How to Drink Your Opponent's Milkshake:
Overall Strategy: Make your opponent's life your life. The goal is to field life draining threats you can trigger each turn through rally mechanics. The creatures in this deck have been selected for maximum lifelink potential, and ability to trigger rally abilities.
Cornerstone Creatures:
Drana's Emissary: This card is an effective early threat that has synergy while doing nothing. Her flying ability can be problematic for opponents, and triggering rally abilities makes her the most dangerous card in the deck.
Kalastria Healer
: A cheap, effective engine for drinking your opponent's milkshake. The potential of the healer is unlocked when you can field 2 or 3 at once and do 6 unanswered damage & gain 6 life by playing 2
Expedition Envoy
s. Don't swing with these unless you have to.
Lantern Scout
: The power of this card is in bestowing lifelink on all your ally creatures. This lets you swing knowing that even if creatures die you benefit from the damage they do.
Rally Triggers:
Expedition Envoy
,
Kor Castigator
,
Kor Bladewhirl
: cheap threats that trigger rally effects.
Kor Bladewhirl
also has the benefit of adding first strike, while
Kor Castigator
has a slight advantage against Eldrazi decks.
Muscle:
Drana, Liberator of Malakir: She earns a spot by being a cheap, flying, first strike ally that buffs other creatures.
Malakir Familiar
: not an ally, but synergy with life gain, flying & deathtouch make it a threat capable of defending more important ally creatures.
Bloodbond Vampire
: this gains +1/+1 for each
Kalastria Healer
on the field when you play it, and only grows from there. The lifelink potential here is enormous.
Serene Steward
: Like
Kalastria Healer
this card is meant more to hang back, trigger rally effects, and dispense buffs, but at 2/2 it's a more formidable threat than the healer. She can also function as a mana dump late game.
Tandem Tactics
: A good mid game threat since it buffs two creatures (potentially with lifelink) and triggers
Bloodbond Vampire
's and
Malakir Familiar
's abilities.
Maintainance:
Vampiric Rites: a good way to trigger
Bloodbond Vampire
and add some gas late game.
Retreat to Emeria: this card is meant to fix mana flood by turning late game land draws into Allies that trigger rally effects.
Sideboard:
Meant to convert the deck into a more sac oriented strategy if creature removal is problematic during the first game.
Note: Yes, this deck is almost exclusively BFZ cards. Some people might think this is a poor choice for deck design, but after play testing it I've found that creatures who trigger rally effects are more beneficial to the overall strategy and play consistency than others. That said, if anyone has a better 3 drop than Malakir Familiar please let me know.
As always, comments, suggestions and up votes are appreciated.
