Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated. After pulling the trees off of my home, getting power restored, battling the 100 degree heat inside my house, getting the air conditioner fixed, and finally getting my internet restored, here I am, the same day my internet is back up and running bringing you lovely ladies and gentlemen MTG content. Why? Well for love of the game of course.

(Originally, I forgot to include the wishboard, I apologize to everyone who imported the deck without it as I consider it incomplete without one of its main combos. In my defense I submitted the deck at around 3a.m.  I hope the deck guide was able to give y'all a pretty good idea s to what should've been in there, but it's my fault nevertheless; it's fixed now and it won't happen again.)

Since the release of core21 there have been a few cards that have stood out to me as potentially powerful, or at least janky and fun to play. One of the cards that have stood out to me particularly is Obsessive Stitcher. So without further ado I bring y'all The Stitchers Nightmare.

On turn one we only have one card to play. Merfolk secret keeper; if we are on the play, we are using the adventure to mill ourselves. If we are on the draw against aggro, we may have to play a 0/4 body as an early blocker.

On turn two we have several plays to make up for our glaring lack of one drops. Ideally we play mire triton here as it does three things we love, a. It gives us a 2/1 deathtouch, b. It mills is for two, and c. We gain two life to help us stabilize for our weak early game. We also run two copies of fae of wishes, which I'm always trying to jam a few of if I'm running blue in a deck due to its great versatility; against aggro, we will not hesitate to play its 1/4 flying body, but we can also use the granted side of the card to not only grab our win condition, but play it that very same turn (more on this combo here in a bit). Finally, but certainly not least, we have fiend artisan, which we typically don't want to play on turn two due to it only having a 1/1 body that is weak to almost every type of removal.

On turn three we have four copies of one of the decks namesake cards, Obsessive Stitcher. This card makes for an a decent blocker with its 0/3 body, but we would rather not block with it if we are suspecting combat tricks as we'll be needing it to bring back any creature we wish from the graveyard, our main goal is to cheat out gyruda, but don't be afraid to cheat out syr Konrad, as aside from overpowering our opponent with pumped fiend artisans and flying nightmares, his draining ability is our other win condition. Really this card is flexible, don't be afraid to sacrifice it to bring out any part of the combo including Nightmare Shepherd, as he too can be intregal in ending games quickly, and not just on the merits of him being a 4/4 flyer (more on Nightmare Shepard in a bit). Our other three drop is woe strider, we run two copies and I'm not sure if we even need that many if any, but he does combo well with Syr Konrad to sacrifice our board and in order to end the game. Another big turn three play we have is the potential that we had the perfect curve of turn one secretkeeper, turn two mire triton, into a turn three fiend artisan (this typically gives us a 5/5, 6/6, or 7/7 beatstick on turn three).

On turn four, since we run Gyruda, we have plenty of four drops. The most important being nightmare Shepard. At first glance you would think nightmare Shepherd would nonbo our fiend artisans that we'd rather see pumped by having stuff in the graveyard rather than exiling them, but we put so much stuff in the yard it's absolutely negligible. Always, I repeat, always activate nightmare shepards ability. We also run four copies of carrion grub as a way to feed the graveyard; this play not only pumps our fiend artisans further by milling four cards, but also combos very well with syr Konrad. We also run two copies of Thassa in order to abuse Gyruda (if we have syr konrad out, this is going to cripple our opponent and typically win the game that turn).

On turn five it's imparrative that we get Syr Konrad on the board. With Syr Konrad on the board, everything we do is supercharged... venture deeper turns into a mill for up to four damage for one blue mana. Mire triton becomes a mill two cards for up to two damage. Obsessive stitcher can be activated to bring in Gyruda and ping an opponent for half their life total. Carrion grub mills four cards for up to four damage. If we have nightmare Shepherd on the board we ping our opponent once when our creature goes into the graveyard, and once more when we exile it back to the battlefield. As a sweet and sneaky combo that your opponent will never see coming, with Syr Konrad out, we can play granted for four mana, grab tormod's crypt from our wishboard, and activate it immediately. We use it to exile our own graveyard pinging our opponent to death with Syr Konrad (I've found we typically get anywhere from 10-18 damage with this combo).

On turn six we have Gyruda. This card is one of the more powerful six drop creatures one can put in a deck, and I know I don't need to go over all of its merits. We will use Gyruda to first make sure we have a nightmare Shepherd on the board to protect our creatures from removal, then to start grabbing huge fiend artisans (at this point it's nothing to have at least a 12/12 beatstick). But hey, if you can steal something better from your opponent,don't hesitate.

We run Umori as our companion as an aside. Since the companion nerf, the tempo loss of paying three mana just to put it in our hand crushed almost every companion except for yorion and maybe lurrus. In this deck Umori is simply an extra card that can be reached for if you happen to be top decking against an opponent and need a very slight edge. And why not? Gyruda and Syr Konrad want us to run as many creatures as we can. Plus, we've got the wishboard should we need other spell types ;)

Aside from our sneaky tormond's crypt win condition, we keep some counters, sweepers, and some of the most powerful planeswalkers in standard in our wishboard.

This particular deck can be a bit difficult to pilot, and I wish I could give yall guidance via YouTube and Twitch, but the new computer is still on its way! Hopefully it will be here soon, so I can not only bring y'all wonderful and extensive written deck guides, but also bring yall video guides of me playing these decks.

If there is a card, cards, or general deck idea yall would like to see in action, I would love to brew it up for you. Thank you for all of your continued support as I've had nothing but encouragement, and in trying times even a little love can go a long way. I hope you enjoy this deck and, as always, good luck!