Black or White [EDH]

[Oversoul]

I threw this deck together somewhat hastily and haphazardly. Shay Cormac was one of the only commanders from the "Assassin's Creed" set to pique my interest, and I was particularly drawn to the use of Heaven's Gate and Touch of Darkness as tools to throw bounty counters on all opposing creatures. The deck isn't very strong and I might need to tweak it to pump the power level up a bit if I'm going to seriously pilot this thing at my LGS. But I like this starting point and it's not going to leave my opponents feeling helpless, so it's potentially a good deck to use against newer players.

Commander:
1 Shay Cormac

1 Activated Sleeper
1 Akroan Horse
1 Archon of Cruelty
1 Arid Mesa
1 Baton of Morale
1 Black Market
1 Black Ward
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Bounty Board
1 Bounty Hunter
1 Buried Ruin
1 Cauldron of Souls
1 Cemetery Gate
1 Circle of Protection: Black
1 Circle of Protection: White
1 Cruel Celebrant
1 Damn
1 Dark Ritual
1 Darkest Hour
1 Dauthi Trapper
1 Decree of Pain
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Desert
1 Diabolic Intent
1 Elenda, the Dusk Rose
1 Endless Cockroaches
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Flooded Strand
1 Generous Gift
1 Ghoulcaller Gisa
1 Godless Shrine
1 Hail of Arrows
1 Heaven's Gate
1 Heliod, Sun-Crowned
1 Helm of Chatzuk
1 Icy Manipulator
1 Jade Monolith
1 Kami of False Hope
1 Karmic Guide
1 Liquimetal Torque
1 Luminous Broodmoth
1 Marsh Flats
1 Miren, the Moaning Well
1 Mother of Runes
1 Oversold Cemetery
1 Painter's Servant
1 Phyrexian Tower
9 Plains
1 Polluted Delta
1 Reanimate
1 Reassembling Skeleton
1 Retribution of the Meek
1 Righteous War
1 Royal Assassin
1 Scrubland
1 Selfless Spirit
1 Sepulchral Primordial
1 Serra Ascendant
1 Shaman en-Kor
1 Sol Ring
1 Sorceress Queen
1 Splendor Mare
1 Strip Mine
1 Sun Titan
8 Swamp
1 Swords to Plowshares
1 Tetzimoc, Primal Death
1 Tombstone Stairwell
1 Touch of Darkness
1 Tower of Coireall
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Tragic Arrogance
1 Unburial Rites
1 Urborg
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Victimize
1 Village Rites
1 Vish Kal, Blood Arbiter
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Wasteland
1 White Knight
1 White Ward
1 Windswept Heath

 

[Oversoul]

I played this deck for my first game of the evening last Wednesday. The game ran long with a lot of back-and-forth. I was doing well for most of it, but started to fall behind due to the sheer number of board wipes and my lack of card advantage. I'm kinda OK with that because I deliberately built this deck to be more janky, and running enough card advantage to reliably churn through a deck makes it too easy to break away from that. One of my opponents was running a deck helmed by Lim-Dul the Necromancer and mostly focused on defending himself and on milling the rest of us. He took a beating. Could have killed him, but it seemed better to leave him alive as a target for the other two players. Also, I think all three of them knew each other and were more inclined to focus one another. Despite the other two decks at the table both drawing lots of cards and assembling huge board states, they turned on each other enough that the Lim-Dul player and I just barely managed to wipe both of them out. I figured that once it was down to the two of us, he'd probably win because our graveyard were gigantic and his deck had more graveyard recursion stuff. But he was satisfied with the win over the other two players and said we should just call it a draw. More players were showing up at the store, so I figured I might as well.

Technically, that's a win! But yeah, this deck is on the slower side. I'm torn on whether to refine it or leave it in its current form.

 

[Oversoul]

That's twice now. This deck won a game that it had no business winning. Well, the player with the strongest deck at the table had really bad luck and was stuck holding my Akroan Horse. Meanwhile, a player with a deck themed around Radiant (the archangel) was sacrificing tokens a lot, which fed my Elenda, the Dusk Rose. The game got drawn out for a very long time. I was gaining enough life to counteract the damage I was eating from creatures flying over my blockers. Eventually, one player decked himself while digging for a board wipe. Soon afterward, the actual strongest deck at the table finally built up enough resources to start dominating. Almost immediately, he pumped up Tana, the Bloodsower for lethal commander damage and eliminated the Radiant player. I was able to sacrifice Elenda to Gisa and make enough tokens to block his token swarm. He tapped out and swung in on me, taking me down to 5 life. I had enough zombies left over to hit back for the win.

 

[Oversoul]

Played this deck and got easily picked off by a player who was flooding the table with gigantic creatures. I couldn't do anything about it. Pretty sure he won shortly after killing me anyway. I guess that's the sort of performance I should have been anticipating from this pile anyway.

 

[Oversoul]

Took this deck into a five-player game using the Star variant. My two opponents didn't play creatures at first and I didn't have much going on. My deck faltered, and eventually one of my opponents started estalishing a dominant position. One of my allies got bored and really wanted to concede. Despite being a huge underdog, I was ready with Decree of Pain, which was looking to turn the game around for me, when the other players all gave up on the game and decided to try to get new pods together. Success? I mean, not really. Still Royal Assassin and Circle of Protection: Black held their own in this game, and that's cool.

 

[Oversoul]

Played this deck in a long game on Wednesday night. The deck performed well at first, but I ultimately fell way behind, in part due to being manadrowned. It was a weird game anyway, and I'll probably remember it more for that. We all got off to a slow start, and at first I had both Shay Cormac and Sorceress Queen, but no targets to put bounty counters on, so I was attacking with both 1/1's just because I could. Eventually I played Vish Kal, and everything revolved around that card for a while. Opponents tried to kill it, I tried to stop them. I brought it back. One of my opponents conceded just because he was frustrated with the way Vish Kal was temporarily outpacing his own creatures. I honestly thought he'd probably have been fine, but he was used to having that deck pop off earlier and wasn't interested in waiting.

I had to use Enlightened Tutor to fetch Circle of Protection: Black if I was going to guarantee surviving another turn against one of my opponents. From there, I topdecked lands for the rest of the game. The opponent who was in a dominant position killed the other player at the table, but needed to wait another turn to finish me off. I assumed he had a lethal board state just from seeing his creatures across the table, but when I asked him what he was doing, he didn't tap any creatures or provide any numbers, instead he merely declared that the game was over. When I asked for clarification, he kinda blew up a bit. Didn't make sense to me and I thought either fatigue had set in or I'd done something to offend him. I asked the other players about it afterward and was told that he was "hung over." Hadn't picked up on that, but I guess it might have been the case.