Amber Shadows [EDH]

[Oversoul]

This is my fourth attempt at a "Hellbent" EDH deck, but it's the first one I'm taking somewhat seriously. Gone (for now) are the days of me trying to jam stuff like Grafted Skullcap and Avaricious Dragon into a deck helmed by something like Pavel Maliki. On the one hand, I'm building my third new deck of 2023 instead of improving something old. On the other hand, there's considerable overlap between this and some of my previous decks.

I like the theme of building a deck to go Hellbent. But there are some challenges here. Firstly, the actual cards with the "Hellbent" mechanic are mostly bad. Secondly, I don't own most of those cards anyway. Thirdly, there aren't any great commanders to synergize with going Hellbent. And fourthly, I don't really know what I'm doing anyway. Solutions are, in order, as follows. Firstly, forget about cards that say "Hellbent" and just focus on graveyard recursion stuff, which is plentiful in Rakdos colors. Secondly, run Infernal Tutor because it's awesome and I already own it. Thirdly, find a commander that looks fun and reasonably powerful. And finally, pretend that I know what I'm doing.

Reviewing all possible Rakdos commanders, I decided that Amber Gristle O'Maul looked promising. I was going to name the deck "Smooth Criminal" until I realized that my EDHrec browsing had taken me to the wrong background. Criminal Past is more popular for some reason, but Agent of the Shadow Thieves is better. So there goes the awesome deck name I was going to use. Anyway, we'll see how this goes. At the very least, it should entice my opponents to kill me, and that's all I ever wanted anyway.

Commander:
1 Amber Gristle O'Maul
1 Agent of the Shadow Thieves

1 Anarchist
1 Anger
1 Anje's Ravager
1 Archfiend of Ifnir
1 Archon of Cruelty
1 Arid Mesa
1 Avaricious Dragon
1 Badlands
1 Bazaar of Baghdad
1 Bedlam Reveler
1 Blade of Selves
1 Blazing Rootwalla
1 Blood Crypt
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Bonecaller Cleric
1 Braid of Fire
1 Brainstone
1 Buried Ruin
1 Call to the Netherworld
1 Chainer, Nightmare Adept
1 Changeling Outcast
1 Chaos Warp
1 Command Tower
1 Conjurer's Bauble
1 Conspiracy Theorist
1 Containment Construct
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Curse of Obsession
1 Dangerous Wager
1 Dark Petition
1 Dark Ritual
1 Decree of Pain
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Den of the Bugbear
1 Diabolic Intent
1 Dread Return
1 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Feast of Sanity
1 Gibbering Descent
1 Glint-Horn Buccaneer
1 Goblin Bombardment
1 Goblin Firebomb
1 Goblin Welder
1 Grafted Skullcap
1 Grave Scrabbler
1 Impulsive Pilferer
1 Infernal Tutor
1 Jeweled Lotus
1 Library of Leng
1 Luxury Suite
1 Mana Vault
1 Marsh Flats
1 Maze of Ith
1 Memory Jar
1 Mindslicer
1 Mindstorm Crown
6 Mountain
1 Null Brooch
1 Oversold Cemetery
1 Ox of Agonas
1 Persist
1 Phyrexian Tower
1 Polluted Delta
1 Ragavan, Nimble Pilferer
1 Rankle, Master of Pranks
1 Reanimate
1 Reassembling Skeleton
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Scroll Rack
1 Sire of Insanity
1 Sneak Attack
1 Sokenzan, Crucible of Defiance
1 Sol Ring
1 Squee, Goblin Nabob
1 Strip Mine
7 Swamp
1 Takenuma, Abandoned Mire
1 The Flame of Keld
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Victimize
1 Village Rites
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Wooded Foothills

 

[Oversoul]

In constructing this deck, I realized that my whole playset of Bazaar of Baghdad is now occupying EDH decks (Liberator, Hakim, Otharri, and now Amber). It's not a problem, but it feels strange.

 

[Oversoul]

No luck with this one yet, but I was in a kind of weird pod I didn't care for much, and got egregiously colorscrewed with a bunch of black topdecks and no black mana production. I should have tried the deck in a second game, but both this one and our last game ran way too long.

 

[Oversoul]

I think that I had a brainfart and had misremembered Reassembling Skeleton as returning to hand, not to the battlefield tapped. I used the card and didn't care for it in this deck, so I'm swapping it out with Goblin Engineer because I'm scared that I'll be hoisted on my own petard by Ensnaring Bridge.

-1 Reassembling Skeleton
+1 Goblin Engineer

I might make further revisions later, but the deck hasn't really seen enough play yet.

 

[Oversoul]

Got stuck in a long game where I was awkwardly outclassed by two different opponents, managed to make myself a global threat and target anyway, and somehow survived long enough to be eliminated last. Anyway, the deck generally does what I built it to do, and it's not the deck's fault that I keep blundering into taking it into games against decks that are decisively stronger than it.

I've got the general concept of aggressive "Hellbent" topdecking gameplay going on, so perhaps I should work to make the deck more deadly. My game last night ran on for a long time and this deck simply isn't very good at killing opponents. I think that I took too sporting of a mentality into constructing this one. I might also be influenced by one detail from last night's experience. My opponent with a Nethroi deck used Bojuka Bog to exile my graveyard midway through the game. Bojuka Bog didn't really hit any cards I cared about other than Mindstorm Crown and Goblin Welder, so the actual impact on my own gameplay wasn't too severe. I'm just annoyed with people running Bojuka Bog in casual EDH decks because it is usually a bad card and the only times it works well are the times it is keeping me from having fun. Well, the game dragged on for some time afterward and of course this same Nethroi deck repeatedly made plays that dumped most of its key cards into its graveyard, then brought them back again. If I'd been running Bojuka Bog, I could have Bogged him back and effectively taken him out of the game. He'd have been thoroughly, totally screwed. It was totally throwing stones from a glass house. Of course, it was a single thing that happened in a single game, and not really that important. But it did leave me thinking, "If my opponents are just going to play suboptimal cards that make the game less fun for me and are also going to leave themselves so vulnerable, I should stop messing around and give them the punishment they're so clearly asking for."

Anyway, I just made a minor change to this deck and haven't gotten to try it out much, so I might hold off on further revisions for now. But I have some ideas...

 

[Oversoul]

Yet again, I got to do a bunch of damage to my opponents and then die. This deck doesn't really work properly. I need to make some changes.

 

[Oversoul]

Tried again. And yeah, this deck did get to pretty much play Magic. Like, it worked. I never even cast my commander, but I hit myself with Curse of Obsession and was getting substantial value off my madness spells. Someone else set up an infinite damage combo and killed me soon afterward, though. But it kind of works? I don't know.

 

[Oversoul]

This deck won a game! It was looking pretty bad, but I found and opening and my opponents had exhausted their resources. I was able to make Archfiend of Ifnir stick, and they had no lines that saved them from the beatdown that commenced once their creatures were all dead.