This is a very heavy instant/enchant focused deck.
The main ideas of the deck are thus: 1) Buy yourself time by locking down all of your opponents creatures and spells while you 2) curse your opponent to death.
I've been told this is an exceedingly frustrating deck to play against; so much so that I don't use it very often because it's just no fun for the other player and I'm not a sadist.
If you want to drain your opponents' fun and give it all to yourself, this will help you to do it.
Tons of enchants in here totally lock down creatures (Pacifism,
Burden of Guilt
, etc.). The few creatures I have in here are tappers to keep whatever isn't pacified, tapped instead. You might be thinking "Well he's eventually going to get more creatures than you can lock down". That's what the assassins are for -- by the time that starts happening, I should have an assassin out to kill a tapped creature each turn, freeing up my tapper to tap something else. Lastly, in regard to creatures, I have Bitterheart Witches to greatly disincentify your opponent from attacking (if he can) -- this should at worst keep him from attacking, and at best let you put any curse you want on him. Top priority is Curse of Misfortunes if there isn't one already on him, and then
Curse of Thirst
s or Curse of Bloodletting (since CoM can't put more than one thirst on him you'll need to use witches for it).
Later, if your witches are just sitting out there, you can sacrifice them yourself with Altar's Reap. Pass go, draw two cards, and double the curse damage on your opponent.
Then enter the counter spells and the like to stop the opponent from countering your curses. Opponent using witchbane orb? Well, shouldn't be a problem. Stall (which is easy to do when none of their creatures can attack) while you wait for an Oblivion Ring to exile it. Oblivion Rings are for getting rid of whatever else the other cards can't handle (planeswalkers, witchbane orbs, etc).
The order you want to misfortune up curses would depend on what type of deck your opponent appears to be running. If you expect a lot of counter spelling, jump for Curse of Echoes immediately. Is he bringing cards back from the graveyard? Flashbacking? Quickly get out a
Curse of Oblivion
.
Lastly, the Elixirs of Immortality are to either 1) help stall in the beginning by healing you or 2) shuffle all the countered/destroyed control enchants back into your deck after they've been removed due to various causes.
Only 3
Curse of Thirst
s in the deck because you don't want to actually get them in your hand. You never want to have to spend mana on a curse other than Misfortunes. Let Curse of Misfortunes and the Bitterheart Witches tutor them up. You need to save your mana for control! There is never a need to have more than 3
Curse of Thirst
s on your opponent. They will lose way before that's necessary. The rest of the curses are one-of so that you can keep putting more curses on with Curse of Misfortunes (since it won't let you put two of a card already on them) every turn -- this gets as much damage-per-turn as you can get with
Curse of Thirst
.
Sideboard stuff contains
Deadly Allure
to swap in instead of Altar's Reap as a way to deal with hexproof creatures. Since this relies so heavily on control, a hexproof creature can foul things up. The plan is to control everything else and force the hexproof creature to defend the deadly allured creature (as no other creatures will be able to block due to the control). Cancels instead of Mana Leaks if needed, and the extra curses in case the opponent is running a deck that heavily pulls things from the graveyard.
Always looking for critiques and advice. I started literally a month ago, not even knowing what the numbers in the bottom right of cards meant.
Testimonials:"I had a ton out, I just couldn't do anything." -- random opponent
