The early days of the Brother's War release I'd been on a bit of a losing streak. A lot of the exciting new decks people were talking about - Azorius Soldiers, an Izzet Prowess deck - were letting me down. While I really enjoy my Mono Red Powerstone deck, I've been thwarted in getting to actually ramp up (usually by hard control decks that counter absolutely everything and those very same prowess decks that never work for me).
But then, I decided to embrace my dark side.
Historically, Black has been my favorite Magic color, ever since I pulled a Royal Assassin out of my very first Revised Edition 60-card starter back in 1994. (Technically my second MTG purchase, as I had also gotten a Fallen Empires booster pack before I understood that I would not be able to do anything with it on its own).
This deck is a race-to-zero deck that is all about burning everything down, yourself included. The best card is Gix, Yawgmoth Praetor, which is a 3/3 for IBB (already pretty decent - remember how getting a creature with power and toughness for its mana value was generally something only green and white got to do? Scathe Zombies was a vanilla 2/2 for 2B). Gix has a triggered ability, which is that when you deal combat damage to a player with a creature, you can pay 1 life to draw a card. The more creatures you swing in with, the more cards you can draw.
Aggro's big challenge is usually running out of steam when you get into the main game, but I just won a game with more cards in hand than an Azorius control deck.
Gix actually has a very expensive activated ability that I don't even remember what it does because that first one is good enough. (Ok, it's 4BBB: Discard X cards and exile the top X cards from your opponent's library, which you can play (lands or spells) without paying their mana costs - really good if you can get it off (maybe using power stones) but we want to kill the opponent before we'd get 7 mana to play with).
Obviously, we use some standard aggressive black creatures - Tenacious Underdog is an obvious inclusion here. Graveyard Tresspasser is always good (and nice to use against graveyard shenanigans decks).
However, on theme with this is Defiler of Flesh. Like all the Defilers, this lets you treat one black mana symbol in any permanent spell as Phyrexian mana, which you can pay with 2 life instead of one black. Also, when you play such a card, you can give one of your creatures +1/+1 and menace until the end of turn.
Now, you combine this with all the cards we're drawing from Gix and then making our creatures better at getting to the opponent, and you get a feedback loop where you can get more things into play than your lands should allow. This thing's a 4/4 body for 4 mana, which is pretty good value. Also, multiple Defilers can convert multiple mana symbols, so, for example, your Tenacious Underdog can come in for 2 mana if you're willing to pay 4 life.
Again, this is a high-risk deck. You want to end things ASAP because you're going to be reducing your life total (ideally) faster than your opponent is. But it does two things that feel great as a magic player - it fills your hand with cards and lets you play those cards when you've drawn them.
Right now I don't have Sheoldred in it, because I'm trying to keep things relatively cheap, but I might swap her in for some others to give this more sustain (indeed, Gix actually winds up netting you positive life if Sheoldred is out). I think I have Henrika Domnathal, who does have her uses (the "sacrifice a creature" option is helpful to deal with a beefy defender).
I also have Ashnod, Flesh Mechanist, though I don't know if she's the right fit. Basically, she's a useful 1-drop with Deathtouch - a good combo with Gix because players will let her deal her 1 damage rather than lose a creature. But I haven't made use of her sacrifice trigger or her graveyard exiling to make minions - we usually have plenty of cards as it is to put creatures in the field, and we don't have the mana to spare for her ability.
Anyway, it's a fun deck and I've been racking up wins with it.
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