World Champion Michael Jaszczur breaks down his competitive Malice, Domina of the Dead Classic Constructed decklist, complete with sideboard and matchup tips. When a new hero hits the track, the pros get you up to speed with Zero to Eighty!
When I was asked to write an article about one of the new heroes being released in Usurp the Shadow Throne, I was incredibly excited. The Shadow talent has always been one of my favorites, and Usurp the Shadow Throne has added so many new interactions to the talent and the different classes showcased in the set, so much that we’ve truly been spoiled with the many different paths we can take when deckbuilding.
Building a deck for Malice, Domina of the Dead is no easy task, as there are a lot of different ways the deck can be constructed. As a Necromancer, Malice is going to focus on creating allies and using them to gain an advantage over your opponents. These heroes that try to build up a board state, either of auras or allies, are often quite tricky to build, as they have a lot of moving pieces. I’m going to go through how I like to play the deck, the list I’ve worked on, and the reasoning behind the cards in it.
After playing this deck, I’ve come to the conclusion that there are two main gameplans that I’m looking to enact. Either a faster, more value-based plan, or a plan where I look to set up a very strong endgame.
The first, most common gameplan is the value plan. I would look to play with this plan in mind against most decks, excluding decks that are very slow or could threaten fatigue. Simply put, when we’re playing with this plan in mind, we are mostly looking to ignore the idea of setting up for an endgame, and are trying to extract the most value from every card in our hand every turn.
Against these decks that are going to kill us relatively quickly, we really don’t want to be taking any blood debt. These games are often quite close, and any additional point of damage we have to take could cost us the game. This means we are looking to play the Corrupted Corpses that Malice’s hero power creates as soon as possible. Often when playing with this gameplan in mind, we are looking to play 2-3 card hands, threatening 7-10 damage every turn and trying to defend as efficiently as possible. The types of decks I’d be looking to play in this way against would be Cindra, Levia, or Arakni, Marionette.
The other main gameplan is used for slower decks that cannot pressure us. Due to the decay keyword, our opponents cannot stop our allies from dying, so we can stack multiple Corrupted Corpses in our banished zone, alongside multiple Gate to i’Arathael tokens, to then pivot on one turn where we look to play 3-4 Corpses and snowball the advantage from there. Because these slower decks often struggle immensely to clear large board states, this is the best way to combat them. I’d be looking to set up an endgame such as this against decks like Jarl, Teklovossen, or Arakni, Huntsman.
Dorinthea Pão de Queijo · Sep 25 · 71 min read0 likes00 comments0
Of course, there are some decks that can threaten both an aggressive strategy as well as a fatigue (defensive) strategy. So if you’re unsure, you should always lean towards having a plan for the defensive strategy. If you think about it, you can still win a quick game if your deck has cards meant for a long game in it. However, if you’re playing a long game, and don’t have the tools you need to be able to win that type of game, you will almost never win.
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Zombies
Normally I would go over the equipment first. However, reading Malice’s hero ability, it becomes quite obvious that the allies are the most important cards in the deck. Malice has access to a whole new suite of zombie allies, and utilizing them as efficiently as possible is going to be the key to success.
Similar to all of the allies that the other Necromancer, Gravy Bones, has access to, Malice’s allies don’t defend. Additionally, they are all reds. So I realized very quickly that I was going to have to try and find a way to build around this vulnerability, as having multiple reds that cannot defend can lead to some very awkward hands. I will go over the ways I’ve mitigated a lot of the issues this causes in most of the sections of this article, but I wanted to mention this at the beginning as it’s important to have the context of why I’ve decided to play some of these cards in the deck.
The main play pattern that we are looking to do every turn in Malice is to activate her ability, or activate a Gate to i’Arathael, and play an ally from either the graveyard or banished zone, having it enter the arena attacking, thanks to her weapon Vox Necropolis.
I’ve decided to play 12 allies in this list. The first and most important ally in the deck is Restless Templar. Because it creates a Gate to i’Arathael whenever it or another ally with decay dies, it guarantees that we will have a way to play a Corrupted Corpse that was created in our banished zone by Malice’s second ability. This ally truly does everything the deck is looking to do, creating a threat immediately while also helping us set up for some more powerful turns in the future with the Gate to i’Arathael.
The other 9 allies I’m playing are not nearly as important, however, they do have very powerful effects that cannot be ignored. The most powerful of the remaining allies is Restless Commander, giving all of your zombies (including itself) +1, which can be a huge amount of value if you’ve amassed a big board of Corrupted Corpses. Restless Magister and Restless Quartermaster are the last 6 allies I’m playing. While they aren’t as impactful as the others, the disruption they create is hugely important against any aggressive deck.
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Equipment
Now having gone over the allies, I want to talk about the weapon and equipment I’ve chosen to play.
Vox Necropolis
The weapon is what this whole deck is built around, alongside Malice’s hero power and the allies. Making your allies automatically attack when played, then attack for the cost of 1 each subsequent turn, is what every play in the deck is designed around.
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Dead Threads
The first and most important equipment in the deck is Dead Threads. This powerhouse from High Seas is one of the most powerful equipment in the game, creating an additional once per turn, as long as an ally has been put into your graveyard that turn. This resource can enable us to play a turn without pitching any cards, or give us enough to pay for an attack with a Corrupted Corpse. While you may not use it every turn, this equipment smooths out our hands and helps create some truly explosive turns.
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Crown of Providence + Undead Grasp + Base of the Mountain
One of the biggest downsides of the powerful allies that Malice can play is that they don’t defend. For the most part, this deck wants to have one ally in every hand. Because the allies in the deck don’t inherently have go again, drawing multiple allies becomes an immense liability as we can likely only play one of them, and we cannot defend with the other one because they don’t have a value.
These three pieces of equipment solve this problem. Base of the Mountain had seen play in Gravy Bones before, as a way to “defend” with allies that normally cannot defend. While defending with allies this way only gives us 1 value, it gets the allies into the graveyard to be played later, so in a way, we get to keep those cards to be played later in the game. While Crown of Providence doesn’t put anything to the graveyard, being able to put an extra ally from your hand to the bottom of your deck and draw a new card is incredibly powerful to bail us out of an awkward hand. Finally, Undead Grasp allows us to convert an ally in our hand into 3, and gets the ally into the graveyard to be played afterwards.
These three cards really help us have coherent turns, and mitigate some of the awkward draw sequences the deck may have.
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Other Equipment
I have five additional pieces of equipment in the deck. Three Arcane Barrier slots for decks that deal arcane damage (note that I am not playing any Arcane Barrier in the chest zone, as Dead Threads is too crucial), Quickdodge Flexors for aggressive decks that attack using multiple chain links on any given turn, and Circlet of Eternal End, a great new head equipment from Usurp the Shadow Throne to help combat decks that like to interact with cards in their banished zone.
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Card Choices
Building a solid 60 card deck for Malice is a tricky puzzle to solve. Getting the ratios right has been difficult, and even after writing this article I’ll be trying to improve them further. As I mentioned before, these decks that create allies or auras that stay in play often have a lot of hoops to jump through to do something powerful, and Malice is no different.
Discard Outlets
To use her hero power, we need to first get an ally into our graveyard. This can be done with some of our equipment, but we also have a lot of cards in the deck that can help us do this. I’m playing Ominous Toll and Bone Mass as strong red attacks that let us put an ally into the graveyard, and also have an additional effect. Bone Mass is just a relatively efficient attack, attacking for 3 and giving the next attack this turn +1. The buff also pairs nicely with the on-hits from Restless Magister and Restless Quartermaster, increasing the attack to 4, making them significantly harder to defend. Ominous Toll’s additional effect is much more important, however, as it creates a Gate to i’Arathael as long as we discard an ally. Creating these tokens is essential to playing our Corrupted Corpses from our banished zone, so that is why all three colors are present in my deck.
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We have additional ways to get allies into our graveyard in our blue base. Call to the Grave and Clambering Corpses are standout blues. Call to the Grave just does everything we could possibly want, getting an ally into the graveyard, letting us use our Dead Threads to pay for Malice’s ability to play the ally we just put into our graveyard and attacking with it, thanks to Vox Necropolis. Clambering Corpses is a blue that defends for 3, and attacks at the same rate as a red assuming we discard an ally to its ability. The last blue that can help us get our allies into our graveyard is Rally the Coast Guard. This card was a solid late pick in High Seas limited, but I believe it has found a new home in Malice, as a flexible card that can, in a way, let you “defend” with an ally.
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Making Gates
Creating Gate to i’Arathael tokens is key to winning with Malice. When our ally dies, Malice creates a Corrupted Corpse in our banished zone. The only way for us to play these super-zombies from our banished zone is by using a Gate to i’Arathael, and because these allies have blood debt, we need to play them, otherwise we will eventually take too much blood debt damage and fall too far behind. We have quite a few different ways to make Gates. Restless Templar makes one whenever a zombie with decay dies, and Ominous Toll makes one if you discard an ally when you attack with it. We also have a couple ways to make Gates with some of our other blues.
Rites of Nightfall is a great 3 blue that we can use to make a Gate if our opponent gives us space to do so. Countdown to Extinction also defends for 3, but gives us more impactful plays on the first turn, and can be a solid play if we need to attack with it at any point. Finally, Mark of Ushering is a card I wasn’t sure about at first, but giving the ally it binds to the ability to make multiple Gates and giving +1 to potentially threaten an on-hit is strong enough in my eyes to justify its non-defense.
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Extending Turns
Because all of the allies attack for a base of 3, we are going to need to have other cards to help us generate bigger turns. Ominous Toll and Bone Mass are solid attacks, and Malice also has access to quite a few very powerful non-attack actions that we can pair with our zombies to attack for a lot of damage. Commit to Corruption, Dig for Souls, and Shadowrealm Strength are relatively efficient cards, and they also defend for 3, making them very flexible. Shadowrealm Strength also pairs incredibly well with Dead Threads, as moving the zombie from your banished zone to your graveyard fulfills the condition present on Dead Threads.
Finally, I’ve decided to play Enlightened Strike. This iconic card is still relevant nearly seven years after its original printing, being a solid attack that can also help with some of the clunkiness that the red allies with no value can create.
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Defensive Tools
Malice is a deck that thrives when it gets past the early game. As long as you can survive the initial onslaught that some of the more aggressive decks can threaten, your value in the late game from all of the allies should give you a good chance of winning. For that reason, playing defensive cards makes a lot of sense. Sink Below, Fate Foreseen, and Shelter from the Storm are all in my deck, with Sink Below being the standout to help smooth out our hands.
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Obviously the cards you decide to play in your sideboard to target any specific matchup will change based on the metagame you expect to be playing against, but for now I’ve decided to include Arcane Polarity and Overcrowded. Arcane Polarity is a defensive tool for decks that deal arcane damage. Against those decks, it will help us get to the late game healthy enough to create an unbeatable board state. Overcrowded is a very strong card against Codex of Frailty, and due to the dominance that we’ve seen from Arakni, Marionette throughout the past few metagames, it seems like a very solid inclusion in the list.
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Sideboarding
For the most part I like to keep my sideboard plans very simple for any deck I play. This deck runs a 51-card core, with the following cards making up the inventory:
3x Arcane Polarity
3x Ominous Toll (yellow)
3x Mark of Ushering
2x Overcrowded
2x Shelter from the Storm
3x Fate Foreseen
3x Sink Below
Against aggro decks, I’m looking to play all 8 defense reactions, and 1x Mark of Ushering. The cards that defend for 4 help keep us alive, since our deck thrives once we get past the early game, and the additional blue helps us pay for Corrupted Corpses from the banished zone, because going multiple turns without a blue is hard to come back from, as blood debt begins to stack up.
Against slow/fatigue decks, I play 3x Ominous Toll (yellow), 3x Mark of Ushering, 2x Overcrowded, and 1x Sink Below. The additional copies of Ominous Toll shine in the longer games, as we need to create enough Gates to be able to cast all of our Corrupted Corpses that we make in our banished zone. The 5 additional blues give us the resources to have turns where we play 3-4 Corrupted Corpses, as these turns require a multiple blue hand. And finally, a single Sink Below rounds out the 60. It’s not particularly strong into these matchups, but it is by no means a bad card to play.
Arcane Polarity is for decks that deal arcane damage, and Overcrowded is for decks that play Codex of Frailty, as well as being an additional blue against the slow decks.
When sideboarding with this deck, I would try to think of how aggressive the opposing hero is, and adjust based on that. For the most part, I like to add defensive cards when they’re more aggressive, and more blues when they’re slower, so I can pay for these big turns where I’m hoping to play multiple Corrupted Corpses.
Metagame Position
It’s hard to say where the meta is going to fall in the upcoming season. Usurp the Shadow Throne has given us a lot of very powerful new tools, and I’m really excited to see what the players from around the world come up with.
In general, Malice seems to be quite strong against any deck that has a tough time getting additional action points, or threatening a lot of damage. She can often hold on long enough to get late in the game where she can pivot and generate an unbeatable board state.
Based on the games I’ve played, aggro decks are tougher to beat. These decks make it hard to find space to set up your allies, and often make you take blood debt from Corrupted Corpses. There are a lot of moving pieces in the deck, so getting them all to align in a short game can be somewhat challenging.
This deck has been incredibly enjoyable to work on, and I’m looking forward to exploring the hero more. I would really encourage anyone who is interested in Malice to grind games and try it out. There are a lot of moving parts, and I’m certain the different builds of this hero will change and evolve immensely over the next couple of months. I’m excited to see which builds of this hero become popular in the upcoming Pro Quest season!
, which can be a huge amount of value if you’ve amassed a big board of Corrupted Corpses. Restless Magister and Restless Quartermaster are the last 6 allies I’m playing. While they aren’t as impactful as the others, the disruption they create is hugely important against any aggressive deck.
each subsequent turn, is what every play in the deck is designed around.
value.