Laertes
02-18-2010, 08:26 PM
I recognize that Living Death is not a Deck to Beat. But I do want to note that those pillars of the metagame started out as suboptimal decks that have 1) had cards printed that improve the deck 2) had innovations made by collaborations 3) were merged with other successful strategies. I think that knowing builds that could become good opens up the possibility of bringing a deck that both strong and unexpected. Hey, if Itty Bitty Kitty Committee can be posted, I can't feel guilty.
Land (21)
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Misty rainforest
3 Bayou
1 Underground Sea
4 Forest
3 Swamp
1 Island
1 Volrath’s Stronhold
3 Phyrexian Tower
Spells (16)
4 Living Death ( abbreviated LD in here)
3 Pernicious Deed
3 Intuition
4 Cabal Therapy
2 Trinket Targets ( Tormod’s Crypt , Engineered Explosives)
Creatures (23)
6 mana (4 Veteran Explorer, 2 Wall of Roots)
2 Shriekmaw
4 Eternal Witness
2 Tinket Mage
2 Disruption (1Curse Catcher, 1 Mesmeric Fiend) or 2 Tarmogoyf
1 Manowar / Aethersnipe
2 Life Creatures( Kitchen Finks, Darkheart Sliver)
1 Fleshbag Marauder
1 Wall of Blossoms
Chaff Creatures
1 Skullmuncher
1 Peregrine Drake
Why Play it?
The primary reason why I wanted to play this deck is because it can kill all the opposing creatures repeatedly. If I take off the timmy badge for a second, and give a closer look to the metagame: Menendian’s breakdown of the 16 most popular archtypes from StL 5k are: Dredge, Merfolk, Canadian Thresh, Countertop-Goyf, White Stax, Eva Green, BGW, Ad Nauseum, Zoo, 43 Land, Agro Loam, Goblins, Reanimator, Entomb Hulk, Burn, Team America.
Non-reliant upon creatures are: White Stax (can wait until mana lock to play Magus), Ad Nauseum, 43 Land, Entomb Hulk. Looks like they total about 11-13% of the field.
The decks with creatures and burn are Canadian Thresh (8 spells), Zoo (about 12 spells), Agro Loam (seismic assault), and burn. The general point is this, with only light burn and a low percentage of creatureless strategies, most of the game depends on creatures to win. Living Death can clear their field over and over. There are clearly more specific match-ups to focus on, but I’m just starting with the big-picture.
It would be easy to load up with a cycling and evoking army, similar to an Open the Vaults deck from standard. That would be too dependent of LD and predictable. A better choice is a rock-like build, where the creatures could pull their own weight.
How It Works
With one Eternal Witness in play and one in the discard, you can cast LD each of your turns. With good enter the battlefield abilities, you could control any creatures your opponent gets back. By itself it is slow grinding. If you can stabilize, games gravitate towards this soft lock.
The faster, full recursion is: Eternal Witness, Skullmuncher , and Peregrine Drake in the graveyard. Cast LD, return LD with witness, untap 5 lands with Drake, Devour all creatures to Skullmuncher, draw 3+ devour cards and other enter play/leave play abilities, recast Living Death. Once you have cleared the opponent’s creatures (tormod’s crypt or manowar + mesmeric fiend) you should have a nice army and a full hand. You may have huge life from Kitchen Finks or Darkheart Sliver. You may get your Wall of Roots to get the mana to play your hand. Attack for a lot next turn. There is no immediate win condition, unless Anger or storm spell dilutes the deck.
Sure, Swords to Plowshares and Path to Exile ruin it if used on key creatures. Just keep on getting the card advantage from LD if possible.
Mana
The manabase is an ugly but resilient. The deck craves basic lands for Veteran Explorers. At the same time it wants to select the best creatures from all the colors. The average casting cost is high – as demanded by the key cards (1GG witness and 3BB Living Death).
Blue is not a high priority early. Blue mana often comes after a Veteran Explorer hits the discard pile. Most games a single blue source is all that is needed. Black is different. BB is required to cast the key spell. Roughly four basic swamps are needed to do two Living Deaths in a turn without Peregrine Drake. Green is needed for most creatures. Unless wastelands threaten early, you should fetch only dual lands and keep the basics for Veteran Explorer. Memorizing the amount of each basic in your deck is sometimes required to predict how much mana you will have after killing Explorers with LD.
I edited in Phyrexian Tower after I saw it mentioned in one of the demon stompy threads. Total synnergy with the rest of the stuff here. It gets one one extra mana every time you cast living death if Perigrine Drake comes in. It lets you kill off your own dudes for cleaner Living deaths. If you needed to, you could even play turn 1 veteran explorer, turn 2 Phyrexian Tower in to Living Death. Too bad this thing is Legendary.
Veteran Explorers really make it possible to hit 3BB consistently. Their ability seems semetrical, but in reality few decks that have 4+ basic lands will cast high cost spells or use as much mana in a turn as LD. Yes, white stax has a lot plains and can use them, but how happy will they be about you fixing your mana, really?
Walls of Roots instead of tap creatures so that they can produce mana in between Living Deaths. You can cast your entire hand with one wall in full recursion.
Non-Creature Spells
Intuition sets up big Living Deaths, or grabs Living Death. My typical pile is Skullmuncher, Drake, Eternal Witness. It is true that Buried Alive is better at putting all 3 in the yard together. Intuition’s instant-ness and ability to grab LD makes it the better choice.
Pernicious Deed is here to keep the deck from being too gimmicky. It really needs answers that aren’t creatures: some way to zag when the rest of the cards are a threaten to zig. Sweeping your own creatures isn’t too painful with this build. Deeds are the maindeck answers to counterbalance. Dirty deed can handle an army before 5 mana is available. With the help of Cabal Therapy and Veteran Explorer, you can detonate all the 2/2 zombie and goblin tokens on turn 2. Deed doesn’t play well with Survival of the Fittest, so that limits my possibilities with that potential addition. Pernicious Deed can answer many hate cards against this deck like Tormod’s Crypt and Ethersworn Cannonist.
Cabal Therapy is auto 4x. It starts to give you some game against combo, a match up that is otherwise terrible. It lets you peek to see if your opponents is clear of countermagic to freely cast the big equalizer. Flashing back is a pivotal choice. It is usually more than just, “ Do I want another dude to come back from LD?” Instead allowing you to sculpt the 3 graveyard creatures needed for full recursion. You can always play like dredge and target yourself to discard the 3rd intuition card. Don’t forget that sacrificing is the flashback cost and can be used even if the spell is countered by Chalice of the Void and Counterbalance.
Living Death has a couple things not yet mentioned. Counterbalance needs to have a 5CC( FoW )in order to counter. Sometimes, just playing LD once, especially if unexpected, can cause a big enough change in board position to win. The first LD is usually a ‘wrath you, I put bodies back’. The subsequent ones may be less spectacular without crypt or good enter play abilities.
Creatures
I originally dreamed of having an army of Shriekmaws and Kitchen Finks. As I assembled I knew that wouldn’t work so well. Kitchen Finks have some competition. The 3 mana slot is contested by Intuition, Deed, and Eternal Witness. One Finks remains and the Spike Feeder evolved into the lower casting cost Darkheart Sliver. Shriekmaw is clearly the best black dude that kills someone when he enters. If there are too many Shriekmaws then there are no answers for protection/artifact/shroud/black creatures. Manowar and Fleshbag are to deal with them. The Fleshbag Marauder and Shriekmaw can kill your creatures before a Living Death or an ignored Explorer. If your opponent has a bunch of creatures in the yard, you can bounce them all with Manowar and full recursion.
Trinket Mage - He grabs Engineered Explosives and Tormod’s Crypt. I tried one Graveyard hate creature and found that I wanted more. Unfortunately, I’m not finding enough artifacts to really use him effectively. I have been disappointed with Aether Vial and Artifact Land. Pithing Needle I’m still on the fence about.
I’ve been trying to find a strong set of disruptive creatures. At the moment there is just a single Curse Catcher and Mesmeric Fiend. None of the sacrificeable counter-magic creatures have impressed. The Fiend has the nice synergy with Manowar in full recursion to stack enter abilities like: bounce opponent dude, Skullmuncher eats your team, then Fiend steals the bounced dude. Have to trigger it in reverse order. Not 100% on the rules on that yet.
Skullmuncher is the cream of the crap. There is a large selection of creatures that allow you to kill all your creatures – anything with devour will. Carrion Feeder is the other real contender. The muncher was selected because he also draws a card for each devoured creature – thus allowing you to draw all your cards with 2 buddies (Witness and Drake) in the ‘yard and LD played. No Wall of Blossoms, Coiling Oracle, or Mulldrifter required.
Peregrine Drake untaps 5 lands after you cast Living Death. He also chumpblocks fliers.
Sideboard
You are likely to catch all the graveyard hate for dredge and storm hate, so games 2 and 3 Plan B is necessary.
Plan B: 4 Natural Order, 1 Progenitus, 1 Dryad Arbor. (remember the 5 fetches get forest). The 6 that go out are often non-green guys like Mesmeric Fiend, Fleshbag, Curse Catcher, 1 Trinket, 1 Living Death, or Intuitions.
That leaves 9 slots left.
1 Yixlid Jailer
3 Ley Line of the Void
2 Duress – over Krosan Grip. Used VS counterbalance , white stax, and combo.
1 Kitchen Finks
2 Innocent Blood
Card Considerations
Aethersnipe: Clearly better than manowar post LD. If you want to go heavier blue he's arguably better.
Vendillion Clique : I think I should make room for 1. He helps VS control and slow combo. He can mill opponents out in some circumstances.
Coiling Oracle: Blossom performs similarly, is more durable with 4 toughness, and doesn’t require early blue. Putting lands into play would be fun, though.
Sakura – Tribe Elder: Veteran Explorer fills this role better. He may work in addition to four Veterans, but once all your basics are in play it doesn’t matter how many basic land searchers you have.
Tinder Wall: A big boost in speed, but it certainly doesn’t pull its weight without LD.
Azusa, Lost but Seeking: Would be really fun when you are in recursion, but is simply win-more.
Mulldrifter: 3CC has competition already. 2CC Blossoms gets you a card and has a body ASAP. If you are casting LD all you want, then drawing 1 more card every time is irrelevant. The terrible Skullmuncher gets you cards, if you’ve hit that point, too.
Rishidan Cutpurse: 2B and when he enters play all opponents must pay 1 or sacrifice a permanent. Seems like the most versitile recursion creature not in the deck. He eliminates all opposing non-creature permanents. On his own, he will at best kill a land. I doubt people will sacrifice counterbalance or goyf and such. Plus, you will probably give them land with Explorers.
Fulminator Mage: You give your opponent land with Explorers, so he is only good against utility lands or in full recursion win-more mode.
LimDuhl’s Vault: looks solid. But what is the vault better than?
Viridian Zealot: why can’t you be mono green Qasali Pridemage? Is it worth it to add white just for Qasali’s clear superiority? I opted to remove the zealots, and instead rely upon the Deeds.
Psychotog: one of the better creatures that act as a discard outlet. Situationally good, but not consistent impact.
Vampire Hexmage - He can always sac himself. He might be a lightning rod for countermagic if people expect Dark Depths ; )
Skingscourger - If a red splash were desired, he would definately be on the list.
Match Ups
Dredge: Ways to kill your own guys to remove Bridge From Below? Check. Maindeck graveyard hate? Check. Ways to clear all the 2/2 zombies? Check. Looks good.
White Stax: Focus on Veteran Explorers and walls to even up the mana. Magus of the Tabernacle and Smoke Stacks can help you sacrifice them, too. Pernicious Deeds sure pull their weight.
Merfolk: If they expect LD and save countermagic for it, you probably lose. It may be good to delay playing islands to prevent islandwalk. They might forget that your Cursecatcher gets Lord’s bonus? Go deed.
Canadian Thresh: Same FoW and Daze as merfolk, but no Cursecatcher. Put as many bodies in the way as you can, LD and Pernicious can make the big swings in position later.
Countertop – Goyf: Try to keep CB off the board with Cabal Therapy and Deed. Living Death or Fleshbag Marauder may give Progenitus a heart attack. StP will probably prevent full recursion, so Intuition for card advantage rather than combo.
Eva Green: LD has few answers to Tombstalker. Hope to Manowar him ; ) Opponents who don’t know what you are playing may eat Tarmogoyfs out of the grave to pay for Tombstalker. You will probably have to discard LD, so get lucky topdecking another LD, Intuition, or Witness. An early crypt may keep Tombstalker off the board.
Ad Nauseum: Looks tough. Throw Cabal Therapies early and try to combo out quicker than them. Graveyard hate may force them away from an Ill-Gotten Gains route. Throw any attacks you have to diminish cards from Ad Nauseum. Don’t kill Veteran Explorer before you can combo, lest As Nauseum get precious lands into play for free and use them against you.
Zoo: It has no counter magic or disruption. As long as you hit a life gainer to neutralize the lightning it is winnable. Mulligan a slow hand.
43 Land: Deed away Mox Diamond, Manabond, and Exploration. Remove graveyard, preferably when loam is in without a cycle available. Outnumbering the blockers and mazes could be tricky. Attacking into the creature-lands, then LD in main phase 2 may be big if they don’t have Life from the Loam online. Your manabase has many basics to resist wasteland lock. Tabernacle isn’t too troublesome because you have a lot of land in play when you have a lot of creatures.
Agro Loam: Same Loam plan as 43land. Now at least there are creatures to hit with LD.
Goblins: Turn 1 Veteran Explorer is what you mulligan for. Block Goblin Lacky and ramp mana to resist Wasteland and
Rishidan Port. Second turn wall on the play isn’t bad, either. Goblins can hardcast their Ringleaders and Siege-Gang Commanders from fetching 2 basics, but you can’t avoid it. Of course, Pernicious Deed is big again. If you cast Living Death, goblins may benefit more than you due to Matrons, Ringleaders, Stingscourgers, etc.
Reanimator: Clearly, the plan is find Tormod’s ASAP. Respond to Exhume with intuition for Fleshbag Marauder, Manowar, and Trinket Mage, if possible. Many reanimators have only 6 or so creatures, so LD may not be bad if their discard pile is bare or manageable with enter battlefield effects.
Entomb-Hulk: Ouch. Fight with Cabal Therapies, Crypt, and disruption creatures. I’m not an expert with the mechanics of Hulk, but this is clearly a bad match-up.
Team America: A lethal cocktail of troublesome Tombstalker, dastardly discard, and cowardly countermagic. Try to get them to use the countermagic on creatures and bring them all back with LD, if you can.
Enchantress: Yet to try, but seems very good. If they have no maindeck Wheel of Sun and Moon, they have to play the aggressor. You have lots of ways to remove the Enchantress creature. All their enchantments are irrelevant once you hit full recursion. Just deed away Elephant Grass, Moat, etc. Like the Ad Nauseum match, don’t let them use Veteran Explorer land before you are ready to combo.
Survival: may becoming more popular now as a DTB. Its ability to load up a graveyard faster and have a better clock is serious. “in response to Living Death I’ll pitch Iona to survival”etc…
Responses I would like
Suggestions for other Trinket Mage targets (art lands, pithing needle, vail have tried)
3 Eternal Witness instead of 4?
Utility Creatures or Tarmogoyf? Utility creatures are not going to force the opponent to use swords or countermagic – thus goyf enables the other cards to happen.
White for Qasali x2? It would take adding plains X1 and Savannah?
Addendum:
The Survival version would be:
-3 intuition
-2 trinket mage
-1 tormod’s crypt
-1 engineered explosives
-1 eternal witness
-1 island -1 forest + 1 savannah + 1 plains
+ 4 Survival of the Fittest
+ 1 Krovikan Horror / Squee
+ 2 Qasali Pridemage
+1 Graveyard Hater ( Loaming shaman / withered wretch / puppeteer clique )
Krovikan will allow a Kill the turn you hit full recursion as long as you use Wall of Roots for mana every cycle. I don't mind the conflict between Survival and Pernicious Deed too much. Just play deed first. If you use it, then no conflict. If you arn't ready to use it, you can play survival and build a combo graveyard and get E witness in hand.
Land (21)
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Misty rainforest
3 Bayou
1 Underground Sea
4 Forest
3 Swamp
1 Island
1 Volrath’s Stronhold
3 Phyrexian Tower
Spells (16)
4 Living Death ( abbreviated LD in here)
3 Pernicious Deed
3 Intuition
4 Cabal Therapy
2 Trinket Targets ( Tormod’s Crypt , Engineered Explosives)
Creatures (23)
6 mana (4 Veteran Explorer, 2 Wall of Roots)
2 Shriekmaw
4 Eternal Witness
2 Tinket Mage
2 Disruption (1Curse Catcher, 1 Mesmeric Fiend) or 2 Tarmogoyf
1 Manowar / Aethersnipe
2 Life Creatures( Kitchen Finks, Darkheart Sliver)
1 Fleshbag Marauder
1 Wall of Blossoms
Chaff Creatures
1 Skullmuncher
1 Peregrine Drake
Why Play it?
The primary reason why I wanted to play this deck is because it can kill all the opposing creatures repeatedly. If I take off the timmy badge for a second, and give a closer look to the metagame: Menendian’s breakdown of the 16 most popular archtypes from StL 5k are: Dredge, Merfolk, Canadian Thresh, Countertop-Goyf, White Stax, Eva Green, BGW, Ad Nauseum, Zoo, 43 Land, Agro Loam, Goblins, Reanimator, Entomb Hulk, Burn, Team America.
Non-reliant upon creatures are: White Stax (can wait until mana lock to play Magus), Ad Nauseum, 43 Land, Entomb Hulk. Looks like they total about 11-13% of the field.
The decks with creatures and burn are Canadian Thresh (8 spells), Zoo (about 12 spells), Agro Loam (seismic assault), and burn. The general point is this, with only light burn and a low percentage of creatureless strategies, most of the game depends on creatures to win. Living Death can clear their field over and over. There are clearly more specific match-ups to focus on, but I’m just starting with the big-picture.
It would be easy to load up with a cycling and evoking army, similar to an Open the Vaults deck from standard. That would be too dependent of LD and predictable. A better choice is a rock-like build, where the creatures could pull their own weight.
How It Works
With one Eternal Witness in play and one in the discard, you can cast LD each of your turns. With good enter the battlefield abilities, you could control any creatures your opponent gets back. By itself it is slow grinding. If you can stabilize, games gravitate towards this soft lock.
The faster, full recursion is: Eternal Witness, Skullmuncher , and Peregrine Drake in the graveyard. Cast LD, return LD with witness, untap 5 lands with Drake, Devour all creatures to Skullmuncher, draw 3+ devour cards and other enter play/leave play abilities, recast Living Death. Once you have cleared the opponent’s creatures (tormod’s crypt or manowar + mesmeric fiend) you should have a nice army and a full hand. You may have huge life from Kitchen Finks or Darkheart Sliver. You may get your Wall of Roots to get the mana to play your hand. Attack for a lot next turn. There is no immediate win condition, unless Anger or storm spell dilutes the deck.
Sure, Swords to Plowshares and Path to Exile ruin it if used on key creatures. Just keep on getting the card advantage from LD if possible.
Mana
The manabase is an ugly but resilient. The deck craves basic lands for Veteran Explorers. At the same time it wants to select the best creatures from all the colors. The average casting cost is high – as demanded by the key cards (1GG witness and 3BB Living Death).
Blue is not a high priority early. Blue mana often comes after a Veteran Explorer hits the discard pile. Most games a single blue source is all that is needed. Black is different. BB is required to cast the key spell. Roughly four basic swamps are needed to do two Living Deaths in a turn without Peregrine Drake. Green is needed for most creatures. Unless wastelands threaten early, you should fetch only dual lands and keep the basics for Veteran Explorer. Memorizing the amount of each basic in your deck is sometimes required to predict how much mana you will have after killing Explorers with LD.
I edited in Phyrexian Tower after I saw it mentioned in one of the demon stompy threads. Total synnergy with the rest of the stuff here. It gets one one extra mana every time you cast living death if Perigrine Drake comes in. It lets you kill off your own dudes for cleaner Living deaths. If you needed to, you could even play turn 1 veteran explorer, turn 2 Phyrexian Tower in to Living Death. Too bad this thing is Legendary.
Veteran Explorers really make it possible to hit 3BB consistently. Their ability seems semetrical, but in reality few decks that have 4+ basic lands will cast high cost spells or use as much mana in a turn as LD. Yes, white stax has a lot plains and can use them, but how happy will they be about you fixing your mana, really?
Walls of Roots instead of tap creatures so that they can produce mana in between Living Deaths. You can cast your entire hand with one wall in full recursion.
Non-Creature Spells
Intuition sets up big Living Deaths, or grabs Living Death. My typical pile is Skullmuncher, Drake, Eternal Witness. It is true that Buried Alive is better at putting all 3 in the yard together. Intuition’s instant-ness and ability to grab LD makes it the better choice.
Pernicious Deed is here to keep the deck from being too gimmicky. It really needs answers that aren’t creatures: some way to zag when the rest of the cards are a threaten to zig. Sweeping your own creatures isn’t too painful with this build. Deeds are the maindeck answers to counterbalance. Dirty deed can handle an army before 5 mana is available. With the help of Cabal Therapy and Veteran Explorer, you can detonate all the 2/2 zombie and goblin tokens on turn 2. Deed doesn’t play well with Survival of the Fittest, so that limits my possibilities with that potential addition. Pernicious Deed can answer many hate cards against this deck like Tormod’s Crypt and Ethersworn Cannonist.
Cabal Therapy is auto 4x. It starts to give you some game against combo, a match up that is otherwise terrible. It lets you peek to see if your opponents is clear of countermagic to freely cast the big equalizer. Flashing back is a pivotal choice. It is usually more than just, “ Do I want another dude to come back from LD?” Instead allowing you to sculpt the 3 graveyard creatures needed for full recursion. You can always play like dredge and target yourself to discard the 3rd intuition card. Don’t forget that sacrificing is the flashback cost and can be used even if the spell is countered by Chalice of the Void and Counterbalance.
Living Death has a couple things not yet mentioned. Counterbalance needs to have a 5CC( FoW )in order to counter. Sometimes, just playing LD once, especially if unexpected, can cause a big enough change in board position to win. The first LD is usually a ‘wrath you, I put bodies back’. The subsequent ones may be less spectacular without crypt or good enter play abilities.
Creatures
I originally dreamed of having an army of Shriekmaws and Kitchen Finks. As I assembled I knew that wouldn’t work so well. Kitchen Finks have some competition. The 3 mana slot is contested by Intuition, Deed, and Eternal Witness. One Finks remains and the Spike Feeder evolved into the lower casting cost Darkheart Sliver. Shriekmaw is clearly the best black dude that kills someone when he enters. If there are too many Shriekmaws then there are no answers for protection/artifact/shroud/black creatures. Manowar and Fleshbag are to deal with them. The Fleshbag Marauder and Shriekmaw can kill your creatures before a Living Death or an ignored Explorer. If your opponent has a bunch of creatures in the yard, you can bounce them all with Manowar and full recursion.
Trinket Mage - He grabs Engineered Explosives and Tormod’s Crypt. I tried one Graveyard hate creature and found that I wanted more. Unfortunately, I’m not finding enough artifacts to really use him effectively. I have been disappointed with Aether Vial and Artifact Land. Pithing Needle I’m still on the fence about.
I’ve been trying to find a strong set of disruptive creatures. At the moment there is just a single Curse Catcher and Mesmeric Fiend. None of the sacrificeable counter-magic creatures have impressed. The Fiend has the nice synergy with Manowar in full recursion to stack enter abilities like: bounce opponent dude, Skullmuncher eats your team, then Fiend steals the bounced dude. Have to trigger it in reverse order. Not 100% on the rules on that yet.
Skullmuncher is the cream of the crap. There is a large selection of creatures that allow you to kill all your creatures – anything with devour will. Carrion Feeder is the other real contender. The muncher was selected because he also draws a card for each devoured creature – thus allowing you to draw all your cards with 2 buddies (Witness and Drake) in the ‘yard and LD played. No Wall of Blossoms, Coiling Oracle, or Mulldrifter required.
Peregrine Drake untaps 5 lands after you cast Living Death. He also chumpblocks fliers.
Sideboard
You are likely to catch all the graveyard hate for dredge and storm hate, so games 2 and 3 Plan B is necessary.
Plan B: 4 Natural Order, 1 Progenitus, 1 Dryad Arbor. (remember the 5 fetches get forest). The 6 that go out are often non-green guys like Mesmeric Fiend, Fleshbag, Curse Catcher, 1 Trinket, 1 Living Death, or Intuitions.
That leaves 9 slots left.
1 Yixlid Jailer
3 Ley Line of the Void
2 Duress – over Krosan Grip. Used VS counterbalance , white stax, and combo.
1 Kitchen Finks
2 Innocent Blood
Card Considerations
Aethersnipe: Clearly better than manowar post LD. If you want to go heavier blue he's arguably better.
Vendillion Clique : I think I should make room for 1. He helps VS control and slow combo. He can mill opponents out in some circumstances.
Coiling Oracle: Blossom performs similarly, is more durable with 4 toughness, and doesn’t require early blue. Putting lands into play would be fun, though.
Sakura – Tribe Elder: Veteran Explorer fills this role better. He may work in addition to four Veterans, but once all your basics are in play it doesn’t matter how many basic land searchers you have.
Tinder Wall: A big boost in speed, but it certainly doesn’t pull its weight without LD.
Azusa, Lost but Seeking: Would be really fun when you are in recursion, but is simply win-more.
Mulldrifter: 3CC has competition already. 2CC Blossoms gets you a card and has a body ASAP. If you are casting LD all you want, then drawing 1 more card every time is irrelevant. The terrible Skullmuncher gets you cards, if you’ve hit that point, too.
Rishidan Cutpurse: 2B and when he enters play all opponents must pay 1 or sacrifice a permanent. Seems like the most versitile recursion creature not in the deck. He eliminates all opposing non-creature permanents. On his own, he will at best kill a land. I doubt people will sacrifice counterbalance or goyf and such. Plus, you will probably give them land with Explorers.
Fulminator Mage: You give your opponent land with Explorers, so he is only good against utility lands or in full recursion win-more mode.
LimDuhl’s Vault: looks solid. But what is the vault better than?
Viridian Zealot: why can’t you be mono green Qasali Pridemage? Is it worth it to add white just for Qasali’s clear superiority? I opted to remove the zealots, and instead rely upon the Deeds.
Psychotog: one of the better creatures that act as a discard outlet. Situationally good, but not consistent impact.
Vampire Hexmage - He can always sac himself. He might be a lightning rod for countermagic if people expect Dark Depths ; )
Skingscourger - If a red splash were desired, he would definately be on the list.
Match Ups
Dredge: Ways to kill your own guys to remove Bridge From Below? Check. Maindeck graveyard hate? Check. Ways to clear all the 2/2 zombies? Check. Looks good.
White Stax: Focus on Veteran Explorers and walls to even up the mana. Magus of the Tabernacle and Smoke Stacks can help you sacrifice them, too. Pernicious Deeds sure pull their weight.
Merfolk: If they expect LD and save countermagic for it, you probably lose. It may be good to delay playing islands to prevent islandwalk. They might forget that your Cursecatcher gets Lord’s bonus? Go deed.
Canadian Thresh: Same FoW and Daze as merfolk, but no Cursecatcher. Put as many bodies in the way as you can, LD and Pernicious can make the big swings in position later.
Countertop – Goyf: Try to keep CB off the board with Cabal Therapy and Deed. Living Death or Fleshbag Marauder may give Progenitus a heart attack. StP will probably prevent full recursion, so Intuition for card advantage rather than combo.
Eva Green: LD has few answers to Tombstalker. Hope to Manowar him ; ) Opponents who don’t know what you are playing may eat Tarmogoyfs out of the grave to pay for Tombstalker. You will probably have to discard LD, so get lucky topdecking another LD, Intuition, or Witness. An early crypt may keep Tombstalker off the board.
Ad Nauseum: Looks tough. Throw Cabal Therapies early and try to combo out quicker than them. Graveyard hate may force them away from an Ill-Gotten Gains route. Throw any attacks you have to diminish cards from Ad Nauseum. Don’t kill Veteran Explorer before you can combo, lest As Nauseum get precious lands into play for free and use them against you.
Zoo: It has no counter magic or disruption. As long as you hit a life gainer to neutralize the lightning it is winnable. Mulligan a slow hand.
43 Land: Deed away Mox Diamond, Manabond, and Exploration. Remove graveyard, preferably when loam is in without a cycle available. Outnumbering the blockers and mazes could be tricky. Attacking into the creature-lands, then LD in main phase 2 may be big if they don’t have Life from the Loam online. Your manabase has many basics to resist wasteland lock. Tabernacle isn’t too troublesome because you have a lot of land in play when you have a lot of creatures.
Agro Loam: Same Loam plan as 43land. Now at least there are creatures to hit with LD.
Goblins: Turn 1 Veteran Explorer is what you mulligan for. Block Goblin Lacky and ramp mana to resist Wasteland and
Rishidan Port. Second turn wall on the play isn’t bad, either. Goblins can hardcast their Ringleaders and Siege-Gang Commanders from fetching 2 basics, but you can’t avoid it. Of course, Pernicious Deed is big again. If you cast Living Death, goblins may benefit more than you due to Matrons, Ringleaders, Stingscourgers, etc.
Reanimator: Clearly, the plan is find Tormod’s ASAP. Respond to Exhume with intuition for Fleshbag Marauder, Manowar, and Trinket Mage, if possible. Many reanimators have only 6 or so creatures, so LD may not be bad if their discard pile is bare or manageable with enter battlefield effects.
Entomb-Hulk: Ouch. Fight with Cabal Therapies, Crypt, and disruption creatures. I’m not an expert with the mechanics of Hulk, but this is clearly a bad match-up.
Team America: A lethal cocktail of troublesome Tombstalker, dastardly discard, and cowardly countermagic. Try to get them to use the countermagic on creatures and bring them all back with LD, if you can.
Enchantress: Yet to try, but seems very good. If they have no maindeck Wheel of Sun and Moon, they have to play the aggressor. You have lots of ways to remove the Enchantress creature. All their enchantments are irrelevant once you hit full recursion. Just deed away Elephant Grass, Moat, etc. Like the Ad Nauseum match, don’t let them use Veteran Explorer land before you are ready to combo.
Survival: may becoming more popular now as a DTB. Its ability to load up a graveyard faster and have a better clock is serious. “in response to Living Death I’ll pitch Iona to survival”etc…
Responses I would like
Suggestions for other Trinket Mage targets (art lands, pithing needle, vail have tried)
3 Eternal Witness instead of 4?
Utility Creatures or Tarmogoyf? Utility creatures are not going to force the opponent to use swords or countermagic – thus goyf enables the other cards to happen.
White for Qasali x2? It would take adding plains X1 and Savannah?
Addendum:
The Survival version would be:
-3 intuition
-2 trinket mage
-1 tormod’s crypt
-1 engineered explosives
-1 eternal witness
-1 island -1 forest + 1 savannah + 1 plains
+ 4 Survival of the Fittest
+ 1 Krovikan Horror / Squee
+ 2 Qasali Pridemage
+1 Graveyard Hater ( Loaming shaman / withered wretch / puppeteer clique )
Krovikan will allow a Kill the turn you hit full recursion as long as you use Wall of Roots for mana every cycle. I don't mind the conflict between Survival and Pernicious Deed too much. Just play deed first. If you use it, then no conflict. If you arn't ready to use it, you can play survival and build a combo graveyard and get E witness in hand.