Wow. This deck is a masterpiece.
Now, don’t take that to mean I think it’s going to take over Modern. I doubt it’s consistent enough to do so against the power of Thoughtseize and the like, but that does not make it any less impressive as a feat of deckbuilding.
I imagine building a deck like this is a lot like tackling a home improvement project yourself. In the beginning, you’re naive and think you can make one trip to Home Depot, get everything you need, and bang it out on a single Saturday. Only after your seventh trip and third full weekend do you understand everything your project entails.
In the case of deckbuilding, Home Depot trips take the form of Gatherer searches. It’s similarly tedious, although not having to leave your house or put on pants in order to complete the task gives it a substantial edge. But there are so many moving parts to this deck that it had to take a good six or seven searches to find everything.
The interaction with Squee, Goblin Nabob and the two enchantments is the core of the deck, so I’d bet it started there. At that point, Liliana of the Veil and Lingering Souls are the only obvious additions. Cryptbreaker, Ruthless Sniper, and Voldaren Pariah are also easy to see because they’re in Standard, but that’s not an insignificant find. They give the deck much-needed interaction and card advantage, but in very strange ways.
The truly genius finds are the madness creatures. Big Game Hunter is…a big game. It kills all the threats in Grixis Death’s Shadow through Stubborn Denial, as well as all the Eldrazi. Grave Scrabbler can re-buy the Big Game Hunter to go for an even bigger game (kind of like turning two medium prizes into a large one at the carnival); if you have two of them, you can loop them together with Call the Bloodline for repeated value.
Looking at this deck is bound to generate some blank stares from those who doubt its strength or simply can’t figure out what’s going on, but it has some legs. Finding decks like this, almost entirely composed of obscure cards, is so difficult that you have to appreciate this one.
Creatures (23)
- 4 Squee, Goblin Nabob
- 4 Big Game Hunter
- 4 Grave Scrabbler
- 3 Voldaren Pariah
- 4 Cryptbreaker
- 4 Ruthless Sniper
Planeswalkers (3)
Lands (21)
Spells (13)
