Hello, my name is the Lich Lord

Hello everyone!

I haven't been posting much this summer, but that's because I have been incredibly busy here at camp! We're in week 8 right now which is our final week of the season. Most camps are completely closed and packed up by now, but we're rocking one last week with 200 campers (smallest of the year)!

A lot of things have happened since I have been gone like the Hall of Fame voting (congrats PV!), but one thing in particular has caught my attention: A new card from Return to Ravnica!

Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord!

Now the first thing that stuck out to me when I read this card was the middle ability "1BG, Sac another creature: Each opponent loses life equal to the sacrificed creature's power." I feel like if Jarad is to become a contender in standard (definitely too slow for modern or legacy), then it will have to be based off of that ability. The next thing I noticed about him was that he is a zombie, so he combos very nicely with Gravecrawler! Gravecrawler + Mortarpod was quite a nice thing this past year, and having 1BBG: All opponents lose 2 life isn't the worst...

But you know what card will very happily pair up with Jarad? Geralf's Messenger! Without things like attacking involved, look at this:

T3: Cast Geralf's Messenger (18)
T4: Cast Jarad (18)
T5: Sac Messenger to Jarad (15), Undying (13)
T6: Sac Messenger to Jarad (9)

So without turning any dudes sideways, the two combine for 11 points of direct life loss for your opponent! That's pretty nice! After packaging up with gravecrawlers, blood artists, and other disruption, we should have a pretty solid deck!

Now, the one limiting factor is going to be the mana cost... BBGG isn't too easy to do.... However, assuming Overgrown Tomb gets reprinted we will have that, Woodland Cemetery, and Cavern of Souls to fix our mana, so I doubt there will be a problem. Consider this deck:

4x Gravecrawler
4x Diregraf Ghoul
4x Blood Artist
4x Bloodthrone Vampire
4x Geralf's Messenger
3x Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord
1x Disciple of Bolas

4x Tragic Slip
4x Duress
1x Vile Rebirth
3x Sign in Blood

4x Cavern of Souls
4x Woodland Cemetery
4x Overgrown Tomb
12x Swamp

I know that this isn't quite a final product, especially considering that I don't have any RTR cards in here, but It's a start. Some other cards I have considered for this deck include Ghoultree and Rancor. If I'm playing Ghoultree, then I would probably want to play smallpox as well because then I can still get value out of discarding a creature besides Gravecrawler. I am also considering Killing Wave, although that has generally been phased out at this point as being too cute and not actually effective.

I originally wrote a piece on the possibility of combining Jarad with Life from the Loam, however, then I was directed to this video from Dan Diego Comic Con where Rosewater explicitly says there are no returning mechanics. Yeah, that was from over a month ago, but I have been gone and missed it completely. I will hopefully get to watch this video in the next week and draw some information from it. I'm sure there is potential in Modern, but I haven't had the time to wrap ideas around the whole modern format!

That's all I have for today! Until next time, stay classy!

Ryan Lackie
Ryan.Lackie92@gmail.com
@ThingsILack