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Yes, that's 1600 dollars, shut up. This is the story: One of my long-term Magic buddies has a playset of Chains of Mephistopheles for ages, picked them off when they are still cheap. He loves his Chains and every 2 or so years he creates a new Chains deck to annoy us. But his creations have never been that great. His last attempt was disasterous and frustrated him more than us. So, I said to myself, fine, let's do a proper Chains deck. That's itching me for 20 years now - he is sitting on them but never put them to good use.Now, Chains of Mephistopheles is a card that causes headaches understanding it and some players never really understand it no matter how many times they read it. But I do not want to get all too techincal because then you would stop reading this. So let me just explain the main combo of this (Chains of Mephistopheles + Anvil of Bogardan), I will focus on the RESULTS:1 Chains + 1 Anvil:In your draw step you draw your regular card. Then you have to discard one to Chains, then draw another card for Anvil, then discard another one. So the net gain is zero cards. You CAN cast an instant between the first draw and the Anvil. So, once your hand is empty, you instants are the only cards you will be able to play from now on (and only if you draw them first).X Chains + X Anvils:You draw one card regularily and as above can play it if it is an instant. Then you have to discard one card for each Chains. For each card you have to discard but can't (because your hand is empty) you have to mill yourself for one card. Then you draw a card for each Anvil and discard them all (can't play any of those).Note that players have to discard/mill for any other card they draw outside of the draw step as well! But, at least, they will keep the last card they draw in this case. This deck has TONS of interaction and synergy, read How to Play section for all of the other combos. This deck can stand his own in 1-on-1 but is designed for multiplayer (usually Pentagram).
Get out Chains and Anvils asap. One each is enough to get going, but a second Chains empties opponent's hands (so they can't sit on important spells) while more Anvils help you filling your graveyard.When you have the combo in play you fill your grave and flood the battlefield with recurring zombies and Spirit tokens from Spirit Cairn. Alternatively you kill opponents with Liliana's Caress. However, do NOT play a Caress too early! You are annoying enough and you need creatures to defend yourself. That's why I focussed on discard based creatures instead of Caress/Megrim. Other synergies and picks:HAAKON + GRAVECRAWLERSHaakon can only be played from the grave. Luckily he is a zombie, so he enables Gravecrawler to come back, too, even though Gravecrawler isn't a knight.CRUCIBLE OF THE WORLDS:Brings back discarded lands. Devestating with Strip Mine.REASSEMBLING SKELETONS:Can come back on their own, so perfect discard material.INFERNAL TRIBUTE:Very potent card draw engine with all those recurring creatures and tokens. Works even better with lands if you also have Crucible. However, keep in mind that each draw will trigger Chains. And, if that ever might be needed in diplomatic struggles, you could also use it to get rid of Chains, Anvil or Caress.SOUL NET:Creatures will come and go, so this has the potential for massive livegain.
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nice idea I like it maybe add bloodghast? I just built this would love some feedbackhttp://www.mtgvault.com/vaan104/decks/human-sacrifice/
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I considered Bloodghast but after looking closer I decided against him. See, when the Chains/Anvil combo is in place, I won't get any cards anymore, not even lands. So I will run out of methods to reanimate him soon. Moreover, he is neither a knight (Haakon) nor a zombie (if he was a zombie he would be an alternate way to enable Gravecrawlers). AND he cannot block, which is kind of a problem in multiplayer when everybody is angry with you :)
This is a technical question involving the effect of anvil and chains:At the end of chains, it says that it doesn't apply to the first card drawn by a player during the draw phase. Doesn't that mean they don't have to discard after you draw the first card? With chains in play this would make the net gain still +1 cards that turn.
Yes and no. You don't have to discard after you drew your first card. However, then you have to discard before you draw the second (Chains), then draw again (Anvil) and discard again (Anvil) which is a net gain of 0. However, as explained, if the first card drawn is an instant, you could play it before Anvil is resolved.You WOULD net 1 card if you could resolve Anvil first and then draw your regular card. However, this isn't possible anymore because of this errata for Anvil of Bogardan:"4/15/2013: The triggered ability is put onto the stack after you have already drawn your card for the turn."At some point in the past the regular draw was put on the stack, too, so you could stack Anvil first and draw second, but that's no longer the case.
Yep, that cleared it up. Awesome combo for sure!! Hope your friend used/uses it!
My plan is to tell him secretly and when this goes off and flattens everybody, HE will get the blame for building such an annoying deck, hehe.EDIT:We play in a group of regulars for almost 20 years now, so you can imagine the rivalry and personal vendettas foing on :)
My friends, Puschkin here with yet another fine example of why removal is so important. :)I really like decks built around cards like chains ... ambiguity, for example. Nice work, and good job describing the effects!
He he he .... once the combo is in place, you won't have many cards in hand eh? Ensuring Bridge sounds fun ... :)In all seriousness though, Bridge from below might be quite worth it in this deck ... since most of your creature's can nonce right out of the graveyard ...
Wouldn't Bridge from Below end up exiled pretty fast!? And Ensnaring Bridge works for all player (which includes me :P ), so if I play that, I can't win anymore.
Ah well ... it was worth a shot.Maybe madness would be fun to play with ...
Haha Arty recently made a Chains + Anvil deck and it's stupid brutal. That said, this thing also runs Balance...People have quit the game because of Balance.
This deck wasn't made to make friends or to establish world peace ... it wants to see flowers burning, babies crying and guardian angels in dispair.
Whenever I see someone make a Chains deck I get all sorts of giddy inside, even if the card isn't competitive.I recommend splashing blue. Why you ask? For the best combo pieces to ever happen to Chains.4x StandstillBecause Standstill with Chains is hilarious and absolutely frustrating.As for what to drop, you'd have to drop things that you probably consider fun like 2 Spirit Cairn, 1 Soul net and 1 creature.Now if you want a creature base after splashing blue I recommend Bloodghasts and Prized Amalgrams. Free creatures is fun.Another strategy you could do would be to throw in a couple Unburial Rites and 1 or 2 fatties.The creatures stuff is really optional, but if playing Chains, you should really consider Standstill.Of course there are also cards like Teferi's Puzzle Box and Wheel and Deal for ever more flavor.Howling Mine is also really good.I'm not saying I've played around with Chains...... but I've played around with Chains.
Explain to me, please, why I would like to run Standstill in this? All it does is milling some cards. Standstill is great when you are ahead - opponents need to cast something but if they do, their opponents draw cards. But in this case nobody draws cards, so nobody will care about the Standstill and just play their spells.I already commented why Bloodghast isn't in. Prized Amalgam (which wasn't printed yet when I made this deck) is an option, yes, but I don't think it's beneficial enough to splash another colour.Teferi's Puzzlebox? With Chains in play the Box will mind twist everybody and from then on it's a dead card. And at 4 mana it'll hit play too late. Same with Wheel and Deal - I get the feeling you think this is a mill deck, but it isn't. My route of attack is creatures, I only use the mill to get some of them in the grave. Mill is a sideeffect here - the main goal of the Chains/Anvil combo is to keep my opponent's hands empty at all times, the only thing they can play is instants. Too much milling actually HELPS my opponents to get out of the soft-lock with stuff like flashback, retrace, unearth, dredge and whatnot.
This deck is frickin sweet. Puschkin are you some sort of magic god sent to earth to restore balance to this game we all love? I believe so. Anyway, I love how you aren't afraid to rock 61 cards. I think in some decks it is actually better to have 61 vs 60.
Not a Magic god, more like a magic elder or paragon. Been playing and collecting non-stop since 1994 and always focussed on casual play, but also played competetively for many years. That's, ugh, more than 22 years now ... and during all that time I have always been active in the community, first in Beyond Dominia, then in Phyrexia.com, then in TheManaDrain.com and MTGCraft plus local forums of my country, notably Die Zusammenkunft. Most of them are defunct meanwhile, but if you delve that much into the game and see it evolving over almost the entire life span of the game, you just accumulate knowledge and see some things others would never come up with. Which is one of the great draws for me. About your 61 card theory, yes, for some decks running 61 cards is actually better than 60. It depends on your mana curve, in some constellations the 61 card version (which will typically have a mana source as the 61th card) will have a better probability to draw the number of lands you need for your fundamental turn.This here, however, is for casual. While I Do try to stick to 60 cards in most cases I don't numbercrunch casual decks so much that I would go with 61 cards just to have a tiny advantage in landdrops. It's just that I don't know what to cut and figured a 61th card wouldn't be a problem and might even give me the edge in a close game where milling will kill players instead of damage (because someone managed to get a Moat or something like that in play). I'll probably go down to 60 cards when I figured out which card is the least useful, most likely one of the Spirit Cairns. And that can take some more time - I don't own those Anvils and can play this deck only about 2 times per year when I visit my buddy (which is a 600km trip).