In this experiment, we set our creatures wandering in the deadly penumbras of seclusion.

I was excited when I saw Dragons of Tarkir’s Deadly Wanderings. You see, it’s very similar to Homicidal Seclusion from Avacyn Restored. To contrast that set’s teamwork theme of creatures pairing up with the soulbond mechanic, black went off in its own direction and had a seclusion subtheme: Some creatures and other cards had effects that cared about a player controlling just a singular creature.

The subtheme didn’t prove itself super-powerful, though Homicidal Seclusion was certainly a strong card while it was on the battlefield. I was hoping when I saw Deadly Wanderings that Dragons of Tarkir would reintroduce the subtheme but make it strong enough to be viable.

Basing my opinion on other cards in the set, I’d have to guess this is not the case. That basically relegates Deadly Wanderings to occasionally Limited oddball decks and joining up with Homicidal Seclusion for casual play.

Going Solo

Once I’d decided to build with Deadly Wanderings and Homicidal Seclusion for maximum redundancy, the question was what would be the best creatures to go solo. Something like Spiritmonger might be nice. Some Dragon, such as Dragonlord Kolaghan or Rorix Bladewing could get the job done.

But I really wanted to have something on the field already when I dropped one of my two 5-drop enchantments so that the creature would be ready to swing. And sure, there are probably 4-mana bombs like the super-strong creatures listed above. Siege Rhino comes to mind. But what I decided to do was take advantage of the creatures whose superpowers are their persistence.

And so I came upon Penumbra. From Apocalypse, we have Penumbra Bobcat, Penumbra Kavu, and Penumbra Wurm, and Time Spiral followed up with the powerful Penumbra Spider. The Kavu doesn’t fit the bill because it costs 5, which means it can’t come out before one of our enchantments. The Wurm can’t come out earlier either, but at least it is of relevant size and is more reasonable for its mana than a 3/3 for 5. I’m not excited about a 2/1 Cat for 3 either, but hey, you have to start somewhere.

I knew I’d need a few more creatures that replaced themselves, so I did a Gatherer search. I had to avoid things like Symbiotic Wurm, which replace themselves with multiple creatures, as that works in direct conflict with the deck’s theme, but a few cards still came out of the woodwork.

Brindle Shoat is a pretty powerful, though innocuous, little card. Unlike the Penumbra creatures, its replacement isn’t the same size as its initial form, but I’m certainly happier having a 3/3 token than a 1/1. I wonder if I’d rather have a 2/2 upfront and a 2/2 token afterward, but it’s a moot point, and I think I actually like the 3/3 on the back end.

Finally, the real gem I came across that helps pull the deck together is Flesh Carver from Commander (2014 Edition). First, it replaces itself, as is the requirement for this deck’s creatures. At face value, we have a strict upgrade from Penumbra Bobcat—instead of a 2/1 for 3 that is replaced by a 2/1, we have a 2/2 for 3 that is replaced by a 2/2. It’s the same mana cost and 1 more toughness.

But if the Flesh Carver was able to carve any flesh (sacrifice any creatures) beforehand, both its pre-token and token forms will start multiplying in size. And that brings us to what could be the biggest exciting element of Flesh Carver: If we have extra creatures stranded in our hand because we only want one on the battlefield, Flesh Carver can start sacrificing them for good effect—and every one of our creatures can be sacrificed twice!

Finally, Flesh Carver has intimidate. Evasion is pretty important for our deck. If we’re putting all our eggs in one basket, we really want our basket to push through our enemy’s defenses to deliver the eggs. I think that’s how that metaphor is supposed to work.

Backup

Now, our creatures have built-in redundancy. If one dies, it’s replaced, and it gains the buffs from our active enchantments—we can move on with the game without our collective heart breaking. But if our creature dies during combat, that can be a pretty big tempo hit for us. It means we deal less damage and gain less life, and even if we have another creature ready, we can’t afford to miss too many damage steps. That’s what a few copies of Vines of Vastwood are for. This is a versatile pump spell that we can use for just to protect one of our creatures, and for instead, it’s also Monstrous Growth.

For another form of protection, I considered something like Boon of Erebos, but I also wanted trample. As I mentioned, our attack steps are pretty important—with only one creature, we need to make sure that creature is dealing damage to our opponent. If it’s just being chump-blocked, we could lose by being overwhelmed by opposing forces, even through our lifelink. With trample, though, we put our opponent into a tougher situation, especially if the trample comes by surprise. Run Wild is the card I found for this. It gives us the ability to regenerate our creature as many times as we like—though it’ll cost each time—and we also let our creature trample.

Also remember that Deadly Wanderings gives our creature deathtouch, which may not be super-useful for some of our buffed-up and tough creatures, but with trample, even 1 point of damage to blockers is lethal, allowing us to trample over for the rest. We can only Run Wild a few times, but if we happen to land Penumbra Wurm, it has the ability naturally.

To round out the deck, I tossed in some copies of Sign in Blood and Skeletal Scrying to make use of some excess life and use black’s card-draw powers to find us the pieces we need and keep the engines running.

Penumbra Seclusion ? Casual | Andrew Wilson

• Creatures (18)
• 2 Penumbra Wurm
• 4 Brindle Shoat
• 4 Flesh Carver
• 4 Penumbra Bobcat
• 4 Penumbra Spider

• Spells (19)
• 2 Run Wild
• 3 Skeletal Scrying
• 4 Vines of Vastwood
• 3 Sign in Blood
• 3 Deadly Wanderings
• 4 Homicidal Seclusion

• Lands (23)
• 6 Swamp
• 7 Forest
• 2 Golgari Rot Farm
• 4 Evolving Wilds
• 4 Jungle Hollow

Buy This Deck

If you have a bunch of Penumbra creatures lying around, if you hadn’t happened to make use of your Flesh Carver yet, or if you just love Homicidal Seclusion as much as I do, give this deck a try.

Andrew Wilson

@Silent7Seven

fissionessence at hotmail dot com