{"ops":[{"insert":"When I first laid eyes on Anti-Venom, Horrifying Healer it was love at first sight. Only problem was, this apple of my eye was 5 white mana which severely restricted a lot of the usual deck building options. But you know what they say, limitations breed innovation, constraints are the ultimate catalyst for creativity"},{"attributes":{"color":"#000000"},"insert":". I could not deny this attraction and was willing to give it my full attention."},{"insert":"\n\nThe first limitation/challenge was Anti-Venom’s casting cost. Like I said above 5 white cc makes it clear that you cannot rely on colorless mana to ramp. So in came all the worthy White mana artifact ramp, which white has some decent options: Marble Diamond, Arcane Signet, Hourglass, and White Auracite (which also conveniently works as a removal spell too!)\n\nBut that wasn’t enough, the ‘Aha!’ moment came when I was looking over some bulk and came across Timeless Dragon and Eternal Dragon. While they may not ramp, they do get us the needed Plains and White mana necessary to cast Anti-Venom. Coincidentally, the plains cycling also made it so that you could gain some value from the mostly overlooked etb ability of Anti-Venom. So in went all the worthy basic land cyclers white had! Land Tax included (I’ve been looking for a good reason to play Land Tax again!)\n\nAnother limitation and challenge of the restrictions that AV’s 5cc creates is that the earliest you generally get him out is T4, most often a natural T5. This meant that you could not turbo him out early easily. But that restriction only reinforces a basic deck building/construction tenet which Commander players have long forgotten…that is, playing your deck on curve. We can take advantage of this restriction by playing good fundamental Magic! By doing that, it eases the tension of exploding out the gate and makes us take our time to set the trap nicely and set up our board accordingly. \n\nThis also conveniently scratches an itch of mine as well. I like each of my decks to have a different play pattern and go to each deck when I’m wanting a different experience. It’s often easy to fall into a rut in Magic (in life really) and it’s good practice for us to switch things up. These ruts often look like each deck having the same 5-10 Commander staples making each game look similar. If this repetitive pattern happens too often, Magic can get stale and your enjoyment or interest can wane. So this intentional playing my deck on curve allows me to relax a bit and not feel the need to speed up the game. Now, you do want to hit your curve but playing this way doesn’t auto-script your first 5 turns, it just gives you a general template and a few micro objectives to achieve before the pay-off turn. To me, I found that refreshing as I had fallen into the speed trap with a few of my recent EDH builds.\n\nA good curve looks like this in this deck:\nT1: Plains, Land cycle (Eagles) or 1cc Protection piece like Mother of Runes, Benevolent Bodyguard, etc.\nT2: Plains, Land cycle or 2cc mana rock\nT3: Pariah Combo piece or more ramp\nT4: Cast Anti-Venom or Phyrexian Vindicator, or address the board state, cast a damage redirect (en-Kor) creature, etc. Reanimating landcycler.\nT5: Attach combo.\n\nThe nature of this deck being forced to play on curve will likely mean this deck won’t ever fully get to Bracket 4 or cEDH levels, but that’s ok. This deck can certainly hold its own and Pariah effects make for fun and interesting social dynamics. \n\nBesides the long preamble about making Anti-Venom’s Reanimate ability useful, this deck fully employs the Pariah Voltron aspect of his ability to devastating effect. From Darksteel Plate, to Dawnsire, to Inquisitors Flail, your opponents will be between a rock and a hard place in figuring out how to kill this thing. This guy is a nightmare to block with all the damage prevention and redirecting. I even found that there is a damage loop you can take advantage of while gold fishing, Anti-Venom with Guilty Conscience and Inquisitor’s Flail (I had to double check this online) which makes for a damage loop on AV that makes him infinitely large! There are probably many more corner case situations for this deck which makes it a fun replayable deck.\n\nI’ve had a lot of fun brewing this deck and for anyone who enjoys making it hard on your opponents but not necessarily going down the STAX route, this deck is for you. \n\nEdit Update: \nAfter a few run through a I found that I was leaning too hard into the land cyclers. Though it was nice getting a creature back on the cast rigger, I found that it was a bit too cute and so pulled back on that in favor of more ramp in the form of Solemn simulacrum and Scampering Surveyor, which worked beautifully because instead of the land going to your hand, it went straight to play and ramping you a bit. The turn you cast AntiVenom is pretty tight on mana and so getting that land out a bit earlier is very helpful and much better than in your hand.\n\nThe other update is I have removed the Heliod Ballista combo in favor of Puresteel Paladin, Super Serum, and Grand Abolisher. The mana saved by the free equips boosts and solidifies the deck better than to have the combo in the deck. Also, it brings the deck down to a real Bracket 3 which is where my play group normally plays at.\n"}]}