In this experiment, we offer our opponent the gift of life—but it is nothing but a false cure.

A long time ago, early in my Johnny deck-building career, I had a deck built around False Cure. While it may be a fine response to a Sphinx's Revelation, Congregate, or Heroes Remembered, most of the time, we don’t plan on our opponents gaining significant enough amounts of life that we’d want to run False Cure in our competitive main decks, our Commander decks, or our non-Commander casual decks. (A Cube in which False Cure were a consistent, powerful card, however, would be quite interesting.)

Instead, we will need to play our own ways of forcing our opponent to gain life. My deck long ago ran Skyshroud Cutter and Reverent Silence. These many years later, Wizards of the Coast hasn’t really played too much into the theme of granting an opponent life as an alternate cost, and that means I’ll be falling back on the old stand-bys today.

The biggest challenge of the deck, besides not dying, of course, is assembling a False Cure and four copies of our Nemesis commons. Alternatively, having two copies of False Cure and just two of the life-granting commons will be sufficient, reducing the number of cards we need from five to four. But then we also need in addition to a Forest.

With False Cure and four Skyshroud Cutters and/or Reverent Silences, cast False Cure. Cast Skyshroud Cutter for its alternative cost, putting the opponent to 25. The delayed trigger from False Cure will then cause the opponent to lose 10 life, reducing him or her to 15. The second Skyshroud Cutter will move the opponent’s life total from 15 to 20 and then to 10. In that way, four Skyshroud Cutters after a False Cure will drain an opponent from 20 to 0. Reverent Silences work the same way except in increments of 6.

If False Cure used replacement-effect rules technology, only one replacement effect would apply to the life-gain event (before it would no longer be a life-gain event), and thus multiple copies of False Cure would be redundant. Fortunately, for our purposes, this is not the case, as it allows us versatility in the ways we are able to assemble a game-winning card combination.

While the interim ten or so years since False Cure’s Onslaught has not brought us new Reverent Silences, it has brought us a few new tools. Notably, we have Overgrown Tomb, whereas the previous option was only the expensive Bayou. Having a Forest (for the Nemesis cards) that also taps for (for False Cures) is quite valuable.

The other benefit Chandra offers is that she can shore up the deck’s failings in situations when False Cures can only take it so far. Dealing just a few extra points of damage to the opponent’s face can help close out the game, and the ability can also stave off attacks from low-toughness creatures will help keep us alive.

Along the same lines is another good addition to this, or any black-based, deck. Crypt Ghast can generate a lot of mana, and extorting one or more opponents is very useful for both staying in the game and closing it out. When a Skyshroud Cutter or Reverent Silence is free anyway, paying that extra for the additional life-loss and life-gain is a huge deal. Extort will really help deal those last 4 or 5 points of virtual damage.

And for when we need to drain more than just 1 point or 2 of life at a time, we have Needlebite Trap. This genre of card has been appealing to me ever since my infatuation with Rhystic Syphon, and the Zendikar Trap can serve as an additional Cutter or Silence for only . Since the opponent will have assuredly gained life on the False Cure turn, the Trap cost will be available. This is another situation in which it is to our benefit that False Cure creates a trigger rather than a replacement effect—were it a replacement effect, the opponent would never gain life, and we wouldn’t be able to use the Trap cost.

The last few cards of note are for cleaning up the mana and for streamlining the deck a bit—something my ancient iteration of the deck was sorely lacking. Chromatic Lantern will ensure our lands tap for whatever mana we need, allowing us to cast multiple False Cures in the same deck as Chandra, the Firebrand while we also have plenty of Forests for our free spells. Read the Bones is a black draw spell that will dig us deep into our deck to let us find the pieces we need. Expedition Map, Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth, and Cabal Coffers form a package that will generate us a lot of mana, along with Crypt Ghast. And with all that mana, we will be able to cast and flash back our Increasing Ambition to pick up the last piece—or two or three—we need. Finally, Piranha Marsh fills a similar role as extort, though to a much smaller degree.

"Phage and the Cutters"

• Creatures (8)
• 4 Crypt Ghast
• 4 Skyshroud Cutter

• Planeswalkers (2)
• 2 Chandra, the Firebrand

• Spells (28)
• 4 False Cure
• 4 Needlebite Trap
• 2 Pack Hunt
• 3 Increasing Ambition
• 4 Read the Bones
• 4 Reverent Silence
• 3 Expedition Map
• 4 Chromatic Lantern

• Lands (22)
• 6 Swamp
• 1 Cabal Coffers
• 2 Stomping Ground
• 4 Blood Crypt
• 4 Overgrown Tomb
• 4 Piranha Marsh
• 1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

Buy This Deck

This deck has a similar problem as many of my combo decks, which is that it’s fun to think about and enact, but it provides little interaction with the opponent. It is a sad day when a Skyshroud Cutter has to be hard-cast in order to chump-block a lethal attack. However, this deck does have the advantage of scaling well into multiplayer. Not only will the multiplayer environment provide a potential cushion—in the sense that players will be focusing on each other as much or more than they are on you—but False Cure and the Nemesis commons apply to all opponents equally.

You may only be able to Needlebite Trap a single opponent, but a pack of Cutters and a devious gift from Phage the Untouchable can wipe a whole table at once.

Andrew Wilson

@Silent7Seven

fissionessence at hotmail dot com