Nicky's Xantcha Deck [EDH]

[Oversoul]

This is a deck I built for Al0ysiusHWWW. Didn't bother giving it a title yet. Might edit that later. We'll see. At the moment I have no idea what Al0ysiusHWWW thinks of this deck. He asked me to build him a Xantcha deck, so I did. Um, I might have procrastinated on it a bit. He originally floated this idea back in March, and I didn't actually put the deck together until a couple of days ago. Oops. Well, here's the list.

The guiding principle behind this deck is that it should be able to cause a substantial ruckus and induce "group slug" chaos at a casual EDH table. With the right setup, this deck can pack a punch and finish opponents off, but it's not a high-power Xantcha deck at all.

Commander:
1 Xantcha, Sleeper Agent

1 Abyssal Persecutor
1 Arcane Signet
1 Archfiend of the Dross
1 Arid Mesa
1 Ashnod's Altar
1 Badlands
1 Bazaar Trader
1 Bitterblossom
1 Blasphemous Act
1 Blim, Comedic Genius
1 Blood Crypt
1 Bloodstained Mire
1 Bonecaller Cleric
1 Brash Taunter
1 Bucknard's Everfull Purse
1 Buried Alive
1 Burnt Offering
1 Cabal Coffers
1 Captive Audience
1 Chaos Warp
1 Crawlspace
1 Culling the Weak
1 Custody Battle
1 Damnation
1 Dark Ritual
1 Death Kiss
1 Demonic Pact
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Deserted Temple
1 Disrupt Decorum
1 Dread Return
1 Expedition Map
1 Exsanguinate
1 Fateful Handoff
1 Fire Covenant
1 Footsteps of the Goryo
1 Forbidden Orchard
1 Goldnight Castigator
1 Harmless Offering
1 Heartstone
1 Humble Defector
1 Karazikar, the Eye Tyrant
1 Kardur, Doomscourge
1 Khârn the Betrayer
1 Lake of the Dead
1 Last One Standing
1 Marsh Flats
1 Maze of Ith
1 Mogg Maniac
7 Mountain
1 Myriad Landscape
1 Parasitic Impetus
1 Phyrexian Altar
1 Phyrexian Tower
1 Prismatic Vista
1 Rakdos, the Showstopper
1 Reanimate
1 Reliquary Tower
1 Rise of the Dark Realms
1 Shiny Impetus
1 Sidisi, Undead Vizier
1 Simulacrum
1 Sleeper Agent
1 Sol Ring
1 Spectacular Showdown
1 Starke of Rath
1 Stuffy Doll
8 Swamp
1 Talisman of Indulgence
1 Thespian's Stage
1 Thought Vessel
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Treacherous Link
1 Unearth
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Varchild, Betrayer of Kjeldor
1 Varchild's War-Riders
1 Verdant Catacombs
1 Vesuva
1 Victimize
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Wayfarer's Bauble
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Witch Engine
1 Wooded Foothills

 

[Oversoul]

I piloted this deck last night to test it out before passing the deck off to Al0ysiusHWWW for his own evaluation. We'll see if he want to make changes or is even going to play the deck at all. I dunno. Anyway, I was pretty happy with the deck's performance, but I piloted it poorly. Also, one of my opponents was successfully able to put a target on me while developing his own board state for an eventual win. I underestimated the extent to which he'd buff his Elturel Survivors and send them after me, and by the time I shifted my focus, it was too late to salvage the game. So I lost, but I ultimately was pleased with how the deck felt. Whether Al0ysiusHWWW will feel that way, however, I have no idea.

 

[Oversoul]

Brought this deck to my first game last night. Fought through some difficult lines and stayed alive. Bled the table out and eventually won with Xantcha activations. Deck played how I was hoping it would. Success.

 

[Oversoul]

Played this deck again. And yet again, I think that I picked the wrong lines, which cost me the game eventually. I'm kinda liking how much of a challenge this deck can be.

 

[Oversoul]

Tried this deck out again, but I got manascrewed. I kept a two-land hand that also contained Thought Vessel, so I thought I should be in a decent spot. I topdecked Wayfarer's Bauble right away. Unfortunately, after playing Swamp and Thespian's Stage and using Wayfarer's Bauble to fetch a Mountain, I never saw another land for the rest of the game. This was fatal for my performance, but I managed to throw a little craziness into the game with Abyssal Persecutor, which kept everyone alive even after they would have died. So it was still kinda fun and memorable. But yeah, the lack of mana ruined my chances this time around.

 

[Oversoul]

Had some fun with this deck, but ended up just barely getting stuck in a spot where I knew I'd get taken out. A player across the table from me was overly suspicious of Abyssal Persecutor, a card that never helped me this game at all and only served to paint a target on my head for this one player. Kind of weird, actually. I told him that he was making a mistake, but in the end, the game worked out for him and he just barely pulled off a win. Good for him. It was still lousy threat assessment.

 

[Oversoul]

Tried this deck again for the first time in a while. Incidentally, Nicky was going to borrow it a week or so ago, but changed plans and never actually played it. Anyway, I ran into the same problem, which is that some players become really hostile against this deck due to massively overestimating the threat that it presents. So yeah, it happened again. Two players who might have been in a good position to stop a third player from winning both went all-out against me, then died when the player they ignored popped off and killed us all. Makes it hard to judge what, if anything, I should change about the deck, because there isn't any particular card or combo at fault here. It's just my opponents having poor threat assessment. Sounds like a classic multiplayer Magic excuse, but in this case, I think it's true.