Miss me.

This deck makes me think of a line from an Avril Lavigne song where she says, “Miss me, miss me, now, you wanna kiss me.” 

Well, not the kiss me part, but missing the unlockable creatures in this deck sneaking past enemy lines to do direct damage would be a real pity. This deck is built to be sneaky and that’s just what it does. 

Before we dig into this juicy deck, I’d like to thank our wonderful partners at Unplug Yourself for the opportunity to play this deck. It was a real fun deck to play.

Obscura Operation

The face up commander in this deck, Obscura Operation, is Kamiz, Obscura Oculus. He is a three-colour commander costing you a white, blue and black, otherwise known as Esper, mana as well as a colourless to play. This commander’s ability to make one attacking creature unblockable and another attacking creature have double strike is inspired. It encourages you to attack and really get in there without risk to your creatures or restrictions governing who and how you attack. 

He also has a new mechanic introduced in Streets of New Capenna, connive. Connive encourages you to draw a card and discard a card. If it’s a nonland card then you may put a +1/+1 counter on the creature that connived. It’s a nice way to build things up each turn.

Let’s take a look at the deck composition:

There are 38 lands in this deck. This may seem like a lot, but when you consider that you don’t want to be only playing one creature per turn, it makes more sense. Some of the cards have a high mana cost and you want to get enough of a board presence to be able to quickly ping your opponents before they can do anything about it. I would however swap out some of the tapped lands for pathways and other sources of mana that are immediately available. 

There are 21 creatures in the deck of which 8 are unblockable or can become so on their own like, Ghostly PilfererDaring SaboteurCephalid Facetaker, and Daxos of Meletis. This could turn out to be helpful as having them on the battlefield with Kamiz would allow you to then have an unblockable creature with doublestrike if you attack with them and another creature with greater power. 

Coming in with 8 Legendary Creatures this deck has a good amount of kick with cards like Tivit, Seller of Secrets and Oskar, Rubbish Reclaimer

There are 10 artifacts, 3 enchantments, and 8 instants and sorceries a piece which make up the rest of the deck. 

Let’s talk ramp for a moment. With the long awaited reprint of Wayfarer’s Bauble, Arcane Signet, Fellwar Stone and other of that ilk, there is plenty of ramp to be had.

There is also a fair amount of recursion. With cards like Oskar, Rubbish ReclaimerSkyway RobberSun Titan and Jailbreak among others this does feel like a minor theme with the deck builders wanting to give the player the option of replaying some of their cards which is always nice.

For removal there are the notable reprints of Austere Command and Dusk/DawnUtter EndObscura Charm and An Offer You Can’t Refuse are all new cards from the Streets of New Capenna set which make for some good removal. The target removal isn’t bad. It can take care of your opponents’ big things. The problem is decks that make tokens and go wide. Yes, you have a sweeper or two, but they will kill all your things too and it take this deck longer to rebuild a board state. It might be wise in an upgrade to include a card like Fumigate so at least you gain life for all the creatures you killed.

Counters are a theme in this deck that a player might want to expand on in an upgrade, that or tokens. Cards like Alela, Artful Provocateur and Chasm Skulker make tokens and hand out counters but there is a lot more counter action in the deck as it is, with Kamiz handing them out each turn.

So how does the deck play?

Right out of the box it is not bad. In fact, I’d say it’s pretty good. It’s a lot of fun and the unblockable theme is terrific. I do think that the builders needed to focus a little more. They put in 2 cards Custodi Lich and Archon of Coronation that work with monarch that don’t seem to fit with the rest of the deck, even though they are super cool. Perhaps that’s another avenue to follow in a possible upgrade. 

I would go with the unblockable aspect and make it stronger so that it could work with or without Kamiz on the board. I would add cards like, Tetsuko Umezawa, FugitiveCephalid PathmageBlighted Agent, Aether Figment and Aqueous Form to name a few. Constantly pinging opponents for some direct damage wears them down in the end.

Well, that’s the deck. It is a lot of fun to play, and I really enjoyed it as it is. Give it a try and see what you think.

 

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Source Credit: 

https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Default.aspx

Easy Gaming Group