Willowdusk, Essence Seer V03

Bringing some Power

Intro

Hello again!

Even with just the first round of upgrades, this deck handles so much better. Getting rid of a lot of the clunky and expensive top end cards made the deck curve out much better and hands feel less impossible to keep while goldfishing. There are a few new cards that we’re adding to really enhance the power of the deck as well as make the deck a lot more fun to play. This includes tidying up the mana base and putting in some cards that will let us get some more destructive Willowdusk activations.

As the upgrades go on and we pick up the nice $0.25 - $0.50 cards, the real impactful cards are going to get more expensive and we will be making fewer and fewer changes per month. To not have a blog post that just says “Buy this one card. That’s your whole budget and see you next month,” This post is going to include two months of upgrades meaning there are $20 - 30 worth of cards going in along with the 1.73 left over from the first month’s upgrade package. They are separated by month to be relatively even and there is no recommended order except for this one card you should buy ASAP…

Additions

MVP Addition

Staff of Domination [$2.79] Generally it is a do everything tool if you have some mana leftover for it, but for us, with three particular cards, it is an infinite mana/everything generator. The idea is to use this card in tandem with either Gyre Sage (mentioned later), Viridian Joiner, or Accomplished Alchemist. With any one of these three creatures we can make infinite mana once any one of them has the ability to make 5 or more mana by itself.

For Gyre Sage and Viridian Joiner, that’s by having at least four or five +1/+1 counters on them to get enough mana. For the Accomplished Alchemist, it’s by having gained at least 5 or more life this turn. You start by tapping the creature for 5+ mana, using 3 to activate the staff to untap the creature you tapped for mana, and using 1 to untap the staff. This cycle nets you positive 1 mana (1 green if with Viridian Joiner or Gyre Sage and 1 of any color if you are using Accomplished Alchemist.) With this unlimited floating mana, you can activate any of the staff’s abilities as long as both the staff and the creature generating your mana are on the battlefield. This means you can gain infinite life, tap and untap every creature on the field, and draw your whole library once the two cards are online.

From here there are a few ways you can close out the game:

• Draw cards until you find Exsanguinate (mentioned later) and drain everyone for their life totals.

• Gain a ton of life and make a creature infinitely big with unlimited Willowdusk triggers.

• Gain enough life that everyone just gives up and concedes.

• Use trudge garden to make infinite 4/4 fungus beasts with each life gain trigger of the staff.

• Create infinite pests with Pest Infestation after blowing up all the opposing artifacts and enchantments

• Cast damnable pact targeting someone to draw 100 cards and lose 100 life

• Get a huge over run effect with Blossoming Bogbeast based on a ton of life gained.

• And if any of these cards are in the bin, you can draw until you get the Elixir of Immortality to shuffle everything into your library and keep digging for more options listed above.

For all these reasons and for more that you can discover with more upgrades of this deck, Staff of Domination is the MVP of this deck hands down and is a good enough reason to run both Diabolic Tutor and profane tutor to find the pieces to this combo.

Month 1 of Upgrades ($16.24)

Nighthawk Scavenger [$0.59]

I like to think of this card as [[Vampire Nighthawk]]’s older cousin. It has the same very useful 3 keywords and has the potential to grow even bigger due to it’s graveyard-matters ability. Regardless, it makes just as good of a target as it’s cousin for Willowdusk’s activated ability.

Glorious Sunrise - [$0.99]

99 cents and it does it all! This deck wants games to go on for longer anyways so getting this down on turn 5 guarantees what I think to be an extra 2-3 mana worth of spells. And you can always pick what you need most.

Bolas Citadel [4.49]

If for any reason you can’t get a Willowdusk trigger to go off, this card can fix it by itself. As long as you don’t have 2 lands on top, you can guarantee some life loss. The second ability may be able to work as a closer once you combo off and can cast everything in your deck but you will primarily be using the first ability to be aware of your draws and pull your life down.

Murderous Rider [$0.59]

This serves triple-duty as a solid removal spell, loss of two life for Willowdusk, and a lifelinking body that snowballs with Willowdusk’s ability.

Exsanguinate [$6.79]

This is the definition of a legit game ending card. Cast it for 5 or 6 if you’re desparate but you really want to be casting this late for 8 - 10 mana to rocket yourself into first place.

Month 2 of Upgrades ($13.05)

Gray Merchant of Asphodel [$0.55]

Gary, as he is informally known, is a great tool for this deck to do a lot of damage and get some solid life gained. You’ll want to hold this off for late in the game when you have a heaping amount of black permanents to make it worth it to cast.

Witch of the Moors [$5.99]

Without any other abilities, a 5 mana 4/4 with deathtouch is a fantastic blocker. Add to that an old Sheoldred like effect if you gained life? The card is freaking incredible.

Vault Skirge [$0.35]

Vault Skirge is a fantastic 1 mana imp with the face of a 13 mana abomination. It has the perfect keywords and serves as an early game presence and fantastic Willowdusk target.

Gyre Sage [$0.79]

Gyre Sage is great mana ramp, impactful Willowdusk target, and helps with early game board presence. Perfect card for this deck.

Dismember [$2.09]

The ability to lose 4 life to get rid of something would be terrible if it wasn’t almost exactly what our deck & commander is trying to do. Casting it for 1 mana with no downsides makes this a powerhouse removal spell.

Diabolic Tutor [$0.79] & Profane Tutor [$2.49]

These tutors will get your combo pieces. Simple as that. Having one-for-one tutors almost acts as an additional copy of any card in your deck to serve as more consistency.

Cards Coming Out

Sun Droplet

As Willowdusk can’t activate at instant speed, gaining one every upkeep doesn’t do much and it doesn’t stabilize you fast enough after losing a lot of life. You’d think it would work well in this deck but we just have so many better options.

Venser’s Journal

I don’t think there is enough in the way of card draw to merit having thi in. Yes you’ll gain some passive life without doing anything but you really want to be making impactful plays on turn 5 and not just setting up gaining life off of a small hand.

Gyome, Master Chef

We aren’t a food deck. There’s tonsils of cards and decks that would welcome Gyome but this deck isn’t one of them.

Sangromancer

We want to be gaining life on our turn but there is no way of knowing when your opponent's creatures will die. It’d be cool in a black control-the-boardstate deck or in a forced discard deck but unfortunately not cool enough for this one.

Ageless Entity

It grows itself very well but it doesn’t have trample or lifelink. We can do better with our creatures at the rate of five mana.

Sapling of Colfenor

We've removed some of the bug toughness creatures that could make this work very well. Leave this card to the tree folk decks.

Tivash, Gloom Summoner

I may go back on this one but having a base 4/4 lifelinker with the ability to make demons is quite wild.

Yedora, Grave Gardener

It's a cool ramp piece but not cool enough ramp and especially not at 5 mana.

Taste of Death

It's a neat removal spell but it just doesn’t do enough. It’s better to just run a true wipe like Damnation.

HonorTroll

This deck doesn’t need too much assistance in life gain so making each instance 1 bigger isn’t really necessary.

Blood Thirsty Aerialist

This part of the upgrade guide now gets difficult because it’s now just replacing good cards with great cards. Bloodthirsty Aerialist is great but we have better options coming in.

Ancient Craving

We can get better draw rates for 3 life lost. Having Bolas’ Citadel smokes this card out of the water.

Conclusion

As I mentioned in the description for Blood Thirsty Aerialist, we now are in the territory of upgrades being better and more optimized options. We may replace some cards that we have put in already only if we get something so incredible that we can’t afford to not have it in. This also means saving up for really impactful additions that may cost more than one month’s allowance for purchases.

Thank you for reading another article and as always,

Play Nice and No Shoving.