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Main » Articles » Séances with Devils

Séances with Devils

Brandon Isleib
Posted on February 14, 2012
 Reddit

I keep wanting to read the title as “Dances with Wolves.” Maybe “Cauldron Dance with Young Wolf?” But we have more pressing matters today: a tribal Devil deck and two decks around tough Dark Ascension nut Séance. Ahoy!

The Devil You Know (Yes, I Just Referenced a Jesus Jones Song.)

Five of the eleven non-Changeling Devils are in Dark Ascension. Three others are in Innistrad, so now Devil tribal has real options. I grew up in Onslaught, so I’m always on the lookout for weird tribes to do things with (sadly, Surrakar.dec didn’t pan out). The Devils might have enough to get there, and at the very least, the cards are easy to find because they’re new.

So, we have eleven Devils. What are the good ones?

  • Charmbreaker Devils – A Commander favorite; it doesn’t take much for this to be good.

  • Flayer of the Hatebound – The instant star of the tribe. There are instants and sorceries that reanimate creatures. Hmm . . .

  • Hellrider – Harder to abuse with the rest of the Devils, but it’s fine on its own.

  • Pitchburn Devils – Death triggers are handy.

  • Scourge Devil – Flayer is happy that somebody has unearth.

  • Squealing Devil – Playable under certain circumstances. It requires that we add black, though.

The others are fairly plain, but they at least do us the favor of presenting the curve of our choice. There are two Devils each from 1 mana to 6 mana (apart from the 4 slot, which is just Hellrider), so we can curve the support around whatever Devils we choose.

If we want to work those instants and sorceries around Flayer’s desire for reanimation, we’re looking at black or white. Black would let you use Squealing Devil and possibly Stone-Throwing Devils if we’re into first strike. The more I looked through black’s reanimation options, though, the less distinctive they became. Sure, you could use Patriarch's Bidding, but what tribe doesn’t want that? So, I went into white and came across Second Sunrise, a card I’ve liked for a long time and wanted to use for something. Ding ding ding! A winner!

Second Sunrise works here because Flayer of the Hatebound lets us send burn to faces; the fact that it’s an instant gives us better options as well. You can block any which way to have your creatures die, then Second Sunrise everything and kill the most threatening player. You also can run an attack with Hellrider and friends, see if the other side blocks, then Second Sunrise it all to create the same effect. With Charmbreaker Devils, this is exceptionally annoying.

With opponents fearing the Sunrise, but with some odd creature considerations, we need other instants to keep us afloat. Cauldron Haze is backup Second Sunrise, but you can give the undying Flayer persist for flavor awesomeness. Now, with our best creatures showing up at the 6 slot, Holy Day is important. Faithless Looting and Miraculous Recovery synergize here; Looting lets you get rid of duplicates and keep lands, knowing that Miraculous Recovery can deal with discarded creatures later. Looting is also polite enough to exile itself should you be interested in randomly recurring something else with Charmbreaker Devils.

Let’s see what that gets us:

"The Helltribe"

If you wanted a more aggressive version, stock with more creatures and maybe To Arms! for surprise blocking and card-draw. A more controlling version could add Angels to the Devils, with Firemane Angel, Reya Dawnbringer, and Adarkar Valkyrie looking particularly nice. As it stands, there are a couple overlapping plans with this deck: Flayer of the Hatebound and mass reanimation combo kill, grinding it out with Charmbreaker Devils, and attacking with Hellrider and utility support. I have no idea how this plays out, but it looks fun.

Séance, Yes, but to What End?

Séance is a frustrating card, mainly because that accent mark makes it difficult to search for. Typing Séance without thé mark léavés Gathérér and CoolStuffInc cluéléss whén you séarch for it, which is about as annoying as thé insisténcé of including the accént ovér évéry “é” in this sénténcé.

So, what’s thé weird—ahem . . . I mean, the weirdest thing you can do with Séance? My money’s on Riftsweeper. If you make a Riftsweeper token exiling the card, that token can shuffle card it came from into your library. That and some discussion with my deck-building pal Alex (who contributed his own Séance deck below) sent me going in a few directions.

The key to breaking Séance isn’t getting something on your upkeep; many cards can do that. We want to do things on most upkeeps and do something with the tokens at instant speed. So, why would you want multiple Riftsweepers? Mentor of the Meek, on a very nice sale at CoolStuffInc, is one reason. Paying 1 mana to draw a card each upkeep is fine with me! To add synergy, in went Nest Invader, which brings an Eldrazi Spawn that can sacrifice for its own Mentor trigger. Clone Shell’s intriguing at the 2-power slot—the token will still imprint a card, so if we can make the token die, we’ll get a permanent creature out of it. Besides, we’ll have a card imprinted on a token for a little bit, and that looks cool.

So, we have a card-draw engine, a recurring source of creatures, and ways to shuffle in what we exile. Win conditions are in order, and the best one I found for this deck is Timbermare. Not only is Timbermare a semi-guaranteed 5 to the face, its Ensnare functionality is among the best ETB abilities to Séance on opponents’ turns. If you have Timbermare to tap ’em down, why not have Sunblast Angel to kill ’em for it? The Angel is fine on its own, of course, but being able to Timbermare on one opponent’s turn and then Sunblast Angel on the next opponent’s turn is gross on many levels. (You’ll need to watch out for your own creatures, but you can Séance them anyway.) Also, I can assure you from playing the combo in another deck that Clone Shell plus Sunblast Angel is miserable for most opponents.

To round the deck out, I’ve added a Mentor-friendly sacrifice outlet in the form of Spawning Pit—it makes 2/2s and can let you use your tokens for half a creature—and splashed blue for Perilous Research. Altar's Reap also draws two cards, but you can use Perilous Research when you don’t have a creature, and it lets us flash in whatever’s under Clone Shell. Last but not least, since we’ve moved into Bant colors a bit, why not put in Wargate? You have some odd combo pieces to find every now and again, and most of them aren’t bad on the mana cost, so Wargate adds vital consistency.

The finished list is more of a that-seems-awesome-with-this-over-here! build than a comprehensive study, but this is a good outline of Séance’s upside:

"Sean C.E."

Alex’s build is much more straightforward and also much more capable of winning games. He’s loved Allies since they came out, and I wouldn’t dare build an Ally deck (since I don’t like them much) when he’s around to build one. So, here’s his take on Séance:

"Sean A.D."

The only thing I’ve changed from his list is swapping Terramorphic Expanse for his Evolving Wilds. He prefers the latter while I prefer the original, legitimate, authentic, Time Spiral–approved way to search for one’s basic lands. Your mileage may vary, but it shouldn’t.

Now that I’ve had my moment of purism . . . Allies can be thuggish in multiplayer. But when you can use dead Allies to trigger Allyfall on everybody’s turns? To quote Libby from Sabrina the Teenage Witch: “Ew.” (Yes, I’m dating myself with that reference. It’s a blind date.)

This deck has a normal Ally plan, but Séance plays an unusual substitute for Join the Ranks here. You don’t gain Allies as permanent as the regular tokens, but you do generate Ally triggers from creatures with those triggers—rather than having those two tokens trigger other creatures. Coupled with Join the Ranks tokens costing 3w instead of being free, Séance lets you tap out more aggressively while letting you recover more normally from sweepers. As long as you find one good Ally, you can pump it with Séanced Allies for the next few upkeeps and get up to speed.

Hagra Diabolist and Bala Ged Thief seem to be the best Allies to Séance on other people’s turns, but a Kabira Evangel on an opposing turn is fine as well. All these plans do a better job than my deck of taking advantage of multiple Séances, as receiving multiple bonus Allies on the turn of your choice is nasty. If you’re the opponent, do you block the Allies when you know they’ll trigger at worse times? Allies are a sufficient chore without regurgitation, and Séance is a great way of proving that.

And just in case, there’s the lone Sudden Disappearance. Retrigger your Allies or clear a path to victory; either one’s good for you.

Conclusion

I hope you’ve gotten something out of this. What I’ve learned is: Decks can be more fun when you pair them with a less instinctual color, and building with Séance is fairly limiting, but it’s beautiful when you can pull something together. (Bonus points if you can get value out of the token being a Spirit. I’d love to see what someone can do there; I didn’t think of anything.)

Best of luck with weird Dark Ascension decks; I had fun, so have some, too.

TAGS articles, casual, deck lists, kitt, kitchen table tuesday, brandon isleib, demon, séance

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