Meet DETH
I am most well known in the magic community for designing this deck. So far, it hasn’t exactly made waves in the legacy format, but there has been a ripple or two. My first two live tournaments I made top 16 (CFB 4k) and split top 4 (Forgotten Path Games 1k) respectively. My List combines 3 well known (or long forgotten) combos all in one insane amalgamation I have named DETH, an acronym that represents the ways it can win while clearly explaining what happens to your opponent when any of those modes are implemented. I have nurtured it, watched it grow and am proud of the deck it’s become. However, it wasn’t born as the glorious work of art you see today.
It all started in 2018 when I was reading through some old cards and stumbled upon Ill-gotten Gains. I thought to myself, “wow, this would be pretty sweet with Leyline of the Void.” When I voiced this idea to my dear brother, he agreed, that it would indeed be “sweet” but followed up with a question I was not yet prepared to answer, “yeah, but how do you win?” I toyed around with this idea until I landed on Helm of Obedience. I then built my deck, which, at the time, consisted of Leylines, Helms, Ill-gotten Gains, a bunch of discard spells, baubles and infernal contracts. I took it to my local legacy weekly tournament and got destroyed. Turns out, my “sweet” idea wasn’t so great in practice. One pithing needle, Disenchant or Assassin’s Trophy (just to name a few) completely locked me out of the game.
Instead of becoming discouraged (despite the taunting and teasing of my friends) I went back to the drawing board, a Lone Ranger facing terrible odds. After a few weeks of tweaking the build I had; testing cabal rituals, trying various mana bases and transformative sideboards (which may or may not have included Doom Whisperer), I finally conceded that the deck, as it was, couldn’t hang with the big boys and gals. By big boys and gals, of course, I am referring to the Tiered decks we all know and love (or hate). Even with the baubles, the discard and the card draw, I just couldn’t assemble my combo fast enough, and sure I stole some matches, however, if I didn’t start with a Leyline in play the game rarely went my way.
I decided I needed a more efficient way to get the card I needed when I needed it, and decided I would give Infernal Tutor and Lion’s Eye Diamond a trial run. I cut the baubles and exchanged them for lotus petals, I was going all in. I took it back and started to see instant results, posting my first winning record at my local event. After additional testing I realized I had a very relevant piece of the Iggy-pop shell already in my main board. So, I figured, I may as well throw a Tendrils of Agony in and see what happened. It was great! It gave the deck another way to win, I could finally play around a Pithing Needle, a Disenchant AND an Assassin’s Trophy.
As the ancient riddle goes “what is better than two combos?” Three combos! I jokingly suggested that I should jam the Dark Depths combo into the deck as well. The response, “why not?” Yes, why not indeed? So, that’s exactly what I did. I then had my triple threat deck, DETH. DEpths Tendrils Helm. I went to work testing various copies of Vampire hexmage, Thesbian’s stage and Dark Depths and ultimately decided to run 3 of each land and 2 hexmage.
That week, my friend Jay Trojan asked me if I was going to the Legacy 4k at Channel Fireball the following weekend, and told me that he had a deck I could borrow should I want to attend. I remember deciding that I would go, and that I would be bringing my homebrew. I ended up surprising the field (and myself) that day stealing match after match. I started 3-0 and lost round 4 in 3 games to my friend Isaac Sears who knew and had played against my list. Then I was 4-1, then 5-1, for the last round I got the CFB feature match and again was paired against a friend who knew my list, Marshall Janakowski. I was bested in 2 games. I finished 5-2 and 15th overall. Channel Fireball brought me into their streaming booth for a brief interview about the deck. It was then that I decided I would continue to refine the deck and begin streaming it.
That more or less brings us to today, I am still streaming the deck at traswidden on Twitch and I am still refining the build and sideboard.
My Two Cents: There are a ton of undiscovered competitive decks out there, and a lot of great ideas. A good idea by itself does not equate to a good deck. With enough time, care and patience some of these ideas can become competitive decks. I took a ton of learning losses to find the right combination of cards to make this deck competitive. Is it the best deck of all time? Maybe not, but if you ask me, it’s the most fun.
THE COMBOS
Leyline of the Void/ Helm of Obedience. This is an old favorite of mine. Leyline of the Void causes your opponent’s cards to be exiled rather than placed in the graveyard, while Helm of Obedience states that you must place X cards into your opponent’s graveyard until a creature is placed there or X is reached. The result, of course, of having both of these cards on the battlefield together is being able to mill your opponent’s entire library with X being equal to 1. Since a card is never placed in the graveyard, the condition is never satisfied, thus winning you the game on your opponents next draw step due to them being unable to draw a card. Naturally, getting two cards that take 4 mana into play is no small feat. Being able to start with a Leyline in play is a huge advantage for this particular combo and is generally good against the field. It shuts off reanimator shenanigans, dredge nonsense, snapcaster mage trickeries, as well as Life from the Loam strategies to name a few. The graveyard is a huge resource in legacy and sometimes taking that away is enough. However, this deck also works proactively to win with Leyline of the Void in addition to thwarting your opponent’s game plan. In addition to running 3 Helm in the main deck, there are also 5 cards that can tutor for it.
Ill-gotten Gains is another all-star when paired with Leyline, it doesn’t immediately win you the game if you resolve it, but often your opponent may concede. Since your opponent can’t place cards in their graveyard, Ill-gotten Gains effectively exiles their hand while allowing you your choice of any 3 cards from your graveyard to come back to your hand. Mind Twist? SOLD.
I’m sure many of you are familiar with this combination of cards, being able to make a 20/20 flying, indestructible creature on turn one is pretty great. Hexmage is also useful on its own as a way to take out planeswalkers or clear counters off of a chalice of the void when you need it. Similarly, Thespian’s stage can copy many of the utility lands your opponents control that the deck can’t afford to play. Two of my favorite targets : locus lands versus Eldrazi post and Karakas against Death and Taxes, also, every once in a while you can get away copying a Dark Depths controlled by an unsuspecting opponent.
This is the third and final win condition. Storm. This can lead to some tricky lines in actual gameplay, but the math and theory behind it are simple enough. Cast 10 spells and then cast Tendrils of Agony. In order for this plan to work, you need a six mana loop. The simplest way to achieve this is with 2 mana, 2 Lion’s Eye Diamonds and one Infernal Tutor. Cast Infernal Tutor with your 2 mana, sacrifice your 2 LEDs with your spell on the stack floating 6 black mana and tutor for Ill-gotten Gains. Cast your Ill-gotten Gains with 4 of your six floating mana targeting LED, LED, and infernal tutor from your graveyard. Use the last 2 floating black mana to cast Infernal Tutor again sacrificing the LED’s in the same fashion. You can repeat this process until you have cast enough spells to tutor for your Tendrils of Agony and end the game. Similarly, you can run this combo the same way with 3 mana, 1 dark ritual and 1 LED. Since this loop only nets you 5 mana, you are -1 mana for each loop you do, so in order to get to 10 spells you would need the third land to cast the dark ritual leaving you with exactly 4 mana after casting infernal tutor and sacrificing LED.
The General Idea
Having three distinctly different win conditions in the deck is difficult for your opponents to navigate, but it can also be challenging to pilot. Often times, I have discovered that you need to pivot between game plans as your opponents shut one path of victory off. For Instance, Thalia makes it impossible to win by storm, where Karakas makes your Depths combo useless. The ability to adapt and innovate is crucial. What deck are you playing against? Which combo is most likely to beat them? Which combo are you closest to assembling? There are a lot of moving parts in all magic games, which is what makes the game so great, but it is especially true with DETH. If you’d like to see the deck in action I stream it often under the handle Traswidden. Next time I will go a little more in depth about the deck’s good, and not so good match ups and general sideboard strategies and answer some of the questions I posed above.