Theme

This is a deck of heretics, persecution and questionable religious practices! The theme is built around the Inquisition: find the heretics, remove their threats, and make sure they don't have enough resources left to fight back.

Underneath the flavor, this is an aggressive midrange deck built around pressure, removal and creatures that are often painful to deal with. A lot of your minions either hurt themselves, punish the opponent when they interact with them, or simply represent a very good threat for their cost.

The main idea is to keep advancing with the Persecutor, constantly put pressure on the opponent, and use your removal and flexible cards to make sure that pressure never stops. You don't need to kill the opponent immediately: you want to make every turn increasingly uncomfortable until your board becomes impossible to ignore.

Strengths

• Very good early and mid game
• Extremely high creature density, so you can constantly pressure the opponent
• Lots of efficient removal
• Very good at forcing unfavorable trades
• Good discard package, especially against slower decks
• Some minions remain useful even when they are eventually removed
• Very good at punishing opponents who rely on a few key creatures
• Strong against slower control decks: you're faster than them and can usually remove their few relevant threats immediately
• Excellent ability to turn a stable board into lethal through flexible cards that can either generate card advantage or deal direct damage
• Persecutor is extremely good at advancing the board and keeping pressure on the opponent
• Very solid sites, including several untargetable ones
• Good flexibility between aggressive and more controlling playstyles

Weaknesses

• Can struggle if you don't find enough early pressure
• Some creatures are much weaker when played without the right board state
• Self-damage can become a real problem in longer games
• You can sometimes run out of gas if your first wave gets completely answered
• Positioning is important: losing the wrong site at the wrong time can make your curve awkward
• You need to be careful not to trade too much of your own life for tempo

Strategy

The main strategy is quite straightforward: advance with the Persecutor, put pressure on the opponent, and remove anything that gets in the way.

The deck is fast enough to pressure control decks, but has enough removal and card flexibility to play a longer game when necessary. Your creatures are not necessarily meant to survive forever. A lot of them are perfectly happy trading their life for the opponent's resources.

1. Play aggressively in the first turns. You want to start attacking before the opponent can comfortably establish their board. The Persecutor is made for this: keep advancing, occupy space and force the opponent to react.
2. Don't be afraid of trading your minions. A lot of your creatures are expendable, and that's part of the deck's design. If a small minion forces the opponent to spend a card or take damage to remove it, you're usually happy with the exchange.
3. Use your removal to preserve tempo rather than simply killing the biggest creature on the board. You have a lot of ways to deal with threats, so don't waste premium removal when a smaller answer can do the job.
4. Keep advancing with the Persecutor. This is one of the most important things to remember. The Avatar is not just a big body sitting in one place: the whole deck is built around pushing forward and making the opponent deal with your pressure.
5. Cerberus changes the way you use the Persecutor. You lose some mobility, but you gain a lot of aggression. When you can afford to sacrifice movement for raw pressure, Cerberus can make the Persecutor much more threatening.
6. Try to keep the opponent under constant pressure. This deck becomes much stronger when the opponent is forced to spend their turns answering your creatures instead of developing their own board.
7. Don't underestimate your "painful" creatures. Some of them are perfectly happy dying if they have already forced the opponent to spend resources or have dealt enough damage.
8. Your discard is useful, but don't overvalue it. Sorcery doesn't have an enormous amount of discard, and the discard available to this deck is more of a supporting tool than the main game plan. Use it when removing a specific card actually matters.
9. Your flexible cards are extremely important in the mid and late game. Some of them can generate card advantage, while others can be converted into direct damage. This gives the deck a surprisingly good ability to close games once the board is already under control.
10. Against slower decks, become the aggressor. You are generally faster than control decks, while your removal lets you deal with the few threats they actually need to establish. Don't give them time to set up.
11. Against aggressive decks, don't blindly race. Your deck has enough removal to switch roles. Stabilize the board, trade efficiently, and then use the Persecutor and your remaining minions to turn the game around.
12. Your sites are part of your mana curve, but you also have a very solid site package. With several untargetable sites, you don't have to worry too much about losing your mana base to opposing interaction. Think more about where your creatures want to be and where you can generate the most pressure.
13. The most important thing is to know when to stop trading resources. Once you've established a favorable board, you don't need to keep spending cards just because you can. From that point on, your job is simply to protect your advantage, keep advancing with the Persecutor and close the game.

Nice combos:

• Fallen Angel + expendable creatures: Fallen Angel works very well in a deck where creatures are expected to die anyway. Your smaller minions can become additional value rather than simply being lost resources.
• Peacemaker Arbalest + aggressive minions: Arbalest gives your creatures another way to contribute to the board without necessarily committing to unfavorable combat.
• Persecutor + Cerberus: You lose some of the Persecutor's mobility, but in exchange you get a much more aggressive threat. If you are already ahead on the board, this can make the opponent's life very difficult.
• Persecutor + removal: This is probably the most basic and important interaction in the deck. Keep advancing with the Persecutor, remove whatever can block or threaten it, and keep the pressure going.
• Flexible cards + an established board: Once the opponent is struggling to stabilize, cards that can either generate advantage or become direct damage give you the reach needed to finish the game without relying entirely on combat.
• Inquisition + the right target: The Inquisition isn't meant to be a discard engine. Its strength comes from hitting the card that actually matters. When you know what the opponent is trying to do, removing that specific resource can be much more valuable than simply making them discard.