Just for Fun - Lich in Multiplayer

if you wanna skip all the story & background, scroll down to Lich 3.0...

first, some background. several years ago, my buddy eric decided he wanted to build a lich deck. basically cause, lich is damn cool. he didn't have any lich...es? (whats the plural of lich... anyone?). he also didn't have a lot of magic stuff to trade, even though he's been playing since unlimited, he got really involved in SW:CCG back in the day, and spent his resources on that instead.

after attempting to trade for a lich from our local powermonger, and being told he'd never get a lich in a million years, eric summarily acquired one before the end of the evening, as well as a good looking proxy.

lich count: 2, and holding steady.

Lich 1.0

at first, we built a combo deck with the wonderful mirror universe/lich kill. however, the decklist quickly degenerated into a tinker/mirror universe/lim dul's vault combo, with lich being just another card-drawing engine. although the deck was a blast to play, and killed quickly even unpowered (mostly thanks to our disregard for the restricted list), it simply would not do. it was supposed to be a LICH deck, after all.

Lich ?.?

i wrote up a decklist for a lich-donate combo that i thought would be pretty fun. the idea is to get two lich...es? on the table, and then start passing them out to other players. i lost the decklist somewhere, so i'm not quite sure what i had in there for killing, besides mirror, or just letting them flounder about under their newfound dark power . at the time, i couldn't build the deck since i didn't have any donates, nor delusions, and only 1 illusions. not to mention the lack of lich...es? also, protecting lich would probably require countermagic in this B/U version, which i try and avoid in multiplayer because A)everyone hates it, B)its less than effective. however, i still think this version would be a blast to play, and really gets across the coolness of the lich stealing the souls of all its victims, leaving them lifeless husks. so i might revisit this idea in the future, since it has a lot of potential, especially if i can acquire more lich...es?

Lich 2.0

i had another idea. a mono-B deck that could drop and redraw its hand repeatedly, turn after turn, eventually swarming opponents with hordes of threats. not a combo lich deck, but one that tried to exploit lich with ivory tower, throne of bone (please, hold your laughter ) and drain life, while throwing out cheap, saccable permanents (the deck had no way around lich's drawback) including nether shadow, despondency, pump knights, etc. this deck had three major flaws: 1)our multiplayer meta runs tons of enchantment removal, mostly my fault. with no way to protect lich, people let you play with yourself all day, til you try and drain life, or attack them, then naturalize lich. its like when you carefully eat all the cake out from underneath the frosting, wanting to save it for last, and then the waiter takes your plate away. its the worst. 2)once lich is on the table, the deck stalls. the extra land that you need so desperately to play sits idly in your hand. this was partially solved by Skirge Familiar, but that in itself costs 5, and also felt a little bit too combo-ey to me. 3)in order to keep the engine on the table and not deck yourself, the deck wanted to be too big and unweildy. this was also a problem since we only had two lich..es?

Skirge Familiar
4B
Creature - Imp
Flying
Discard a card from your hand: Add B to your mana pool.
3/2

Lich 3.0

alright, here's the goal: a multilplayer lich deck that is:
0)fun to play, and play against
1)capable of staying alive long enough to get lich on the table
2)able to kill multiple players, some of whom may have extremely high life totals
3)able to protect lich from targeted enchantment removal
oh, and no power allowed my lone beat time walk is still waiting for its companions.

i've looked through goldfish's turboLich primer, and it was a good read, and provided a couple of good ideas. unfortunately for me, turboLich is greedy about its power, and its also a 1 turn deck. city of solitude works wonderfully there, but we need a more permanent solution for this deck. you'll probably notice that this looks like an unfinished pile of crap right now.... thats cause it is this is the preliminary list of included cards that i made up yesterday. thats why its also lacking a mana base currently.

Wow, that card is OLD. what does it DO?

2 lich
2 glacial chasm
2 solitary confinement
1 fastbond
X skirge familiar
-- combo. chasm+lich is a nombo, but chasm is so useful in setting up fastbond. familliar isn't set in stone, especially now that fastbond is in the deck.

Solitary Confinement
2W
Enchantment
At the beginning of your upkeep, sacrifice Solitary Confinement unless you discard a card from your hand.
Skip your draw step.
You can't be the target of spells or abilities.
Prevent all damage that would be dealt to you.

Skirge Familiar
4B
Creature - Imp
Flying
Discard a card from your hand: Add B to your mana pool.
3/2

1 mirror universe
4 drain life
-- kill. mirror is obviously the most stylish kill, but drain life allows for killing people who have life > number of cards in the deck, slowly but surely.

4 sterling grove
4 sylvan library
1 vampiric tutor
1 demonic tutor
1 enlightened tutor
-- tutor/search.
-- groves also protect the lich

2 words of worship
2 zuran orb
-- card drawing

Words of Worship
2W
Enchantment
1: The next time you would draw a card this turn, you gain 5 life instead.

1 regrowth
1 replenish
1 yawgmoth's will
-- obvious.

2 forsaken wastes
1 soldevi digger
-- utility/recursion. the wastes keep retarded lifegain (wellwisher, phantom nishoba, soul warden, congregate) in check. the recursion i'm a lot less sure of right now. i'm thinking 3-4 gaea's blessing might be better, or possibly battlefield scrounger

Forsaken Wastes
2B
Enchant World
If a player would gain life, that player gains no life instead.
At the beginning of each player's upkeep, that player loses 1 life.
When Forsaken Wastes becomes the target of a spell, that spell's controller loses 5 life.

Soldevi Digger
2
Artifact
2: Put the top card of your graveyard on the bottom of your library.

Battlefield Scrounger
3GG
Creature - Centaur
Threshold -- Put three cards from your graveyard on the bottom of your library: Battlefield Scrounger gets +3/+3 until end of turn. Play this ability only once each turn.
3/3

thats the list so far, hopefully i can turn it into something resembling a decklist sooner or later... without a lot of the suboptimal choices i've got in there now.

also, a couple of rules interaction questions, if any of the rules gurus can spare the time: here's the current oracle wording of Lich:
Lich
BBBB
Enchantment
As Lich comes into play, your life total becomes 0.
You don't lose the game for having 0 or less life.
If you would gain life, draw that many cards instead.
Whenever you're dealt damage, sacrifice that many permanents.
When Lich leaves play, you lose the game.

specifically, with lich and forsaken wastes. with lich and forsaken wastes in play it seems like i will have two replacement abilities affecting life gain. lich, which turns it into 1 for 1 card drawing, and forsaken wastes, which makes it 0 life gaining, instead. how are these effects applied when they are both in play? does the order which they came into play matter? i THINK i get to choose the order in which they are applied, on a case by case basis. so i can choose to either draw cards = life gained, or gain 0 life instead of gaining life, or drawing cards for each separate life gain effect. but i'm not 100% sure on that.

thanks to Zherbus and all the mods and admins for this awesome site, and to everyone in advance for helping me have some fun with lich