[Deck] Living Dead Girl

[Hanni]

B/g/u Living Dead Girl
AKA Can't Block!

// Lands (20)
4 [ZEN] Verdant Catacombs
4 [ON] Polluted Delta
4 [ZEN] Misty Rainforest
4 [R] Bayou
3 [R] Underground Sea
1 [R] Tropical Island

// Creatures (29)
4 [7E] Birds of Paradise
4 [RAV] Elves of Deep Shadow
4 [TO] Putrid Imp
4 [SC] Carrion Feeder
4 [DKA] Gravecrawler
4 [ZEN] Bloodghast
4 [ROE] Vengevine
1 [JU] Wonder

// Spells (11)
4 [IA] Brainstorm
3 [TE] Intuition
4 [OD] Buried Alive

// Sideboard (15)
SB: 4 [WWK] Nature's Claim
SB: 4 [JU] Cabal Therapy
SB: 3 [US] Duress
SB: 4 [WL] Null Rod

First of all, I want to address what will be the most commonly asked question: "why play this over Dredge."

Well, this deck has the ability to be a dumb aggro deck. While the graveyard certainly is important, and graveyard hate can wreck this deck, the deck is a bit more resilient to graveyard hate than Dredge. Again, this deck has the ability to be a dumb aggro deck.

Secondly, it's something new to play with. It never hurts to explore new deck ideas. If they turn out to be failures, or worse than existing ideas, it happens. Progress is not made without trying to innovate, and you must fail before you can succeed.

Anyway, onto the deck itself.

The new card, Gravecrawler, is what spawned this idea for me. I really liked the reanimation effect, and how well it plays with Carrion Feeder and Vengevine. I really like Vengevine, and finding a way to make it playable with Survival being banned is still something I'd like to try and do.

There is alot of synergy and mini-combos in here. Carrion Feeder can grow extremely large with Gravecrawler, Bloodghast, and Vengevine. Putrid Imp can discard early Vengevines and Bloodghasts for explosive starts, and Wonder can give my entire creature base flying. 8 mana dorks help accelerate out a turn 2 Buried Alive or Intuition, and the extra mana can be spent on the Feeder/Crawler combo. The mana ramp can also help accelerate into hardcast Vengevines if necessary.

The deck is pretty linear; get a bunch of creatures in the graveyard, cheat them back into play, and swing for massive amounts of damage, possibly in the air.

I run 12 Zombies right now to feed Gravecrawler. I had considered Mutavault as additional zombies. Those may eventually make it into the deck at some point later on.

A red splash for Faithless Looting and Squee Goblin Nabob is also possible, particularly in a build with Zombie Infestation and Bridge from Below.

Suggestions are welcome. And please don't bash the deck idea too harshly.

[Mr. Safety]

I'm guessing Fauna Shaman is left out for the more powerful options of Buried Alive and Intuition.

Nice setup, I'm just curious why you picked Elves of Deep Shadow as your second mana-dork...is it simply for black mana? I would think Noble Heirarch would still be pretty good by providing blue mana for Intuition.

I'm also curious why you would pick Brainstorm over Careful Study. With no 'true' dredge cards, it doesn't trigger the massive graveyard dump you would normally get (as if you were dredging a Stinkweed Imp or Golgari Grave Troll.) I understand Brainstorm's great uses with the fetchlands, I'm just not sure if it's worth the tradeoff of potentially setting you up better turn 1 with Careful Study.

EDIT: Jeesh, now I can't get that stupid Rob Zombie song out of my head...it's going to be a long Thursday.

[Hanni]

Haha. You know what's funny is that before I posted the decklist, I kept thinking of a good name for it. Thought of a few gimicky Zombie names like Night of the Dead, and then that song popped up on my music player.

Fauna Shaman is incredibly slow without untap effects, and would require a restructure of the deck to accommodate it, whereas Intuition is a bomb by itself.

Brainstorm is excellent in this deck, but Careful Study can be a replacement for more explosive openings. That's really something that needs tested, to be honest. I just plugged Brainstorm in because it's Brainstorm, and it has performed very well in testing, but Study may be better.

The blue from Hierarch casts 7 spells in the deck (8 w/ Wonder). Exalted is nearly irrelevant in a deck that wants to swing with multiple creatures each turn. The Feeder/Crawler combo requires black mana, in as much volume as available. I run only 1 non-black source for that reason, also. Deep Shadow works better for the deck, IMO.

EDIT: Actually, Careful Study would be a lot better. Thank you for the suggestion. My 12 creature package is actually better in my graveyard than in my hand (well, with Gravecrawler there's little difference). That means Study has the potential to be a draw 2 for 1 mana (+1 CA). It ups my discard outlets to 8 for more broken starts. More discard outlets also means more consistency with Intuition. When I get home from work, I'm gonna swap the Brainstorm's for Study's.

[GGoober]

This deck is a little awkward lol. Usually a fan of your decks but this deck seems weak for risking an unstable manabase, and seems to lose to Goyfs (can't block) or Scavenging Ooze (lol).

The 8 birds accelerating into turn 2 Intuition/Buried Alive doesn't really seem as consistent as other decks where the birds accelerate into GSZ/Knights because casting Intuitions/Buried Alives still require to have a secondary condition before the Vengevines can start coming back into play.

Is 12 'VV'ish creatures needed in the deck? I feel that Gravecrawler/Bloodghast are still significantly weaker than VV if you're planning on the cheating route. Those slots could be filled with Cabal Therapy/Inquisition/Thoughtseize/Daze/FoW etc.

[Freggle]

Cabal Therapy/Inquisition/Thoughtseize/Daze/FoW etc.

No this deck has 4 too few Smallpox, and 3 too few Eternal Witness.

[rufus]

A red splash for Faithless Looting and Squee Goblin Nabob is also possible, particularly in a build with Zombie Infestation and Bridge from Below.

You're already splashing , so Careful Study is going to be an easier fit than Faithless Looting.

There are a couple of interesting zombies with unearth such as Fatestitcher and Rotting Rats

There's also a possible combo package, though it's not really strong enough to be a primary plan:
Phyrexian Altar and Buried Alive -> Gravedigger,Extractor Demon/Fatestitcher (or Intuition->Gravedigger/Extractor Demon if there's already a zombie on the field.)

I think the deck needs to pack disruption if you want to have a competitive chance against fast combo.

[Hanni]

This deck doesn't care about blocking Tarmogoyf because it races him. Same goes for Knight. The only "care" part about Knight is Bojuka Bog.

Scavenging Ooze, on the other hand, is a threat. In playtesting so far, I've been able to race Ooze, getting my Vines into play before he can do any serious damage, but he is definitely a problem. It may be a good idea for me to fit Snuff Out somewhere in my 75 to deal with him.

If you playtest with the deck some, you'll find that the deck has no problems fulfilling the secondary conditions after casting Intuition/Buried Alive. The deck runs 20 1cc creatures for triggering Vine, with a single Carrion Feeder on the board allowing a tutor package of Vine/Vine/Crawler if you have an empty hand. Turn 1 mana dork, turn 2 Buried Alive is more broken than what Maverick can do, aside from GSZ for Ooze vs me :p

The greatest strength of this deck, to me, is its synergy and consistency. So yes, I do think the 12 self-reanimating creatures are needed. Ghasts apply great additional pressure, and multiple Ghasts with a single topdecked fetchland can grow Carrion Feeder to epic proportions. I often turn my 1cc 1/1 critter into a 10/10 in two turns and outsize the 5/5 Knight of the Reliquary on the other side of the table. If I have a Wonder in the yard, it gets pretty savage.

My deck is a redundant aggro deck in the same vein as a deck like Maverick, except I can skip running removal because I can give my guys flying and I go on the beatdown faster (think Affinity here). The difference is that this deck has a weakness to graveyard hate. The deck is more broken than Maverick, and less affected by graveyard hate than Dredge (although Dredge is more broken). I don't think the deck needs discard or countermagic maindeck, but if I did fit some, it would be Cabal Therapy.

I bring the discard in from the sideboard to address faster linear decks like Burn and Combo. I can still goldfish turn 3-4 though.

[Koby]

This deck might have a good matchup against RUG delver and Stoneblade, but I feel that your Maverick matchup will be horrendous. That goes too for any deck packing a dedicated Ooze engine, because it really takes out a lot of steam from the alpha-strike. Sure, a quick Vengevine might put Maverick up against a wall, but once they stabilize the deck is filled with sub-par creatures trying to interact with the King of Combat.

The deck might need another Falter that doesn't rely on the graveyard.

[Freggle]

This deck might have a good matchup against RUG delver and Stoneblade, but I feel that your Maverick matchup will be horrendous.

Right. Maverick can not beat an early and persistent Smallpox. It hits their t1 dork their fetched dual and the worst card remaining in hand.

Bump up the lands and dump your recursive guys in the yard with Smallpox it is a really good disruptive card.

[Mr. Safety]

I remember an aggro-Survival variant right before SotF was banned...it played Vengevines, Bloodghasts, Birds, Intuition, Buried Alive...and Necrotic Ooze. I'm not sure if you want to go that route, but Ooze seems to make for some even greater redundancy. I'm not sure what (if any) shenanigans you can do with Ooze, but it seems like a decent swiss-army knife.

EDIT: come to think of it, I'm confusing my decks. I was thinking of Survival/Ooze combo. The list I was thinking of didn't play oozes, just Vines, Bloodghasts, Intuitions, and Survivals.

[Anusien]

Decks that lose to Extraction seem like the worst thing in the world right now. Decks that lose to Extraction AND Cage?!

[Hanni]

I guess that's why Dredge is a DTB?

Hai guys. Stop please making new decks and innovating, for Extraction n Grafdigger > fromat.

Regarding the Maveric matchup, I've faced Maverick three times now. Two of the builds was blue splash. I 2-0'd it twice, and lost 0-1 to the other (MWS crashed at the beginning of our second game).

People don't know what I'm playing in g1 and don't grab Ooze fast enough. That's my experience with it anyway. In g2, I've been able to get a swarm of 4/3 hasties into play before they get Ooze online. 3 matches isn't enough playtesting against them, and I haven't been hit with an overwhelming amount og graveyard hate from them postboard yet, so I won't make any blanket statements about this matchup yet. If it does become an issue, Virtues Ruin is one sided, Perish could be useful, although Submerge or Snuff Out (or maybe even Mind Harness) could be strong options too.

Or I could board in Therapy's... clearing out GSZ's seems pretty good.

[Koby]

I wonder if a Red splash for Goblin Bombardment could help to justify the Faithless Looting option, turning from Blue for Wonder/Careful study to a Jund build with Looting and Bombardment. Something to consider for inevitability.

Zombie + Gravecrawler + Bombardment is pretty efficient engine.

[Aggro_zombies]

There's a difference between innovating for innovation's sake, and innovating to solve some problem or exploit some opening in the format.

What problem does this deck solve? What opening does it exploit? Why is it, in short, not Dredge But Worse?

Dredge can mise wins by comboing people out. This deck, as far as I can see, has a slower "combo out" than Dredge does. Even the best-case scenario, fireballing people with multiple Vengevines, takes work to set up and relies on cards that cost multiple mana.

People also don't really know how to play around Dredge. The difference between a good Dredge player and a bad one is the difference between night and day. Blowing Crypts as soon as things start to get scary and Extracting Bridges may cut it against the bad Dredge players, but good ones will get you regardless. As for this deck, you get hurt by a lot of the same incidental hate, and your guys are (by and large) just as bad without the graveyard engine going. Yeah, okay, sure, you can cast them and beat down. You can't see it, but I am literally quaking in my boots at the thought of a bunch of 1/1 and 2/1 guys coming after me.

I mean, I guess your deck is interesting, but why would I ever want to play it, or even care about it? Because it beats up on opponents of dubious quality on MWS?

[Anusien]

I am fairly comfortable Dredge is more resilient to most forms of hate than this deck. It beats Leyline and Cage better, but bites it much more to everything else.

Sure, it's worth exploring ideas. But at a certain point you have to step back and say, "What does this deck do well? What does this deck do poorly?" Reanimator seems like an awesome deck, until you realize it's a worse version of Hive Mind, especially when it comes to battling graveyard hate (since GY hate is much more prevalent than Thoughtseize).

[Hanni]

I love when the rag tag crew come into my threads and bash nearly every new deck idea I make, like decks like Aggro Loam and the like are any better right now.

I also thoroughly enjoy when people do absolutely no playtesting with a deck whatsoever, and come in blabbing ideas about why they think the deck sucks, or why they would run cards X and Y over cards A and B.

This deck folds to hate worse than Dredge? Laff.

Look guys, I can only take so many 'insightful' comments in every thread I make before I question why you're even bothering to post in them at all, especially when you try and speak with such authority with a deck you've never even bothered to play a game or two on MWS with first before thinking you know everything.

Here's an idea. If you don't like the deck, don't fucking post in the thread. Its pretty simple. Did I claim that this deck was a metacrusher that was DTB material? No, I didn't. This is my attempts at making a playable Vengevine deck. And I'm sure there are those out there that would like to find a way to break their Vengevines out for their next local Legacy get together.

If you think Extraction + Grafdigger makes new graveyard strats obsolete, go start a thread in Format Discussion for that. No need to post bullshit one-liners in here.

tl;dr stop harassing my threads Anusien.

[Mr. Safety]

Hater's gotta hate...

Just a thought here: Infernal Tutor. If you have a Vengevine/Bloodghast in play and an active Putrid Imp, you're looking at doubling up either of those nicely. If you've already dumped your hand into the yard it becomes Demonic Tutor, setting you up with whatever you need (most likely another duder.) At first glance, I think Intuition is a better option but playing Demonic Tutor has it's allure.

You've got Wonder in there...Genesis? It seems like a pretty efficient way to get mana-dorks back to double up for Vengevine triggers. If you bring back Dryad Arbor you get any number of Bloodghasts back as well...all for the low, low price of . I would play a miser's copy of and Genesis alongside Wonder. It doesn't take up too much space and can easily drop into your Buried Alive/Intuition piles.

[Hanni]

I think Diabolic Intent has more synergy with the deck than Infernal Tutor, but I don't see why the deck would need a tutor that costs 2 mana for 1 card when it has two better tutors that tutor for 3 cards for 3 mana.

Genesis would be good against heavy duty hardcore removal decks, but this deck is quite capable of bringing its guys back after a sweeper. A single land brings back all Bloodghasts for free, a single Zombie allows me to play my Gravecrawlers for B (vs paying 2G + B). 1 Feeder + 1 Crawler will trigger Vengevines for BB, and the deck runs 29 creatures to make topdecking creatures to trigger Vengevines fairly easy. Genesis is a good idea, but I don't think its necessary in here. The deck already has plenty of guys it wants to tutor for as is.

Keep the suggestions coming though. The Careful Study suggestion you made was gold.

[Aggro_zombies]

I love when the rag tag crew come into my threads and bash nearly every new deck idea I make, like decks like Aggro Loam and the like are any better right now.

I also thoroughly enjoy when people do absolutely no playtesting with a deck whatsoever, and come in blabbing ideas about why they think the deck sucks, or why they would run cards X and Y over cards A and B.

This deck folds to hate worse than Dredge? Laff.

Look guys, I can only take so many 'insightful' comments in every thread I make before I question why you're even bothering to post in them at all, especially when you try and speak with such authority with a deck you've never even bothered to play a game or two on MWS with first before thinking you know everything.

Here's an idea. If you don't like the deck, don't fucking post in the thread. Its pretty simple. Did I claim that this deck was a metacrusher that was DTB material? No, I didn't. This is my attempts at making a playable Vengevine deck. And I'm sure there are those out there that would like to find a way to break their Vengevines out for their next local Legacy get together.

If you think Extraction + Grafdigger makes new graveyard strats obsolete, go start a thread in Format Discussion for that. No need to post bullshit one-liners in here.

tl;dr stop harassing my threads Anusien.

Hey, remember that time when Blue-White Tempo was hands-down the best deck in the format because its creators wiped the floor with all the DtB on MWS, and everyone who pointed out that maybe it wasn't the most awesome thing ever were wrong because they just hadn't tested it?

I think pointing out reasonable and obvious problems a deck has is both a reasonable activity and an obvious one. If you want your deck to have a glaring weakness to graveyard hate because "you can just cast your Vengevines and/or 2/1s", that's fine - but pointing out the fact that that particular plan may not be the best idea is also worthwhile.

I was also under the impression that a competitive Legacy forum existed to share competitive Legacy deck ideas. Sorry, but I don't consider a deck that you, and you alone, can do well with because you, and you alone, can manage to mop the floor with it on online, unsanctioned events to really be an indicator about a deck's capabilities. I would expect a deck's creator to do well with his or her own deck.

The point Anusien and I want to make is that this deck sacrifices Dredge's combo-esque potential and ability to sidestep a lot of the format's stack-based control for dubious gains. Whether or not you want to take that seriously is up to you, but don't attack people for pointing out that your deck is squishy to graveyard hate and "I can cast my Jackal Pups" is not a convincing counterargument.

EDIT: While we're on the subject, you also seem kind of squishy to Snapcaster + a bunch of one-for-one removal spells. Like, if Stoneblade were to side in Extraction and Path against you while keeping the Snapcasters and Jitte main, how do you beat that? Particularly if they focus removal on your recurring guys? Do you honestly try to beat them by feeding your Elves and Birds into a Carrion Feeder and pray they don't topdeck Brainstorm, Snapcaster, Path, or Swords? Or do you try to beat down with a bunch of 1/1s? Or do you hope your Vengevines live and don't get blocked + Extracted or exiled? It seems like your game plan relies on a lot of things going right for you and a lot of things going wrong for the opponent. Also, how do you sideboard for this match? Bring in, like, almost all of your board and side out what? If you cut too many guys, it's harder to trigger VVines without Gravecrawler; if you side out tutors, your topdeck mode is bad; if you side out some combination of the two, it seems like you're diluting your deck a lot without actually answering their hate plan well.

Or what about RUG? Delvers can race you pretty well early unless you want to chump with Imps, and then you need to worry about Bolt - Snapcaster - Bolt in the midgame backed by Tarmogoyfs stabilizing on the ground. What do you do if you can't resolve Imp or a timely Intuition/Buried Alive? Die? Try to race with hardcast 1/x and 2/x guys, some of which will die every combat? That seems suspect to me.

What about Maverick, particularly the red-splash versions with Punishing Fires? So you side in Therapies to get their GSZs (assuming they don't just cast them right away), but how do you beat them consistently killing your enablers? Land, Bloodghast every turn? Hardcast Vengevines into their (most likely) larger Knights? Pray you can get there with your singleton Wonder in the yard? Don't you, say, want some removal lest you get wrecked by Ooze and large blockers in games 2 and 3? A creature-based deck that is not a fast combo deck (like Dredge or Reanimator) that has no actual creature removal whatsoever seems very, very loose.

[Mr. Safety]

The last thought on my mind (and then I'll stop trolling your thread) is whether or not you have enough raw discards outlets like Putrid Imp. I'm wondering if you could do this:

-1 Elves of Deep Shadow
+1 Wild Mongrel

I was tempted to suggest Oona's Prowler, but it would be 100% abysmal against anything graveyard based (dredge, reanimator, Loam.) The evasion, potential disruption, and the 3/1 flying attacker seem so good for ...it's just so risky given the absurd amount of small-dude removal running rampant (Punishing/Groves, Grim Lavamancer, Ghastly Demise, and Lightning Bolt seem to be everywhere right now...not to mention Snapcaster doubling up on all of the non-PFire spells) tied in with the risk of enabling your opponents, resulting in an embarrassing fist-pump and shout of glee.

One more (I swear!): is a misers Eternal Witness worth a slot? Countermagic on your Intuitions/Buried Alive will suck. I realize your threat density is very high (did you say 29 dudes?), so it may not be worth the slot. Given your acceleration potential and your creatures having a healthy dose of resilience to non-exile removal it only seems natural to want EVERYTHING in your graveyard to be available.

That's all I got right now.

EDIT - Random ideas:

Dread Return (borrow some of Dredge's tech)
Stinkweed Imp (ditto)
Shriekmaw (removal + threat for consistency)
Cabal Therapy (smooth with Gravecrawler/Bloodghast)
Noxious Revival (probably a worse version of Eternal Witness...but free and instant speed)