[Deck] Specter Aggro

[Vacrix]

Specter Aggro
4 Hypnotic Specter
4 Sedraxis Specter
4 Dark Confidant
4 Thoughtseize
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Brainstorm
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
6 (open slots)

4 Polluted Delta
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Underground Sea
2 Badlands
2 Swamps
2 Island
4 Wasteland

SB:
3 Magus of the Moon
3 Blood Moon
9 (open slots)


The idea is to distrupt with discard turn 1 and then follow up with a specter on asap. I believe that specters are a much different way to approach beating combo. Laying down a meddling mage, trinisphere, chalice, etc is only delaying the inevitable against a competent player playing slow combo. specter has no short term benefits in that when it comes down it cant attack that turn but over time it completely locks out the opponent from doing anything. Mage just sits there, its not a permanent solution.

Daze and FoW help you to stop fast combo. While fast combo rebuilds, you can distrupt with discard and follow up with a specter.

Convinently, both specters are a nice drop against control. Its ok against thresh but thresh has less answers for it. Against landstill and such blood moon effects are a nice side in. Landstill can't counter and remove 6 blood moon effects and 8 specters. And if they do counter that stuff, you will overwhelm them with confidant.

Aggro should be more difficult. I considered running Tainted Specter but its better as a lock once you have control of the board. The problem is there is really no way to get control of the board. I think that running tall men + therapy might be an idea. the tall men would work well with therapy, but it takes away from alot of card space in which case fitting in specter would be pretty hard.

Another idea is to run counter balance/SDT. top also works well with confidant. a way to search for counter/top could be lim-dul's vault, but it seems a little hard to pull off quickly against aggro.

Another idea is Damnation.

Another idea is so removal spells. Terminate comes to mind. So does smother. 8 removal spells? enough??

The other way i originally went was to run 4 carnophage 4 sarcomancy. works well with therapy against combo. slows aggro. answer to lackey.


any ideas?

[GenioDeArena]

This deck is pretty much dedicated towards beating combo G1, so wasting MD spot against aggro seems iffy to me, use SB for that. On the 6 free spots I can see some Mesmeric fiends (I know there is a similar card in Shards, but I cant remember the name) and maybe Jittes for a better clock.
as far as aggro... play aggro loam, or try meekstone or purging scales, blegh, anyways is going to be hard.

[Maveric78f]

You don't want to play wasteland in a deck that plays only 2 cards with colorless mana. I would add 2 other bilands in order to be able to play the specters consistently on turn 3. Eventually, you have 8 open slots. You definitely need an answer to tarmogoyf and friends, and you'll also need answers to mongoose. Explosives may be the best. You'll need 4 additional blue cards too to support FoW. Ponder probably, but I'd like to try sage of epytir instead, because it fixes 2 DC draws and because it provides fuel to cabal therapy.

Edit: I'm not sure daze is the card you need in a deck that requires 3 manas ASAP.

[Media314r8]

I would agree that Jittes belong in the SB, and perhaps some combination of hymn and dark rit for those six slots... in fact, 22 lands seems like a bit much, perhaps you could drop 2 and add the four dark rits, then the last four slots could be hymns- many a game has been won by a first turn duress->hymn, (TS in this case) and first turn hippie with daze/FoW backup is pretty sex. Heck, first turn TS+Bob is hot too, and will immediately replenish the -1 card from the rit, with a tempo gain. D rit defiantly deserves four slots here. Blood moon effects in the SB hardly seem worth slots and a shaky mana-base for- perhaps needles would be a better option.

[rufus]

In principle I really like the idea of CA creatures combined with free counters. I'm not sure about Thoughtseize/Cabal Therapy/Duress in a deck like this.

Is Sidraxis Specter really worth running red for? In Blue/Black, you can run Needle Specter, Augury Adept, Riptider Pilferer, Headhunter, Cold-eyed Selkie, Shriekmaw, Mulldrifter or Dimir Cutpurse, and there are plenty of strong support cards available to UB decks.

Smallpox and other pox-like cards can be quite strong in a deck like this. Shriekmaw is superb. Going a bit afield, there's also Pact of Negation/Parralax Nexus/Trickbind/Stifle.

[GenghisTom]

This deck needs more smallpox and dark ritual.

think about it,

first turn dark rit allows a hippy, a dark confident and duress/thoughtseize, and several other combinations.

Smallpox adds to the discard theme, is possible creature removal, destroys lands (which doesn't necessarily hurt you, considering your mana curve and the fact that you choose when to play it), and supplies a discard outlet for sedraxis specter so you can unearth him.

[jericohs@cottage]

I'd play 4 x Dark Ritual
3 x Ill Gotten Gains
4 x Hymn de Tourach (Instead of Sedraxis Specter)

SO This is how i envision it (plus this is how i use to play the deck):

TURN1
Dark Ritual - H Specter

TURN2
Swing with H Specter (2dmg, 1 discard)
Play Hymn de Tourach (2 discard)

TURN3
Swing with H Specter (2dmg, 1 discard)
Play Thoughtseize (1 discard)

TURN4
Swing with H Specter (2dmg, 1 discard)
Play Ill Gotten Gains fetching DARK RITUAL, HYMN DE TOURACH, THOUGHTSEIZE
Play DR into HdT into Thoughtseize...

It would make opponnents cry cause i was also playing with that 3 cc enchantment that makes your opp lose 2 life for every card discarded from his hand and also with the finisher called UZRA"S GUILT (Draw 7 discard your hand at the end of your turn) hehe.

[Media314r8]

SO This is how i envision it (plus this is how i use to play the deck):

(God-hand makes your opponent discard 10 cards... but involves using IGG to fetch three cards that make your opponent discard the three cards they just got back.. not to mention they lost their hand to topdeck mode around the fourth card you made them discard on turn three...)

It would make opponents cry cause i was also playing with that 3 cc enchantment that makes your opp lose 2 life for every card discarded from his hand and also with the finisher called UZRA"S GUILT (Draw 7 discard your hand at the end of your turn) hehe.

This is admission of 'cool things'. Making suggestions like "Play Megrim and Urza's guilt OMGWTFBBQROFLcopter!!!" discredits your entire post. Making your opponents cry with a god hand, however, is not the goal of this game of magical cards, its to have a fair-good chance of winning any given match with a consistent deck that can handle most decks in the metagame. More constructive criticism please. A post of "Include dark rit and hymn" would have been more constructive and carried more credibility and professionalism.

[jericohs@cottage]

This is admission of 'cool things'. Making suggestions like "Play Megrim and Urza's guilt OMGWTFBBQROFLcopter!!!" discredits your entire post. Making your opponents cry with a god hand, however, is not the goal of this game of magical cards, its to have a fair-good chance of winning any given match with a consistent deck that can handle most decks in the metagame. More constructive criticism please. A post of "Include dark rit and hymn" would have been more constructive and carried more credibility and professionalism.

WTF buddy. You don't have to play it that way if you don't want to. I was merely suggesting that if the poster is going for that type of deck.... A deck that was played over 5 years ago, that he or she might consider how the deck was configured. I never once claimed it was presently format breaking. The deck i was suggesting was a deck that owned the meta 5 years ago. And it was consistent and viable at the time.

You don't think that by playing 4 of's of the following you wouldn't get the consistency? It has nothing to do with a nut draw or god hand. That's how it was played 5 years ago.

A consistent 1st turn Hypno into the 2nd turn Hymn was a regular occurence with the deck. Regardless if Megrim was down or not, he would suffer because he was in topdeck mode. Otherwise, by mid-game the opponnent often suffered 18-20 pts of dmg with the Megrim/IGG or Megrim / Uzra's Guilt combo...

The poster might wanna revisit it. I'm not going to be negative and shoot down your post. Why are you shooting mine when i used to play this archtype a long time ago. I never once criticized anyone...

Furthermore, if you want cold hard facts. Sedraxis Specter is horrible because its try-color and his inclusion of magus will surely screw him over. Hypno is random discard, that's what made it good. And, even today do you see anyone playing Hypno? Sedraxis is even more horrible when you think about it since its tri-color and not random discard. Unearth is kinda kool but why would you even bother in a format that you can play Hymn de Tourach??? Is that what you wanted for me to be overly critical???

I thought that a mere suggestion on how the original format breaking deck used to work 5 years ago was enough but you wanted to be that way.... chill out.

Back to Magus, you can't honnestly think that you'll board him in. You have only 4 fetches that will get your 2 swamps and 2 islands. You sideboard him in and you'll likely favor your opponent's match up... comon. Consider the fact that your rushing early game to develop your mana for sedraxis and double black for hypno....your telling me that on third turn in round two you'll slap a magus on the table?

Media, you should start by trying to hear a brother out on this one. I know what i'm talking about here. The posters deck isn't as good as lists of the past using only black and blue, megrim, uzra's guilt and IGG...

[jericohs@cottage]

Specter Aggro
4 Hypnotic Specter
4 Sedraxis Specter
4 Dark Confidant
4 Thoughtseize
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Brainstorm
4 Daze
4 Force of Will
6 (open slots)

4 Polluted Delta
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Underground Sea
2 Badlands
2 Swamps
2 Island
4 Wasteland

SB:
3 Magus of the Moon
3 Blood Moon
9 (open slots)


The idea is to distrupt with discard turn 1 and then follow up with a specter on asap. I believe that specters are a much different way to approach beating combo. Laying down a meddling mage, trinisphere, chalice, etc is only delaying the inevitable against a competent player playing slow combo. specter has no short term benefits in that when it comes down it cant attack that turn but over time it completely locks out the opponent from doing anything. Mage just sits there, its not a permanent solution.

Daze and FoW help you to stop fast combo. While fast combo rebuilds, you can distrupt with discard and follow up with a specter.

Convinently, both specters are a nice drop against control. Its ok against thresh but thresh has less answers for it. Against landstill and such blood moon effects are a nice side in. Landstill can't counter and remove 6 blood moon effects and 8 specters. And if they do counter that stuff, you will overwhelm them with confidant.

Aggro should be more difficult. I considered running Tainted Specter but its better as a lock once you have control of the board. The problem is there is really no way to get control of the board. I think that running tall men + therapy might be an idea. the tall men would work well with therapy, but it takes away from alot of card space in which case fitting in specter would be pretty hard.

Another idea is to run counter balance/SDT. top also works well with confidant. a way to search for counter/top could be lim-dul's vault, but it seems a little hard to pull off quickly against aggro.

Another idea is Damnation.

Another idea is so removal spells. Terminate comes to mind. So does smother. 8 removal spells? enough??

The other way i originally went was to run 4 carnophage 4 sarcomancy. works well with therapy against combo. slows aggro. answer to lackey.


any ideas?


So Vacrix, pay no attention to the last post. I like your list a lot. It's one of my favorite archtype of 'ol. However, I don't like Sedraxis and your Side-boarded Magus of the moon. Surely, you have considered Hymn de Tourach and....

and i don't think sedraxis is bad in a vacumm. just not in the deck you have at the moment. Either keep hypno or him. And, to be honnest hypno is better, IMO.

I just thought of this, he's a morph and flips to make an opp discard. Not too awesome but he had cc 1. Hmmm.... one sec, i'll take a look to see if i can locate the name of the card.