I like to pay life to draw cards in Magic: the Gathering
It's no secret that my favourite colour in Magic: the Gathering is BLACK - I'm all about ambition and, as my Confidant says; greatness, at any cost.
Sometimes I even struggle to build a deck that doesn't contain black. Black can do anything in Magic that other colours can do (except destroy enchantments) and in Commander and other multi player formats that kind of versatility is necessary. Such things as playing oversized creatures (green) sweeping the board (white, red) exiling cards from graveyards (white, green) dealing massive amounts of direct damage (red) setting and enforcing rules (white) and drawing huge stacks of cards (blue) are well within the grasp of a well-prepared black mage. But, as Bob says, if you wish to achieve greatness, you must be prepared to pay any cost - and just like Dark Confidant, that cost is usually in the form of your own life points.
We're going to take a look here at a black and white deck I've been brewing for Commander that's all about paying life to do things. Whether it's to drop oversize creatures in play, draw a mountain of cards, clear the board, or just to ruin everyone's day, we'll be using various effects to gain stupidly large amounts of life. But we aren't keeping it - we're creating a 50/50 Minion of the Wastes! Black and white have a couple of other nice little interactions and abilities they share (reanimation comes to mind) that we'll explore over the course of this build as well.
One of the things black is actually best known for, especially in tournament Magic, is the ability to pay life to draw cards, thanks to the early tournament success of Necropotence decks. So let's check out all the ways to pay life (or simply lose life) to draw cards we'll be including here!
Necropotence itself - although we aren't technically "drawing" the cards
Arguel's Blood Fast and its earlier cousin Greed
Tymna the Weaver - who may be a good fit as commander, with or without Ravos
Necrologia - the one-shot Necropotence
Promise of Power - which also gives us a huge flying demon
Bloodtracker - although the card draw is delayed, we get a flying beatdown machine that still triggers the draw if he's exiled or bounced.
Baleful Force - a great "pigeon" card just like all the Commander "Force" cards
Bloodgift Demon - we can even point this somewhere else if necessary
That's quite a range, actually. Unfortunately (for the purpose of building this deck, not generally) Yawgmoth's Bargain is unavailable for Commander play and so is Griselbrand, but we do have another couple of cards to look at here...sometimes in black we can draw cards while gaining life - although there is another cost to be paid here, usually the sacrifice of a body or two.
Krav the Unredeemed - another potential commander if we include his partner
What else can we pay life, or lose life, to do? Make oversized creatures!
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| You'll have life to spare in this deck, so this card will be goddamn huge |
Search our deck!
Get things out of graveyards!
Kill everything!
Thrashing Wumpus, Pestilence and/or Pestilence Demon - although the life loss is incidental for both, rather than part of the cost of playing
Kill individual things for no mana cost!
There's a couple of other ways to make use of having a low life total, including
Mirror Universe - let's be fair, I'm not likely to be able to afford to play this card, but it looks like fun!
Now, straight up lifegain tends to be kind of bad in Magic. The problem is quite straightforward: if you play a lifegain spell that gains you eight life and I play an eight power creature and attack you, then yes, you're at the same life total as before - but next turn I'm hitting you for another eight, and you have one less card in hand. You could have achieved the same result by playing a creature removal spell instead. We aren't gaining life in this deck just for the sake of it, because we've got life to spend on things, but we still want to avoid that sort of one-shot life gaining effects, unless we're talking about a huge chunk of life. Let's look at how we plan to gain all this life to spend:
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| All players lose 20, I gain 80. Fair deck? It's actually pretty fair, the swings are just huge compared to the average life total |
Cockroach Lifegain, i.e.repeatable effects. If you are unaware of the term, refer to "Anthony Alongi's Animal Aspects" of cards, a well-known topic of discussion for multiplayer Magic. Cards are given a rating out of ten in these aspects:
Gorilla - cards with an immediate effect on board
Rattlesnake - cards that warn other players away
Pigeon - cards that get better with more players
Spider - cards that jump out and surprise opponents
Plankton - cards that straight-up benefit everyone
Cockroach - cards that continue to produce resources or allow for recursion of resources.
Cockroach effects, in my opinion, are what allow a multiplayer deck to hold its own against more than one opponent. If you're a blue player, cards like Drake Haven or Talrand, Sky Summoner that make tokens whenever you discard or cast spells are great cockroach cards, while red players get access to Seismic Assault and Goblin Bombardment to turn unnecessary resources into damage. Kambal, Consul of Allocation (a repeated life drain when your opponent cast non-creature spells) and Phyrexian Reclamation (a repeatable return from graveyard effect at the cost of two life and two mana) are just two of the cockroach effects included in the final build of this deck. Here's a few options for Cockroach cards we can use:
Gorilla - cards with an immediate effect on board
Rattlesnake - cards that warn other players away
Pigeon - cards that get better with more players
Spider - cards that jump out and surprise opponents
Plankton - cards that straight-up benefit everyone
Cockroach - cards that continue to produce resources or allow for recursion of resources.
Cockroach effects, in my opinion, are what allow a multiplayer deck to hold its own against more than one opponent. If you're a blue player, cards like Drake Haven or Talrand, Sky Summoner that make tokens whenever you discard or cast spells are great cockroach cards, while red players get access to Seismic Assault and Goblin Bombardment to turn unnecessary resources into damage. Kambal, Consul of Allocation (a repeated life drain when your opponent cast non-creature spells) and Phyrexian Reclamation (a repeatable return from graveyard effect at the cost of two life and two mana) are just two of the cockroach effects included in the final build of this deck. Here's a few options for Cockroach cards we can use:
these three cards give us life when creatures enter, leave or deal combat damage - and the trigger on Noble Purpose stacks with lifelink
Spirit Loop - also stacks with lifelink
A couple of these cards have secondary effect, one commonly shared by white and black, and that's reanimation. So far, we have four cards that do it: the Revival half of Revenge, Sword of Light and Shadow, Chainer, and Phyrexian Reclamation. I want a little more of this action in the deck - things DIE in commander, all the bloody time, and we'll be killing a few of our own guys for fun and/or profit. This is a black deck, after all, and where would we be without the ability to sacrifice in response to exile removal? We don't want to run out of sacrificial minions, after all
Whip of Erebos - this will do double duty here by providing lifelink to everything, plus I own a copy of the awesome Clash Pack foil art!
Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle - lots of ways to trigger her here, but not enough targets yet, she may not make the final cut
Liliana, Heretical Healer - although I'm unsure of the best heading to place her under, it seems like more than a few of her abilities will be relevant.
We'll need to look for a couple more payoffs for all this lifegain. We're drawing cards, and lots of them - but what are we drawing towards?
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| This is a stupid card. You can activate the second ability multiple times per turn and double, triple, etc. your life draining effect. Gain 10, everyone else loses 30 or 40? Yes please! |
Sanguine Bond (but not Exquisite Blood)
Karlov of the Ghost Council
Alhammarret's Archive - because if something is worth doing, it's worth overdoing, right?
Alhammarret's Archive - because if something is worth doing, it's worth overdoing, right?
Vizkopa Guildmage - the deck's true victory condition. Lose 40 out of the 280 or so life you'll be sitting on, activate Children of Korlis and his second ability and drain everyone out of the game!
We're over fifty cards at this point, so may need to be a little more selective and/or find a few cuts, because we haven't even got to the removal section yet. We're here now!
Fumigate - and note that four out of these five of these spells will either gain life or help us pay life. Mass and spot removal are common effects to white and black, and we can't avoid them in multiplayer formats, or we lose - it's unfortunately that simple.
There's a few cards that we're going to put in here to accelerate our game plan a bit and help us find what we need. This isn't a tutor heavy deck, but if we aren't starting with a way to pay life to draw cards, we're going to need to find one in order to get off the ground. Generally, powerful cards are not cheap cards, and we've got a lot of high powered demons, life doublers, and horribly expensive spells like Repay in Kind that we probably want to resolve in the same turn as other spells. Going in is:
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| This can produce an ungodly amount of mana, at what can be a very low price although I prefer the male art with the hollow eye sockets, I only own this one |
Crypt Ghast - extort is a huge bonus here
Soldevi Adnate - a real pet card of mine, but in this deck it is likely to put in a LOT of work. We'll be gaining life by killing our own things thanks to Proper Burial, and if we sacrifice Solemn Simulacrum, e.g. we essentially cast the former for free, as we're repaid with its converted mana cost plus a card when it dies. The real fun comes when we pair it with Chainer, Dementia Master: pay BBB and three life to reanimate something, preferably and it becomes a black nightmare creature. Sacrifice it for a load of mana, and gain your life back from Proper Burial. We can add another card to make this infinite (Thornbite Staff) but there's no way to make a four-piece combo like this happen with any regularity and the staff won't do much else in this deck - it'll be a dead card until we see this one. We also don't need to go infinite here; it's likely activating Phyrexian Processor for fifty will be sufficient
Whether we are "done" or not with this build, we've hit 73 cards, so it's time to hit the cutting room floor. So, we'll separate by cost and see what's been left behind
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| New card fits into decklist like a glove |
Children of Korlis
Soul Warden
Stoneforge Mystic
Karlov of the Ghost Council
Priest of Forgotten Gods
Soldevi Adnate
Vizkopa Guildmage
Bloodtracker
Kambal, Consul of Allocation
Liliana, Heretical Healer
Resplendent Angel
Tymna the Weaver
Solemn Simulacrum
Crypt Ghast
Erebos, God of the Dead
Disciple of Bolas
Sunscorch Regent
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| A strong card that I haven't managed to find a home for, until now |
Crested Sunmare
Chainer, Dementia Master
Krav the Unredeemed
Minion of the Wastes
Thrashing Wumpus
Phyrexian Delver
Regna, the Redeemer
Sun Titan
Rune-Scarred Demon
Razaketh, the Foulblooded
Kuro, Pitlord
Artifacts
Sol Ring
Basilisk Collar
Orzhov Signet
Expedition Map
Sword of the Animist
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| What you gonna do with all that life? All that life inside your...trunk? |
Coalition Relic
Chromatic Lantern
Tainted Sigil
Sword of Light and Shadow
Whip of Erebos
Phyrexian Processor
Alhammarret's Archive
Instants
Vampiric Tutor
Enlightened Tutor
Anguished Unmaking
Utter End
Necrologia
Enchantments
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| One-shot Necropotence that leaves your draw step alone and doesn't get hit by enchantment removal. Do not underestimate the potential of this! |
Authority of the Consuls
Spirit Loop
Arguel's Blood Fast
Necropotence
Proper Burial
Noble Purpose
Angelic Chorus
Sanguine Bond
Sorceries
Toxic Deluge
Kaya's Wrath
Fumigate
Revival//Revenge
Repay in Kind
Unburial Rites
Promise of Power
Promise of Power
Mana Base - we haven't discussed it yet, but the below cards are likely indispensable.
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| This is one of the ideal victory conditions in the deck because you can just pay seven life to draw the card after its "go back to deck" trigger. This is why we are not playing the card, but also because it feels so cheap to play "I win" cards . |
Godless Shrine
Isolated Chapel
Orzhov Basilica which has the bonus effect of stopping a creature being Imprisoned in the Moon and while this might seem pretty niche, I've done it a couple of times before!
Reliquary Tower
Phyrexian Tower
Tainted Field
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Shambling Vent
Temple of Silence
Caves of Koilos
Command Tower
Cabal Coffers
Scoured Barrens
Vault of the Archangel
Basic lands to 100
Cards left behind include one-shot draw effects like Night's Whisper and Ancient Craving, slower once per turn draw effects like Phyrexian Arena, pure lifegain spells like Beacon of Immortality, my pet enters-the-battefield kill spell Noxious Gearhulk and, far, far too many other cards that would be great here. But, the format has rules, and one of them is sticking to the card limit. I've also ignored a few obvious I-win combos, including cards like Wound Reflection and the obvious "Approach of the Second Sun, then pay the seven life you just gained to add Approach to hand via some black draw effect, and cast again" in order to avoid feel-bad situations. Likewise, Liliana's Contract and Felidar Sovereign have been left by the wayside, as there are several decks regularly seeing play in-store that run these, and I wish to move away from that style of gameplay.
Until next time, enjoy using your life points as a resource!
Until next time, enjoy using your life points as a resource!
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