Davriel Discard

 I put together a fun deck that is a bit on the spotty side, but when it works, it's a lot of fun.

The core of the deck is Davriel, Soul Broker. Davriel, the black planeswalker introduced in Children of the Nameless, rather than a card set, is a fun, rakish character, and this card, part of Historic Horizons, is a digital-only planeswalker that has a very interesting mechanic.

It's 2BB, and starts at loyalty 4. The +1 ability is good for slowing down and discouraging attacks. When you use it, any opponent that attacks you or planeswalkers you control has to discard a card, and if they can't, they instead have to sacrifice a creature (such as the creatures with which they're attacking.) This does encourage you to play a bit of a discard deck, which is what I've built (though discard has always been an imperfect control strategy.)

The -2 ability is the real showstopper, and something that could only be done digitally. It says "accept one of Davriel's offers, and one of his conditions." Essentially, you get one really good thing, but then also have to pay a price. Both can take the form of one-time effects or permanent emblems. Generally, the offers are a little better than the conditions, but you can also figure out which are more important in the moment. For instance, one condition gives your opponents' creatures +1/+1 - pretty bad if you're facing an aggro deck, but not a problem at all if you're dealing with some creature-less control deck. My personal favorite offer gives you an emblem that gives every Davriel planeswalker +2: draw a card. Given that my deck also runs Davriel, Rogue Shadowmage, this gives that War of the Spark uncommon with no + abilities way more longevity, not to mention that I can pump the Soul Broker one as well, and oh yeah: you also get to draw more cards, which is always good.

His -3 gives a creature -3/-3 perpetually. This will often kill off a creature instantly, but it'll also ruin anything that gets bounced or flickered. That said, I don't think I've actually used this one.

All in all, the deck I've build is a mono-black control with various creature removal and discard spells to maximize the effectiveness of Davriel's +1 ability. The primary win condition is Westgate Regent, the vampire noble from AFR that has Ward - Discard a Card, which is a lot harder for the opponent to do when you've been chopping up their hand the whole game. The Regent can take an opponent down pretty quickly, thanks to their doubling power and toughness each time they hit the opponent. Naturally, they're still vulnerable to Soul Shatter and the like, but ideally you're forcing them to cast what they have in-hand as quickly as they can with all the discard.

There are definitely some better discard cards I could be using, but right now my policy is that I don't burn rare or mythic rare wildcards for Historic - I got my three copies of Davriel from playing JumpStart. We'll see if, in the future, I feel sufficiently invested in Historic to really build up a collection there, but one thing that's nice about Standard is that the narrower card pool means fewer must-haves at any given time.

We'll see what kind of stuff we can do with Midnight Hunt when it comes out in a little under two weeks. (I really hope that I can make a viable werewolf deck.)