I feel like this deck needs some wish/LED shenanigans a la the various Sealab decks. Burning Wish finds game-ending sorceries, Living Wish gets Mogis's Marauder or similar. I guess there's Mastermind's Acquisition now, if you want to stay in mono-B, but it's expensive. (on the other hand, Songs of the Damned)
Another engine that could work is Fluctuator.
Mausoleum Secrets is certainly breakable, but it's going to be hard to exist in a world where GY hate manages Dredge, Tin Fins, and Reanimator. Be prepared to take some lumps.
Brainstorm Realist
I close my eyes and sink within myself, relive the gift of precious memories, in need of a fix called innocence. - Chuck Shuldiner
Marauder looks cool, and even brings up Gray Merchant of Asphodel as another non-combat win condition. I think Marauder is a strict upgrade to Flame-Kin Zealot, so that goes in straight away. Thanks for that!
Brainstorm Realist
I close my eyes and sink within myself, relive the gift of precious memories, in need of a fix called innocence. - Chuck Shuldiner
have you poked around here yet:
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/s...the-Fluctuator
seems similar to what you are wanting to do with your win-con
Yeah, I read almost the entire thread, lol. The difference is I'm not looking to find and resolve a Fluctuator, nor am I trying to then turn on a win condition like Lab Maniac. I'm trying to cut out the middle man (Fluctuator) and use the engine itself (cycling creatures) to create a win condition. That allows the tutors to find ways to continue the chain or win (mana, Shadow of the Grave, Living Death).
I'm looking to set up a chain of draws like the old Eggs/Second Sunrise decks, but without the need to draw my entire deck. One really appealing part of TES is that it can win on the spot with Ad Nauseam into Tendrils...or it can blast out 10-12 goblins and win that way. This deck is aiming for the same approach: it can win on the spot with Mogis Marauder getting discarded by a Thoughtseize into Living Death...or it can just Living Death after 4-5 cycles and a bunch of mana and have a bunch of 3/3's, 3/4's, or 4/4's and attack. The real quandary is getting an optimal way to have both win conditions feasible.
My big concern is that I won't be able to maintain the ratio of mana to cyclers that I need to combo off. I might fizzle by spending all my mana on cycling instead of drawing enough mana sources to play Living Death or Shadow of the Grave + Mana to continue the chain. I need enough cyclers to reliably cast 2-3 of them to draw more mana, and hopefully draw into a tutor or shadow. It might do a ton of stuff but not result in anything meaningful.
One card I'm eyeballing is an oldy but a goody:Ill-Gotten Gains. It might be exactly what I'm looking for the get mana back and win with Tendrils.
Brainstorm Realist
I close my eyes and sink within myself, relive the gift of precious memories, in need of a fix called innocence. - Chuck Shuldiner
with ill gotten gains you need something like hope of ghirapur or defense grid to dodge counter ^^
Or draw into Thoughtseize.
I might be going to the LGS this Friday (probably playing Depths) so I'll likely pick up a ton of the cards needed for this deck. I really need to start playtesting it rather than just theory-crafting. The good news it will cost me like $20 or less to build, lol.
Brainstorm Realist
I close my eyes and sink within myself, relive the gift of precious memories, in need of a fix called innocence. - Chuck Shuldiner
Finally got to the LGS, so i picked up all the carda i need to build this. Testing shall commence.
Brainstorm Realist
I close my eyes and sink within myself, relive the gift of precious memories, in need of a fix called innocence. - Chuck Shuldiner
Testing shows the engine is valid, but a little slower than I originally thought it would be. Mogis Marauder is definitely needed for the deck, no doubt there. Two copies of Living Death seems to be enough and Archfiend of Ifnir is by far the best cycling threat but slightly overcosted on the cycling end at 2 instead of B.
Shadow of the Grave is actually not fantastic in this; I'd rather just keep cycling and keep rituals in hand to feed Living Death or Marauder. I'm also testing 2 copies of Griselbrand in the deck. I can cycle a bunch, tutor for Song of the Damned, and hardcast him.
Brainstorm Realist
I close my eyes and sink within myself, relive the gift of precious memories, in need of a fix called innocence. - Chuck Shuldiner
Did a little more testing, and there is an obvious route to take. Shadow of the Grave isn't correct for this deck, it needs to be focused on Secrets and Songs of the Damned. The hard-cast Griselbrand plan could still be decent if I go up to 4x Songs of the Damned.
There's a lot of 'fizzling', if that is even the right word for it. I think 'setup' would be more apt for what's happening. I spend mana, including rituals, early on to just cycle 3-4 times and draw extra cards. The goal is to draw into enough mana to play Living Death and kill with Mogis Marauder + 3-4 dudes, hard-cast Griselbrand and then do the same. I think Tendrils x1 should probably be in the deck, I can get to storm 4 pretty often and I know I could direct Mausoleam Secrets to generate more storm.
The big focus is cycling dudes, Mausoleam Secrets, Songs of the Damned. Its a fun and powerful engine, but I'm not sure how competitive it is. Secrets is definitely the lynchpin of the deck.
Brainstorm Realist
I close my eyes and sink within myself, relive the gift of precious memories, in need of a fix called innocence. - Chuck Shuldiner
If you're building around Secrets and Songs of the Damned and fast mana, why not [card]Buried Alive[/card]?
//Mana Sources: 26
13 Swamp
1 Lake of the Dead
4 Lotus Petal
4 Dark Ritual
4 Songs of the Damned
//Cyclers: 16
4 Street Wraith
4 Horror of the Broken Lands
4 Monstrous Carabid
4 Architects of Will
//Tutors: 8
4 Mausoleum Secrets
4 Buried Alive
//Disruption: 4
4 Thoughtseize
//Silver Bullets: 6
1 Reanimate
1 Living Death
1 Griselbrand
1 Necrotic Ooze
1 Walking Ballista
1 Phyrexian Devourer
You can cycle up your graveyard and then Secrets into Living Death. Buried Alive could power up the graveyard size or just fetch a combo to win the game with Necrotic Ooze. I threw in Ooze combo just because it seems bad to run 4 Buried Alive and fast mana without it, but it might dilute the cycling plan too much.
Instead of Buried Alive you could also try to go full-out on the Living End plan, using Yahenni's Expertise to cast it and Secrets to find one of them. The advantage of this over Cascade Living End is that you can still run 1cmc discard to protect the combo and fast mana to speed it up. The cascade build is heavily limited to running cards only 3 cmc or higher, which is a problem in Legacy.
//Mana Sources: 26
13 Swamp
1 Lake of the Dead
4 Lotus Petal
4 Dark Ritual
4 Songs of the Damned
//Engine: 11
4 Mausoleum Secrets
3 Yahenni's Expertise
3 Living End
1 Living Death
//Cyclers: 19
4 Street Wraith
4 Horror of the Broken Lands
4 Monstrous Carabid
3 Lurching Rotbeast
2 Architects of Will
2 Archfiend of Ifnir
//Protection: 4
4 Thoughtseize
//Sideboard: 15
4 Leyline of the Void
2 Shriekmaw
2 Fume Spitter
3 Cabal Therapy
2 Pithing Needle
2 Silent Gravestone
Fume Spitter is tech for beating Thalia. Shriekmaw answers most other hatebears. You're still vulnerable to gravehate, stormhate, and Containment Priest. Monoblack doesn't offer many answers.
Or you could go hard on Storm. Splash red for Burning Wish to get more options.
//Lands: 14
3 Badlands
3 Swamp
4 Bloodstained Mire
2 Verdant Catacombs
2 Marsh Flats
//Fast Mana: 15
4 Lotus Petal
4 Lion's Eye Diamond
4 Dark Ritual
3 Songs of the Damned
//Tutors: 8
4 Mausoleum Secrets
4 Burning Wish
//Creatures: 16
4 Street Wraith
4 Horror of the Broken Lands
4 Monstrous Carabid
4 Wild Cantor
//Bullets: 4
1 Living Death
1 Shadow of the Grave
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Tendrils of Agony
//Discard: 4
4 Thoughtseize
//Wishboard: 15
1 Empty the Warrens
1 Tendrils of Agony
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
1 Past in Flames
1 Diminishing Returns
1 Massacre
1 Firespout
1 Vindicate
1 Dark Petition
1 Meltdown
1 Infernal Contract
1 Living Death
1 Duress
1 Unmask
1 Cabal Therapy
LED seems really good with either Burning Wish or Mausoleum Secrets (Undergrowth checked on resolution, after cracking LED in response).
Shadow of the Grave has some utility getting back multiple cyclers to draw more cards or just getting back everything you discarded to LED, but you probably don't want it often. I have it as a 0-1 of.
Instead of discard and fast mana, what about Chalice and spheres? Chalice seems so strong in this meta.
You can slow-roll the Living Death plan. Set up resistors to slow down the game. Cycle without rituals. Then cast Living Death FTW.
Plan B you just hardcast the slow creatures like you would in any other Ancient Tomb Stompy deck. This means you're not entirely dependent on the graveyard. You can just play it out like a midrange deck.
//Mana Sources: 22
4 Ancient Tomb
3 City of Traitors
3 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
9 Swamp
3 Chrome Mox
//Disruption: 8
4 Chalice of the Void
3 Trinisphere
1 Nether Void
//Creatures: 20
4 Street Wraith
4 Horror of the Broken Lands
4 Lurching Rotbeast
4 Archfiend of Ifnir
2 Plaguecrafter
1 Faerie Macabre
1 Shriekmaw
//Spells: 8
4 Mausoleum Secrets
2 Living Death
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Skeletal Scrying
//Planeswalkers: 2
2 Liliana of the Veil
//Sideboard: 15
4 Leyline of the Void
4 Unmask
3 Hollow One
2 Pithing Needle
1 Ravenous Chupacabra
1 Massacre
Cycling package: The only monoblack ones that can cycle for 0-2 mana and be hardcast for 5 or less. Notice Urborg gives them Swamps and Street Wraith has Swampwalk.
Tutor targets and Sideboard options:
Living Death - Plan A. Terminus + mass reanimate seems good. Protect it from countermagic and instant disruption via Chalice and Trinisphere.
Liliana - board and hand control
Nether Void - big sphere to seal the game when you already a threat on the board
Toxic Deluge - cheap board wipe
Plaguecrafter - deals with enemy fatties and walkers
Shriekmaw - spot removal
Faerie Macabre - gravehate so you're not stuck putting a free Griselbrand into play for the opponent
Skeletal Scrying - Hail Mary. The main plan doesn't work and you just need a new hand.
Ravenous Chupacabra - spot removal for black and artifact creatures too
Massacre - answer tokens and hatebears
Leyline of the Void - you really don't want Living Death to backfire, so bring in the ultimate of all gravehate instead of just Surgical Extraction and friends
Unmask - turn 1 discard that doesn't suck lategame with Chalice
Pithing Needle - answers a wide range of problems from combos to walkers to some gravehate
I like the Chalice/3Ball approach but unfortunately, I don't have the cards. If I tended to lean towards Chalice decks in legacy I would invest, but I don't lean that way. It's definitely a fun idea though.
I've been messing around with the deck again, it seems to have some real potential. It isn't blazing fast, but it does have some fun interactions. This is my current list:
4x Lurching Rotbeast
4x Horror of the Broken Lands
4x Street Wraith
4x Archfiend of Ifnir
4x Duress
4x Sign in Blood
4x Mausoleum Secrets
2x Dark Petition
4x Lotus Petal
4x Dark Ritual
4x Cabal Ritual
1x Songs of the Damned
1x Tendrils of Agony
2x Living Death
14x Swamp
I actually had 2x Griselbrand in there, which I could hardcast easily. The issue was countermagic (of course) but the way it played out was to cycle turns 1-3 and then get a lethal board state with Living Death. Griselbrand was the backup plan, and it was fine. What I noticed was that on some turns I would just cycle and cycle, just to see what would happen. It fed me lands, rituals, and tutors. I then did a tutor chain with a storm count of around 7. I could easily have done a tendrils for 16. If even one of my creatures connects, that's lethal. It's essentially a fireball finisher at that point, but it isn't unreasonable to chain some Sign in Bloods into a lethal storm count as well.
I'm intrigued by the fact that it has graveyard synergy, but even under Rest in Peace/Containment Priest/Leyline of the Void I could just use the cyclers as pure draw power to draw into my sideboard plan. So I've come up with a couple options to steer away from graveyard dependence (other than the obvious route of fast mana into mid-range threats.)
Option #1 - Turbo Depths
4x Dark Depths
4x Thespian's Stage
4x Vampire Hexmage
3x Expedition Map (or Faerie Macabre if the draw engine is enough to find the pieces)
Just switch gears, cut a little bit of the fast mana, cut the Living Death/Tendrils, squeeze in the depths package. So it would likely go:
-4 Cabal Ritual
-1 Songs of the Damned
-2 Living Death
-1 Tendrils
-4 Archfiend (inefficient cycler)
-3 Sign in Blood
This still gives me 12 cheap cyclers, Dark Petition/Secrets to tutor for Hexmage (and Petition finds Depths as well), and still 4x Duress as disruption. With Ritual and Petal, the right draw will make for incredibly fast 20/20's. It is likely that with this plan I would probably go -2 Swamp +2 Urborg maindeck to help facilitate the fast depths plan.
Option #2 Disrupt-O
4x Faerie Macabre
2x Liliana of the Veil
1x Liliana the Last Hope
2x Toxic Deluge
3x Fatal Push
3x Hymn to Tourach
This would just sideboard fair cards to turn into a mid-range deck, with potential for hardcasting Griselbrand. I have found that while the fast mana makes me susceptible to card disadvantage I also draw a ton of extra cards to make land drops. Hitting 4 lands in a game isn't really that difficult, and 3 is common. I debated Smallpox here, but with only 14 lands that would be suicide I think. An argument for Crucible and Wasteland could be made, but it seems to be too narrow. If I wanted to play Pox, I'd play Pox. When opponents side in grave hate I side in disruption. That means I would fight on a fair axis as well, or better, than their watered down approach.
-4 Mausoleum Secrets
-2 Dark Petition
-1 Tendrils of Agony
-2 Living Death
+3 Hymn
+3 Push
+2 Liliana otV
+1 Liliana tLH
+2 Deluge
There it is, the options I'm trying to figure out. I like the surprise factor g1 and just going way off in left field for g2, possibly going back to Living Death g3 if I need to.
Early observations:
1) The deck can just spin its wheels in the early turns, just cycling a few cards, maybe casting a Sing in Blood or Duress. It isn't impressing me with it's speed (pre-board.) The power level is there (I think) but it isn't going to be a t1-3 deck like Belcher, TES, or Elves. It has the potential to go fast, but more often its better to just keep cycling for a better payoff.
2) While slow, it is still able to put out some decent power. Typical battlefield has around 14-16 worth of power spread over 4-5 creatures. Decks without bigger sweepers will have a hard time dealing with it.
3) Living Death is better than Living End because the Rituals do more than just power out LD; they can supercharge the graveyard with lots of cyclers to feed mana/draw/win cons. The deck restrictions of Living End are untenable, in my honest opinion.
4) Living Death is a wrath, pure and simple. Even if opponent's can somehow deal with my horde they have also lost their creatures.
5) Countermagic is still the biggest offender, so the issue of only 4x Duress maindeck might have to be addressed. The natural spot is to cut some number of Archfiend or Sign in Blood to get another 2x discard in, probably Thoughtseize.
6) It's a fun deck!
EDIT: I still don't know where Shriekmaw fits into the deck. It's an option, possibly out of the sideboard. I like that it kills Thalia and still only costs 2 mana to do so.
Brainstorm Realist
I close my eyes and sink within myself, relive the gift of precious memories, in need of a fix called innocence. - Chuck Shuldiner
Emh, you must play 4x Shadow of the Grave
"You either die a Onesto-Player, or live long enough to see yourself become a Dredger"
Tried it, it's not good. Dead almost all of the time. I don't want to sandbag my cyclers to wait for a Shadow of the Grave, and even if I do cast Shadow of the grave I'm usually out of mana to recast the cyclers. If I wanted to turn this into uber-cycling into Shadow, it would have to play more mana acceleration and more cyclers. Sixteen isn't enough cyclers and not drawing Shadow of the Grave feels horrible. Shadow of the Grave really needs Fluctuator and cycle cards that cost, not B.
I have only lived the dream once where all my cyclers drew me into rituals and more cyclers and I redid the chain again. The mana runs out quickly. I might be able to achieve it with more 'free' cyclers like Edge of Autumn, Mishra's Bauble, and Urza's Bauble. Now Mausoleum Secrets looks silly because I can't feed creatures into the grave to tutor for gas.
Brainstorm Realist
I close my eyes and sink within myself, relive the gift of precious memories, in need of a fix called innocence. - Chuck Shuldiner
This seems quite good actually. The best option is Archfiend because every cycler after that creates card advantage. EDIT: Horror of the Broken Lands is decent as well, getting huge with only 1-2 spare cyclers.
That's another option for the sideboard as well:
4x Reanimate
4x Death's Shadow
Xx fetchlands
Reanimating street wraith is a UB Shadow trick, and a good one. It dings for 7 life with that interaction alone. It doesn't answer the Terminus problem, but neither does Turbo Depths. I would want the disruption plan against Miracles anyways.
Nice idea!
EDIT: MSecrets into Entomb/Reanimate is definitely an option as well, I just felt it was strictly inferior to the current Br Reanimator deck.
Brainstorm Realist
I close my eyes and sink within myself, relive the gift of precious memories, in need of a fix called innocence. - Chuck Shuldiner
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