Illness Orchard

by kmk888 on 26 November 2013

Main Deck (60 cards)

Sideboard (15 cards)


Sorceries (3)

Artifacts (3)


Submit a list of cards below to bulk import them all into your sideboard. Post one card per line using a format like "4x Birds of Paradise" or "1 Blaze", you can even enter just the card name by itself like "Wrath of God" for single cards.


Deck Description

When you boil this deck down, it's just illness in the ranks + forbidden orchard abuse. Basically constant token death. Thanks very much to @blackserbian for being the first one to show me the wonder of forbidden orchard and suture priest. When trying to improve his decklist, I thought of illness in the ranks, and then blood artist, and that was the origin of this beauty.

It was given an honorable mention in Gavin Verhey's Modern on a Budget article on dailymtg.com

How to Play

There are three things this deck needs to succeed:

-A way to give your opponent tokens
-A way to kill said tokens
-A way to profit of that death

Quite a few of these cards fill more than one of these roles. But this is fundamentally a token abuse deck. It can be very powerful. I'll give you an example:


Best hand: 3x forbidden orchard (or whatever land really, as long as it can cast the things here), illness in the ranks, blood artist, twilight drover, hunted troll

first turn illness in the ranks with forbidden orchard

second turn blood artist

third turn twilight drover, the opponent loses 0-3 life you gain 0-3 life because of the orchards

fourth turn hunted troll the opponent loses 4-8 life and you gain that much, depending on how many orchards you tapped, your drover gets 4-8 +1/+1 counters.
Best hand and no blocks, you dealt 3, then 8, then attacked for 9, for exactly lethal on the 4th turn. Even if you didn't quite get there, after that just keep spamming out 0/0 tokens, and attack with your stupidly large twilight drover and troll.


This is obviously a kind of looney scenario, but the reason why this deck is good is because it runs on synergy, meaning it's powerful even when it doesn't hit the perfect hand.

-forbidden orchard, hunted troll and mercy killing give your opponent tokens
-Illness in the ranks, ratchet bomb, and massacre wurm let you kill tokens
-Blood artist, suture priest, twilight drovers, reaper of the wilds, and massacre wurm let you profit from the death of these tokens
-Twilight drovers, hunted trolls, reaper of the wilds, and massacre wurm let you beat down

Deck Tags

  • Modern
  • Budget
  • illness in the ranks
  • forbidden orchard

Deck at a Glance

Social Stats

3
Likes

This deck has been viewed 2,566 times.

Mana Curve

Mana Symbol Occurrence

9022019

Card Legality

  • Not Legal in Standard
  • Legal in Modern
  • Legal in Vintage
  • Legal in Legacy

Deck discussion for Illness Orchard

I've been wanting to do a similar deck for a while now, except mine will be UB to use Hunted Phantasm.

Some cards I use in my Stronghold Discipline deck ( http://www.mtgvault.com/dedwards/decks/strong-hold-on-discipline/ ) mite be useful here. In particular I like using Hissing Miasma and Souls of the Faultless to ward off creatures I can't deal with (dam you hexproof). Batwing Brume helps here too.

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Posted 29 November 2013 at 08:54

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Cool man! I've always been a big fan of hissing miasma and batwing brume. All of these things you've said, particularly stronghold, suggest that you might not even try to kill the tokens. Am I reading that right? Are you going to just soft control them? That's kind of cool, although it gives the opponents more options than I would prefer. In that case, I would recommend running swan song, curse of the swine, echoing truth, and ratchet bombs

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Posted 29 November 2013 at 16:53

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Yes, the Stronghold version wants the creatures to live. I was only suggesting the Miasma and Batwing for if the opponent has creatures that live even if Illness makes them smaller. Maybe as a sideboard option? Stronghold was also built before Illness and Ratchet existed. My UB version will be more like your deck here: "kill the tokens!"

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Posted 30 November 2013 at 07:10

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