In my time I have made a lot of Smokestack decks with a lot of different themes, some even without the clunky Smokestack! The concept is pretty simple, you break the symmetry of the sacrifice effects and either lock your opponent out of the game or just pull very far ahead. This list is entirely a creation of one of my friends. While it is a Smokestack list at heart it is really abusing a whole different aspect of the artifact and the cards like it. This list does have a few cards that abuse the symmetry of cards like Smokestack but the primary thing this deck is doing is benefiting from sacrificing things. It is like the Smokestack could have been a Carrion Feeder or Viscera Seer! It was a very different experience to play against. It was also unreal complicated keeping track of all the things that were going on and the ever changing life totals. It wasn't complicated like a precise combo deck with calculation and planning, it was more complicated like trying to keep an eye on thirty energetic kids all running amok. Most Smokestack style decks have very little in the way of resources (for both players) and consequently empty boards. This deck covered everything in clutter with a vast array of different 1/1 tokens!
This list primarily ran off the power of Zulaport Cutthroat and Blood Artist. The deck would be better considered to be based around those cards rather than the Smokestack. The real genius was combining these somewhat overlapping strategies. It allows you to pack disruption that also doubles up as enablers. It means your opponents are that much less likely to disrupt your synergies as you are putting so much pressure on their resources. All in all I was very impressed with how this deck performed, the unique game play experience it gave, and the fact that it made such great use of a lot of low powered and exotic cards. The deck has so much token generation and cards that create multiple bodies that it barely notices the effects of a Smokestack or a Braids. It also frequently got to critical mass where by either saccing all their guys would drain you to death or simply running everything in would get enough stuff killed to make up fatal damage with the things that were unblocked. Here is his exact list;
24 Spells
Young Wolf
Blisterpod
Deathrite Shaman
Fatal Push
Bird of Paradise
Elves of Deep Shadow
Bitterblossom
Fist of Ironwood
Zulaport Cutthroat
Blood Artisist
Sultai Emissary
Sylvan Ranger
Smallpox
Abrupt Decay
Hangarback Walker
Bloodghast
Ophiomancer
Yehenni, Undying Partisan
Flesh Carver
Grim Haruspex
Meren of Clan Nel Toth
Braids, Cabal Minion
Smokestack
Death Cloud
16 Lands including a Gaea's Cradle
Smallpox, Braids, Smokestack and Death Cloud made up his disruptive suite. It seems like a good spread, power and number of cards. The power level or synergy drops off somewhat after those four. I would have quite liked to see some effects to help force through such cards, perhaps a Kitesail Freebooter. While hand disruption is a little wasted effort when you restrict the board so much with cards like Smokestack you will struggle to get that online against a heavy permission blue deck. The Freebooter is nice in that it doesn't diminish your creature synergies but it does broaden your range. Collective Brutality would be another good potential in that role but would probably replace a different sort of card. Brutality might replace the Abrupt Decay or the Fatal Push while I would be more inclined to replace a Fists of Ironwood or a Sylvan Ranger with the Freebooter.
Skullclamp looked like an obvious omission to me but on closer inspection it is not really missed. By using Haruspex and Meren as card advantage engines he is able to keep the deck more consistent. Both are creatures and relevant in their own right and both offer some positive tempo. Skullclamp would offer more direct card advantage but the deck doesn't really need it. The creature plan seems better in a list that is trying to do a lot. The deck is technically getting card advantage when it can sac snake tokens to Braids every turn as well so again, less need of the Clamp. I would like to have seen another creature in the card advantage camp, some kind of Dark Confidant perhaps or just an Eternal Witness. While the latter is not ongoing card advantage it can get back the thing that will be in the appropriate matchups and seems like it would make the deck rather more robust. I particularly like the use of Haruspex in this list. He has seen very little play in cube despite looking pretty decent and he fits in this list better than you might think. Young Wolf and Sultai Emissary both allow you two draws with him as both the bodies those cards produce are non-tokens. Meren also racked up experience super fast and was pretty much a Zombify every end step.
With such a high synergy deck I think I would try and focus a little more on the sac or the discard elements. I love a Bloodghast in this kind of list but there is only a couple of clunkier ways to get it into the bin thus bypassing having to ever cast the thing. I feel like I would want to either cut the Bloodghast or add in a couple more discard synergy things such as a Vengevine, perhaps Dread Wanderer or Scrapheap Scrounger. If doing this you may be able to look at some delirium cards as well. There are plenty of good discard enablers that fit with this theme from Call the Bloodline to Borderlands Explorer to Cryptbreaker. You certainly don't want to over do it, only the most appropriate cards should be going in and even so I think space is a bit of an issue.
I think it would be easier to empower the sacrifice aspect of the deck. Presently Yehenni is the only card that can sac your whole team for no mana and do the old Arcbound Ravager Disciple of the Vault combo with your Blood Artist effects. While Braids and the like will grind out this value the ability to one shot someone is a big deal. Flesh Carver is great and I would't consider cutting it from this list but it is not a one shot kill sac outlet very often as the mana cost prohibits that. I would like to see one more card like Yehenni that can threaten to end the game on the spot and there are plenty of good options. Be it a Bloodthrone Vampire, a Carrion Feeder or a Viscera Seer, I would like to see one of these cards in the list.
I also quite like an Argual's Blood Fast in this list as a way of getting card advantage and as a sac outlet. It would fit but much like the Skullclamp I think not contributing to the creature synergies and being negative tempo probably just mean there are better options. With another sac outlet in the list I would then love to see a Liliana, Heretical Healer. A very elegant fit for the deck all round and a nice high powered card as well. Much like Flesh Carver, when a card is a stand alone high powered card in the cube yet it also aligns with several aspects of your decks synergies then it is a bit too good to turn away.
The only other thing this deck could really use is a bit of tutoring. As it is such a synergy based deck you can just have a draw that is all elves and Blisterpods and nothing much happens. There are some nice tutor options on offer. The black stuff helps with the Smokestack side of things but I think it is a bit costly in tempo or value to run Demonic or Vamp respectively. As you have Braids as a creature option on the disruptive side I would be pretty happy running the more on theme green tutor options. Traverse the Ulvenwald is a potential although it might need the self discard side of the deck upped a little to reliably get delirium. You would probably look to cut the Sylvan Ranger for a Traverse. Another option is Fauna Shaman being both a body and a discard outlet.
As you can see, I have suggested far more additions than I have things to cut. This is a sign of a good deck. It means there is plenty of room to fine tune and lots of room in which to adapt. It means there is a good chance that there are better builds of this style of deck. Given that it performed impressively well as it is, anything better sounds highly viable. The most cuttable cards feel like the Fists of Ironwood. While it is 3 permanents in one you cannot sac the enchantment to much and it is very low value. Similarly I am not a huge fan of the Bitterblossom. It feels super slow as a stand alone card and one of your less sustainable sources of things to sac. Butcher Ghoul feels like it does more than either of these two enchantments! That being said, if you are going for delirium you have to consider your card types a bit more. Bitterblossom may just get a pass for doubling up on otherwise hard to get types although you are going to try and get it in the bin more often than casting it then!
Sylvan Ranger seems cuttable as well. My friends reasoning was simply that he wanted 17 lands but also wanted to keep up his dork count. That felt pretty reasonable but then Khalni Garden also does that job and more reliably! There are a few other areas you could trim but generally they would need things to come in and replace elements of what they were doing. You might be able to cull the Death Cloud, either of the spot removal cards, or the Bloodghast. Some cards that stood out that I wouldn't cut were the Ophiomancer, Young Wolf or Blisterpod. Both the one drops that gave two bodies seemed to really help keep the deck with its head above the water and ahead of the opponent. The Cradle was also a great choice for this deck, it lets you sac off other land to things with ease, gives you reliable ramp, and is rarely shut down by heavy removal opponents. In elf ramp decks you probably won already if you have 4 elves in play, Cradle is just overkill. In this deck the extra mana is meaningful and the ability to produce two or more consistently makes it a much lower risk card. When I come to try this deck out for myself I think I will aim for something like the list below. It only manages to get in a few of the things I want and is ultimately incredibly similar to the original. I suspect I will be returning to this several times to test the spread of potentials.
24 Spells
Young Wolf
Blisterpod
Deathrite Shaman
Bird of Paradise
Elves of Deep Shadow
Carrion Feeder
Butcher Ghoul
Collective Brutality
Zulaport Cutthroat
Blood Artisist
Sultai Emissary
Sylvan Ranger
Smallpox
Abrupt Decay
Hangarback Walker
Bloodghast
Ophiomancer
Yehenni, Undying Partisan
Flesh Carver
Grim Haruspex
Liliana, Heretical Healer
Meren of Clan Nel Toth
Braids, Cabal Minion
Smokestack
16 Lands including a Gaea's Cradle
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