Have you considered using the curses from dark ascension and some of the commander expansions like Curse of Chaos, Curse of Inertia, Curse of Shallow Graves and others like it? Also don't want to picky but you have angel spelled wrong. +1 from me.

chirz2792 Lol the deck was based off of a terrible facebook meme in which somebody posted "I could be your angle... or yuor devil" so the spelling is intentional, and I have actually seriously considered including some of the curses, but I've noticed in the past that they end up drawing unneeded attention to me.

I kind of want to keep the deck so that I am giving people things at a slight cost to themselves similar to something like the effect of a Dark Confidant, while still having a reasonable presence in the game. From my experience other politics decks usually have to sacrifice their own resources/card slots to play the politics game, so I made this deck to try to see how I could get an optimal amount of politics while still being able to take part in the game myself. For that reason I'm trying to shy away from the curses because in my experience they tend to be a bit politically taboo (since you are singling out one person), and they don't really give me enough of a benefit for it to be worth it for me.

Thanks for the advice and the upvote! I appreciate the suggestions, as usual I tend to have a lot to say about something if I can't come to a conclusion on my own, so thanks for the great suggestions. If you have any past experiences with the curses feel free to let me know to help me make a concrete decision!

I'm Pretty Sure It's Spelled Angel...

@poorpinkus: Apparently I'm not very good at the internet lol. I haven't had much experiences with the curses but the experience I have had is that they're good at bringing a player back down when they start to get out of hand. On another note if you want more Dark Confidant type effects then Duskmantle Seer would like to talk.

FadingBoat997 I know lol

chirz2792 That's very true, I'll definitely have to playtest it to figure out how people feel about it

Thoughts on Choice of Damnations and Do or Die?

Spudding Choice of Damnations is a great card but for 6 mana I just didn't find it worth it... Cruel Entertainment and Plague of Vermin are both similar but they end up being a bit more funny to me, plus they allow me to help myself while hurting somebody else. I actually have really thought of putting Do or Die, and I think I just forgot to include it somewhere in the deckbuilding process. I'll have to try to find a spot for it, thanks!

I've always really liked the choice aspect of Volcanic Offering. Making an opponent lose two lands and (potentially) two creatures has always struck me as especially amusing.

Etoilebane I honestly like that card and would like to put it in, but land destruction is pretty frowned upon in my playgroup

Well, it's not MASS land destruction...

Anyway, very creative deck!

Thanks Optimator!

I love this +1

Thanks!

Super creative man, I've been looking for a Vial Smasher/Ludevic deck for a long time and this looks like a lot of fun!

I've been only playing modern since 2013, and i spent the last weeks looking for a deck to get into commander. I really like how this exploits interaction to create an interesting game, so i reckon this is the one. +1, great job :)

Thanks chiri and catafalcoman! I hope you both enjoy the deck! I've found that the politics is a bit of a balancing act - You need to know when to give people things (for example with Fevered Visions) and when to take things away (for example with Cruel Ultimatum). If you balance well, the deck is extremely fun and rewarding to play.

Anyways, have fun! And if you do end up playing the deck, let me know how it goes. Thanks!

Played this deck a few times now and I've had a lot of fun! How do you play the monarch cards? I seem to just become a big target once I've become the monarch and don't seem to get a whole lot of value.

Also do you ever hold off from playing Vial Smasher depending on your hand? If I have higher mana cost cards in hand I seem to draw a lot of hate. When I play him with much lower cost cards in hand I seem to get a lot more value from him and Ludevic.

Thanks!

_goose I'm glad you've been enjoying the deck, thanks for coming back and letting me know how things went!

First of all, I just wanted to mention that this deck requires a lot of finesse in terms of politics. The main idea of the deck is that you do have some cards that are powerhouses, but they have a give people time to respond to them so people don't find you as much of a threat (even if things stay on the board).

Something big to keep in mind with politics is that a lot of people are wise to the usual tricks. This means that if you have a deck that just sits back and draws cards and nothing else, people will get suspicious. This means that the best way to play the politics game is to still be a noticeable part of the game while never being the "biggest threat", and never being the contingency that could blow everything up.

For your first point, in terms of monarch, I assume you are talking about Skyline Despot. My main thought with that card is that is usually a good card to play if everyone else has a large board presence and you don't; usually monarch won't benefit you initially, but if everyone else has big dudes, they will inevitably attack you purely because it is the easiest option. This makes Skyline Despot a good card to show some dominance; when everyone else is stacked, you need to let them know that there might be some repercussions to attacking you. Usually the card is more of a counterspell-bait than anything, but even if it gets out and gets removed immediately you still get the monarch mechanic out (which isn't really even there for personal gain, but just because I thought the mechanic was interesting). Let me know though if you disagree with me on any of these points though, since I haven't actually been able to play the card very often.

In response to your second point, definitely! Vial Smasher is best used with smaller cards, since people don't care as much about losing small amounts of life. Usually there are ways to get Ludevic's effect going without vial smasher as well (sometimes people will let me hit them if I was the only one without profitable attacks during that round), but a lot of the time I will only play Vial Smasher if I notice that I am missing something from my hand (lands, something on-curve, etc). If you play Vial Smasher when you need something, it will make people less likely to be upset that you played her. Additionally, it's important to let people know that you totally understand if they are going to kill Vial Smasher, because then you are kind of taking their side and they won't think of you as an enemy. The thing is, if she does any amount of damage you have gotten some value out of her, so if people use removal on her they have now burned removal and taken damage (think of it like 3 mana counter target spell, deal X damage to an enemy).

Another point I wanted to make with Vial Smasher is that she combos well with cards that benefit the majority of the table (like a counterspell, removal or a silly card in a sense), because then whoever gets hit will think of the damage more like a necessary evil than a malicious prod.

The other thing is that in the end your main goal IS to deal as much damage as possible, you are just trying to do it in ways that don't attract too much attention. If Vial Smasher is going to deal a ton of damage, make a game out of it if you'd like! I like to use a roulette app that I downloaded on my phone; it sort of makes people realize that even though you are dealing a lot of damage the deck is still all about fun. Anyways in general yes, try to deal low amounts of damage with Vial Smasher early game and when people are low on life you can speed up the clock by dropping larger spells.

Sorry for the wall of text lol, I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any other suggestions/questions from your experience with the deck!

This is a beautiful premise for a deck, and you executed it well. I might try to build something similar. Thank you :)

Jerkoid Thanks! I hope the premise works well for you, let me know how it goes. Feel free to link your list if you make one!

+1 from me. I really like this deck! I'm just curious. If you were able to add green, what cards might you add? I'm working on a fun Yidris list and would like to steal some ideas from here. Would they just be rampy cards?

Zidantur Thanks for the +1! I'm not quite sure how to build quad-colour decks since there are so many cards to consider, but green has some great political/underrated cards; Fecundity is a great equalizer most of the time (although it benefits an aristocrats deck way more). Dubious Challenge is a card that I never heard of until recently that is surprisingly good, One with Nature is an underrated favourite of mine especially since you can enchant an opponent's creature and reap the benefits. Pattern of Rebirth is another card that I consider underrated, especially if you are planning on playing any creatures like Sakura-Tribe Elder. Permeating Mass is hilarious IMO and it actually really makes your opponents afraid of attacking you (especially with their commander). Marchesa's Smuggler isn't green but it can definitely help get your commander in for damage. You could also run a lot of copy spells like Progenitor Mimic to make the game a bit more interesting. Brooding Saurian is a great political card if you aren't planning on running any steal spells, since most people like keeping their stuff. Dawnstrider is surprisingly underrated, especially since most of the time it simply prevents people from attacking you when they have a lot of power that could go your way. Finally, Hunted Troll is also a surprisingly good card and is on-theme.

If you want to go full-on group hug (which I wouldn't recommend, but is an option), you could go for stuff like Edric, Spymaster of Trest, Hunted Wumpus, Magus of the Vineyard, Shizuko, Caller of Autumn, Tempting Wurm, Veteran Explorer, Dictate of Karametra, Eladamri's Vineyard, Rites of Flourishing, Collective Voyage, New Frontiers or Weird Harvest. I wouldn't recommend these cards since the whole point of this deck was to move away from group hug while still being political, but you can consider them.

If you wanted to go for a non-group hug politics that still involves being nice, you could buff opponents' creatures with the vows (Vow of Flight for example) and double down with Evolutionary Escalation.

Anyways, I could get a lot of other things that you could do but I don't really want to overload you (especially when I'm kind of just wildly suggesting), but the ideas of these cards are good starting points. You honestly could just ignore all of them and go for green ramp and that would be fine as well, since green doesn't really have many "deal" cards. It's probably good to pick a number representing the amount of "silly" cards you want in the deck and stick with that though, since you don't want to go overboard just because you have another colour to work with.

Hope this helps! Sorry for the wall of text lol, but it could be useful

Wow! Thank you for the time and effort it took to write that!

I'll probably avoid the full group hug cards. I really like your idea of choosing who to help, rather than giving to everyone and potentially helping one player more than others.

These might be perceived as too much of a threat, but I just thought about a couple cards that work well with vial smasher. Curiosity and Ophidian Eye just say damage, not combat damage. So, you'd draw a card any time you cast your first spell.

Zidantur I like those cards, but vial smasher usually doesn't end up staying on the board too long (half of their utility is that they force players to burn removal while still getting some damage out). I will say though, there are some great combos with those cards, especially with Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind.

Looks pretty solid, I was just disappointed as I thought it would have more Devils, of course now I see its referring to choosing evil but since there are so many actual Devil creatures available I guess I thought thered be more literal Devil-centric cards. +2 for creativity, -1 for name, +1 overall!