The Vascular Awareness: Dead by Dawn

Hi everyone! My name is Mason Sokol, I am a senior at Penn state University currently and a modern enthusiast.  I’ll be your host for Mondays, which will be titled Vascular Awareness, with the goal to make as many people possible aware of the depth of this format.  To this end I'll usually post brews I've found and often add my own tweaks.  I’m not usually known for my brewing, but I usually can spot spiciness when I see it and for the first entry on this blog I endeavored to post the spiciest.  I will always strive to give credit where credit is due and in this case this list comes from Jon Johnson and the list is here.

4 Faithless Looting 4 Birds of Paradise 2 Noble Hierarch 1 Children of Korlis 1 Mogg Fanatic 3 Inquisition of Kozilek 2 Zombie Infestation 1 Lotleth Troll 2 Life from the Loam 4 Congregation at Dawn 4 Skill Borrower 4 Necrotic Ooze 2 Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker 1 Borborygmos Enraged 3 Griselbrand 4 City of Brass 3 Gemstone Mine 1 Stomping Ground 1 Godless Shrine 2 Overgrown Tomb 4 Misty Rainforest 4 Verdant Catacombs 1 Forest 1 Breeding Pool 1 Hallowed Fountain SB: 1 Kitchen Finks SB: 1 Obstinate Baloth SB: 4 Goryo's Vengeance SB: 4 Fist of Suns SB: 4 Emrakul SB: 1 Zombie Infestation

3 mana to win the game?  Don't tell Battle of Wits

So what exactly is going on here?  Well actually a whole lot.  First of all the meat card here is Congregration at Dawn.  Depending on your mana situation and cards in hand can find a whole lot of different combo to win you the game often on the spot.  Play it at upkeep with Skill Borrower in play finding Kiki Jiki followed by Mogg Fanatic.  Make a bunch of Skill Borrowers, draw your card, and sac them all using the Mogg’s ability.  If you have an Ooze and Faithless Looting, find Kiki and the Mogg and throw them both in the yard.  You can draw a ton of card with Griselbrand/Ooze then toss the land if Borborygmos is in your yard.  If you need to gain the life back off Griselbrand you can play Children of Korlis, gain it back, then gain even more with and Ooze sac!  Lotleth Troll helps get stuff from hand to the yard either by himself or with Ooze/Skill Borrower if he is in the yard.  Zombie Infestation and Loam are clearly there to fill the yard, and Inquisition is there for disruption/protecting the combo.  The Birds and Hierarchs provide very useful acceleration.  

For changes to the deck I’d consider replacing the Loams with Golgari Thugs, they dredge faster AND can make some more shenanigans with Skill Borrower.

If we do decide to keep the maindeck the same the sideboard probably does need work, the transformative sideboard seems unnecessarily complicated and likely not as helpful as a sideboard with more pinpoint answers.

My first pass for a sideboard would probably look something like this:

3 Thoughtsieze: for control matchups and combo decks.

3 Kitchen Finks: it seems that Jon noted how poor the agro matchup can be but I feel if that is the case I’d like to be a lot more solid than he was being for the matchups.

3 Qasali Pridemage: artifact and enchantments exist that want to make us sad.  I don’t like being sad.

1 Mogg Fanatic: I actually like this card as a value card for certain matchups, making sure there is access to a second doesn’t seem too bad to me.

4 Ancient Grudge: I hate losing to affinity, so much

1 Kami of False Hope: aggro hate that fits the combo!


With a bit more testing a better sideboard will probably emerge, I’ll be looking into the deck more when I get the chance and will try to update you guys if I do.  Thanks for reading!