Siphon Identity

Become your opponent’s deck and steal their key cards to make your deck stronger.

The Creatures:

Thousand-Faced Shadow is a 1/1 flyer to get out early, and also is useful for sacrificing in a pinch, but Late game his Ninjutsu can become a big surprise for you opponent and can even be game winning.

Rootcoil Creeper is your mana booster, if he survives long enough can really push you ahead, also a decent chump blocker and really helps out on the flashback cost when mana gets tight.

Ivy, Gleeful Spellthief is a nice 2/1 flyer that can play off of spells you steal from the opponent’s deck, or even spells they play on their own creatures. It has a little synergy with a couple of the spell in this deck but more useful with stolen spells as her name suggest.

Old Rutstein is just a useful card, depending on what you mill he can get you more mana serving as a mana fix, more card draw for when your hand stalls out, or even 1/1 creature for chump blocking or more importantly sacrificing for paying a particular additional cost.

Kotose, the Silent Spider is a nice way to remove big threats from your opponent’s deck and even play one of them as a bonus. On top of being a nice 4/4 attacker, she gets you a nice peak at you foe’s entire deck including what they currently have in their hand.

The Spells:

Rona's Vortex is a great card to stall early game, and really shines late game as a simi-removal spell, sending hard to deal with creatures or planeswalkers to the bottom of the opponent’s deck. Another possibility here would be Fading Hope for the Spellthief synergy, but I feel this one will work out better in the long game.

Tamiyo's Safekeeping keep you creatures safe, as well as the creatures you steal safe as well, players tend to really try to get their creatures back, this really helps with that, also that 2 life gain can really save you in an emergency.

Siphon Insight is one of the two main cards of the deck, stealing you opponents deck piece by piece, it having flashback means we can play it up to 8 time. That’s a lot of cards that your opponent doesn’t get to play against you. Sometimes I even just steal things just to stop them from having access to it.

The Stone Brain to get rid of those pesky cards the you see coming or to just stop them from happening again and get them out of the game.

Croaking Counterpart is a card that I go back and forth on, with a lot of the cards being legendary in this deck it has a hard time finding its footing, but against the right opponent it can be devastating. It has Flashback synergy with the creeper, so I’ve kept it in, but did remove it for another spellthief and safekeeping which also worked well. If nothing else, it creates another chump blocker when things get dire.

Choking Miasma to help with swarm decks, and the kicker can help keep the Rootcoil Creeper alive after the sweep.

Grafted Identity is the second main card of the deck, this lets you steal your opponents big baddie, and even makes it better but you do have to sacrifice a creature to do so, my choices usually are one of the green insect tokens that Old Rutstein gives you or a thousand-face shadow but anything will work if it give you the advantage.  

Takenuma, Abandoned Mire / Otawara, Soaring City / Boseiju, Who Endures are also worth mentioning as the can add a lot to the game, I’ve put in x2 of the Mire’s as they really can work out well in this build.

The Gameplan:

Getting the right mana out is pretty key, blue is easy but the black or green can be a hassle if you’re not careful, Rootcoil Creeper can really help with this but does gets killed a lot so Old Rutstein and The Celestus can really put things on track. Hit them with the Siphon Insight when ever possible, that can help you figure out you later moves in the game early on. Grafted Identity and Kotose, the Silent Spider are kind of your kill cards in a way as they can really change the direction of the game. That being said, the deck relies heavily on your opponents cards to pull off a win, so knowing how a lot of decks function can be key here, and takes some thought.

Feel free to comment if you would like to see more my decks and please link here and give me a shout out if you used this deck and had fun.

Update 1/5/23: Added The Stone Brain in place of The Cruelty of Gix to bring the curve down a bit and give more removal options, also added Choking Miasma to help with the current meta, removing The Celestus