A few of us were pondering if hand destruction could be viable, so I decided to throw something together. It's not optimal yet but has quite a lot of synergy.

Edited;
-3 Mire's Malice
-3 Renegade Map
+3 Witness the End
+3 Lands


Artefacts / Sac-Revolt-Emerge / Hand Destruction

Creatures (15):
2x Syndicate Trafficker (artefact/sac synergy)
1x Yahenni, Undying Partisan
3x Weaponcraft Enthusiast (spawns 2 token artefacts [useful for Trafficker/Herald, etc] and leaves a 3cmc shell for emerging Mindbender)
2x Vengeful Rebel (plenty of Revolt triggers. Once his ETB effect is done, he can be used to emerge Mindbender)
2x Thought-Knot Seer (hand destruction)
2x Priest of the Blood Rite (plenty of synergy here for sac'ing the priest or using him to emerge Mindbender)
1x Herald of Anguish (hand destruction/removal/sac synergy, enough artefacts for improvise)
2x Distended Mindbender (hand destruction and ample emerge fodder)

Artefacts (12):
3x Servo Schematic (might be out of place here, as the Traffickers & Herald are the only ways to sac them. But it's 2 artefacts towards Herald's improvise cast?)
4x Implement of Malice (hand destruction. can self-sac to trigger revolt)
2x Aethersphere Harvester

Instant/Sorcery:
3x Fatal Push (plenty of revolt triggers)
2x Altar's Reap (card draw with sac/revolt synergy)
2x Read the Bones (card draw)
2x Yahenni's Expertise (sweeper, free cast)
3x Witness the End (hand destruction / burn)

Lands (24):
11x Swamp
5x Wastes
2x Westvale Abbey
2x Foundry of the Consuls
4x Evolving Wilds (just as an extra revolt trigger)

Things missing I think we need;
-Baby Lily. (Lots of sac to flip her, then she's another hand destruction).
-Big Lily. (not much synergy but just a flat wincon)
-Ob Nix (card draw, removal, wincon)
-Kalatis, Traitor of Ghet (spawning zombies would give us more sac fodder. Would synergise with Big Lily occasionally).

Most likely cuts would be the Servo Schematics, I think.

Whispers of Emrakul could work here. We can hit Delirium naturally with Evolving Wilds, artefacts, creature and instant/sorceries, to round out our 4 card types. But it would be excessive hand destruction, which is useless if your opponent has no hand. Therefore it might be a replacement for Mire's Malice, instead of running both. Maybe Mindwrack Demon if going down this path.

I hate seeing Maps and low land counts. It's like having Improvise for your mythic rare 7 drop and more Revolt shenanigans is more important/powerful than curving out. (Hint.. its not)

I'll take that as a;
"-3 Maps +3 lands"

Witness the End is way better than Mire's Malice

Agree. And if you put a dash more exile effects in there you can run Wasteland Strangler.. or even Mind Raker.

Speaking of Wasteland Strangler, I was trying to break that card recently... I forgot about hand destruction options. I may need to look at that deck again.

Really cool idea! I'm going to play around with it a bit and make some tweaks. I'd love to keep this thread rolling as people get this figured out. I will say that I really like the idea of running a few wispers. The random discard is very powerful, it makes it much better midgame when the opponent has 3-5 cards still in hand. I'd bump up evolving wilds to 4 and aim for creature (easy) sorcery (expertise, bones, or malice), and some instant to trigger delirium. Shouldn't be too hard to get.

Fair point on Witness. I had overlooked that card entirely. Although I think trying to squeeze in more exile effects might be getting a little too unfocused.
We have the Vengeful Rebels acting as Wasteland Stranglers.

That's the idea, to keep this thread rolling as we crack this deck type. I think there's the shell of a functional deck here, it just needs optimization.

It's worth noting this deck is useless against the A.I It just mindlessly vomits its hand onto the board and rarely plays any card draw .
It always hits every land drop and always gets a perfect curve (imo by cheating), so it has nothing in hand by the time you can make it discard.

Then it just spends the rest of the game with enough mana to play whatever it top decks, before our sorcery speed hand destruction can get to it.

Makes testing difficult if I don't want to go into Versus and lose ranks

If you're not gonna test the deck.. it isn't going to get better. Lose rank? Seriously? You're an NGAer.. you're supposed to be the crem de LA crem!

Mais oui, Je suis la crème de la crème et le roi du fromage

I didn't say I wouldn't test it. Just that it won't be against the A.I

even I used to be gunshy about bringing stuff onto the ladder and now I do ONLY that. You need to know how the deck is and the AI isn't going to answer that. Plus I lose to the AI WAY more than I lose on the ladder. It's really weird.

That's because the AI >>> Xbox ladder.

Depends what times of day you get on.

Well I was obviously kidding, but that's probably true.

It can't be that bad but judging by the content producers I watch on YT the opponents they face on XBONE are significantly worse than the opponents for the Steam guys. Maybe it is treated much more like a free side game on xbone where very few buy/have all the cards. On Steam beside a bigger population I think more people spend real money on the game.

For the deck I think it defo needs Whispers of Emrakul + Mindrack Demon probably just cut 2 Witness. Whispers is just better even if you only cast for 1 because it is random rather than their two worst cards. Also would go 4 x Altar's reap as this deck has no life gain to balance RtB and lots trash to sac, also is instant.

A deckbuilding contest based around hand destruction would be really cool...

I was thinking the same thing.

I'd probably try reanimator, because I'm silly. And I don't understand how mtg works.

I had considered 4x Reap but I'm hesitant to do so, as we won't always have something suitable to sac, even with all the trash. But it would be better to have a sac outlet more reliably. It would suck being stuck with a Priest on the board and drawing a RtB instead of Reap.
If I could work in Kalatis and Baby Lily that might help with RtB. Don't forget there's the two Harvesters.

I still think Bone Splinters has become more relevant with the addition of Revolt than people realise.. if we opted for more removal over card draw.

Do you mean a singleton of Whispers? (as you suggested cutting 2x Witness, but also adding Mindwrack Demon).