Greetings, commanders! Some have taken interest in my constant ramblings of a certain Kamigawa Ogre on the /r/EDH subreddit of late, so I have taken the time to give you all some insight on the very best blood mage in the multiverse!
Firstly, this deck appeals to just about every player archetype. Timmies will love the explosive flashiness of huge damage numbers. Johnnies will fall head over heels for its just-janky-enough-to-work combo potential and spikes will be enthralled by its winning results.
Without further adieu, I present my primer:Heartless Hidetsugu here for my new commander deck, Hidetsugu's hatred emporium, where I teach you how to hurt people!
Have you ever been on the recieving end of an annoying blue or white player locking down the board with counterspells, card draw and board wipes? Worry not! Hidetsugu's hatred emporium needs only one creature: Heartless Hidetsugu!
HASTE ENABLERS
By utilizing haste outlets such as Hammer of Puphoros, Lightning Greaves, Swiftfoot Boots, and, if you do decide to take additional creatures, Anger, Lightning Mauler and even Mass Hysteria (Though I believe Fervor is better) we can use Hidetsugu the turn he comes down. This is obviously pretty valuble.
LANDS
For our land package, we can take it easy with just thirty five of your favorite Mountain! If you wish to drop extra cash for some better toys, throw in Glacial Chasm so that Hidetsugu won't brutally murder you along with your opponents, or a Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle to shoot down annoying utility creatures! Take these and you'll get a Shivan Gorge absolutely free! That's right! Shivan Gorge; laughably terrible in all other decks, but an all star in Hidetsugu's hatred emporium! You see, Hidetsugu's hatred emporium has a very straightforward win condition: damage doublers!
WIN CONS
By using Dictate of the Twin Gods, Furnace of Rath, Gratuitous Violence and more, we can one-shot any opponent on an even life total. By using Pristine Talisman, Staff of Nin and the aforementioned Shivan Gorge, we can manipulate our opponents' life totals to kill them. Opponents packing heat against your damage doublers? No worries! By using Basilisk Collar, Loxodon Warhammer and Batterskull to give Hidetsugu lifelink, we can skyrocket our life totals to avoid death long enough to assemble alternate win conditions! Godo, Bandit Warlord lets us tutor for these cards directly and place them straight onto the battlefield, which is great because that means we can kill people with them easier! (He can also grab lightning greaves or swiftfoot boots!)
CARD FILTERING
Goblin Rummager, Mad Prophet, Faithless Looting, Deal Broker, Daretti, Scrap Savant, Outpost Siege, Chandra, Pyromaster and several card-drawing artifacts allow us to easily filter our cards to filter for the combo. Squee, Goblin Nabob is great here, as we can discard him to these effects and get him back, effectively netting us bonus cards. Notable is that Alhamarret's Archive is a no-go for this deck, as the incidental lifegain clause makes it so that if we try using an effect like Pristine Talisman, we stay at an even life total. Not good.
RAMP
On to the mana ramp package, we're running the standard Sol Ring, Mind Stone, Hedron Archive, Dreamstone Hedron... et cetera, and a new challenger to the throne of awesome ramp, Treasonous Ogre. This guy sets our life total up to not die and MASSIVELY lets us explode on people. if your hand consists of a haste outlet, treasonous ogre and a damage doubler you will almost always win the game unless your opponents are packing instant speed interaction.
MISCELLANEOUS CARDS
Grafted exoskeleton allows you an alternate win condition. If an opponent or opponents drop you below 20 for a teamgank because you're beating them, suit up hidetsugu and anyone on 20 or more life is instagibbed
Expedition map lets us find Glacial Chasm, Valakut and Shivan Gorge
Stranglehold is a meta call but is very invaluble in a deck that relies on killing your opponents before they kill you. Use this if your meta is combo heavy or has a Narset/Sharuum player
Dark Sphere is an oldie but a goodie for obvious reasons.
Silent arbiter slows down the game
Malignus with haste can be a serious finisher. Might put too much attention/heat on you, but I recommend it.
So yeah. There it is. Hope this helps, this deck has been my baby for about a year now. I highly recommend it.
Hope someone found this helpful! The deck's cheap and fun, try it online or buy it now. You won't regret it!
