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Welcome once again to our wild and wacky Wednesday where every deck is guaranteed not to include any cards from Mirage. This follows in the wake of two days where Mirage cards ruled the prophetic roost.
Today, let's turn our eyes towards a little Ravnica action, shall we? Sometimes, you just want to build the obvious. Bottled Cloister screams "Combine me with other artifacts." Let's take a look at just such a deck.
Burning Bottled Bridge
4 Bottled Closter
4 Grafted Skullcap
4 Ensnaring Bridge
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Incinerate
4 Volcanic Hammer
4 Chain Lightning
4 Arc Lightning
4 Shock
24 Mountains
Yep, this is just your basic Burning Bridge deck with a Bottled Cloister tossed in. Alright, look at the fun! Burning death!
I guess maybe sometimes you don't want to build the obvious after all. Okay, now let's take a closer look at the Bottled Cloister.
Mono Brown (Blackish) Cloistering
4 Bottled Cloister
2 Fool's Tome
4 Null Broach
4 Dark Suspicions
4 Ensnaring Bridge
4 Bottomless Pit
4 Frozen Shade
4 Consume Spirit
4 Cursed Scroll
1 Undercity Shade
1 Whispering Shade
24 Swamps
This deck uses the Cloister to draw extra cards and then have an empty hand during opponents' turns. It works well with Dark Suspicions in order to deal some damage and encourage players to empty their hands. Another enchantment that does that is the Bottomless Pit. You can stack the Cloister, then the Pit, so that the Pit resolves first causing you to discard nothing, and then you draw for the Cloister.
My favorite Cloister card is the Null Broach. This grants an uncounterable countering ability to you for just two colorless mana per use. Only a handful of cards can counter a Null Broach's activation, and most aren't regularly played. A Null Broach can really stifle a deck, and two simply shuts down anything.
Ensnaring Bridge is your defense. While you should be able to attack through a Bridge, your opponent will never be able to swing unless she has a creature with a power of zero. Maybe she has Carrion Ants or something. Except for this rare circumstance, the Bridge shuts down attacking.
Meanwhile, you'll be attacking away with your Shades. Even if you don't have a Cloister out, you can still attack through a Bridge with a Shade. Just draw your card, attack, pump, then play your card. I tossed in one each of the fear and swampwalk Shades just in case they are needed to break open a stalemate.
Consume Spirit acts as both creature removal and a game ending spell. After taking some Scroll, Suspicions or Shade Damage, a nicely sized Consume Spirit should finish off a player. Since you'll be drawing extra cards, you'll rarely miss a land drop, allowing you to build up quickly to a large Consume.
A little extra card drawing is added in the shape of Fool's Tome. It cheaply draws cards, and with a Cloister or Pit out, you'll frequently find yourself cardless. The Tome is a nick backup to the Cloister, just in case it gets destroyed or you can't find one.
Cursed Scrolls also work well in this deck. They are cheap to play when you draw several cards and need to drop your hand. You'll have plenty of mana to use them. They add to your removal and winning conditions. Last, you'll almost always be able to deal damage with them. Manipulating the table so that you have just one card in hand when you activate a Scroll is easy to do with this deck.
There are certainly other cards that might fit. Everything from Underworld Dreams to No Mercy could fit in here. Black adds a nice smattering of removal and damage dealing capacity. If you want to tech up the deck, I'd start by adding Black power, including tutors and such. A Yawgmoth's Will, Demonic Tutor and Vampiric Tutor would make this deck more deadly with ease.
Another way to adjust this deck is to morph more towards a traditional Cabal Coffers engine, using Drain Life and Consume Spirit to kill while having the Cloister and maybe Phyrexian Arenas as the backbone of the deck - allowing you to draw extra cards.
No matter how you use your Cloister, it is a nice adjunct to several existing strategies while also providing deck ideas of its own.
Until Later,
Abe Sargent