To be honest, I like Skullclamp a lot, I like Hinder a lot, and I like Blood Artist a lot. I can't not run the three in tandem, and this is the perfect general to do it with. Whether you're bouncing Shrieking Drake, sacrificing creatures to Attrition, or just using Life's Finale to wipe the field, every time a creature dies, something bad happens for your opponent.
How does one play this deck?
Basically, the goal of this deck is to punish opponents for doing anything; casting spells, making creature tokens, drawing cards or playing lands. When fully set up, the deck is a nasty machine that grinds opponents slowly but surely into dust. And when they try and fight back, your counterspells remove what little hope they have of winning!
Nuances of the Deck
-Blood Artist is incredibly important. It helps grind your opponents out while keeping you healthy. While Falkenrath Noble is the same thing at 4 mana, it's less useful because it can get countered more easily.
-Blood Seeker is great against token decks, and like his cousin Blood Artist, is surprisingly strong early.
-Remember when casting Exquisite Blood to remind opponents that your deck doesn't contain the infamous infinite combo with Sanguine Bond. Opponents will want to kill you...slightly less.
-When your opponents are deciding who to attack, try to persuade them to attack other players when you have Bloodchief Ascension in play. This is easier to accomplish when you have Blood Reckoning active.
-Try to get Vile Consumption active as soon as possible. Your opponents will cling to most of their nontoken creatures, and it's fantastic against green in that it wrecks opponents who have their army ready to strike.
-Remember when using Duskmantle Guildmage that its first ability can trigger once for each time you activate the ability. If you have an active Cabal Coffers and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, each blue mana you sink into this card can make any discard, mill or Wrath incredibly painful.
Tezzeret just wasn't pulling his weight and was just an awkward slot. I like the card, and I almost wanted to force it to work, but it just wasn't doing what it was supposed to do, so it got cut. Rite of Replication is a card I didn't realize until I received a comment on it, so it felt like a natural addition. I just never got around to making the change until now lol.
Carrion Feeder seemed infinitely worse than Viscera Seer, because I would rather dig through my deck than make a giant Carrion Feeder.
This deck was in need of a large facelift, and it's partially due to user Merakon that I went through with changing the list in the first place. Props to him for getting me off my lazy ass to edit this in the first place.
Having a lot of slots freed from a lot of the decks I took apart, I had a bunch of sweet cards laying around to put in here. Having a bunch of awkward cards in the slots here that were either linear and narrow in function (particularly Deadeye Navigator), the change was obvious.
Caged Sun may seem like a great fit in the deck, but you always want to use Skullclamp to draw cards, and when Caged Sun is on black that isn't very possible. Sadly, the mana doublers that also buff your creatures don't play well with Skullclamp, which is what Nirkana Revenant was brought in for.
Aside from that, this update is largely just giving a facelift to rather useless cards and putting better spells in their places. Hope you guys enjoy the update.
-Updated the format of the deck.
-Updated the Nuances of the Deck section.
Gatecrash brings us a bunch of new toys for this deck; Mortus Strider is the new addition to the Clamp Club, and while he's no Reassembling Skeleton, the fact that he can trigger Endrek Sahr is worth including in the deck. Plus, with the addition of Ogre Slumlord, I want more recursive creatures that die because the deck seems to be shifting towards that theme more and more.
Crypt Ghast is absolutely fantastic. A 4-mana Nirkana Revenant that can also drain life on spellcasts? Uh, yeah.
Duskmantle Guildmage is insaneeeeee. The fact that you can get multiple triggers off its first ability is absolutely broken in this deck. Just a stupid card overall - it's like I've been given the most beautiful gift <3
Undercity Informer feels better than Ashnod's Altar as a sac outlet and is dumb with Duskmantle or an active Bloodchief Ascension. It also doubles as a win condition / manasink when you have enough mana lying around and a decent recursion engine going.
And then Thespian's Stage. Oh, Thespian's Stage. As if Coffers/Urborg with Vesuva wasn't bad enough, now you have to go and print a second Vesuva that can constantly reapply itself. Need to cack that legendary land? Sure! Jesus this card is busted as piss.
Ancient Tomb was a card I've been meaning to take out of the deck for a long time - you don't need Vela at all in this deck, she's a win-more to your strategy and casting her turn 4 isn't going to help as much as it will hurt. You aren't a deck that needs colorless acceleration, making Ancient Tomb worse than colored mana. (You do have a lot of X spells, though, which is what the Urza lands are for)
Consecrated Sphinx is a card I'm starting to grow an intense dislike for - it warps the board state entirely, much worse than Primeval Titan ever did. Seriously, how in the balls is this thing still legal in EDH? BAN THIS SICK FILTH.
Toss in Great Whale. With Vela out you can soul bond him to Deadeye Navigator and go absolutely crazy. Blink, untap, blink, untap etc etc until victory. With 8 mana you can cast Great Whale, untap and cast Deadeye Navigator, blink Great Whale, cast Vela, then keep blinking until you kill off your opponents. This janky combo worked for me the other night.
Toss in Great Whale. With Vela out you can soul bond him to Deadeye Navigator and go absolutely crazy. Blink, untap, blink, untap etc etc until victory. With 8 mana you can cast Great Whale, untap and cast Deadeye Navigator, blink Great Whale, cast Vela, then keep blinking until you kill off your opponents. This janky combo worked for me the other night.
In this vein, but less powerful, Cloud of Faeries, Palinchron, and Peregrine Drake can all go infinite with Deadeye and win the game with Vela in play.
Also, Rite of Replication on Vela = each opponent loses 36 life. It's not a definite kill but it should be pretty friggin close.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"I think EDH would be more fun for the majority of participants if players just showed eachother their decks rather than actually playing games out."
6 Vela the Night-Clad
Creatures - 21
1 Viscera Seer
2 Blood Artist
2 Bloodghast
2 Blood Seeker
2 Duskmantle Guildmage
2 Nether Traitor
2 Reassembling Skeleton
3 Fleshbag Marauder
3 Mortus Strider
3 Pawn of Ulamog
3 Undercity Informer
4 Crypt Ghast
4 Falkenrath Noble
5 Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder
5 Ogre Slumlord
6 Harvester of Souls
6 Massacre Wurm
6 Nirkana Revenant
7 Butcher of Malakir
7 Pentavus
7 Sheoldred, Whispering One
Sorceries - 10
1X Killing Wave
2 Demonic Tutor
2X Profane Command
4 Barter in Blood
4 Diabolic Tutor
4 Temporal Extortion
5 Increasing Ambition
6 Life's Finale
2 Counterspell
2 Countersquall
3 Dissipate
3 Hinder
3 Perplex
3 Soul Manipulation
4 Rewind
5 Evacuation
Artifacts - 6
1 Expedition Map
1 Skullclamp
1 Sol Ring
2 Dimir Signet
3 Druidic Satchel
3 Mimic Vat
Enchantments - 13
1 Bloodchief Ascension
3 Attrition
3 Phyrexian Arena
3 Rhystic Study
3 Underworld Dreams
3 Vile Consumption
4 Blood Reckoning
4 Grave Pact
5 Exquisite Blood
5 Painful Quandary
5 Polluted Bonds
6 Wound Reflection
7 Grave Betrayal
Planeswalkers - 1
4 Liliana of the Dark Realms
7 Island
7 Swamp
Nonbasic Lands - 26
0 Barren Moor
0 Bojuka Bog
0 Cabal Coffers
0 Creeping Tar Pit
0 Darkwater Catacombs
0 Dimir Aqueduct
0 Dreadship Reef
0 Drowned Catacomb
0 Forbidden Orchard
0 Halimar Depths
0 High Market
0 Jwar Isle Refuge
0 Leechridden Swamp
0 Lonely Sandbar
0 Polluted Mire
0 Reliquary Tower
0 Remote Isle
0 River of Tears
0 Tainted Isle
0 Thespian's Stage
0 Tolaria West
0 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
0 Urza's Mine
0 Urza's Power Plant
0 Urza's Tower
0 Vesuva
Why Vela, the Night-Clad?
How does one play this deck?
Nuances of the Deck
-Blood Seeker is great against token decks, and like his cousin Blood Artist, is surprisingly strong early.
-Remember when casting Exquisite Blood to remind opponents that your deck doesn't contain the infamous infinite combo with Sanguine Bond. Opponents will want to kill you...slightly less.
-When your opponents are deciding who to attack, try to persuade them to attack other players when you have Bloodchief Ascension in play. This is easier to accomplish when you have Blood Reckoning active.
-Try to get Vile Consumption active as soon as possible. Your opponents will cling to most of their nontoken creatures, and it's fantastic against green in that it wrecks opponents who have their army ready to strike.
-Remember when using Duskmantle Guildmage that its first ability can trigger once for each time you activate the ability. If you have an active Cabal Coffers and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, each blue mana you sink into this card can make any discard, mill or Wrath incredibly painful.
Changes Log
Rite of Replication
Viscera Seer
-Removed:
Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
Carrion Feeder
Tezzeret just wasn't pulling his weight and was just an awkward slot. I like the card, and I almost wanted to force it to work, but it just wasn't doing what it was supposed to do, so it got cut. Rite of Replication is a card I didn't realize until I received a comment on it, so it felt like a natural addition. I just never got around to making the change until now lol.
Carrion Feeder seemed infinitely worse than Viscera Seer, because I would rather dig through my deck than make a giant Carrion Feeder.
12/13/2012:
Demonic Tutor
Nirkana Revenant
Profane Command
Diabolic Revelation
Phyrexian Arena
Consecrated Sphinx
Exquisite Blood
Evacuation
Liliana of the Dark Realms
Grave Betrayal
River of Tears
Island
-Removed:
Black Market
Deadeye Navigator
Murder of Crows
Skirsdag High Priest
Army of the Damned
Fabricate
Mistvein Borderpost
Mind Slash
Innocent Blood
Caged Sun
Maze of Ith
Underground River
-Edited the Nuances of the Deck section.
This deck was in need of a large facelift, and it's partially due to user Merakon that I went through with changing the list in the first place. Props to him for getting me off my lazy ass to edit this in the first place.
Having a lot of slots freed from a lot of the decks I took apart, I had a bunch of sweet cards laying around to put in here. Having a bunch of awkward cards in the slots here that were either linear and narrow in function (particularly Deadeye Navigator), the change was obvious.
Caged Sun may seem like a great fit in the deck, but you always want to use Skullclamp to draw cards, and when Caged Sun is on black that isn't very possible. Sadly, the mana doublers that also buff your creatures don't play well with Skullclamp, which is what Nirkana Revenant was brought in for.
Aside from that, this update is largely just giving a facelift to rather useless cards and putting better spells in their places. Hope you guys enjoy the update.
1/23/2012:
Crypt Ghast
Duskmantle Guildmage
Mortus Strider
Ogre Slumlord
Undercity Informer
Island
Thespian's Stage
-Removed:
Consecrated Sphinx
Shrieking Drake
Dimir Machinations
Rite of Replication
Ashnod's Altar
Ancient Tomb
Cephalid Coliseum
-Updated the format of the deck.
-Updated the Nuances of the Deck section.
Gatecrash brings us a bunch of new toys for this deck; Mortus Strider is the new addition to the Clamp Club, and while he's no Reassembling Skeleton, the fact that he can trigger Endrek Sahr is worth including in the deck. Plus, with the addition of Ogre Slumlord, I want more recursive creatures that die because the deck seems to be shifting towards that theme more and more.
Crypt Ghast is absolutely fantastic. A 4-mana Nirkana Revenant that can also drain life on spellcasts? Uh, yeah.
Duskmantle Guildmage is insaneeeeee. The fact that you can get multiple triggers off its first ability is absolutely broken in this deck. Just a stupid card overall - it's like I've been given the most beautiful gift <3
Undercity Informer feels better than Ashnod's Altar as a sac outlet and is dumb with Duskmantle or an active Bloodchief Ascension. It also doubles as a win condition / manasink when you have enough mana lying around and a decent recursion engine going.
And then Thespian's Stage. Oh, Thespian's Stage. As if Coffers/Urborg with Vesuva wasn't bad enough, now you have to go and print a second Vesuva that can constantly reapply itself. Need to cack that legendary land? Sure! Jesus this card is busted as piss.
Ancient Tomb was a card I've been meaning to take out of the deck for a long time - you don't need Vela at all in this deck, she's a win-more to your strategy and casting her turn 4 isn't going to help as much as it will hurt. You aren't a deck that needs colorless acceleration, making Ancient Tomb worse than colored mana. (You do have a lot of X spells, though, which is what the Urza lands are for)
Consecrated Sphinx is a card I'm starting to grow an intense dislike for - it warps the board state entirely, much worse than Primeval Titan ever did. Seriously, how in the balls is this thing still legal in EDH? BAN THIS SICK FILTH.
Input is appreciated!
[Primer] - Jor Kadeen, Boros Legionnaire
WUBRGSliver Legion, Slynergistic Slivertastic BeatdownWUBRG
Here are some of the EDH decks I have to deal with...
[Primer] WUBDromar, the Banisher Esper StaxWUB
In this vein, but less powerful, Cloud of Faeries, Palinchron, and Peregrine Drake can all go infinite with Deadeye and win the game with Vela in play.
Also, Rite of Replication on Vela = each opponent loses 36 life. It's not a definite kill but it should be pretty friggin close.