Conniving Obscura

This is a fun and effective obscura deck that takes full advantage of the connive mechanic introduced in this set.

An important addition that I have yet to see in other connive decks is the artifact \”Bag of Holding\”. This artifact, in combination with connive, is very powerful. Cards discarded by connive, or any other discard mechanism, go into the bag of holding, rather than being wasted into your graveyard. In a pinch, you can spend two mana and tap to draw, then discard, a card. When you have enough mana, and the timing seems appropriate, you can spend four, sacrifice the bag, and get all the exiled cards back into your hand.

This has no downside if you have managed to exile another bag of holding into the current one, by the time you decide to cash it in.

Toluz, Clever Conductor has the same discard exiling mechanic. Try not to add a second bag of holding, or Toluz, to the board, if you already have one of these card out. The exiled cards go to the most recent one to enter the battlefield, which often, but not always, dilutes the utility.

Once you have a Bag of Holding, or Toluz, on the board, it makes the decision of which cards to discard with connive much less painful. You can discard high value cards, with a good chance of getting them back later in the match.

The vast majority of the time, you want to sacrifice a non-land card, for the +1 counter, but there occasionally will be points in a match where it makes sense to discard land cards, to increase the availability of non-land cards in your hand before the next turn.

Through game play, you should develop a sense of which cards to prioritize getting on the board, and which cards to discard as part of connive. My advice is to play several matches where you don\’t really sweat the decisions. It might become very easy to suffer \”paralysis by analysis\” with this deck, if you are a player who overthinks. The more matches you play with this deck, making quick decisions on which cards to discard, the better you will become at playing it.

I played it initially as a grinding deck. It\’s fun to play, even if your win rate isn\’t great as you learn the deck. I also tweaked it quite a bit over the past several days.

The current iteration presented here has a 83% best of three win rate. 

I almost never sideboard, which means this sideboard can probably use some tweaking as matches occur where substitution choices will become more clear. I still prefer best of three with this deck, as it seems to do better without the hand smoothing draw mechanic of best of one matches. 

Valorous Stance has proved, for me, to be the most effecting instant speed interaction capability I\’ve experimented with in the deck. The versatility is very nice, and both options have proven instrumental in several wins.

I also tried running more than three cards that didn\’t play directly into the connive mechanic, but I found they diluted the tempo of this deck a little too much. The sideboard is always an option if you feel like you might occasionally want a different mix, versus particular decks.

I also experimented with no instants at all, replacing them with conniving creatures. The win rate for those iterations was around 54%, over time. (That\’s actually how I first ran the deck, as I learned how to play with connive).  Moving to three Valorous Stance, though seemingly a minor tweak, made a noticeable difference.