This is my pride and joy! I really love how unique this deck feels.
Disclaimer
I’m not a fan of easy infinite combos, so no Exquisite Blood. This deck is meant to be a strong mid range deck, no cEDH, but optimized. It’s intended to play within a no-inf-combo playgroup. This is also why I included Dig Up, Demonic Tutor and Natural Order. They serve to find answers, not combo pieces.
Abstract
The plan is to ramp early game and get Beledros Witherbloom out ASAP. Then create a board state to deal with your opponents threats until you find your finishers: Exsanguinate, Torment of Hailfire or Bolas's Citadel + Aetherflux Reservoir + Sensei's Divining Top.
Ramp
In the early game, you will want to RAMP hard to get your commander out soon. Because Beledros lets you untap lands only, I’ve included all the classic green sorceries that gets you lands Cultivte, Kodama's Reach, Farseek, Migration Path (this one has cycle so if you get it when you don’t need it, you can get a new card off of it), Skyshroud Claim, Three Visits.
There are also Azusa, Lost but Seeking and Exploration that will let you play even more lands.
Awakening Zone will get you tokens that you can sac for mana or tap them to do so with Cryptolith Rite. If you get Ashnod's Altar, you’ll get even more mana. Bitterblossom is here to help with tokens that you can use to ramp, sac, block some threats early in the game, etc.
Dig Up is very flexible. In the early game you can use it to not miss a land drop. Later in the game, get yourself a bomb.
There are also the classic Birds of Paradise, Sol Ring, Arcane Signet.
Mid-game you’ll use Kura, the Boudless Sky to get Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth + Cabal Coffers + whatever other land you need. Westvale Abbey
is very good choice at this point of the game. Hopefully we can play at least 2 of them on the same turn.
Priest of Forgotten Gods is a very flexible card. It gives you mana, card draw and is also a sac outlet. So good.
In the endgame you’ll generate a lot of mana with Itlimoc, Cradle of the Sun because of your tonkens, which will also generate mana with Ashnod's Altar and Cryptolith Rite.
Lands
There are a lot of utility lands in the deck, they’ll make you a lot of mana Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth + Cabal Coffers, they’ll let you sacrifice creatures High Market, Phyrexian Tower, exile graveyards Bojuka Bog, create tokens Field of the Dead, get creatures from graveyard Witch's Cottage, destroy things Boseiju, Who Endures and create a 9/7 indestructible demon with flying, haste and lifelink Westvale Abbey
.
Token Synergy
Tendershoot Dryad will give you just as much tokens as Beledros and you can use them however you please. Parallel Lives will double all the tokens you make. There not much more I can say here.
Card Advantage
All these dying tokens will get you card draw with Dark Prophecy and Moldervine Reclamation. Bolas's Citadel is great together with Sensei's Divining Top to filter lands. Vampiric Rites is a sac outlet that makes you draw cards. Woe Strider is another sac outlet for scrying. Yawgmoth, Thran Physician will let you sac creatures, draw cards and get rid of threats. Twilight Prophet will drain your opponents and get you an extra card every turn. And with all the life you’re paying, Vilis, Broker of Blood is perfect in the deck. Classic cards included: Phyrexian Arena and Sylvan Library (paying 8 life won’t even bother you sometimes).
Removal
Dictate of Erebos is one of the strongest card in the deck for creature removal. Most of the creatures you sacrifice in the deck are gonna be tokens, and they want to be sacrificed: you gain life with the pests, you get mana from eldrazi spawns.
Attrition is a sac outlet (synergy with Dictate of Erebos) and lets you destroy a non-black creature. Perfect.
Font of Agonies will have a lot of counters because of Beledros. When you pay the 10 life, there are enough counters (and mana) to kill 2 creatures.
The Meathook Massacre is another perfect fit in the deck. It kills creatures on ETB, and stays on the battlefield to gain you life and ping your opponents.
Culling Ritual is awesome to kill all those token your opponents have (and yours) and it gets you back a lot of mana. Sometimes you don’t even care if it kills your opponents stuff because you’ll have so man tokens yourself that you can use the mana to cast Torment of Hailfire or Exsanguinate and end the game right there.
Other additions are Krosan Grip, Pest Infestation and Toxic Deluge.
Protection
There aren’t many creature cards in the deck, but the ones that we have are very powerful and needed, including Beledros himself. We need protection. Besides classics like Lightning Greaves, Swiftfoot Boots, Heroic Intervention and Asceticism, I’ve included Journey to Eternity
that you can cast onto Beledros, sac it and use his second ability again in the same turn. Then, Journey to Eternity flips and you can get creatures back from your graveyard. You can even sac Beledros over and over again and get him back and get more mana. It won’t go infinite because your life is not infinite, be careful. You can use it to get back Eternal Witness multiple times as well. There’s also Helm of the Host that serves as protection because you get multiple Beledros on your turns, so your opponents will need to deal with them too. It also gives you more tokens and more activations of Beledros second ability.
Recursion
Use Eternal Witness to get back that finisher that was countered by some nasty blue player.
Phyrexian Reclamation will let you pay some life to get back your creatures.
Tutors
Demonic Tutor can get you that special synergy card you need at the moment, or a removal to get rid of something. Very flexible, just like Dig Up.
Natural Order will get you either Vorinclex, Voice of Hunger to get you more mana and stop your opponents or Verdant Sun's Avatar if your life total is running low.
Kura, the Boundless Sky will tutor 3 lands. We can go for Urborg + Cabal Coffers + Westvale Abbey
Life Effects & Synergy
You will be paying a lot of life with Beledros, so it’s important to also gain life. Besides their trigger when they die + Bastion of Remembrance, pests will get you life when they ETB and you have Ayara, First of Lochtwain, Essence Warden and Verdant Sun's Avatar. Alhammarret's Archive will double your life gain and card draw. Pontiff of Blight will give all your creatures extort. Venser's Journal gets you life on upkeep. Sanguine Bond and Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose will make your opponents lose life whenever you gain life (great synergy, but no inf combo).
Finishers
Most impactful finishers are:
Exsanguinate that you can use with Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose and/or Sanguine Bonde to make sure that high life total opponent is dead.
Torment of Hailfire. Even if your opponents sac everything and lose not that much life, they’ll be so behind that you‘ll be able to kill them with anything.
Make sure you cast those for X = enough. Until you get there, you’ll be draining your opponents with other stuff, hitting them with Beledros and his pets, so you don’t need X = infinite.
Aetherflux Reservoir is also good, but paying 50 life will leave your life total really low. If you have one opponent left, no problem, but if you want to take 3 of them down, you can use Bolas's Citadel + Sensei's Divining Top. At one point, whenever you cast a spell, you’ll be gaining more life than losing it. So you can easily pay the 50 life to kill someone. Use the Top to filter lands. Maybe you’ll have Sanguine Bond or Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose and won’t need to activate the Reservoir at all. This is a highly synergetic play, but there are so many “ifs” and “buts” that I don’t consider it an infinite combo.
I keep changing things in the deck whenever there’s a new card out that fits in the deck, when I find out about a card that I didn’t know existed or even when I see some nice play that fits the deck. Sometimes I’ll just change a lot of cards and adjust the game plan (more aristocrats, more life leech or whatever).
Feel free to give some feedback or new ideas for the deck (:
