emberfire17 Ngl, I was looking over the decks and this is the first time I realized there are printing with Llanowar Elves with bows because I'm so used to the 9th edition/Alpha/Dominara arts. I might change up an Archer theme deck I've had for a bit now bc of that.
I put a lot of effort into this one and I'm really happy with the results. I'd like to share with everyone a:
Harvest of Crops and SoulsDecklist(Budget)A ~29 USD list that is themed entirely around cards with scythes in their art. Our primarily strategy is to play cards like
Elves of Deep Shadow and
Careful Cultivation to rush out bigger cards like
Eradicator Valkyrie that will sacrifice them for a quick benefit or
Midnight Reaper that will set us up to benefit from more sacrifices. We also use
Reassembling Skeleton as both a chump blocker and a more reliable means of sacrifice that we can use over and over with Eradicator Valkyrie to clear the field if we get both out.
We have two surprise win conditions - because a lot of our cards are artifacts (Most notably
Harvest Hand, which is a free sacrifice for us that comes back as an equipment), we can play
Necron Overlord and quickly drain our opponent to death out of nowhere, and
Strata Scythe, which we can repeatedly stick on a Reassembling Skeleton in more grindy games to slowly wear the opponent down.
A lot of this deck's cards have multiple uses in general, some of which I'll briefly detail below:
Careful Cultivation - Is not only ramp and a buff but also an unexpected removal speed for any fragile attackers - channel at instant speed and use the token to block.
Egon, God of Death - If a dork is played turn 1, he can be 'cycled' turn 2 for a card. His throne works as both a means to quickly find Reassembling Skeleton and early setup for Necron Overlord. Naturally, if the game has gone on long enough, Egon himself can be a beatstick finisher.
Eradicator Valkyrie - In addition to being our main beatstick and field clearer, she allows us to heal back damage accumulated from Elves of Deep Shadow and Midnight Reaper, and offers the deck a way to handle Planeswalkers.
Ultra Budget VersionUltra-budget basically consists of us playing all basics and eliminating our more color intensive cards to focus on repeatedly smashing face with Strata Scythe, or beating face with
Jade Statues buffed with Careful Cultivation. I put in a 68 cents "sideboard" of 4 Necron Overlords to note that you can try using it instead of Jade Statue, but I'm generally a little wary of including more color intensive cards on a manabase with no multicolor support, so buyer beware.
The ultra-budget list is about 15 USD and a bit more straightforward than its counterpart, so if you just want to get a basic feel for the deck or customize it your own way it can be a good starting point.
Throwing the Budget out of the Window:(Note: These strategies expand to count some cards that use sickles, in addition to scythes.)If we ignore the budget restriction entirely, some other interesting ideas and cards come up for us to consider, which I list below. The reason these ideas didn't make the cut usually boils down to one of two reasons:
- It requires you to run three colors, which would require a manabase that is definitely not budget.
- This deck relies a lot on cards that can fit multiple strategies at once, but even then it's in your best interest to pick cards that focus on a certain strategy. I really liked the mental image of Necron Overlord swinging a ton of scythes or scythe-adjacent artifacts around, so I mainly focused on cards that enabled that and sacrifice.
- It required running off-theme nonland cards, and I wanted to try and do the bonus challenges.
Note: It's worth noting
Cavalier of Night fits all the strategies mentioned here (including the ones used in the main deck).
Lifegain/Lifeloss with 
: Use
Pain Seer for card draw, and
Dross Harvesters as less reliable Midnight Reapers that are chunkier beatsticks to try and beat the opponent while frantically swinging your life total back and forth with
Intrepid Adversary,
Mistmeadow Skulk, and
Ambitious Farmhand. Use
Mutagenic Growth for more free surprise damage and
Avatar of Hope as a surprise beatstick. If it's winter,
Spirit of the Season helps a ton here, honestly, and also enables
Murmuring Bosk as a decent land consideration. You can also use
Swords to Plowshares to trade in a Dross Harvester for a life boost in a pinch and stop it from killing you (in addition to being the great removal Swords already is), and
Duergar Assailant if you need even more removal to quickly fill your graveyard with.
Slower tables will also find they have access to a bunch of exciting lategame finishers like
Mortarion, Daemon Primarch,
Avatar of Woe, and
Angel of Deliverance.
Reanimator: If you can fit some good discard outlets like
Wild Mongrel or
Noose Constrictor to make sure expensive creatures stay out of your hand, this deck could be well-suited for
Dread Return with the large number of big creatures, some of which I listed in the Lifegain/Lifeloss section (other standouts include
Grave Titan and
Ashen Rider). Egon can either get rid of extra reanimator fodder to fuel himself or steadily self-mill your deck for more reanimation targets and opportunities, and Reassembling Skeleton is useful both in and out of the graveyard. This isn't a particularly expensive strategy to find appropriate cards for (Dread Return costs literal cents), but the need for discard outlets will noticeably reduce the number of Scythe-themed cards in your deck.
If you're willing to use digital only cards,
Klement, Novice Acolyte works as an on-theme discard outlet - his Black and Green specializations feature a scythe.
Beatdown: Play more cards like
Hunted Nightmare,
Spirit of the Season, and
Dross Reaper to focus on just beating the opponent down, with some mix of
Monstrous Growth or
Mutagenic Growth to drive the point home. This is also a dirt-cheap strategy you can try and it stays 100% on theme, but I didn't build this way because I wanted to show something more exciting to play for the theme.
Phyrexian Defiler also seems like an interesting choice for more creature-centric strategies as additional removal.
Pivoting to Blue?: If you want to try an even weirder deck that features some amount of
, you have access to
Nightveil Specter,
Hurkyl's Prodigy, and
The Scarab God. Not sure what could be done there but there's a a few potential ideas sitting there.
The Cursed Gifts of the Lake 
"When in doubt, do a common." 
