I was lacking most of the good removal available in black, only Scour from Existence practically, which is not much. So I tried to see if I could find some unconventional removal. And I found Ayli, Eternal Pilgrim. I wondered; how can I take advantage of her ability, without having to sacrifice her. I would either have to go the Eldrazi Scion way, so Scion dying would pump mana in the next cards. Or I could choose to use Prized Amalgam.
DISCLAIMER! Please do not use this deck if it causes freezing by you. I understood that the fix rolled out with Saheeli Rai’s event didn’t work for everybody. Also it was not tested on QB, but it’s doing great during the Event.
EDIT: Added a few info about Runaway Carriage.
Creatures
Prized Amalgam is the perfect candidate to be sacrificed by Ayli. As a Defender he will always be placed first, sparing your other creatures. Relentless Dead is a nice addition to the deck, as when he dies, he is re-summoned, which brings back the Amalgam if it would happen to be dead. Being a mythic, not everybody would have it, but something like Crow of Dark Tidings or Diregraf Colossus are also good options to reanimate your Prized Amalgam. Them being Defenders is also an advantage.
Blood-Cursed Knight is kind of a pet card for my Ob Nixilis decks, as it is lifegain for a Planeswalker where I always use quite a few Supports. And again Defender.
If you go the Scion route, I would advice Carrier Thrall and Catacomb Sifter, Brood Butcher being a bit redundant with Ayli. But maybe you need the redundancy, as you’ll see with my Spells.
And really, Defender is quite useful in meta where Runaway Carriage runs rampant (pun intended). Carriage comes crashing in your Amalgam or Scion, and you get your Amalgam or mana back. One of the most problematic scenario though is when Carriage is used by Gideon in conjunction to Grasp of the Hieromancer. Suddently, you’ve got an unblockable Carriage, and you’re the one who crashes into his Carriage. That’s where Relentless Dead is useful in another way: Menace. With Menace, you get Damage through hopefully faster as your opponent can do. Other options are Drana, Liberator of Malakir (Mythic), Mindmelter (Uncommon) or Geyserfield Stalker (Common).
Spells
As I said, the creation of the deck was prompted by my lack on good removal. But due to the focus of the deck being sacrificing my creatures, an interesting option appeared in Bone Splinters. This is as efficient as a Ruinous Path without Awaken or a To the Slaughter, and it takes advantage of my creature coming back from the dead. Bonus point if you sacrifice your Relentless Dead to bring both him and Amalgam back. Not much to say about Transgress, aside for it being the go to discard spell.
Supports
There are two package here: the ramp package of Grafstone and Temple which helps you bring your critters on the board asap and power up your abilities. This is the kind of package which would only really work on a mono-colored Planeswalker. And there is the lifelink package of Vent and Retreat. This helps you reduce the cost of using your abilities and increase your survivability.
I hope that this deck inspires a few of you to try your own spin on the deck.