Fedger's Fiddlin': Eldritch Onslaught

Welcome to the first edition of Fedger’s Fiddlin’.  In the following blog I will be fiddling Inistrad’s ‘Eldritch Onslaught’ to hopefully make it more focused, efficient and consistent.  There are a couple of restrictions to my Fiddling:

1. The deck may contain up to 4 rares.
2. Of the 4 rares, 1 may be mythic.
3. Only a single copy of each rare is allowed.
4. The deck must be legal for Standard.

Efficiency

Firstly I want to up the mill efficiency.  Self mill tends to be an adverse affect in most decks, consequently if a card forces you to mill (as opposed to ‘target player’) we generally get a benefit.  No card demonstrates this better than the Deranged Assistant.  I want to make our mill options always give us extra benefit to really squeeze us much effect out of each card.  So here are the changes to the mill package:

Cut                                                                  Add

2 Merfolk Mesmerist                                       1 Dream Twist

1 Ghoulcaller’s Bell                                          2 Armored Skaab

1 Cellar Door                                                  1 Deranged Assistant

2 Curse of the Bloody Tome

I’m not too worried about the loss of pure mill power here as in previous tests it was too easy to deck myself (especially with a bloody tome).  Cellar door does give us an additional benefit to each mill but the price outweighs the bonus, and there aren’t enough creatures in the deck to consistently get that zombie token.  With all the flashback in the graveyard we should not be needing it as a mana sink either.

I also want to limit the amount of cards that are useless to me when they are in the graveyard.  For this reason I’m cutting Harvest Pyre and Into the Maw of Hell.

Consistency

Once the deck’s combo engine gets going it works amazingly. With Burning Vengeance active we get a ridiculous amount of bang for our mana with flashback spells so let’s add 2 more of them.

Focus

As it stands the deck isn’t too focused.  Yes, we have a good Self-Mill – Flashback – Burning Vengeance Combo but we need something else.  I don’t think burning our opponents to death on Burning Vengeance damage is effective enough a tactic on its own. More often than not I need to use the burn to take out/ finish off an opponent’s troublesome creature. 

I propose instead, that we use beaters as our way of winning and use the deck’s ample bounce’n’burn cards to eliminate any potential blockers.  To this end I add the following cards.

4 Civilized Scholar // Homicidal Brute

This guy is a great 2 for 1 in my eyes.  In his Dr Jekyll form he gives us effective mill with the added bonus of being able to choose what hits the graveyard and in the event that we pitch a creature he transforms to his Mr Hyde side making him a beefy 5/1!  Given that we’re aiming to remove blockers, his 1 toughness shouldn’t be too big of a down-side.

1 Skaab Ruinator

This thing is also a great fit for the deck because he can be cast from the graveyard.  This means when we are effectively searching for him when we self-mill and he sets off burning vengeance when we cast him.  His drawback cost (exile three creatures) might stop us casting him if drawn early but the mill package should keep our graveyard nicely stocked with creatures for at least 1 or 2 castings of him.

Combined with the Charmbreaker Devils and 2 Murder of Crows already in the deck this completes our beater package.

To make room for these cards, I am removing the defensive minded Fortress Crabs, the Pitchburn Devils, Sturmgeist and Scourge of Geier Reach. The last three have nice abilities but they don’t quite fit with the deck’s goal in my opinion – so they are cut.

Remove Blockers

Without the Merfolk Mesmerists and Ghoul Caller’s bell to force an opponent to mill, I see little benefit in having Grasp of Phantoms over Silent Departure.  So I’m going to go ahead and replace both Grasps with Silent Departures.  If your opponent is top-decking, then the Grasps would be preferable but this is not something to rely on and we’re focusing on removing blockers in the most efficient way.

I’ve also added 2 Nightbird’s Clutches for block denial and also some repeatable burn in the form of a Grim Lavamancer from magic 2012 who will give us some use for the unfortunate burning vengeances and lands that end up in the graveyard.

Support

As a bit of land fixing, I’ve gone ahead and added a Sulfur Falls.

Here's all the cuts/adds:

Cuts                                                             Adds

2 Merfolk Mesmerist                                     2 Armored Skaab

1 Ghoulcaller’s Bell                                        1 Deranged Assistant

1 Cellar Door                                                4 Civilised Scholar

2 Fortress Crab                                             1 Skaab Ruinator

1 Pitchburn Devils                                          1 Grim Lavamancer

1 Sturmgeist                                                   2 Burning Vengeance

1 Into the Maw of Hell                                   2 Silent Departure

1 Scourge of Geier Reach                               2 Nightbird’s Clutches

1 Harvest Pyre                                               1 Dream Twist

1 Mountain                                                     1 Sulfur Falls

I’m so excited by the synergy in this deck I went ahead and drew a flow diagram picturing all the interactions in this deck.

Now all that remains is to rename it, given that it’s no longer the same Eldritch Onslaught deck I purchased.  In lore terms, the library is often likened to the Planeswalker’s Mind. Since we are sacrificing our ‘minds’ for power I name this Fiddled deck:  “Mind for Mayhem”.

I’ll be playtesting Mind for Mayhem this week and will post the results on Friday.

Thanks for reading!

Fedger