Angrath's Amazing Amassing

After a pretty uninspired showing yesterday, I figured I should come back today with a stronger, wackier deck for all of you. So I went back to the lab and cooked up one of the most ineffective and game-losing Brawl deck with a commander that is underused for a reason! It's aggressive, it's got sacrifice in it, and it plays cards that have no reason seeing play outisde of limited!

Yep, Angrath. The Amass 2 guy that gives your creatures menace. Yes, this IS what we will be building around today. And to make things better, we are going to make sure we have as many playable (non-terrible) amass cards as we can. So let's see what kind of nonsense we can come up with today.

Amassing:

This deck sure can make one big army! From 1 to 4 mana, we have many ways of making our zombie army token grow, which brings us to our game plan: we gotta be aggressive. Amassing is very weak to all sorts of removal, so we need to be swinging in with them as much as possible, and in creature matches we should have the upper hand by the fact that our commander gives all our creatures menace. We have Grim Initiate to begin with the beats on turn 1, and Lazotep Reaver to clutter up the board next turn of Dreadhorde Invasion to give us a steady stream of amass triggers, and eventually the possibility of gaining a LOT of health in one big swing. On turn 3 we have Toll of the Invasion to help both amass and let us disrupt the opponent's game plan, and Vizier of the Scorpion to give our Zombie Army token deathtouch. On turn 4 we have the clearly worse of our amass creatures in Herald of the Dreadhorde, who if nothing else is hard to get rid of, and Dreadhorde Twins, who do give our tokens trample. This works WONDERS when combined with Vizier of the Scorpion and Angrath's menace, keyword soup hype! And I can't believe I'm actually running this card in a deck, it's Widespread Brutality, making an appearance in a deck where it doesn't seem actually terrible! On average this will be a 4 damage board wipe, but we can get it to do quite a bit of damage if we have a big amassed token. If you can afford it, attacking with a big army with Dreadhorde Invasion first will give it lifelink, which will in turn mean you lifelink off of all the damage from the Brutality, as it is the creature that deals it.

Sacrifice:

Ok so what do we do with all these amass triggers? Well, sacrificing is usually a think that works well with tokens, and as many skilled players have shown us, we can sacrifice the amassed creatures in response to amass triggers, allowing us to get extra value of we can go wide instead of tall on just one creature token. We have Witch's Oven for extra lifegain and kitten synergy, Priest of Forgotten Gods as the best sacrifice outlet in Standard right now, Piper of the Swarm who will be sacrificing rats but it still provides good synergies, and Malevolent Noble at the two mana slot. I'm opting for a more agressive, stats-based strategy instead of going all in on value since our commander seems to want us to be going for combat damage. At 3 mana we have the amazing Ayara, First of Locthwain, which can ping our opponent every time we make a new army or play a black craeture, and can sacrifice an existing army token to draw a card and guarantee anothe trigget if necessary. We have Mayhem Devil to get extra damage out of all of these sacrifice triggers, and Rankle, Master of Pranks as a very powerful threat which can let us get consistent value, damage, and disruption on our opponents.

Aggression:

Judith, Scourge Diva

We're going face, and we wanna be dealing damage early. We have a lot of 1 drops, with Footlight Fiend, Gutterbones, and Cauldron Familiar being the fodder for further sacrifice that can give us extra pressure potential. We also run the quality Knight of the Ebon Legion to snowball on our opponents as early as possible. Dreadhorde Butcher will help us keep the snowball going if he connects with a player or planeswalker, and Judith, Scourge Diva helps all our minions grow in power to get maximum impact. We run one Rotting Regisaur to scare the bejeezus out of our opponents, and the threat of Embercleave is never far when you're playing with the giant Zombie Dinosaur. Get that damage in!

Direct Removal:

We need a few ways to deal with creature matches, as Angrath will be forcing many awkward blocks, this gives us quite a few chances to blow the opponent out with a trick, or just keep our opponent from blocking at all! Angrath's Rampage can take care of most of the threats this deck has trouble with, and Bedevil does it more consistently and at instant speed. Murderous Rider deals with a creature or planeswalker, and Price of Fame is still my piece of removal of choice for creatures in Brawl. To top it off we run a Cavalier of Night as extra sacrifice synergy, removal, and a way to recur a lower power threat to our board upon death. He is excellent in a race.

Extra Value:

We need a couple unfair cards to make sure we stand toe-to-toe with our opponent. We run an Arcane Signet because mana, and a Wishclaw Talisman to fetch out our big finishers like Embercleave or a piece of removal we might need. Malevolent Noble can sacrifice it in response to its trigger if you have the luxury, but other than that it's a risky proposition you should be taking to win the game or just not lose on the spot. Stormfist Crusader provides us that steady stream of cards, as well as damaging our opponent every turn. Midnight Reaper will let us draw whenever our nontoken creatures die, and Gruesome Menagerie is a way to bring a lot of our more powerful low drops back from the dead, hopefully stacking some juicy triggers or allowing us to get tricky with sacrifice.

Lands:

The lands for this deck were less painful to build than expected. We don't run many big dudes so 24 lands seems fine. We run Blast Zone, Cryptic Caves, and Emergence Zone for sacrifice and utlity, as well as both Fabled Passage and Evolving Wilds. Field of the Dead fits the deck in both theme and function, so we went for variety with Castle Embereth, Castle Locthwain, Witch's Cottage, and Dwarven Mine, on top of 3 basic Mountains and 6 basic Swamps. All 3 dual lands made the deck as well.

Well, that's it. If you love the angry minotaur pirate as much as I do, then you're probably sad this is what we have to play with in Standard Brawl right now. But hey, let's give it our best and see how much chaos we can cause!