Planar Chaos brought us some messed up cards. Black counterspells, good green card drawing, blue discard and so on. Circle of Affliction is among the messed up cards of Planar Chaos, but it still rings true to the motives, mechanics and flavor of black. Today I’m going to mix this card with some old school black cards for a crazy fun deck. A deck that can be as powerful in one on one as it can be in multiplayer group games. Curious? Keep reading!

I think Wizards has a secret laboratory where they have bubbling vats and drying tables. Or maybe an underground goblin pit where they mix species together to see what the end result might be, kind of like Saruman did in Lord of the Rings. Only Wizards does these crazy crossbreeding experiments with Magic cards.

In Circle of Affliction’s case, it’s like crossing Story Circle with Death of a Thousand Stings. You get the modal color choice and flavor of Story Circle crossed with the mechanic from Death of a Thousand Stings. Maybe they tried mixing different Circles of Protection with different cards like Entropic Eidolon or Last Caress in an effort to get the final creation?

In any event, Circle of Affliction is a great way for black to consistently gain life but it has to be at the cost of taking damage – so really you aren’t gaining much life. While most players would think about setting the color to your opponent’s main color, there are a few of us that would prefer to set it to black. This way, you can control the damage (keep it to one) and still drain life from your opponent. Once you’ve drained your opponent, the one life you lost is gained back so your life total remains stable.

Plagues and Deep Shadow.

As usual I searched the net for any decks that used Circle of Affliction. While there were only two I could readily locate, one seemed interesting. A player over at MTGS thought of mixing Circle of Affliction with Elves of Deep Shadow and Plague Sliver. Here’s the decklist:

This isn’t a finished deck and I can see several problems with it. While the initial thought was to set Circle of Affliction to green to combo with Elves of Deep Shadow, there are only three different green cards in the deck: Birds, Elves and Gemhide Sliver. There are a lot of black cards in the deck that can potentially deal damage to you so the question is: Do you want Circle of Affliction set to black or green? When this deck gets into the middle game, you will need the Circle set to black to prevent yourself from dying to your Plague Sliver. Which leads me into another cool combo in the deck.

The Gemhide Sliver gives all of your slivers the ability to tap for mana. Hivestone makes all of your creatures Slivers. Plague Sliver, once online, will turn all of your creatures into pingers against yourself. Combined with Circle of Affliction, each creature will deal one damage and then can tap for one mana to use the Circle and drain one life from your opponent. Ultimately, you will have the same life as when you started, but your opponent will be one life less for each creature you have in play.

There’s some good stuff going on in this deck, but the Hivestone and green cards are unnecessary. I would keep Gemhide Sliver in there just to keep the cool Plague Sliver – Circle of Affliction combo. I would take out Phyrexian Arena as it doesn’t combo with Circle of Affliction (you lose life from it, not take damage from it). Dark Confidant doesn’t combo with Affliction either so he’s out. And I would increase the land count.

I would keep the deck as black as possible so you can always be comfortable with setting the Circle of Affliction to black. This way you can have maximum control over it.

If I were going to go the more-green route to this deck concept, I would use Wormwood Dryad, Elves of Deep Shadow and Nettletooth Djinn. All of these green creatures deal 1 damage to you a turn. Without all of the other black creatures clogging the deck I could comfortably set the Circle to Green and still have the combo work every turn.

Or you could use Darkest Hour…

I mentioned earlier I would prefer to set Circle of Affliction to black. After reviewing the above deck, it became apparent to me that Darkest Hour could have replaced Hivestone. Suddenly the drawback of having both green and black creatures in the same deck became not so bad.

But if I’m going to use Darkest Hour, there are many, many other cards I could splash or add to make more combos work within the deck. One of those cards is Compost.

Compost draws you a card whenever a black card is put into your opponent’s graveyard. With Darkest Hour making all of your opponent’s creatures black, you suddenly have a card-drawing engine. Black has many means of killing creatures, even if they are black. To name a few: Betrayal of Flesh, Devour in Shadow, Disembowel, Fatal Blow, Krovikan Rot, Strangling Soot, Swat...

And those are just the instants that say “Destroy target creature”. Cards like Lose Hope (-1/-1), Darkblast, Death Pulse, Afflict, Sudden Death and Last Gasp are other options. And then you have cards like Chainer’s Edict and Diabolic Edict to just make them sacrifice creatures.

Here are a few more cards that work well with Darkest Hour:

• Elephant Grass. It has cumulative upkeep, but while you can afford to pay for it, you opponent can’t attack you while Darkest Hour is on the table.
• Any creature with Protection from Black works well with Darkest Hour. Unblockable creatures? I say yes.
• Decomposition is a nice form of green removal. And if you are using Compost, it does double duty – destroying a creature and drawing you a card.
• Reap is another great way to gain card advantage while your opponent's creatures are black. Pulling cards out of your graveyard for each black permanent they control… that’s prime.

But that’s just Darkest Hour.

Back to our card at hand, Circle of Affliction. There are other cards that work extremely well with it. While one shot damage cards mentioned in the first deck are nice, I want something with more power. Something black. Something capable of destroying lots in one turn. Something devastating. Something as old as a card in Alpha.

Apeiron was the one to recommend using Pestilence and Circle of Affliction together in the previous PC Combo Thread in the MDV forums. I then posted it on the Planar Chaos combo page. And it was at that point that I started building the deck you will see in just a moment.

With Pestilence on the board, every black mana you have available to you becomes a game wrecking enabler. Both to you and your opponent. One damage to each creature and each player for just one mana? Having the card is one thing but making sure the card doesn’t kill you while killing your opponent is another.

That’s where Circle of Affliction comes into play. When you activate Pestilence for one, Pestilence will damage you, everyone and every creature on the board. With the Circle set to black, you can pay one mana to gain one life and make an opponent lose one life. This puts you right back at the life you had before activating Pestilence and essentially provides a two life swing for only two mana.

Unfortunately, all-powerful cards have to come with some baggage. In Pestilence’s case, there has to be at least one creature on the board at all times for Pestilence to stay in play. Our answer to that is Protection from Black. In black, there are only three creatures with Pro: Black. Those creatures are Cemetery Gate, Minion of Leshrac and Spirit of the Night. If I was going to go black with a splash of green, I would use Cemetery Gate. Under any circumstances, I would not use Minion of Leshrac. He needs a whole deck built around him.

Now that I’ve covered most of the card interactions in the deck, here it is:

QUICK NOTE: Beware of bombos.  In the original decklist, I had a nice combo of Darkest Hour - Urborg Shambler - Forbidden Orchard - Compost.  That is, until I realized Compost and Dark Ritual don't interact with tokens as I had hoped.  Thus the bombo.  Compost states that a "black card" has to go to the opponent's graveyard in order for a card to be drawn.  Tokens aren't cards and thus the combo didn't work.  Good thing I caught that before publication.

So I replaced the Composts that were once in the deck with Diabolic Edicts for some additional creature control that your Pestilence and Urborg Shambler can't handle.  Shambler still works well with Forbidden Orchard as the tokens will die upon entering play thanks to state-based effects. 

Having green in the deck allowed me access to Harrow, Putrefy and Reap.  Each of these cards help to stabalize the deck in terms of mana and control.

Other than that, the rest of the deck has been described throughout today’s article. You’ve got Cemetery Gate and one Spirit of the Night to be resistant to the effects of Pestilence. Reap combos with Darkest Hour. Urborg Shambler makes an appearance to combo with Darkest Hour as well. Circle of Affliction and Pestilence combo to create your main win condition.

There are many ways to modify this deck to your liking, such as adding more green creatures with Protection from Black to give the deck some beatdown. Green creatures that naturally have protection from black include Anurid Scavenger, Darkwatch Elves, Nantuko Blightcutter, Phantom Centaur, and Whirling Dervish.

You could add more Bubbling Mucks to kill your opponent a few turns earlier. You could take green out altogether and make it more like a mono-black control deck loaded with creature removal. Whatever you do, know that Circle of Affliction is a potent card if you mix it with other cards that work well with it.

I hope you enjoyed this article and I also hope you are going to leave me some feedback in the forums to let me know what you thought. Remember that no Ruler can rule without underlings and servants. Or advisors (like you).

That said, join me next time where I explore a rare card from the Invasion Block!

John Streetz

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