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In this experiment, we make Allies out of Zombies—or is it the other way around?
The cohort ability word explores activated abilities in some ways that have been done before, but the mechanic has one particularly exciting feature: None of them require mana.
The cost of tapping two creatures isn’t negligible, especially since they both have to be Allies, but abilities that don’t cost mana are the easiest to repeat. I suppose creatures can stand in for mana (see: Llanowar Elves, etc.), but this way, our creatures can be doing other things, giving us more versatility.
Intruder!
Okay, but wait. Why are we talking about repeating activated abilities already? Well, that’s just how my mind works.
This Vampire Shaman Ally has a pretty potent ability in that she allows us to make an entirely new creature. No, it’s not an Ally, so she can’t team up with it to make even more Zombies, but as long as we have the Chosen and one other Ally, we can make a Zombie each turn.
That interaction brings to mind Intruder Alarm. You see, when that Zombie enters the battlefield (tapped though it may be), we’ll then untap every creature on the battlefield. And since Drana's Chosen’s ability doesn’t require any mana, we can just tap her and her Ally again for another Zombie, repeating the process.
Then, we can win on the next turn.
Why Wait?
Winning on the next turn sounds okay, but wouldn’t it be better to just win on the same turn we drop the Chosen’s Ally?
Kalastria Healer — With the Healer, whenever an Ally enters the battlefield, each opponent loses 1 life and we gain 1 life! That makes it the perfect way to win immediately up on making all those Zombies—oh wait. The Zombies aren’t Allies, so they don’t trigger the Healer. What is this even doing here?
Zulaport Cutthroat — With all the creatures we can make, the Cutthroat will be perfect for making all our opponents lose life for each one! Oh wait, the Zombies aren’t dying—what is this even doing here?
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Vampire Envoy — Whenever this becomes tapped, we gain 1 life. That makes it the perfect Ally for Drana's Chosen with Intruder Alarm. Sure, we don’t win the game for doing this, but it does put us in a pretty good position to not die.
Chasm Guide — If we cast this after we make all our Zombies (and untap them since performing the combo requires we’ve been triggering Intruder Alarm), we can immediately attack with said Zombies. This is a bit awkward since we’ll probably have played a different Ally in order to perform the combo, and this has to be played last, and since it costs 4 mana, casting both Allies could be kind of rough.
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Zulaport Chainmage — Here’s another cohort ability. The way to win the game with Zulaport Chainmage while going off with Drana's Chosen is to have a total of four Allies: the Chosen with her cohort and the Chainmage with her Cohort. In this way, making the Zombies is just a necessary means toward untapping the Chainmage with Intruder Alarm. We’ll end up with a bunch of unused Zombies and dead opponents.
Backup and Explanations
Here are a few more cards for the deck.
Sign in Blood — I often like to round out decks with a little bit of card-draw. This is just a nice, cheap way to draw some more cards and find the cards we need.
Infest — This helps hold off opponents while we try to set up. Some of our creatures have high toughnesses (Vampire Envoy), but certainly not all of them do (Kalastria Healer). Oh yeah, and remember Zulaport Cutthroat from way back when? We can Infest after making a ton of Zombies in order to trigger the Cutthroat a ton of times—yes, we kill all our own creatures for the win.
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Artificial Evolution — This lets us change the text of a card to replace one creature type with another. We could change Drana's Chosen so her cohort can be a Zombie instead of an Ally. Or we could change the ability so she makes an Ally instead of a Zombie. Either of those lets her team up with her own creatures for more creation, but we’ll still need the Intruder Alarm. But since we’ll have needed an Ally (or Zombie) to make that first Zombie (or Ally), perhaps playing the Evolution on the Chosen isn’t the best option.
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We might instead want to cast Artificial Evolution on the Kalastria Healer. Changing that trigger to look for Zombies would be great, as it would mean we can win with just Kalastria Healer, Drana's Chosen, Intruder Alarm, and Artificial Evolution.
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Or we could cast Artificial Evolution on Chasm Guide, changing its reference to Allies to Zombies. That means, whenever a Zombie enters the battlefield under our control, our creatures gain haste until end of turn. If we Evolve the Guide and use it with the Chosen with an Alarm around, we could enact the satisfying win of attacking with all the Zombies we make as early as turn five.
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Finally, Zulaport Chainmage is a reasonable target for Artificial Evolution. By changing her cohort requirement from an Ally to a Zombie, we don’t need a fourth Ally to use while iterating Zombies with Intruder Alarm—we can just use one of Drana's Chosen’s Zombie friends instead.
With all those ways Artificial Evolution to create a win with a few permanents onboard, you may want to up the count from two to four. It may also be worthwhile to include ways for more ways to find Intruder Alarm and Drana's Chosen—while the other cards in the deck are somewhat interchangeable, those two are integral. Nonetheless, here’s the version of the deck I put together:
Drana?s Alarm ? Casual | Andrew Wilson
- Creatures (22)
- 2 Zulaport Chainmage
- 4 Chasm Guide
- 4 Drana's Chosen
- 4 Kalastria Healer
- 4 Vampire Envoy
- 4 Zulaport Cutthroat
- Spells (14)
- 2 Artificial Evolution
- 4 Sign in Blood
- 4 Infest
- 4 Intruder Alarm
- Lands (24)
- 2 Terramorphic Expanse
- 4 Crumbling Necropolis
- 4 Blood Crypt
- 4 Watery Grave
- 10 Swamp
So if you needed a new way to use Intruder Alarm, if you love casting Artificial Evolution in unexpected ways, or if you just enjoy offbeat Allies decks, give this deck a try.
Andrew Wilson
fissionessence at hotmail dot com
