with the creature on your turn. As an added bonus; you can use Aminatou's -1 to keep the creature on the battlefield if you so choose. Without setup there's about an 75% of hitting a creature; so in a pinch you can try to get a blocker or relevant etb.
Copy something useful of your opponent's or color fix. Also can copy Lotus Field or Lost Vale for ramp.
In a pinch the land side of these cards can be flickered to have them enter as creatures.
Besides being a good politicy removal card, can also be flickered back to your battlefield with Aminatou for extra value.
Noteworthy fact about this card. This + empty graveyard + can't lose the game effect; will cause an "involuntary infinite loop" effectively drawing the game. Look at this cards gatherer page for more info. This is possible to do with this deck, so thought it was worth mentioning.
Note's on Deck Construction
This is a budgety list. When I get into deck construction I go all over the place with value, craziness, etc; and my card collection grows and life is good. So I've got this $5 rule for myself, where I try to avoid spending more than $5 on a card if I can help it. That said there are a lot of insanely good cards that are only barely out of that range, so here's a suggestion for cards that go really well in this deck or Aminatou in general.
Easy Upgrades Show
Search for 3 lands; Aminatou +1 leave a land on top. Next turn shuffle your deck and repeat. The value this card generates in Aminatou specifically is ridiculous. It functionally makes Aminatou's +1 read "draw a card."
