Lands:
9 Swamp
7 Forest
4 Overgrown Tomb
3 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
Creatures:
4 Nezumi Bone-Reader
3 Nezumi Shortfang
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Augur of Skulls
1 Vulturous Zombie
1 Sadistic Hypnotist
1 Guiltfeeder
2 Mournwhelk
4 Nath of the Gilt-Leaf
4 Shriekmaw
Other Spells:
1 Liliana Vess
3 Grave Pact
3 Weird Harvest
2 Brainspoil |
  Gilt-Reader.
Description of deck by it's author
(quoted):
I always like it when readers share their
wacky creations with me, so it goes without saying that I was delighted
when Johnny on the spot Noel d.C. decided to blow the lid off the
greatest combo ever formed between an Elf Warrior and a Rat Shaman.
You start with a card Mark Rosewater previewed a couple
weeks ago, Nath of the Gilt-Leaf. You might say that he's a marriage
between Durkwood Boars, a one-sided Bottomless Pit, a Hivestone hacked to
"Warriors" with Artificial Evolution, and a Riptide Replicator with one
counter on it, set to "green" and "Elf," and with the ability to be
activated for free whenever your opponent discards a card. You might also
say that he does his own thing.
That was the first half of the equation. Noel kept me in
suspense for a whole sentence before (finally!) revealing the second half.
As he wrote, "Nath plus blank equals the engine B: Target opponent
discards a card. Play this only at sorcery speed. Blank = Nezumi
Bone-Reader."
You'll need another creature or token creature token to
kick things off, but after that you're golden. Sacrifice this initial
creature to the Bone-Reader to make your opponent discard, which causes
Nath to birth an Elf Warrior token, which provides more fuel for your
Bone-Reader. Don't laugh. It works. Keep doing it until your opponent runs
out of cards or you run out of black mana. If your opponent decides to
play card-drawing spell of some kind, or you happen to be playing against
multiple opponents, you can do it all again next turn.
As with any discard-heavy strategy, you can run into
problems if your opponent does something annoying like play a creature.
Luckily, Noel was one step ahead of me. Since you'll be doing a lot of
creature-sacrificing, with Nezumi Bone-Reader as well as Sakura-Tribe
Elder and Augur of Skulls, there's one card that can solve your creature
problems. As Noel says, "Enter Grave Pact and voila! You've annihilated
his hand and board."
Nezumi Shortfang is another fine Rat to pair with Nath
of the Gilt-Leaf. First, they team up to empty your opponent's hand and
make an army of Elves. Once that's been done, Stabwhisker the Odious does
a passable impression of The Rack, causing your opponent to lose 3 life
per turn. Call him The Rat Rack. Stabby Davis, Jr.? No? All right.
As a fan of the transmute cards from Ravnica (Hey, I
didn't say you had to throw away your old tools!), I heartily approve of
Noel's small Brainspoil toolbox, even if I changed a few cards in it.
Besides fetching Nath himself, you can transmute for Sadistic Hypnotist
(a.k.a. Nezumi Bone-Reader number five); Liliana Vess (more discard plus
some general late-game bomb-ery); Noel's finisher of choice, Vulturous
Zombie; my finisher of choice (and an excuse to make puns), Guiltfeeder;
and, last of all, Shriekmaw.
I added the Shriekmaws (and Mournwhelks) for a couple of
reasons. First of all, they're evoke-ability is simply dynamite with Grave
Pact. Not only will you get the "Terror" or "Mind Rot" effect, but you
will also force your opponent to sacrifice a creature. With Shriekmaw,
make sure that the "Terror" effect happens before the self-sacrifice
effect, otherwise your opponent can just sacrifice the creature you want
to "Terror."
The other reason I wanted to use the evokers is that
they are creatures that act like spells. To keep his opponent with a hand
full of cards, Noel used Howling Mine. Just to be different, I thought,
"What about Weird Harvest?" For one, it fetches all the pieces of the
combo in one fell swoop. For two, if you already have the combo online,
you can force your opponent to discard all the creatures you just let him
harvest (if he harvested any at all). For three, it can fetch some very
efficient removal in Shriekmaw. |
. |
