[Deck] Deadguy Ale (B/w Confidant)

[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. 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.

[BoardinCharlie]

It seems like there is a lot of testing to be done to see if the 4 swords are necessary with the negators..I didnt feel that I would want to cut the creature count * especially shade* to increase spot removal. Shade is supposed to be that way...just keep swinging and pumping, gaining card virtually card advantage cause he should beat everythign out there *cept mystic enforcer or regenarators*. The build you are suggesting has a lot of pain in it and adding that aggro is your worse match up I don't think you can afford Negator, Confidants, 8 Fetches, and 2 pain lands.

Finally the lone cabal pit seems a bit out of place...I can see the Tomb as a one of since if you are going to use it you make sure its pretty much a win. But the Pit...its not a game breaker , its a small trick that removes creatures that you should have some answer for by the time you have threshold. Just my opinion, if you are going to use Cabal Pit it should be seen in more numbers if you can afford the pain in your stressed mana base.

[SuckerPunch]

In the b/r aggro deck's thread, Anwar stated that Negator was gold against goblins and aggro of all sorts.

Yes the decks are quite different. But they both run the same amount of removal that can take out blockers and a rather similar disruption base.

I don't think Negator hurts your aggro matchup as most seem to believe, and the games I played so far seem to back that up.

Besides, aggro is indeed your worst matchup. And running 4 Swords is a good way to pick it up a tad.

I only cut one Shade, but you're welcome to cut a Negator or Swords to add that Shade back in.

The Cabal Pit is a 1 of because you never want to draw it the same game you drew a Tomb. It's not as bad as drawing 2 tombs, but it's still not so hot either. Running a 2 of something is a good way to ensure that you almost always only draw it once. Thats why I opted for a single one.

[dre4m]

The changes SuckerPunch made to this deck worry me more than slightly, partially because I believe that it alters the focus of the deck by adding Negator, but mostly because he has removed a great deal of permanents and replaced them with spells or Deltas, which only thin out the number of permanents in the deck. Let's examine this:

4 Polluted Delta
4 Bloodstained Mire
4Wasteland
1 Tomb of Urami
4 Phyrexian Negator

Total of 17 permaments which require sacrifice to have an effect, or will likely require sacrifice.
22 Land, 8 of which sac to find others, and 4 of which sacrifice to destroy other lands, and one of which sacrifices itself and all others you control.
14 Creatures, 4 of which devour permanents whenever they are dealt damage.
Total of 20 (19 if I exclude Tomb) permanents that don't make you sacrifice themselves or others.
The rest of the deck contains 24 spells.
Would you really rather have the Negators than the recurring pressure of Cursed Scroll while 17 cards in your deck cause you to sacrifice permanents?
This isn't Stax<edit>I am referring to Type 1, sorry</edit>, with 59 permanents and a Wheel of Fortune, or B/r sui, which is almost all creatures or lands, so Cursed Scroll or Verdicts would probably be better to include. Maybe sideboard Negator if you like it against Solidarity, but I do not believe it belongs in the maindeck.

[BoardinCharlie]

I agree that Negator definately shines in some matches and can push the game against some aggro decks. I still don't get why you need 8 fetches, the math says you only need 10 sources of white to get your white splash. It just doesn't seem like you need to lose another 4 life and thin your lands out even more against opposing wastes/sinks/vindicates.

In the end though I agree with what Dreams says, you don't really have that many permanents that stick around in your build. I will have to test out your card counts to see how the deck actually handles aggro with/without the negator. So far with my testing I have found Negator to be prime sideboard material for wretch to come out for...maybe if graveyard abuse finds its way out of the meta this change from SB to MB will happen, but till then wretch is a beast.

[SuckerPunch]

The problem with saying the fetchlands cost you a permanent is that they really don't. You sac them but get another permanent in return. There is no net loss of a permanent.

I will agree that in certain matchups and metas, Negator poses a problem. But the fact remains that a.) Combo is becoming more and more prevalent and Negator shines in the combo matchup. Wretch is helpful against survival which is largely nonexistant and Threshold, which this deck already had a solid matchup against before Wretch was added. b.) Anwar stated that he never ran into a matchup where he wished the 4 Negators he maindecked were something else.


True, Red Death is strategically different from this deck. But the only differences between my build of Deadguy and Red Death are...
3 Chain Lightning
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Rotting Giant/Wretched Anurid

versus.

4 Swords to Plowshore
4 Vindicate
4 Dark Confidant.

Where as Red Death has 7 ways to get rid of potential blockers of Negator, this deck has 8. This build is almost just as capable of winning quickly as Anwar's deck. But at any moment it desires, it can decide to forego speed to disrupt your opponent's manabase with Vindicate. It is strategically more versatile (heck it's removal can kill creatures like Exalted Angel and Mystic Enforcer that the burn spells can't touch), but there is no reason it can't win quickly.

The fact is, D4D had a pleathora of Deadguy decks both days, and Deadguy didn't top 8 once. It had two Red Death decks, both of which top 8ed. I think this is enough justification for trying to learn and borrow a little bit from Red Death's success.

[AnwarA101]

SuckerPunch's version of the deck takes it more in the direction Sui or Red Death. The issue becomes are you in some kind of middle ground where you don't have the benefits of Deadguy (card advantage plus more disruption) and you don't have full power of Red Death (the more aggressive approach with the full compliment of burn and such). I tried to run Dark Confidant in Sui and it just seemed like he didn't fit the mold especially since he was terrible against goblins. I also don't like the life gain associated with STP. Sui or Red Death are trying to pull that life total down STP seems like the opposite of what you want. Though Deadguy is a different deck with a different strategy. Deadguy wants to generate card advantage over time with disruption + Confidant. Red Death doesn't care for such advantage because its playing for tempo and trying to kill you before card advantage really matters. I'm not sure exactly where SuckerPunch's version fits in. But perhaps this deck could switch between those two strategies effectively.

[SuckerPunch]

In all honesty you aren't really saccing any of Deadguys' disruption. I find 4 Swords to actually be more disruptive than the 2 Gerrard's Verdict and 2 Plague were. Verdict gives your opponent a choice where atleast one of the cards they discard is one they never planned to cast anyways, where as Swords always takes out their biggest threat and after they invested both the mana and time into casting it. The fact that they actually wasted a turn to cast the threat that you took out with Swords is a huge difference in tempo. Plague is better against both Goblins and Thunderbluff, but strictly worse than Swords against everything else (cards like that belong in the Board imo), and both cards eat up more mana than Swords does.

But yes, that "almost" as fast as Red Death part was a concern of mine too. It's at most only about a turn slower I found. That I believe is still fast enough that Negator can be MDed against the many matchups where he is gold, and sided out in the few where he isn't so hot. You commented that Negator was great even against goblins.

I am curious to hear how many of your wins came from dropping down a Negator and then simply disrupting your opponent till he wins the game for you. That is afterall the main reason to run him, and I believe the main thing this deck lacks. Deadguy can disrupt your opponent well enough, but once the disruption runs out, so many games it seems like your opponent can recover before you can finish the job.

[BoardinCharlie]

I think what Anwar is saying is the key in deciding what is going on in your deck. You are playing a middle ground between the two styles. Late game card advantage through disruption and Confidant and Beating your opponent down fast and disruption. I find by mixing these two you aren't using the color combinations properly. Yeah you have swords and vindicate to enforce your beats, which almost seems counter intuitive. You give them life so you don't sac permanents *granted you smash them for 5, but still* or you are killing a creature with a 3cc spell. The reason I thought the red version played negator cause it had the ability to remove a blocker, pound in, and disrupt hand/land in any order they chose at 1cc a piece.

I think you missed the idea behind fetches and Negator...think of it this way. When playing thresh, turn one you fetch out a land and your oponent wastelands it....he killed 1 land 1 for 1, but really he just thinned out your deck 2 lands so your chance of drawing another one get even lower. Yes fetches can thin out your deck to get more business spells...but it can work for the opponent as well by lowering the amount of lands left in your deck to draw. So you sac a land to Negator...thats one less land in play/deck you can have is all he meant.

[SuckerPunch]

My point, as I illustrated in the post directly above yours, is that you really aren't saccing Pikula's disruption by running 4 Swords over 2 Verdicts and 2 Plagues.

Yes, the deck is maybe a turn slower than Red Death, but it's not any less disruptive than Pikula's deck, you just speeded up the clock.

You still have 8 lands that you can fetch and 2 more permanent sources and 4 wastelands on top of that, and if you calculate the average turn at which a deck draws and plays out 10 lands, it's very very late into the game, far longer than the vast majority of games in legacy last. In a tourney, they've usually called time by then. Include the 4 wastelands into the calculation (you only use wastelands early anyways, as late in the game, wasting mana source hardly matters), and you are talking about a situation that practically never comes up, a situation which only occurs once you have drawn out 3/4 of the deck.

And like you yourself said, drawing more business spells than mana sources late in the game is usually a good thing, far more often than it is a disadvantage, even in a deck like this.

But if you really want, go back to have just 9 ways to get white mana. The manabase I use is just a personal choice. There is no reason you can't simply use the standard Pikula mana base of just 4 fetchlands if you want to. Cutting Gerrard's Verdict for Negators actually ups your black count afterall. And I don't want to derail the real discuusion.

So lets go back to talking about the viability of Negator and wheter or not Swords is an effective means of disruption in Legacy?

As an aside, I have now gone to using 3 Shades and 3 Negators rather than 2 Shades and 4 Negators. That should please some people atleast.

[Tao]

You guys won't find an answer for these questions. You have to set up the deck for the metagame you expect. Pikula did a great job at the GP.

Negtor is a bad creature vs. every deck that runs R and vs many other Aggrodecks. Just imagine how Zilla Stompy laughs about Negators. No matter what people may tell you: Phyrexian Negator is BAD vs. Gobbos, too. And if Red Gro is able to get 2 Burnspells or Mongoose + Burnspell Negator loses the game. The chances that a first turn Negator goes all the way even against those decks are really small: you need Ritual plus Negator plus a lot of good Disruption plus bad topdecks of your opponent.

Negator is mediocre against decks like Angel Stompy, Affinity or White Gro. He will win some games and lose some games.

Negator is a great Creature vs. all Combo decks and Control decks like Rifter, Landstill, Train Wreck or Staxx. It is also an absolute bomb in the Suicide/Deadguy Mirror. Another good thing is that he is so much fun to play: Phyrexian Negator is the Antithesis of Solidarity.

In general Goblins is the most played deck and Red Gro is 1/2 of the 2nd most popular deck in the format. If you expect a different metagame Negator can be a good choice.