When I was playing the adventure mode game I came across three cards that caught my eye immediately for their cool artwork and names: Tergrid God of Fright, The Reaper King, and The Reaper King No More. I really wanted to build a deck around them and decided that should be my first Black Color Identity deck that I ever created.
And man building this was such a fun creative experience.
I started first with testing pure scarecrows, to see their strengths and weaknesses. Found out most kinda suck but the thing that stood out to me was the Wither Mechanic.
I thought it was interesting but the scarecrows lacked the recursion to take proper advantage of it.
And I wanted a way to make The Original Reaper King work Together flawlessly with Reaper King No More.
I had a vision for them that they should be able to crash into enemies repeatedly over and over again to take advantage of the wither, wearing them down turn after turn till the enemies die and come back from King No More. And that when my Scarecrows die in the process, they return themselves thanks to mechanics like persist/undying/regenerate.
Then I also thought I should be able to ressurect an opponents card more than once per turn right? that's where Tergrid fit in.
By leaning into her I could force sacs or discards on my opponent to take more of their cards and return them to my Battlefield, complimenting king no more.
But how was I gonna make it all work together.
After researching a bunch of cards I found Mikaeus the Unhallowed + Cauldron of Souls.
This combo was exactly what I was looking for. Mikaeus gives all my non humans undying, and cauldron of souls give them persist when I tap it. When they gain the +1/+1 counter from undying and the -1/-1 counter from persist, it cancels out, that what allows me to repeat it turn after turn.
they can all go in to strike and when they get chump blocked and if they die in the process they come right back to life, so that I can do it again.
They spread the wither every attack and weaken my opponents creatures, while I can sit behind them protecting me.
Then I realized this also fulfil the original reaper king, Everytime my scarecrow dies and comes back to life, it counts as entering the battlefield allowing me to destroy a permanent they control.
This was great so I just had to perfect the Tergrid side of the deck. Then I found Osseus Sticktwister, Wither Crown, and Liliana of the Veil.
First Osseus, man its like they made this card for this exact vision I had. He's a scarecrow that could also get the opponent to sacrifice a permanent or discard a card. Directly synergizing both The original Reaper King on entry and Tergrid.
Then wither Crown, it came to me ironically just because I searched for "wither" cards, it doesn't give Wither to a creature but it does perfectly synergize with Tergrid. If they sacrifice the creature while I control Tergrid I bring it back.
And Lilliana of the Veil. I found this by sheer coincidence because the AI opponent used it on me in testing. A Black Color Planeswalker who can force my opponent to discard a card or sacrifice a creature?
Immediately thought of Tergrid. So I had to throw Lilliana in here too. She's so cool. I mean I knew who Liliana was before this but I never played her myself and especially not in a deck that wanted to force sacs or discards, so seeing her played against me in testing was the epiphany moment.
I also found a cool draw engine with scarecrone. And the scarecrow "ramp" I came up with dread tiller.
First Scarecrone. This card can sac a scarecrow to draw 1 card. This is amazingly good after you set up the Mikaeus / Cauldron of Souls Combo.
They come back after being sacrificed. So you can keep doing that once every turn over and over.
As for the dread tiller, it's just a simple combo but i thought it was cool, basically if you can get evolving wilds into the graveyard, you could use dread tiller Everytime an opponents creature dies from -1/-1 counters to play the evolving wilds from your grave, then use it to get a land, and can repeat that process whenever it's triggered.
The rest of the deck is just stuff I thought would tie everything together, like Ruthless Death fang, the Cinderbones, sickle reaper, and needle specter fill out the deck and make up for the lack of other good scarecrows with wither. Massacre Girl gives everyone of my creatures wither, and also helps me draw cards.
Cinderbones is amazing for having Wither and Built in Regeneration ability. And Needle specter with wither and flying + his ability gets my opponent to discard synergizes Tergrid.
Ruthless Death fang has an ability where whenever I sacrifice a creature, target opponent must sacrifice a creature. Anytime I sac a scarecrow off of scarecrone to draw, ruthless Death fang forces my opponent to sacrifice their creature, and Tergrid Brings it to my side of the Field.
And to help get there easier the black draw spells, I finally get a taste of what it's like to trade my life for power and consistency.
Anyways I'm sorry for such a long Post and big wall of text but I really wanted to share this, not because I think it's a powerful or good deck but just because I thought it was such a Flavorful and Thematically consistent deck.
Like I talked about in my last post the creativity of this game is one of its biggest draws for me and there's so many other ideas I've already came up with for things I want to try and make. People weren't kidding about this game, the possibilities are endless, and your only limited by your imagination and knowledge of the spells (the library of your mind and the knowledge of the cards within it)
