Nefarious Lich BBBB
Enchantment Rare
If you would be dealt damage, remove that may cards in your graveyard from the game instead. If you can't, you lose the game.
If you would gain life, draw that many cards instead.
When Nefarious Lich leaves play, you lose the game

This card, in combination with a variety of cards, can make or break the game. Most designs run Zombie Infestation and Confessor, but there are several with Psychatog and Confessor. I favor the Zombie Infestation/Confessor combo, but that is my personal preference.
Seeing that this combo relies on enchantments, and since Lich can lose you the game very quickly, protection for these are a must. At our disposal we have: Devoted Caretaker, Sterling Grove, and a whole lot of counterspells. Because this deck is b/w to begin with, Devoted Caretaker seems obvious, but upon closer inspection, it has a limited use, whereas the grove can search for needed enchantments and protects all of your other enchantments. Because of this, Sterling Grove is vastly superior.

When most people saw Life Burst and Nefarious Lich, it seemed obvious that these cards were made for each other, but in combo decks utility is key and life burst does exactly nothing compared to Dromar's Charm. Dromar's Charm gains life/draws cards, takes out bears and weenies, and has the always important text: counter target spell. Lets recap, it draws cards, kill stuff and protects your combo, when life burst does 1/3 of this, what more could you want?

As for the kill mechanism, most of the community has decided upon attacking with their newly created zombie tokens. This presents many problems First, there are way too many wrath of god effects running around. Second, my blue friend going by the name of Wash Out and third this card no ones seems to play called obliterate. There is also the obvious problem of opposing creatures, but seeing everyone is educated enough to know that, I shouldn't be telling you that. If we look back at a Urza block deck named Chimera, we can find the answer to the eternal question: how to kill with a Nefarious Lich in play (ok, maybe not, but I tried)? This deck ran Saproling Cluster, Fecundity and Ashnod's Altar to provide enough mana to get a huge fireball at their opponent's dome. This combo translates into current type two language as Nefarious Lich, Confessor, Zombie Infestation, Phyrexian Altar and Ghitu Fire. Ok that's a few more cards, but we can deal. With this you can play an instant Ghitu Fire to counteract your opponent's Disenchant. To fuel this very card intensive combo, we have Legacy Weapon to make infinite tokens, which in turn makes infinite mana.

There is a large amount of singletons in this deck, meaning extract absolutely destroys this deck, which is why we have every control players worst nightmare, Duress. If your metagame has a lot of blue, Addle could also be a choice. Also, with protection for the combo, we have the aforementioned Dromar's Charm and Orim's Chant. Both of these provide excellent protection for your soon to be cast combo pieces and Orim's Chant stops creatures cold.

With these factors in mind, go bravely into the new Odyssey metagame with this new knowledge upon your shoulders. Not only will this info be helpful, but Lich is a great deck to play: both challenging and fun to play (kinda like FEB but without the severe brokenness). That's all for now, I'll do a follow-up article upon the completion of states and maybe a few articles on other, different decks being misused or underused in the current standard environment.

Don't be a butthole to someone that writes an intelligent and thought provoking article meant for discussion.

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quote:

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Originally posted by magictg:
Does and Donts...

Don't: Play lich in any deck

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quote:

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Originally posted by Lord of the Goats:
well, i definatly disagree with running charms. life burst is superior in this deck. the charm can gain 5 life for 3 mana, life burst is capable (and often does) 16 life for 2 mana. you should be running addle as well as duress to take out threats so counters arn't needed

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Duress definately goes in but my desicion is between addle and gerrards verdict. Which is better. Maybe u dont have any life drawing cards in your hand with lich on the table and u can play verdict and they dont wanna discard lands for u to draw cards so you practically force them to discard spells or creatures. Your thoughts?

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