This has been my pet deck for the last month, and it has been a wild ride. The goal of this deck is to play some token creatures, put
Dramatist's Mask mask on them, and then win on the following turn. It can reliably combo on tun 6 with backup, but sometimes as early as turn 5. I feel like this deck is really close, but just a hair too slow.
The combo is essentially 24 damage.
First Flame comes into play with Tribute and makes three
Infernus, all with haste for nearly lethal damage immediately (it is lethal with
Svetya's Bravery). If you don't kill them, they didn't have an answer to the first mask, and they will not have an answer to the second. You will also now, most likely, have a full grip of counter magic which makes my winrate, on games when Mask has triggered, above 95%.
Currently, I am running one
Spirit of Resistance to try it out. It has been great and I have won every time it has triggered (approx. ten games), but it is going to feel really bad that one game it gets hit with
Vanquish.
The following are the most important cards in the deck (other than the mask combo).
Strategize: This can tuck an unwanted threat back into the deck for more mask shenanigans.
Svetya's Bravery: This is almost the sole reason the deck is as good as it is. One mana aegis for a masked creature will dodge almost any removal.
Honestly, one thing I have noticed that can help is that people are not sure what is going on until the Mask hits, and then sometimes still. They are extremely unlikely to kill your tokens which allows the sheep and goblins to play defense and keep your life total high. Remember, you only need one so don't be afraid to chump with the others.
The worst matchup, by far, is Jennev control. They have a mix of removal, counter magic and sweepers that makes it very difficult to win unless you can play mask on four and have the creature survive by leveraging
Steely Resolve.
Most Aggro matchups are about 50% as they usually only have one piece of removal which can be easy to dodge and our torches and flares are great.
I would be happy to hear any suggestions! Happy comboing!
Maybe I'm missing something here, but it just feels like First Flame is always a good get, but there are a lot of cases where Spirit of Resistance just ends up being a super expensive and elaborately set up Harsh Rule that also kills your own Mask.
Thanks for the deck.