Nether Death. 36 damage in one turn.

Intro

This deck has really surprised me. I've tried playing "Big Nether" decks before to mirror "Big Beast" nature decks, but Over the Line was the missing piece. It gives Death the same threat profile as Light: "Don't leave my creatures on the board." But death has very different tools and spells compared to light. Most importantly, beefy nethers don't need the buff to do huge damage. The buff is a bonus.

The Deck

Here's what I've currently settled on. But I'm actively tweaking.

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God Power

Right now, I'm using Soul Burn. This combos with Necroscepter and Decaying Rhino. It also gives us a little bit of reach. With Over the Line in the deck, your opponent is realistically in danger below 25 health if you have board presence. A few pings can help get there.

On the other hand, we've got a solidly mid-range deck, so Blood Ritual is possible. You can heirloom and then kill your 1/1 to heal yourself for 2 while dealing 1 to them. Curse of Greed gives us more heirlooms. On the other hand, most of our creatures are strength heavy. We don't normally trade leaving them at 1 HP.

Healing

We are doing a fair amount of damage to ourselves. In the past, this has really crippled nether decks, but as you'll see, I don't mind going <15 health when I can kill my opponent in one turn. With that said, the deck does have some healing to help if we find ourselves behind.

Necroscepter is an incredibly powerful card. 1x Monsterize is currently in the deck to transform a 1/1 zombie into a 4/3 healing machine, but even without that, spitting out zombies is a great source of healing while keeping up board presence and pressure on your opponent. Scepter OP.

Deathwatch Curate does double duty for us. Not only does he have his own heal ability, but he combos really well with Takhat:

Deathwatch comes back 5/6 blitz + leech. And of course if you're still below 15 hp, he heals at the end of your turn.

Threats

Threats to your opponent. Threats to your own safety. Our deck is setup to mitigate the latter, while Over the Line maximizes the former. Similarly, Takhat further presses our advantage by bringing back our biggest threats each turn. Also note that Takhat brings them back at the beginning of our turn. Over the Line works even on sleeping creatures - effectively giving them god blitz.

Vampiric Skull can also bring back Void Banshee or Greed Banestrider to put 10 damage on the board in a single turn. If unanswered, Over the Line can make that 20 damage next turn.

Possible cards to replace

These are some cards I'm on the fence about. Happy to hear suggestions for replacements.

Something like a basic Sailweaver (2/2 + ward) might be better than the Skeletal Hoplite, but the hoplite is a great turn 1 play when you have Necroscepter in your opening hand.

Heirlooms are nice, but maybe a basic Axewoman would be better?

Is Monsterize worth the include for the occasional 4/3 zombie? Skeletal Hoplites are another nice target, but if they come out maybe so does Monsterize.

I love some Guild Enforcers, but it doesn't have the same high strength as my other creatures, so it isn't as much of a threat. I dont' want to run any more removal - especially at the 5+ mana slots. Our creatures are strong and able to clear enemy frontliners. In addition, Over the Line bypasses frontline and goes directly to the face. GE does play an important role: against creature-based decks, he protects my glass cannon nethers, who generally have more strength than HP. Against spells, though, that's not as effective.

One last option to consider:

I definitely went through a phase trying to get this guy to work in several decks. I still don't think he works. Such a cool idea for a card, but they never dialed him appropriately. If they had scaled the damage based on number of cards in the void, he could have been a great card. He is enormously scary combined with OTL doing 16 damage by himself, but I think he's still meme status. He does, however, want to be in a deck like this that drains hard removals on all the other beefy nethers. He doesn't want Takhat pulling creatures out of the void, but Takhat pulling him back onto the board without having the eat the face damage again is really nice.

Gameplay

OK this is a fun one. Light in particular is going to struggle against this deck. High strength makes Light's Levy less useful. We are also more than happy to take damage to dominate the board. Order can't stop us from going face with OTL. I suppose a full control light build putting our creatures back in our deck has the best chance.

To finish our opponent, we do 36 damage to the face. Poor guy, but he flashes us the "Nice!", so hopefully he was at least entertained.

This deck is so scary for an opponent because OTL could drop at any time. You can't afford to leave creatures on board, but unlike Light, we aren't dropping puny creatures that need buffs. We are dropping nether demons with huge stats.

We can see it immediately at the start of the game: he has no good answer for Void Banshee. The best he can do is stall it with order. We, on the other hand, have excellent early game removal that we use.

At 5 mana, he faces a tough choice. It would take both of his creatures to clear one of mine. That's a terrible trade, so he decides to go face instead. Seems reasonable since we are low health, but it's actually a big mistake. We are able to clear his board with 2 nice trades and that is effectively game over. He looked like a control light deck, but we end the game in a single turn long before his AOE board clears come down at 7 mana. I don't think we needed the OTL to win, but you love to see it.

Conclusion

Fun deck. Really satisfying win condition, but can easily win with traditional mid-range play. Struggle against Magic with lots of direct damage spells, but not as much as you might think. We are beefy enough to withstand AOE clears, and we have enough big-statted creatures to exhaust their single-target spells (hopefully). Give it a try!