On May 12th, WOTC spoiled the face commander of the pre constructed grixis deck, “The ruinous powers” which is available from the Warhammer 40k IP commander set. The commander heading up this deck is a real spicy boy called Abaddon the Despoiler. Whilst we don’t know what cards are going to be in the pre con until it’s officially spoiler season, that doesnt stop us from brewing a deck now, full deck list can be found here let’s get into it.
The Commander
Abaddon the Despoiler is a 5/5 Astartes Warrior with trample for 2 and Grixis. He also has a flavour text called Mark of chaos ascendant which reads – During your turn, spells you cast from your hand with mana value X or less have cascade, where X is the total amount of life your opponents have lost this turn.
This card screams group slug to me, we want a bunch of group pingers to deal damage to everyone so that it increases our capacity to cascade, we also can have some damage doublers in the deck to gain more value and some big spells to use as our cascade on and top deck manipulation. Something’s to note, this card only cares about damage on our turn so having cards that damage on other turns, wont benefit us as much. This card also doesn’t have a first spell of the turn restriction and doesnt end after you have cast a spell, if you have the mana you can keep it going. And lastly this deck does have a 2 card combo win con. Let’s get into it.
Slug it out
We want as much incidental damage as we can and in this deck, we have 12 pieces of group damage.
Spear Spewer and thermo-alchimist are cheap and efficient peices that deal 1 to each opponent, giving us a cascade of up 3 right if the bat. Guttersnipe will trigger off us casting spells dealing 2 damage to each opponent when we cast an instant or sorcery, giving us access to a 6 mana value cascade incidentally.
What’s better then main phase damage? Upkeep damage, we have tonnes of cards that do damage at upkeep and gives us some additional value. Protection racket will either give us access to cascade or additional cards, keen duelist, whilst not having as wide a range gives us both. Court of ambition will force opponents into discarding if they don’t want to lose the life and give us more access to cascading.
We also have stormfist crusader a card that give us a card (and our opponents) but deals them 1 each. Court of ambition introduces Monarch and at upkeep makes our opponents discard a card or take 3 damage each, 6 if we are the monarch
This is going to hurt
Let’s talk about getting that damage and amplifying it, dealing more damage will give us more access to cascades later. We have furnace of Rath, Angraths Mauraders, Dictate of the twin god’s and fiery emancipation. This will be targeted quite often so dictate of the twin god’s is especially good because you can flash it in at the end step leading into your upkeep.
Alternative costs
We have to have big mana value cards to initiate bigger cascades but alot of these cards have an alternative way of casting or reducing the cost of the spell. We can cast dig through time or treasure cruise by exiling cards in our graveyard to help cast it, into the story costs less if an opponent has 7 or more cards in there graveyard and temporal mastery can be cast for its miracle cost if we draw it of the top of our deck. Speaking of top decking….
Always top decking
We want to be able to manipulate what we cascade into, by using cards like scroll rack, the reality chip or diving top we can manipulate our deck anyway we see fit we also have some cards with incidental value like spy network, preordain and ponder.
Always knowing what the top card is going to be will help us cascade into more meaningful cards which can lead to more pay offs.
Cascade pay offs
We have some suspend cards in this deck but we are not going to suspend them. We are going to aim to get them by cascading into them. The floor on this is getting a free mana rock, but the cowling is so much better. A profane tutor that gets is exactly what need sounds great, or some cards to fill our hands. What about the best creature out of an opponent’s deck? That sounds incredible.
Damage pay offs
Because we are going to be dealing a tonne of damage, we should have cards that give us incidental value just for damaging our opponents. We have Chandra’s incenetor which costs less when we damage our opponents and turns all the non combat damage into potential removal, we have Florian, Voldaren Scion which basically becomes a tutor and we have Sygg river cut throat a card we will have no trouble drawing with.
Combo time
I promised a two card combo so here it is. With any of the damage doublers out we can win with heartless hidetsugu. If your going to do this be sure to keep up mana for counter magic because it doesnt have haste and will need protecting for a full turn circle
There we have it, this looks to be a really fun deck to play, and I am looking forward to the rest of the spoilers coming up. How would you run this deck? Leave a comment and let me know.
