Four Armies of the Damned

Posted on April 3, 2013

A few months ago, I wrote an article about four decks built around Form of the Dragon: one for each Ravnica guild with red. This week, I picked another awesome-but-mana-intensive card and built another four decks. Last time, I wrote short pieces of fiction and created a different character for each deck, but that took a lot more time than I expected, and it also prevented me from being able to talk about the decks. This week, we’ll correct that. The card?

Army of the Damned by Ryan Pancoast

Rakdos

"Zombies in the Walls"

The Form of the Dragon Rakdos deck was built to dive headlong into an attempt at casting the massive red enchantment. The plan came complete with Dark Ritual and various hellbent cards. Basically, things could go great or terribly, but either way, it’d probably be quick.

I wanted to avoid just rushing out the 7- and 8-mana cards in question every time, so I built this deck differently. Here, the Rakdos take the Boros shtick from the Form of the Dragon article by building up defenses until the big spell is ready to come out. It’s a little different here, though, as the defenders can actually serve as win conditions in their own rights through the power of Rise of the Eldrazi favorite Vent Sentinel and Return to Ravnica Two-Headed Giant star Lobber Crew.

Wall of Souls can also punish an unsuspecting opponent or just buy more time for the thirteen Zombies. Wall of Blood can take out pretty much any attacker, though at a cost, and Aether Membrane is a Planar Chaos rendition of an old-time favorite of mine: Wall of Tears.

Finally, when we are able to cast Army of the Damned, Fallen Angel or Corpse Blockade can allow us to sacrifice some tokens so Vengeful Dead can do the cleanup work. Of course, that’s only if we don’t have time to actually attack for 26. And Massive Raid can do 13 or more after an Army or just a measly 3 to 6 as our opponents face down a battlefield full of hard-to-kill Walls.

Golgari

"Elves and Zombies"

Golgari and this article’s remaining black guilds don’t have any red in them, which means they’re new to the potential five-part Four Somethings series—and that means I had a blank slate here. Well, I have a Jolrael, Empress of Beasts mono-green combo Commander deck. The combo is a land-animating effect (Jolrael or Rude Awakening) with an Overrun effect (Overrun, Vitalizing Wind, Beastmaster Ascension, Triumph of the Hordes, etc.) with an untapping effect (Vitalize, Mobilize, Patron of the Orochi, or Llanowar Druid). It’s fragile, but it can attack for a lot of damage seemingly out of nowhere.

Anyway, seeing thirteen tapped Zombies made me think of Vitalize, which in turn made me think of ways to use tapping creatures, such as for mana (Fyndhorn Elder), to return creatures to the battlefield from graveyards (Gravespawn Sovereign), to massively pump up Trolls (Mossbridge Troll) or flesh-hungry plant Elementals from Zendikar (Bramblesnap), or to gain control of all lands target player controls (Gilt-Leaf Archdruid).

Basically, the game plan for Golgari’s Army of the Damned deck is to start out with a few mana Elves, accelerate into an Army of the Damned, Vitalize, and then attack with a giant monster or take over the game with other creature-tapping activations. Note that Vitalize can serve as a powerful green Cabal Ritual with enough mana-producing creatures, and Doubling Chant is also here to just hypercharge the acceleration. Golgari Charm is around to protect the creatures with its regeneration effect. I don’t recommend the Nausea mode.

Dimir

"End-of-Turn Undead Army"

The Dimir list gave me the most trouble this week. My Standard list from just over a month ago technically fit the bill, but just reprinting that would have been a cop out—especially considering the primary win condition of that deck actually was to just pay for a bunch of extort triggers. The existence of Army of the Damned there was just due to my loving the card.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew I wanted Spelltwine. (Really, I wanted Galvanoth, but that would be for the Rakdos deck, and I just didn’t think that red Mirrodin Beast would work in a list without blue.) But a Gatherer search for “without paying its mana cost” turned up two gems: Djinn of Wishes and Counterlash.

With Brainstorm to combo with the Djinn and Forbidden Alchemy to combo with Spelltwine, I feel confident including the ambitious four copies of the 8-mana sorcery. And when it’s stuck in your hand, just counter your opponent’s sorcery to drop a free—kind of—thirteen Zombies. If you really need it to go in your graveyard for Spelltwine, you can always Recoil your own stuff.

I realized we’d want to keep up mana for the Djinn, Brainstorm, Forbidden Alchemy, and/or Counterlash, but rather than go creatureless, I included a suite of utility morph guys to both keep opponents guessing Dimir-style and to allow us to play control while also having a board presence. Ixidron is just for funsies—and the obvious value of resetting Skinthinners and Echo Tracers.

The eight budget fetch lands are to play well with Brainstorm, and my only regret about this deck is that a Counterlash on an opponent’s creature won’t let us drop a face-down morph.

Orzhov

"Carnival of Soul Sisters"

I think the star of this week’s article is the Orzhov list. Just as the Golgari list used mana creatures to accelerate and then Vitalize to push it into high gear, this deck generates tokens and then uses those tokens for more mana—and sources of life-loss.

It can play like a normal tokens deck with Lingering Souls, Conqueror's Pledge, and Geist-Honored Monk—and Soul Warden and Soul's Attendant gaining us life along the way. But Ashnod's Altar can let us turn those tokens into an early Army of the Damned, which means a lot more Souls Sisters triggers and potential Blood Artist triggers. Even without Blood Artist, a Vizkopa Guildmage activation before a many-token-generating spell could mean opponents’ death.

However, this article has been floating around in my head for a few weeks, and I already had most of this Orzhov list written down. When it really came together, though, was when I rediscovered Carnival of Souls for last week’s Commander deck. Now, we’ll probably need to have at least one Soul Sister on the battlefield, but a Carnival of Souls before an Army of the Damned means we’ll immediately generate enough mana to flash it back, thus generating even more mana. I wouldn’t play more than two copies of the enchantment in this decklist, but a version that really pushed Carnival of Souls I could see making room for some copies of Drain Life to really go all-in.

As it is, though, just making that many Zombies can spell opponents’ deaths with a sacrifice outlet (Ashnod's Altar—for even more mana . . . ) and Blood Artist (or an activated Vizkopa Guildmage).

Fifty-Two Zombies

Well, those are for Army of the Damned decklists four you! I’d like to complete this miniseries by writing about awesome, expensive, build-around spells in green, white, and blue, but I don’t know what cards I’d want to write about off-hand. Perhaps Dragon’s Maze, Magic 2014, and Theros will ultimately provide perfect candidates for these hypothetical articles, but I’d also be interested to hear what you all think. What awesome green, white, or blue spell of 7 or more mana would you like to see four guild decklists about?

Andrew Wilson

@Silent7Seven

fissionessence at hotmail dot com

You Make the Card 4 – Enchantment

Things have gone well for me in YMTC4 so far. I voted for enchantment both weeks, and my preferred card type ended up victorious. I didn’t chime in for the land-versus-enchantment debate, but this should just about summarize my opinion:

“Lands can go in every deck,” is exactly the reason I did not want a land. I do not want to see another Commander staple or generic color-fixer. I do not like ubiquitous utility cards, especially when they end up as expensive money cards. Crucible of Worlds is exactly the type of card I want to avoid in YMTC4.

I want to see a unique or weird card—one that is the antithesis of “goes in every deck.” I want to see a card that must be built around so that I can . . . well . . . build around it. Cards that promote new styles of play are my favorites, and I feel that an enchantment will have the best shot at fulfilling this.

That said, that’s all old news at this point. By the time this article goes up, voting will have begun for the color of the enchantment we’re all creating. I don’t want to write a second article down here, so I’ll try to keep it short by just including samples of enchantments that each color is capable of. I’m sure the community will be able to come up with awesome new stuff unlike what we’ve seen before (I have some ideas of my own already!), but if you’re trying to decide, take a look at these, and see if they provide you some voting direction.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, my vote will be for blue. Historically, the weird cards I’ve had most fun with have been blue—manipulating spells, generating Clone effects, and whatnot—so that’s what I’m working toward. Also, there’s the little fact that my Hakim, Loreweaver Commander deck could really use some new blue Aura love. But really, I think we can make something awesome out of any of these five colors.