Berserk — The Black Swordsman

Commanded by Guts, the Black Swordsman, this Mono-Black 100-Card Commander Deck is about a man who is hunted. The brand on his neck bleeds whenever something inhuman is near, and every night everything that can smell it comes for him. He has no army, no money and no magic; he stands somewhere narrow with a slab of iron and kills until morning. So the deck does what no other deck does: it asks to be attacked.

• The Brand of Sacrifice: sixteen permanents carry it. At the beginning of each opponent's upkeep, that player may put a 2/2 Apostle token onto the battlefield attacking you — and it stacks, one Apostle per copy. That is the engine, not a drawback: Guts takes a +1/+1 counter for every creature that attacks you and draws a card whenever one of them dies. The only way to starve this deck is to leave it alone.
• The Berserker Armour: six cards carry it. Prevent all damage that would be dealt to the creature; at your end step, lose life equal to what was prevented, and the ability can't be removed. The pain is deferred, not cancelled — prevent 19 and you lose 19, from the same life total that pays for Vampiric Tutor, Snuff Out and Toxic Deluge. The two mechanics argue with each other, and every turn is a choice between taking the hits now and paying for all of them at once.
• Two combos: The Crimson Behelit, Corkus and Slan turn every branded death into another branded Apostle and a drain; Guts, the Hundred-Man Slayer, Ubik and The Beast of Darkness run an unbounded drain inside somebody else's combat.

Why Mono-Black

Black here is its oldest reading: there is a price, it is paid in body, and it is paid on the day. No white, because no institution in this world keeps its word. No blue, because nobody knows anything. No green, because nothing grows back. No red, because the berserker rage is a measured, purchased state Guts switches on knowing the invoice. Thirty-six cards live on the Brand: sixteen print it, twelve read what it sends at you, and eight exist to survive the swarm.

A complete 100-card Commander deck plus 5 tokens, tuned for Bracket 4, available as a digital print-yourself edition or a printed physical deck, and offered in 10 languages.