[Deck] BGu Deathcloud Control

[Mantis]

So after trying a lot of decks I finally found something I really like and that fits my playstyle perfectly. Initially I just ported Extendeds Planeswalker Deatchloud Rock to Legacy and from there on it evolved a bit (for those unfamiliar with the list: http://www.deckcheck.net/list.php?type=Death+Cloud&format=Inv_7th_Lrw).

I immediately took out Golgari Rot Farm because Wasteland, Sinkhole and Vindicate just beat me on the spot if I play Rot Farm. However, Golgari Rot Farm is pretty important to the deck as it ensures no land drops are missed and you can get a pretty large Death Cloud. I tried Living Wish as substitute so you can Wish it up in matchups that lack Wasteland and in all the other cases Living Wish would still be helpful, but alas I really disliked Living Wish as there just weren't any other gamebreaking Wish targets. I then tried Dark Confidant as I already had Top and although contra-intuitive, it actually worked out pretty darn good. My latest addition is Trinket Mage, but I am not entirely sure of this addition yet.

Current decklist:
3 Polluted Delta
2 Windswept Heath
2 Wooded Foothills
6 Forest
5 Swamp
4 Bayou


Creatures
4 Sakura Tribe-Elder
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Dark Confidant
2 Ravenous Baloth (these could become Kitchen Finks, Eternal Witness, Smother, Engineered Explosives or something completely else)

Rest
4 Garruk, Wildspeaker
4 Pernicious Deed
3 Death Cloud
3 Duress
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Sensei's Divinning Top
1 Gaea's Blessing

Sideboard:
1 Gaea's Blessing
4 Leyline of the Void
3 Krosan Grip
4 Kitchen Finks
3 Smother


Old list:
Land
3 Polluted Delta
2 Windswept Heath
2 Wooded Foothills
5 Forest
5 Swamp
3 Bayou
1 Tropical Island
1 Island


Creatures
4 Sakura Tribe-Elder
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Dark Confidant
2 Trinket Mage

Rest
4 Garruk, Wildspeaker
4 Pernicious Deed
3 Death Cloud
3 Duress/Thoughtseize
3 Cabal Therapy
3 Sensei's Divinning Top
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Tormod's Crypt
1 Gaea's Blessing

Sideboard:
1 Gaea's Blessing
4 Leyline of the Void
3 Krosan Grip
4 Kitchen Finks
3 Smother



Let's start off by explaining what the deck is trying to accomplish. Basically this deck has a superb late game, comparable to the lategame Landstill has. Thus it's goal is to drag the game into the lategame and then use Deed and Death Cloud to gain control, Garruk can finish the job from there on. Death Cloud + Garruk is the combination the deck is trying to set up. The rest of the deck is basically geared towards surviving the early game and to avoid missing any land drops, maximizing the Cloud's effectiveness. Therapy is there to force through the Death Cloud. Once Garruk is on board, you can just sac a Beast token to Therapy and follow it up with Death Cloud. Therapy is also great with Trinket Mage and is a sac outlet for Confidant if the damage is racking up.

The sideboard is a bit unfocused and I am definately going to work at that and the numbers in the maindeck are not set in stone yet.

The Gaea's Blessing in the maindeck is probably going to raise some eyebrowes, but I strongly believe the card deserves to be a one of in this kind of deck as it just basically makes the Painter game much, much better and is also good against Ichorid and Loam decks, if you happen to draw it.

Matchup discussion:
My testing has been quite good, although I tend to take the results from MWS with a grain of salt, as skill. Overall the deck just plays a lot of high quality cards such as Deed, Trinket Mage, Confidant and Goyf, combined with a strong manabase thus already giving you a shot in almost every match. I struggle a bit with fast decks such as combo and burn decks and would say those decks are bad matchups.

Landstill
I have been winning a surprisingly high percentage of matches against Landstill. They just don't have a solid answer to Garruk and if I can push through Death Cloud it's game. On the other hand, if they get an early Standstill it's hard to recoup the lost advantge, but seriously just about every deck loses to an early Standstill. The outcome largely depends on playskill from both sides. Therapy should name Standstill here, as that is the card that can single handely wreck you (unless you can get Goyf up before they get Standstill).

Threshold
UGR Threshold is hard, while the UGW Threshold is much easier and quite winnable if you play around Daze as you have numerous ways stalling (Deed, Sakura, Goyf) untill you can get Death Cloud and seal the deal. UGR has a much faster clock against me, thus cards like Daze also become much more relevant and giving you a shorter timespan to find and resolve Death Cloud before you get into burn range. They can burn Garruk and that doesn't help the matchup either. But like I said UGW is a wildly different story and very winnable, burn is just so much better against me than STP and I also don't really care too much about Counterbalance.

Goblins
Against Goblins it really depends, I expected the matchup to be very good for me but testing has shown it can go either way. While I can almost always grab control later in the game, my life total can be very low if Goblins had a fast start and I lose to hasty Ringleaders and Warchiefs or don't have enough life to be able to cast Death Cloud for a sufficient number to lock the game. Not sure about the matchup precentage, but I have a hard time believing it's under 50%, as this deck packs Goyf and Deed, cards Goblins just hates to see.

Dragon Stompy and other stompy variants
Awesome matchup. I just flatout win, always. Their disruption hardly disrupts me. Chalice doesn't stop Deed or Death Cloud, I play a ton of basics so Magus of the Moon is not really an issue.

The deck is just awesome against all kinds of random decks, because Deed and Death Cloud are just almost always good in this format. That's the main selling point of this deck, it only loses to lightning fast decks and just wins against everything else.

Looking forward to your comments,
Mantis.

[TheCramp]

The problem is a deck with a positive match-up vs land still, only struggels against red thresh, has a fair shot against goblins, and flat out wins all their stompy match ups just simply sounds too good to be true.

That said, I really like the idea. Death cloud and Garruk looks tech. I just don't think you have enough exceleration for it to be relevant. So I wonder if pox would not be a more useful card.

I'll toss it together, because I have been wanting to play a BGu contol deck that was not into FoW myself.

Garruk pox seems wacky enough to merit consideration.

[Mantis]

Well, those are my testing results and like I said, you should take them with a grain of salt as they are from MWS, so a lot players there are either bad or expiriment with new decks they are not familiar with. But I don't think I was really exaggerating my matchup results or anything. Anyway, you can see for yourself, don't give up too easily though as the deck takes some practice. Naming stuff correctly with Cabal Therapy is just very hard, I've been playing with Therapy for years now and I am finaly starting to get the hang of it.

Pox + Garruk or any other planeswalker could be decent but not in this deck. Pox just diminishes the resources both players have and this deck really uses all of it's resources. A deck like Eva Green is fine with both players having 1 card in hand, one creature on board and 2 lands, this deck is not. In that position, I am just losing the game flatout. A low life total doesn't work in your favor as well. I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but I doubt it's suitable for this deck.

Anyway, thanks for your comment, good luck testing the deck.

[Jaynel]

I saw some Extended lists running Liliana Vess - does she have a place here? She's great at keeping hand size down post-Deathcloud, and she also reanimates everything you just swept away with Deed or Cloud. I was thinking of replacing Trinket Mage with her; Liliana can do everything Trinket Mage can and more, and not force a third color.

[Mantis]

I originally had Liliana in there, but she felt a bit too slow, however when I get her down it usually meant game. Anyway, post-Cloud you shouldn't have much trouble winning anyway. What I did like about Liliana though, was that when she came into play you could instantly search up Cloud and cast it next turn, so it's kind of a 1 card combo.

I am not too sure about Trinket Mage, but I just had like 3 slots and I didn't know what to put in there. With the addition of Confidant and Cabal Therapy, Trinket Mage became very attractive all of a sudden as it allows me to search up Top for Confidant or it can gain massive card advantage by searching up Explosives and saccing to Therapy. But again, this is the card to take out if you want to replace anything, although it weakens some strategies in the deck.

[Waikiki]

I think the confidant is dangerous with all the high casting costs. I too have been playing a Dead Cloud deck and also made top 8 in a 25 people event (5th place)

Maybe we can combine powers and think about it.

// Lands
4 [A] Bayou
3 [CS] Snow-Covered Forest
2 [ON] Windswept Heath
1 [ON] Wooded Foothills
2 [ON] Polluted Delta
2 [ON] Bloodstained Mire
5 [CS] Snow-Covered Swamp
3 [10E] Treetop Village

// Creatures
4 [WL] Veteran Explorer
4 [LRW] Garruk Wildspeaker
4 [FUT] Tarmogoyf
3 [ON] Ravenous Baloth
2 [FD] Eternal Witness

// Spells
3 [CHK] Sensei's Divining Top
3 [DS] Death Cloud
4 [AP] Pernicious Deed
4 [JU] Cabal Therapy
4 [LRW] Thoughtseize
3 [RAV] Putrefy

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [ON] Ravenous Baloth
SB: 3 [PLC] Extirpate
SB: 2 [TSP] Krosan Grip
SB: 2 [US] Duress
SB: 3 [UL] Engineered Plague
SB: 1 [DIS] Crime/Punishment
SB: 3 [TE] Choke

The goal is to accelerate with explorer/therapy. Baloth + garruk is awesome lifegame. and a cloud after garruk is most of the time GG.

Cards i'd like to find room for are: tombstalker & harmonize.

[Finn]

I have a friend who has a Death Cloud deck without the blue. He has the druids that get you two lands when they die instead of the Trinket Mages, and I recommend this for savage synergy with Death Cloud. For years, he routinely beaten opponents in much the same way mantis claims. And he does not even tweak it. Death Cloud decks have serious potential in Legacy.

[Mantis]

Okay, after some more testing and bearing the comments here in mind I agree that Trinket Mage must go. While he's cute, he's just not good enough.

I'm going to see if Veteran Explorer works here, but I'm afraid giving me opponent lands is something I have to avoid when playing Death Cloud. It looks interesting if you manage to get it in the yard before you play Cloud. But it could have potential I'm going to check it out.

Confidant is the nuts in this deck, with Top you just never miss a land drop and it's so important to ensure you have more lands than your opponent.

Thanks for all the input so far, this has definitely helped me speed up the design process.

[Mordenkaynen]

Can you explain more detailed how the deck works? I mean, I can't imagine how deathcloud can be a good card when smallpox is d.c. @1 twice more expensive and d.c. @2+ is turn 4(3?) or later. Can you write a log from MWS or something like this? Ok, I can see deed here, but still I can't understand how do you win goblins. And how are you so reliant on cloud vs landstill while it has counters, crucible etc.?
I think this needs more explanation.

It may be idiotic, but note shadow of dubt for veteran (also for random disruption, including fetchlands wrecking). But really, veteran+therapy is huge.

[overseer1234]

I used to run a mono black deathcloud deck (mainly for fun). But It seemed a bit to powerfull for "fun play" and a bit to slow for competative play.

So here's my list:

4x Chrome Mox
4x Guardian Idol
4x Phyrexian Totem
4x Talisman of Dominance
4x Talisman of Indulgence
3x Kokusho, the Evening Star
1x Tombstalker
3x Boseiju, Who Shelters All
19x Swamp
3x Liliana Vess
3x Damnation
4x Death Cloud
4x Duress

Sure this deck had lots of weaknesses, but maybe you can use it for idea's :)

[Vimes]

I have a friend who has a Death Cloud deck without the blue. He has the druids that get you two lands when they die instead of the Trinket Mages, and I recommend this for savage synergy with Death Cloud. For years, he routinely beaten opponents in much the same way mantis claims. And he does not even tweak it. Death Cloud decks have serious potential in Legacy.

Mind getting his list? The more sample decklists we can get in this thread the better.

I've loved Cloud ever since block. Making this work would be awesome.

[Mantis]

Can you explain more detailed how the deck works? I mean, I can't imagine how deathcloud can be a good card when smallpox is d.c. @1 twice more expensive and d.c. @2+ is turn 4(3?) or later.
To explain how the deck works: basically you just disrupt, try to hit every land drop with Confidant and Top (these are needed because the Extended version played Golgari Rot Farm, this card is obviously not viable in the Wasteland packed enviroment), and get ahead on lands with Sakura and Topping. You wipe the board with Deed to buy yourself some more time to set up a devastating Cloud with Garruk. Also, a lot of games are just won by Deeding the board and then attacking with Goyf and Beast tokens or by the card advantage Dark Confidant provides.

Death Cloud is a lategame card, it's the card that says 'I win the game.', not the lack of syngery with Smallpox in this deck. That card will probably hurt you more than them in most cases.



Can you write a log from MWS or something like this? Ok, I can see deed here, but still I can't understand how do you win goblins. And how are you so reliant on cloud vs landstill while it has counters, crucible etc.?
I think this needs more explanation.
Sorry couldn't find a log. How to beat Landstill and Goblins:




Now, I'm not saying we've got a 90-10 matchup against Landstill or anything but the matchup just isn't bad and probably quite even. It really depends, if they draw Standstill and you can't get it out of their hand you probably are going to lose, because they can easily answer your Goyfs and Confidants and still have cards left to counter Garruk and Cloud.
Key to winning this match are the discard spells. If you can get the counters out of their hand in the lategame followed by Cloud, you should be good. Basically the only card that hoses them is Death Cloud, but thanks to their slow clock you will usually get it anyway. Treasure Cloud, don't get it countered and you can win this matchup. The reason I like the matchup is because you just have Cloud and that's a card they really can not answer if you pick off their counters. But yeah, it's a hard matchup and the outcome of the 2-3 games will be the most skillful player, but you've got the rogue advan'tage on your side.

Also, I won a game that I shouldn't have won because Landstill was low on life had total control of the board. I had Cloud in my hand and just waited to get either Duress or Therapy, I used it cleared up the coast and killed him with lethal Cloud.

Crucible can be handled by Deed, but it sure is not a card you like to see as it requires additional set up, luckily they mostly don't run it as more than a 1-of if any at all.

The matchup against Goblins; sometimes they overwhelm you. Nothing you can do about that. Other times you have Goyf and Sakura to stall followed by Cloud or Deed and you win. Smother comes in postboard to make things a little better.


It may be idiotic, but note shadow of dubt for veteran (also for random disruption, including fetchlands wrecking). But really, veteran+therapy is huge.
Basically I think Veteran is worse than Sakura in this deck. I tested it yesterday and went back to Sakura in no time after losing two games where my opponent was mana screwed and was able to kick my ass thanks to the high threat density in his hand paired by the lands Explorer gave him. So that's basically the reason I don't like him, he turns games you should easily win thanks to manascrewed opponent into hard battles. Also, if opponent attacks and you chump block with Explorer they get to use the mana first. Also, there are a lot of decks in the format that get really good with a lot of mana, think about Landstill, combo decks and basically any deck with FoW as now they can hardcast the FoW, and probably some more I can't think off right now.

Sakura has some other random advantages like removing Bridge from Below at instant speed, keeping counters off Jitte and being an instant shuffle effect for Top. Also, you don't require a sac outlet to grab a land. Veteran Explorer can be sacced to Therapy which is a huge pro, but for the mentioned points I think Sakura is the better card here.

UPDATE: I figured out a way to make the deck a whole lot better. Enter Living Wish, now I can finally play Golgari Rot Farm against every deck that doesn't play Wasteland, and not miss any land drops anymore. No need for Dark Confidant anymore! Which probably was the worst card in the deck. Other Wish target include, Witness (Therapy shenanigans), Loaming Shaman/Withered Wretch, Viridian Shaman, Kitchen Finks, Ravenous Baloth and perhaps even Sundering Titan. I'm looking for a wish target that completely breaks the Landstill match open, I might splash a Mountain in the maindeck and use Magus of the Moon as a wish target. Suggestions on Wish targets would be appreciated.

Also, this may be blasphemy but I'm not finding Tarmogoyf all that impressive, everyone has answers for him and now that Confidant is gone it might be nice to not have any EE and STP targets in the deck. But still, he's a great beater and singlehandedly steals games sometimes.