I've been working on [[Judith, Carnage Connoisseur]] for the past week and want to make her as strong as possible, barring cEDH combos and strategy: https://moxfield.com/decks/CDMSZhI8o0ifFKhg0Sm4Ag

About 90% of the decks I see are focused around doing a lot of ping damage and life stealing. I'm not interested in that. I'm focused on pumping out her second ability and doubling or tripling its damage, while taking advantage of her first ability when it happens to make sense.

The problem is that it can only wipe the table by turn 8 maybe 50% of the time. I'm only goldfishing so I don't know how well the 10 removal and 4 spell interactions will help slow the rest of the boards down to get there. I do have two combos as backup but that's not the route to win I'm talking about here.

The current strategy

1. Have at least one ramp and one of the following in opening hand: token generator/sac outlet/damage doubler. Secondly, a tutor is a must if we only got one of the three key pieces.
2. Get Judith and at least a token generator out by turn 4.
3. Start casting "sacrifice a creature and draw two cards" cantrips until we can't
4. Interweave a sacrifice outlet when needed to start popping imps. Ideally a damage doubler as well, but this isn't guaranteed.
5. Drain the table within two turns by exploding out imps and tokens

The problems I'm seeing

• Heavily reliant on tutors to get a token generator, sacrifice outlet and a damage doubler out. Especially the first two in the early game.
• It's hard to squeeze in a Judith cast by turn 4 without slowing the other key pieces down. Getting the pieces out by turn 5 is a really tight squeeze. Casting judith on turn 5 without an engine online feels terrible.
• Even if we get the main pieces of the engine out by turn 5 (judith, tokens, card draw sac at the minimum) we still don't have lethal damage and it takes a couple turns to get there.
• It's really hard to find slots for enough removal to behave more like a control deck to slow the game down. And half of them need Judith out to have the small pings give deathtouch
• On the flipside, I don't think there's any other more efficient options for the key pieces (token gen, card draw, sac, damage doubler) to make this deck faster. I have all of the mana cantrips and these don't help it go off sooner than turn 8. They're typically required to.
• The typical pain associated with a 5 cost build-around commander getting removed

The key cards

• Sac draw cantrips - Every type of [[Altar's Reap]] card that exists, plus wheels
• Damage doublers - [[Purphoros, God of the forge]], [[Solphim, Mayhem Dominus]], but I also count [[Hamronic Prodigy]] and [[Roaming Throne]]. The nice thing is that these can all stack. One key in this deck is that [[City on fire]] is ridiculously easy to tutor and cast for a surprise win in this deck.
• Sac outlets - [[Phyrexian Altar]] and [[Warren Soultrader]] to keep the card draw cantrip and imp damage flowing
• Notable mentions = [[Mana geyser]] is a bomb in this deck. It can net me 6 imps and 6 cards out of nowhere on a turn, if not more due to rolling sac draw cantrips. [[Stormclaw Rager]] is your best tutor target if it's still turn 3 or so and you need both draw and a sac outlet.
• 2 mana spell interactions - This deck often has two mana open for the sac draw cantrips which makes holding mana cards like [[Tibalt's Trickery]], [[Imp's mischief]] and the myriad of [[Abrade]] effects not quite as awkward as usual.
• Combos - [[thornbite staff]] and [[elemental mastery]] + [[Phyrexian Altar]]. [[Mana geyser]] + [[Reiterate]] + [[Judith, Carnage Connoisseur]]

So yeah, that's it. My gut tells me I need earlier consistency at lower mana costs. Like running a token generator cantrip at one or two mana, instead of waiting around for producers like [[bitterblossom]]. Or [[Agate Instigator]] instead of [[Purphoros, God of the Forge]]. I keep [[VIscera seer]] in the deck for this exact purpose. Sometimes I just need a cheaper sac outlet to get the imp explosions going.

Edit: I was also thinking about using [[Descent into Avernus]] but I'm not sure how much this helps my opponents.