UPDATE: Check out my better version of this deck: Dune Boardwipe Bees/Burn
so here's the gameplan: Increase board presence, wipe board to deal massive damage, gain massive life, or make tons of 1/1 flying deathtouch creatures to swing with or even to block with. This can easily happen by turn 4, and it's easy to set up a solid enough defense to get us there; the creatures themselves are scary on their own, burning opponents etc to penalize them for attacking. Playtesting so far, this deck has been unstoppable. If you lose a game to blue, which happens a lot since they can just counter Blasphemous Act, just sideboard all your cards and begin the blue hate. Works pretty dang well so far, any feedback would be appreciated! Please, if you have the time, at least leave a comment telling me what you think, and perhaps a recommendation or two!
More specifically:
Ragged Veins
,
Spiteful Shadows
, Boros Reckoner, and Spitemare all have the capability to directly burn the opponent for 13 with a Blasphemous Act or a Chain Reaction, and there are therefore 16 different ways to swing at your opponent's face for 13 damage each. Also, spitemare and the reckoner are extremely underrated blockers. Your opponent swings with a 5/5 on the ground? Great, block and burn your opponent's face for 5. These creatures and enchantments (your opponent WILL have creatures by the time the combo goes off usually, even in a burn deck etc. because of Forbidden Forest.) do not depend on there being a large number of creatures, except to lower the cost of Blasphemous Act and increase the damage from Chain Reaction. The following strategies, however, do directly require a crapload of creatures. This isn't a problem at all for us.
First off, give your opponent AS MANY creatures as you want, don't even worry about it. To a certain extent, that is, as many as it takes to deliver a lethal blow or guarantee a win. Once you get to around 8 or 9 creatures total, you're good, as you can cast Blasphemous Act for a measly 1 red mana. If you're opponent has a lot of creatures when Blasphemous Act or especially in that case, Chain Reaction, or there are a lot of creatures in general, these guys absolutely kill it:
Hornet Nest: assuming you crack off one of the boardwipes for something around 10+ damage, you now have a totally cleared board and have 10 or so attackers to swing with next turn, all with flying and all with deathtouch. that alone is powerful enough to often times end a game.
Soulfire Grand Master... This guy is a beast, period. If you crack off either boardwipe with him on the field, you will gain a LOT of life. Period. With act, it's 13 life for every creature on the board.
Speaking of lifegain, Blood Artists are amazing as well. Maybe not as powerful (usually) as the other guys when a boardwipe goes off, unless there are a lot of creatures, but a few copies of him can easily turn the tide in your favor. You become very hard to attack with one or two of them and a Boros Reckoner... and there's lifegain to boot. soulfire master and Blood Artist both work together very well and extremely fast if you can tap as many forbidden forests as possible, giving your opponent tons of creatures while also decreasing the cost of Blasphemous Act.
Ghostly Prisons are a nice feature, not essential but helpful, since you are usually assembling a whole army of 1/1's for your opponent, but if you make them pay 2 for each creature the army quickly becomes useless, and you can increase its size for your own benefit without worry.
Aetheros is great sometimes, but as nice as his effect is, I don't really see the point of him as many times his effect ends up being "kill you more" when you can often get a lethal hit in early anyways, or gain enough life that you don't have to worry about damage until you can build up a big board state again.
Guys, this deck is so much fun. Seriously, try it out, I love it so far and it is MUCH more effective than you would imagine it would be on paper.
Finally, sideboard: Just TONS of blue hate. Because simply put, we fold to counterspells. Almost every time. With this sideboard you have a much better chance of surviving games 2 and 3. The cards are Vexing Shusher because vexing shusher, Defense Grid because blue sucks and I hate it, and
gutteral response
because it is hilarious to counter a spell with green or red mana. Everything else we can deal with. This deck honestly gains enough life to deal with burn last minute, you'll find yourself sweeping the board and gaining life or moving in for the kill with a few health left, and then coming back and destroying when they run out of cards. Which is the reason I left out Leyline of Sanctity, it's a GREAT card, but I don't think we need it. Maybe it should replace Batwing Brume, as I haven't had a chance to make it useful in a game yet...
By the way, the idea behind Batwing Brume was since you're giving them 1/1's, TONS of them sometimes, why not when you're in a pinch just fog and deal a bunch of surprise damage? Seemed like a win, it's like a 2 mana burn for 5-10 dmg late game, if you can bait them into attacking.
it's pretty solid for a homebrew! (Inspired by a deck built around blasphemous act, but I decided on things like hornet's nest for some extra cool effects) But PLEASE leave a comment, anything, a recommendation would be great, looking for any cards that seem like they would have good synergy with this style of deck, and especially any any-color lands or ways to fix my mana for this 4-color deck. It's fairly consistent but I would like it to be even better if possible. thanks!
