I have been working and testing this list a lot in the last couple of weeks. It is now a hardcore control deck, skipping on the previous contamination lock + creature setup to allow playing more sweepers and bombs such as smoke and aether flash. Olivia is a powerful general as it can decimate aggro decks if they don't deal with it, is cheap enough to recast, and can be a very fast clock. This deck is built to be competitive for the French 1 vs 1 meta. This deck is built with the top-tier decks edric, geist, animar, grand arbiter, wydwen, nin and doran in mind.
You should play Olivia if:
- You like being the control player.
- You like destroying permanents (while being left helpless against enchantments)
- You enjoy a deck which has a lot of subtle interactions, is difficult to pilot, and is built as a metagame deck towards all the aggro / tempo decks.
- You enjoy playing stax/mana denial effects.
- You enjoy playing something else than blue for a change.
You should not play Olivia if:
- You don't like playing control- although this can win quickly it has to take control of the game first.
- You want to play a goodstuff deck- although most of the cards are powerful, RB is not the most powerful color combination. The cards the deck plays to hate on other decks are very powerful, however.
Main strategy of the deck is to maintain control over the board until you lock someone out and go for a win via general or regular damage. An outline of some of the main interactions in the deck is given below.
This deck is meant to destroy creature decks, something that it does quite handily. It is however quite weak against non-creature based combo, which is luckily not that common in the French meta. It is very effective against edric and sisay, solid against animar, doran and karador, even against wydwen, nin, geist and grand arbiter, weak against zur and jhoira, and awful against iname. With tight play any matchup but iname and combo decks is winnable. In general combo decks, decks which don't play many creatures and decks which play troublesome enchantments are difficult. For example geist of saint traft + angelic destiny is almost impossible to deal with, as is zur, lightning greaves fetch solitary confinement, then fetch necropotence.
In return you get greaves on olivia which is pretty much game against a lot of aggro decks if you have the mana to abuse her ability. Basilisk collar only makes this easier.
Blood Moon/Smokestack/Braids/Winter Orb are all very powerful and are your best chance against opposing control decks.
Braid of Fire is quite powerful in this deck for:
Olivia's pinging ability
Casting instants
Grim monolith untapping.
Maze of ith + smoke stops your opponent from dealing damage. Phyrexian Obliterator can sometimes be difficult to cast, but even on turn 6 it is such a powerful play that it is completely worth it. As a type of moat it really does its job well.
The deck plays 7 removal spells (ghastly demise, chaos warp, fire covenant, go for the throat, lightning bolt, terminate, arc trail, liliana of the veil), 7 wrath effects (aether flash, consume the meek, damnation, volcannic fallout, pyroclasm, whipflare, wildfire) and cabal pit/barbarian ring. Smoke is very effective against swarm decks, dystopia is very strong against GW decks, and reb / pyroblast / combust provide three additional removal spells against U decks.
A note on dystopia - of the top tier generals edric, karador, doran, geist, animar, sisay and zur are hit hard by this card. If they don't counter/remove it, it will take over the game. Although only hitting G/W seems like a big restriction, the power of its effect makes it more than worth it. With the prevalence of blue, reb and pyroblast earn their spot as well even if they are dead against doran/karador/iname/sisay. Combust hits all top generals except for iname, which makes it an incredible removal spell, and its uncounterable as well. The drawback of smoke is negated by only playing 5 creatures.
Shred Memory:
Terminate
Smoke
Impending Disaster
Braid of Fire
Winter Orb
Lightning Greaves
Defense Grid
Godo + Batterskull
Innocent Blood
Snuff Out
Massacre
Parch
Forked Bolt
Shattering Spree
Engineered Explosives
No Mercy
Dimir Houseguard
Night of Soul's Betrayal
A lot of cards - I will post a short list later.
I do believe this can be a very effective deck in a meta infested with edric and other decks weak to removal. Any comments are appreciated. If you recommend cards to add, please also take a look at what you would remove.
Why no Duress, Distress, or Mind Shatter from your discard package? and I may have overlooked it but no actual board sweepers like Damnation? Are you relying on your combo's and Olivia Voldaren for board clearing?
just curious, I am looking into building a control style build with her also, looks like you have a solid start going
I am definitely looking to add duress into the deck. Distress/mind shatter are too slow. With the amount of creatures I play, board sweepers also hurt you, and between the general, goblin sharpshooter, fleshbag marauder, shriekmaw (and recursion of those two), barbarian ring, terminate and liliana to be sufficient.
She is a very good control general for BR.
After playing the deck a number of games, I made a couple of changes:
+ 1 imperial recruiter
+ 1 sensei's divining top
+ 1 dwarven miner
+ 1 stensia bloodhall
- 1 goblin matron
- 1 infernal darkness
- 1 ravenous baboons
-1 molten slagheap
I'm still looking at goblin welder and wurmcoil engine as a possible addition as welder, engine and solemn simuraculum is a pretty brutal buried alive package. Buried ruin is also on the testing list.
The deck is strong and a lot of fun to play with a lot of different routes to victory.
The real question I would ask here, is why Olivia Voldaren, when you can use Lyzolda, the Blood Witch? Lyzolda is cheaper to cast, has the same power, and can net extra cards and free damage, all while working as a sac outlet whenever you need it.
I used to not think so much of her, but once I piloted a deck with her, just wow, she is definitely the poster-woman for BR decks.
The main difference is that Olivia Voldaren is an actual win condition without the support of any other creatures because of its evasion. This deck is more combo-control as opposed to aggro, and that makes Olivia Voldaren better in this deck.
Although Lyzolda's abilities are good and very solid in combination with blooghast/nether traitor, Lyzolda needs other cards to work. If you have contamination lock going for which you sac your bitterblossom token every turn, lyzolda is practically useless whereas olivia can fly over blockers and pump itself by pinging other creatures. To accomadate Lyzolda, I would need to play more creatures, especially black ones and focus more on an aggro route while many of the cards/interactions in the deck are more control focused.
I have been considering taking out all of the small creatures so that I can use aether flash. I'm just not sure that the deck won't become too slow. I tested 5 matches against geist of saint traft today and lost 3 because I couldn't deal with it. Damnation, pyroclasm, whipflare and aether flash would help that matchup a lot, while further improving the already good animar and edric matchups.
I hadn't thought about defense grid, but I will test it.
I have a very similar deck, packed much more land destruction (6 spells +Mine, Dwarven Blastminer, Miner and Driller). So far it was very strong against tier B and under, and had fair matches against Doran, Animar, Eldric, etc.
The only ones that cause me way too much trouble are Iname and Augustin, that's why I'm thinking about dropping the land destruction package for the extra punch that's needed there (since LD isn't what helps me in the other match-ups anyway)
One creature I have that you should consider is Godo, he's massive if he goes into play and brings the greaves with him, only time he's come into play and not dealt 6 straigh away was when facing a Darksteel Armor equipped Thrun.
Other cards I'm considering are Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief and Goblin Cannon for their interactions with Braid of Fire and Black Market. Both cards can clear the board and deal massive damage, and while Drana is known to be a great creature, other players seem to think the cannon is inoffensive.
Defense Grid is great too, specially if you play it turn 2 or even 1. If puts Augustin and other counter happy decks a couple turns behind.
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I like your list. You skip on the mana denial aspect for a bit more creatures.
I think aether flash is so good that it is worth not playing any x/2 creatures for it. Same goes for smoke, I don't really want to play too many creatures to abuse her ability.
Godo should probably be in my list as the batterskull interaction makes it quite a bomb. Graveborn muse is good enough to add as well to my list.
Could you explain your choices for guardian idol (weak), karn liberated (slow), liliana vess (slow), shattering pulse (is this better than shattering spree), arc-slogger (slow), grim lavamancer/siege-gang commander (dissynergy with all your sweepers, night of soul's betrayal, etc.).
What do you think of infest/ massacre, no mercy, snuff out and forked bolt?
Here's my list inspired by yours. It's shifted a bit more for multi-player games as we normally have 5 people playing secret partners. I plan on having all the cards in a minimum of 2 weeks.
The maybeboard is full of cards that I want to remember incase the selected 99 don't perform on par.
How has Winter Orb been in here? It seems out of place. Don't you want your mana available all the time for Oliva's abilities, or for when you draw into a bomb like Wurmcoil Engine or the titans?
How has Winter Orb been in here? It seems out of place. Don't you want your mana available all the time for Oliva's abilities, or for when you draw into a bomb like Wurmcoil Engine or the titans?
Winter orb and cards like it are still remnants of the stax theme. The idea was that you kept the board clear, then dropped olivia and winter orb. This could easily be a blowout against opponents trying to get back in the game. I cut these for the list I used in the tournament however because they weren't really good against edric and bad draws in the opening hand. After the tournament I will post my updated list.
Hi, I´m using your list as reference in my olivia edh deck because i felt in love with Oli and your list seems relly powerful but there are some cards that other people plays as staples and you don´t use at all so I would like to ask you about why you are not playing them.
I can´t know what cards you used and take out and which ones were the reasons to not playing them (because list of discarded cards is missing ) so I decided to write you asking for them and perhaps I could help you too with my questions ;).
On the other side the other day I was playing against an Edric deck and found that your list haven´t lot of ways to get rid of a resolved jace (blasts and few more).
I´m thinking on that and found that hexmage and pithing neddle can be really good to control it.
There are lot of other cards that I´m testing and would like your opinion on them.
Lot of thanks for your answers and forgive me if there is mistakes but english is not my natal language.
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You should play Olivia if:
- You like being the control player.
- You like destroying permanents (while being left helpless against enchantments)
- You enjoy a deck which has a lot of subtle interactions, is difficult to pilot, and is built as a metagame deck towards all the aggro / tempo decks.
- You enjoy playing stax/mana denial effects.
- You enjoy playing something else than blue for a change.
You should not play Olivia if:
- You don't like playing control- although this can win quickly it has to take control of the game first.
- You want to play a goodstuff deck- although most of the cards are powerful, RB is not the most powerful color combination. The cards the deck plays to hate on other decks are very powerful, however.
Decklist as per 5/4/2012
1 Olivia Voldaren
Lands -40
1 Ancient Tomb
1 Arid Mesa
1 Badlands
1 Barbarian Ring
1 Blackcleave Cliffs
1 Blood Crypt
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Cabal Pit
1 City of Traitors
1 Command Tower
1 Dragonskull Summit
1 Graven Cairns
1 Homeward Path
1 Lavaclaw Reaches
1 Marsh Flats
1 Maze of Ith
3 Mountain
1 Polluted Delta
1 Rishadan Port
1 Rix Maadi, Dungeon palace
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Shadowblood Ridge
1 Shizo, Death's Storehouse
1 Sulfurous Springs
8 Swamp
1 Tainted Peak
1 Tectonic Edge
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Wasteland
1 Wooded Foothills
1 Bloodgift Demon
1 Braids, Cabal Minion
1 Grave Titan
1 Inferno Titan
1 Phyrexian Obliterator
1 Viashino Heretic
1 Wurmocil Engine
Artifacts- 17
1 Basilisk Collar
1 Charcoal Diamond
1 Chrome Mox
1 Coldsteel Heart
1 Everflowing Chalice
1 Expedition Map
1 Grim Monolith
1 Heartstone
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Mox Diamond
1 Rakdos Signet
1 Smokestack
1 Swiftfoot Boots
1 Talisman of Indulgence
1 Thran Dynamo
1 Winter Orb
Enchantments -8
1 Aether Flash
1 Blood Moon
1 Braid of Fire
1 Curse of Death's Hold
1 Impending Disaster
1 Phyrexian Arena
1 Smoke
1 Chaos warp
1 Combust
1 Consume the Meek
1 Fire Covenant
1 Ghastly Demise
1 Go for the Throat
1 Lightning Bolt
1 Pyroblast
1 Red Elemental Blast
1 Shred Memory
1 Skeletal Scrying
1 Terminate
1 Volcanic Fallout
Sorceries - 13
1 Arc Trail
1 Damnation
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Duress
1 Hymn to Tourarch
1 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Night’s Whisper
1 Pyroclasm
1 Reanimate
1 Sign in Blood
1 Thoughtseize
1 Whipflare
1 Wildfire
Planeswalkers - 1
1 Liliana of the Veil
Main strategy of the deck is to maintain control over the board until you lock someone out and go for a win via general or regular damage. An outline of some of the main interactions in the deck is given below.
This deck is meant to destroy creature decks, something that it does quite handily. It is however quite weak against non-creature based combo, which is luckily not that common in the French meta. It is very effective against edric and sisay, solid against animar, doran and karador, even against wydwen, nin, geist and grand arbiter, weak against zur and jhoira, and awful against iname. With tight play any matchup but iname and combo decks is winnable. In general combo decks, decks which don't play many creatures and decks which play troublesome enchantments are difficult. For example geist of saint traft + angelic destiny is almost impossible to deal with, as is zur, lightning greaves fetch solitary confinement, then fetch necropotence.
In return you get greaves on olivia which is pretty much game against a lot of aggro decks if you have the mana to abuse her ability. Basilisk collar only makes this easier.
Blood Moon/Smokestack/Braids/Winter Orb are all very powerful and are your best chance against opposing control decks.
Braid of Fire is quite powerful in this deck for:
Olivia's pinging ability
Casting instants
Grim monolith untapping.
Maze of ith + smoke stops your opponent from dealing damage. Phyrexian Obliterator can sometimes be difficult to cast, but even on turn 6 it is such a powerful play that it is completely worth it. As a type of moat it really does its job well.
The deck plays 7 removal spells (ghastly demise, chaos warp, fire covenant, go for the throat, lightning bolt, terminate, arc trail, liliana of the veil), 7 wrath effects (aether flash, consume the meek, damnation, volcannic fallout, pyroclasm, whipflare, wildfire) and cabal pit/barbarian ring. Smoke is very effective against swarm decks, dystopia is very strong against GW decks, and reb / pyroblast / combust provide three additional removal spells against U decks.
A note on dystopia - of the top tier generals edric, karador, doran, geist, animar, sisay and zur are hit hard by this card. If they don't counter/remove it, it will take over the game. Although only hitting G/W seems like a big restriction, the power of its effect makes it more than worth it. With the prevalence of blue, reb and pyroblast earn their spot as well even if they are dead against doran/karador/iname/sisay. Combust hits all top generals except for iname, which makes it an incredible removal spell, and its uncounterable as well. The drawback of smoke is negated by only playing 5 creatures.
Tutor Packages:
Expedition Map:
Removal - Cabal Pit / Barbarian Ring, Maze of Ith
Land denial - Tectonic Edge / Wasteland
Control Decks - Rix-Maadi
Evasion - Shizo, Death's Storehouse
Manafixing - Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Endgame - Volrath's Stronghold
Theft - Homeward Path
Shred Memory:
Terminate
Smoke
Impending Disaster
Braid of Fire
Winter Orb
Lightning Greaves
Defense Grid
Godo + Batterskull
Innocent Blood
Snuff Out
Massacre
Parch
Forked Bolt
Shattering Spree
Engineered Explosives
No Mercy
Dimir Houseguard
Night of Soul's Betrayal
A lot of cards - I will post a short list later.
I do believe this can be a very effective deck in a meta infested with edric and other decks weak to removal. Any comments are appreciated. If you recommend cards to add, please also take a look at what you would remove.
BRWC Mardu Shops - Tymna and Akiri Artifacts BRWC
just curious, I am looking into building a control style build with her also, looks like you have a solid start going
She is a very good control general for BR.
BRWC Mardu Shops - Tymna and Akiri Artifacts BRWC
+ 1 imperial recruiter
+ 1 sensei's divining top
+ 1 dwarven miner
+ 1 stensia bloodhall
- 1 goblin matron
- 1 infernal darkness
- 1 ravenous baboons
-1 molten slagheap
I'm still looking at goblin welder and wurmcoil engine as a possible addition as welder, engine and solemn simuraculum is a pretty brutal buried alive package. Buried ruin is also on the testing list.
The deck is strong and a lot of fun to play with a lot of different routes to victory.
BRWC Mardu Shops - Tymna and Akiri Artifacts BRWC
I used to not think so much of her, but once I piloted a deck with her, just wow, she is definitely the poster-woman for BR decks.
Steel Sabotage'ng Orbs of Mellowness since 2011.
Although Lyzolda's abilities are good and very solid in combination with blooghast/nether traitor, Lyzolda needs other cards to work. If you have contamination lock going for which you sac your bitterblossom token every turn, lyzolda is practically useless whereas olivia can fly over blockers and pump itself by pinging other creatures. To accomadate Lyzolda, I would need to play more creatures, especially black ones and focus more on an aggro route while many of the cards/interactions in the deck are more control focused.
BRWC Mardu Shops - Tymna and Akiri Artifacts BRWC
Steel Sabotage'ng Orbs of Mellowness since 2011.
BRWC Mardu Shops - Tymna and Akiri Artifacts BRWC
I hadn't thought about defense grid, but I will test it.
BRWC Mardu Shops - Tymna and Akiri Artifacts BRWC
The only ones that cause me way too much trouble are Iname and Augustin, that's why I'm thinking about dropping the land destruction package for the extra punch that's needed there (since LD isn't what helps me in the other match-ups anyway)
One creature I have that you should consider is Godo, he's massive if he goes into play and brings the greaves with him, only time he's come into play and not dealt 6 straigh away was when facing a Darksteel Armor equipped Thrun.
Other cards I'm considering are Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief and Goblin Cannon for their interactions with Braid of Fire and Black Market. Both cards can clear the board and deal massive damage, and while Drana is known to be a great creature, other players seem to think the cannon is inoffensive.
Defense Grid is great too, specially if you play it turn 2 or even 1. If puts Augustin and other counter happy decks a couple turns behind.
BRWC Mardu Shops - Tymna and Akiri Artifacts BRWC
I think aether flash is so good that it is worth not playing any x/2 creatures for it. Same goes for smoke, I don't really want to play too many creatures to abuse her ability.
Godo should probably be in my list as the batterskull interaction makes it quite a bomb. Graveborn muse is good enough to add as well to my list.
Could you explain your choices for guardian idol (weak), karn liberated (slow), liliana vess (slow), shattering pulse (is this better than shattering spree), arc-slogger (slow), grim lavamancer/siege-gang commander (dissynergy with all your sweepers, night of soul's betrayal, etc.).
What do you think of infest/ massacre, no mercy, snuff out and forked bolt?
BRWC Mardu Shops - Tymna and Akiri Artifacts BRWC
Here's my list inspired by yours. It's shifted a bit more for multi-player games as we normally have 5 people playing secret partners. I plan on having all the cards in a minimum of 2 weeks.
The maybeboard is full of cards that I want to remember incase the selected 99 don't perform on par.
BWGhost Council of OrzhovaBW
RUGRikuStormRUG
Winter orb and cards like it are still remnants of the stax theme. The idea was that you kept the board clear, then dropped olivia and winter orb. This could easily be a blowout against opponents trying to get back in the game. I cut these for the list I used in the tournament however because they weren't really good against edric and bad draws in the opening hand. After the tournament I will post my updated list.
BRWC Mardu Shops - Tymna and Akiri Artifacts BRWC
I can´t know what cards you used and take out and which ones were the reasons to not playing them (because list of discarded cards is missing ) so I decided to write you asking for them and perhaps I could help you too with my questions ;).
cards i´m considering are:
Ambition's Cost
ancient craving I´ve seen this cards are staples in black decks and are in the 30 best black cards for EDH. What do you think about them?
void mass removal with discard in it
Fault line mass instant removal that affects jace too
Bonfire of the damned the same as above.
pithing needle to stop planeswalkers and activated tricks
beseech the queen more tutoring is always good
diabolic tutor idem. perhaps expensive but..
Ashes to ashesinstant exiling spell
Blightning discard and damage all in one
Massacre wurm mass removal with a body there
Price of glory instead of impeding disaster
Promise of power more card advantage
Kumano, Master Yamabushi Another shooter to clean the table that exile pesky critters that returns from grave
vampire hexmage nice chumpblocker. planeswalker removal and can be sacrified in response of damage if flash is out.
Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief Another killer lady that flies and has removal on her.
Quietus spike help the basilisk pland while create huge life loss for the oponent if played on olivia.
Have you tested them?
On the other side the other day I was playing against an Edric deck and found that your list haven´t lot of ways to get rid of a resolved jace (blasts and few more).
I´m thinking on that and found that hexmage and pithing neddle can be really good to control it.
There are lot of other cards that I´m testing and would like your opinion on them.
Lot of thanks for your answers and forgive me if there is mistakes but english is not my natal language.