Liliana's Recurring Nightmare
- Matt Adams
- Oct 23, 2015
- 6 min read
I play a lot of people lately who don't know that Recurring Knightmare isn't banned. I've often times had to bring up the ban list on my mobile device just to prove I'm not cheating. This card is banned in many formats and for good reason. It's a powerful card that can often dodge removal unless it's at instant speed. The value it can provide to the caster can become an unanswerable problem for those who are on the opposite side of the battlefield. In the right deck, Recurring Nightmare can easily seal a win against unprepared opponents.
I present to you:
LILIANA'S RECURRING NIGHTMARE
Leader of Choice:
Liliana, Heretical Healer
The Deck List:
Creature (14)
1x Blood Artist
1x Bloodghast
1x Bone Shredder
1x Carrion Feeder
1x Dark Confidant
1x Flesh Carver
1x Fleshbag Marauder
1x Geralf's Messenger
1x Gravecrawler
1x Grim Haruspex
1x Priest of Gix
1x Skirsdag High Priest
1x Thoughtpicker Witch
1x Vampire Nighthawk
Instant (4)
1x Dark Ritual
1x Malicious Affliction
1x Smother
1x Tragic Slip
Enchantment (3)
1x Necromancy
1x Recurring Nightmare
1x Waste Not
Land (17)
1x Barren Moor
1x Bloodstained Mire
1x High Market
1x Marsh Flats
1x Nykthos, Shrine to Nyx
1x Phyrexian Tower
1x Polluted Delta
8x Swamp
1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1x Verdant Catacombs
Sorcery (8)
1x Chainer's Edict
1x Diabolic Intent
1x Hymn to Tourach
1x Inquisition of Kozilek
1x Profane Command
1x Thoughtseize
1x Toxic Deluge
1x Unearth
Artifact (2)
1x Sensei's Divining Top
1x Sword of Light and Shadow
Planeswalker (1)
1x Liliana of the Veil
Sideboard (10)
1x Engineered Plague
1x Gloom
1x Perish
1x Pithing Needle
1x Stromgald Crusader
1x Sudden Spoiling
1x Sword of Feast and Famine
1x Sword of Fire and Ice
1x Sword of War and Peace
1x Virtue's Ruin
Liliana's Recurring Nightmare is flavorful and powerful. You'll easily be able to abuse the countless sacrifice outlets to flip Liliana, Heretical Healer into Liliana, Defiant Necromancer. The best part about this list is that if you can't manage to keep Liliana alive long enough to flip her, it won't matter. You have other plans that are more important that the opponent likely doesn't see yet.
Here's the Tappedout list for easy reference:
Early Game
You want to start out with a way to either disrupt your opponent's hand with spells like Inquisition of Kozilek and Hymn to Tourach or be able to cast something imposing early on with Dark Ritual. Prime targets for the second strategy are Vampire Nighthawk and Geralf's Messenger. Liliana can be cast off of Dark Ritual on T1 if you want to, but in my experience this is better left for T2 when you have a sac outlet at the ready. She can soak up removal or become a Planeswalker by T2. It depends on what you need to have happen in your game and what your opening hand looks like.
As you progress into the next few turns you'll want control what your opponent does (i.e., force them to deal with your threats or cause them to discard). Waste Not is amazing if you can get it out early and then cast your discard spells, which give you value out of each card your opponent is forced to drop. Dark Confidant's card advantage will keep you in the lead early on while the opposition quickly hits top deck mode. One way you can capitalize on this is to have Sensei's Divining Top online. Set up your draws and grab what you need faster! The top's ability to dodge instant speed removal brings it up a notch in a format where artifact destruction can be main boarded in almost every deck. This is mainly due to the "swords" being a staple in nearly every build.
Mid Game
You've got cards in hand, and your oppenent is quickly losing anything they tried to hold onto. They keep removing your threats but you bring them back with things like Unearth. You've stolen one of their creatures with Necromancy and they are begining to see the walls closing in. Skirsdag High Priest has invited one or more 5/5 flying demons to the fight. Sword of Light and Shadow puts needed creatures back into your hand and gains you some life, which puts you further out of reach for the opponent. Even when they cast something, you can just cast Smother, Chainer's Edict, or Toxic Deluge. You're able to do this consistantly because you run as many fetch lands as you can afford, so your deck thins out and your spells are drawn often. Thoughtpicker Witch - a card most have to read when they see it for the first time - is not only enabling your leader to flip but is also giving you a peak at your opponent's top two cards and letting you exile one of them. This aggro list has become more of a tempo deck suddenly and the opposing force is struggling to make sense of it.
Late Game and The Combo
By now, if all has gone according to plan, you have some pieces of your combo in hand. Yes, I said combo. You have access to an infinite combo and you're going to do your best to set it up, although it is not needed to win the game. You may be wondering about Priest of Gix. Have you noticed anything about him? He has Dark Ritual tacked onto him. If you paid attention to the wording of our showcased card you'd notice a neat interaction between these two. After you cast Recurring Nightmare and it resolves, you can now sacrafice a creature, which will return Recurring Nightmare to your hand. Then you can take a creature from your graveyard and place it on the battlefield. We can do this with any creature we need to. However, when we sacrifice Priest of Gix and then choose to bring back Priest of Gix, we can cast Recurring Nightmare again essentially for free. Why does this even matter? Because of a wonderful card called Blood Artist. If you have this puzzle completed, you will win instantly if your opponent can't answer at instant speed. Hopefully you've made that impossible by taking their hand away from them. You have the ability to tutor up a missing piece of the combo with Diabolic Intent, which can also flip Liliana or trigger a Tragic Slip.
Sideboarding and Game Two/Three
Remember that the sideboard is a tool that should be finely tuned to your own meta. Everything here reflects what I've experienced in the format locally. That being said...
My sideboard is jam-packed with hate. White is heavily targeted because of my own meta. Path to Exile and Swords to Plowshares shut the combo down. We don't like that. Gloom is a card that can make this a much harder task for decks splashing white like Sydri's Artifacts or the notorious Anafezna's Good Stuff decks. Virtue's Ruin can also clear a board in the Mono White Weenie and Tokens match ups. Perish, Engineered Plague and Sword of Feast and Famine are "must-haves" for the Ezuri Elf Ball combo deck. You can and should also bring in Sudden Spoiling against Ezuri because it can ruin the overrun alpha attack. Pithing Needle is your tech for almost every Leader out there because you can use it to shut off most of the abilities of most of the legendary creatures that people use in this format. The swords of x/y are of course there to help keep you safe in the various matches you face when your sideboard can't help you in some other way. You can always fill these spots with things that better suit your meta game and they are by no means needed to complete this build.
Considerations
Another creature that might find its way into the deck is the new card from Battle for Zendikar: Zulaport Cutthroat. He basically does the same thing as the artist but it's more one-sided. I still am working on finding a spot for him in my build. Other interesting cards are Bloodsoaked Champion, Mortician Beetle, Pack Rat, and Grim Return to name just a few. Experiment with your own versions and see what is effective in your local meta.
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