Weedwhacker Spotlight - Cadaverous Bloom

Cadaverous Bloom
Enchantment
{3BG}
MI-Rare
Choose a card in your hand and remove it from the game; Add {BB} or {GG} to your mana pool. Play this ability as a mana source.

When this card came out a lot of people said, "Hey that looks like it can be abused, I just need to figure out how." Well I decided I would figure out how. Here is some thoughts, and a deck I came up with.

First of all every card is basically a dark ritual that can be black or green. (A dark ritual nets you 2 black mana just like the Bloom). Since green has very little requiring lots of coloured mana the deck is almost mono black. The key spells are necropotence, cadaverous bloom and drain life. The simplest use is to fill your hand using necro then discard 6 cards for 12 black mana, tap all available lands and drain life or soul burn for a ton of damage/life. Then of course necro back to 7 cards and repeat. With 7 drain life/soul burn in the main deck it is very consistent. To help get the cards you want there are several card drawing/manipulation cards. Necro is basically for drawing lots of cards, hopefully one will be the bloom if you don't have it already. If you have the bloom you can use oath of limdul to browse through your library for whatever cards you want. Simply discard a card for 2 black and activate oath of lim dul to draw a card. Repeat this until you have the exact cards in your hand to win. You can literally get whatever cards you want in your hand with oath and bloom in play. Unfortunately the disadvantage of oath made it not quite right for the deck I made. In a more combo-lock oriented deck it could be very strong.

Type 1.5 Black, Green, White:

To get bloom faster: necropotence, enlightened tutors
To get necro faster: enlightened tutors
To kill opponent: 12 Powerful Creatures, 7 Drain Life/Soul Burn
To defend vs creatures and direct damage: 12 Powerful Creatures, 7 drain life
Disruption: Hypnotic Spectres, Mind Warp, fast big creatures
Speed up deck: dark rituals, lake of the dead, cadaverous bloom

Type 1.5 Cadaverous Bloom / Necro / Drain deck:

• 4 Cadaverous Bloom (tons of mana when with necro)
• 4 Necropotence (Necro can also help me find a bloom)
• 4 Enlightened Tutors

• = 12 combo cards

• 4 Drain Life (discard hand after necroing to drain life)
• 3 Soul Burn
• 1 Mind Warp (with dark rituals, lakes, bloom, may as well)

• =8 spells

• 4 Hypnotic Spectres
• 4 Erhnams
• 2 Juzzam Djinns (can use juggernauts if these are not available)
• 2 Juggernauts (hopefully get disenchanted-use up disenchants)

• =12 creatures

• 4 Dark Rituals
• 4 Swamps
• 4 Badlands
• 2 Lake of the dead
• 4 City of brass
• 4 Scrublands (for enlightened tutors and sideboard cops)
• 4 Bayou (for cadaverous bloom and ehrnams)
• 2 Mirage duals- Black and any other colour (These fetch dual lands)

• =28 mana sources

• sideboard:

• (remember i have 4 tutors for enchantment/artifact)
• 2 dystopia (vs cops, moat, etc)
• 1 moat
• 1 abyss
• 1 digger
• 1 cop red
• 1 cop black
• 1 cop green
• 1 mangaras blessing (5 life)
• 2 glacial chasm
• 4 red blasts

Here is a type 1 idea on the bloom -
With Lich out and 8 drain life/soulburns in a deck you can easily do a lot of damage with cadaverous bloom. Simply discard your hand for a 12 mana drain life (this gives you 10 life and therefore you draw 10 cards). Discard your new full hand to cast another drain life which will cause you to draw another full hand of cards. This loop keeps repeating until your opponent is very dead or you deck yourself :).

Mail Mike Donais