[Deck] Deadguy Ale (B/w Confidant)

[laststepdown]

After watching him go to the finals with this deck, I am convinced with proper tweaking (if possible?) this could be the deck to beat. I will easily say that he should have won the Grand Prix, as I for one can't name a deck that wins against Goblins with 1 land out other than 1 land Belcher. For those of you who havent seen it, here is what he ran:

Lands:
10 Swamp
4 Scrubland
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Wasteland
1 Tainted Field

Creatures:
4 Dark Confidant
4 Hypnotic Specter
3 Nantuko Shade

Spells:
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Sinkhole
4 Dark Ritual
4 Vindicate
2 Gerrard's Verdict
2 Engineered Plague
2 Cursed Scroll

Sideboard:
4 Withered Wretch
3 Pithing Needle
2 Engineered Plague
2 Darkblast
2 Swords to Plowshares
2 Phyrexian Negator



Sorry if this has been posted beforehand, I've checked through the forums, and saw nothing even mentioning this powerhouse that stormed GP: Philly.

Edit:Here is Chris Pikula's SCG write up of the GP and his deck. It is quite informative and provides much information not found in this post. (http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/10848.html) - PR

[DampingEngine]

There are lots of little things I would change about this deck due to my experience playing black disruption with a white splash.

#1 - Add the 4th shade. He's the one kill method that can kill an opponent singlehandedly and you need kill methods like that so you don't kill yourself faster than your opponent under Confidant. It's also one of the best creatures ever printed, and one of the few that's a bomb early game and late game.

#2 - I would add one more white source as I always played 10 and occasionally didnt find one. 9 is a little too few when all of them can be destroyed with Wasteland. If Crucible was in here, it would be easier to bounce back. Personally I loved Crucible because of the synergy with fetches and wasteland, and the fact that with Dark Ritual you can occasionally get a turn Crucible/Wasteland lock. I also played 6 fetches instead of the Tainted Field, which would be better if Crucible was in the deck.

#3 - Swords to Plowshares should probably total 4 between main deck and sideboard. It's a powerful card and your best solution to many troublesome creatures. Darkblast is a good option though, which I haven't tested.

#4 - Disenchant is usually better than Pithing Needle. It's a better option against some of the more threatening cards this deck could see, such as Scepter/Chant and Worship or Solitary Confinement. Part of the reason is that it can't be Disenchanted itself.

Now the stuff that I strongly agree with:

#1 - 4x Engineered Plague between main deck and sideboard. This doesn't only come in vs goblins, but also cards like Grim Lavamancer and Argothian Enchantress. It's really not a bad main deck card and it tested better than Jitte for me. Since this deck only has 11 (should be 12) main deck creatures, Plague is obviously the better option.

#2 - Gerrard's Verdict. Main deck life gain is always good with Confidant, and there are times when I was not running it that I really wished I had over 4 Hymns in my deck. If these aren't main deck, they should be sideboard.

#3 - Withered Wretch. Yes, it is good because it takes care of Reanimator and Dredge-a-tog and helps vs. Survival. It's also really handy just to have 4 more threats in your sideboard. These come in against a variety of decks just in place of dead cards.

#4 - 2x Cursed Scroll. I'm not saying Cursed Scroll is necessarily the best card to run in this slot, but 2 is the right number. Multiples can be really terrible. Scroll is very good though and there needs to be threats in this slot.

#5 - Dark Confidant. This is card is terribly underrated right now. It really is better than stuff like Phyrexian Arena because it's a good thing that it's a creature. It's also the cheapest one sided howling mine in print I believe, which is amazing. Also, it's a combo with Chains of Mephistopheles (one of my favorite sideboard cards) because only you can get card advantage. Chains wouldn't be a bad SB option since Threshold decks will surely be more popular now.

These are just my initial thoughts, you can bet I will be testing this deck extensively in the future, so I'll have much more to report later on.

[CynicalSquirrel]

This is not a deck to beat. No offense to Pikula or his deckbuilding but this was really the case of Pikula just having a lot of playskill, a little bit of luck, and a little bit of knowledge of the format. I doubt a random player would have been able to pilot this deck to day two, but Pikula had enough skill where he could have won with just about anything. I just can't see this being tier one, or even 1.5, but more the kind of deck that randomly shows up and sometimes can win tournaments.

Personally, I'd like to see a build with Suppression Field in it. That card rapes so much it'd be worth it to take out cards it hurts (Wasteland and Bloodstained Mire mainly).

[laststepdown]

@Darkblast: I watched Pikula use one single Darkblast and one Engineered Plague to take out every goblin on the board-I assume this was a meta choice against the few Gobs that survive Plague, and that makes it a better choice than more StP's.

@Nantuko Shade: I strongly agree that there should have been a way to fit in a 4th one.

@Pithing Needle/Disenchant: To be honest with you, I think this was the 'in case I see random crap I need to deal with (tog? disk? dustbowl? fetchlands?)', but I rarely watched him side it in. Plus, 4x Disenchant will mean you'd have to up the White mana sources, and to be completely honest, 8 cards main have one white in them-with 4 ways to get a Scrubland or Swamp, and 1 natural draw, I am convinced the manabase only needs slight tweaking-as you said. Maybe one more Tainted Field? I dislike Caves of Kolios in this deck, especially Running Dark Confidant. If Disenchant is your bag, I highly suggest 2 Null Rod instead, to side out for Scroll. I could be an idiot for saying that though. Speaking of which...

@Cursed Scroll: I couldn't see another card in this place. A way to deal colorless damage is second to none in a resource denial deck like this, where a White Knight could ruin your day. Also, it greatly helps Darkblast in killing Kird Apes and other 3 toughness beatsticks.

@Withered Wretch: Don't, I repeat, DON'T forget it stops Crucible of Worlds dead in its tracks.

@Squirrel: Don't forget, Suppression Field hits Cursed Scroll, Nantuko Shade, Withered Wretch, as well as the lands. 17 cards overall. Is that really better than Pithing Needle? I'd say no.

[CynicalSquirrel]

@Squirrel: Don't forget, Suppression Field hits Cursed Scroll, Nantuko Shade, Withered Wretch, as well as the lands. 17 cards overall. Is that really better than Pithing Needle? I'd say no.

Oh, I see I missed some cards. Nevermind then, that was just my ridiculous obsession with Suppression Field coming out again.

[troopatroop]

...You act like this build has never been played before.

This was the Original, ORIGINAL Amazing Results deck made by DaveDude 6 monthes ago with tiny tweaks. B/w Sui is FAR from DTB. Dark Confident makes it good, but it's still not amazing.

[Peter_Rotten]

...You act like this build has never been played before.

This was the Original, ORIGINAL Amazing Results deck made by DaveDude 6 monthes ago with tiny tweaks. B/w Sui is FAR from DTB. Dark Confident makes it good, but it's still not amazing.
OMG! Troopa... you may be correct to some extent. Except Dave's build was horrible and supported by make believe test results. Unfortunately, I think some jerk deleted Dave's original thread.

[laststepdown]

@Troopa: To my knowledge, I had never seen the deck before, sorry for my ignorance. The builds are different, however. And for some reason, this build stomps Goblins, Gro, and has a favorable matchup against Lanstill of all forms due to the resource denial/advantage.

@Cynical Squirrel: It's quite alright. I'm obsessed with Suppression Field too. I just don't believe that it would be able to take the place of Needle in this deck's sideboard.

[Zilla]

...You act like this build has never been played before.
If it didn't have Confidant in it, no one has played this deck before. About a year ago I had a build roughly 8 cards off Pikula's maindeck. It was good, but not truly viable. Confidant is the missing piece to the puzzle. Recurring card draw is incredibly strong, and helps solve the deck's original consistency issues. The fact that it's also a beatstick is a huge boon also. Confidant alone makes the deck powerful rather than just playable.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

Yeah, comparing this to whatever bad B/W aggro-control deck you tried to play two years ago is way off base. You might as well compare Black Crusade to old school Necro. +4 Ridiculously Busted card >>>>> -4 Ridiculously Busted Card. By leaps and bounds.


Edit: Note that that was in general, not directed at Zilla.

The deck's also not suicide, dammit.

Personally, I'm looking forward to exploring the archetype, not least because of all the fun I have planned in naming each tweak. You can cut the White to get Deadguy Black Lager, add Red to get Deadguy Cranberry Ale. I'll probably think of a dozen more later. The possibilities are nearly limitless.

[MasterBlaster]

I'm looking forward to exploring the archetype, not least because of all the fun I have planned in naming each tweak. You can cut the White to get Deadguy Black Lager, add Red to get Deadguy Cranberry Ale.
I wish pikula had named the deck Evil Dead.

It already has a boom-stick, cursed scroll. Or would cursed scroll be the necronomicon?

[boom]

I wonder if he tested Burning Wishes in his deck as a means to get more expensive cards and fetch some pyroclasms. I am almost positive he has to have, so I guess my question is what were his results and why did he go with white?

Lightning bolt, for all intents and purposes, is a dumbed down StP. You do lose Vindicate, which is a huge loss but I dont know. Red offers soo many goodies.

[noobslayer]

The red splash would be terrible. Black needs that disenchant; as well as other relevant things. Also, burning wish would be far too slow. If discussion continues on supression field, you can sub (these are testing suggestions, I'll get around to them for myself eventually) nantuko shade for black knight. He dodges swords, has first strike, and a power of two. He owns white weenies and essentially removes every relevant goblin. Also, I know its terrible under supression field, but could umezawa's jitte be maybe worked in as a two of, or is it too high on the curve after equip costs come into play?

[effang]

@Withered Wretch: Don't, I repeat, DON'T forget it stops Crucible of Worlds dead in its tracks.
Well, not exactly. If you give him any kind of priority, he'll be able to play lands from the crucible still.

Also, I think he needs jitte in here somewhere. He doesn't have the mana to necessarily equip it, or the mana to even cast it, but jitte is still a powerhouse, and late game your mana will free up. i could definately see the scrolls being cut for jittes, especially since you have beaters that they almost have to block (hippies, and they WILL wnat to block your confidants)

[martyr]

I think it's probably fair to assume that Pikula didn't play Plague Spitter or Pyroclasm (and therefore, Burning Wish) because he was leaning on card advantage in the Goblins matchup. If you kill your own creatures (all of which can generate extremely high card advantage given time), you'll probably lose. He'd have had to include larger creatures, and that would have sucked against everything else.

That said, who the hell plays Gerard's Verdict? I would test out Cabal Therapy, to some extent, if you're a good player with a defined metagame.

[Wehner]

Running equipment in a deck with 11 creatures and only four cards to draw for more does not seem like a terrible good idea to me. I played the deck for a few hours yesterday, and I can say so much that it is actually a challenging deck to play - especialy during the first four turns, where you often have several options.

(This is my first post on The Source and will post an introduction in the introduction thread asap)

[Sims]

That said, who the hell plays Gerard's Verdict?
People who like 2 for 1's.

Also read as people who like pitching dead lands to gain life when their main draw engine tends to hurt them.

I have tested and played the deck some games against Zilla, and I'm not sure this whole "Stuff Jitte into every deck with creatures evaR!" stigma that everyone seems to have works all the time. You have 11 Creatures... I'll repeat that. You have 11 creatures.... The deck wants to be disrupting and drawing and disrupting, not tapping out turn 4 to Jitte-equip it's Confidant or Hyppie.



Edited By CorruptedAngel on 1132177576

[midnightAce]

I agree... that Jitte is not a neccessary auto inclusion in every deck supporting creatures. Decks such as AS can support it really well due to First Strike and Shadow and Protection from Mother. This deck wants to dedicate its mana into the Shade or actively ripping the other guy's hand apart, Jitte plays very little role in supporting that strategy.

Verdict in conjucntion with Hymn is very deadly, actually. All these two for one card advantage eventually adds up, to a point where he's holding 7 cards in hand and still has a Hymn left while the other guy's playing off the top of his library. The lifegain CorruptedAngel mentioned is very important as well. The Dark Confidant hurts very much when ripping a E.Plague off the top. :D

[laststepdown]

Well, not exactly. If you give him any kind of priority, he'll be able to play lands from the crucible still.

As long as you get rid of the 4 lands(IMO they are Wasteland, Mishra's Factory, Faerie Conclave, and Dustbowl) that can be a threat, when they get discarded/killed, you can remove them from game. During your turn, or during his upkeep/draw step, even during his main phase. Why am I telling you this? You should know this. I think it's a selective, reusable Phyrexian Furnace-but it has legs. It's a great drop against aggro decks, and against Crucible-abusing decks.


Also, I think he needs jitte in here somewhere.
What? Is this the magicthegathering.com message boards? What would you take out for it? More importantly, what 10 creatures would you put in? This isn't the proper archetype for equipment of any kind-it's resource denial. This format is Legacy-for the most part, equipment is too slow.

[effang]

Well, not exactly. If you give him any kind of priority, he'll be able to play lands from the crucible still.

As long as you get rid of the 4 lands(IMO they are Wasteland, Mishra's Factory, Faerie Conclave, and Dustbowl) that can be a threat, when they get discarded/killed, you can remove them from game. During your turn, or during his upkeep/draw step, even during his main phase. Why am I telling you this? You should know this. I think it's a selective, reusable Phyrexian Furnace-but it has legs. It's a great drop against aggro decks, and against Crucible-abusing decks.


Also, I think he needs jitte in here somewhere.
What? Is this the magicthegathering.com message boards? What would you take out for it? More importantly, what 10 creatures would you put in? This isn't the proper archetype for equipment of any kind-it's resource denial. This format is Legacy-for the most part, equipment is too slow.
I never said run the 4x full set. It could replace the cursed scrolls, like i mentioned. cursed scroll is late game, jitte is late game, jitte can get you life in a pinch.

2x cursed scrolls for 2x jitte. try it first before you critisize. i know he's only running 11 creatures, what's your point? 4 of those fly, 4 of those are must kills for the opponent, IE must blocks, seems pretty good if i want to get some counters on my jitte.

[laststepdown]

Scroll is cheaper than Jitte-it's a turn 1 "I'll Hymn you and cast Scroll". It's also colorless damage, and doesn't need a creature on the board. By taking out Scroll, you'll let a single white knight kick your ass game one. How chump blocking a Jitte-equipped creature in Legacy is too easy="Block with my Fanatic(or Legionarre)-before damage, I'll sac and hit you." As for Jitte being 'Life, in a pinch', there's Gerrard's Verdict, which is a) A 2 for 1. b) Able to call out land bluffing. c) Allows for self-targeting, enabling life gain in a 'pinch'.

Go ahead and test Jitte. Against everything. Just please, do me a favor, and next post, use capitalization. Once again, this isn't the magic.com's boards, where every deck is made better by "+4 x JITTE cuz it pwnzzz".

Thank you.

[Tao]

First of all: The deck is not new, it is called Yin/Yang and it is a quite old Archetype. So don't call it Pikula.dec, call it YinYang like you don't say Threash-Gro but NQG.

Jitte is really, really bad in this kind of Deck. Your creatures are all great threats to your opponent even without the Jitte. Every control deck must get rid off any Creature on the Board, if it wears a Jitte or not. Combo gets crushed by Confidant and Specter, Jitte or not. And vs. Goblins it is okay, but you just don't have the time to equip Jitte, and if they shoot the equipped creature you lose about 2 turns, don't play Jitte in this Deck.

It may be insane, if you play cards like Mesmeric Fiend and Black Knight, but then you have a different deck. This deck is good too, but it is different. You have to concentrate on 1 strategy, beatdown/Discard or resource denial.

[Sims]

I never said run the 4x full set. It could replace the cursed scrolls, like i mentioned. cursed scroll is late game, jitte is late game, jitte can get you life in a pinch.

2x cursed scrolls for 2x jitte. try it first before you critisize. i know he's only running 11 creatures, what's your point? 4 of those fly, 4 of those are must kills for the opponent, IE must blocks, seems pretty good if i want to get some counters on my jitte.
Cursed Scroll domes the player, Jitte does not. This is key in the control match. 11 Creatures, by testing mind you, is far too low to support equipment like Jitte. You'd need more to be able to reliably have a creatures + Jitte that way if your 1 creature gets iced you don't have a useless Legendary permanent. If you follow the game plan of the deck, you shouldn't have the available mana to play and equip a Jitte because you will be casting disruption. If you do, then something is wrong.. Either you are winning and in control, or losing horribly and have run out of gas (which means you likely have no creatures anyway.)


Edit: Btw, I refuse to call it Yin-Yang, no matter how old the archtype is. Deadguy Ale is just a much cooler name.



Edited By CorruptedAngel on 1132270328

[Machinus]

Obviously everyone likes this deck, since it placed second and is so cool. However, I think even Pikula would agree that some changes could be made.

First, I think Gerrard's Verdict and Cursed Scroll should be taken out of the deck. Verdict is not a good discard spell, and it isn't a good lifegain spell; rather it's in between these two. For a tempo-oriented deck, this kind of dilution is unacceptable. Scroll, while a good source of recurring damage, soaks up three mana per turn. This is not efficient use of mana, especially in a deck that is trying to swing the game very early on.

For replacements, StP is the first obvious card. Either three or four of these maindeck will basically finish up any problems with the Goblins matchup, and take care of Werebears and Mystic Enforcers. (Additionally, StP can function as bad lifegain if Bob is going to kill you). Secondly, I think the fourth Shade and two Jittes should be included. Jitte is powerful removal - in my opinion better than scroll, because it activates for free. Additionally, it can finish a damage race quickly once active (and offers lifegain to offset Bob).

My proposed changes:

-2 Engineered Plague
-2 Gerrard's Verdict
-2 Cursed Scroll
-1 Tainted Field
-1 Swamp

+1 Shade
+2 Jitte
+3 StP
+2 Polluted Delta

SB:
4 Engineered Plague
4 Withered Wretch
3 Pithing Needle
3 Seal of Cleansing
1 Swords to Plowshares/Darkblast

The sideboard is pretty open. I can easily see Null Rod making an appearance in the future.

[Sims]

You just contradicted yourself. You said that in a tempo oriented deck that Verdict is too diluted and that Cursed Scroll is an inefficient manasink. So is Jitte. In a Tempo oriented deck you should be tapping out every turn to disrupt them with 1for1 and 2for1 trades. Verdict is good in this case because it is a 2for1 trade with your opponent, or you sacrifice some cards to gain life if Bob will kill you. Jitte requires mana to play and equip to one of the (with your suggestions) 12 creatures in the deck and then requires you to actually connect. I honestly would much rather be playing disruption and creatures every turn, than essentially wasting a turn or two to play/equip Jitte. I do, however agree that Cursed Scroll isn't optimal, but it's better than Jitte in this scenario.

Also, I strongly, STRONGLY disagree with the removal of Engineered Plagues from the maindeck. In a heavy Goblin environment (which this deck was metagamed for), E.Plagues are an excellent way of giving you a better shot game 1 than you typically would have. Removing them when Goblins doesn't seem to be going anywhere seems highly suspect. If you are going to make changes I would believe they'd be more along the lines of taking out scrolls for perhaps STP. In my testing I've just found Verdict to be too good as essentially Hymn 5 and 6. 2 For 1's are some good.

[Machinus]

You just contradicted yourself. You said that in a tempo oriented deck that Verdict is too diluted and that Cursed Scroll is an inefficient manasink. So is Jitte. In a Tempo oriented deck you should be tapping out every turn to disrupt them with 1for1 and 2for1 trades. Verdict is good in this case because it is a 2for1 trade with your opponent, or you sacrifice some cards to gain life if Bob will kill you. Jitte requires mana to play and equip to one of the (with your suggestions) 12 creatures in the deck and then requires you to actually connect. I honestly would much rather be playing disruption and creatures every turn, than essentially wasting a turn or two to play/equip Jitte. I do, however agree that Cursed Scroll isn't optimal, but it's better than Jitte in this scenario.

Also, I strongly, STRONGLY disagree with the removal of Engineered Plagues from the maindeck. In a heavy Goblin environment (which this deck was metagamed for), E.Plagues are an excellent way of giving you a better shot game 1 than you typically would have. Removing them when Goblins doesn't seem to be going anywhere seems highly suspect. If you are going to make changes I would believe they'd be more along the lines of taking out scrolls for perhaps STP. In my testing I've just found Verdict to be too good as essentially Hymn 5 and 6. 2 For 1's are some good.
Jitte takes 4 mana to cast and then activate. Cursed Scroll takes 4 mana to cast and activate.

After that, Jitte requires no mana, while cursed scroll takes 3 mana for every subsequent activation. Jitte can act like a Cursed Scroll by killing a 2 toughness creature every turn, or it can do 4 extra damage per turn, or it can gain life. I think the lifegain is actually important with Bobs in the deck. Jitte isn't well curved for this deck, but they are versatile and powerful and I think 2 is the right number.

Regarding the Verdicts: I don't think you need more than 8 discard spells. The deck already runs 4 duress, 4 hymn, and 4 hippie. That is already a huge amount of hand disruption. Verdict just isn't that strong of a card. It certainly doesn't match the power level of the other cards in the deck.

I'm also not sure about plague. I don't think two plagues maindeck is the right number. If you are really worried about Goblins, play three or four, and you have to take out something else. The plagues are pretty bad against most other decks which is why I am hesitant to run them. Goblins can easily smash through 1 Engineered Plague, so I don't agree at all with only two maindeck. I would rather run then in the side and rely on other removal like StP and Jitte.

[midnightAce]

You just contradicted yourself. You said that in a tempo oriented deck that Verdict is too diluted and that Cursed Scroll is an inefficient manasink. So is Jitte. In a Tempo oriented deck you should be tapping out every turn to disrupt them with 1for1 and 2for1 trades. Verdict is good in this case because it is a 2for1 trade with your opponent, or you sacrifice some cards to gain life if Bob will kill you. Jitte requires mana to play and equip to one of the (with your suggestions) 12 creatures in the deck and then requires you to actually connect. I honestly would much rather be playing disruption and creatures every turn, than essentially wasting a turn or two to play/equip Jitte. I do, however agree that Cursed Scroll isn't optimal, but it's better than Jitte in this scenario.

Also, I strongly, STRONGLY disagree with the removal of Engineered Plagues from the maindeck. In a heavy Goblin environment (which this deck was metagamed for), E.Plagues are an excellent way of giving you a better shot game 1 than you typically would have. Removing them when Goblins doesn't seem to be going anywhere seems highly suspect. If you are going to make changes I would believe they'd be more along the lines of taking out scrolls for perhaps STP. In my testing I've just found Verdict to be too good as essentially Hymn 5 and 6. 2 For 1's are some good.
Jitte takes 4 mana to cast and then activate. Cursed Scroll takes 4 mana to cast and activate.

After that, Jitte requires no mana, while cursed scroll takes 3 mana for every subsequent activation. Jitte can act like a Cursed Scroll by killing a 2 toughness creature every turn, or it can do 4 extra damage per turn, or it can gain life. I think the lifegain is actually important with Bobs in the deck. Jitte isn't well curved for this deck, but they are versatile and powerful and I think 2 is the right number.

Regarding the Verdicts: I don't think you need more than 8 discard spells. The deck already runs 4 duress, 4 hymn, and 4 hippie. That is already a huge amount of hand disruption. Verdict just isn't that strong of a card. It certainly doesn't match the power level of the other cards in the deck.

I'm also not sure about plague. I don't think two plagues maindeck is the right number. If you are really worried about Goblins, play three or four, and you have to take out something else. The plagues are pretty bad against most other decks which is why I am hesitant to run them. Goblins can easily smash through 1 Engineered Plague, so I don't agree at all with only two maindeck. I would rather run then in the side and rely on other removal like StP and Jitte.
Jitte also requires a creature to be equipped on, as well as successful swings to make it worth while. We can all agree that the currect format is flooded with creature based decks, and therefore, powerful instant speed creature removals.

If you taken a look at Akki's post in the Tournement report, you'll see how painful a virtual Time Walk created by Lynx is. Same thing happens to you when you equip the Jitte and swing, only to have it Natrualized, creature StPed, etc. These are virtually mana and tempo wasted.

The whole arguement about late game reach is also flawed. If both players are top decking, 90% of the times you will not have a creature on the board, top decking a Jitte in that situation does aboslutely nothing.

Also, on the slim possiblity of drawing both, at least Scroll can be both activated, where the second Jitte is sitting dead. The situation amplifies if there is no creature to even put the Jitte on.

With all that in mind, I completely agree with CorruptedAngel that Scroll is much better than Jitte in this particular instance. Again, Jitte is not an auto-inclusion in every deck under the sun that runs creatures.

Side note, if Wombat and this deck are both gaining popularity, it wouldn't be long before facing multiple of those damned RoP: Black. Scroll is so infinintely better in that situation, but that's a couple of month down the road.

[Sims]

After that, Jitte requires no mana, while cursed scroll takes 3 mana for every subsequent activation. Jitte can act like a Cursed Scroll by killing a 2 toughness creature every turn, or it can do 4 extra damage per turn, or it can gain life. I think the lifegain is actually important with Bobs in the deck. Jitte isn't well curved for this deck, but they are versatile and powerful and I think 2 is the right number.

This makes sense when you look at it that it's 4 and 4 for the playing and first activation. You are correct that Scrolls would cost 3 for every subsequent activation, Jitte still costs 2 for every subsequent activation. You only have 11-12 Creatures, and the odds aren't that shabby for your opponent having some or topdecking some form of removal for your creatures. Darkblast, for example, can kill every single one of your creatures except for a Shade that's been pumped more than once by making use of it's Dredge ability. This essentially requires you to make subsequent activations of the Jitte to equip it over and over. If you have no creatures, it sits idle like a Scroll might in parts of the game, but it also makes the other Jitte a dead card in your deck. The only true benefit of the Jitte over Scroll is the lifegain, but again it requires your creatures surviving to put counters on the Jitte... and from my experience with the deck, if your creatures are surviving and connecting, you are winning... regardless of the Jitte.



Regarding the Verdicts: I don't think you need more than 8 discard spells. The deck already runs 4 duress, 4 hymn, and 4 hippie. That is already a huge amount of hand disruption. Verdict just isn't that strong of a card. It certainly doesn't match the power level of the other cards in the deck.

Perhaps, and I welcome any testing that removes Verdicts for something else. I like them a lot due to the fact that it allows you another 2 for 1. There were times in testing when I needed a discard spell and drew Verdict. If Verdict was an StP, I probably would have lost those games. I agree they may not match the powerlevel of the other discard spells in the deck, but they serve a niche as two functions essentially; And that "dilution" is more of a Flexibility... hitting your opponent for 2 cards or discarding 2 lands to gain 6 life.



I'm also not sure about plague. I don't think two plagues maindeck is the right number. If you are really worried about Goblins, play three or four, and you have to take out something else. The plagues are pretty bad against most other decks which is why I am hesitant to run them. Goblins can easily smash through 1 Engineered Plague, so I don't agree at all with only two maindeck. I would rather run then in the side and rely on other removal like StP and Jitte.

Two might not be the right number; but in any metagame where you are expecting Goblins to be in force, zero is definately the wrong number. Goblins have answers to Plague, so giving yourself even 2 cards advantage during Game 1 is a huge boon, as it allows you to either win game 2 or discover what answers were brought in for your plague and board accordingly. For example: Game 2 they bring in Patron or Fledgling Dragon and they beat you with it, you now have Game 3 to bring in StP for that threat. Honestly, 2 may feel too little, but I would much rather have 2 going into Game 1, than none at all. As a Goblin player, I can also say that I'd hate to see my opponent with ANY Plagues in their deck Game 1. As for it being bad against other decks, it's not as horrible as it seems:

Wombat/Rifter: You can name Soldiers to shut off Decree.
Fish: Trickier, but Wizards, Faeries, and Drakes are all options depending on their build.
Goblins: duh.
Tog: Okay fairly dead here, unless they are running the Combo version that has Zombie Infestation, then Zombie is a good call. In Game 1 you can stall by naming Atog to make them have to pitch/remove more cards and delay the innevitable, hopefully by long enough for you to get your win on.
Gro/NQG/Thresh: Decently dead, so if you Verdict yourself you can pitch it if you have only 1 land.
Elves: heh...
R/GSA: Elves, Birds... Game 1 It can keep them off acceleration.
Landstill: Soldiers, and the deck sucks. So be a good disruption player and beat the blue deck.
Solidarity: Dead along with every other creature hate card, this is obvious...

I mean, there honestly are a lot of targets that may not quite be crippling, but can deal damage to name Game 1 should the Plagues be drawn. It's enough of a boon vs. Goblins and can be a decent mitigation tactic against other decks that having 2-3 in your MD isn't really going to hurt you much unless you run into Solidarity every round.



Edited By CorruptedAngel on 1132278109

[SpatulaOfTheAges]

The red splash would be terrible. Black needs that disenchant; as well as other relevant things. Also, burning wish would be far too slow.
Test it. I've been playing it a bit, and A)Burning Wish isn't really that expensive. There are a lot of good targets that run 1 mana or have an alternate casting cost(Massacre is tech against WW and Goblins splashing white(and theoretically the mirror match vs B/W)), plus Therapy, Innocent Blood, and Unearth.

B)The deck can actually support more expensive Wish targets, due to Confidant and Dark Ritual ensuring more mana than most aggro decks.

C)Having 4x Lavamancer, 2-3x Scroll, and 3-4x Darkblast in the main is a ridiculous board control machine.

If you test it and can give me a good reason it's bad, then I'll listen, but test it first.



I swear to God, the next person who thinks they're clever because their pal Eddy the Cross-Dressing Hobo once built a deck with Hyppies and Vindicates so HA! iTz n0t n3W iTz KALD EDDY-ZOO n00bz!1!!one! will get a hammer in the kidney faster than you can say Putrid Warrior. Playing a somewhat similiar deck that sucked because you suck and your friends suck and your shitty meta-game is shit in no way mitigates the innovation of Pikula making a list that actually works.



Edited By SpatulaOfTheAges on 1132278639

[bigbear102]

Okay, Pikula did not reinvent the wheel here, he merely gave it some better treads so that it could grip the road better. This is partially because these treads were not around for the rest of us to build this deck before Ravnica came out. This archetype is not new, but it is viable now due to the printing of Confidant. Now I do concede that noone else built this deck, and so therefore Pikula gets props for innovating it and playing it.

Onto the deck: I believe the Gerrard's Verdict is VERY good in this deck. Redundancy is key. Having 10 discard spells is enough to disrupt, especially going 6x 2for1. If you think about it, whichever strategy this deck goes for, he has at least 10 ways to go about it, which is why the deck is so effecient. He has 10 discard spells, 14 w/ hippie, he has 12 land destruction, and 13 beatdown cards.

I believe that Plague is a very good card in this deck, as it can possibly clear the board against a lot of decks, while leaving your men standing.

[Happy Gilmore]

Before we start breaking the deck apart it might be beneficial to make changes that fix the short comings, based on the play it has seen already.

I got a chance to talk to Pikula in between rounds (he is an awsome guy btw) and the one thing he kept mentioning was how he tended to bring in Withered Wretch in practically every matchup. He also admitted he was luck in drawing his Engineered Plagues in a timely fassion. I asked about jitte as well, just for the hell of it: He agreed that it had decent synergy with the deck, but greatly weakened the redundancy of the disruption.

Some food for thought, from the designer himself.

[laststepdown]

I got a chance to talk to Pikula in between rounds (he is an awsome guy btw) and the one thing he kept mentioning was how he tended to bring in Withered Wretch in practically every matchup. He also admitted he was luck in drawing his Engineered Plagues in a timely fassion. I asked about jitte as well, just for the hell of it: He agreed that it had decent synergy with the deck, but greatly weakened the redundancy of the disruption.

Some food for thought, from the designer himself.
Quoted for truth. Pikula is the nicest Magic player ever. He also said that Negator seemed to be a dead sideboard card, and that he'd up the StP count.

@Verdict: 6 2 for 1's are some good. In my opinion, it's a mental struggle as well when they have to choose(instead of random, when a good player will set their hand down).

@Scroll: Taking this out for Jitte? Let's say no. Once and for all.

@ Red splash: I would like to see the list, but I think a 3rd color makes for a tougher mana base to achieve-I could see running a few Badlands for choice cards (I saw Lavamancer mentioned, I'm not sure if that would be the correct choice, when you could just add more Scrolls for colorless damage).

[Peter_Rotten]

It is important to note that Chris recommends leaving the Scrolls in. Feel free to read his SCG article about the GP and his deck. (http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/10848.html) Scroll is an important win condition against control decks. It is distinctly a card that Landstill and other control decks hate to see. Plus, it's not too shabby against Goblins. Chris also mentions that the deck can not fully support Jitte because of the low creature count.

[laststepdown]

All of which we've discussed. What we haven't discussed is what Negator's slot would be better suited as. For now, I'm suggesting Phyrexian Scuta for two reasons-one, you can just let it be a chump blocker in times of need while all it will ever deal to you is 3 damage, two, Juzam Djinns are hard to come by.

[kirdape3]

I think he'd cut Negators for Plows.

Personally, I don't think that Jitte's anywhere near the level of that Cursed Scroll card. You have 11 creatures. Jitte won't stay attached to anything relevant, or be drawn at the right times. Scroll while a little mana-intensive is downright rude at both creature control and provides reach - something that Jitte singluarly does not do.

[Zilla]

A few things:

More discussion should be had about running Therapy in the Verdict Slot. Hear me out before you get all up in arms. I agree with those that say the discard redundancy is important, particularly in control matchups. I also recognize that Verdict helps mitigate life loss from Confidant.

The pros of Therapy:

1. Great synergy with Duress. Is also often a two-for-1, or even more in certain circumstances.

2. It's 1cc. It has great synergy with Ritual, gives you another first turn play, and rounds out your curve better.

3. Hurts less when drawn with a Confidant.

4. Gives you a way to get rid of your own Confidants if they become a liability, which the deck is currently lacking, unless you include Vindicate, which I'd much rather be sending towards my opponent's side of the table. Turns your creatures into additional hand disruption when necessary.

5. Doesn't give your opponent the luxury of choosing what to discard. Therapy in conjunction with Hymn is savagely strong against the Burn matchup in particular, because they're so redundant. It's also a strong play after your Goblins opponent tutors up a card with Matron and passes the turn.

The obvious drawback is that it doesn't gain you life, but that's somewhat mitigated by the ability to remove your Confidants in a pinch. PLEASE NOTE: I'm not saying it's strictly superior, I'm just suggesting it deserves testing.


@Scroll:

I agree with Pikula on this one; Scrolls shouldn't be removed. They're a colorless lategame finisher that don't require use of the attack phase. This can't be stressed enough. The format is currently rife with decks that hate on decks that rely on the attack phase. This is a backlash from Goblins' immense popularity and is consequently why most aggro strategies simply aren't cutting it. Scroll keeps you from being one of them.


@Spatula:

In my experience with the B/x aggro-control archetype (and I've had lots and lots), the archetype's greatest weakness is a general inability to answer problematical artifacts and enchantments. The red splash gives you answers to artifacts, but none at all to enchantments. Problem enchantments include Survival, Worship, Moat, Lightning Rift, and Humility. Vindicate provides a remedy to these problem, while also acting as creature removal, and perhaps most importantly, as additional land destruction. The versatility of Vindicate alone makes the white splash unquestionably the best, in my mind.

[umbowta]

My oppinion on Cabal Therapy...not enough critters to make it truly effective. There isn't one creature in the deck that I would want to sac to therapy, ever.
Gives you a way to get rid of your own Confidants if they become a liability, which the deck is currently lacking, unless you include Vindicate, which I'd much rather be sending towards my opponent's side of the table.See Scrolls. Anyway, has anyone bothered to figure out the average life loss Dark confidant will cause over the entire cc range of the deck. With 22 land and alot of cheap spells, How is confidant really a liability to anyone but the player on the other side of the table?

[Zilla]

My oppinion on Cabal Therapy...not enough critters to make it truly effective.
This might be a logical argument if they didn't do anything on their own, which they do. Plus, there are only two in the deck.



Gives you a way to get rid of your own Confidants if they become a liability, which the deck is currently lacking, unless you include Vindicate, which I'd much rather be sending towards my opponent's side of the table.See Scrolls.
When I could be doming my opponent with them? No thanks. Scroll and Verdict targeting your own Confidant is -2 card advantage. Saccing Confidant to Therapy (assuming you hit at least one card) is -0 card advantage. Personally, I'm a fan of card advantage.


With 22 land and alot of cheap spells, How is confidant really a liability to anyone but the player on the other side of the table?
When you're at 3 or less life and you enter your draw phase. If you believe this is uncommon, you haven't tested the deck. No offense.

[umbowta]

I really can't argue too much with you on this. I've only tested the deck in 6 games so far and have not yet been in the situation where I saw Confidant as a liability.

Quote
Quote
Gives you a way to get rid of your own Confidants if they become a liability, which the deck is currently lacking, unless you include Vindicate, which I'd much rather be sending towards my opponent's side of the table.
See Scrolls.

When I could be doming my opponent with them? No thanks. Scroll and Verdict targeting your own Confidant is -2 card advantage. Saccing Confidant to Therapy (assuming you hit at least one card) is -0 card advantage. Personally, I'm a fan of card advantage.
The only reason I mentioned this was because you commented that the deck had no way to remove the Confidant, if it becomes a liabilty, besides Vindicate. I assert that you simply overlooked the scroll. I understand your point about card advantage, but, in the situation you proposed, card advantage means nothing if you die in your upkeep. Don't let me convince you though. Do your own testing and make your own choice.

EDIT know what? Heres the card advantage.

Gerards Verdict= 1 for 2

Scroll = We all know already of the advatage this card can create

Therapy
Cast it = maybe whiff, maybe get one, two or more if you're lucky
Flashback = - 1 good critter, in this deck, maybe whiff(you better not, noob) Maybe get two if you're lucky

Therapy is a gamble, Verdict and Scroll are consistent.

End EDIT

[laststepdown]

Therapy is a gamble, Verdict and Scroll are consistent.
Quoted for truth. I think the sideboard needs more work than the actual deck. Mainly, the Negators. I'm sure more StP would fill the slot nicely, but is Withered Wretch really the best two drop available for Black? Off the top of my head, Black Knight, Hand of Cruelty, maybe even Fallen Askari?

[umbowta]

Withered Wretch is not the best two drop but it needs to stay in the sideboard. 5 of the top 8 decks at GP Philly used and abused the Graveyard. I think it was Godzilla who pointed out the necessity/ possibilty of seeing/needing a "metric fuckton" of graveyard hate in the near future.

I agree with replacing Negator with StP. I might even try +1 each of StP and Darkblast. More time playing against Goblins will help make that decision.

[laststepdown]

I could be going out on a limb by saying that StP would be the proper choice, because it can kill a Meddling Mage, while Darkblast would be the better choice against goblins. As we all know, boarding is a meta choice-as Mr. Pikula pointed out, he brought the Withered Wretch in almost every matchup for a simple guy to have on the table. I do agree that he is very good against most decks abusing the graveyard, so there is no point taking it out. The question is, should it be main deck? And what is worth putting to the side for it? For those of you who know the deck, or who read the article on magicthegathering.com blogging the finals of GP Philly, there are 4 targets in a Goblin deck to hit with Duress (Æther Vial). This shift would, however, take a primary first turn spell. Any suggestions?

[Machinus]

Is there a logical reason to run 2 verdicts besides the fact that chris did so?

[Zilla]

Having tested the deck without additional hand destruction in that slot, I'd have to say yes. Against aggro it's not all that impressive, but the additional hand destruction is very important for keeping the pressure on against control strategies. In theory, the potential lifegain to offset the loss of life from Dark Confidant can also be of use, but that hasn't been a huge factor in most of my test games. I'm not totally convinced that this slot shouldn't be Therapies (as I've already mentioned in this thread), but I'd say in a metagame with a significant control presence you want it to be hand destruction of some kind.


Therapy is a gamble, Verdict and Scroll are consistent.
I never suggested Scroll should be removed. If I ever do, slap me. It fulfills a very important role in the deck. As for Verdict, it may be less of a gamble than Therapy, but it gives your opponent the choice of what to discard, which is a gamble in and of itself. In my testing at least, I am more often afraid of one specific card in my opponent's hand than I am of anything else. In those circumstances, even if the Therapy whiffs, the key threat I fear in that circumstance isn't an issue, and I can proceed with that knowledge.

Further, Therapy is only a gamble when you don't have Duress, or foreknowledge of your opponent's hand. Therapy following Intuition, Gifts Ungiven, Enlightened/Mystical Tutor, Goblin Matron, Burning/Cunning/Living Wish, Survival activation, etc. provide you the information you need to make Therapy useful.


I understand your point about card advantage, but, in the situation you proposed, card advantage means nothing if you die in your upkeep.
You mistook my point. If I'm getting that low on life, I'll preemptively sac my Confidant during my turn to prevent death on my upkeep.

@Wretch:

I agree with umbowta on this one. The fact that Wretch beats is secondary to its ability to rape the opponent's yard, especially in the current metagame. Rifter/Wombat with Eternal Dragon, Gro with... well, everything, Dredge Tog with everything, Iggy Pop with Ill-Gotten Gains, Landstill with Wasteland/Manland recursion, Salvager Game with LED/Sphere, RDW with Lavamancer and Fledgling Dragon, RGSA with Anger and friends, etc... with the possible exception of the pre-ban days when Dragon and WelderMUD were still legal, there has never been a better time to run graveyard hate in this format.

[Machinus]

Having tested the deck without additional hand destruction in that slot, I'd have to say yes. Against aggro it's not all that impressive, but the additional hand destruction is very important for keeping the pressure on against control strategies. In theory, the potential lifegain to offset the loss of life from Dark Confidant can also be of use, but that hasn't been a huge factor in most of my test games. I'm not totally convinced that this slot shouldn't be Therapies (as I've already mentioned in this thread), but I'd say in a metagame with a significant control presence you want it to be hand destruction of some kind.
I was referring to the aribitrary assignment of two additional discard slots in the deck, whether they be verdicts or therapies. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me why one would just accept this constraint on the deck just because someone else built it that way. I don't see why there should be two additional slots rather than four or zero, regardless of the merits of the specific discard spell.

[Zilla]

In my experience? The tertiary hand destruction slot (after Duress and Hymn) should almost never be a 4-of. At that point, you tend to run into too many situations where you're topdecking hand destruction when it longer matters. At most I'd run 3 tertiary hand destruction cards, but 2 has seemed like a pretty solid balance in testing. As a 1-of it wouldn't be a consistent enough draw to bother with, and as a 3-of, it only leaves 1 additional slot in the deck for removal, (be it StP or Plague), and that also seems janky without a way to tutor for it.

[laststepdown]

Godzilla: How do you feel about Distress over Therapy? Granted, you lose your ability to sac Confidant, but you would always nail a card. I wouldn't want to take out Confidant though-as it's your only draw ability-the thing to take into consideration is what could you run to maintain card advantage? The only thing i can think of is Phyrexian Arena-which (IMO) sucks.

On another note, Godzilla, I completely agree with you that 2 Verdicts feels like the exact right number.

[Zilla]

I'd call Distress almost strictly inferior to Verdict in this deck. The only reason I'd consider Therapy over Verdict is because Therapy can sometimes be 2 or even 3 for 1, and at 1cc it rounds out your curve better. If you're going to be paying 2 mana for a hand destruction spell, it had better be hitting 2 cards.

As for removing Confidant from the deck, I would never ever suggest such a thing. It's one of the best cards in the deck by far. I just like having ways to remove them if they become a liability.

[laststepdown]

@Distress: I'm merely brainstorming-pardon my inferior suggestions.

I understand your need to do away with Confidant-I always found that attacking(when they have blockers of course) with it is usually death.

[Machinus]

23 land, and only four fetchlands. Is this (and tainted field) ordinarily sub-optimal configuration just used to minimize life loss from Confidant? I would certainly want to run 22/6, but I am not sure if it makes the life loss problem significantly worse.

3 Shades. Shade is such an efficient card, both in the early and late game. It is a good blocker and a good finisher, and is a card that allows good players to outplay their opponents. Why wouldn't you run four of these?

2 Cursed Scroll. Isn't three better? Is the chance of drawing a second scroll so bad, especially with the increased removal and tempo in the early game?

[Paluka]

23 land, and only four fetchlands. Is this (and tainted field) ordinarily sub-optimal configuration just used to minimize life loss from Confidant? I would certainly want to run 22/6, but I am not sure if it makes the life loss problem significantly worse.

3 Shades. Shade is such an efficient card, both in the early and late game. It is a good blocker and a good finisher, and is a card that allows good players to outplay their opponents. Why wouldn't you run four of these?

2 Cursed Scroll. Isn't three better? Is the chance of drawing a second scroll so bad, especially with the increased removal and tempo in the early game?
Talking about adding cards without discussing what you are taking out doesn't seem very useful.
I do think drawing 2 cursed scrolls is quite bad- this is especially true because a very common way to stop the Scroll is Pithing Needle. I only played 3 Shades because 11 creatures ended up feeling like the right amount. I'm sure the deck would perform very nearly the same if you took out a Gerrard's Verdict for a 4th Shade. Or if you made one Hypnotic Specter a Withered Wretch. It is impossible to determine absolutely what the proper number of a particular card is except in cases where it is very obviously 4.

[Machinus]

23 land, and only four fetchlands. Is this (and tainted field) ordinarily sub-optimal configuration just used to minimize life loss from Confidant? I would certainly want to run 22/6, but I am not sure if it makes the life loss problem significantly worse.

3 Shades. Shade is such an efficient card, both in the early and late game. It is a good blocker and a good finisher, and is a card that allows good players to outplay their opponents. Why wouldn't you run four of these?

2 Cursed Scroll. Isn't three better? Is the chance of drawing a second scroll so bad, especially with the increased removal and tempo in the early game?
Talking about adding cards without discussing what you are taking out doesn't seem very useful.
I'm not "adding" cards, so I don't have to "take out" any. I'm doing actual deck design, not just copying and modifying someone else's list. If this is unfamiliar to you please see the New and Developmental Forum.

[Paluka]

23 land, and only four fetchlands. Is this (and tainted field) ordinarily sub-optimal configuration just used to minimize life loss from Confidant? I would certainly want to run 22/6, but I am not sure if it makes the life loss problem significantly worse.

3 Shades. Shade is such an efficient card, both in the early and late game. It is a good blocker and a good finisher, and is a card that allows good players to outplay their opponents. Why wouldn't you run four of these?

2 Cursed Scroll. Isn't three better? Is the chance of drawing a second scroll so bad, especially with the increased removal and tempo in the early game?
Talking about adding cards without discussing what you are taking out doesn't seem very useful.
I'm not "adding" cards, so I don't have to "take out" any. I'm doing actual deck design, not just copying and modifying someone else's list. If this is unfamiliar to you please see the New and Developmental Forum.
Actually, I'm the one who designed this deck. Does that count? I thought you guys might find it useful/helpful/interesting if I joined the discussion.

[Machinus]

23 land, and only four fetchlands. Is this (and tainted field) ordinarily sub-optimal configuration just used to minimize life loss from Confidant? I would certainly want to run 22/6, but I am not sure if it makes the life loss problem significantly worse.

3 Shades. Shade is such an efficient card, both in the early and late game. It is a good blocker and a good finisher, and is a card that allows good players to outplay their opponents. Why wouldn't you run four of these?

2 Cursed Scroll. Isn't three better? Is the chance of drawing a second scroll so bad, especially with the increased removal and tempo in the early game?
Talking about adding cards without discussing what you are taking out doesn't seem very useful.
I'm not "adding" cards, so I don't have to "take out" any. I'm doing actual deck design, not just copying and modifying someone else's list. If this is unfamiliar to you please see the New and Developmental Forum.
Actually, I'm the one who designed this deck. Does that count? I thought you guys might find it useful/helpful/interesting if I joined the discussion.
Obviously you can't take my word for it now, but I think everyone would be very happy about your input.

I'd like to respond to your new comments.

Cursed Scroll: do people really pith this? Facing B/W I would almost certainly want to deal with wasteland first. Especially after sideboaring, it seems like there are more relevant plays to be making for most decks, like dealing with wasteland, engineered plague, wretch, etc. Scroll won you a game in the finals against Goblins; does the possibility of drawing a dead card outweigh the power of an active scroll?

Shade: I don't think the fourth shade is necessary with so much disruption, but it's so powerful that putting the fourth one in shouldn't be overlooked.

Would you comment on the manabase? Is tainted field in there for life considerations?

Let me apologize for my curt response to your original post, and reiterate that the source would be very happy to include you in any discussion of Magic.

[Draco2156]

Chris, since you're the creator of the deck, I was wondering what you think should be changed in the deck to beat goblin consistently, would you add more shades, scrolls, what's you're opinion on the deck and it's future?

Please tell me, cause I'm interested in learning what the creator thinks.

thank you

[Paluka]

Needle is just usually the answer people have for scroll, because I don't have any other disenchant targets (except Goblins with white will bring in disenchants).
I think the one Tainted Field is very good. No pain, and it almost never hurts you because all your other black lands are swamps. I do think the deck probably could use one more white source, so I think a 5th fetchland is probably the way to go.

[miseatron]

Chris, do you have an updated list? I read on SCG that you always sided in Wretches, and the negators in the sb were pretty much useless. Do you have a different decklist with the wretches main? What did you replace the negators with?

[Paluka]

Chris, since you're the creator of the deck, I was wondering what you think should be changed in the deck to beat goblin consistently, would you add more shades, scrolls, what's you're opinion on the deck and it's future?

Please tell me, cause I'm interested in learning what the creator thinks.

thank you
I haven't done enough testing to know what my true win percentage is against Goblins. There isn't some secret way to make the deck better against goblins. The only way to improve the Goblin matchup is to take disruption out and fit in more Plagues, Plowshares, Scrolls, and creatures. This will obviously be a tradeoff because it will weaken your deck against other decks. If you are in a creature heavy format without much combo or control, the first thing you should probably do is replace the Gerrard's Verdicts with Swords to Plowshares.

[Paluka]

Chris, do you have an updated list? I read on SCG that you always sided in Wretches, and the negators in the sb were pretty much useless. Do you have a different decklist with the wretches main? What did you replace the negators with?
I don't have an updated list, because I dont' have a tourney to play in. As I stated in my SCG article, I would replace the Negators in the board with 2 more StP.

[AnwarA101]

@Paluka:
I haven't read your SCG article, but I'm curious what convinced you to play the deck as it was constructed. Were you convinced that you could beat goblins with 2 Plagues in the main? Were you more concerned with combo ie (Solidarity, Iggy Pop)?

[TorakTwoEye]

Here's a thought. If you are poor and can't pay out for a playset of sinkholes, would rancid earth be an acceptable substitute?

For reference: rancid earth BB1 sorcery: Destroy target land
Threshold: destroy target land and rancid earth deals one damage to each creature and each player.

True rancid earth costs one more mana. But is this disadvantage off set enough by the one damage effect? Note the ability to kill off your own Confidants while killing off your opponent's weenie's(BoP, elves, many goblins, soldier tokens, etc.). The only downside of the one damage is that it might kill your Nantuko Shade. But, I think you can avoid that preety easily.
Also notice that this method of Confidant removal does not result in card disadvantage. Finally, it's true that the threshold wouldn't happen until the late game. However, isn't that the time you want to knock off your Confidant anyway?

I'm not saying that rancid earth is better than sinkhole, I'm just wondering if you all would consider using it if you were poor and couldn't get sinkholes.
Thanks all

[Paluka]

Throughout the entire Grand Prix, there was never a game where I wished to kill my own Confidant.

[DampingEngine]

If you really can't afford Sinkhole, I would recommend playing Choking Sands in its place. It has no chance to backfire on you unless you also have a Wasteland and they only have one nonbasic land, and you get greedy and want the 2 damage more than you want to destroy 2 lands. If you avoid that trap, it's the best black land destroyer after Sinkhole. Rancid Earth just has too great a chance to backfire in this deck. Nothing's as good as Sinkhole though, and it's worth your while to get some.

I have a question for Chris Pikula - would you consider dropping the 2 Engineered Plagues for 2 more creatures? I tested out the deck with the 4th shade and one random wretch main deck, and it was nice to have more creatures, and I just wouldn't play the deck without 4 shades so something had to go. I believe shade is one of those non-debatable 4-ofs that you mentioned, and I'm surprised you couldn't find room for the 4th.

One more question - did you not play Chains of Mephistopheles in your sideboard because of unavailability, not knowing it existed, or a concious choice? It's my favorite black sideboard card because it's the strongest single disruption card vs. decks like Gro and Solidarity, and it's usable vs. Landstill and many other decks as well. It's also neat in this deck because you can cheat it with Dark Confidant, and be the only player who gets to draw extra cards. I would understand not playing Chains if you thought your game was more than good enough vs. all those decks (it is pretty good), but even then, 2 or 3 Chains sided in would increase your chances even higher, which isn't such a bad thing.

[laststepdown]

If that is the real Chris Pikula, I'd like to say hi, I'm the guy with the two lip piercings that was watching you play all day, and had you sign my Meddling Mages. First off, excellent job. Secondly, do you feel Negator is a wasted spot in sideboard?

[My Name Is Scott]

Here's a thought. If you are poor and can't pay out for a playset of sinkholes, would rancid earth be an acceptable substitute?

For reference: rancid earth BB1 sorcery: Destroy target land
Threshold: destroy target land and rancid earth deals one damage to each creature and each player.

True rancid earth costs one more mana. But is this disadvantage off set enough by the one damage effect? Note the ability to kill off your own Confidants while killing off your opponent's weenie's(BoP, elves, many goblins, soldier tokens, etc.). The only downside of the one damage is that it might kill your Nantuko Shade. But, I think you can avoid that preety easily.
Also notice that this method of Confidant removal does not result in card disadvantage. Finally, it's true that the threshold wouldn't happen until the late game. However, isn't that the time you want to knock off your Confidant anyway?

I'm not saying that rancid earth is better than sinkhole, I'm just wondering if you all would consider using it if you were poor and couldn't get sinkholes.
Thanks all
Is the possiblilty of clearing part of your opponents board worth that of killing off your own threats? It seems like most of the time it would be card disadvantage. I think rain of tears would almost certainly be better, or you could look around at big tournaments. Alot of people have beat to shit sinkholes they're willing to get rid of.
edit: Actually, make that icequake, because fuck IBA, that's why.

[Paluka]

If you really can't afford Sinkhole, I would recommend playing Choking Sands in its place. It has no chance to backfire on you unless you also have a Wasteland and they only have one nonbasic land, and you get greedy and want the 2 damage more than you want to destroy 2 lands. If you avoid that trap, it's the best black land destroyer after Sinkhole. Rancid Earth just has too great a chance to backfire in this deck. Nothing's as good as Sinkhole though, and it's worth your while to get some.

I have a question for Chris Pikula - would you consider dropping the 2 Engineered Plagues for 2 more creatures? I tested out the deck with the 4th shade and one random wretch main deck, and it was nice to have more creatures, and I just wouldn't play the deck without 4 shades so something had to go. I believe shade is one of those non-debatable 4-ofs that you mentioned, and I'm surprised you couldn't find room for the 4th.

One more question - did you not play Chains of Mephistopheles in your sideboard because of unavailability, not knowing it existed, or a concious choice? It's my favorite black sideboard card because it's the strongest single disruption card vs. decks like Gro and Solidarity, and it's usable vs. Landstill and many other decks as well. It's also neat in this deck because you can cheat it with Dark Confidant, and be the only player who gets to draw extra cards. I would understand not playing Chains if you thought your game was more than good enough vs. all those decks (it is pretty good), but even then, 2 or 3 Chains sided in would increase your chances even higher, which isn't such a bad thing.
I think trying to play the deck without Sinkholes would obviously make it a lot worse. That one mana means a lot when you are trying to keep them off 2 land.
You could drop the 2 Plagues for creatures if there weren't a lot of Goblins in your metagame. There are a lot of things you can do with that slot if you don't feel you want a way to get lucky game 1 against goblins.
I did not play Chains of Mephistopheles because I did not think my deck needed a sideboard card against combo decks. I had not considered how good it would be against Gro. The problem with the card is that it is hard to know how good it is without seeing your opponents decklist, although I guess every blue deck will have Brainstorm.

[laststepdown]

On a further note, why would you choose Rancid Earth over Rain of Tears as a budjet choice when you're running Confidant and Shade?

[umbowta]

Very good point, laststepdown. Killing off your own creatures is usually bad. TorakTwoEye, if you're going to play this deck 'budget casual', Rain of Tears is fine. It seems though, that the rest of the deck could incur quite an expense. Last time I looked, Vindicates were going for $8-9 each.

[kirdape3]

This deck costs a freaking fortune from scratch to assemble. Set of Sinkholes are $70, set of Vindicates will eat $25-30, triple Shade is $25, set of SCRUBlands is another $60. That's not including the Confidants, Hypnotics, and assorted and sundry other cards in the deck. It's quite possibly the most expensive deck that isn't FlameVault in the format.

[Paluka]

This deck costs a freaking fortune from scratch to assemble. Set of Sinkholes are $70, set of Vindicates will eat $25-30, triple Shade is $25, set of SCRUBlands is another $60. That's not including the Confidants, Hypnotics, and assorted and sundry other cards in the deck. It's quite possibly the most expensive deck that isn't FlameVault in the format.
Aren't there quite a few decks that have 8+ duals and FOW? All of those are going to be pricey.

[laststepdown]

Zoo runs 12 duals and 8 Fetchlands. That's pricey(and off topic). That being said, why is the conversation leaning towards the price of cards? Don't answer that-let's get back on topic, please. Do we feel that there are better 2 drops than Withered Wretch?

[Paluka]

I can't imagine using a 2 drop other than Nantuko Shade or Withered Wretch except in a bizarre metagame. I'd have to see a heckuva an argument.

[laststepdown]

What can we say is the toughest matchup for Deadguy Ale?

[Kadath128]

I posted this over at Star City:

I played this deck at our weekly 1.5 tournament here in Vancouver... only four round went 2-2. Lost the first round 2-1 to a monored Burn/LD it was basically the same deck but with burn instead of discard and more expensive and less land destruction. He basically dumped his hand into heavy mox draws so he could just top deck and play whatever it was... worked out ok for him games 2 and 3 Razz

Second round I won 2-1 against a MUC deck with basically Intuition, Counters, and only Ophidian and Morphling to win with. First game I lost to Morphling, won the next to by hymning away Morphling, easy enough.

Third was a Bw deck that really just seemed like an older version of Deadguy Ale, won that one 2-0.

Last was a Survival/Madness deck. I have manage to become fairly proficient at destroying RG Survival (beat it 5-0 earlier in the day) but I just coulnd't get this decks number. He always had cards in his hand for his mongrels to dodge Perish, and discarding Rootwalla's to Survival just seems evil. This is probably the only match where I really wished that my Disenchants were Needles. On the upside I did pull 2 FoW with a single Hymn, pretty sure that was the game I won. The only critters I saw were Arrogant Wurm, Mongrels, Rootwallas, and Looters and it was the Mongrels that killed me each time despite having Swords and Vindicate to kill them somewhere in the deck.

So for what its worth it does seem like the deck has problems against Burn, or at least non pro players do Razz The Madness deck I just chalk up to him having superior playskill, and me not being able to figure out on the fly the best way to disrupt him. Him playing all basics didnt help any either.

After the tourny a few people were asking why I didn't have Therapy/Contagion/Jitte. Therapy I still think could be good, but playing more and more against real opponents really makes it obvious that the critters need to stay on the board. Contagion and Jitte just seem like they'd suck, dont really know what else to say about that. Confidant is good at recovering from various 3 card ritual plays, but I'd hate to have to rely on it to recover from Contagion disadvantage also. Jitte + 11 creatures seems to be the same as Therapy + 11 creatures.

Plus I muliganed at least 7 times across 11 games, at least twice down to 5. I honestly have never had that problem before when I've played this deck, and I didn't shuffle any differently than other times. Meh.

[DampingEngine]

I should mention that the best 2 drop vs. Goblins is Black Knight, although Shade is better vs. most other decks and Withered Wretch is possibly the best graveyard hoser, so they deserve their slots.


I did not play Chains of Mephistopheles because I did not think my deck needed a sideboard card against combo decks. I had not considered how good it would be against Gro. The problem with the card is that it is hard to know how good it is without seeing your opponents decklist, although I guess every blue deck will have Brainstorm.

I like Chains because I have seen most of my opponents' decklists. 1.5 might be the most diverse format, but most people still play net decks. And most decks that have blue (Landstill, Solidarity, Gro) tend to run 8+ draw spells, so it's not that much of a risk. It also badly hoses a lot of less common things that show up sometimes, like Phyrexian Arena. I just love the damn thing, but I understand if people don't want to pay 100 bucks to get a couple.

[Kadath128]

Although I mention Chains before in another forum, I really haven't ever wished I'd had one. Generally the discard in the deck is more then enough for decks that rely on card advantage to win, and I've taken to putting Perish in the SB for NQG and Survival.

Only deck that I really still have continuous problems with are non goblin Red decks. I lost to one last week and thought it was just bad play on my part, but I've played against it abit on Workshop and usually end up on the wrong end of the shitty stick.

Since at the Batcave I have it on authority that there are only 2 goblins that show up, and they both have bad players I've moved the plagues to the SB and MD'd two Wretches. I'll probably shave 2 of the plagues out of the board even. Still looking for something that's not 4 mana or double white that is good against red. So far I've come up with Honorable Passage and... what... Warmth? Also had a few moments where Confidant life loss got scairy but I think that's from keeping slower hands.

[midnightAce]

With Gro varients on the rise, another potential two drop to consider would be Spectral Lynx. It can survive most forms of removal such as Keg/EE, as well as Deed in Tog varients, Disk/Starstarm in UR Landstill. Its bonus reside in the nice Pro Green attached to it. It can block Werebears all day long, and provided that you keep the threshold in check with Wretch, the Lynx can block the Mystic Enforcer all day long as well. Seeing how Enforcer's got Pro Black, short of StP and discard, Vindicate, Shade, and Hippy's got nothing on that guy. The Lynx would be very useful in that aspect.

[Citrus-God]

My tools against Gro is

1. Perish
2. Withered Wretch
3. Spectral Lynx

And to beat up Enforcer... umm... S2P? Somewhere you people have gotta run more of these. Perish is also another way to kill off Enforcer, as I mentioned.

Meddling Mage is a bitch to deal with. But Vindicate can take of him very easily.

[DampingEngine]

I played the deck today and went 3-0-1 in swiss and split the top 4. I actually won all my matches 2-0 and IDed in the last round so I didn't lose a single game today, although I only played 6. I beat a kid playing life, then turboland, then a more traditional suiblack deck. One of the games vs suiblack was extremely close, I won by scrolling him for specter when I had 2 in my hand out of 5 cards, with confidant's ability on the stack, which would've killed me that turn. I also took 14 from Confidant one game vs life, but I wouldn't consider that game close since he had no cards in hand or creatures in play when I won, and I had 6 good cards in hand. Engineered Plague is very, very good vs. Life btw. The Chains of Mephistopheles helped game 2 vs. turboland, it's one of the decks that gets hosed really badly by that card. The other suiblack deck had a lot of land destruction, which almost won him game 1, and Phyrexian Arena, which I might have sided in Chains for but I didn't see it game 1. I sided out the plagues for STPs because he had the same creatures as me except for Juzams, which I would rather have STP for anyways.

I did notice that Confidant is more risky in this deck than it is in decks with more creatures. When I was testing this archetype with Confidant in it, I had about 20 creatures in my deck so it was never hard to deal more damage to my opponent than Confidant was dealing to me. I can see why Pikula kept siding in extra creatures, because putting more pressure on the opponent is often needed, more than life gain would, with a Confidant on the table. On the flipside, I won one game vs. Turboland with 2 Confidants on the table because playing the 2nd sped up my clock a turn. Then again, that deck doesn't damage you until it's comboed out already.

The Spectral Lynx idea is very interesting. I don't think it's strong enough for a sideboard slot (you could play Perish if you were really worried about green creatures), but it is something to consider if the main deck creature count is to be increased. I still think Black Knight is clearly better vs. Goblins because it's harder to kill and holds off their army with no mana open. If the Plagues were taken out for creatures, putting Knights in their place would at least mean you still had an anti-goblin card in that spot. Lynx would be much better vs. Gro, but I just don't think that's a bad matchup. On the other hand, I have the card Gro fears more than any other in my sideboard to seal the deal in that matchup. After today though, I do agree that more creatures should be in the deck. If the Plagues and Verdicts were removed, that would leave room for 15 creatures. I'd play 4 of each of the basic 3 and 3 Black Knight to keep the game winnable vs Goblins, but Wretch could be maindecked in a different meta.

[Kadath128]

I really dont see all this talk about Gro (assuming you mean NGQ or 'Threshold'), its not on overly difficult match up. Now I do run Perish in the SB (which kills every creature but Meddling Mage) so that may make it easier but also they mana base for that deck is stretched crazy thin.

Keeping them off blue is pointless but both Green and White are viable, mostly white though. Screwing them for white means you dont have to deal with swords or enforcer or mage (conviently the only creature you can't perish). Then of course Wretch can usually keep them off threshold if he comes down soon enough, at least against the Threshold deck I generally face.

I really think the only support the deck needs in the SB is something against Non Goblin Red, since its consistantly a pain. However I guess no one else lives in a Red/Black meta :P

[Vimes]

I play Gro myself, and I have found the Deadguy-Gro matchup to be easily in Gro's favor. Why? Because your game vs. UGw Gro depends on keeping them off white. They run tons of draw, and at least 9 ways to get white mana, as opposed to your 8 land destruction spells and 4 Bobs. I have never been successfully kept off white mana, and Enforcer is good game. The UGr Gro matchup, however, is absolutely horrid for you. 4x Nimble Mongoose are killable only in combat, and they're in green, the second biggest color. Running more removal than UGw Gro spells trouble for you as well.

[Kadath128]

Perish is the SB card of choice against Gro, at least it is for me, killing everything in the UGw thats not a meddling mage. Now I realise that its not the standard SB card, but it probably should be with how huge Gro is getting lately.

As for keeping Gro off white... its not all that hard really. Deadguy has 12 land d (you probably forgot Vidicate). Now of course you can't feasibly deny them white forever, but you can make sure they never keep it for more than a turn. Especially since most /w only have at most 1 non basic white source, sure they can fetch them all to hell, but it'll still die before it's used more than once.

For my playing vs Gro thats usually my gameplan at least, screw white as best as possible, then protect Perish with discard to kill what's on the board. Granted that just makes it easier to get threshold, Wretches have always been sufficient to stunt that.

Sure its not an easy matchup, Gro is a good deck, but Deadguy is probably one of the best suited to beat it.

[Hutch8729]

This past weekend there was a Legacy judge event. 3 Deadguy ale builds were played and one managed to top 8. The build was quite different.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/bd205

4 Scrubland
4 Wasteland
3 Tainted Field
2 Bloodstained Mire
7 Swamp
20 land

4 Hypnotic Specter
4 Dark Confidant
2 Nantuko Shade
10 creatures

4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Gerrard's Verdict
4 Dark Ritual
4 Sinkhole
2 Vindicate
3 Engineered Plague
3 The Rack
2 Cursed Scroll
30 other spells

3 Withered Wretch
2 Seal of Cleansing
2 Swords to Plowshares
1 Engineered Plague
1 Cursed Scroll
2 Infest
2 Darkblast
2 Pithing Needle
15 sideboard

The changes we have from our origional buil are...

MD
+2 Tainted Field
+2 Gerrard's Verdict
+1 Engineered Plague
+3 The Rack

-2 Bloodstained Mire
-3 Swamp
-2 Vindicate
-1 Nantuko Shade

SB
-1 Withered Wretch
-1 Engineered Plague(moved to MD)
-1 Pithing Needle
-2 Phyrexian Negator

+1 Cursed Scroll
+2 Infest
+2 Seal of Clensing

Slops on the build

Well for starters he went the wrong way on the shades. any change should have been more not less. Mires were at the correct number of 4. Vindicate is our BEST(and only) MD spot removal... and it hits EVERYTHING! great card in this deck stays at 4. I think he over compensated for goblins with the 3rd MD Plague. The rack? not really optimal. Better choices. Verdict is good but not 4 count good. 3 at most and that is pushing it. I wont touch the SB because Metas are all different and i have yet to do a major tournament for the deck and havet taken it through a huge grind to flesh out all the details.

Props for the build

we did need less land but i think 21 is the right number and the fetches should be 5-6. I like seal of cleansing... thats about it

Not the way i had hoped the deck would go from the first 2 events

[Paluka]

What led you to the decision that the deck needs to go below 23 lands?

[Machinus]

This deck loves land. It has good synergy with scroll and confidant. Furthermore, you need BB on turn 2 almost every game. That requires more land, and 23 is actually a very good amount for land in the deck. I think anything less than 22 is probably not enough to support the spells in the deck.

[Zilla]

I dropped a single land for the fourth Shade, and I haven't regretted it a bit. I've been testing it quite a lot, and the consistency of BB on turn 2 is very high, as well as the ability to support the rest of the curve. There's a very delicate balance between the numbers of manasources and disruption/threats in the deck, because you need to be keeping constant pressure on the opponent to prevent them recovering from your initial disruption.

Even with Confidant, I was often getting manaflooded and losing the advantage I'd gained in the early game in my testing with 23 lands. The drop to 22 has mitigated this problem, and has proven very consistent for me overall. I strongly agree that less than 22 lands is pushing it, however.

[Hutch8729]

I have yet to test either so i was just assuming. And since i seem to have a plethora of land at the end of most games with the deck when i play at various places I figured 21 would be fine but i do feel that more fetchalnds are needed.

[Slay]

You have to watch out for adding too many fetchlands. This deck has very little creature control and Dark Confidants. RandomAggroWithBurnSpells gets a lot more dangerous for each extra fetchland you put in.
-Slay

[Kadath128]

You have to watch out for adding too many fetchlands. This deck has very little creature control and Dark Confidants. RandomAggroWithBurnSpells gets a lot more dangerous for each extra fetchland you put in.
-Slay
Its also the hardest matchup for the deck. Byes are your friend with this deck.

As for those builds that are posted they are a little out of whack. 20 Land with 4 Wastelands is asking to tap wastelands for mana a lot, 3 Tainted Fields with only 11 Swamps and 2! Fetch Lands also seem to be begging to tap for colorless a lot. 23 land has only left me looking for white about .1% of the time, and I think I can handle making it happen a little more often for the 4th Shade. He seems to kinda just do that game winning thing fairly often. So... I'll have to try 22 land 4 Shades.

4 Gerrards Verdict is silly. It would help against burn (one of the hardest matchups for me at least) and it is a two for one, so it may have a place in 62 card decks, but there are better things to do with the deck space. Specifically things like running Vindicate. From blowing up that last splashed land, to clearing blockers, to making it possible to win through various silly enchantmenst Vindicate is way to good to only run 2 of.

Only thing I've been thinking about now is swapping the sideboard Perish to CoP:Red (don't laugh I played 3 red decks out of four matches last night, and thats not uncommon). Also figured might try out Nezumi Shortfang in place of Verdict. Might be bad, I havent tested it at all, but I think it might be nice to have access to instant speed discard that can finish a game as well. Might give the deck an unacceptable number of mana sinks though: two scrolls, three (four) shades, and two shortfangs.

As for the fetching: you should ALWAYS fetch it EoT your opponent and put into play tapped.

[Hutch8729]

With guildpact just a little over a month away there is a question to be posed though it amy be a minor one. Should we change the Tainted field to the B/W shockland? You should NEVER fetch for it so the 3 dmg isnt a problem and with only one in the deck should we even worry about the off chance for the 2 dam? I think it goes in because then a hand with that and a wastland is possibly a keeper depending on your other 5 cards. ALSO we should try and flesh out a SB. Figuring out what MUST go in(i.e. Withered wretch, Engineered plague) in some quantity and the room you have to add metagame tech(i.e. C.o.P red, Chains of mephistopheles<sp?>) and i think it should be agreed on that the 4th shade and the 23rd land will be put in and taken out respectivly. Though I do think the thinning we get from another fetch or two is nice and should be considered and looked at. also it increases your chance to get your BB or BW on turn 2 and your BBW on turn 3.

Comments?

[Lego]

Should we change the Tainted field to the B/W shockland?
If I'm not mistaken, the Tainted Field was chosen over Caves of Koilos because it never causes life loss. The Shockland does not have this benefit, at least not if played within the first 3 or 4 turns of the game, when I find that I'm easily using all of my mana. Honestly, I don't know how often you are wanting to keep hands with a Tainted Field and a Wasteland, because this leaves you without BB on turn two, and with one land very quickly. In most matchups, I view Wasteland as a removal spell rather than a land for mulling purposes. Can others provide their thoughts on this?

Verdict: I'd probably be shipping back a hand with Tainted Field and Wasteland anyway, so I think the lifeloss becomes more of a factor, and Tainted Field wins out.

@ General Comments: I think the real strength of this deck is in its ability to be heavily metagamed, and I think the perfect construction of the deck requires, if not a heavy knowledge of the metagame, at least some concept of what you expect to face. In these cases I think it is perfectly acceptable to switch out some of the disruption package, edge in some creatures, that sort of thing, but for the overrall Legacy Metagame that we see shaping up, I feel like the optimal number is the 12 creature, 10 hand disruption + Hyppy, 8 LD + Wasteland package that Pikula originally included (assuming we go to 22 lands for the 4th Shade). Seeing 4 x Ritual and 2 x Cursed Scroll as auto-includes, I feel like that leaves 2 slots open to general metagaming, and I find that I've liked the Engineered Plagues a lot. After doing a lot of testing, that's how I would take it into an unknown metagame, and I like the side pretty well, although I might try to make room for Perish.

That's not to say that it's incorrect to do something like -2 Engineered Plague, -2 Gerard's Verdict for +4 Withered Wretch, or any other change you decide to make, when you have more intimate knowledge of a metagame, but I would hesitate to make too many drastic changes to the deck as is, because it would take away a lot of the versatility of the deck, which is (IMO) one of its greatest strengths.

[DampingEngine]

-2 Engineered Plague -2 Gerrard's Verdict and +x Withered Wretch (it's 3 right now since I still have 23 land in my deck and 4 Shades) is exactly what I decided to do. I still have 4 Engineered Plague and 4 Swords to Plowshares in the sideboard for goblins, which are easily switched in for the Sinkholes and Duresses. I also have the massive anti-gro sideboard of 1 Withered Wretch, 3 Chains of Mephistopheles, and 4 Swords to Plowshares. I actually am not 100% sure of what to take out for all those cards when I'm playing against gro. The Duresses are probably the most expendable card, since I would have a hard time taking out land destruction against gro or Hymns against any deck. Cursed Scroll isn't so hot against them so they should probably be cut as well. If I went to 22 land and maindecked the other Wretch, I would only have to pick one more card to board out, or I could just have only 2 Chains in my sideboard. It's the only card I would side in against Solidarity though, but my matchup's not bad against that deck so I can probably afford the sacrifice. With the extra 2 sideboard slots, I could add the 4th Pithing Needle and something else, such as a 3rd Cursed Scroll or something for burn/sligh, like Gerrard's Verdict or COP: Red. COP would probably be superior if it's strictly in the sideboard. As for the land argument, I don't think any option is better than adding more fetches. Shockduals would mean more life loss 90% of the time, and Tainted Field means more mulligans and is weaker against Wasteland, since a fetch can become a Swamp if necessary. I don't think losing 1 more life point is going to matter often, because my games against burn were won by drawing lots of land destruction and Hymns, and I could even afford to play Confidant once I had stripped my opponent's offense.

[Zilla]

I also have the massive anti-gro sideboard of 1 Withered Wretch, 3 Chains of Mephistopheles, and 4 Swords to Plowshares.
I'd by far rather have Perish in the SB for Gro than Chains, particularly because Perish bolsters your Survival/Stompy matchups, which aren't particularly positive either. It's been my experience that most decks which draw extra cards are already fairly positive matchups.

[AnwarA101]

I also have the massive anti-gro sideboard of 1 Withered Wretch, 3 Chains of Mephistopheles, and 4 Swords to Plowshares.
I'd by far rather have Perish in the SB for Gro than Chains, particularly because Perish bolsters your Survival/Stompy matchups, which aren't particularly positive either. It's been my experience that most decks which draw extra cards are already fairly positive matchups.
Why not play Dystopia over Perish? It has a tendency to wreck your opponent's board. Dystopia also hits white cards which makes it much less narrow than Perish.

[Kadath128]

Seriously... On Perish:

One of my roommates has been playing RG Survival Advantage for about a year and a half. After I first built Deadguy Ale we played for a few days and I almost always would loose 2 outta 3. I made the switch to only 2 Perish in the side and started a winning streak against his deck which I don't think has been broken since. Now obviously I've gotten better at winning the presideboard games but Perish helps to fairly common matchups that can be pains (Gro and Survival) and randomly thwacks other decks.

Also Nezumi Shortfang has contributed greatly to winning every game I've ever drawn it in. It rather helps this deck actually win the game after the first frontloaded disruption puts them on their heels. Generally he is not stellar flipped, but when its so easy to keep their hand empty as it is with this deck, the auto 3 damage a turn and the potential 6, really help keep momentum in your favor.

EDIT: Dystopia's additional lifeloss wasn't so much a big deal with Necro since you didn't pay as much life per card, and had ways to get it back. This deck generally doesn't and Perish immediatly clears several critters outta the Shades way, letting you win asap. Dystopia would have cost me a LOT of life in several situations that Perish saved the day. About the only plus is it kills Compost, but Vindicate does that and only occasionally dings me for three.

[Zilla]

This has been my experience with Dystopia in this deck as well. The lifeloss from it combined with the Confidant is just too much. Too often I had to let Dystopia go before it became truly effective. Perish may be more narrow, but it's really effective against a lot of the deck's problem matchups.

[Lego]

I agree with the Perish over Dystopia argument. The main difference is that Perish is instantaneous (albeit at sorcery speed, but you get what I mean) whereas Dystopia will take many turns. And in some matchups (RG Survival Advantage) it's not going to kill the creatures you want it to anyway (instead hitting Birds and Elves while the Baloths beat you to death).

@ Nezumi Shortfang: How many do you play? He seems like he would compete for the second turn plays (Hymns, Sinkholes, Wasteland activations, Verdict if you play them) and that he would encourage me to use his ability instead of other, more pertanent disruption. How have you been using him, and how does he play for you?

@ Withered Wretch Main: For anyone who has tested this, what matchups does it significantly improve, and have you found any problems with the loss of Engineered Plague or Verdict maindeck (or whatever else you took out), or are there any matchups that become worse?

In General: The two decks I'm playing right now in Legacy are Threshold and this one. The reason is that I haven't found any unwinable matchups for either deck, and they both immensely reward playskill, moreso than other decks I have been playing. What are others' thoughts on this?

[Hutch8729]

quick question what gets taken out of a SB for Perish? Curtently using SB: 2 [UL] Engineered Plague
SB: 4 [U] Swords to Plowshares
SB: 4 [LE] Withered Wretch
SB: 2 [RAV] Darkblast
SB: 3 [SOK] Pithing Needle

[B is for Big Job]

I would personally take out the dark blast since youre going to be using perish in more games than you will be using Darkblast

[Lego]

You're going to be using Perish in more games than you will be using Darkblast
I don't know if that's true. I'm not disagreeing with you, I just actually don't know. Perish comes in against Thresh/Gro, Survival Advantage, and Elves (and probably more unplayed decks). Darkblast comes in against Survival Advantage (right? I think you wanna hit the mana creatures), Elves, and Goblins (and probably more unplayed decks).

I'm sure I'm missing something and sounding like an idiot, but the question between Darkblast/Perish seems to be the question between boarding against Goblins/Thresh. Perish is definitely better against Gro, but the recurability of Darkblast gives it a chance of even being better in the Elves or SA matchup (not that we should be metagaming for Elves ;). I really don't know which is better, I think I'm just trying to play devil's advocate. I was already convinced a while back to play Perish, but I can still see a big argument for Darkblast.

[Zilla]

The question rests very heavily on the metagame, obviously. First and foremost, it's not entirely out of the question to drop Verdicts in the maindeck for 2 maindecked Wretches, which leaves you two open slots right there. Further, it's not entirely out of the question to drop some Pithing Needles. By and large, Needle is strong against combo, which is already positive for you. It's also good against Survival, obviously, but I'd contend that Perish is better.

Incidentally, I did some testing today against UGw Thresh with 3x Perish in the board. We played 2 pre-board games, and 5 post-board games. Deadguy went 6-1, losing one of the preboarded games. Note also that the Thresh player was bringing in 2 Misdirections from the side. Perish was, as expected, a total house in the matchup. Obviously these few games don't mean anything even remotely conclusive, but they seem to indicate that pre-board is very roughly 50/50, and post-board is positive in favor of Deadguy. This might change if Compost gets added to Thresh's SB, but I've been siding out all the hand destruction except the Hymns and Hyppies anyway, so it probably wouldn't be too difficult to just change the SB strategy to play around Compost almost completely.

I have yet to test against the UGr builds yet... I'll post some results once I have them.

[Lego]

I'm surprised that the matchup is that skewed after board. Can you tell us what you are boarding on both sides, and how the games were usually won? My board for Thresh has virtually nothing I would want to bring in.

I think the Red splash will do much better, as Pyroclasm seems to be pretty effective against Pikula. I couldn't say from actual testing results though, and I'd love if you could post some of those :)

[Zilla]

I'm surprised that the matchup is that skewed after board. Can you tell us what you are boarding on both sides, and how the games were usually won? My board for Thresh has virtually nothing I would want to bring in.
I don't know exactly how he was boarding, but I know he brought in 3 Mongooseses and 2 Misdirections. I brought in 3 Swords, 3 Perish, and 4 Withered Wretch, in lieu of 2 Engineered Plague, 2 Gerrard's Wisdom, 2 Cursed Scroll, and 4 Duress. (When I found out he was running Misdirection I swapped out Hymn instead of Duress).

Essentially, the reason that they beat you when they do is that they have large beatsticks and you don't have effective ways of removing them. In a prolonged ground war, they're going to win that fight. The preboard games you win you win because your disruption is enough to keep them from getting on solid ground before they get real threats online, which isn't a perfectly consistent strategy. Post board, you win because you have 10 highly relevant creature removal spells (3 of which are mass removal), and you have Wretch to keep their creatures from getting Thresh. It's a rather dramatic change, and one that benefits you greatly.

I agree with you that the UGr Thresh build is likely to perform better against Deadguy than its UGw counterpart; Pyroclasm gives them mass removal of their own, and their Dragons are unaffected by Perish. Further, they have burn to supplement the damage you're already doing to yourself. This is speculation, however. I'll do some real testing and let you all know how it pans out.

[AnwarA101]

What's the sideboard strategy against Gro? I played against it a few weeks ago and it seemed like their threats were just better than mine. I even got my Shade hit by Pithing Needle and essentially wasn't much of threat. I boarded out 4 Duress, 2 Engineered Plague, and 2 Cursed Scroll. I boarded in 4 Swords to Plowshares and 4 Withered Wretch. I was not playing Perish, because I was running Pikula's board. I still got overrun in game 2 as well. Is this an effective strategy? What would you board out to put in Perish?

[calosso]

Why would you sideout Duress since you can hit cantrips or counterspells with it.

[AnwarA101]

Why would you sideout Duress since you can hit cantrips or counterspells with it.
Because Duress is by far the weakest card against them. It doesn't help you get rid of their threats. While it does hit cantrips and counterspells its just weaker than the other discard spells (Hymn and Verdict). I don't see what else you can take out against them that is less effective.

[Zilla]

Why would you sideout Duress since you can hit cantrips or counterspells with it.
Because Duress is by far the weakest card against them. It doesn't help you get rid of their threats. While it does hit cantrips and counterspells its just weaker than the other discard spells (Hymn and Verdict). I don't see what else you can take out against them that is less effective.
Precisely. Duress came out because it was the least bad choice. Hymn stayed because it's card advantage, which is particularly effective against a deck that doesn't have that much true card advantage of its own (in this case, AK and Predict). However, knowing that Misdirection is in the mix, I felt safer siding out the Hymns and keeping in the Duress. Besides, it was nice having a first turn play that didn't involve Ritual.

[AnwarA101]

Why would you sideout Duress since you can hit cantrips or counterspells with it.
Because Duress is by far the weakest card against them. It doesn't help you get rid of their threats. While it does hit cantrips and counterspells its just weaker than the other discard spells (Hymn and Verdict). I don't see what else you can take out against them that is less effective.
Precisely. Duress came out because it was the least bad choice. Hymn stayed because it's card advantage, which is particularly effective against a deck that doesn't have that much true card advantage of its own (in this case, AK and Predict). However, knowing that Misdirection is in the mix, I felt safer siding out the Hymns and keeping in the Duress. Besides, it was nice having a first turn play that didn't involve Ritual.
I guess if I knew that Misdirection was coming in that would probably lead you to stick with Duress over Hymn. But I doubt Misdirection is a good card in the current format. It does almost nothing against every deck type except Black decks and Burn. Why would you board Misdirection, just for Deadyguy Ale? I guess so.

[Kadath128]

Shortfang came out for the Gerard's Verdict, because it's actually more useful (for me) against burn and I only play 2. Verdict would put them into topdeck mode but I still couldnt keep creatures around to kill them. The Rat flips easily and forces them to burn him out over other threats, so I can sneak in more damage that way. Also it's rarely a turn two play, since he actually wants to flip, so he ends up being played turns 3 and 4 more often than turn 2 since he's a less desirable mana sink than Shades. I tend to flip him on his first activation.

I run 2x Perish in the SB because the Confidant makes it like running 3x. They swapped out for Darkblast because the deck tends to win against Goblins a LOT outta the sideboard and can steal away games 1's fairly often. GodzillA's sideboard plan is identical to mine but I side 4 Sword 2 Perish. Perish makes Surivial winnable and against either variant of grow it kills every creature except their splash color critters, and you can generally screw them for that color.

My current SB is: 4 Swords, 2 Perish, 4 Wretch, 2 Plagues, 3 CoP: Red. This is because of the Batcave's meta which is randomly HEAVY burn... Anyway depending on what I see prior to the kick off the 2 MD Plagues leap out for various other cards, most oftenly 2 Swords (good against most things) or 2 Wretches, cause warm bodies are good.

The 3 CoP's are to give me a shot in hell against burn decks, I'd like to only run two, but I'm not ballsy enough to rely on Confidant to draw me one in a matchup vs burn. In fact I've been leaning towards siding out Confidants vs. Burn and just bringing in Wretches in their place. No idea why I haven't been doing this so far. Might get harder to SB once I get my needles that I had sold out from under me, 'cause wombat is hard atm.

[Zilla]

I guess if I knew that Misdirection was coming in that would probably lead you to stick with Duress over Hymn. But I doubt Misdirection is a good card in the current format. It does almost nothing against every deck type except Black decks and Burn. Why would you board Misdirection, just for Deadyguy Ale? I guess so.
Misdirection's theoretically good against other blue-based control, and maybe creature-based aggro with instant-speed targeted removal, but realistically it's there specifically for Deadguy. It would appear not to be effective enough to actually matter, though.


The 3 CoP's are to give me a shot in hell against burn decks, I'd like to only run two, but I'm not ballsy enough to rely on Confidant to draw me one in a matchup vs burn.
My experience with Burn hasn't been all that bad; some games it just wins outright, but other games it's not too difficult to just hit their hand over and over again until they run out of gas. Once you get them to that point, all you have to do is resolve and protect a Shade for the win. Honestly, if I were going to sb hate specifically for Burn, it would probably come in the form of Honorable Passage, or better yet, Aegis of Honor.

In any case, maybe I'll see you at the Batcave sometime... it seems Alternate Universe here in Portland is never going to get their weekly Legacy tournament back up and running.

[Kadath128]

In any case, maybe I'll see you at the Batcave sometime... it seems Alternate Universe here in Portland is never going to get their weekly Legacy tournament back up and running.
Good because Batcave can't afford to loose players. :P

My experience against burn is this:
1) I empty their hand.
2) They topdeck burn to kill my threats.
3) The topdeck more burn than I do threats.
4) The left over burn goes to my face.
5) I die.

If I was to have a sideboard card for Burn and only Burn it would probably be Warmth, which makes all their cards suck. But then I still have problems against Sligh builds which also show up around here. Honorable Passage seems a little not good enough against burn since rarely are the games decided by a single burn spell, although I would love to hit a Fireblast with that. Aegis of Honor seems like it would be insanely sick against Burn though.

But those are all fairly narrow answers, CoP just kinda makes about three decks on average loose in the local meta here.

[Zilla]

Like I said, the key is to resolve and protect a Shade against them once you've drained their hand. You don't want to play hyper-aggressively here. Use your non-Shade creatures to draw out burn in the early game, but don't play out a Shade until you've got plenty of mana to protect it.

As for Aegis of Honor, I used to sideboard it in Angel Stompy when Burn and Zilla Stompy were still really popular in these parts; it utterly destroys Burn unless they're running Needle, Disenchant, or Anarchy. Incidentally, that's why I'd consider Honorable Passage... it's an answer that they have absolutely no way around, unless they're running Flaring Pain in the SB. Another option for Burn, if it's really a huge metagame concern, is Chalice of the Void. Side out your Duresses for them, and the only 1cc cards left in your deck are Dark Ritual and Scroll, which you'll be playing before you play Chalice in most cases anyway. Something to consider.

[Lego]

Aegis of Honor is an interesting choice, as a lot of burn decks are not splashing (although many are going with the white splash, for both Disenchant and Lightning Helix). It's also nice that it doesn't prevent damage, so Flaring Pain from the side won't matter.

I still wouldn't dedicate sideboard slots to it, because I don't expect to see much burn, but would you say that the matchup is winnable withoutdedicating sideboard space to it?

[Zilla]

Aegis of Honor is an interesting choice, as a lot of burn decks are not splashing (although many are going with the white splash, for both Disenchant and Lightning Helix). It's also nice that it doesn't prevent damage, so Flaring Pain from the side won't matter.
Most Burn decks not splashing white do board Pithing Needle, however, so that's an answer to it as well.



I still wouldn't dedicate sideboard slots to it, because I don't expect to see much burn, but would you say that the matchup is winnable withoutdedicating sideboard space to it?
My prior analysis of the matchup was assuming no SB slots dedicated to it. Burn really dislikes hand destruction. A lot. That doesn't mean it can't win, but it does mean that it's more positive than one might assume by comparing the two on paper.

[James Bond]

Seeing as how Burn is a tough matchup how come nobody ever runs cop: red or warmth in their sbs??

[SpencerForHire]

Because you already have enough nice bombs against them. Hating out their resources will have to do and Pithing Needle is good against COP I hear. If it is of any interest, there are currently at least 3 BW decks going into the top 8 of the MTS Tourny V which means that it was definately a good meta choice there. What kind of decks were played: All kinds!
This deck seems good for the most part against any deck for various reasons and although some matchups are better than others it doesn't "just lose" to any deck I can think of.
I'll post some more after the tourney is over on how it performs against the "random decks" you can run into.

[Kadath128]

I'm really confused by all the people saying that Deadguy has bombs against burn and that the match-up isn't all that bad... because it is.

I've played against burn MANY times and the only times I've won is by savagely mana-screwing them (no land over 8 turns) or by savagely mana flooding them (drawing only land for 8 turns). Discard is nice against them, but they can still topdeck against you and win since you have to have at least 5 mana so you can play a shade and protect it from at least a single three damage burn spell.

Its a really bad matchup for the deck no matter how you splice it. It relies on emptying their hand while still drawing mana and threats. Sure that's important for any match but more so where every card in their deck kills one of your creatures. Land Destruction is virtually worthless unless it's complete screw because of how low the decks curve is.

I'd have to say that the percentages are somewhere around 60/40 for burn, probably even 65/35.

[Zilla]

I'd have to say that the percentages are somewhere around 60/40 for burn, probably even 65/35.
For clarity, I don't disagree with this estimate. What I said before was indicating that the Burn matchup isn't unwinnable. It's unfavorable, but not as much as it appears on paper. Because on paper, it looks like Burn should beat this deck ~85/15, which it does not. If Burn is a real metagame concern for you, I strongly believe you can turn it into a positive matchup with proper sideboarding.

[Kadath128]

I'd have to say that the percentages are somewhere around 60/40 for burn, probably even 65/35.
For clarity, I don't disagree with this estimate. What I said before was indicating that the Burn matchup isn't unwinnable. It's unfavorable, but not as much as it appears on paper. Because on paper, it looks like Burn should beat this deck ~85/15, which it does not. If Burn is a real metagame concern for you, I strongly believe you can turn it into a positive matchup with proper sideboarding.
I honestly had the impression that you were saying this was a match-up in Deadguys favor :P

On average Burn/Sligh is about 15-20% of the metagame at the weekly tournaments I go to. I still haven't decided between CoP:Red or Warmth, but I'm honestly leading towards Warmth since I dont like having to take mana away from Shades.

Between Honorable Passage, Aegis of Honor, CoP, and Warmth, warmth seems the best bet, maybe even going the full on distance and running Sphere of Law, sure it hurts a lot to flip it... but it keeps on giving.

Currently Running:
4 [TE] Wasteland
9 [UNH] Swamp
4 [ON] Bloodstained Mire
1 [TO] Tainted Field
4 [R] Scrubland

4 [TO] Nantuko Shade
4 [A] Hypnotic Specter
4 [RAV] Dark Confidant
2 [CHK] Nezumi Shortfang--Stabwhisker the Odious

4 [US] Dark Ritual
2 [TE] Cursed Scroll
4 [A] Sinkhole
4 [AP] Vindicate
4 [FE] Hymn to Tourach (3)
4 [US] Duress
2 [IA] Swords to Plowshares

SB: 4 [LE] Withered Wretch
SB: 4 [UL] Engineered Plague
SB: 2 [A] Swords to Plowshares
SB: 2 [TE] Perish
SB: 3 [9E] Circle of Protection: Red

Pretty standard stuff. Shortfangs have been good to me, I'd suggest trying them out if you haven't. CoP's like I said are still in debate, however the only testing I really get against sligh/burn is on Workshop playing against myself.

What problems have shown up for anyone else out there? How many are actually playing this deck?

[Zilla]

Your list is identical to my current build with a few exceptions:

1. -1 Swamp, +1 Tainted Field. You want 10 ways to get white mana by turn 2.

2. Like Pikula, I tend run Verdict in the Shortfang slot, simply because the lifegain can be important. If I weren't running Wisdom, I'd be running Wretch or StP in this slot, depending on the metagame. Shortfang has been kinda meh in my testing.

3. How many Goblins players are there at the Batcave? If there are a lot of them, I'd want to back up Plague with 2 Darkblast like Pikula did. That's what really turns the tide in your favor, in my experience.

4. If there's enough reason to run any at all, I'd run 3 Perish. Even over the 4th StP.

5. You missing Pithing Needle at all?

6. Re: Warmth. Any Burn player not splashing white had damn well better be running either Anarchy or Vortex in the sideboard. Both of them answer Warmth. Test Honorable Passage. I honestly think it may be all you need to turn the matchup in your favor, and it's the hardest hate for them to play around.

7. Note: Gerrard's Verdict is savage in the Burn matchup. That you aren't running it is almost cerainly contributing to your difficulty there.

[Kadath128]

To answer point by point:
1) I've never had problems needing white, even with the maindeck Swords. Although since I haven't tested it, I'll give it a try. Probably low enough chance of getting Field with no swamp it may be worth it (8% according to Workshop). Also I tend to sit on fetches habitually until absolutely neccesary, I rarely run out white until it's needed.

2) I had Verdicts, Shortfang is better. Often I have problems actually ending the game once I've thrown the initial disruption out. Shortfang turns that initial disruption into an actual threat to end the game. Generally the turn he flips he deals 3 on their upkeep, and then swings in for 3 since they're busy blocking the Shade. Are you playing him for instant speed discard or for the rack effect? Flipping him is some good in this deck from my experience. What exactly was meh in your tests? Or was it just not good enough? One more, how often are you aiming Verdict at yourself for the lifegain?

3) There's a R/W that I've played every time it's shown up, and a Mono Red (4 Bolts, 4 Grenades, no Ports or Wastelands). Oh and there's my build as well. Not an overall strong presence thus I dropped the Darkblasts. The trade was for the Perish.

4) I've tried 3 Perish, but 2 has always been enough for me. Against Survival and Threshold both Confidant can be played freely, and his card advantage makes it seem like I'm running 3. Also the low number of Threshold and Survival in the meta make 2 a fairly solid number for me.

5) Scored 4 Needles at $18 each from online retailer... 2 weeks later he said he sold them all at an event and would honor the price when he gets more. Still hasn't got more = I have no needles. The list I posted is the list I play, not the optimal list.

6) I'll try it since I haven't really. I assume it's used to protect your board unless its a lethal spell? I'll test it.

I suppose I am rather conradicting myself by being so paranoid over red decks and still dropping Verdict. Shortfang really has been better for me on the whole though and has brough my overall win percentage up.

[Zilla]

6) I'll try it since I haven't really. I assume it's used to protect your board unless its a lethal spell? I'll test it.
It's basically virtual (or real) card advantage. Burn's biggest failing is that it runs out of gas and has trouble picking up the slack in the lategame. Along with Duress and Hymn and Verdict and Hyppie it's yet another card that says: you just wasted a Burn spell. It speeds up your clock, costs them a card, and can protect one of your threats.

[James Bond]

I think Kadath may be onto something with Shortfang. 1-2 Perishes should be more than enough. Gro/Mono green decks are already heavily in our favor anyways. I've found that warmth is a superior choice over cop: red, as somebody said earlier burn decks run needles, also; the deck gains advantage from having excess mana available. People often question why I run 2 seal of cleansing in my sb seeing as how there's no particular threat I should worry about. The thing is just about any jank can defeat ale with a little luck, the added versatility is a major bonus. I also still adamently stand by having 1stp maindecked as an excellent source of backup. I'll have to do some extensive testing with Nezumi Shortfang, sounds good.

Current design:
//NAME: Deadguy Ale
1 Tainted Field
2 Polluted Delta
3 Bloodstained Mire
4 Wasteland
4 Scrubland
9 Swamp
1 Swords to Plowshares
2 Gerrard's Verdict
2 Engineered Plague
2 Cursed Scroll
3 Nantuko Shade
3 Dark Confidant
4 Sinkhole
4 Dark Ritual
4 Hypnotic Specter
4 Vindicate
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
SB: 1 Darkblast
SB: 1 Swords to Plowshares
SB: 1 Perish
SB: 2 Engineered Plague
SB: 2 Warmth
SB: 2 Seal of Cleansing
SB: 3 Pithing Needle
SB: 3 Withered Wretch

[Zilla]

Gro/Mono green decks are already heavily in our favor anyways.
This isn't accurate. Gro may be favorable, but certainly not heavily so. If it were heavily favorable, Deadguy would certainly have T8ed Lille. 2 Perish may be enough, but in a field with a strong Gro presence, I would absolutely run 3.

[Lego]

I would most certainly not call the Gro matchup heavily in your favor. It seems to be fairly even to me. If there is a heavy Gro presence (which seems like it will be the norm for now) then 3 Perish seems worlds better than 2. Keep in mind that Gro plays counters, and although you've got a lot of hand disruption, you still might need to cast 2 Perish to resolve one of them.

[James Bond]

I'm maybe 4-0 against Gro thus far, it's always seemed to be an easy match for me. Luck perhaps??

[Lego]

Probably not entirely luck. They're right that it's not a bad matchup, I just don't know that with the current testing I'd say it's heavily in favor of Pikula. It depends on a few factors, not the least of which being the skill of both players. It also depends on which build of Thresh you're playing against, as we said earlier. The Red version should have a much better game against you than the white (read: MUCH better game)

[Othersider]

Apologies for both reviving a thread on moratorium and for saying something (possibly) dumb, but has anyone considered the possibility of Nether Void in this deck? With all the disruption going on, it seems like a fairly good idea to me. Not 4, obviously, but maybe a couple. A well-timed one after several disruption spells and a critter on the board could really set your opponent back for a couple of crucial turns.

I think I'm going to try it.

[BLODORN]

Nether is anti control and this deck has a good matchup against it in the first place. And it costs 4.

[Othersider]

Nether is anti control and this deck has a good matchup against it in the first place. And it costs 4.
Hmm, that's true...but I'm going to try it anyway. Never know, it might actually work. :cool:

[Zelyon]

My main concern with Pikula Black was that...

a) the cursed scroll slots are really slow and weak.

b.) the engineered plague slots are very limited in what they help against.

c.) Both slots are also very mana intensive and ineffective finishers considering their mana requirement.

d.) And Pikula's deck has a hard time with fast aggro decks, especially nongoblin based ones.

I want to improve those problems, find better cards for these slots. And to improve the fast aggro matchups.

Here's are some of the other cards I'm consider trying for BW. I would love to hear your opinions on which of these cards have the most potential in BW.

Chalice of the Void

Perhaps replace 2 Duress with 2 Gerrard's Verdict, and you end up being able to Chalice for 1 consistently. That's a play that can wreak havoc on a lot of decks.

Swords to Plowshore

There's really no explanation needed. But it's also just a 1 for 1 trade.

Exalted Angel

Not disruption but many seem to think Pikula's deck would benefit from some fat/life gain. It also helps stabilize from fast weenie rushes.

Jitte

A much better finisher than Cursed Scroll. And a better way to deal with weenies. But you run too few creatures so this really can't be run.

Blight

BB, Enchant Land
When target land becomes tapped, destroy at end of the turn.

The only reason I bring these card up is because land destruction is perhaps Pikula black's biggest strength and the means through which it wins so often. Almost every deck is very vulnerable to them. But so many games in which I lose, it feels like if I could have had one more land destruction spell, I would have certainly won the game.

So lets discuss other disruptive cards that might fit these slots better and hopefully complement the land destruction strategy that in my experience, win most of the games anyway.

Now clearly, the card is no where near as powerful as sinkhole. It lets your opponent get one last use of the land, and it can be countered with a disenchant.

But it is a 2cc land destruction spell, one that can be powered out along with duress first turn with a dark ritual. And one that along with the Wastelands, Vindicates and Sinkholes, would allow you to utterly decimate opponents mana bases even more consistently.

Rain of Tears/Choking Sands (can't target swamp though and the mirror match is getting popular)/Befoul (higher cc but more versatile)

For the same reasons just mentioned. It's 3cc so it's slower, but it helps smooth out a curve that's mostly 2cc. Its comparable in speed to Blight since Blight lets them get one last use of their land as well.

Crucible of Worlds

Running a lone copy couldn't hurt. But it also useless against most monocolored decks.

Night's Whisper/Skeletal Scryin

With all the lifeloss from DC, this probably is just overkill.

Pithing Needle

This is going to be an obvious response. Assuming you know that your opponent is running fetchlands and which fetchlands your opponent is running four of, and assuming it hits play early enough, it's probably the best option. And it's very versatile in what else it can hit. But purely as a land destruction spell, it's very conditional. Of course, it's still by far probably the strongest choice because of it's versatility.

More Discard - ie. Gerrard's Verdict, Cabal Therapy

Sensei's Divining Top

This is not a disruption slot, but it improves card quality especially if used with fetchlands and can help you get that last critical land destruction spell that much faster. It also minimizes Dark Confidant damage.

[Zelyon]

Here's the deadguy list I'm thinking about to address these weaknesses as I think these slots are faster than Cursed Scroll.

18 Land
4 Wasteland

4 Dark Ritual
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Sinkhole
4 Vindicate
2 Gerrard's Verdict

4 Hypnotic Sceptar
4 Dark Confidant
3 Nantuko Shade
3 Spectral Lynx (Could be Phyrexian War Beast or Exalted Angel)
1 Jitte
1 Swords to Plowshore

Spectral Lynx seems like a solid inclusion. It eats up a lot less mana than Cursed Scroll, regenerates so it can chump block massive guys including tramplers (pro green), and pro green is actually very strong as most every creature in this meta with toughness greater than 2 is pro green anyways, and thus, this guy will very rarely be blocked. And the pro green also means you don't have to hurt tempo to regenerate him as often. Yes he can be taken out by swords, but I would rather swords take him out so that you can play your Shade or DC or Hippie without fear of swords. Can you guys explain to me why you never decided to run it or Exalted Angel?

Exalted Angel and Phyrexian War Beast are solid here too.

Nantuko Shade works well as a 3 of. You only want to see one per game, and later on in the game anyways. Early to mid game, Spectral Lynx is beter.

Jitte - Yes, I know 1 ofs are bad. But it works perfectly as a 1 of here. You run too few creatures to run more than 1. But as 1, it's way better than cursed scroll at dealing with threats. With 14 creatures, you would have to admit that Jitte is stronger than Cursed Scroll.

Swords to Plowshore - I've never regretted drawing it. But then again, the other cards are better so I wouldn't play more than one.

[Zilla]

Can you guys explain to me why you never decided to run it or Exalted Angel?
Because the manabase can't consistently produce BB and WW, and because Angel is outside the curve in general.

[Zelyon]

In my experinece, it can easily support 2 Exalted Angel on turn 3 with as few as 6 fetchlands.

The angel uses up the same curve as the 2 cursed scroll activations it replaces, and gains you 4 life in that time as well as dealing four damage.

and it gets much better from there.

also, you didn't even mention spectral lynx. it can regenerate which means it can neutralize most every legacy threat including green tramplers and kill most goblins and other annoying creatures. it's also unblockable by threshold. and it deals damage, and lets you play 1 jitte. and it eats up a heck of a lot less mana than cursed scroll.

i don't see how any of that is bad.

it seems that pikula should be running one of these creatures.

[Bane of the Living]

Umm lame question..?

Dont you still take trample damage since your suppose to divy enough combat to the creature that 'would' kill it? I cant believe I dont know this.. Just remembered the old days of Mother of Ruins vs Rancor.

[Zilla]

In my experinece, it can easily support 2 Exalted Angel on turn 3 with as few as 6 fetchlands.

The angel uses up the same curve as the 2 cursed scroll activations it replaces, and gains you 4 life in that time as well as dealing four damage.

Apparently you live in a world where Wasteland and Lightning Bolt never existed.

Also, kindly capitalize your posts. Proper grammar is a requirement on these boards.


Dont you still take trample damage since your suppose to divy enough combat to the creature that 'would' kill it?
Yes, green tramplers will still deal you combat damage. Protection from a color reduces all damage dealt to that creature from that color to 0, but it doesn't prevent the additional damage that would spill over to the player.

For example, if your Spectral Lynx blocks a Rancored Troll Ascetic, it would live and not need to be regenerated, but you would still take 4 damage (Troll's 5 minus 1 for Lynx's toughness).

[Voice]

Having the angel in play, attacking and gaining you life is nice and all, but revealing her with DC...

In my experience Jitte is very slow, maybe as slow as a scroll. I don't run those cards. If I run into a deck with pro-black creatures I side in StoPs.

Playing more creatures could open a slot for Cabal Therapy. If you know your meta, therapy is much better than duress. But playing with more than 14 creatures changes the deck considerably. Who would want to cut any of these cards: Duress, Sinkhole, Vindicate, Dark Ritual or Hymn to Tourach for creatures?

[Lego]

For example, if your Spectral Lynx blocks a Rancored Troll Ascetic, it would live and not need to be regenerated, but you would still take 4 damage (Troll's 5 minus 1 for Lynx's toughness).

This wasn't always the case though (I think... I didn't play back with the old rules) so that's why you may be confused. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

[Jolfer]

This wasn't always the case though (I think... I didn't play back with the old rules) so that's why you may be confused. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

I think it's always been the case. At least it was when urza's came out (tample over that mom-ma).

[Eldariel]

What's up with people not liking Cursed Scroll? It gives the deck reach, it's repeatable creature removal, it's a cheap threat against just about anything and it gives you something to do with all your mana when your Confidant gets blasted. 'Repeatable colorless damage without needing the attack phase' just sounds good to me. Perhaps it's just me and perhaps all the decks which've used the card in the past have actually sucked, but I think this deck is actually amazingly similar to Sligh, with everything from efficient creatures to land control present. Cursed Scroll allows you to win those long games where all creatures just die.

[Bryant Cook]

The thing is cursed scroll is dead against half of the format. I mean C'mon it does nothign against Gro, RGSA, 3 color aggro, and many others. A good slot to replace it would be withered wretch, because of all of the gro present in the current metagame.

[Zilla]

True dat. I've dropped Scrolls also. Call me a terrible player all you want. Calim I didn't read Pikula's premium article (which I did), I just hate the Scrolls. In my experience they've been too slow to matter against Goblins (and Zoo and other aggro), too weak to matter against Gro, and just generally ineffectual. Their mana investment every turn also has terrible synergy with Shades. My current build looks like so:

// Mana
7 Swamp
4 Scrubland
2 Tainted Field
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Wasteland
4 Dark Ritual

// Creatures
4 Dark Confidant
4 Nantuko Shade
4 Hypnotic Specter
4 Withered Wretch

// Disruption
3 Swords to Plowshares
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Sinkhole
4 Vindicate

// Sideboard
SB: 3 Pithing Needle
SB: 1 Swords to Plowshares
SB: 2 Darkblast
SB: 3 Perish
SB: 2 Dystopia
SB: 4 Engineered Plague

It's been treating me rather well. The maindecked Wretches provided added beat and utility against decks like Rifter, Survival, and Thresh. The sideboard is geared towards smashing Goblins and anything with Green in it, which are this deck's biggest problems.

[AnwarA101]

// Sideboard
SB: 3 Pithing Needle
SB: 1 Swords to Plowshares
SB: 2 Darkblast
SB: 3 Perish
SB: 2 Dystopia
SB: 4 Engineered Plague

It's been treating me rather well. The maindecked Wretches provided added beat and utility against decks like Rifter, Survival, and Thresh. The sideboard is geared towards smashing Goblins and anything with Green in it, which are this deck's biggest problems.

So do you have an auto-loss against Goblins game 1? It looks really bad considering you have very little removal and all of your threats are easily killed by goblins. I saw Chris Pikula play a few games at the GP and in game 1 against goblins he often used scroll and plague to win and sometimes both. Without either how can you even compete?

Just suprised to see you playing Dystopia in the sideboard. I would quote you but I doubt that is necessary. I remember a few pages back that you said that the lifeloss was a big reason for not running it . I guess you got tired of losing to Humility.

[Zilla]

So do you have an auto-loss against Goblins game 1? It looks really bad considering you have very little removal and all of your threats are easily killed by goblins. I saw Chris Pikula play a few games at the GP and in game 1 against goblins he often used scroll and plague to win and sometimes both. Without either how can you even compete?
I can't game 1. I simply wouldn't play this deck in a Goblins heavy meta. I can still beat it games 2 and 3 with the board, but for the most part I just don't care about beating it. I play this build when I see a lot of Thresh, Control, and Combo. If there's a lot of aggro I just leave it in the box.


Just suprised to see you playing Dystopia in the sideboard. I would quote you but I doubt that is necessary. I remember a few pages back that you said that the lifeloss was a big reason for not running it . I guess you got tired of losing to Humility.
I never said it was always incorrect to play it... just that it has often been too slow to get the job done for me in the past. Mainly, I was saying I wouldn't run Dystopia over Perish. As you can see, I'm running both. I have Vindicate for Humility, btw. :tongue:

[Eldariel]

Reading the coverage of Philly, it seemed like Pikula won multiple games simply with Scroll going to the head after board was empty (in which Scroll again helped through blasting creatures). Then again, I don't know anything, I'm just talking out of my experience with the said card.

[Bryant Cook]

Reading the coverage of Philly, it seemed like Pikula won multiple games simply with Scroll going to the head after board was empty (in which Scroll again helped through blasting creatures). Then again, I don't know anything, I'm just talking out of my experience with the said card.
You could win the game with a carrier pigeon in twenty turns with a board that's empty, whats your point?

[Eldariel]

The point is that Scroll is removal that becomes a threat once opponent is out of creatures. Scroll gives you additional threats while also giving you removal, something that the deck seems to desperately need, being very threat-light, and having many disruption-slots taken by LD.

[Tao]

You could win the game with a carrier pigeon in twenty turns with a board that's empty, whats your point?

If matches vs. Control Decks like Rift, Wombat or Landstill go for a long time, you will reach a point, at which they have more ways to deal with your creatures than you have Creatures and Discard. At this point Scroll shines because it is immune to Wrath, StoP, Shards, Rift etc. and can often finish the control player before he finds a way to deal with Scroll or is able to kill you.

[Bryant Cook]

The point is that Scroll is removal that becomes a threat once opponent is out of creatures. Scroll gives you additional threats while also giving you removal, something that the deck seems to desperately need, being very threat-light, and having many disruption-slots taken by LD.
This is new information to me 16 creatures is now threat-light? I disagree with that statement completely. With 16 creatures in the decka nd witht he disruption this deck has you should be able to make sure you can with without beign disrupted yourself. Using sinkholes and wastelands for the control match-ups to cut off white mana, discard spells to nail removal. You should never have to worry about not having creatures. Even trading men is good for you because it's card advantage. How does scroll shien against control Tao? you forgot to mention akroma's vengance or disk which blow up scroll. Not to mention some decks play MD needle or disenchant to deal with scroll.

[Eldariel]

Yes, 16 creatures is threat-light. It's enough because of your disruption, but you'll only need a bit less than average creatures to fold to removal and blockers. But yea, of course you don't need the scroll for anything, just the fact that you have a bear-powered non-creature damage source that also clears the board appears like it could be relevant. Even against Thres, it either takes out Mages, takes out Bears in conjuction with a blocker/attacker, and Galina's Knights, or it goes to the head when you want to kill.

[Bryant Cook]

Yes, 16 creatures is threat-light. It's enough because of your disruption, but you'll only need a bit less than average creatures to fold to removal and blockers. But yea, of course you don't need the scroll for anything, just the fact that you have a bear-powered non-creature damage source that also clears the board appears like it could be relevant. Even against Thres, it either takes out Mages, takes out Bears in conjuction with a blocker/attacker, and Galina's Knights, or it goes to the head when you want to kill.
I'm sorry, but 16 creatures is not creature light, that is more than needed in my opinion. Hate to say this but cursed scroll had it's time and that was in 2003 when sligh was a DTB. Not to mention MD pithing needle in 90% of white gro decks. So I doubt you'll be killing many mages or bears with a cursed scroll.

[AnwarA101]

I'm sorry, but 16 creatures is not creature light, that is more than needed in my opinion. Hate to say this but cursed scroll had it's time and that was in 2003 when sligh was a DTB. Not to mention MD pithing needle in 90% of white gro decks. So I doubt you'll be killing many mages or bears with a cursed scroll.

When you have creatures that are easily blocked and easily killed by almost any creature in this format that hardly makes them reliable threats. Confidant and Shade can be hit by Mogg Fanatic. Try playing this deck against Goblins without Cursed Scroll I'm sure you'll find that you don't have enough threats.

[MasterBlaster]

I'm sorry, but 16 creatures is not creature light, that is more than needed in my opinion. Hate to say this but cursed scroll had it's time and that was in 2003 when sligh was a DTB. Not to mention MD pithing needle in 90% of white gro decks. So I doubt you'll be killing many mages or bears with a cursed scroll.

I doubt Threshold would Pithing Needle a Cursed Scroll when Shades and Wastelands are ran in higher numbers. Also how else would this deck get rid of White Knights and Mother of Runes in the AngelStompy matchup game 1?(Not that anybody besides me plays AngelStompy.)

[Lego]

I'll Pithing Needle Scroll if I've got Swords in hand and all non-basics in play with a stable enough manabase. My second Needle will almost always name Scroll as long as I've got extra Swords. It's a good card, and I don't want to see it active (although I think that might say something about playing it.)

[Bryant Cook]

I'll Pithing Needle Scroll if I've got Swords in hand and all non-basics in play with a stable enough manabase. My second Needle will almost always name Scroll as long as I've got extra Swords. It's a good card, and I don't want to see it active (although I think that might say something about playing it.)
If your in that position with a ton of swords and needles, wouldn't withered wretch be better? Atleast it can beat if it has a needle on it, not to mention the fact it removes threshold with the swords on the stack.

[Tao]

Scroll is a great inclusion in the deck. It has strenghts that can improve some of the major weaknesses the deck has.

- Winning without creature damage: important vs. every control deck in the format. You can sneak wins, when they have 2 Wraths, 2 StoPs in hand and Humility in play.
- Creature Removal and Card Advantage vs. Weenies: Key Card vs. AS and Gobbos. Kills everything in these decks, except Exalted.

[Lego]

If your in that position with a ton of swords and needles, wouldn't withered wretch be better? Atleast it can beat if it has a needle on it, not to mention the fact it removes threshold with the swords on the stack.

These days, probably yes. Wretch is showing up in a lot of maindecks. It's probably a moot point though, I don't think Pithing Needle is any reason not to run the Scroll.

[Binary Star]

I'm surprised more players aren't running 3 Dark Confidants. There's been so many games where Bob has just kicked my ass, and I've wound up needing a stp to remove him just to stay alive. Imo 4 Bobs is purely suicidal. Also I find it surprising that in red mana intensive format people don't run cards like Warmth very often.

[Zelyon]

Has anyone tested Descendant of Kiyomaro in Cursed Scroll's slot.

Run Swords for removal. Between the card advantage discard, Spectar, and Confidant, you get a 3/5 for 3 mana that gives you 3 life each turn. Well out of burn range, a great blocker, and life gain to boot. Seems rock solid to me.

[Danger]

I have not tested the card, but it would seem a casting cost of 2 White would make it rather unappealling in a deck that only splashes white. What does everyone else think?

[Zilla]

I have not tested the card, but it would seem a casting cost of 2 White would make it rather unappealling in a deck that only splashes white. What does everyone else think?
I wholeheartedly agree.

[Adan]

True dat. I've dropped Scrolls also. Call me a terrible player all you want. Calim I didn't read Pikula's premium article (which I did), I just hate the Scrolls. In my experience they've been too slow to matter against Goblins (and Zoo and other aggro), too weak to matter against Gro, and just generally ineffectual. Their mana investment every turn also has terrible synergy with Shades. My current build looks like so:

// Mana
7 Swamp
4 Scrubland
2 Tainted Field
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Wasteland
4 Dark Ritual

// Creatures
4 Dark Confidant
4 Nantuko Shade
4 Hypnotic Specter
4 Withered Wretch

// Disruption
3 Swords to Plowshares
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Sinkhole
4 Vindicate

// Sideboard
SB: 3 Pithing Needle
SB: 1 Swords to Plowshares
SB: 2 Darkblast
SB: 3 Perish
SB: 2 Dystopia
SB: 4 Engineered Plague

It's been treating me rather well. The maindecked Wretches provided added beat and utility against decks like Rifter, Survival, and Thresh. The sideboard is geared towards smashing Goblins and anything with Green in it, which are this deck's biggest problems.

Hm,haven't benn here for some time,but this list is a good progress.

I've dropped the Scrolls for Sensei's Divining Top,because then you can play 2 Confidants without taking lots of damage.And without Confidants,it just improves your cardquality.

That Zilla has put Perish into his board was another good idea,because it's a Sweeper against NQG and R/G SA's Troll Ascetics.

I like Zillas decklist a lot,but i would play Sensei's Divining Top 2 oder 3 times if you got free slots,because holding back one or two Confidants to prevent huge lifeloss sucks.

[Zelyon]

Just how much would the deck suffer were it to run a couple more fetchlands. Fetchlands can grab basics just as easily. So you lose on average one extra life per game. Big deal. The life gain from Descendant of Kiyomaro (or it's cousin Exalted Angel) easily make up for this and then some.

There're too many games already where you get screwed out of a color because of the heavy number of basics run. The deck puts enough pressure on your opponents mana that often, even if they have a wasteland, they would think twice about sacing it. And once again, fetchlands can grab basics just as easily.

Honestly, I think the price is well worth being able to more consistently get the mana that you need and being able to sub out mana intensive weak cards like cursed scroll that are very slow and limited in dealing with threats and not synergic with stuff like shade anyways for a strong card like Descendant of Kiyomaro.

A list like this perhaps..

6 Swamp
4 Scrubland
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Polluted Delta
4 Wasteland
1 Tainted Field

Creatures:
4 Dark Confidant
4 Hypnotic Specter
3 Nantuko Shade
3 Descendant of Kiyomaro - Life gain, and an excellent attacker and blocker to boot.

Spells:
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Sinkhole
4 Dark Ritual
4 Vindicate
3 Gerrard's Verdict

[Adan]

Running more Fetchlands won't prevent the opponents to waste your scrublands and just remove the Descendant from the game with Swords.

And White is just a Splashcolor for this deck. And please,never SPLASH a card with has got the splashcolor 2 times or more in it's manacost,that's not good.

Ah,and btw. : this is still a kind of Suicide Deck,you want to play your disruption an fast as you can,so you won't have 7 cards or more in your hand very often...

edit: Like i said before,i would rather play StoP and Withered Wretch. Swords should be a main-reason to splash white and withered wretch is just good in the current meta.

[Zelyon]

Yes, but running less fetchlands won't prevent you from grabbing swamps, or prevent your opponent from wasting a scrubland either. If anything, it makes it more likely that you'll be able to recover and grab another scrubland thanks to the extra fetchlands you run.

Better they Swords the Descendant than the Confidant or the Hippie or something else. Swords is swords. If they have swords and you don't make them discard it, you will lose one of your creatures regardless. Running more creatures just makes recovering from Swords easier.

4x more Fetchlands and 2x Descendent (4 Shade/2 Descendent if you want) won't be the end of the deck. It's entirely feasable.

You don't need 7 cards for Descendent to be useful. you just need more cards than your opponent. Considering that the majority of decks are faster than this deck and empty their hand of cards by turn 2/3 anyways, and that those that don't get slaugtered by your Hippe, Hymn and Gerrard's Verdict, and considerign the synergy Descendent has with Confidant (along with Hippe and your other discard) on so many levels, it's a perfect natural fit in this deck.

[Zilla]

Look, there's some very simple math involved here. If you want to consistently reach one of your splash colorm by turn 2 you need at least 10 sources for it (including fetches). To reach 2 of a splash color consistently by turn 2, you need at least 16. That means you'd need to add 6 fetches, not 4, in order to consistently produce WW. This isn't taking into account a single well-placed Wasteland, which can effectively keep you off WW until quite late into the game. This also omits the issue that 10 fetchlands combined with 4 Confidants is going to significantly weaken your matchup against... well, everything, really. Descendant is nice and all, but is it really worth making a full color commitment to add 2 cards to the deck? (Note: the last question was rhetorical.) (Secondary Note: the rhetorical answer is no.)

[SillyMetalGAT]

Can I just ask why this deck is considered a DTB? I have only seen it place at one big tournament.

[Bane of the Living]

Because it beats Thresh and got over hyped. I think theres a forum made for bitching about that stuff though. So lets bitch there.

[Zilla]

Can I just ask why this deck is considered a DTB? I have only seen it place at one big tournament.
Here are the qualifications for a DTB. Deadguy Ale meets all three qualities for our consideration. (http://mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3202)

Don't agree with the qualifications? Click here (http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3202) or here (http://images.art.com/images/-/Dilbert---Just-Shut-Up--C10114871.jpeg)

Diplomacy added by PR.

[Drathro]

Sub-Optimal Deadguy Top-Eights at Kadilak's Dual Land Draft!

I played a Sub-Optimal (=partial budget) version of Godzilla's latest Deadguy list at Kadilak's Dual Land Draft, to a 4-0-2 record in the swiss, and a loss to Solidarity in the quarterfinals of the top 8. I'll try to write a mini-report later if I can figure out the appropriate thread, even though my note-taking is terrible. For now, I'll list the changes that weren't based on budget and availability concerns, and along the way mention a few issues I had with the deck:

-3 Bloodstained Mire
+3 Polluted Delta
Reason: The real reason is that almost all of the cards I played with belong to Lego_Army_Man, and he needed the Mires to loan out Goblins. However, ideally I would run two of each, to minimize interference from Pithing Needle, and because there are no maindeck Cursed Scrolls (card name redundancy requirements are lessened).

SB: -1 Pithing Needle
SB: -1 Sword to Plowshares
SB: +2 Cursed Scroll
Reason: Availability on the Needle, but I also wanted to fit the Cursed Scrolls that Zilla left out into my sideboard. They came in several times during the day, and really shone as a Dystopia enabler (ping that weenie, now you sacrifice that monster).

-1 Swamp
+1 Tomb of Urami
Ok, this is Issue Number One: In testing, even with an optimal list, I didn't like the slow pace at which this deck kills, because it gives the opponent the chance to get back in the game. Dark Confidant fixes that to some degree, but I added one Tomb of Urami to give the deck an added kick every once in a while. The damage never put me in danger, and it worked pretty nicely (or would have if I weren't such a scrub), even as a one-of:

- In my second-round draw, I should have won the game: The third game went to time, and I completely forgot that the Tomb could convert to a 5/5 flying killing machine.

- Later vs Solidarity, a first-turn Hyppie + an EOT third-turn Urami sealed the deal.

Issue Number Two: I had some mana problems with this build, specifically getting 2 Black - it could be matter of mulliganing more intelligently, but if that were true, I would have had a lot more mulligans - and that's not a good sign for a non-combo deck, I think. Maybe one less maindeck Wretch or Swords, in order to add one more Swamp?

Issue Number Three: The hardest match-ups I faced today were Solidarity and Solidarity. The first one my deck pulled it out for me, but the second time, Herbig's deck rolled over mine. Lego_Army_Man keeps telling me I had a good match-up, but I just can't see it - Solidarity forces me to mulligan aggressively at best. Before the tournament, I almost jammed Chalice of the Void into my sideboard for the Solidarity match-up and also considered rule Rule of Law, but, in the end, I gave up and hoped I wouldn't face it. So naturally, I faced it twice, including the only one in the top 8.

Summation:
Opinions on Tomb of Urami?
Extra land?
Solidarity strategy?

Thanks to Godzilla for the list, and Mad Props to Lego_Army_Man for the cards and the playtesting.

[dontbiteitholmes]

Can I just ask why this deck is considered a DTB? I have only seen it place at one big tournament.
1: Lots of people play it, so you have to figure that you will face it when building a deck (Pikula, Thresh, and Goblins are prolly the top 3 most played decks).
2: Everyone says it's not a good deck but it always has the chance to just win off the bat through discard + LD.
3: It top 8'd the Duel for Duals also which I would call a "Big Tournament" by legacy standards.
4: It has game against Goblins, Thresh, and Solidarity.

Could Pox be used in the side vs. Solidarity? I mean them losing 1/3 life/hand/lands seems like it would hurt, maybe it sucks just throwing it out there.

[AnwarA101]

Issue Number Three: The hardest match-ups I faced today were Solidarity and Solidarity. The first one my deck pulled it out for me, but the second time, Herbig's deck rolled over mine. Lego_Army_Man keeps telling me I had a good match-up, but I just can't see it - Solidarity forces me to mulligan aggressively at best. Before the tournament, I almost jammed Chalice of the Void into my sideboard for the Solidarity match-up and also considered rule Rule of Law, but, in the end, I gave up and hoped I wouldn't face it. So naturally, I faced it twice, including the only one in the top 8.

Summation:
Opinions on Tomb of Urami?
Extra land?
Solidarity strategy?

Thanks to Godzilla for the list, and Mad Props to Lego_Army_Man for the cards and the playtesting.


This deck should not have problems with Solidarity, but it does. The main reason is that you can't actually kill your opponent in a reasonable amount of time. This deck is pretty slow by its very nature. Its has no swift clock and that is the part that really scares Solidarity. If you give them time to recover and abuse Flash of Insight you will lose. Maybe you could board a creature that would speed up the clock (I know that Pikula boarded Phyrexian Negator, but he wasn't happy with it). Or you could play Sui?

[Caleb]

-1 Swamp
+1 [b]Tomb of Urami
Ok, this is Issue Number One: In testing, even with an optimal list, I didn't like the slow pace at which this deck kills, because it gives the opponent the chance to get back in the game. Dark Confidant fixes that to some degree, but I added one Tomb of Urami to give the deck an added kick every once in a while. The damage never put me in danger, and it worked pretty nicely (or would have if I weren't such a scrub), even as a one-of

Eldariel reached the same conclusion when he was helping me test my Cloud deck against Pikula for CaNGD. I agree with him and yourself, a tomb should be in the deck.

[Eldariel]

Yea, after losing for the billionth time due to the deck being unable to produce any more threats, I recall I wasn't quite as articulate. I rather strongly expressed that the deck has been meddling with other decks of the same gender, since it can't ever seem to spit out actual threats if opponent has any removal whatsoever.

But yea, I'd even go as far as to test 2 Tombs; the risk of drawing multiples might, or might not, be worth of the risk of actually having a decent clock more often. And of course, you can blow up Tomb #1 into a Demon to lay Tomb #2. I think that would do the deck's threatcount a world of good. Seeing that most of the losses I've gotten while playing the deck have been simply because opponent has matched my draws with removal (yes, even after Duresses, Verdicts and Hymns), I think the low threat count is the #1 hinderance for the deck.

The deck's low threatcount is largely a result of the large amount of space devoted to disruption, so I'd personally focus on finding cards like Tomb that act at some other cardslot in the deck (such as Tomb acts as a land), while still being a creature when need be (a strong argument for Cursed Scroll too; not only is it repeatable removal, but it also doubles as a threat, and even reach).

[Lego]

In the interest of threats that also act as disruption, I'm a huge fan of Mesmeric Fiend, and adding him might allow the inclusion of Cabal Therapy. I'm not sure if I'm taking the deck in the wrong direction, but it's worked for me in the past. Also, I've been tempted several times to take out the Nantuko Shades for some equipment like Sword of Fire and Ice so that you could play things like Mesmeric Fiend, and he and the Dark Confidants would become immediate threats. I haven't tested it though, so feel free to discount my ideas :)

[Caleb]

well Lego, fiend is better in decks with cabal therapy and SoFI, as you mentioned. Heck, why not use green, BoP is good with therapy/SoFI as well... drop in some troll ascetics for easy beats... add in some moxen for the turn one confidant/turn two troll, maybe a jitte or two...

And we have Macey Rock for 1.5. Not that that's bad, it actually performs pretty well. It's just a different deck... that's all.

[rsaunder]

I played a Sub-Optimal (=partial budget) version of Godzilla's latest Deadguy list at Kadilak's Dual Land Draft, to a 4-0-2 record in the swiss, and a loss to Solidarity in the quarterfinals of the top 8.

.....

Opinions on Tomb of Urami?
Extra land?
Solidarity strategy?

Thanks to Godzilla for the list, and Mad Props to Lego_Army_Man for the cards and the playtesting.
Were you the one playing the orders of the ebon hand, and knight of stromgald (sp?)? I honestly thought (after seeing duals and sinkholes in your deck) that they had been a meta choice to help with rifter and gro's STPs. I didn't agree with them, but I thought it was an interesting idea.

In any case, the Tomb is an interesting idea. It opens you up to a little more nonbasic hate, which, if people are smart, they will start running more of, and makes you put all of your metaphorical eggis in one basket. What am I talking about? If they deal with your 5/5, you have no recourse. All of your lands are destroyed, and this deck tends to have a relatively low hand size (thus dark confident is nuts), and you have to topdeck lands to get back into the game. Sure, you could only do this when your opponent has all of thier lands/hand destroyed, but seriously, that's rare at best. This deck just denies people the rosources they need to keep thier origional tempo.

I do think that this deck could use another threat or two, and a multi-purpous one like tomb would be nice. But, I must play devil's advocate and ask if it wouldn't be better to run another shade or something like that, instead of a vulnerable threat (echoint truth/wasteland...) that is also conditional.

Congrats on finishing in the money! I wish I had:cry:

[Eldariel]

Well, the thing is, you aren't technically playing it in your deck. That is, none of your cardcounts change, except you get an extra threat. If you can fit an extra Shade, you're losing something. When you add Tomb, you lose nothing. I agree, that an extra threat or two wouldn't hurt, but I would play Tomb regardless. Anyone with half the wit will be trying to manascrew you by going after your white sources anyways, nobody will bother with Tomb, except if you're already colour screwed, so I think the drawbacks are minimal, and you won't be using the Tomb for a creature, except if you're short on threats and would lose anyways, or if you need a faster clock to win, or if you know it's safe through your discard. I'd consider Tomb almost riskfree, and certainly a worthy addition. To make the deck consistent, I'd also try to add that 4th Shade, and probably a third Scroll somehow. I dunno, it's hard to cut anything when the disruption package hits so many things and takes so much room, weakening any part of it would weaken the strategy as a whole.

[Sims]

and you won't be using the Tomb for a creature, except if you're short on threats and would lose anyways, or if you need a faster clock to win, or if you know it's safe through your discard.


Then what's the point? You are adding, essentially, a Swamp that cannot be Fetched, can be Wasted, and pings you every time you tap it for mana for the off chance that you can throw away all of your lands for an easily removable token? This seems rather risky.

[Eldariel]

Then what's the point? You are adding, essentially, a Swamp that cannot be Fetched, can be Wasted, and pings you every time you tap it for mana for the off chance that you can throw away all of your lands for an easily removable token? This seems rather risky.

They've used up their removal when you turn it into a creature, you were going to lose the game anyways, or they have none and you need a faster clock (most combo). You've got plenty of Swamps to fetch, as I said, you don't mind it being wasted since that means they saved a Scrubland and the damage is likely to matter more rarely than the ability to turn it into a Demon-token. Those sitiuations will come up more often than the damage will matter.

[NANTUKO_SHADY]

I know this was already discussed, but I would like to raise the subject once more and perhaps go a little more in depth with the situation. I play Dead Guy Ale and it works very nicely for me. My only two matchups that I am truely concerned with are weenie and straight up burn... sadly, this deck absolutely gets on it's knees for burn, and weenie just runs the deck over. When those two decks combines (Boros Deck Wins), BW Dead Guy just gets ripped into pieces. They burn our pathetic little creatures and swing FTW with random 2 power creatures. You really need to deny them of red and get lucky picks of hyms to win this matchup without any tech against it. If it is just mono white weenie, then ebon hand works just fine, but when they splash red, problems start to surface. I am beginning to test 2 mainboard descendent of the kiyomaros in place of Gerard's verdict... yes I know, the card costs the dreaded double white, but if you think about it, it really isnt terrible for what you get with the card. If you get it's ability going, good luck boros. I will post with results to this testing, but I think it might be something to fight back at red/white agro burn decks. Any suggestions???

[Zilla]

Any suggestions???
Absolute Law? Hell, it even doubles as Goblins hate, protects your threats, and weakens theirs. It turns Burn into a straight up race, which isn't all that difficult if you're attacking their hand in the early game and they can't touch your threats.

[Caleb]

I like the idea of absolute law. You could just take out the sinkholes for them and be no lighter on threats.

Isn't Auriok Champion better than descendent of whatever? Champion can, hypothetically, hit play on turn two, and start gaining you life right off the bat. You also lose the possiblity of Helix+Bolt taking her out, which you have with the descendent.

That's just my guesswork though, I haven't tested either of them so I wouldn't know.


Then what's the point? You are adding, essentially, a Swamp that cannot be Fetched, can be Wasted, and pings you every time you tap it for mana for the off chance that you can throw away all of your lands for an easily removable token? This seems rather risky.

Easily removable mine arse. As a 5/5, lightning bolt doesn't touch it. Gobblins probably can't incinerate it and silly things like hardcasted Slice and Dice from Rifter won't even kill it.

Yes, STP hits it and Solidarity can cunning wish for a bounce spell, but Eldariel is right when he mentions that through discard-use their answers will deplete, in which case the uncounterable 5/5 flyer can finish things quite quickly. I mean, if you activate at their EoT, that's a 5/5 w/ haste. That gives them 4- turns to find an answer.

Besides all that, this deck needs what, 3 lands to operate? If you've got the mana to pay for tomb, you've probably got more where that came from, in which case you can just hold back a land.

If you use it correctly, Tomb will just randomly win you games, while losing you none that you wouldn't have lost anyway.

[NANTUKO_SHADY]

Oh my stars... I had never heard of absolute law up until then, ( ripping up descendants). Thank you godzilla for introducing me to this card. It is infintely times better than descendant, and it does double as goblin hate as well. and they only sell for a buck.. sweet!!:smile:

[Drathro]

I just entered a vaguely fact-oriented tournament report, including the correct list I played to a top 8 spot, here (http://mtgthesource.com/forums/showpost.php?p=67982&postcount=252) (single post view). If I don't answer a question here, then maybe I answered it there.


I think the low threat count is the #1 hinderance for the deck.Exactly! The creature count is one of two reasons why I audibled into Godzilla's list a few days before the event, despite having been playtesting Pikula Deadguy for several weeks. The other reason was the substitution of Swords for Scrolls in the main, as they are ready to deal with threats turn one. (Although I made room for the Scrolls in the side.)

However, even after a few day's testing of the Zilla Deadguy list, I still found the finishing strength lacking - thus the Tomb of Urami went in. Tomb of Urami definitely would have won me the game I drew, if I wasn't so stressed at going to time again and had actually playtested with it. It also gave me a fast clock when I had to finish my round five Solidarity opponent. I will definitely test the list with two in the main, in place of Swamps.


If they deal with your 5/5, you have no recourse. All of your lands are destroyed, and this deck tends to have a relatively low hand size (thus dark confident is nuts), and you have to topdeck lands to get back into the game.I hear you, but in practice things went a little differently. I found that Tomb of Urami has three modes:

* Good Mode: Especially if you get Dark Confidant to stay in play at all, you will usually end up with extra lands in your hand, eliminating the need to topdeck lands. Thus, you have the option to sacrifice your manabase for a big threat. Also, if they can't remove Confidant, how will they remove Urami?
* Pain Mode: You don't have extra lands. You need more mana. Tomb is essentially a non-basic pseudo-Swamp with pain attached. I discuss the costs of that pain in the next paragraph.
* Desperation Mode: You are going to lose if you don't get a threat out now. Who cares if you need to topdeck lands? Take the chance that they can kill your 5/5, because it's the only shot you've got.

At the Dual Land Draft, the damage from Tomb of Urami never actully made a difference, but, for example, I avoided tapping it to activate Wretch's ability at end of turn unless I absolutely had to. I suppose sometimes it will make a difference, but we'll have to see how often the Tomb pain kills us, as compared to how often Urami wins the game for us. For me that was no game losses to (at least) two games where it made (or would have made) for a huge win.

Regarding Absolute Law - Don't forget that it makes Rifter a lot less potent, too!

[pater]

Sorry I missed this thread for so long. So I'll just throw out some thoughts on what I've seen up to this point.

@ Jitte: Definitely keep it away from this deck. Could make a hippy pretty beasty but not worth it nonetheless.

@ Splashing red: Seems like a good idea but I just think white offers better control (StP / Absolute Law) and Vindicate can handle the removal role pretty well. It seems worth the extra mana over Lightning Bolt but the fact that it takes out anything makes it worth it to me, especially since you've got plenty of first and second turn disruptors to keep them from even dropping anything until you have the extra mana for it.

@ Gerrard's Verdict: I'm glad to find a deck that uses this awesome card. Sims already explained its leetness.

@ Withered Wretch: Seems handy enough to keep a spot, especially in a Gro/Tog/Reanimator-heavy meta.

@ Pithing Needle: I have to go with Disenchant. Can cast as instant, and doesn't sit around waiting to be destroyed. Disenchant just seems better here.

@ 4th Shade: Yes.

@ Weenies matchup: I would think the Scrolls and Blasts would help there, or even pumping a Shade as a blocker. I don't have any advice there, I'm confounded.

@ Burn Matchup: Sphere of Law seems like too much of a mana-stretch and CoP:Red kinda wastes away your mana quickly as well when you're trying to cast your own threats. But then again, turn 2 Dark Rit to Sphere of Law could save the day.

Overall, like the deck. When I get some spare cash I'll see if I can nab a build to toy around with.

[kimberley]

Well... i won a small tournament today with this list:

7 Swamp, 4 Scrubland, 8 Fetchlands, 4 Wasteland, 4 Rituals
4 Confidant, 4 Specter, 4 Wretch, 3 Shade
4 Duress, 4 Hymn, 4 Sinkhole, 4 Vindicate
2 Scrolls
SB: 4 Plague, 3 Darkblast, 3 StoP, 2 Needle, 3 Perish

Just for the record: I played 2-0 vs. VG, 2-0 vs. Zompy, 2-1 vs. subpar Burn, 0-2 vs. 4cNQG, 2-0 vs. 2Land.
I have tested various lists on MWS for some time and was often disappointed with my playskill, but on the tournament all of a sudden i was able to decide corectly about my turn 2 plays...

My thoughs about the choices are:
I am quite happy with my base. During tests i was very annoyed by the decks lack of consisitent BB on turn 2 on the one hand and its tendency for flooding on the other. So far playing more fetchlands was fine for me.
I do not like any pseudo-dual solution at all.
I enjoy the Scrolls very much and consider them very valuable. I see the contradiction with Shade as it was pointed out, but i would consider the Shades being guilty for that. I very much tend to go for only 2 Shades, cause i repeatedly expierience them as useless in situation where the decks fattie should become a control tool and the Shades failed to accomplish that.
I consider 4 Withered Wretch an auto-inclusion due to the meta shift post Philly (note that we have a slighly higher % of NQG and a slighter lower % of VG in Germany in addition).
Obviously my list is just horrible against Burn. I haven't decided about my SB choice for Burn yet (we did't expect Burn to be present at that event at all). I tend to go for Ministration... as a weak answer to any kind of red damage... and because i was familiar to using them in some other decks.
My testing results against NQGw are bad despite the inclusion of Perish. My results about NQGr are just pure horror. I have severe doubt that boarding Perish (+ some Plowshares etc.) is the final and most correct way to handle that MU.
In addition to not being successful, that plan just does not feel right imo... but i have no alternative to present yet (and i doubt Lynx is a satisfying one).

I know most of this is nothing new. But i wanted at least show that i am in for that stuff now...
...updates (with more relevant ideas (at least i hope so)) will follow.
I hope i did not bore you.

[Eldariel]

In my testing, Cursed Scroll has been the all-star in attrition wars, since opponents simply can't often take care of it. I'd definately go to 3, even at the cost of something like a Sinkhole, since Scroll is that one card which really allows winning against Gobbos pre-board. Have you considered the Tombs, btw? Do you recall a sitiuation from the tourney, where having a Tomb instead of a Swamp would've won you the game? On another note, Tomb is again a fine card against Gobbos, as they often have serious trouble in dealing with creatures larger than their deck.

Btw, that's a lot of creature hate on the SB in 4 Plagues, 3 StPs AND 3 Perishes. Since the deck already goes after the graveyard pretty strongly with Wretches, how about something like Leyline of the Void, Planar Void or such against Gro? When their deck suddenly constitutes of 1/1s, it's much less scary and with some SB-cards, you'd have 7 cards to make that happen post-SB. Another option would of course be to go after their landbase. They aren't casting that Mystic Enforcer if they control at most 1 land throughout the game. Then again, these appear to be the wrong colours for good non-basic hate...

[dpoc]

Hello everybody. Even though I just joined The Source, I have been watching over a few particuler threads for awhile, this one specifically. I've looked at your arguments for and against certain cards, and based on your opinions, along with my own general expirences from playtesting, i have devised this list:

// Lands
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Wasteland
4 Scrubland
9 Swamp
1 Tainted Field

// Creatures
4 Dark Confidant
3 Nantuko Shade
4 Hypnotic Specter

// Spells
2 Engineered Plague
4 Duress
4 Vindicate
4 Hymn to Tourach
2 Cursed Scroll
4 Sinkhole
4 Dark Ritual
3 Swords to Plowshares

// Sideboard
SB: 4 Withered Wretch
SB: 2 Engineered Plague
SB: 3 Darkblast
SB: 3 Perish
SB: 3 Seal of Cleansing

My sideboard is still sketchy, and I don't have access to needles for it. But the MD seems quite solid. I really like the STP's as they are always good to have against goblins, can be relevant in the Threshold matchups, and they are nice agianst those other random aggro decks like Angel Stompy and Green Stompy. Like Godzilla said, I haven't noticed that much of a difference after switching to 22 lands; the deck still runs about as good as normal, and it allows me to use 3 StP's, which is invaluable.

The reason I choose to run STP over Verdict is because, first of all, teh deck already has 12 MD disruption spells, all of which can be played within turns 1-2. Secondly, people are talking about how they Gerrards Verdict themselves to gain life. That might be nice, but I think it's not worth the -3 card advantage to gain 6 life. STP gets rid of prominent threats in play, such as a goblin, quirion dryad, or even stuff in the mirror. However, if you are really in a position where you ened life, you can STP your own bob, get rid of him and gain 2 life to boot.

But I am currently testing STP at the moment. I'm not 100% sure that I want to keep it MD.

[Eldariel]

Verdicting yourself against burn is worth it. You lose 2 lands you wouldn't have needed anyways, and the Verdict to retroactively undo their last 2 spells. Very strong especially if they're topdecking. That's not the main purpose of the card, but there are sitiuations where that becomes useful too, so it's good to keep in mind.

Also, as Goblins seem to be in decline, maindeck Plagues are almost universally removed. You don't necessarily need a Plague to win game 1 against Goblins anyways and it isn't very strong against anything else. On the other hand, maindeck Withered Wretch is almost universally played and as a 4-of no less. Threshold is The deck to beat presently, and even against decks that don't care about graveyard, it's still a solid 2/2 bear for 2, something the deck lacks. Even Pikula mentioned in his tournament report that he often sided in Withered Wretches just to increase his threat count.

Also, one card that I'd at least consider worth including is Tomb of Urami. I'd suggest 2 more fetches and removing Tainted Field for more consistent white mana, if you add it (since Tainted Field can't produce coloured mana with Tomb in play). Tomb of Urami is very potent in giving you a fast clock, some way to use your excess lands and an additional threat if you play against a removal-heavy opponent and are topdecking crap. Also, a third Scroll is definately worth considering as it's immune to creature removal and a damn good way to bring opponent to 0 while also being a gamewinner against Goblins and the like.


Btw, the biggest thing going on for StP in this deck is, it kills Mystic Enforcer, an otherwise-lethal Gro creature (well, I guess you could remove their grave and double-scroll/Plague-scroll it, but yea...). But yea, if you want MD StP, I'd suggest upping the fetch-count as you'll need that white mana early every game you draw it. Of course StP also does a host of other relevant functions, killing Lackeys, Warchiefs, removing Eternal Dragons for good, etc.

[Phantom]

Is there any place for the new Dissension tutor in this deck, or is it too slow and restrictive?

[Atwa]

I feel it is way too restrictive. Esspecially with Confidant, you will not have a empty hand too often. I think the only way to make good use of the new tutor is in either a superfast black (splashing) aggro deck, or in combination with with LED.

In almost every other situation, you'd rather have an other buisinesscard.

PS: On the other hand, I once trade away all my Onslaught fetch because I felt the Mirage onces were a lot better, so don't pay too much attention to my opinions :)

[Eldariel]

I feel it might have some benefits. Finding a second Confidant or Vindicate or Engineered Plague could be pretty hot. The ability to find a copy of a card in your hand isn't entirely worthless after all. 2 Plagues are better than 1.

[Bane of the Living]

I am 100% for the addition of a tutor in this deck.

I would love nothing more for you to diddle with yourself for a turn rather than blow up a land, rip cards out of my hand, or drop a scary win condition.

[Atwa]

That's true, but I dislike the fact you can't search for a Vindicate or Plague when you need one (and don't have on in your hand). I think I'd rather play something like Rhystic tutor than I'd play the new one. Esspecially in Deadguy's Ale where your opponent doesn't get too much last most of the time.

I think the best thing is to play just a lot of answers and threats, instead of a conditional tutor.

[Tao]

Stop the Sarcasm. That just creates confusion : )

Tutors are bad in this deck, really bad. And the 2-Mana slot is...umm...full.

[Phantom]

It is a little slow, and a bit conditional, but I can see some uses in my head:

1) It is restrictive, but is emptying your hand that difficult? I know it has mediocre synergy with Confidant, but do you have trouble winning games where a Confidant sticks?

2)Turn 1: Duress
Turn 2: Ritual, Hymn, Tutor
Turn 3: Hymn

3)Is fetching a second Vindicate ever a bad thing?

4)Can go get 1 of win conditions like Tomb of Urami.

I'm not completely sold on it being in the deck, but I think it deserves some testing.

[Tao]

2)Turn 1: Duress
Turn 2: Ritual, Hymn, Tutor
Turn 3: Hymn

3)Is fetching a second Vindicate ever a bad thing?

2) Yes. With Ritual plus Hymn plus Random-spell plus lands every hand is good. Nevertheless would Hymn/Sinkhole Hymn/Confidant be much better.

3) Yes. It is bad. If you pay 2BBW to destroy target permanent it is not the same as paying 1BW.

I can see many potential in the card, too. But not in this deck. Deadguys gameplan is really dependend on how it spends the first 2-3 turns and can't afford to play slow cards that won't affect your opponents play immediately. Furthermore the deck is "full", so there is no room for a tutor + 1-off engine.

[Zilla]

I can see many potential in the card, too. But not in this deck.
I don't know if I agree. Often times the deck is at its best when it is able to focus a great deal of one disruption type in the early game, as opposed to one or two pieces of several. For example, a turn 2 Sinkhole followed by a turn 3 Hymn is very strong, but is often not as powerful as a Sinkhole followed by yet another Sinkhole.

Often times, the ability to focus on either land or hand hate specifically will add consistency to the deck's gameplan, which is in fact exactly what it needs. Consider how often you think to yourself "if I just had one more Sinkhole or Wasteland, he'd be totally screwed", or the same of Hymn or Duress or Vindicate. Tutor can provide this kind of consistency, although there's an obvious tempo loss. On the plus side, it also lets you tutor up one of your two Scrolls when your hand is empty, which seems like a bonus.

I'm not certain it will be a good addition, but I definitely think it should be tested before being dismissed outright.

[Eldariel]

Tutoring up a Wasteland allows for use on the very same turn. Turn 2 Sinkhole followed by turn 3 Infernal-Wasteland and turn 4 Wasteland on Threshold for example seems pretty brutal. A deck running 17 lands doesn't like losing 3 of them. I say it's worth testing, because who hasn't hoped to draw that second Engineered Plague against Goblins?

[Finn]

Of course, this means that you are using turn 2 for something other than disruption. Turns 1 and 2 are this deck's bread and butter. Good luck with that card, you're going to need it.

[Lego]

Often times, the ability to focus on either land or hand hate specifically will add consistency to the deck's gameplan, which is in fact exactly what it needs. Consider how often you think to yourself "if I just had one more Sinkhole or Wasteland, he'd be totally screwed", or the same of Hymn or Duress or Vindicate. Tutor can provide this kind of consistency, although there's an obvious tempo loss. On the plus side, it also lets you tutor up one of your two Scrolls when your hand is empty, which seems like a bonus.

This, to me, suggests Pox. After you've cast a Sinkhole or a Hymn, Pox can finish your job for you. The nice thing about it is that it finishes either job for you. I know it's taking the deck in a completely different direction, but is it necessarily a bad one? (I'm almost certainly completely off base in suggesting Pox in any deck, I'm just looking for people to think about it)

[Obfuscate Freely]

Well, your analysis of Pox's function is pretty accurate. The card's strength lies in its ability to simultaneously attack almost every one of your opponent's resources. The chances for Pox to put pressure on the scarce resource is very high.

Of course, Pox has its problems, too. The fact that it is symmetrical hurts, as does the fact that it is a 3 mana sorcery. Infernal Tutor shares some of Pox's strength, but is also an expensive sorcery (factoring in whatever you fetch with it), and will generally generate a much less powerful effect for the cost (1BBB to destroy a land is objectively very weak). Tutor is also conditional.

Pox can't be run in Deadguy because of its interaction with creatures, so Tutor certainly gets the edge in this application. I guess it's worth testing, but I'm skeptical.

[dsg123456789]

You could run merely two Tutors, perhaps cutting a Scroll for one, so that you would get a reasonable amount of Hellbent use out of them. Then, when the Scroll would be useful, you could use the 3 mana (or perhaps 4) to grab whatever piece of disruption would seal the game.

[Bane of the Living]

I played Pox for awhile. Let me tell you, boy is that spell worth it. Anyone here that plays Deadguy avidly but hasnt picked up that deck probably should. I really dont see the strengths Deadguy has in comparision.

[Lego]

ObFreely: I wasn't suggesting that we put Pox in Deadguy as is so much as I was suggesting that we take all the creatures out, and then put Pox in. That necessitates some Nether Spirits and maybe a couple Crucibles, possibly some Mishra's Factories or Chimeric Idols, but otherwise you've got essentially the same decklist.

[Phantom]

I was at work today, and I was wondering how hard it would be on the mana-base to dplash green for Pernicious deed. I've played the deck, and I feel it's lacking a sweeper like this. I think it would vastly improve the Goblins matchup, and turn the Thresh matchup from bad to worse (for them). Also, it's a pretty sweet card versus Rifter.

I know the mana-base would have to be overhauled, and I was thinking something like this:

4 Swamp
3 Scrubland
3 Bayou
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Polluted Delta
4 Wasteland

This is just an example, I figured more sac-lands was better than more duals so it gives the player more choices, but with needles out there, I don't know if that's true.

I guess I would run the the deeds in the Verdict/Plague/StP slot (depending on the build) but def keep some StPs around (at least 2). Green offers some other interesting board options, but that's putting the cart before the horse.

1) Is this possible?

AND

2) Is this worth it?

[Zilla]

ObFreely: I wasn't suggesting that we put Pox in Deadguy as is so much as I was suggesting that we take all the creatures out, and then put Pox in. That necessitates some Nether Spirits and maybe a couple Crucibles, possibly some Mishra's Factories or Chimeric Idols, but otherwise you've got essentially the same decklist.
You'd have a list very similar to my B/w Pox list from over a year ago. It's quite decent, but not particularly superior to Deadguy in its current form. Dark Confidant alone goes a long way in making the archetype viable.

[NANTUKO_SHADY]

@ Phantom: Phantom, very intersting strategy you got working there. I do like pernicious deed, but I'm not fully sold on the idea of making your mana base weaker than it is by splashing a third color. There are also way too many non-basic lands. Your mana base consists of only 4 basics, and although you do have the fetch utility with 8 fetchlands, I believe that a decent player with a pithing needle can really wreck your day. I think that the cons outweigh the pros in this one.. but of course.. I could be wrong. I would suggest consulting Zach Fine. He knows much more about magic than I do.

[Drathro]

In light of my experience at K'sDLD, I tested the B/W Confidant vs Solidarity match-up. In this latest round of testing, Confidant trounced Solidarity, game after game. This is in stark contrast to the tournament, where the two most difficult match-ups I played the entire day were Solidarity. This could be explained in part:

- My opponents at the tournament were obviously very good Solidarity players, given that I faced one of them Round Five at Table Two, and the other I faced in the top eight. It is just possible that they were a wee bit better with the deck than my opposing playtester. (I was also handicapped in the top eight in that my opponent knew what I was playing, but I didn't know what he was playing. Buh-bye Game One.)

- I also had limited experience against, and no experience with, Solidarity, so I didn't realize that Solidarity has exactly four threat cards total against B/W: 4x High Tide. Without understanding the match-up, I certainly didn't plan accordingly.

The latest testing results also contradict my pre-tournament testing, where Solidarity successfully went off with such regularity against Confidant that I basically decided to call the match-up a total loss and concentrate on boarding and tweaking for other more commonly played decks.

I guess I feel that, while Confidant does have game against Solidarity, the match-up is very dependent on the opening hand (or mulligan) of both decks, and therefore a little too random for my liking. I'd like to see that randomness reduced by boarding some Unmask (http://gatherer.wizards.com/gathererlookup.asp?name=Unmask)s in place of some of the abundant creature kill in the sideboard. Obviously, the idea is to increase the likelihood of picking out that opening hand High Tide, or whatever nasty threat/answer your opponent might have. In addition, Unmask is rarely a dead card against any deck.

Another possibile answer would be Chalice of the Void (http://gatherer.wizards.com/gathererlookup.asp?name=Chalice_of_the_Void) set to one. Yes, it would stop Duress and Dark Ritual, but, generally speaking, they only seem to make a difference on turn one of this match-up. It would also stop a large part of the Solidarity player's deck, including the key card. I like this answer, because he can't just draw into another win condition, he has to dig as best he can to wish for bounce, while I race him with creatures. Chalice also hates on several other top decks.

[SCRUB ALERT]
The other fun thought I had was to board Nightcreep (http://gatherer.wizards.com/gathererlookup.asp?name=Nightcreep)s. Play it in response to the first High Tide, and hope that he wastes enough resources countering it to force a combo-fizzle. One drawback to this idea is that Nightcreep is only marginally useful against most other decks. Another drawback is that Confidant generally doesn't like to keep mana open, so waiting for that High Tide doesn't necessarily mesh with the game plan. On the plus side, how much fun would it be to thwart your opponent by turning his Islands into Swamps!
[/SCRUB ALERT]

[AnwarA101]

@Drathro: If a deck running main deck Duress, Hymn, Sinkhole, Vindicate, and Hypnotic Specter can't beat Solidarity I think that says something about the deck. All of these cards are amazing against Solidarity. The real problem the deck has with Solidarity is that it just doesn't kill it fast enough. So the disruption can wear off and you might top deck a couple of lands and then they go off.

I did some post-board testing with Ewokslayer with him playing Solidarity and me playing Deadguy Ale and I think it was like 10-5 me. I'm not sure exactly what his board was but the matchup wasn't even close. Perhaps Ewokslayer can post what he boarded (I was playing his version of Deadguy Ale).

If you really want to crush Solidarity play Chains of Mephistopheles - it has great synergy with Confidant.

[Drathro]

I did some post-board testing with Ewokslayer with him playing Solidarity and me playing Deadguy Ale and I think it was like 10-5 me. That's good to hear. Like I said, my most recent testing has been very positive in Confidant's favor. If nobody else is having issues with Solidarity, I'll just chalk up my earlier difficulties to inexperience and a little bad luck.

Still, if I wanted to play this in a meta with a fair amount of combo, I'd probably board the extra discard of Unmask instead of Perish (but I could only get away with that because I also board Dystopia (http://gatherer.wizards.com/gathererlookup.asp?name=Dystopia)).


The real problem the deck has with Solidarity is that it just doesn't kill it fast enough.I hear that! That's why Chalice was another suggestion - it slows the other deck down, to give you a chance to kill him before he combos out. Alternatively, I like 2 maindecked Tomb of Urami (http://gatherer.wizards.com/gathererlookup.asp?name=Tomb_of_Urami) for a slightly faster kill, but I'm not trying to re-open that can of worms.

[Lego]

Alternatively, I like 2 maindecked Tomb of Urami (http://gatherer.wizards.com/gathererlookup.asp?name=Tomb_of_Urami) for a slightly faster kill, but I'm not trying to re-open that can of worms.

While I'm in favor of a Tomb of Urami main, I'd hesitate to put two in. An opening hand of two swamps, or a swamp and a Tomb is a keeper. Two Tombs is not :wink: I feel like the occasional benefit they give is not worth the added chance of mulligans, or late-game drawing an absolutely dead card. I'd play one though.

[Phantom]

While I'm in favor of a Tomb of Urami main, I'd hesitate to put two in. An opening hand of two swamps, or a swamp and a Tomb is a keeper. Two Tombs is not :wink: I feel like the occasional benefit they give is not worth the added chance of mulligans, or late-game drawing an absolutely dead card. I'd play one though.

I completely agree here. It's not a card you miss or expect to have, but it's certainly nice at times. Fact is, this deck draws a bunch of cards, and you never want to get 2 Tombs in the same game.

[BoardinCharlie]

I have just started playing this deck in legacy and found its results very powerful against grow and goblins along with any other DTB in the format. I have found a very fast upspring of Angel Stax builds now though since its powerful matchup against grow. How do you think this deck would have to change *if at all* to match up against Stax. I see the deck already runs alot of disruption so its a close match up I have found... but a turn one Trini hurts you A LOT, not to mention supression field/Ghost Prison slows down your tempo quite a bit as well.

My sideboard options have been as follows:

Serenity: good top deck late game to reset the board in your favor they
lack card draw.
Kataki: Decent but not too hot cause its not cumulative *legendary*
Seal of Cleansing: Not too hot since it just hits one, but can be pre-emptive
Disenchant: Again not as hot cause its 1 for 1

So Serenity has proven to be the best I think, just because it wipes the board for 1W. Kataki is second, but again seing multiples suck....and only 2 makes it hard to draw.

What do you guys think?

[Morim_Brightsmoke]

Another anti-artifact card you might consider for angel stack could be Dust to Dust it is WW casting cost, but 2 for ones are pretty good and removing from the game is useful against other artifact startegies (read Goblin Welder).

[BoardinCharlie]

I just had a full day of play testing the other day. I tested against Gro, Goblins, and Angel Stax.

The build I decided to run after testing:
4x Duress
4x Hymn to Tourach
4x Sinkhole
4x Vindicate
4x Dark Ritual
4x Nantuko Shade
4x Withered Wretch
4x Hypnotic Specter
4x Dark Confidant
3x Swords to Plowshares
4x Wasteland
4x Bloodstained Mire
4x Scrubland
2x Tainted field
7x Swamp

Sb:4x Engineered Plague
3x Serenity/Disenchant
2x Dark Blast
3x Perish
3x Pithing Needle

Results:
Goblilns- I played around with cursed scroll in the main board first and it just didn't do enough. It was a threat that wasn't really that scary. It made me tie up my mana when it was active and when it wasn't made me save wastelands to use it. Its an early game threat that prevents you from playing your other ones. Very anti synergistic with Shade you find yourself always compromising dmg to be able to save your shade against vialed fanatics or gempalms. Swords is definately better in this match game 1. Besides that game one isn't too hot in your favor unless you pull some really nice ritual tricks in the first few turns to cripple them. As long as they get the vial going or lackey first turn its very tough. Game two and three were EASY... just had to remember they can still win with a plauge on board and a blast in hand.

Gro- Cursed scrolls yet again failed me in this match up. Swords were the key to this game. Every card you play is a threat and with them only have 4 spot removal spells *swords* your creatures stick around longer than they should since they have to conserve them. Having both Swords and Vindicate make mainboard mages no problem *and in turn mystic enforcers*. Game two they brought in Disrupts and winter orbs I think. Winter orbs are a hinderence cause they can plan out their mental notes and deck stackers to hit thresh for one turn and smash or screw over your shades. Still found you have great game against them with mainboard wretches.

Angel Stax- Lets just say I hate Chalice set at 2!!! Turn one trinispheres are a raping, ghost prison is tough, supression makes shade blow (and scrolls before I got rid of them). Unless I got a mutiple hand disruption effects I was as good as dead. Game two serenity was SOOOO good to me they sided in Kharmic Justice against me and I think Hanas custody thinking i had disenchants or seals. topdecking serenity is amazing late game since they have no card advantage outlets besides crucible. Just don't get baited into wraths. Swords keep the angels away...after boarding its definately a better match up. Save vindicates for pesky enchantments..IE Light of Day, Workship, etc!!

-Edit- Thanks to Godzilla for deck critiques just realized after tuning my build I ended up with your same main board.

[Wynk]

If you're really worried about stax, how about devout witness? Its in your colors and the only real card they have for it is suppression field and WOG. If you can keep it on the table early their deck is dead, especially with your discard.

[BoardinCharlie]

I would rather have something that fits into the curve a bit better, but this seems to give another outlet for your dead spells and land. To be honest though will a player have cards they want to pitch to just get spot removal on artifacts?

[Eldariel]

Serenity tends to stick it to Stax, so if you want pure Stax-hate (happens to annihilate Raffinity too), it's your card.

[Wynk]

you guys are probably right. Serenity is a great card and is probably a better choice, but I was just trying to find a permanent answer to stax's permanents that can also attack for 2 damage a turn as well. Kataki's another choice, but it's not pinpoint artifact destruction and a stax player will just pay the 1 mana to keep their most important artifact.

[BoardinCharlie]

Yeah I liked Kataki for a while. The only reason I decided not to put it in the final build is its not cumulative, meaning if you get stuck with more than one in hand and draw another you can't cast the other. Thing about Serenity is it clears stax's board...or will next turn *unless they disenchant some how*.

[Jander78]

Please follow these rules (http://mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=624) when posting in the LMF. Posts containing "one-liners", poor spelling, and/or bad grammar will be deleted/edited.

[BoardinCharlie]

Played in a 1.5 tourney this past weekend, here is my report:

Decklist-
4x Nantuko Shade
4x Hypnotic Specter
4x Withered Wretch
4x Dark Confidant

4x Duress
4x Hymn to Tourach
4x Sinkhole
4x Vindicate
3x Swords to Plowshares

4x Bloodstained Mire
4x Wasteland
4x Scrubland
1x Tainted field
8x Swamp

SB:
4x Engineered Plauge
3x Perish
3x Pithing Needle
2x Disenchant
2x Cabal Therapy
1x Swords to Plowshares

Round 1 vs. Rock Variant
Game 1-
Start off with a ritual, duress hitting a deed, confidant...he throws out a birds. I continue to hit his mana knowing his hand has 3/4 drops...then lay down the hippie and beat him down.

Game 2- sided out duresses, added needles (should've brought in perishes)
He starts off with a duress hitting my duress. I ritual out a hippie. He casts wall of blossoms. I hymn him hitting a balloth and a land. He plays a therapy naming vindicate with me revealing 2x shades and a vindicate. sacs the wall there go my shades. I keep top decking discard...then he keeps getting mana and Yavimaya Elders....therapies, genesis...sac genesis.. I have no hand he has genesis with balloths, witnesses, trolls, I get dominated.

Game3 - sided out swords for perishes
Duress a living wish, he birds, I hymn hitting balloth troll *wahoo*. Plays a deed. I play a hippie, hoping he deeds next turn. He does, then I cast a confidant...he goes into top deck mode... I hit 2 perishes to keep the trolls at bay...GG

Round 2 vs. Springtide (1-0)
Game 1-
Not knowing what I'm up against, keep an awful hand of Swamp, Waste, Shade, Hippie, Hymn, Swords....I top deck a waste, then a hippie, then, a shade..He combos out turn 5 or 6.

Game 2 - -2 STP, +2 Therapy
Turn one ritual duress, hymn...turn two confidant. Next turns throwing out one or business spells, he can't recover.

Game 3 - No board
Turn one duress away high tide, turn two hymn, turn three hippie, therapy hitting multiple ideas unbound. He scoops.

Round 3 vs. Rifter (2-0)
Game 1-
Turn one duress away slice n dice, turn two hymn hitting, turn three ritual vindicate, sinkhole. He get stuck on no red, and keeps top decking 4+ casting spells.

Game 2- -3 STP, +2 Disenchant, +1 Therapy
Turn one Ritual hippie, gets swords. Confidant turn two, ritual hymn, vindicate turn three. Keep hitting land disruption with Confidant, keep him at 3 mana with no red. Hippie comes down, GG.

Round 4 vs. Mirror (using scrolls over, Wretches and more land)
Game one
I'm first, I play ritual hippie, he plays double ritual shade, hippie...not sure if thats the right play. We trade hippies, I swords his shade. Play my shade hope he uses removal on it...he vindicates, then I play bob...it stays in play for a few turns, I win.

Game 2- Had brain fart..sided out Wretches for needles, extra STP *mistake*
We go back and fourth first 3 turns...nothing big, get into near topdeck mode...he hits a scroll, I never find a needle... I die.

Game 3- side out sinkholes for the wretches
I get turn one ritual duress confidant *he has no removal in hand*..it sits for 2 turns, diruption plus creature every turn thereafter...he topdecks discard and 3cc spells while at 2 land. I easily blow over game 3.

Final result 4-0 get first

I have no problems with the mainboard decklist as is, the sideboard though...therapy was stronger than I thought...just cause of the fact it hides in grave. Not sure if I like it more than Verdict, but I seem to be having problems staying on white against the mirror/other aggro decks. Disenchants are not that hot. As for the rest of the board...very happy with it. With the mainboard swords I have found that many of your bad aggro matchups aren't too bad, and grow is that much easier to beat. I need to find a beater that can be tossed in for wretches when its a dead card, I'm thinking Black Knight, but not to sure on it. It seems to smash the mirror *can't be swords or vindicated, and first strike owns*.

[Vardaman]

HA! 'sup Boardin Charlie?

To be fair, game one of round 4 I had nothing better than Hyppie/Shade. I didn't have Hymn or Bob. I could have paris'd but it didn't seem bad enough to ditch. I should have held the Vindicate longer since Bob wins mirrors.

It probably didn't help that I was playing an older version of the deck. :p

[Kadath128]

I should have held the Vindicate longer since Bob wins mirrors.

Shade wins mirrors just as well, and usually faster. Especially if its going to be swinging for 5+ damage. Its the only fast clock in the deck and I would personally have no problem removing it unless I knew something better was immediately on its way.

[BoardinCharlie]

Shade isn't as hot as you think...most people will side in the needles to stop shade pumps. Yeah its nice, but in the early game they have to focus all their time disrupting you to make it an even playing field.

@ Vardaman: I think you did all you could with what you were given, that game one I kind of drew the threats I needed, the only thing that gave me an oomph is knowing your deck has a slightly higher curve then mine, so keeping you at 2 mana is pretty nice. This will show you now that the version with Wretches is just better I feel.

[f|i[p]]

I was wondering how would homebrew do against this kind of meta.


1st Counter Sliver
2nd Solidarity
3rd Landstill Control
4th Solidarity
5th Sligh
6th Iggy -pop
7th Sui Black
8th Sui Black

[BoardinCharlie]

With my experience with the deck now I think you would be fine going into a metagame like that. You have multiple good matchups i my opinion including landstill, iggy-pop, solidarity, and counter sliver.

Some might say that sui-black is a bad matchup for you because they have bigger creatures, but with swords/vindicate I think that you have a better game against them than most. Everything else you match them on and possibly side into needles for their cursed scrolls if they run them.

The Sligh match up is definately a harder one. I have recently noticed an increase of burn/mono red in my metagame so instead of the disenchants I have added 3 warmth in the board. I'm up in the air to see whats better, warmth or COP...it just seems that COP makes you save mana which is hard when you are trying to put as much pressure on them as possible with disruption and saving shades.

[Morim_Brightsmoke]

Do you think the B/r variant that posted well both days at SCG duel for duals is a natural progression from Deadguy ale and shoudl be included in our discussion? Also, if that is the case, what is better the red or white (kinda the theme question of legacy)?

[AnwarA101]

Do you think the B/r variant that posted well both days at SCG duel for duals is a natural progression from Deadguy ale and shoudl be included in our discussion? Also, if that is the case, what is better the red or white (kinda the theme question of legacy)?

I placed in the top8 with it on Day 2. It is not a natural progression of Deadguy Ale. The deck is more of a progression of the Suicide Black deck I played at the last Duel for Duals and similar to the discussion here - http://mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3451&highlight=Suicide+Black

When I get a chance I should be writing something up about it. PowerGamer1003 placed in the top4 on Day 1 with the same list. I believe he might be writing a tournament report as well.

[f|i[p]]

I know this is a somewhat silly question,

but would the new Jotun grunt from coldsnap be a card to consider... a 4/4 beater for 2 mana (although white) which fits this decks mana curve... although you are actually returning the cards you destroy or discard. Since he gets to return your own discards and sinkholes wastelands,dark rituals, and he's a very good beater. I just thought about it since there was discussion that this deck needs a good beater... Just a thought though...

[Morim_Brightsmoke]

Has it ever been a consideration to splash another color, or would that weaken the plan of Deadguy Ale too much? I would think blue to play meddling mage as it adds to the plan of flexible cards, and this deck makes any counter spell like mana leak or even force spike a whole lot better. I really don't know if this is a good idea or if it is, if blue is the correct color, but it seems as though some of the DTB discussions stagnate and i though this might inspire some conversation at the very least.

[BoardinCharlie]

@ Brightstroke: If you are running into problems against control I really think you are not playing the deck to its potential. This deck completely wrecks control, if you know your opponent is playing counterspells such as leak or force spike simply play around them or bait into the counters with your less eficient spells.

As for adding blue to the deck. You are proposing to beat a control deck by making your deck more control, which in my mind seems counter productive. Taking away from the decks consistancy making its worst match ups even worse to aid a match up which is in your favor already. I know if I 'm heading to a metagame which is facing a lot of control I up the count of gerards verdicts the board and possibly make some room for some negators if its U/W *landstill* or U/B *psychatog variant*.

@Flip: I have done very little playtesting with the Grunt, but what I have found in all the matchups you need to shrink the grave Wretch is a lot better since it is targetted and you can choose the number you remove pending enough mana. Also if your arguement is to add against aggro...the grave doesn't fill up fast enough to make use out of it for more than 3 turns. In all my experience if you are going into a metagame where you want more beaters or to slow the beats....try spectral Lynx or go with the negator against non red.

[Morim_Brightsmoke]

Sorry if my post didn't make sense, but i wasn't saying that i lost to force spike and the like i was saying they might be good cards to add. Likewise meddling mage might be good in the deck if it went in that direction, because it is a flexible card and can fit with different strategies fo denial. Even stifle could be a very functional added card. I don't think my problem is with control but i think adding these another color might make this deck more potent.

Cards that i would consider adding, with a blue splash would be:
-Meddling mage: always good against something.
-Stifle: adds to the mana denial plan (fetch lands) and has other uses like protecting our own lands from waste.

Further, i think jotun grunt is a fine card especially with a lot of thresh around as it contends with all but there biggest creature, and breaks there threshold.

[f|i[p]]

It's not really the aggro I'm concerned about, but the clock, I have read quite a few threads boasting that they can beat deadguy ale just because it has a very slow clock. My primary thought for adding it was just to boost the clock and keep the cc at 2.. As for the graveyard hate,I wouldnt know if it would help, since you do use you cards quicky early game to disrupt your opponent(dark ritual, duress, hymn, sinkhole,wasteland) and could return your own cards to your library instead. It may be a good card to at least put into consideration. The graveyard hate is just a plus. But I havent really tested it, im still on the process of finishing the deck thus I have not tested it yet..

[tsabo_tavoc]

Hey guys, what do you think about adding Red for Burning Wish?
My current Sideboard plan include Vindicate, Cranial Extraction, Morning Tide, Cabal Therapy, Pyroclasm, Wrath of God, Chain Lightning, Chainer's Edict, Shattering Spree. From my tests, it works much better than 4 Vindicates.
Also, I find the control matchups tough--Stax and Stasis, from my tests.
Other 6 places are for 2 Stp(2 in main), 4 Disenchant. I wanna fix some place for Phyrexian Negator.

[Morim_Brightsmoke]

Red could also give you some reach to speed the clock up. Adding in Char? Or maybe just going with like Lightning Bolt or something might help the clock by a turn.

Please use your Shift Key in the LMF. Verbal Warning.

[tsabo_tavoc]

Red could also give you some reach to speed the clock up. Adding in char? or maybe just going with like lightning bolt or something might help the clock by a turn.
I have not read through the threads, but I guess Deadguy Ale is kinda control deck.
1. Stp is better than Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning, or something like Mogg Ffanatic, Char.
2. As to mass removal, Burning Wish can just find spells you do not want to run main.
3. It is a Black-centered Deck, too many nonblack cards just spoil Hymn, Sinkhole, Hippy and Shade, and that weakens the deck. If there is something to cut, it is Gerrard's Verdict; but I will add 2 STP, not Bolts.

[Morim_Brightsmoke]

There are usually already 3 STP main from most builds I have seen, but ok. Again I am just trying to see if there is another direction this deck could go that would suppport the ideas presented but lead to some innovation.

Issued warning. This is the LMF, Shift Key required. Please read this Forum's Rules (http://mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?t=624).

[SuckerPunch]

I am not sure if this card has been tested at all, but now that a lone Tomb of Urami is accepted, I was wondering about the viabity of Cabal Pit.

This deck does a great job of filling up the graveyard, and Cabal Pit can act like a key removal spell in the mid game versus a creature that snuck in before your disruption, and that you can't afford to waste a Vindicate or Swords on esp if it tries to chump block a Shade or something.

It actually kills quite a few creatures, and I think the small lifeloss is worth the trade off.

You can also opt to run Descendant of Kiyomoro if all this lifeloss is starting to add up or if you want a nice large toughness beater for cheap.

As for speeding up the clock. Jotun Grunt seems like a great option if you're not running Cabal Pit that is. He is a 4/4 beater that will stick around for atleast two attacks early on and three attacks in the mid to late game. He also refills your library with key cards like Swords and Vindicate. The graveyard hate is just a bonus. The main strength is the 4 power and toughness.

[BoardinCharlie]

The cabal pit is a nice touch but I just don't think the deck needs such a small targeted removal as that. It's worth testing because I wouldn't mind an answer to meddling mage in game two when I bring in my perishes against grow.

Even though you suggest Descendant of Kiyamanaro *sp* to counter the pain, you might be forgetting that the deck is a white splash, the only 10 sources of white doesn't ensure you with double white on turn 3. Also, you replace which creature with Descendant, it just doesn't seem to fit the decks resources. If you play in a meta with low waste/port/land hate, then this guy would be great, but since this deck already has a problem against gobbos game 1 it just doesn't seem like he warrants a slot.

Finally at the Jotun grunt, he is a great beater, but if I used him he would replace the Withered Wretch just because of their lack of synergy together. In all the match ups where wretch is awesome I have found that timing is the issue on getting cards out of the grave. You will find that against most decks they will find ways to play around the grunt since it only occurs during your upkeep. It may be nice in the board against gro, but I don't think that the deck needs much more help in that match up post-board since you already have perish and possibly spectral lynx.

[Drathro]

I am not sure if this card has been tested at all, but now that a lone Tomb of Urami is accepted, I was wondering about the viabity of Cabal Pit.
Another non-basic land that the Mana Drainers have suggested is Volrath's Stronghold (http://ww2.wizards.com/gatherer/CardDetails.aspx?name=Volrath[s_Stronghold). It's a reusable method to virtually increase your creature threat density, the main drawback being that it does not provide Black mana.

[Eldariel]

If one goes to 23 lands, Volrath's Stronghold is natural, but at 22 lands, 4 Wastelands already drop us to 18 black sources, which is more or less the absolute minimum for consistent access to BB. 8 fetches and 4 Scrublands give us 12 white sources, which is 1 less than I personally prefer (I prefer to run 13+ sources for an access to 1 mana of a given colour and 18+ sources for an access to 2 mana of a given colour).

I wouldn't play Cabal Pits since while one land that causes pain I find bearable, multiples becomes hard to stomach. Also, the deck seems to be short on creatures far more often than short on removal. Descendants I find unplayable due to the simple fact that you run only ~10 white sources and it requires 2 white sources to be played.

[SuckerPunch]

Sorry Descendant is probably indeed a bad idea given the lack of white source. (I run 4 extra fetchlands in my build along with Tainted Fiedld so that's why I may have overlooked that - I probably just haven't been stung hard enough by Needle yet).

I still feel like this deck needs a decent sized beater other than the lone Tomb of Urami.

I'm guessing this has already been tested but is 3-4 Negator a bad idea cutting the 4th Shade and 2nd Gerrard's Verdict. You play a lot of disruption and removal (3-4 Swords in place of Withered Wretch/Cursed Scroll/Engineered Plague). And the few games I've tried it, it's never been a liability. Yes this deck doesn't need to win fast. But it doesnt hurt to be able to ritual out Negator turn one and then just cripple them with disruption till they die. Given B/r Aggro's success last weekend, I think it's clear that Negator isn't unviable in the format as we once believed.

If not Negator, how about Phyrexian War Beast (3/4 is ideal in a format with burn and lots of 2/2s and 3/3s) or perhaps even something like Grinning Demon.

[edgewalker]

If your looking for beaters, theres lots of them. Zombie cutthroat, Drinker of Sorrow, Negator, Avatar of Discord, Wretched Anurid, Rotting Giant... The list goes on. The only thing now is to figure out which one was the least destructive draw back

[SuckerPunch]

I think it's fairly obvious that Negator and Phyrexian War Beast, and even Grinning Demon to some extent, are superior to all the cards you listed.

The 3/3 Zombies aren't bad but they're too vulnerable to many of the burn spells and creatures in the format.

So I would run Negator if I don't fear the drawback, War Beast if I do.

[f|i[p]]

you can also consider bane of the living as it acts as creature control and is a good beater himself...

If the grunt would be considered, I think 2 or 3 would be the right number, but I think 2 would be just right.

[BoardinCharlie]

If I was to add a creature to this deck I would make sure it was in multiples of 4, or do a 3 and 1 *similair creatures like wretched anurid/rotting giant*. One of the decks powers is the ability to be consistant, running 4 ofs of all spells is a huge boost in our favor over a lot of decks.

If you are having a problem with aggro I say throw the wretches back in the board and MB the Warbeasts. Disenchant effects have rotated out of many decks mainboards, I'm pretty sure the only decks packing them now are Angel stompy and vindicate from the mirror. Burn seems to be more likely to be played now *R/B confidant*, but if you don't expect to see much burn go with the negator. I gladly would sacrifice 4 lands to trample over a werebear in the late game.

[SuckerPunch]

Now that the results of D4D prove that Negator is very much viable in this format, heres the list I'm currently running...

Lands:
4 Swamp
4 Scrubland
4 Polluted Delta
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Wasteland
1 Tomb of Urami
1 Cabal Pit

Creatures:
4 Dark Confidant
4 Hypnotic Specter
4 Phyrexian Negator
2 Nantuko Shade

Spells:
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Sinkhole
4 Dark Ritual
4 Vindicate
4 Swords to Plowshore

The changes are...

-2 Engineered Plague
-2 Cursed Scroll
-2 Gerrard's Verdict
-1 Nantuko Shade

-6 Swamp
-1 Tainted Field

+1 Cabal Pit
+1 Tomb of Urami
+4 Polluted Delta

+4 Swords to Plowshore
+4 Phyrexian Negator

I highly encourage people to try out such a build.

I like these changes a lot. The manabase is much more consistent. I don't have worry about things like not having Plains for Vindicate/Swords, or having only Tainted Field in my opening hand without a swamp to accompany it and thus having to mulligan. It cut down on my mulligans a good bit.

The extra swords is great to remove blockers in the path of Negator that you hadn't already vindicated or forced them to discard.

I think such a list has a lot more potential. It gives it speed, which seems to be the reason why the B/R Aggro deck did so well at D4D.

Negator is great. It lets you win early.

If not, you draw a lot of cards and lands anyways so saccing a few to Negator to trample over even 4/4 Werebear is worth it midgame.