Calling Up Abyssal Persecutor

First, a huge thank you to Eric Linden and Mana Nation for featuring The Brewery again on This Week in Magic! Here’s hoping something this week is worth a third consecutive mention.

Earlier today on Twitter, Gerry Thompson (@G3RRYT) posited that “Abyssal Persecutor is the new Frost Titan.” This follows his article on StarCityGames from earlier this week where he called it “Grossly underrated.”

Abyssal Persecutor – 2BB
Creature – Demon
Flying, Trample
You can’t win the game and your opponents can’t lose the game.
6/6

I’ve been trying to fit Abyssal Persecutor into various Black decks for months. First Black/Red, then Mono Black… but it hasn’t been until the last few days that I realized that Jace, the Mind Sculptor has incredibly synergy with Abyssal Persecutor. Between Jace, Into the Roil (an absolutely brilliant card at the moment), and Trinket Mage-fueled Brittle Effigies, a U/B Control deck actually has quite a few ways to deal with an Abyssal Persecutor after he’s smashed enough face.

@G3RRYT agrees.

Abyssal Persecutor can come down on Turn 3 or 4, a fantastic time to get a 6/6 Flying, Trample in today’s Titan-filled Standard environment. Now consider that a UB deck will be able to play Abyssal Persecutor and have Frost Titan as backup. It’s already hard enough to deal with a Black 6/6 Creature, let alone that early, and Frost Titan’s tapping ability will make sure they stay in their precarious position. Add to that the rest of the UB Control shell, and you have an excellent start for a deck.

Here’s a sample decklist from a recent MTGO Standard Daily:

UB Control, by Joseph_K (MTGO, 3-1)
4 Creeping Tar Pit
4 Darkslick Shores
4 Drowned Catacomb
6 Island
1 Misty Rainforest
3 Swamp
3 Tectonic Edge

3 Abyssal Persecutor
2 Frost Titan
3 Trinket Mage

1 Brittle Effigy
1 Consume the Meek
1 Deprive
4 Doom Blade
2 Everflowing Chalice
2 Into the Roil
2 Jace Beleren
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Mana Leak
1 Negate
4 Preordain
2 Spell Pierce

SB:

2 Consume the Meek
4 Disfigure
1 Elixir of Immortality
2 Flashfreeze
3 Memoricide
2 Negate
1 Nihil Spellbomb

This decklist does a lot of things really well. First, notice the Blue/Black Control shell:

4 Preordain
4 Mana Leak
4 Doom Blade
2 Into the Roil
3 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
2 Jace Beleren

And the Trinket Mage package:

3 Trinket Mage
1 Brittle Effigy
2 Everflowing Chalice

Accompanying those are Elixir of Immortality and Nihil Spellbomb to fetch postboard.

The land base looks pretty solid. There’s a little wiggle room for an extra fetchland, and I’m going to assume the weight is right between Black and Blue. I like 25 lands here to go along with the 4 Preordain and the 2 Everflowing Chalice.

Now the win conditions:

3 Abyssal Persecutor
2 Frost Titan

Here is the bare minimum I would play. Ideally, I would want to start with at least the third Frost Titan. With Creeping Tar Pit, both Jaces, Frost Titan, Abyssal Persecutor, and even Trinket Mage (with or without Elixir of Immortality), this UB deck has an extremely varied backup attack plan in the face of a resolved Memoricide or a long attrition battle.

This leaves a few slots open. What did Joseph_K choose?

1 Consume the Meek
1 Deprive
1 Negate
2 Spell Pierce

I like parts of this and I don’t like others. Consume the Meek seems a little sub optimal when going with Trinket Mage, but I do concede that having a miser’s copy of a boardsweeper like this can be an extremely useful maindeck card. Negate and Deprive serve the obvious purpose as a hard counter backup to Mana Leak. Spell Pierce is the card I especially like. This deck is built like a Control deck, but when playing the beatdown versus another Controlling strategy (behind Abyssal Persecutor and friends), having a 1-mana Counterspell effect like Spell Pierce is extremely valuable as a trump card to force through your threats past Mana Leak.

When fine-tuning these final cards in a deck, the difference is unlikely to be astronomical. But those small, incremental advantages from making optimal deckbuilding choices can really start to add up . Here is the list I would start with:

4 Preordain
4 Mana Leak
4 Doom Blade
3 Into the Roil
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
1 Jace Beleren
3 Trinket Mage
1 Brittle Effigy
3 Everflowing Chalice
3 Abyssal Persecutor
3 Frost Titan
2 Spell Pierce
1 Deprive

4 Creeping Tar Pit
4 Darkslick Shores
4 Drowned Catacomb
5 Island
1 Misty Rainforest
3 Swamp
3 Tectonic Edge

The Sideboard would feature heavily some combination of Consume the Meek, Elixir of Immortality & Nihil Spellbomb, Negate, Flashfreeze, Memoricide, Disfigure.

There are a few minor changes from Joseph_K’s original list, and my version is where I would personally begin testing. The third Into the Roil comes in to deal with Abyssal Persecutor and as a catch-all to various Permanent threats. The third Frost Titan comes in as promised. Two Spell Pierce and the single Deprive remain, and one Jace Beleren levels up to Jace, the Mind Sculptor. I also cut a land and added an Everflowing Chalice.

The extra Chalice plays well with the additional Jace, the Abyssal Persecutors, and the Frost Titans especially. Being able to power those cards out early is part of what makes this direction of the Archetype so intriguing. It’s also my justification for cutting back to 24 land. If 24 is not enough, the Deprive or Into the Roil will probably be the first card to go. However, with 24 land and 4 Preordain, the deck should already play as if it has closer to 25 or 26, and the Chalices should definitely push that more toward 26+.

Elixir of Immortality stays in the Sideboard, since with Abyssal Persecutor as additional threats the need to grind out a long game is diminished.

I don’t personally have the resources to test this deck on MTGO, but I’d encourage anybody else to do so instead! I’m currently working on an analytical approach to analyze playtest games – hopefully to be debuted next week after the playtest session with @Smi77y’s GW Tokens deck.

Until then, thanks again for reading!