Hey Everyone!
I came up with this deck after pulling Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh from my HOU pre-release. This is meant to be budget, being able to upgrade into a fully fleshed out cruel control or a typical grixis control deck. This is an insanely fun deck that can take down FNMs. However, I am not a deck building savant yet, so please give some suggestions. All are welcome.
NOTE: Nicol Bolas, God-Pharaoh and Collective Brutality are definitely not necessities for this deck. Simply replace the God-Pharoah with the Planeswalker version or another card of your choosing and Collective Brutality can be replaced with spells like Duress,
Despise
, or even more
Mind Slash
. The other pricey cards can also be replaced if you want it to be more budget.
Now onto the tech!
This deck is centered around two control packages before Cruel Ultimatum or one of the Nicol Bolas' resolving. The first I'll call "Steal and Sack" and the second I'll call "Counter and Forget."
Steal and Sack:This package focuses on 'stealing' your opponents' creatures to attack their owners, then 'sacking' them before it goes back to the owner. The 'stealing' consists the cards
Wrangle
, Kari Zev's Expertise, and Mark of Mutiny. They all basically do the same thing, but Kari Zev's Expertise has a bonus. With the card's second ability, if you have
Wrangle
in hand, you can steal two of their creatures for three mana. What a lead you'll get from that!
Now onto 'sacking.' The sackers consist of Viscera Seer, Bontu the Glorified,
Altar's Reap
, and
Mind Slash
. As you can see, all of these except for
Mind Slash
deal with deck advantage. This will help you control your draws to adapt to different situations, and also allows you to get Nicol Bolas or Cruel Ultimatum faster. The sack-ee's consist of
Abyssal Persecutor
, Reassembling Skeleton,
Fire-Field Ogre
, Sedraxis Specter, and of course your opponent's creatures! Just in case your opponent is running a control deck that has very little creatures, it's important to have some creatures you can sack. Also, these creatures are amazing who give amazing advantages. The unearth creatures not only are to be feared, but are in flavor too!
Counter and Forget:This is the basic counterspell package focused on disrupting your opponent. These include Terminate, Mana Leak, and Anger of the Gods. There are more in the sideboard just in case, along with 2 Goblin Electromancer to lower the CMC of these cards.
Win-ConditionsCruel Ultimatum sets your opponent so far back it's not even funny. If it resolves, and you have some creatures on the board, you are almost guaranteed to win. The Nicol Bolas cards are also a game changer, since the loyalty abilities are so strong for a planeswalker. Their ultimates win you the game on the spot. The best part is that this deck's "steal and sack" control package along with the "counter and forget" package not only disrupt your opponent and give you the upper hand, but also protect the planeswalkers! Another important win-con/stall is
Abyssal Persecutor
. It's a cheap, big body that swings in hard. Because of all the sac outlets you have, you don't have to worry about his ability since you can sac it for the win.
To sum it all up, this is a very strong, effective, and fun modern deck on a budget! I hope you all enjoyed this deck tech!
Suggestions will be a big part of making this a better deck. So please comment, no matter how small. Everything helps.
Thanks!-TankyHamster
