If you’re going to levy a toll on the population, you need to be able to enforce it when the people grow restless. Not to mention we have taxes of our own to consider. Cards like
Koskun Falls
and
Contamination
can be brutally effective, but they ain’t free. Since we need to guarantee we have a creature each turn to
or sacrifice to them, we have 3 possible methods:
1) Stuff our library full of cheap creatures. This is the worst possible option; it’s unreliable at best, and even if it works—what’s the wincon look like? No, we can do better.
2) Auto generate creatures, like tokens for instance. We could use
Bitterblossom
to churn out fodder each upkeep, but between the life loss or cards like
Illness in the Ranks
it’s either Death by a Thousand Cuts or we shoot ourselves in the foot. No, I believe we can do better still.
3) Low costed creatures with built-in recursion, coupled with a different sort of token generation. This is our sweet spot. The creatures we’ll be casting are either designed to pair with
Contamination
, or else somehow compliment that strategy.
1111 Constitution Avenue
•
Desecrated Tomb
synergizes well with how our deck functions. As we’ll be having creature cards routinely leave our graveyard, it never hurts to be gifted free 1/1 flyers as a bonus. In a pinch, one of these can be used to pay both enchantment’s recurring fees—remember, you can sacrifice the same creature to pay the fee of one enchantment that you’ve just ’d to pay the upkeep cost of the other.
•
Gravecrawler
is easy enough to recast once he dies, either due to being sacrificed by us or killed by the opponent.
•
Bloodghast
may return to play for free, and through means that benefit us anyway.
•
Endless Cockroaches
will skitter back to our hand once we clobber them with the steel-toed boot of
Contamination
, ready to be played again.
•
Geralf's Messenger
not only comes back, but is stronger when he does. The is great to add to our devotion, too.
•Speaking of devotion to ,
Phyrexian Obliterator
is king. We get a fistful of mana symbols, a potently lethal 5/5 (with Trample no less!), and yet another deterrent to ward off attack. Dare the person sitting across from you launch an assault, whatever damage is dealt to the Obliterator will force catastrophic loss of already extremely limited resources.
•
Ayara, First of Locthwain
not only brings some extra taxation of her own to further add to an already overburdened player, but she helps offset any life loss we may have incurred and is a source of draw if necessary. Grovel, peasants.
•
Gray Merchant of Asphodel
is a fine finisher, particularly once an Obliterator or two is afield.