This deck is simply about building board presence fast and beating and burning the opponent down before they can stabilise. There are three main avenues for this:
a) turn 1 phylactery lich (vault of whispers; dark ritual; phylactery lich with counter on the vault), finish with burn on turn 3 or 4.
b) cranial plating on preferably either a flier or etched champion
c) simple burn while distracting the opponent with board presence (0 drops, vault skirges, etched champions etc). There is 36 points of burn in the deck over just 8 cards!
Or of course some combination of the above. The deck's biggest weakness seems to be running out of a hand if the game goes past 4-5 turns and I get to top drawing (sometimes i even have an empty hand by turn 2!) I included the dangerous wagers to help this, and they seem ok. Duskmantle seer is also in for this problem, and has the additional benefit of almost certainly burning my opponent more than me and is thus an indirect finisher (notice my cards' avg CMC!).
I just pre-ordered a playset of the new Blood Scrivener, which I think will fit in perfectly.
My question is, what should I take out for him? I was originally thinking the wagers, but then i realised they actually have amazing synergy with blood scrivener. Now I'm leaning towards the two trinkets and two of the memnites (i'd prefer to keep the ornithopters as they are perfect cranial plating carriers). Thoughts?
note: while it is a casual deck, our playgroup generally follows legacy bannings....i.e. no skullclamp, no sol ring etc
