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It's time to head back to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Magic the Gathering's most beloved, most horrific plane, Innistrad. The full setlist has finally been revealed, and although there's a hell of a lot going on here this time around, what with the werewolves and vampires and ghosts and such — and we will get to them eventually — there is one new Commander who immediately caught my eye… and she's just a smiling lady who loves to curse people. This week, we're building .
Lynde, Cheerful Tormentor is a 2/4 Human Warlock with 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Deathtouch who costs one generic, one blue, one black, and one red mana. Whenever a Curse enchantment is put into the graveyard from the battlefield, you return it to the bat༒tlefield attached to yourself at the next end step. While that sounds bad, at your next upkeep you are then allowed to move Curse you control from yourself onto an opponent.
Ramp
Lynde has three colours, and none of them are green, meaning we'll need other ways to both build up the mana and fix our lands to ensure we can always cast what we need to.
First, the staples. Sol Ring, Arcane Signet, and the Temple of the False God are almost always the first three cards worth putting in. They're not particularly interesting, but they provide much-needed extra mana for either a cheap cost or for free. Sacrificing Burnished Hart to search for a land has some neat synergy with other cards in the deck, like The Meathook Massacre and Syr Konrad, so that'll go in as well.
Probably the most potent ramping tool is also the first Curse of the deck, Curse of Opulence. Encouraging everybody to attack one player, and getting Gold token when they do, is immense, especially if you can get it out early on for just one mana. Double that up with a Dockside Extortionist and you'll be exploding in open mana incredibly quickly.
Draw
Drawing into as many curses as we can is crucial, and so this deck has plenty of ways🤡 to draw.
Read the Bones and Phyrexian Arena fit nicely inꦑto almost a💖ny deck with red and black, and so are easy inclusions here.
After that, there are three main curses that let us draw. Curse of Verbosity has a similar effect to Curse of Opulence, but lets you and the attacking player draw a card when they attack the cursed opponent, while the Curse of Chaos lets the attacking player discard and draw. The third one is new to Midnight Hunt, Curse of Surveillance, letting everybody but the cursed player draw equal to the number of curses on them. While targeting one player with lots of curses can be a bit of a feel-bad play, being able to draw multiple cards on their turn is incredibly ꦑpowerful.
Monastery Siege is a really handy and flexible enchantment. If you've already drawn what you need, it can protect your permanents with an additional cost to target them, but if you haven't it can let you discard and draw on your upkeep. Combine that with Paradox Haze (which is a card we'll go more into later), and you'll be able to draw two if you need to.
Finally, Ever-Watching Threshold is a fantastic enchantment that will either dissuade an opponent (probably the one you've dumped all the curses on) from attacking you, or at least let you draw if they have. This deck is fairly light on potential blocking creatures, meaning pillow fort tools like this are critical.
Curses
We've got a few curses already, but now it's time to add the real meat of the deck. Curses are enchantments you put on another player that either persuade your other opponents to target them, or directly punish the cursed player in some way.
Possibly the most important Curse in the entire deck is Curse of Misfortunes, as, on your upkeep, it lets you search your deck for another curse and attach it to them. With Lynde, curses aren't likely to stay off the board for long, and so Curse of Misfortunes will let them all pile up quickly.
Next up, there's Curse of Thirst, which is one of the ways this deck actually wins. It deals damage to the target player equal to the number of curses on them — stack up the curses, let Thirst drain them, then move on to the next target once that player has been eliminated. With Curse of Vengeance, which gives you life and draw cards based on the number of spells the cursedﷺ𒆙 opponent played before losing, and knockout will bolster your position even more.
Though they're not curses as far as Lynde's graveyard ability is concerned, there are a few other enchantments that really help. Estrid's Invocation and Mirrormade allow you to copy any enchantment you need. Having two Curse of Misfortune, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Curse of Opulence, or Curse of Echoes out at once🅺🀅 is too good an opportunity to pass up on, while also providing a backup for if the original version gets removed somehow.
Curse-Loving Creatures
This deck is very enchantment-heavy, but there are a few creatures who synergise paꦕrticularly well with the effects of our curses.
Syr Konrad the Grim and Tergrid, God of Fright work very nicely with the forced sacrifices from Cruel Reality and Torment of Scarabs. Draining your opponents, then giving you control of whatever they sacrificed to serve as a blocker is always nice. As an added bonus, Tergrid absolutely loves Curse of Obsession, as it forces your opponent to discard their꧟ entire hand at the end of each turn𝔉.
Agent of Erebos is a good answer to any graveyard recursion deck, as it can exile it whenever an enchantment enters the battlefield under your control. If you lose a lot of curses in one turn, putting Doomwake Giant out before Lynd🎐e brings them all back will help massively, as it is an effective board wipe thanks to its -1/-1 constellation ability, and hopefully put💛 off any opportunistic attackers.
Move The Curses Around
Lynde's ability has one major downside: curses that enter the graveyard return to the battlefield at the next end step, but enter attached to you. That means there's a high chance that you'll be the victim of your own enchantments, and so we need to find ways to offload them as quickly as we can by doubling up how many upkeep triggers we have.
For this, we'll be combining Paradox Haze and Sphinx of the Second Sun. Paradox Haze givers you a second upkeep step, where Lynde can move a curse onto another player, while Sphinx of the Second Sun gives you a second entire beginning phase, which includes an upkeep. Put them together and you'll have a total of four upkeeps, and can move four curses elsewhere every single turn.
Protect Yourself
Curses are a contentious deck theme in Commander, as you tend to be picking on one player who is likely to retaliate. Because of that, there are ways we can hold off against the inevitable backlash. Stock up on pillow fort pieces like the aforementioned E🌃ver-Watching Threshol🌟d and Propaganda to prevent direct attacks, and use tax pieces like Callaphe, Beloved of the Sea to stave off targeted removal.
Tidal Barracuda is one of my favourite Magic cards ever made, and it really comes into its own with Lynde. One of the worst outcomes is somebody removing a curse on your turn, making it come back attached to you and remain there for a full turn cycle, and Tidal Barracuda almost entirely shuts that down. You can flash out curses on other people's turns — which turns them into powerful diplomatic tools for table politics — but, more importantly, people can't cast spells on your turn. No more targeted removal, and no more sitting with the curse for everyone else to make use of for such a long time.
Sometimes you're in a position where you simply can't afford to not have your curses out. For that, the deck has a few of the best counterspells in the game, like Counterspell, Mana Drain, Tale's End, Fierce Guardianship, and Force of Negation.
Time to Win
If the plan of draining through the Curse of Thirst and Syr Konrad isn't enough for you, Triskaidekaphobia is a neat card to include. You'll be gradually sapping the table's life each turn, and Triskaidekaphobia knocks anybody out of the game if they are at 13 life exactly on your upkeep. Use something like Exsanguinate to get enough players down to that amount and you could knock out multiple players in one turn.
If Triskaidekaphobia is plan B, plan C is to pull the table down to zero life with cards like The Meathook Massacre, Xantcha, Sleeper Agent, and Mogis, God of Slaughter. At the ve♍ry least, Mogis is indestructible, and so a perfect tool♓ for brute-forcing enemies down in combat.
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While not necessarily powerful, this is a deck you'll want to make the table aware of in your rule zero discussion. Curse decks tend to feel meaner than most other types, simply because victory requires you to pick on one person until they're dead and then move on to the next one. Being on the receiving end of a curse deck when you weren't expecting it is no fun at all, so make sure your table knows what it's getting itself in for when you shuffle up.
Regardless, I absolutely love Lynde's design. A curse-focused Commander with inbuilt recursion that's offset by risking the curses coming back to bite you is genius.
It's also something that scales well to all kinds of power levels. You could scale it back by removing the tutor cards like Bitterheart Witch and Curse of Misfortunes and lowering the quality of the counterspells to cards like Muddle the Mixture, Rewind, and Arcane Denial. Alternatively, you could go the opposite direction, add more fast mana through cards like Fellwar Stone or Jeweled Lotus, and add even more tutors like Vampiric and Demonic Tutor.
For a full deck built with Lynde, Cheerful Tormentor, c𒀰heck out the for this guide.
Lynde, Cheerful Tormentor will only be available in Set and Collector's Booster packs of Innistrad: Midnight Hunt, which launches on September 24, 2021.