If your friends all jumped off a bridge, would you too? (A Black and Red ‘Suicide’ deck idea)

Breaking news! I went 2-1 on Monday at Card Brunch (18 people showed up) with my UR Titan Control deck. It feels good to win again, and I think I can keep on winning now with my current build. We’ll see!

I was going to save this deck idea for later this week and attach it to a meta game report, but I’m just too excited about it to sit on it for that long! It all resolves around this little guy:

Blood Artist by algenpfleger of Deviant Art

Blood Artist is an amazing Creature.

Blood Artist

For 2 mana you get a 0/1 creature that is meant to die. He wants to die. He DIES to everything. And that’s the point. But what if he could die 2 times? Or 3? Not enough? Well how about 4 times?? And what if he were to have tons of friends in play that want to die with him?

Well, not only would you gain a lot of life, but your opponent would be done for, especially if you had 4 Blood Artists in play (They’d lose 4 life for each one that dies, and you’d gain for, which would be -16/+16 respectively). This card has been seen in Zombie decks recently and it’s been doing pretty well. Zombie decks don’t really have any life gain, and they also die a lot, so the synergy works really well.

But I have a different idea. I don’t want my creatures to die once, I want them to die as many times as possible. I’m a sadist.

BR Suicide/Fushi Titan (Undying Titan)

Lands – 24

8 Mountain, 8 Swamp, 2 Dragonskull Summit, 1 Inkmoth Nexus, 2 Shimmering Grotto, 1 Woodland Cemetery, 1 Copperline Gorge, 1 Clifftop Retreat

It’s mainly a black and red deck. 4 Dragonskull Summits would be great, but I only have two at the moment. It would also be nice to have more Clifftop Retreats, but those have gone up in price a lot since WR Humans has become popular. Because of this, I have 2 Shimmering Grottos in there for flashback effects. The same with the other multicolor lands.

Instants and Sorceries – 16

3 Undying Evil, 3 Unburial Rites, 1 Blasphemous Act, 3 Altar’s Reap, 2 Desperate Ravings, 1 Slagstorm, 1 Postmortem Lunge, 2 Volt Charge

Maybe you see how this is starting to tie together now that I’ve posted some of the spells. Lets say we have 4 Blood Artists in play but they can’t attack and your opponent doesn’t want to attack into them. How do we get around this? We burn them with our own spells of course! And then we can bring them back right away with Undying Evil on the stack, or get them back with an Unburial Rites later. We can also sacrifice the Artist with an Altar’s Reap and gain 1 life for each one in play while our opponent loses life, and we get to draw 2 cards! Neat! ^_^;. The Blasphemous Act and Slagstorm can kill your opponent’s creatures, while at the same time activating all of your Blood Artists’ abilities. Maybe you can guess what the Volt Charge is for, but lets look at the creatures next before you make any assumptions.

Creatures – 17

4 Blood Artist, 3 Inferno Titan, 1 Wurmcoil Engine, 2 Reassembling Skeleton, 1 Geralf’s Messenger, 2 Flayer of the Hatebound, 1 Bloodgift Demon, 1 Falkenrath Noble, 1 Hound of Griselbrand, 1 Olivia Voldaren

Yes, the Volt Charge is in there for undying creatures. Kill them all, gain life, and then proliferate! The Blood Artist and Falkenrath Noble are pretty much the same, and it would be game over for your opponent if you had all 5 in play. The Flayer of Hatebound is super dangerous in this deck if you get him out, especially if you can kill your Inferno Titan and then give it undying (10 damage to any creature or player when it comes back into play!). Unburial Rites also works good with this combination, since a creature is coming back from the graveyard and into the battlefield. Even with the Reassembling Skeleton, you’ll have a chump blocker + pinger all in one! Plus he’s great to sacrifice to Altar’s Reap.

Enchantments and Artifacts – 3

1 Heartless Summoning, 1 Jar of Eyeballs, 1 Mortarpod 

There are 2 ways to use the Heartless Summoning. The first is to make it cheaper to cast your Inferno Titan and Flayer of the Hatebound, and the second way is to kill all of your Blood Artists and other  1/1 creatures to activate the loss/gain of life. Jar of Eyeballs is a good way to get that card you’re looking for, and with tons of your creatures dying and coming back to life, it should be easy to get counters on it should you need a card in a pinch. Mortarpod is another great card that can be put to great use in this deck. Whenever you sacrifice a creature with Blood Artist in play, you’ll basically be doing 2 damage each time and gaining a life. If you have it on a Geralf’s Messenger or other undying creature, the damage and loss of life can add up rather quickly!

Sideboard:

1 Mimic Vat, 1 Ratchet Bomb, 1 Nihil Spellbomb, 1 Ancient Grudge, 1 Slagstorm, 2 Tribute To Hunger, 2 Bone Splinters, 1 Memoricide, 1 Life’s Finale, 1 Surgical Extraction, 1 Black Sun’s Zenith, 1 Phyrexian Crusader, 1 Sheoldred, Whispering One

The sideboard is kind of all over the place, but with cards I think would be useful in this deck. For example, if you want more ways to destroy your creatures, throw in Life’s Finale (which is great against Frites and hexproof creatures!). If you want to remove your counters so your creatures can use undying again, throw in the Black Sun. Mimic Vat is also a good way to sacrifice creatures you don’t want lose after they’ve attacked, and it can also save a Blood Artist for a rainy day if you are about to unleash a board clearing spell. Bone Splinters also works well as a 2 in 1. It kills an opponents creature while activating your undying creature’s ability, and with Blood Artists in play you get that added bonus as well.

Against the Metagame:

I think the deck that will hate this the most is going to be Birthing Pod. Zombie decks will also hate you, but most likely they will have the Blood Artists in the main deck as well. Token creature decks would be obliterated if you had a Ratchet Bomb in play along with the Artists. After some play testing over the last few days, this deck seems very promising. If you don’t have all of these cards, try switching out cards for something you do have, and if you find some other interesting strategies or synergies, please share them with everybody here!

Before I finish this article, I would like to remind everybody living near Nagoya that I always post the schedule for this week’s games in a box near the top left corner of the page. If you want to know the times please look there! Thanks again for reading.