I Slit My Wrists to Win

First off, the title is metaphorical, not literal, so cool it. That's one of the ways a black deck usually plays: my life total is just another resource to be spent. If my opponents bleed out before I do, I still win!

Second, it was not a clean victory. There is a lot of room for improvement, and I was fortunate in that my opponents were leaving me alone. Well, not entirely leaving me alone. I had to recover from two major setbacks where someone just destroyed all of my creatures. I was left trying to find ways to rebuild faster than everyone else, and I think the only way it worked was because my recklessness wasn't punished by my opponents.

You can find my deck list here, although it will probably be changing as I make further updates and refinements. I first wrote about it just a few days ago. As a side note, I'm pretty happy with the cheap card sleeves so far. This is for the Commander format in Magic: The Gathering, and my deck is built around K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth (pictured here). He lets me get a discount on anything from spells to card abilities for the low, low cost of paying life. Any black mana pip counts as Phyrexian mana instead, which allows me to build a big board presence in exchange for a lot of risk.

So, how did the first game go? I had to mulligan my first hand and draw a new one. Fortunately, that second hand was playable, and I had an easy cruise to turn 4 with a land drop for each turn. It would work far better had I found some of my fast mana cards. I should add more, but I'm not about to dump money into this, especially if I'm not sure whether I'll enjoy playing it more. This is just cards I have on hand for casual games, after all.

Anyway, I got K'rrik on board and started toward an aggressive combat plan.

There was a board wipe.

Bummer, but that happens in a 4-player game where people know how to handle things getting out of control.

I managed to rebuild, and then there was another board wipe. Every time K'rrik dies, he costs an extra 2 mana to cast again from the command zone. That's how Commander/EDH handles these thematic cards in this format. This was getting frustrating, and my backup plan of combo piece creatures got killed, too. Fortunately, I also had some tutors on hand, and enough mana to make something finally happen. It was time to go big or go home.

I had Peer Into the Abyss ever since my opening hand, and I decided to play it on myself, losing half of my remaining life to draw 39 cards. Then, I selected the ones I hoped would help me lock down a win, and discarded a huge pile into my graveyard.

One of the cards I kept was Songs of the Damned, an older card that synergized well with the ten or so creature cards now in my graveyard thanks to that massive discard step. On my next turn, I was able to make lots of mana, dig for one last combo piece, and thanks to paying life instead of black mana, I played a lot of cards. I had bled myself down to 4 life from my starting pool of 40, and since I gained a bit of life along the way, I lost over 40 damage over the course of the game, almost entirely self-inflicted.

However, as a result, I was able to drop the OG black combo of Sanguine Bond and Exquisite Blood, so once I protected K'rrik with a Whispersilk Cloak, He was free to hit, trigger life gain with his lifelink ability, and start the cycle of triggered effects draining my opponents for the win.

This is a weird way to play the game, and I'm not sure I enjoy it, but it is definitely different, and it was undeniably effective. I'll be swapping out a few cards, and looking over my collection for inspiration. I may not keep this in regular rotation, but it seems worth another go at some point. What do you think?