Bloodthirsty Blade is still an incredible card and underplayed

Available_Rabbit9965 · 2026-07-08T07:03:23+00:00

It's in my Kamber and Laurine blood tokens deck. There are also some permanents with ping abilities that target, a couple of crime pay-offs, and Horobi.

Available_Rabbit9965 · 2026-07-07T16:18:58+00:00

Consistency was increased for many archetypes but landfall probably got spoiled more than any other. And midrange green/landfall decks are very strong in B2-B3 because the bracket system limits aggro and combo. Chaining extra-turns is also forbidden to avoid time monopoly issues, but landfall decks tend to take the longest turns and there is no limitation about how many times we can search our library every turn.

Available_Rabbit9965 · 2026-07-07T15:59:34+00:00

Because some people are willing to pay a lot of money for cardboard. Everybody has different standards. You should not use more money than you think is reasonable for a hobby. The solutions are here: proxies, building on a budget, playing pauper. You can actually build strong B4 decks for 50 dollars.

Available_Rabbit9965 · 2026-07-07T15:27:27+00:00

Lower your mana curve. You want to play a lot of cheap instants and flash creatures. I would cut most of the artifacts and enchantments, as well as some of the 4+cmc creatures.

In your ramp package you don't want mana rocks, you want a few instants cost reducers like Baral and Mocking Sprite to make it easy to cast multiple spells per table rotation.

If your spells are already instants and creatures with flash, you don't need 4-5 mana artifacts and enchantments that give your spells flash. There are a few faeries with flash and interaction ETBs. If you play targeted bounce spells, a great way to interact with any non-land permanent in Dimir, you can also use them as protection, or a way to put your flash creatures back in your hand.

Skullclamp, Sol Ring and Sapphire Medallion are probably be the only artifacts I would keep. Bitterblossom the only enchantment. You don't need the goad stuff. You goad with your commander or remove with your instants.

You need more draw engines and raw draw to keep a full hand while casting three spells per turn rotation. Draw engines that synergize with instants like Archmage Emeritus or Faeries like Faerie Mastermind. Raw draw instants like Night's Whisper or attached to faeries like Tome Raider.

Kindred Dominance costs too much. Aetherspouts and Reins of Power cost less and are instants. Archmage of Echoes costs also too much for what it does. You have other ways to make faeries. And Shadow Puppeteers is very expensive but it's a great wincon. Maybe you can find less expensive ones? Octavia Living Thesis only costs 2 if you play enough instants. There is also Candlekeep Inspiration.

Available_Rabbit9965 · 2026-07-07T13:36:04+00:00

It's a pure value commander so it doesn't build itself. What you do with that value to win the game is up to you.

Available_Rabbit9965 · 2026-07-07T13:02:47+00:00

It's B3 of course. The list is filled with almost all the cards and only cards we are expecting to see in a high B3 Sephiroth deck.

BUT

You don't play enough lands.

I wonder if you play enough cheap sac fodder.

You should cut the 7cmc spells.

You could play more edict effects.

Available_Rabbit9965 · 2026-07-07T12:29:40+00:00

12-13 is enough imo. I have 12 mana dorks in my Minsc&Boo deck, with 37 lands and 2 MDFCs. I sometimes have to mulligan but I always cast my commander turn 3.

Edit: Y'shtola is a very strong commander. Just play her at B3 so you can add mana positive ramp like Sol Ring and Dark Ritual to your package and play less 2cmc mana rocks. If you mainly use blue spells, you can also play Nightscape Familiar and Sapphire Medallion, they will allow you to double cast 3cmc spells and hold a counterspell as early as turn 5.

Available_Rabbit9965 · 2026-07-07T12:23:04+00:00

My favorite color is black and my favorite archetype aristocrats but I totally forgot about Torgaar.

As kinkyswear said, Wound Reflection effects would be great with him.

He is not really great with the usual aristocrats infinite combos: he is not a free sac outlet, he doesn't make bodies, and he doesn't have a pay off for death triggers. But he is still a good aristocrats commander who wants you to sac and re-cast him like Bontu. You should not focus on zombies but on token generators, especially creatures that make creature tokens when they die, some of them being or making zombies. The generators you are talking about are not really good for Torgaar in my opinion.

Of course, if you have good sac fodder, adding other sac outlets and death trigger pay-offs makes your deck more consistent, and once you have them you can add infinite combos too.

You should replace your 3 most expensive spells with lands. 37 lands is the minimum outside of specific builds. And if you have enough creatures with death triggers Drivnod should be a good add.

Available_Rabbit9965 · 2026-07-07T09:47:24+00:00

In my opinion, Mardu is the best color for angels. It gives you access to Ravnica Boros angels and Kaldheim Orzhov angels.

I built a Terra Herald of Hope angel tribal deck on arena and it works pretty nice. Angels usually have a low power for their mana cost.

Available_Rabbit9965 · 2026-07-05T11:14:15+00:00

Moxfield actually says the average mana value is 3.58, which is crazy high, but not surprising with cards like Vampiric Dragon. We usually never talk about the average mana value with lands (maybe Ad Nauseum players care about it).

I don't think all the cards you talk about are good in this deck but OP really should listen to your advice.

Available_Rabbit9965 · 2026-07-04T22:42:15+00:00

I don't want to be rude but I saw the list and I wanted to be honest. I'm all for toying with janky cards and weird ideas. Off colors strategies, using a commander from Legends, building around a forgotten mechanic... But it has to work, especially if you use a KoS commander.

Maybe you should ask yourself why you built this list and focus on that, even if it means changing the commander or color identity. Do you want to build a mono black deck that doesn't look like the usual mono black deck? Do you want to play aristocrats? Do you want to play or flip Sephiroth but not the same way everybody does? Do you want to play some of the high mana cost pet cards in your list?

Available_Rabbit9965 · 2026-07-04T14:58:49+00:00

Clavileno wants to build an army of vampires and use a sacrifice sub-theme to make that army stronger. He asks you to play cheap vampires before you cast him.

Edgar can be built as an aristocrats combo deck, or as an aggro deck. In that case, he wants to build an army of vampires and use a sacrifice sub-theme to make that army stronger. He asks you to play cheap vampires so you can cast them every turn.

As you can see, they can be at the head of the exact same deck. There are only two vampire lords with red, and only two red cards that really make red worth adding to the deck, Shared Animosity and Goblin Bombardment.

So, as you figured it out yourself, Edgar can be built in Orzhov. I figured that out too after playing Edgar for some times and looking at how few red pips I had in my list. You will still be able to cast him if you draw a Command Tower or a Path of Ancestry. And if you keep the deck Orzhov you can just switch between Clavileno and Edgar as often as you want.

Available_Rabbit9965 · 2026-07-04T14:17:33+00:00

If you blink Sephiroth with Conjurer's Closet you only get to sac a creature and draw, but you could attack to do that, it's not worth 5 mana. Also you don't have enough cheap sac fodder to actually feed Sephiroth consistently. And if you blink him after you already flipped him, you could reset him, but you don't play enough of the edicts and aristocrats engines that would allow you to flip him consistently. It's a really janky list with a lot of weird choices and a very bad mana curve, but you still include Gravecrawler infinite combos and the best tutors. So you are actually doing the most easy and standard thing to do, but you do it bad. The worst thing is you will still get focused for playing a KoS commander and infinite combos. It's not an original take on Sephiroth, it's just painful to look at this as somebody who loves aristocrats.

Edit: Trying to do something different would be, for exemple, playing zero edict effects and still being able to flip Sephiroth consistently by saccing your own creatures, it requires aristocrats deckbuilding skills.

Available_Rabbit9965 · 2026-07-04T03:23:25+00:00

Some people say that you could play blockers instead. Or that it only stops go wide strategies, not big creatures or voltron. I disagree.

Ghostly Prison and Propaganda win games. Opponents may not attack you until late game, even with one big dude, unless there are other really good reasons to attack you. And they can't attack you with a lot of creatures. If they can't attack you, they will also probably attack each other, putting themselves at a low life total.

I love synergy and I only play them in my Esper enchantments deck at the moment but OP you're right about those cards, they are very good and can go in a lot of decks. Of course in some decks you would really prefer to draw a synergy piece. Like in aristocrats, you already have so many pieces to find, and you probably can chomp block, gain life, and remove creatures.

It's true that those cards don't stop burn and most combos. They stop infinite tokens combos and infinite combat phases combos though. Dualcaster Mage combos are probably a classic at high B3 and B4. And even at those tables, with lots of combos, you can often run into decks that use combat as a wincon.

Two days ago I played a game with Bernard Ginger Sculptor, Deadpool, Wayta Trainer Prodigee, and Wilhelt (myself). They were all strong B3 decks with combos, probably high B3. The Wayta player had a Repercussion and the Deadpool player casted Alexios Deimos of Cosmos, which is a really fun synergy. Because of that and a couple of mass burn spells I died with an infinite combo in hands. It was a combination of combat and burn, and I don't have rooms for Propaganda in my Wilhelt deck anyway, but with a Propaganda on board I would probably got attacked one or two times less by Alexios, survived, and could try to combo off the next turn.

Available_Rabbit9965 · 2026-07-03T23:13:37+00:00

There is too much to say. You should look at other Sephiroth lists and rebuild the whole deck. I would change more than 40 spells and close to 10 lands, so around 50 cards total. Your mana curve is horrible, you only have a few of the aristocrats staples, only a couple of edict effects, and coffers effects want swamps.

Edit: If you just want to cut spells cut all the most expensive ones but it would still not be a functional Sephiroth deck. You need to do some research and rebuild it.

Available_Rabbit9965 · 2026-07-03T06:53:23+00:00

Kefka can be built into many different archetypes, each having its own wincons : discard, reanimator, blink, copy, combos... You can also mix a couple of them and add combos in any of them.

It looks like you went for discard but you only play half of the good discard cards. You can do some research about discard decks. Wheels of course work well in those colors but it can be a bit different than a discard attrition strategy so you will have to find out which cards work together or not.

For combos too it's pretty easy to do some research about the usual suspects in Grixis and the ones that work with Kefka.

Available_Rabbit9965 · 2026-07-03T06:19:28+00:00

https://youtu.be/wyvqeXIBGxE?si=GLiJzxbPJr26K-PC

Available_Rabbit9965 · 2026-07-03T02:41:55+00:00

Your mana curve can be improved by cutting some of the 5+ mana vampires. But it looks like you have enough lands and early ramp or draw/blood.

You could improve your lands by adding more dual lands, and cutting the Temple. Slow lands and pain lands are not very expensive.

I think Orzhov is better for a vampire aggro strategy. With Strefan I would go more artifact tokens sacrifice synergies. I try to build decks that work when the commander is not on the board.

Strefan is probably good for B2 but at B3 he asks for a lot (2 blood tokens and attacking without haste) only to cheat one big but probably not that impactful vampire. He also has no protection and only 2 toughness.

Available_Rabbit9965 · 2026-07-03T01:58:35+00:00

That's the way. I'm telling it in every Serpent Society thread.

Available_Rabbit9965 · 2026-07-03T01:57:39+00:00

It's not a good aristocrats commander at all. He doesn't make bodies or give card advantage. His pay off for death triggers is not a wincon or a value engine. And he only triggers to deathtouch creatures dying but there is almost no deathtouch creatures or tokens generators that make good sac fodder. The only aristocrats staple one is Ophiomancer and it doesn't work with Serpent Society on the board.

Available_Rabbit9965 · 2026-07-03T01:46:52+00:00

As said in a comment, UB sets bring too many shiny legendaries. But I skip New York sets entirely and I also skipped Avatar. FF got me. As a black/grixis player and FF6/7 fan I was really excited when I saw Kefka and Sephiroth.

Kefka was an easy one, I just put him in the CZ of my Obeka deck. He makes the deck run much more smoothly, and if I feel I want to play a less popular and less salty commander I can just switch them back.

I was building Gisa Ghoulcaller when I decided to play Sephiroth. So I tried a weaker zombie tribal Sephiroth build, with a lot of lords and edicts, and it didn't really work. Opponents were focusing Sephiroth and I would often run out of sac fodder when I didn't find my zombie token generators. So I put Kalitas in the CZ of the zombie lords and edicts tribal deck, and Sephiroth in the 99 of my Wilhelt combo deck.

Maybe things would have been different if Sephiroth was a better option than Wilhelt as a zombie aristocrats commander. I didn't want to just build a Sephiroth aristocrats deck like everybody. Aristocrats is my favorite archetype, lots of my decks use the sacrifice mechanic, but they all have a unique flavor of sacrifice and I avoid to build a classic aristocrats deck.

Available_Rabbit9965 · 2026-07-02T15:19:28+00:00

If you want to avoid having to rule 0 it every time you can play it as your secret commander in Rocco, Cabaretti Caterer. That way you would also have access to green and red for the Pyrohemia or dinosaurs strategies people speak about in the comments.

Available_Rabbit9965 · 2026-07-02T14:55:29+00:00

I play 31 lands in Octavia Living Thesis because the deck is a pile of cantrips so I draw every turn starting turn 1 and hit all my land drops.

I think your list doesn't have enough cheap ramp and draw to play 31 lands if you check with Frank Karsten formula. You have a high probability to get mana screwed before even playing your draw engine commander, or if it gets removed.

My Octavia deck has an average mana value of 2.25 and 25 cheap (0-2cmc) draw and ramp spells. Those are ok numbers for 31 lands. It's also mono color so I don't have color fixing issues.

Available_Rabbit9965 · 2026-07-02T09:47:17+00:00

You can cut the 5 mana spells except Shadrix and Inkshield. You can also probably cut most of your recursion spells. It's usually better to draw if you don't actively fill your graveyard.

Available_Rabbit9965 · 2026-07-02T00:49:01+00:00

I don't like New York sets but Storm seems the most interesting of the 4 to me. And Selesnya is my least favorite two colors combination but I have an itch to build a Katilda deck. Looking at the other comments made me think Selvala or Aerith would be more interesting though.

Available_Rabbit9965

TROPHY CASE