This deck draws inspiration from Pay 20 life or you lose created by karn862
This is my non-budget, competitive take on that deck.
Please +1 if you like it, and leave any questions in the comments, I am happy to answer them.
Here is a rundown of the deck:
The backbone of this deck are cards like Children of Korlis and
Tainted Sigil
which give us the ability to ignore the downsides of cards such as
Pain's Reward
.
Children of Korlis is our way of paying all of our life with no real downside.
Tainted Sigil
is the real MVP of this deck. It allows us to do all of our life shenanigans with the upside of also including life lost by the opponents. It is also hilarious against Griselbrand decks.
Immolating Souleater
is an amazing card in this deck and can grant us a turn 3 win. Best part is you only need 3 cards.
Here is an example:
Turn 1: Land + Children of Korlis
Turn 2: Land +
Immolating Souleater
Turn 3: Land +
Tainted Sigil
/Children of Korlis
Swing with
Immolating Souleater
. If they don't block, congrats, you have won. Pay 18 life to the souleater. Sac a children. Gain 18. Pay 18 life to the souleater. Sac
Tainted Sigil
/Children of Korlis. Gain 36. Pay as much life as you need to finish of you opponent then and there. 54 damage to the face should kill just about any opponent.
Faith's Shield
can make our
Immolating Souleater
unblockable and give everything (including us) protection from any colour. The fateful hour trigger is easy to get using souleaters ability. This can be really useful if our opponent is trying to bolt us on low life and just generally saves our life a lot of the time.
Orzhov Charm
provides so much utility in this deck. Two mana either: Save a creature, Destroy any creature, Return Children of Korlis to the field. Such an adaptable card that just fits in perfectly into this deck.
Intervention Pact is perfect if you forgot you were up against burn and paid life down into burn range. It can also gains you life, so yay, multiple upsides.
Gitaxian Probe allows up to know when we can be risky by looking at our opponents hand for two life. Card draw is just gravy.
Thoughtseize is for removing nasty cards in our opponents hand that might disrupt us.
Pain's Reward I recommend making sure you 100% understand this card before playing this deck. for 3 mana you can bid any amount of life. Your opponent then has the option to bid more than you. Then if they topped your bid you have the option to bid again. This continues until nobody tops the high bid. The player who had the highest bid then loses life equal to the high bid and draws four cards. Remember you can bid 0 life (Hint: always bid 0 life first). This card often that has my opponents confused as hell. They quite often don't top my bid of 0 life allowing me to draw 4 cards for 3 mana. If they do want to bid you can use this as a burn spell. If they want to pay 11 life to draw cards with no way to gain it back, then sure. Remember that
Tainted Sigil
gains you life equal to the life lost by ALL players. So if they decide to bid a large amount of life you have the option to gain that much. Just a thought.
Remember the Fallen is another toolbox card that allows us to return a creature and an artifact from our graveyard. Quite often you will be targeting Children of Korlis and
Tainted Sigil
, but
Immolating Souleater
can be targeted by both due to its dual typing.
Exquisite Blood and Sanguine Bond are the dirty infinite combo we can do if it comes to it. Sanguine Bond is amazing by itself though, allowing us to deal damage equal to the life gained. Pretty nice considering all the ways we have to do that.
Vizkopa Guildmage is a semi-toolbox creature that has Sangune bond as an ability for three mana.
Lands are pretty self explanatory as they give us consistency with the multiple double black we have to pay, and because we don't mind paying the life for Godless Shrine etc.
Sideboard is a variety of other deck hate that I run for my local meta, ie. Burrenton Forge-Tender for burn and Tormod's Crypt for graveyard based decks.
Last words of advice are:
1: Don't pay large amounts of life unless you have a way to gain it back. It may seem like a good idea at the time, but nothing is worse then being on less than 5 life with nothing to do because you can't pay any more.
2: If possible stack your triggers well. Having 2
Tainted Sigil
s with a Vizkopa Guildmage or Sanguine Blood is not that uncommon If you get to the late game. Stacking your triggers well with the
Tainted Sigil
s can end the game right there.
3: Try to predict your opponents moves. If you think they are going to deal a large amount of damage to you next turn, maybe hold off on sacrificing that Children of Korlis or
Tainted Sigil
, It could very well save your life.
4: Make sure you test and understand the deck well before you take it to any tournament or FNM. Knowing what you are doing vast increases your success rate with this deck.
5: Enjoy. I have found this deck successful and fun. Most people don't expect a deck to come at them like this one, so a lot of the time they are still guessing what you are trying to do up until you unleash your delightful combos on them.
Shoutout again to karn862 for the inspiration. His deck is a version of this for $30. My deck is purely based on his. I played his deck and fell in love with it straight away.
