[Deck] Deadguy Ale (B/w Confidant) [Archive] - Page 2

dre4m

07-20-2006, 10:05 AM

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

07-20-2006, 10:47 AM

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

07-20-2006, 01:57 PM

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

07-20-2006, 02:36 PM

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

07-20-2006, 02:51 PM

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

07-20-2006, 03:31 PM

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

07-20-2006, 04:06 PM

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

07-20-2006, 05:36 PM

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.

AnwarA101

07-20-2006, 11:34 PM

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.

I've used Negator many times by simply dropping him and disrupting my opponent until they are dead. In terms of the Duel for Duals (sorry I've never gotten around to writing a tournament report but I would suggest PowerGamer1003's since he did make Top4), I played 3 Solidarity decks and I believe I got a first turn Negator once or twice and I won both of those games. Negator can almost race Solidarity all by itself when you play him on turn 1. I also used a Negator late in the game to defeat a Threshold opponent by being able to trample over for damage. Its not that Negator is great in every situation, but he is good in so many situations. If the format was dominated by Burn decks or even Goblins running Lightning Bolt then he would a different story. But Legacy is a varied field and there are many decks that you can play at a competitive tournament and many of them can't take immediate advantage of Negator's drawback. My position is that he is strong in many situations that may arise at a Legacy tournament that he is playable in the maindeck despite his drawback. You may lose because of his drawback, but you might also lose because your creature doesn't swing for 5 damage a turn.

This is where Deadguy comes in. It does lack a significant clock, but I'm not sure Negator is best here. It seems like the strategies of Dark Confidant and Negator aren't exactly best together. Dark Confidant is all about generating card advantage with each passing turn. He can bury your opponent in card advantage given enough time. Negator hardly wants the game to go long instead he wants to end it in a few turns. Negator seems best in a deck that wants to abuse tempo. Cards like Dark Ritual and Sinkhole and Hymn in Red Death are used as ways to buy time so that a creature (Negator or others) can come in for the kill. Deadguy doesn't have that strategy. The disruption itself is the strategy. It tries to completely shutdown an opponent based off disruption and to continue that disruption via Dark Confidant. Red Death uses disruption as a means to an end. Deadguy's disruption is the end itself. I believe that this is the reason Chris Pikula found Negator so unsatisfactory in Deadguy Ale. Negator just isn't part of the strategy because he doesn't help you disrupt your opponent. Nantuko Shade doesn't really do this either but the deck needed more win conditions and he fit better into the strategy than Negator. I think changing the strategy of the deck is much harder than it seems. Trying to move it closer to the Sui strategy is harder in practice than it seems. The question I'm left with is, why not choose one of these strategies instead of trying to convert one into the other?

dre4m

07-21-2006, 09:56 AM

Negator is a great Creature vs. all Combo decks and Control decks like Rifter,

SCREECH

What?!!?! Do you know what Rifter is?!
Rifter will have a field day with this deck especially if you drop Negator, because it reads "either use one of the 14 ways in your deck to kill this outright or make its controller sacrifice four permanents per turn." Negator is just not good in the maindeck in a deck that is primarily disruption and secondly aggression. In an all-out aggro deck I still believe it is unviable against an aggro format like Legacy, but it is far more acceptable in a deck with more permanents than Deadguy.

SuckerPunch

07-21-2006, 03:55 PM

In an all-out aggro deck I still believe it is unviable against an aggro format like Legacy

SCREECH!

If Negator is indeed unviable even in an all-out aggro deck as you claim, then how exactly do you explain Anwar and Powergamer1001's dual successes this past weekend in a deck that ran exactly to the dot, the same number of permanents as Deadguy runs, in a build that only differs by 11 cards (Rotting Giant, Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning versus Confidant, Vindicate and Swords). There was a huge number of Deadguy decks at the tournament, not a single one of them came close to top 8ing either day. Anwar's build was run twice, and top 8ed both times? Was that just an anomoly. How do you explain Anwar's 9th place placement in the previous d4d with another deck that ran 4 MD Negators.

laststepdown

07-21-2006, 05:16 PM

The topic at discussion I believe is whether or not Negator belongs in the deck-main or sideboard. While it has an amazing clock against High Tide, and is great against Gro, we have pretty good matchups against both decks already. Now, I live in St. Louis-as some of you may know, there is a Grand Prix here (tomorrow). Day 2 features a Legacy side event, and this is where I'm going to test the fatty. On a side note, why not Phyrexian Scuta or Juzam Djinn instead? Because they cost 4. On turn 2 they are not as good of a play as say, Duress-Hypnotic Specter. Plus, this deck runs 4 Confidants. 3 is really the most life I want to pay for an extra card.

All this being said, here is my current sideboard:

3 Pithing Needle
3 Planar Void
3 Engineered Plague
2 Darkblast
1 Swords to Plowshares
2 Gerrard's Verdict
1 Phyrexian Negator/Cursed Scroll/4th Plague

SuckerPunch

07-22-2006, 03:03 AM

Phyrexian Scuta et. al clearly don't fit.

But if you do want beats, and don't want Negator or inc. your white reliance by playing Spectral Lynx...

Phyrexian War Beast is by far the best option. It's 3/4 body survives burn, and holds its own against the vast majority of the creatures in this format.

Lol, if you want to be bold and try something completely original, you could always up your Hippe count by running 2 Hollow Specter. It's not half bad, esp if you have mana to choose and discard their best card each time.

I do think 2 Hollow Spectar may warrant testing. It's not as good off of a ritual which sucks, but it's solid when played third turn, since you often have excess mana open fourth turn.

SuckerPunch

07-23-2006, 04:56 AM

This may belong in a seperate thread or something but I wanted to find a tournament successful version of Rock and started searching for any legacy versions of PT Junk - it was probably the most popular rock variant in extended.

And I ran into the two year old list below...

4 Wasteland
4 Polluted Delta
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Bayou
4 Scrubland
2 Wooded Foothills
4 Dark Ritual

4 Birds of Paradise
4 River Boa
3 Spectral Lynx
4 Hypnotic Spectar
3 Skeletal Scryin

2 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Sinkhole
3 Vindicate
3 Pernicious Deed

The reason I post the list above is because it gives us another way to get around the inability of Deadguy to win if the initial onslaught of disruption fails. Most of the times I lose with Deadguy, it's precisely for that reason, that I wasn't able to disrupt the opponent enough early on. Deed gives Deadguy a reset switch. I am not suggesting anything like the above build, though the ability of all the above creatures to survive Deed is nice. But could a slight green splash for Deed be another possible direction to go, in perhaps a wholly seperate variant that takes the best elements of both Deadguy and the Rock. The past two years afterall also added such bombs as Witness.

Once again, if this was the wrong place to mention the possiblity of a green splash or such a variant, I apolozise.

laststepdown

07-23-2006, 11:19 PM

Deed might be warrantable as replacement for vindicate...but it doesn't hit lands. You're really too heavy into black to play three colors.

I tested Negator. It was useless-as were Needles(everything that they hit, you already have a maindeck answer for). So there's 4 open slots in my sideboard and I think their going to Carnophage/Sarcomancy.

NANTUKO_SHADY

07-24-2006, 12:22 AM

Ewww... Negator is utterly terrible in this deck. It is only useful in the matchups that you should auto-win anyways. Read Pikula's SCG report after GP Philly. He even says that the Negators in the board were a mistake. I guess you learn from the best..:tongue:

dre4m

07-24-2006, 09:14 AM

SCREECH!

If Negator is indeed unviable even in an all-out aggro deck as you claim, then how exactly do you explain Anwar and Powergamer1001's dual successes this past weekend in a deck that ran exactly to the dot, the same number of permanents as Deadguy runs, in a build that only differs by 11 cards (Rotting Giant, Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning versus Confidant, Vindicate and Swords). There was a huge number of Deadguy decks at the tournament, not a single one of them came close to top 8ing either day. Anwar's build was run twice, and top 8ed both times? Was that just an anomoly. How do you explain Anwar's 9th place placement in the previous d4d with another deck that ran 4 MD Negators.

I really don't know how to explain it because I am still convinced that the creature that can singlehandedly wreck yourself faster than your opponent is terrible in this format, but he is nevertheless better in a deck such as b/r that can support him than in a deck like Deadguy, which packs substantially fewer permanents.

laststepdown

07-25-2006, 12:20 AM

My real question is about Pithing Needle. What is this doing for us that we don't have a maindeck answer for-is there something I'm not seeing?

I think I'm going to try and take a note from Pikula's statement of needing more warm bodies. However, Zombies are not warm. At all.

Current Sideboard:
3 Carnophage
1 Sarcomancy(this looks like the better choice since I run 4 Withered Wretch in main-however, I haven't picked them up-regardless, if Negator has a better permanent to sac on color, I'll be suprised. Not that I'm running Negator anymore, but it's an option if the meta changes...ever...)
2 Planar Void
1 Perish
3 Engineered Plague
2 Darkblast
1 Swords to Plowshares
2 Gerrard's Verdict

BoardinCharlie

07-26-2006, 10:03 AM

I actually have been putting some thought into that idea as well. The deck truly does need some more bodies to bring in from the board....but I'm not sure if the deck can sacrfice not having needle. I'm not completely sure why others have used this tool, but in my testing this saves you from the random aggro and aggro/control decks that have good games against you. Yeah you have vindicate, but sometimes you need a faster answer, or the proactive answer to it. The cards I'm talking about are as follows:

Pernicous Deed, Survival of the Fittest, Regenerators in multiples *River Boa, Troll, Lynx, etc*, Mother of Runes, Ravager, Cursed Scroll, random equipment....these are just a few of the cards I have run into where I'm happy I play needle in my board.

While these decks aren't played in high numbers anymore, as seen at the last D4D these decks will pop up cause they know some people such as you are noticing a meta shift.

dre4m

07-26-2006, 12:00 PM

Pithing Needle also shuts down some fetchlands, I hear.
Sounds like Solidarity and Thresh, which you can already keep off one of their colours if you want, might have a hard time dealing with half of (or all of) their fetches being shut off.

SuckerPunch

07-26-2006, 12:31 PM

I wouldn't bring stuff like Sarcomancy and Carnophage from the board. This deck has a big problem against fast aggro.

You want a creature that doesn't die to every other creature in the format. Phyrexian War Beast is a suggestion, as is Spectral Lynx, and possibly Negator based on when you want to bring him out. Even 2 Hollow Spectar isn't a horrible choice.

laststepdown

07-28-2006, 01:50 AM

What about Order of the Ebon Hand/Knight of Stromgald?

It's Pro White, can be given first strike, and it's still a 2/x for 2.
But. Carnophage doesn't die to every other creature in the format, at least not the ones that can be cast on turn 1.

I'm not sure about the 2 Planar Void 1 Perish-I just know the situation of me drawing multiple Voids against Thresh-it's a dead card. I would recommend them over Tormond's Crypt, because Crypt can be Stifled as well. However, with Planar Void down, that doesn't stop Mongeese from multiplying, them from drawing cards, or you from dieing unless you draw some critters, or a Perish. 1 of just doesn't seem safe.

dre4m

07-28-2006, 07:27 AM

I would definately play three Perish, it is simply the best answer to a lot of problems for this deck, and is a three-mana Plague Wind against Thresh if it resolves (except for Pikula in U/G/w). I also wonder what you bring in those two Verdicts against. Solidarity? I can see where they might be good there, but isn't your maindeck already more than sufficient to smash them?

Drathro

07-28-2006, 10:22 AM

If you are sideboarding B/W Confidant for the DLD in Syracuse, you should run Dystopia in the side. You can expect to see Angel Stompy, Rifter, and possibly MWC, plus Dystopia is still useful against Thresh, SotF, and random green-based graveyard recursion decks. I also recommend to run maindeck Withered Wretches for graveyard hate and as speed bumps against fast aggro.

FallenOmnipotent

07-28-2006, 10:35 AM

I was kinda surfing around starcitygame's D4D decklists and I noticed Day 2, there was a less orthadox build (or to what I'm use to at least) of Deadguy Ale. I'm refering to Adam Bowles's list with 4 Hymn, 4 duress, AND 2 Gerard's Verdict. Here's a link to his decklist: Click (http://sales.starcitygames.com/deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=17996).

My question is, has anyone done the math behind the idealistic number of discard one should run? Perhaps he increased his count as a meta-game call. (2 solidarity in t8 day 1 and quite a few overall.) I would do the math, except I'm not sure how you would approch it in this situation.

Vardaman

07-28-2006, 12:44 PM

Didn't Chris Pikula run two Verdicts MD?

I don't know the math on the "ideal" number of discards spells but it was a great call since he saw so much Solidarity. The 3 MD Plagues look like another good meta call against all the goblin decks that showed up.

Actually, his deck looks just like Pikula's except -2 Scroll, +1 Plague and +1 Jitte.

EDIT: Running Jitte with 11 creatures is ballsy. Vs. aggro I suppose he could take out the duress for more guys and the second Jitte. :\

dre4m

07-28-2006, 01:14 PM

I personally would not run Jitte, because it is indeed quite ballsy without a lot of stuff to carry it, and I prefer to have eight discard spells, because I would rather devote my slots to other disruption and destruction for things other than my opponents' hands. Pikula did in fact run two maindeck Verdict and Plague, but that was his (very, very, accurate) metagame call.

NANTUKO_SHADY

07-28-2006, 02:51 PM

Agreed. Jitte in this deck seems rather awful. There just aren't enough threats in the deck to abuse Jitte's powers. Believe me, Jitte on a Hippie or any other beater sounds tempting. But the slot that Jitte takes up isn't worth it. I used to play this deck and I always considered Jitte. But my own insight and everybody I talked to said the deck isn't creature heavy enough. Remember folks... this deck isn't mainly aggro, control is a big factor in this deck too.

DeathwingZERO

07-28-2006, 10:25 PM

I've been playtesting this deck for since it was originally uploaded here, and the only real changes I made to the original decklist that Pikula played at the GP was adding in the Perish's to the SB to help the match against GRO (which is relatively common out here, but I've yet to test it's effectiveness), and I added in a third Scroll MD for 1 Swamp out (I've had far too many games where 23 lands would literally flood me). The original list of 2 Verdicts MD were also kept, keeping the balance at 10. I will admit I'll probably change the Cursed Scroll to Shade #4, I just didn't have a 4th on hand to play with, so I didn't bother yet.

So far, I've been completely satisfied with the setup, I did about 10-15 matches vs Goblins, R/W Rifter, GRO, Solidarity, and Iggy Pop recently, and it's been relatively good to me in those matchups. Here's a little bit of data I've setup for myself:

GRO: Meddling Mage flat out sucks. If your running StP in the SB like I am, expect this little bastard to waste your destruction on him in order to even play your threats. Having only Hymn to get rid of creatures proactively also hurts, because you've got very little removal once they hit the table. I've actually considered attempting to put WoG or Mutilate in the SB just for this very setup, because you will always come out ahead on creatures lost, but 4cc is a bit steep.

SB options:(these games were tested before I had Perish)
-2 Verdict
-2 E.Plague
+3 StP (I was only running 3 at the time)
+1 Cursed Scroll

Gobbos: 2 E.Plague in the maindeck are the only thing capable of saving your ass game one, short of a miracle hand. In all honesty, if you have to rely on Cursed Scroll or Vindicates to attempt removing early threats, your in a race you absolutely will not win. Another reason I seriously considered mass-removal over spot removal.

SB options:
-4 Duress
-2 Vindicate
+2 E.Plague
+1 Scroll
+3 StP

Note: Some of you will notice I took out 2 Vindicates. Yes, they are more consistant than Cursed Scrolls in comparison, but Scrolls take out EVERY problematic goblin on an average of once a turn after it's dropped, compared to a one shot threat eliminator. On the same note, StP is infinitely better than Duress in Gob matchups, your best shot with Duress is a 4 of with Vial (or Naturalize/Disenchant vs splashed decks), and in combination with Cursed Scroll, you've got removal at instant speed cheap. I've never had issues keeping the matchup in my favor against standard builds of Vial Goblins using StP, Scroll, and E.Plagues against them.

Rifter: If you love the idea of being smashed in the face with Dragons after your threats got plinked by Rift constantly, don't run StP. If however, you like winning, side them in every game. Vindicates almost always hit the manabase or Rifts, Scrolls basically make late games a firing match, your cards vs theirs.

SB options:
-4 Sinkhole
+3 StP/+1 Cursed Scroll OR
+4 Pithing Needle (Can call Dragon & Rift) OR
+4 Withered Wretch (beats + Dragon remover)

With the choices I made here, I've yet to discover which overall was best. The main issue: Akroma's Vengeance & Burning Wish. They have answers to your answers, and theirs are both relatively efficient. Not sure what to do here, if anyone else has any ideas, let me know what you've done.

Solidarity/Iggy Pop:
Both of these decks I put together for one main reason, the playstyle on both of them means they'll kill you the turn they go off, nothing matters until then. Their cards in hand don't mean anything until they attempt the chain, and there's nothing in your maindeck that can stop that once it starts.

Basically, hit their lands, hit their hands, and do your best to take them to 0 asap. The sideboard is little more than lackluster against combo, because your maindeck is where all the action is anyways. StP and Needle both do nothing, Wretch has it's main purpose being a beater, with the backup of spot graveyard removal (moreso against Iggy than Solidarity), and Cursed Scroll is just another pinger. Once again, not really much I figured needing changing between games, though if anyone has ideas, let me know.

Hopefully some of this helps out, I've noticed that people have been saying things like "Negator should be in this, Jitte should be in this" etc, but in all honesty, the decks balance is in it's destruction and resource denial, not it's creatures beating speed. If you notice something I've done with my sideboard options against specific decks, post what you think is a better strategy. Since I've had so much faith in the maindeck being able to handle itself rather well against our meta, I've very little practice in correctly sideboarding.

If there's any other playtesting that's been going on with this deck against most of the upper tier, please list some particular strategies you've used. In all these pages I haven't really read anything in particular vs specific builds other than Goblins and at times GRO, but I know those aren't the only two decks finishing in top spots.

Vardaman

07-29-2006, 01:31 PM

Rifter: If you love the idea of being smashed in the face with Dragons after your threats got plinked by Rift constantly, don't run StP. If however, you like winning, side them in every game. Vindicates almost always hit the manabase or Rifts, Scrolls basically make late games a firing match, your cards vs theirs.

SB options:
-4 Sinkhole
+3 StP/+1 Cursed Scroll OR
+4 Pithing Needle (Can call Dragon & Rift) OR
+4 Withered Wretch (beats + Dragon remover)

It should be noted that Lightning Rift is a triggered ability so Pithing needle doesn't shut it down.

DeathwingZERO

07-29-2006, 04:21 PM

It should be noted that Lightning Rift is a triggered ability so Pithing needle doesn't shut it down.

Completely forgot about that. I was so busy naming Dragon anyways that I never attempted it, so was never shot down during game for my temporary idiocy.

laststepdown

07-29-2006, 11:29 PM

From my small meta, I've experienced that everything Needle answers already has an answer main deck. Vial is sometimes a problem, but if you're still running 2 Plagues maindeck (which have relevance in other matchups besides Goblins), then I can't see why you wouldn't want a more relevant threat.

I've upped the fetches in my build, and I was playing 4 Wretch in the main. The problem is that against every deck short of Threshold or Gamekeeper, he's just a 2/2 for 2. Pikula said he sometimes just needed a warm body. So. I threw 2 of them in sideboard, adding 2 Rotting Giant-who are easier to cast(having a Giant in opening hand with Wasteland and Bloostained Mire is ok-with Wretch that situation is a problem), bigger, and have an almost irrelevant tax. The other situation I've found is seeing quite a few decks without Cursed Scroll-I can't see why colorless, reusable damage is ever a bad thing, especially when this type of deck runs so few creatures.

Which brings me to the Pump Knights.
Immune to Swords to Plowshares, dies to Bolt.
But.
Everything in this deck dies to Bolt.
I just wish Shade wasn't so tasty. Or I'd switch over. Thoughts on the pump knights? Has anyone had any experience with them?

DeathwingZERO

07-30-2006, 01:04 AM

My fear of them is the always low 1 toughness, and requiring 2 black to pump +1/0. The flying effect is rather nice to get damage over the opponents head, but with most removal taking out anything short of 3 toughness, I'd personally say the Shade's ability to boost both p/t at the same time with only a (B) would win out over the pumps. Flying just doesn't seem very relevant when the creature will still die to more hate/creatures than Shade.

laststepdown

07-30-2006, 04:35 AM

Not jump knights, Deadwing(Coldsnap=stupid)-pump knights. First Strike. As for the x/1 situation, we do run Bob. It's a thought if you're expecting lots of Threshold-depending on if they run Fire/Ice.

DeathwingZERO

07-30-2006, 05:07 AM

My bad on mixing of the two, with the Jumps being so sought after in some T2 decks buddies have, I completely disregarded the Pumps.

The issue I've noticed with the creature slots is that there really isn't much we can do to the maindeck in change without disrupting a very stable setup. With the list I use, there's 22 lands, 11 creatures, 10 disruption, and the rest is all land destruction/spot removal/mass removal(sans Dark Rit). If we end up having to make changes to the creatures, we sacrifice what they're there for:

Dark Confidant- Obvious card advantage
Hyppie- Same as Confidant, but in a reactive way, requres opponent to have cards, and also is a flyer
Shade- Win condition. Blocks fatties, capable of surviving burn, and on the spot damage increase on its own.

Even if I go to 12 maindeck creatures, I'd be hard pressed to put a first striker in over the toughness gain capability. Rarely will you need first strike if you've got higher defense.

On the other hand, there's disrupting the level of disruption. What would you consider cutting from Vindicate, Scroll, Plague, Sinkhole, and the others? I thought about cutting Scrolls to sideboard, but Scroll only has to worry about a couple decks maindecking a Needle or two, or disenchant, while Pumps die to Rift, burn, fatties, StP, and other forms of removal that's much more common. We're still overall a creature dominated format, with very little in the case of total-control or total-combo.

We obviously don't want to cut any of the hand disruption, or else it basically reverts back to sui-black/white, with a much less solid game vs control, which already tends to lose if the disruption outraces their draw.

Personally, I really don't have any real considerations of altering the deck, other than possibly cutting Wasteland to the sideboard (there's really not much non-basics happening with our metagame, and most will fetch out basics when they see a deck running WL) but even then I wouldn't run the deck on only 18 land. It'd probably just get replaced with more sources of mana, or more cheaper disruption (I was considering Cabal Therapy or Ostracize, to take out the creature threats, at one point...and only 1cc really doesn't hurt the manabase that badly, though you'll probably see more common mulligans).

If you do end up testing the pump knights, let me know what you chose to replace them with, and if they actually made a big difference against stuff like Gro, RW Rifter, Solidarity, Goblins, or Thresh. That's pretty much a majority of our "good' meta out here in Portland, so seeing anyone else's results on these matchups would be nice.

laststepdown

07-30-2006, 09:50 PM

Pump Knights make a huge difference against Threshold-they're Pro White. No StP-but if the build runs red, then Fire/Ice is your worst enemy. They usually come in for Nantuko Shade, since their main creature removal can't target the Pump Knight. I think we're both getting/giving misinformation, since you haven't seen my current main/sideboard-which I will present to you now.

25 Mana Sources
4 Scrubland
3 Bloodstained Mire
3 Polluted Delta
4 Wasteland
1 Godless Shrine
6 Swamps
4 Dark Ritual

13 Creatures
4 Dark Confidant
4 Hypnotic Specter
3 Nantuko Shade
2 Rotting Giant

22 Disruption
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Sinkhole
4 Vindicate
2 Swords to Plowshares
2 Cursed Scroll
2 Engineered Plague

Sideboard:
3 Perish
2 Swords to Plowshares
4 Withered Wretch
2 Engineered Plague
2 Darkblast
2 Order of the Ebon Hand/Knight of Stromgald
-------------------------------------------
I'm honestly loving Rotting Giant over Withered Wretch. Previously, I was running 4 Wretch main, taking out the Scrolls and Plagues, with 4 StP in maindeck. Swords was a dead draw if I didn't have white mana(which happened more often than desired with the original 4 fetchland setup, so I upped the fetchlands, threw 2 StP back in sideboard, and added a threat that can win the game a few turns earlier than Wretch. The real problem with Wretch that I'm seeing is against any matchup that doesn't use Nimble Mongoose or Ill-Gotten Gains, he's just a 2/2 for BB, where Rotting Giant is a 3/3 for 1B.
However.
The only reason the pump knights are there is immunity to StP and First Strike-they were originally Carnophage(x3 with a Sarcomancy). They're a replacement for Pithing Needle, because in all the matches I've played, they were never relevant. I should bring them back though, just for saying that-it's Karma.

Under no circumstances-I repeat-NO circumstances should Hypnotic Specter, Dark Confidant, Dark Ritual, Sinkhole, Vindicate, Hymn to Tourach or Duress ever be less than 4 of in this deck. Nantuko Shade is perfect as a 3-of. 2 on the board just ties up your mana.

I suppose my creature dilemma is coming from when I took Cursed Scroll out(in case you readers were unaware, this is another one of those 'don't do it' situations. Same with 2 maindeck E. Plague. This deck can get swept by fast aggro if it draws suboptimally.)

Tacosnape

07-31-2006, 11:50 PM

I'm already wagering a lot of people have thought of this before me, but I got tired of boarding Perish and then losing to ridiclous white aggro decks. So if your metagame is like mine and way low on Threshold and exploding with Angel Stompy, White Weenie, or any other annoying thing that likes to run White's ridiculous men, Virtue's Ruin is a solid card to sneak in the board. It wins games and you can very often catch 3-4 creatures with it due to the incredible unpredictability of it.

And if you want to make Rifter cry, try Stench of Evil. I lost in the final round of a tournament this weekend while running Rifter when I got Stenched in games 2 and 3.

I don't know if I would try either of these at a big league tournament just yet, but they're fantastic in metagames filled with white, and if decks start shifting more towards white in the near future, they're definitely worth remembering.

laststepdown

08-01-2006, 12:38 PM

I agree that Virtue's Ruin is an excellent card to sideboard against Angel Stompy-however, siding in E. Plague helps the matchup so much (naming Cleric) I haven't considered devoting my sideboard to such cards. This is the only matchup where I want Scroll ASAP. White Knight+Equipment can ruin your day if you're not ready for it.

Stench of Evil seems like it would bust the mana curve, and in that case, I'd personally rather get a Hyppie on board and just Armageddon. If there's alot of white and green in your meta, I suggest Dystopia-it hits (dumb)Exhalted Angel, Mongoose, Mystic Enforcer, Circle/Rune of Protections, etc. and costs 1 less than Stench of Evil.

Playtesting against Red Death(b/r sui), Infest is the card you really need to worry about-the matchup is mostly about who goes first/resolves hymn to tourach. I played about 6 games against this deck and sinked/wasted any chance of him having double Black when I saw Infests from Duress. Cursed Scroll goes a long way in this matchup.

Tacosnape

08-02-2006, 07:41 PM

From my small meta, I've experienced that everything Needle answers already has an answer main deck.

While I'm not currently running Pithing Needle in my sideboard with Deadguy Ale, I have to go on record and say that the logic here is absolutely the most fantastically ridiculous thing ever. I can see not running it in a given metagame, but come on.

The deck has Vindicate. Sinkhole if you're naming something on a land, STP/Plague/Scroll if you name something on a creature. But mostly, the deck has Vindicate. Four of them. To deal with creatures, artifacts, enchantments, and lands. Even with Duress/Hymn helping it, Vindicate can't handle everything. Anyone who's played Deadguy Ale for a long time against highly random metagames has experience trouble at one point or another with Umezawa's Jitte, Survival of the Fittest, Eternal Dragon, and Nantuko Shade/Cursed Scroll in the mirror. Jitte is near-lethal if you don't stop it or the creatures it's going on immediately. Survival and Dragon both fetch mana sources galore, and Survival can even fetch things to replace itself.

DeathwingZERO

08-02-2006, 11:01 PM

I completely agree with keeping Needle's in the SB. There's just too much out there, too many cards abusing activated abilities, and too many things that are just downright the death of this deck if they resolve, and most of those decks don't have artifact destruction. Even the ones that do, there's a good chance they'd hit your Scroll or E.Plague just as often as the Needle.

The list I gave during my brief synopsis of each deck I went against was a good start on it's own when discussing Needle. Gro is probably the only deck short of Solidarity/IggyPop in the top 2 tiers that can usually play around Needle without doing anything to it's gameplan. It's that crucial.

Goblins lose AEther Vial, Goblin Incinerator, Kiki-Jiki, and SGC's sac ability.
Rifter loses Dragon recurring, as well as the cycling of Dragon and Decree (which are it's common game winners).
Survival would have to hunt down an artifact destruction card (usually a one of creature they'd normall Survival for), Welder (while not hugely seen around here) becomes a vanilla goblin, and most of the good "answer/lockdown" creatures to any version of Survival are typically activated ones.

I've still been on the fence of putting StP back in the maindeck, but I'm still really liking the way the 3 Scrolls and 2 E.Plagues are working out. With the metagame around here being really competitive (read:good) decks, the random creatures I can call with it to hose certain decks games one, as well as reusable spot removal of Scroll has been very kind to me. If I get the chance to do more playtesting I'll probably work the MD/SB out a little bit more, and see if there's any changes between the two I like.

BoardinCharlie

08-03-2006, 09:27 AM

It's good to see that most people are agreeing that needle is a must for unknown metagames. Its versatility, casting cost, and nuetral color *none* fits the decks theme perfectly. I could see if you know specifically your meta doesn't call for it to not run it, but otherwise this decks bad matchups and problem cards become even worse.

I have play tested Grunt now in the board as a 3 of....against grow you don't need it you already have a good match against them. Any other matchup I would rather have a creature I know can bash in or that I have more control of. Rotting Giant has proven itself to me to be a superior beater that sticks around. So for now Rotting Giant is in my board to replace my 3 wretches in matchups where wretch is less than good. Negator is good, but I need a body that survives most creature blocks and at the same time doesn't make me sac my permanents.

SuckerPunch

08-03-2006, 05:39 PM

Judge_Julez

08-03-2006, 07:05 PM

...do you know I think that AZORIOUS HERALD may be a better creature than NANTUKO SHADE. It bags you 4 life; which is necessary considering the number of BURN decks out there; and with 'Bob' in the deck, it is a great life off-setter

SuckerPunch

08-03-2006, 07:47 PM

Power/Toughness:2/1

Casting cost: 2W

Card text: Azorius Herald is unblockable.
When Azorius Herald comes into play, you gain 4 life.
When Azorius Herald comes into play, sacrifice it unless U was spent to play it.

Umm... you don't run blue in your build of Deadguy do you?

Even if you did, I think you're going to have a hard time convincing anyone that it's superior to Shade.

laststepdown

08-03-2006, 09:33 PM

Judge Julez-Welcome to the Source, and the Legacy Metagame Forum, and Legacy in general. Please read the complete thread and save yourself from looking unintelligent again. Deadguy Ale is a black/white deck.

Suckerpunch-I tried 4 Nantuko Shades for a while. It seemed to be a pain to keep them both active with more than 1 on the board-unlike Bob, who I'm happy to put more than one down in the right situation. I've since dropped it back down to 3, and I'm happy with that, but I'm running 2 Rotting Giant main(my list is a few posts up). The 4 main Wretch was awesome at first-but the more matchups I tested against, the more I realized that usually it's just a measily 2/2 for 2(Let's be honest here, that's not very impressive. There's 4 creatures that fit that cost-to-power ratio in Rav block alone.)

Also, I'd like to thank this board for talking me out of the anti-Needle situation. I was about to make a HUGE mistake for Gencon.

SuckerPunch

08-03-2006, 09:51 PM

Yeah, I've come to a similar conclusion about Withered Wretch. It's a bomb against Threshold sure, but it's just a 2/2 too often.

Are you running Swords or Plagues or both? And did you cut back to 22 sources.

Rotting Giant does seem solid. But I'm wondering if anyone has considered running a lone Jotun Grunt to replace the 4th Shade. Yes, it's not as good at hating Thres as Withered Wretch, and it doesn't stick around quite as long as Rotting Giant. But it does serve so many different functions at once, and can also trade with Werebears and take out BTS's.

scrumdogg

08-04-2006, 12:25 AM

Threshold is the best deck in the format, arguably, and every viable combo deck except Solidarity/Spring Tide/Nausea utilizes the graveyard (and even Solidarity uses Flash of Insight). The question is why WOULDN'T you run Withered Wretch in any potential build? At worst he is a 2/2 for 2, that is the minimum standard for acceptability. But the decks which he is golden against make his 'drawback' quite acceptable. UGW Thresh, UGR Thresh, UGB Thresh, any deck with Survival of the Fittest, Salvagers Game, Iggy Pop, et al doesn't even include random stuff that shows up like Sunny Side Up or Reanimator or....use your imagination, but since 25 percent (or more) of any Legacy field is random decks....

Tacosnape

08-04-2006, 01:09 AM

How many people are running the 4th Shade as it indeed is a very strong beatstick?

How many people are running 4 maindeck Withered Wretch and how many are instead sideboarding them? How many are running 2 Rotting Giants?

How many people are still maindecking Engineered Plague, and how many are maindecking Swords and sideboarding 4 Plagues instead?

How many people have retained the original manabase, and how many opted to add two or more fetchlands to add more mana reliability? How many cut back to 22 lands to increase their threat density?

And how happy have people been with these changes?

And lastly but most importantly, how many people who play this deck regularly agree with Anwar's calculation in his Post-goblins metagame article that Deadguy is the seventh worst of the most commonly played deck, and how many think this is clearly untrue and the deck is still very strong against most of the popular archeatypes?

1. I am running the 4th Shade. Its inclusion has never once made me wish I had Rotting Giant.

2. I'm maindecking two wretches and boarding two. Fourteen creatures has been perfect for me. Wretch > Gerrard's Verdict in maindeck, in my opinion. Rotting Giant will never touch my Deadguy Ale deck. He provides no disruption element, and therefore doesn't belong in this deck as I see it.

3. I am maindecking two Plagues and boarding two. Threats too large for Plague to hit don't often get out against me. Random mana-generating creatures and goblins succumb to it and it's a great sneaky play when you swing into a 3/3 with a 2-power guy. I am not maindecking Swords yet, and I think the trend towards more Solidarity demands that you don't. Though I pack the full four in board and would never run this deck without 4 in my 75.

3. I'm at 22 lands: 6 fetches, 4 scrubs, 4 wastes, 8 swamps. I rarely miss double black. I've also experimented with 2 more swamps in sideboard for matches like Solidarity when Wasteland is useless and getting double black ASAP is the difference in the game.

4. Very Happy, though my list is very close to Pikula's original. Changing much more takes away from the deck's beauty, which is incredible relentless disruption.

5. I think (And I have all the respect in the world for Anwar) that Anwar's chart is utter bullshit, as I've never once lost the Survival matchup with Deadguy Ale, ever, and I'm well over 50% against Goblins.

laststepdown

08-04-2006, 02:06 AM

DeathwingZERO

08-04-2006, 04:59 AM

As I stated before, I've kept it at 22 lands after plenty of testing, it's just been much better on me not getting flooded early, and I still have a good ratio of drawing into them with Bob.

Still haven't tested the 4th Shade, but I'm also very happy keeping one on the board long enough to swing. Most decks I've tested against lately (U/G/w Thresh, Goblins, Rifter) have pretty much nuked him the turn he comes out, or their turn (with WoG and the like), so having a 4th might push me a little better on the kill condition vs removal problem I seem to have with these guys not being able to recur. So I'm pretty sure he will end up coming in, I'm just not certain what to cut (maybe push back to 21 land, or 2 Scroll maindeck...)

The 4 Wastelands have seemed a little ineffective lately, with so many decks being able to pull basics and keep on whatever mana they need, or have Wastelands of their own. Has anyone else seen their metas start taking shape on their anti-Wasteland strategy? These may become more solid black sources, or additional disruption (2 more Verdicts, for example) and lands (which would see roughly 20 lands maindeck for my current build, but all able to produce black).

I still have not tested alternate-kill conditions. I know there's been plenty of talk about various things in the maindeck to make it speed the clock upr, but in all honesty against most of the decks I've played if you see a solid enough stream of land destruction/disruption they tend to scoop once a threat hits (Usually Hyppie is good enough if you've slowed them), so I can't say that all of my victories have been based on damage.

All in all, the changes I made were all to better what I think was the core of the deck; disruption, and removal:

1 additional Scroll in place of 1 Swamp: Better amount of removal with limited amount of land loss, good for going up against an increasing number of aggro decks in our area (I was one of a select few actually playing combo in Portland, when I and LinkXwing cut back on playing our combo decks, we noticed the rest of the meta almost immediately picked up on it and went full on aggro).

Removal of Darkblast, Negator from SB in place of 2 more Swords (all 4 SB), the 4th Scroll, and 4th Needle. All have seemed to play out much better than the original choices, though the meta is obviously different than what Pikula went against. I personally think this deck falls behind on MD removal, which is why all 4 cards removed from original SB are well replaced.

I still find this deck to be a very sound choice given any mixed metagame. It wasn't the end all against Goblins (or any specific deck in the top tier), but a deck made to at least match the rest of the format in general (commonly known as a metagame deck) which it does very well, having decent matchups vs aggro as well as combo. It's the perfect theory of a rogue deck, to beat or at least minimize losses against the entire metagame, rather than a top deck or two.

Tacosnape

08-04-2006, 11:30 AM

Taco: I believe I'm the only person using Giant-keep in mind that I'm replacing Wretch(4 in side), not Shade. I'm at 21 lands, and that 22nd is really hard to squeeze in there-I may drop down to 1 Giant, and I'll let you know either way if they get removed completely or not.
I believe we've got a stable agreement on 6 fetches to achieve double black ASAP.

I'm not running Verdict at all, and I'm questioning my own decision to do that-I'm also not sold on Scroll. They may trade places before gencon.

We're both running 2 Plagues main, and I have to agree it tears up much more than just little red men. I've considered Darkblast, but Nimble Mongoose just says no.

May I ask what your build looks like? I'd really like to compare it to my own, and maybe figure out what it is I feel like I'm just not seeing.

My build:
8 Swamp
4 Bloodstained Mire
2 Polluted Delta
4 Scrubland
4 Wasteland
4 Dark Ritual
4 Nantuko Shade
4 Hypnotic Specter
4 Dark Confidant
2 Withered Wretch
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Sinkhole
4 Vindicate
2 Cursed Scroll
2 Engineered Plague

SB:
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Withered Wretch
2 Engineered Plague
3 Pithing Needle
2 Darkblast
2 Gerrard's Verdict
(Italicized slots aren't final and are just what I'm currently running.)

How's your manabase holding at 21? Are you pretty much running the same manabase as mine, minus one swamp? [EDIT: I scrolled back and actually looked at your manabase after writing this. Oops.] I thought about cutting down, but going down to 21 can make Cursed Scroll inoperable.

The reason I like Cursed Scroll, besides its versatility in picking off little guys, is that it's a noncreature threat that gives you reach against control decks. While every control deck -has- an answer to cursed scroll, Deadguy Ale packs so much ridiculous discard that they'll usually have to draw straight into it. I've picked off more Train Wreck / Rifter / Mimic / other bizarre control decks with Scroll than I can count, and most of these given games I recall I'd have lost if not for Cursed Scroll. I think the inclusion of them in the two slots boosts your control percentages outlandishly. I'd never go without Scroll.

I retain Darkblast not only because it's awesome against Goblins to back up your plagues and stop turn one Lackey, but also because it's decent in the Mirror against Confidant, and a godsend against Survival. Being able to pick off turn one Birds/Elves, especially combined with Ritual/Sinkhole or Ritual/Hymn, is horrible for Survival, especially since most of them cheat on land a little bit due to the number of mana creatures they run.

Gerrard's Verdict I partially agree with you on. I'm not sold on it, and while it helps a lot of matches like Burn, Control, and Combo, it doesn't do it strongly enough sometimes. Solidarity -loves- to pitch a land and a Flash of Insight and giggle at me. (Though in truth, this is one less land they have on the board, so Sinkhole and Vindicate become all the stronger.) I get the feeling Gerrard's Verdict is one of those cards that is actually better than it feels like it is when you're playing it, so I'm hanging on to it and still testing it from time to time.

Deathwing Zero: Four scrolls? Interesting. What do you board in #4 against?

laststepdown

08-04-2006, 04:54 PM

I dropped to 21 land after continuous mana flood, and never drawing a threat-here's an example of what happened:

I have 2 Bobs down, and they have 2 Goose with threshold. I draw (in two turns) Swamp, Dark Ritual, Swords; then Swamp, Vindicate, Bloodstained Mire.

Now, I'm going back up to 22 land somehow-21 is just not enough, even with 4 Dark Rits. I like the Idea of 4 Swords in sideboard, but it's tough finding the room in 15 cards. My fear is Scroll being offset is by Bob more than Shade. How often has that happened to anyone; a hand such as Bloodstained Mire, Swamp, ripping say, Scrubland off Bob then drawing Vindicate?

SuckerPunch

08-04-2006, 05:50 PM

DeathWingZero, thank you for that excellent post and update. It also got my mind whirring about what other choices people have made since this deck's debut...

How many people are running the 4th Shade as it indeed is a very strong beatstick?

How many people are running 4 maindeck Withered Wretch and how many are instead sideboarding them? How many are running 2 Rotting Giants?

How many people are still maindecking Engineered Plague, and how many are maindecking Swords and sideboarding 4 Plagues instead?

How many people have retained the original manabase, and how many opted to add two or more fetchlands to add more mana reliability? How many cut back to 22 lands to increase their threat density?

And how happy have people been with these changes?

And lastly but most importantly, how many people who play this deck regularly agree with Anwar's calculation in his Post-goblins metagame article that Deadguy is the seventh worst of the most commonly played deck, and how many think this is clearly untrue and the deck is still very strong against most of the popular archeatypes?
1. I am running the 4th Shade. Its inclusion has never once made me wish I had Rotting Giant.

2. I'm maindecking two wretches and boarding two. Fourteen creatures has been perfect for me. Wretch > Gerrard's Verdict in maindeck, in my opinion. Rotting Giant will never touch my Deadguy Ale deck. He provides no disruption element, and therefore doesn't belong in this deck as I see it.

3. I am maindecking two Plagues and boarding two. Threats too large for Plague to hit don't often get out against me. Random mana-generating creatures and goblins succumb to it and it's a great sneaky play when you swing into a 3/3 with a 2-power guy. I am not maindecking Swords yet, and I think the trend towards more Solidarity demands that you don't. Though I pack the full four in board and would never run this deck without 4 in my 75.

3. I'm at 22 lands: 6 fetches, 4 scrubs, 4 wastes, 8 swamps. I rarely miss double black. I've also experimented with 2 more swamps in sideboard for matches like Solidarity when Wasteland is useless and getting double black ASAP is the difference in the game.

4. Very Happy, though my list is very close to Pikula's original. Changing much more takes away from the deck's beauty, which is incredible relentless disruption.

5. I think (And I have all the respect in the world for Anwar) that Anwar's chart is utter bullshit, as I've never once lost the Survival matchup with Deadguy Ale, ever, and I'm well over 50% against Goblins.

Thank you for the solid and well thought out reply. The same goes to the other people who replied.

I noticed most everyone is running 6 Fetchland now over the original 4 Fetchland 2 Tainted Field build. Wasn't Tainted Field used to help dodge Pithing Needle, and reduce the lifeloss. I am wondering if anyone still thinks 2 Field is worth running over 2 Fetches for that reason. Or the very least, shouldn't the fetches be a 3/3 split over a 4/2 split to help dodge Needle.

Also, is there a reason no one seems to mention running a Tomb of Urami or possibly even Cabal Pit. Is Threshold that hard to get, is Tomb not worth it, or is the lifeloss just too painful?

I too have got to say that Anwar's numbers don't look right for Deadguy.

I'm also not convinced that Scroll can be supported when cutting back to 21 land as opposed to the orignal 23. 22 seems like the right call for Shade, Scroll, and even Wretch (so you can use it the turn you cast it).

laststepdown

08-04-2006, 06:00 PM

Suckerpunch: I'm not sure about anyone else, but I chose a single Godless Shrine over Tainted Field, for the simple fact I can drop it turn 1 and get black mana-not only that, you can keep a hand of Shrine-Wasteland, where you have to send back Field-Wasteland. I forgot who said "Your life total is a resource-use it" but for the simple fact of arguement, I'll give Necropotence the credit.

DeathwingZERO

08-04-2006, 09:04 PM

The single Godless over Tainted Field I'm definitely going to playtest, I really like the idea of having more white without a requirement (I can always have this come into play tapped if I have no turn 1 spells).

As for the alternate land ideas (Tomb & Pit) I haven't attempted either of these, for a few reasons: threshold isn't very easy to get, and in the meantime if your tapping it it's pinging you for 1 a turn, which is risky with Bob out there (it's basically putting you on a faster clock to death). A couple hits of damage could effectively cost you the game.

Tomb just outright scares me, but that's also my metagame. I'm seeing so many StP's running around, I'd never wish to sacrifice any number of mana to bring out a creature that will still take a couple of turns to kill off the opponent, even if it survives it's first untap step.

As for Scroll, I'm still very happy with 3 maindeck, the process I use when playing with it is mainly keeping a well sculpted hand (I use this term loosely, it's almost always just land) that assures at least a 75-100% chance of hitting for 2 damage. On occasions I'll drop a second and just rip 4 damage at them each turn in addition to whatever creatures swing. It's all on how you play the deck once you know Scroll is on the table, it's almost always in the back of my head to keep a hand that's consistent for Scroll damage.

SuckerPunch

08-05-2006, 05:28 PM

I'm not sure if this has been discussed yet.

But has anyone actually playtested Jotun Grunt like we've been meaning too.

I finally got my hands on a playset yesterday, and tried it a couple of games against two Gro variants.

I found it very strong, stronger than Wretch against UGR for one.

The main points...

If you have the mana to get rid off a bunch of cards the turn it's played, Wrech is probably better. But if you don't, then Grunt is far better as it does its thing without requring any additional mana investment, leaving you free to disrupt them via other means as well.

You get more life if it's gets StPed.

It's very hard for UGR Gro to get rid off due to 4 toughness. And if UGW Thres uses Stp on it, that's one less Stp for your Hypnotic Specter and Confidant.

It's scares the bezzes out of Mongeese and trades with Werebear, though why would you want to.

If it stays on line a few turns, Thres is almost incapable of winning, as Grunt very very rapidly robs them off all cards in their graveyard, while simultanously letting you use up mana to disrupt them through other means, and they won't be able to reatain thres for a long time.

Zilla

08-05-2006, 08:04 PM

I agree Grunt is solid against Thresh, but it's much worse than Wretch against combo like Salvager Game and Iggy Pop, because those decks can use their graveyard to win before your upkeep. Based on my testing thus far, I'd say the choice between the two is a metagame call.

laststepdown

08-06-2006, 04:43 AM

The only problem I have with Grunt is that it's not legal until the 20th. This is after Gencon. Otherwise, I'd run him over Rotting Giant-somewhere between 2-3 main. I've seen quite a few Thresh decks run Loaming Shaman for the mirror match-this seems a little bit slower, but just as potent-not to mention, it takes down Werebear single-handedly. In other words, have we been given a new weapon? I'm really interested to see how he plays out-especially against fast aggro decks(gobs of course, stompy of multiple types, etc.).

rsaunder

08-06-2006, 07:09 PM

4 hymn
4 sinkhole
4 funeral charm
4 vindicate
4 duress

4 dark confident
4 hippy
4 shade
2 scroll

4 dark rit

4 scrubland
4 bloodstained mire
4 wasteland
1 godless shrine
1 tomb of uruami
8 swamp

SB:

4 e. plague
3 chains of mephistopheles
3 serenity
2 pithing needle
3 perish

I took 14th at the most recent "Kadilak's dual land draft" with the above list.

A brief matchup description, analasys, and "what I would do differently" bit.

Round 1: Jesse Hatfield (MadZur) with UGr thresh:

Game 1 my deck did it's thing, disrupting, then dropping shades for the win. Game 2 I did my SB ing (3 perish and 3 chains for 4 charm and 2 scroll), and managed to resolve a chains reasonably too late for it to not suck. I failed to draw a perish and lost to 2 mongooses. Game 3 was similar, except that it was with an additional werebear. I probably would have won, had I seen a perish either game 2 or 3.

0-1

Round 2: John Quackenbush with Goblins:

He is on my team, and is the guy I've been testing against. 'Cept he was running a white splash now with 3 MB disenchant ( Exclamation ). Game 1 I charmed his lackey, sunk his land, and dropped a shade and a scroll to handle his threats. I won at 14 life. Game 2 I SB'd in 4 plague for 4 duress, but never saw them. The game went exactly as the first one, except that he had no lackey first turn.

1-1

Round 3: Some guy with "The hatfield project" (UGbr thresh (BAD!!))

Game 1 I killed his hand with early discard an kept him off of red mana for the entirety of the game. I played a shade to handle his goose and won handily from there. Game 2 I SB'd the same way as I had for round 1, and made an error of keeping a 1-land hand. I had almost pulled it out with some lucky early land draws, but couldn't draw a perish to sweep his guys untill too late. I died the nest turn to a vindicate flipped over by my own confident. I had resolved a chains that sat there, doing nothing. Game 3 I sided in 1 charm and 2 scrolls for the chains. I won, easily, after charming one of his confidents, keeping him off GREEN, and dropping double shades for a quick finish.

2-1

Round 4: Some guy with solidarity:

I win with ease. This matchup is seriously a bye. Second game I resolved a chains, but kept him in topdeck mode so it didn't matter.

3-1

Round 5: RGSA:

I had really been hoping I wouldn't see this matchup. Game 1 he drops a survival that I don't have an answer for, and wins shortly after. Game 2, I manage to keep him off of survivals long enough for a shade and a hippy to go lethal. Game 3 I duressed a survival first turn, killed his land, and dropped a hippy. He then topdecked a survival, and proceded to own me., despite the perishes that I had sided in after the first game. He won due to a survival that was ripped off the top. Damn.

3-2

Round 6: Diablos with eternal garden:

Before the round started, Di and I had mentioned how much ot would suck if we had to play each other. Well, of course we did. Game 1 he kept a sub-par hand, I duressed out a crucible, he innocent blooded my confident, I managed to keep a shade out long enough to win. Game 2, he hets an early crucible, and obscene advantage with 3 explorations. I needled barbarian ring, and eventually drew a serentiy (oh, -4 charm +3 serentiy, +1 needle), but it was too late. He had a functional LFtL, and it was too late. I scooped so we could get on with the third game. Game 3 I mulled down to 5 cards, but in them was a first turn duress, and a later serentiy, so it was OK. I lay the serentiy after he drops a crucible, 2 explorations, and 2 mox diamonds, and ride that advantage to the win.

4-2 (overall)

Overall, I don't know about charm. I'm not sure what I'd want instead, perhaps edict, wretch, or any number of other disruption slots, but I don't think charm was really worth it. As for the SB, chains was the only member that had performed unsatisfactorily, and I would probably put graveyard hate in instead, if wretch hadn't found a home MB by then.
_________________

Whit3 Ghost

08-06-2006, 08:49 PM

Like I said on SCG, I'd run Wretch over Charm. Congrats on the finish. Btw, you played Mulletus with RGSA.

PS- The sig is up and go on both here and SCG.

Bryant Cook

08-06-2006, 08:59 PM

Round 3: Some guy with "The hatfield project" (UGbr thresh (BAD!!))

Game 1 I killed his hand with early discard an kept him off of red mana for the entirety of the game. I played a shade to handle his goose and won handily from there. Game 2 I SB'd the same way as I had for round 1, and made an error of keeping a 1-land hand. I had almost pulled it out with some lucky early land draws, but couldn't draw a perish to sweep his guys untill too late. I died the nest turn to a vindicate flipped over by my own confident. I had resolved a chains that sat there, doing nothing. Game 3 I sided in 1 charm and 2 scrolls for the chains. I won, easily, after charming one of his confidents, keeping him off GREEN, and dropping double shades for a quick finish.

2-1

He sucked, it was his first tournament and he didn't know how to play threshold. He never changed his deck reg either, whhich is why it says thiers only 1 U/g/r/b when thier was two. BigBear asked me to help him so I gave him the list. He didn't understand "The Herbig Project" was a joke.

rsaunder

08-07-2006, 10:05 AM

I suppose I didn't really want to say "Man this guy sucked", as he was obviously new to the scene. And I understand the Herbig project thing. I was told about it perhaps 8 or 9 times that day.

@Wretch: I really like it, but it seems like it would make the deck perhaps a little too threat dense, and not packing enough disruption. 16 creatures is a lot in a deck designed to run off of 11.

Whit3 Ghost

08-07-2006, 10:36 AM

What's awesome about wretch is that he IS disruption on a 2/2 body. YOu also said that you'd have wanted to see wretch in both of your game losses.

SuckerPunch

08-07-2006, 11:44 AM

Yes, Wrecth is disruption on a 2/2 body against a decent number of matchups Thres, Reanimator, Survival, Tog, Iggy Pop? etc.

But those matchups and a few other don't account for more than 1/3 of the metagame. Thres is the only deck that sees a decent amount of play on that list.

So all those other games, he's a 2/2 that's just about the least aggressive most vulnerable creature in the format from every angle. This is why I would seriously reconsider ever MDing more than 2 at most. Even for those 2, I like Jotun Grunt better as he is a 4/4, is better than Wretch against UGR Thres, decent against UGW Thres (the bulk of the matchups where Wretch is effective), and is solid against just about any matchup assuming you have a moderate size graveyard.

Drathro

08-07-2006, 04:18 PM

@Wretch: I really like it, but it seems like it would make the deck perhaps a little too threat dense, and not packing enough disruption. 16 creatures is a lot in a deck designed to run off of 11.
I think it's acceptable to increase the number of creatures in this deck, as long as those creatures can serve as some sort of disruption, since they will be replacing non-creature disruption when you make the change.

Even for those 2, I like Jotun Grunt better as he is a 4/4, is better than Wretch against UGR Thres, decent against UGW Thres (the bulk of the matchups where Wretch is effective), and is solid against just about any matchup assuming you have a moderate size graveyard.
Jotun Grunt is probably worth some testing in this deck, but it forces you to wait before it serves it's graveyard-hate purpose. On the other hand, it serves as better immediate resistance to ground based attacks, and is more resistant itself to red removal. Running the Grunt might also interfere with Volrath's Stronghold every once in a while.

SuckerPunch

08-07-2006, 10:13 PM

Who runs Volrath's Stronghold?

It's not card advantage.

Many of the times I'm playing, I would rather top deck more disruption than creatures. With 4 Shade, 2 Grunt, 1 Urami and 2 Scrolls, you're running 17 threats, that's plenty.

It wouldn't be bad except this deck can't support any more colorless mana sources IMHO.

Drathro

08-09-2006, 11:12 AM

Who runs Volrath's Stronghold?
Some people run it instead of Urami. The brave/crazy/brilliant/challenged run it in addition to Urami.

nitewolf9

08-09-2006, 11:59 AM

FYI, Jotun Grunt is so rediculous against thresh...although being a bit weaker against decks that target the graveyard (reanimator, etc.). I find with this deck, wretch's mana requirements make him hard to be effective keeping thresh off of threshold (you always seem to want to be doing something else with your mana), and grunt is also immune to pithing needle, kills mongoose, trades with bears, kills prethresh enforcers, and takes the plow heat off your dudes as well. Plus, he's an extra low costed beater against solidarity and burn (with the disruption you pack and their spells hitting the yard, he usually stays around for at least 2, usually 3, attacks, which is just enough). All this makes his slight lack of versatility in the face of wretch a better choice I feel.

I've tested with him as a 4 of in the board and I really think he will make deadguy a much bigger problem for thresh, while shoring up other matches, after snap comes in. Anyway, I'm curious as to what other people feel about him after some testing...let me know how he works out for you.

SuckerPunch

08-09-2006, 01:50 PM

FYI, Jotun Grunt is so rediculous against thresh...although being a bit weaker against decks that target the graveyard (reanimator, etc.).

Yes, but how many such decks like Reanimator do you honestly see in competitive play, like a tourney, not many. The only decks that you see in any real numbers that use the graveyard are Thres and Tog, both of us are hurt as much if not more by Jotun Grunt than Wretch.

Given that, I still wouldn't run more than 2 Grunts main though, because as popular as these decks are, they still don't represent more than a fourth of any meta. Drawing 2 Grunts in one game against any other deck is just bad.

Phantom

08-09-2006, 01:54 PM

Yes, but how many such decks like Reanimator do you honestly see in competitive play, like a tourney, not many. The only decks that you see in any real numbers that use the graveyard are Thres and Tog, both of us are hurt as much if not more by Jotun Grunt than Wretch.

Iggy Pop.

nitewolf9

08-09-2006, 01:54 PM

Given that, I still wouldn't run more than 2 Grunts main though, because as popular as these decks are, they still don't represent more than a fourth of any meta. Drawing 2 Grunts in one game against any other deck is just bad.

Yeah, I completely agree with that...I think that they belong as a 4 of in the board really. Wretch can be maindecked, but these should not be.

SuckerPunch

08-09-2006, 03:10 PM

Iggy Pop.

Umm yeah, Dual Land Draft was just saturated with Iggy Pop. Heck it's had 8 decks run in every tourney we've had this whole year. No idea how I overlooked such a widespread prevelant archeatype. :wink:

Phantom

08-09-2006, 04:05 PM

The D4Ds had a fair amount of Iggy Pop, and I personally think it's on the rise, but I suppose it's a meta call.

I suppose the Wretch vs. Jotun Grunt debate is similar to the Wretch vs. Loaming Shaman debate that other decks have gone through. One point of note is that Wretch is the only card of the three that can keep a graveyard locked down. It's also the only one that can be needled. Basically, there are a lot of pros and cons on each side.

quicksilver

08-09-2006, 04:13 PM

I have only seen a maximum of two people ever play Iggy Poop at a tournament, and that was only once. One thing that really keeps it down is its terrible solidarity match, which is becoming more prevelent.

SuckerPunch

08-09-2006, 04:52 PM

Don't get me wrong Phantom, I don't think Iggy Pop is a bad deck. Just like I don't think either survival or reanimator are bad decks, and also are played less and less as solidarity is played more and more. Thus I just think that they see very little play, hence I wouldn't put them as that big a pro on Wretches side, where as Needle does infact see a ton of play. Thres runs 3 MD needles for godsake. And UGR Thres runs 4 bolt and 4 magma jet, all of which Wretch is vulnerable to but Grunt isnt. Also, once Jotun Grunt empties the entire opponent's graveyard (in 3 turns or so), most Thres or Tog deck would just outright scoop, because they really can't recover from that once they've played out much of their hand.

laststepdown

08-09-2006, 08:31 PM

So, it turns out I'll be at the Legacy Championships running Deadguy. If you see a guy with two piercings through his lip, say "Hi".

Tournament Report following my return, when I once again have internet connection.

Sorry for the lack of information-I ran out of time.

nitewolf9

08-09-2006, 09:02 PM

^ can't wait to hear it, good luck!

And yeah, that's one thing that can't be overlooked of grunt...he's a freaking 4/4 face smasher as opposed to a 2/2 weenie.

dre4m

08-10-2006, 07:03 AM

Due to the higher influx of random aggro and other jank decks at Legacy Champs, I cannot honestly recommend playing a specific resource disruption deck such as Deadguy. Though Tide and Thresh will be there, I would rather play something with a reducted matchup against those decks that does better against aggro crap such as Elves and six-colour Samauri aggro-control.

nitewolf9

08-10-2006, 01:58 PM

I find deadguy ale has pretty good game against random decks, I don't know why people seem to think it's such a narrow deck.

Specifically, those "jank" decks are not going to be able to handle the ammount of discard this deck packs, let alone getting all their land blown up. Plus, vindicate, bob, and shade are worth their weight in gold with these matchups.

If you ran a build that was pretty much exactly like pikulas was, lets say -2 swamp, +1 additional white source (godless shrine for example), +1 nantuko shade, -2 plague, -1 verdict, and +3 stp, or something like that (maindecked stp being pretty key I think) with a good board, you'll be in good shape. Yes, the deck takes some skilled decision making, but it well worth the versatility it offers.

Goblins is a way better aggro deck than those decks you mentioned (and this deck does have game against goblins), and decks like elves/samurais/other terrible crap get splash damage from the hate you're already packing. I just don't see the validity in the argument.

If you're a good player with a good build of any of the tier one decks, you will crush those random janky decks (unless someone comes up with a really clever idea, which is certainly possible...and would be very welcome).

rsaunder

08-11-2006, 08:54 AM

Specifically, those "jank" decks are not going to be able to handle the ammount of discard this deck packs, let alone getting all their land blown up. Plus, vindicate, bob, and shade are worth their weight in gold with these matchups.

If you ran a build that was pretty much exactly like pikulas was, lets say -2 swamp, +1 additional white source (godless shrine for example), +1 nantuko shade, -2 plague, -1 verdict, and +3 stp, or something like that (maindecked stp being pretty key I think) with a good board, you'll be in good shape. Yes, the deck takes some skilled decision making, but it well worth the versatility it offers.
My problem with MB STP is that it doesn't help you with anything you can't already handle, save perhaps turn 1 lackey. Anything untargetable (read:mongose) still owns deadguy's face. And with thresh on the rise, still, I'm honestly considering edicts. Chainers or otherwise.

Heck, might even help out wipe that one crappy critter the samurai deck got out.

BoardinCharlie

08-11-2006, 10:09 AM

Swords is amazing in the main board and I bet zilla could even back me up on this one. It is your one and only answer to MB Enforcers. Instant speed removal against Warchiefs/piledrivers. It's arguably the best removal spell ever printed for its cost and effect. In troubled spots removes your bob. Handles anything fat that your hymns may miss for ONE WHITE INSTANT SPEED. What you have to take into consideration is what are your BAD matchups. This consists of anything that has fat creatures that you can't handle...and this is exactly what swords deals with.

Your argument about Mongoose is handled in the board...most of the time I side out my swords agaisnt grow for the board sweeps such as perish.

rsaunder

08-11-2006, 04:14 PM

I won't ever argue that swords isn't worth it's CC in gold, it just doesn't solve this deck's problems. Seriously, you've had an enforcer cast on you? I can count the times that's happened to me on one hand with room to spare, as they will almost never have the mana available to play it, or the card after some good hand D. Besides, many builds are getting away from the white splash. Enforcer is a dying card.

"Your argument about Mongoose is handled in the board...most of the time I side out my swords agaisnt grow for the board sweeps such as perish."

With thresh being popular as it is now, board answers for mongose can't be all we're packing. Tossing in edicts or another answer isn't that high a price, especially when they too, kill an enforcer.

Whit3 Ghost

08-11-2006, 06:38 PM

Seriously, why don't you just maindeck Wretch. He beatz and reads ANSWER ME OR DIE to Thresh

SuckerPunch

08-11-2006, 06:46 PM

edicts aren't bad except that they rarely hit what you want them to hit.

so swords doesn't take out mongoose and troll ascetic and simic sky swaller. that's a couple of creatures out of thousands. mongoose is the main one that sees play. but when would you want to use your swords on a mongoose rather than a werebear or mystic enforcer anyways. if it's that big a concern (and it rarely is), just wait till it attacks and either double block it or pump a shade.

rsaunder

08-11-2006, 11:18 PM

Edicts can hit whatever you want them to hit against decks like thresh. They rarely have more than one creature in play that you'd need one to deal with at a time. A diabolic edict can be played in response to more choices being played, almost guaranteeing it can hit the one you want. Against goblins, it'll be worse off, as they have a lot of crappy creatures instead of one or two really important ones. But this is a meta choice against thresh.

@W_G: I tried a 2/2 split between edicts (diabolic) and wretch in the 4 charm slots, and it worked well.

DeathwingZERO

08-12-2006, 07:08 AM

I honestly don't know what kind of decks you guys are using for playtesting as far as Thresh/Gro is concerned, but even with disruption the U/G/w Gro decks I've been playtesting against have been tossing out creatures left and right from turn 2 on. With Daze, FoW and Swords to deal with your threats/disruption, and roughly 16 creatures (Mongoose, Mystic, Bear, Troll, Mage, etc) they almost always match you card for card when it comes to keeping their creatures safe vs yours staying on the table. Duress can't hit a creature, and Vindicate is a slow response to threats Thresh/Gro have.

Your single attempt at Edicts are nice in a pinch, but figure if your behind on Hymns or your Gro opponent packs the standard on creatures, your removal < their creature base. This usually equates to your Edicts hitting a 'Bear nowhere near threshold, or at best a Mage. Either way, they're going to keep their beatstick on the board, and there's a good chance it won't be answered by Vindicate. If you honestly think you need to have more removal maindeck, pack the Swords. There's much less creatures that dodge Swords than the chance you give them to dodge an Edict you more than likely need to have immediately (re: Diabolic) for it to be effective.

As for Jotun Grunt, I personally don't think his upkeep cost is a blessing, it's more of a pain. The only deck this guy would be seeing more than a single upkeep or two against would be Thresh, and they've got answers or counters for him. Half the time when messing around with him I had I noticed when he hits the table I'm almost always having to dig their graveyard to keep him, as the early game for Deadguy doesn't always toss a lot of cards in the graveyard (maybe an average of one and a half per turn from turn 2 on). This is a problem when your looking at 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 cards just to keep him on the board enough to make him a clock, assuming your oppnent hasn't already had enough time to either kill him or just block him to death. On top of that problem, you'll NEVER have two on the board. You might as well splash blue and pack Traumatize if you think your balls enough to keep that upkeep cost paid.

To be honest, what kind of matchups are we actually noting are SERIOUSLY BAD for Deadguy at this point? We know the original build given a tweak or two did amazing against Goblins, and it's got savage game against combo as long as the early disruption hits.....the only thing I can think of that would give a huge problem would be aggro decks packing more creatures than removal (Zoo or Zilla style decks) or aggro control that have untargetable threats larger than ours (Gro, Thresh and the like). So rather than hypothetical changes like random non-basic lands or creatures to attempt to speed/pump the deck up, could we get some info in determining real problems we see (especially specific cards)?

rsaunder

08-12-2006, 11:06 AM

To be honest, what kind of matchups are we actually noting are SERIOUSLY BAD for Deadguy at this point? We know the original build given a tweak or two did amazing against Goblins, and it's got savage game against combo as long as the early disruption hits.....the only thing I can think of that would give a huge problem would be aggro decks packing more creatures than removal (Zoo or Zilla style decks) or aggro control that have untargetable threats larger than ours (Gro, Thresh and the like). So rather than hypothetical changes like random non-basic lands or creatures to attempt to speed/pump the deck up, could we get some info in determining real problems we see (especially specific cards)?You really hit the nail on the head here.

As for real problems, fetches are annoying always, but Mongose is what this deck really has a hard time with. You need a shade to outpower it, otherwise you have exactly zero answers that don't involve having your sparse creatures 2-for-1'ed.

Diablos: Thanks for fixing my title:laugh:

Whit3 Ghost

08-12-2006, 11:10 AM

@W_G: I tried a 2/2 split between edicts (diabolic) and wretch in the 4 charm slots, and it worked well.
Did you ever want to see one or the other? If so, which one did you like more?

rsaunder

08-12-2006, 08:07 PM

E arly game I wanted edict, in almost all cases, but mid-late game, wretch was my weapon of choice, choking them off of thier final resource.

SuckerPunch

08-14-2006, 02:51 PM

In Shugyoso's tournament write up I noticed that he played against a Pikula deck running Rack.

I was wondering if that option was tested at all.

I note that a ton of the games I play, I have my opponent at 0 cards in hand, mainly bc they're afraid holding back threats will cause them to lose them to hymn.

I also hate how the duress's and hymn and verdicts you draw mid game all become dead cards.

The Rack would serve as a recurring source of 3 damage most of the games I've played with this deck. It would basically be lightning bolt ever single turn for only one mana total. If my opponent holds back cards because of it, it would make my hymns, verdicts and duresses worthwhile again.

Do you think it's worthwhile?

4 funeral charm

I can name six cards that I personally think would be far stronger... Swords, Diabolic Edict, Engineered Plague, Contagion (you always have useless discard lategame in your hand and Contagion often takes out or neuters two creatures and really screws with all their combat calculations, if you're running two, the odds of drawing it off of Confidant are next to nil), Smother and The Rack.

Drathro

08-14-2006, 04:18 PM

the U/G/w Gro decks I've been playtesting against have been tossing out creatures left and right from turn 2 on
I can honestly say I haven't played any Thresh with as high a threat density as you describe. That would make things much tougher.

Mongose is what this deck really has a hard time with. You need a shade to outpower it, otherwise you have exactly zero answers that don't involve having your sparse creatures 2-for-1'ed.
My experience (based on a build including Wretches) vs Thresh is that if you manage to draw their opening-hand removal/counter (usually with a Wretch), you have a chance to out-creature them with an active Confidant, but it's still a tricky situation. On the other hand, if the Wretch sticks, you have a good chance to break them early.

2nd and 3rd games, I always board in Dystopia, which makes things much more difficult for UGw Thresh. Against UGr Thresh, you have to save your LD for the red sources. Stupid Fledgling Dragon.

Oddly enough, I almost never end up attacking the graveyard games 2 & 3.

rsaunder

08-14-2006, 05:40 PM

2nd and 3rd games, I always board in Dystopia, which makes things much more difficult for UGw Thresh. Against UGr Thresh, you have to save your LD for the red sources. Stupid Fledgling Dragon.Dystopia is a really good answer, which I wish I had heard of in time for the draft. That being said, I have a playset now:cool:

@Suckerpunch: The exact same thing I said on starcity:
Did I say that they turned out to be the best choice? Swords, I've found out, doesn't handle your main problem which is mongose. The life gain also isn't something you want to be promoting, slowing your clock down further. Engineered plague is in no way stronger. With goblins declining in popularity, and combo getting more popular, it is obscenely frequently a dead card. Also, charm allows you to handle turn 1 lackey, something that this deck was utterly incapable of before. The reason I like, and chose to run charm, was the fact that it is always useful, in every situation. Plague is just far too narrow right now. Contagin is interesting, but why? It doesn't kill bear or touch mongose, it 2-for-2's goblins, assuming you have a card you're willing to pitch. And, as my problem always is with cards in this deck, it's useless against combo. Smother is a decent choice, although I'd run edict over it, hitting mongose and all. The rack is interesting, but my problem with it is that played early game, it essentially time walks your opponent. I'd much rather spend the early game disrupting, and have my kill conditions further disrupt him from recovering.

DeathwingZERO

08-14-2006, 06:43 PM

I agree with The Rack not being needed for playtesting, even in my best games I'm not keeping the opponent's hand dead the entire time, it'd rarely hit up for damage enough to bother dropping it.

As for the Thresh decks I face against, they're all U/G/w, and are relatively close copies of the one Bardo has on here. It's got a minimum of 14 creatures, of which they see very regularly against me. The last time I played a few matches I'd seen 5 of his creatures by turn 6, and two of them were 'Goose, the other two Mages, and the last Enforcer.

As I said before, the problem this deck has with getting rid of their creatures ahead of time is your relying solely on Hymn and Verdicts, which is only 6 cards, and typically turn 2 casts (in fact Verdict is never faster than turn 2). Once they hit table, Mage names Vindicate, and it's typically GG for your removal. You either have to hope to find a Cursed Scroll and keep your hand size tight, or have Swords maindecked.

My question, why don't we attempt running Ostracize or Cabal Therapy in the board instead of removal post-drop? Adding them in gives us a 40% chance of getting them turn 1, and it's additional removal before the threats actually drop. I'm going to see if they actually do any good when I playtest more, I'm still thinking there's some slots not necessarily earning their keep in the board.

SuckerPunch

08-14-2006, 07:39 PM

I keep my opponent out of cards most of the games I play. Esp if there's an active Confidant, they quickly realize that if they don't play their cards asap, they lose them.

Does anyone else have any input on The Rack?

Contagion I can attest is incredible (in my sui black deck). I run 4 copies of it there for the same reason I want to run 2 here. Because I always have a dead card in hand midgame, either a dead sinkhole, duress, hymn or dark ritual. Contagion by letting me throw away the dead card to take out two creatures/goblins is practically like 2 for 1ing.

I actually tested Engineered Plague in it's slot in Sui Black before settling on Contagion. I found it every bit the card that plague is against golbins, and unlike plague, it was free to cast and was awesome against any aggro deck, not just goblins.

The -2/-1 counters stay in play forever, so it makes angel stompy's 2/2s 0/1s permanently, or can make exalted angel a 0/3 essentially neutering the cards even it if doesn't kill them.Of course that deck ran more threats so combat was a lot more prevalent, and messing up combat calculations consistently won games, but I think 2 copies could work here very well.

The best part is, it supplements Shade since it has 1 power more and lower toughness so you can save it in combat situations more easily.

Revealing it with Confidant doesn't come up very often at all. I only recall it happening a few times with my Sui Black deck (though I am running a full playset), and I only recall it costing me one game out of close to a hundred.

I think it could work even better in Deadguy since you have Swords/Vindicate to deal with big creatures, so Contagion only has to deal with weenies, which is where it shines. Bluffing that you have a contagion usually works wonders too.

rsaunder

08-14-2006, 10:43 PM

The more I think about it, the more contaigin seems like an underpowered funeral charm. The charm takes out weenies, and is somewhat lesser in that regard to contagin, but the problem I have with contagin is the problem I have with all removal spells I try in this deck: They're dead half of the time.

Perhaps as a 2-of, as the thought of utterly neutering an exhalted angel sounds awesome, but I'm not convinced.

Phantom

08-14-2006, 11:03 PM

In what spot would you run the Rack?

The problem as I see it is that The Rack is no good by itself. It needs other cards to function. In more specific terms, it sucks against two out of the top three decks in the meta (Solidarity and Goblins) and completely goes against our Land Destruction strategy.

Basically, if we've stripped them of all the cards in their hand, we are either winning or losing on the board and The Rack is not going to change that (unlike some of the cards it might replace). Basically, it seems like a win more card in a deck that's packed with quality cards.

@ Contagion: We've already clashed on this card so I'll leave it alone lol, but I was curoius, were you going to run it in the Scroll spot?

@ Ostracize/Therapy in the board: I see no reason to run Ostracize in the board over Swords (except maybe to grab Mongoose, but that's a one drop). Therapy is a quality card, but I'm not crazy about it here because our threat count is so low.

NANTUKO_SHADY

08-14-2006, 11:36 PM

... Cabal Therapy would definetely not be a good choice in this deck. Like Phantom said, our threat count is waay to low to even consider running Therapy. In addition, each one of our creatures is very crucial and powerful to the deck. I can almost see no situation when it would be worth the flashing back of Therapy in exchange for one of your creatures.

@ Ostracize, fun card, but it should see no play in this deck. I would much rather have STP in the board than Ostracize. Not to mention, this card is a socery so it cannot be manipulated as well as STP. Also, ok it may take out goose, but lets be realistic folks, our matchup against Threshold is pretty decent to begin with. No sense in running a sub-par card in order to hate a deck we are already capable of beating...

f|i[p]

08-14-2006, 11:45 PM

Since people seem to think that the rack does not fit deadguy, has anyone ever tested Nezumi shortfang?

It adds to your threat count, provides instant discard and becomes the rack that beats down (3/3) mid to late game. I personally think nezumi shortfang would do alot better than the rack in the deck. Although I dont have copies of him yet, I do plan to get a couple and test him. I was just wondering if anyone has ever tested the rat?

SuckerPunch

08-15-2006, 12:01 AM

Lego

08-15-2006, 12:42 AM

That's a great suggestion. Shortfang is better. Instant speed discard rocks, and a 3/3 beating rack rocks as well. I'm confused about the wording, do you always have to pay atleast 1B to flip him, or does he automatically flip if your opponent has no cards in hand.

The flip clause appears at the end of the ability, so whenever you use the ability, once it has resolved, it checks to see if your opponent has an empty hand. If he does, Shortfang flips. You will always have to use the ability for Shortfang to flip, but your opponent does not have to have a card in hand for you to use the ability. If you use it while your opponent has an empty hand, it will simply flip Shortfang.

I remember some friends trying Shortfang in here for a while, but he seemed to be far too mana intensive, and encouraged poor choices. He didn't put away any games that would not normally have been won, but often he ensured that your opponent would not come back from the early game barrage. In the end, he simply didn't seem to improve any matchups significantly.

dre4m

08-15-2006, 11:25 AM

The Marco

08-15-2006, 11:53 AM

Shortfang is far too slow to warrant a slot in this deck, and this is capped off by the loss of his discard ability once he is flipped. If he stuck around as a constant "In your draw step I reduce your hand size to zero" creature, he would be better, but no.

I could'nt agree more,

The card seems interesting, but in tesing I found it to be less then satisfying. The card is decent until it becomes flipped, at which point I found it pretty useless (in most situations). Even before it becomes flipped it requires a lot of mana to use.

DeathwingZERO

08-16-2006, 06:34 AM

In regards to Therapy, I would say it should very, very rarely to be something needing a flashback, as none of the other discard effects we have can do it anyways. My biggest argument for either Ostracize or Therapy in the board (in addition to StP, not in place of it, I'm actually consdering taking out E.Plague completely since we're only seeing maybe one gobbo player at most), is the fact that it ups our disruption, and in Therapy's case, has the opportunity to 2-1 in card advantage, and late game can be called back if absolutely necessary to get rid of a potential threat you happen to know the opponent has (re: Wish targets, etc). Plus, unlike Duress, it hits creatures, and if your going first, this is your only opportunity to take out the decks worst nightmare: Mongoose.

Just the idea of your opponent having yet another reason to show their hand early game seems to be a good enough reason for this deck, even if most of the time the first one is basically a "guess and check" sort of play. In the same regards, so is Duress in a lot of matchups, and I've seen plenty of games vs aggro decks such as Gro and Goblins that I wish I had Therapy first turn over Duress, just because I knew the possible threat wouldn't be handled by Duress.

Also, this is one of those disruption spells that's never considered a dead card (unless your capable of keeping your opponent at 0 cards for turns on end, which I've pulled off on an average of less than 1/3 of my matches), and in a lot of cases it'll be the silver bullet you were hoping for, being your choice for the discard, not your opponents. I just suggest maybe we take a look back to the card for what it does initially, as all discard spells we have do, and just forget it has flashback unless it seems worth the sacrifice.

I will playtest this one a few more times, 2 in MD and 2 in SB (in place of E.Plague), and give some results once I can get a friend or two meet up with me so we can playtest some top decks against it.

Lego

08-17-2006, 02:24 AM

I know that Cabal Therapy has been tested with some success by a few in the Train Wreck board, and that deck has even less ability to flash it back then you do here. Personally in Deadguy I wouldn't flashback Cabal Therapy unless I would lose the game if I didn't, or win the game if I did, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't play it. It's great against Solidarity, possibly providing that little extra punch that you need to win that matchup, and can come in for Duress against random aggro if you've got nothing else useful to board.

My main problem with it is that it can whiff completely very easily. Duress almost always hits something, and Hymn and Vindicate always do. Ignoring the flashback, Cabal Therapy is a disruption spell that can potentially do no disrupting. That doesn't take it out of contention for me, it just means that it has to supliment the other disruption, and can't take the place of any of it.

I've never tested it in Deadguy, but in several other decks, one of which I also never payed the flashback, I found that often times there would only be one key threat I needed an opponent not to have, and Therapy took care of that. In the past I didn't feel like more hand disruption was needed in Deadguy's board, but with the shift in the meta it seems like Therapy can justify a spot in the board more and more.

dre4m

08-17-2006, 11:58 AM

NANTUKO_SHADY

08-17-2006, 01:16 PM

Counting the spectres, B/w has a total of twelve discard spells, maybe fourteen, if you still play Verdicts, which is very adequate in any matchup in which you want discard. Adding more discard in the form of therapy, especially in the Scroll slot, would be a huge mistake. I would always prefer the recurring source of damage than a dead late-game discard engine. I believe we need to keep the threat density up rather than pack in yet more discard.

QFT. This deck has enough discard spells in it, and adding more would just result in you drawing them late game when they are not relevant. I played this deck for a few months and I ran 14 discard spells including the Verdicts... and almost every hand I had discard on turns 1 and/or 2. I don't see the logic in adding more discard into an already tight build. If anything, add more threats, as a low number of threats was always the issue for me.

The Marco

08-20-2006, 06:02 PM

QFT. This deck has enough discard spells in it, and adding more would just result in you drawing them late game when they are not relevant. I played this deck for a few months and I ran 14 discard spells including the Verdicts... and almost every hand I had discard on turns 1 and/or 2. I don't see the logic in adding more discard into an already tight build. If anything, add more threats, as a low number of threats was always the issue for me.

Completely agree, the deck runs enough discard to destroy most hands, I have not played the deck much, but the main issue has always been the lack of threats. Most of the deck creatures can be easily dealt with.

rsaunder

08-20-2006, 07:03 PM

As for the lack of threats bit, I've been trying out these changes to the deck (from my list) :
-4 charm
-1 shade
+3 wretch
+2 jitte

And I've also been considering cutting 1 jitte for either another wretch or another shade.

This works very well, as wretch has single handedly been able to hose a few decks I've tested against, such as tog and golden grahms. It also helped an abysmal landsill and loam confinement matchup.

The Marco

08-20-2006, 07:19 PM

Hum, I really like the charm... call me crazy but would cut Duress before the Charm. I would also keep all 4 shades. But Jitte is a good idea (or is SOFI better?)

NANTUKO_SHADY

08-20-2006, 07:47 PM

Hm... the idea of Jitte is quite interesting. I however am not sold on it. I don't think this deck has enough threats for Jitte to make a HUGE difference in this deck. Yes it is always nice to have when a creature is riding it FTW, but in this type of deck with such a low threat count, I don't feel that Jitte has a spot in this deck. Perhaps I am wrong, but I am just making this analysis based of what I know about this deck and how it runs.

DeathwingZERO

08-20-2006, 08:04 PM

This deck can't support Jitte, period. There's between 11-14 creatures (depending on builds), and none of them survive any of the typical removal we see, all of which are instant speed. Wasting 2 mana to cast a dead card until it has a creature to equip doesn't follow the flow of this deck at all, it doesn't disrupt, and it doesn't remove. It needs a creature to survive long enough to swing, and when it runs out of counters, it needs it to happen again. This is really just coming down to being a bad and overcosted Cursed Scroll, and at best, an Enormous Growth.

laststepdown

08-20-2006, 08:42 PM

Jitte is not worth it-it's too slow. We really need a faster clock-I suggested Rotting Giant, it worked OK for me @ the Gencon Prelims, but not enough to warrant playing the deck @ the Championships.

dre4m

08-20-2006, 11:37 PM

Nantuko Shade is fine as a clock-setter, because the resource denial will keep them from establishing sufficient resistance even to our Hyppies and Bobs. Jitte is far too slow for Deadguy, so is SoFI, and Rotting Giant serves no purpose other than to take up a slot that can be filled by a creature that does something besides randomly die to an empty graveyard.

NANTUKO_SHADY

08-21-2006, 12:38 PM

Agreed, do NOT cut Nantuko Shade. That would be a huge mistake. I think that the creature base is solid as is, and there isn't any reason to switch it around. The only time I would tinker around with the creatures would be if I were to add more threats, but those threats would have to be pretty good to earn a slot in the deck.

rsaunder

08-21-2006, 10:48 PM

I heven't been horribly impressed with jitte, mostly because I always seem to have better things to do with my mana. I've cut 1 jitte, leaving the other one in for the sake of randomness and the games it can win on it's own for a 4th shade. I really like this configuration, but I think it's more the wretches than the jitte at this point.

SuckerPunch

08-21-2006, 11:07 PM

Yeah, running single Jitte was something I've always wanted to do with this deck.

More importantly though, this deck is getting a lot of bad hype, on account of all the articles saying that it tests poorly, and the lack of significant results since Pikula's run.

If the status quo remains, the days of this decks presence in the Metagame forum are numbered. If we want it to get more respect, we either need to...

A.) Post any solid organized testing results that we have that honestly assess this decks matchups in the current metagame.

B.) If the results are poor, find a way to innovate and improve the deck. A lone Jitte might be a start. Another is to try and learn from the repeated success of Red Death.

As I mentioned before, the only differences between this deck and Red Death are...

4 Vindicate
4 Dark Confidant
2 Gerrard's Verdict
2 Engineered Plague
2 Cursed Scroll
1 Swamp

vs.

4 Negator
4 Rotting Giant/Wretched Anurid
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Chain Lightning

I'm by no means saying that the decks are strategically similar.

But there's no denying the fact the disruption base is near identical, the only difference is in how the two decks go about winning the game once the disruption has had it's toll.

Deadguy goes for a slow controllish type game that tries to maintain the initial card advantage with board control elements.

Red Death goes for the throat and hopes to finish of the opponent by the time they recover from the initial onslaught of disruption.

Red Death has had continued success from multiple players in the past two months, Deadguy hasn't had too much success in the past six months.

So there likely is something to Red Death's strategy. The problem with Red however is that it offers nothing that even compares to the incredible synergy and versatility that Vindicate has with the rest of the deck. It can supplement the land destruction strategy, or can serve as removal. In my experience, it by itself justifies the White splash.

I've already suggested that this deck try running 4 Negators for a fast win and 3 Swords so that it has 7 removal pieces just like Red Death to supplement the Negators. It's been discussed so I wont go down the route again.

But I do think comparing and contrasting the two decks and learning from each is a very key element in putting this deck back on top. I would love to hear your guy's feedback on this issue.

P.S. As for removal, I really don't like Charm just because as far as removal is concerned, it's pretty crappy IMO. It can kill lackey, whoppie, and that's really about it. And removal is really the function that the card does the best. The discard is only good if they have an empty hand, and in that situation, you're usually already winning. And the swampwalk is near worthless IMO.

NANTUKO_SHADY

08-21-2006, 11:46 PM

P.S. As for removal, I really don't like Charm just because as far as removal is concerned, it's pretty crappy IMO. It can kill lackey, whoppie, and that's really about it. And removal is really the function that the card does the best. The discard is only good if they have an empty hand, and in that situation, you're usually already winning. And the swampwalk is near worthless IMO.

QFT. Funeral Charm is terrible in my opinion. It is quite true that it's only GOOD and relevant removal is the ability to get rid of a turn one Lackey. I would much rather run a threat in place of Funeral Charm. I don't even see why this card was put into any Deadguy builds to begin with. Whoever decided this was a good card to throw in was wrong in my opinion. The build is already pretty tight, and with Vindicate, STP, and Cursed Scroll, there is a decent way to get rid of creatures you don't like. Not to mention Funeral Charm only dishes away Lackey, not much else. If you were to make changes to this deck, the only change I would advise would be to up the threat count.

laststepdown

08-22-2006, 12:59 AM

the only change I would advise would be to up the threat count.
QFT.

Which is why I upped the fetchlands and added Rotting Giant. While I wasn't as happy with him as I could be with something else, he definitely helped in the matchups where graveyards didn't matter(anything but Thresh really). In a Thresh heavy meta, I would say run Withered Wretch for sure.

DeathwingZERO

08-22-2006, 05:13 AM

This might sound SERIOUSLY out in left field, but has anyone attempted to test Putrid Warrior? A 2/2 for W/B with the ability to either gain life or make life loss seems to be a pretty decent hit, especially when multiples attack. It does require both colors, which makes for a bit less of a chance to cast when compared to any other creature we have, but it seems that it might help speed the clock just enough. Also the ability to gain life (albeit offsetting the damage to your opponent by 1), seems to possibly be a help for late game to keep the life from dying out too quickly. I'm not even 75% sure of testing it, but it did seem like a plausable option.

Summoner

08-22-2006, 06:08 AM

I don't like him (and it's not cause of the flavour ;) ). The lifegain declares him to a 1/2 attacker, that can easily be blocked. If he would be somewhat like Goblin Leggionaire, then maybe yes.
But what does he do? There is nearly no match-up in which Dead Guy is the Aggro-Deck. Even against Combo you are more of a Control Deck by disrupting them.
All Creatures in this Deck have usefull abilities, but the Warrior doesn't, because he doesn't do anything, maybe except for the Solidarity matchup. But still there are better cards. You can't want to play him 2nd Turn - except if you started with Ritual, Duress, Hymn 1st turn - and he can attack probably turn 4 then. Little late, isn't it?
I dunno, but I don't see where he helps out in any matchup (except for blocking against aggro, where he's not better than Phyrexian Warbeast, which blocks and lives).

Welcome to The Source! Please refer to the LMF Rules (http://mtgthesource.com/forums/announcement.php?f=23), specifically the part about proper grammar and spelling. This part of the site is moderated much more strictly than the rest of the site. ~ Nightmare

SuckerPunch

08-22-2006, 07:35 AM

Yeah, the main thing that keeps Putrid Warrior from being good is that he's a format where most every creature has 2 power atleast.

If I wanted to add threats I would add either....

Negator

Rotting Giant

or Jotun Grunt - better against Thres than Withered Wretch IMO.

The Marco

08-22-2006, 12:43 PM

QFT. Funeral Charm is terrible in my opinion. It is quite true that it's only GOOD and relevant removal is the ability to get rid of a turn one Lackey. I would much rather run a threat in place of Funeral Charm. I don't even see why this card was put into any Deadguy builds to begin with. Whoever decided this was a good card to throw in was wrong in my opinion. The build is already pretty tight, and with Vindicate, STP, and Cursed Scroll, there is a decent way to get rid of creatures you don't like. Not to mention Funeral Charm only dishes away Lackey, not much else. If you were to make changes to this deck, the only change I would advise would be to up the threat count.

The card can also be used for instant discard or in some rare occasion give swampwalk to a shade or hippie for finishing purpose.

I do not have a complete report but the guy who won the Canadian Legacy Championship played BW Confidant with charm instead of duress (I am currently testing a 3/3/3 split between charm/duress/STP). I know he killed goblins all day...

Summoner

08-22-2006, 12:49 PM

I'm sorry for Off-Topic, but:

My native language is not english. And I do not really understand what your problem is about. My english doesn't seem too bad, but obviously I'm not allowed to discuss here, cause I make some mistakes.

Whatever, maybe I better keep reading here, than trying to say sth.
I don't want any problems with you (or anyone else) but this seems quite arrogant to me.

@Topic:

Negator might be a good help against Solidarity, IGGY and Salvager's Game, that's why I keep him in the Sideboard. But MD he is not a good decission (imo), because legacy is an aggro-format.

So far,

quicksilver

08-22-2006, 12:53 PM

I'm sorry for Off-Topic, but:

My native language is not english. And I do not really understand what your problem is about. My english doesn't seem to bad, but obviously I'm not allowed to discuss here, cause I make some mistakes.

Whatever, maybe I better keep reading here, than trying to say sth.
I don't want any problems with you (or anyone else) but this seems quite arrogant to me.

Oh don't worry about the mods. One of them is a bitter old man, who teaches english for a living. So you can see why he has such a stick up his you-know-where when it comes to spelling and grammer. And all the other mods obviously just try to emulate him. But just try the best you can and you'll be fine. You are more than welcome to post.

DeathwingZERO

08-22-2006, 06:47 PM

My biggest problem with Negator (especially against decks such as Iggy Pop and Solidarity)......their goldfish is faster than your fastest clock. You get a turn 1 Swamp->Dark Rit->Negator, they have 4 turns. They KILL before 4 turns. This also has given them ample opportunity to get their hands sculpted as they wish, because best case scenario now, your hand has Swamp, Dark Rit, and two Hymns to back him up, and keep them off a solid 7 cards for the next few turns. Very unlikely.

On top of that issue, both decks pack maindeck answers to a potential threat. While Iggy is still mixing it up with between 1-2 in the maindeck, it has multiple ways to search for it. Solidarity can just as easily play out their game without the Cunning Wish for a draw spell using Brain Freeze and just waiting for your draw phase, and use it to get the Negator bounced during combat that would be lethal. Seeing this happen numerous times with my Shade, I know it's very, very likely to happen with a 5/5 that keeps your mana free.

What it boils down to is: You will NOT race the top 2 combo slots. Ever. In 50+ games of playtesting against both decks, I was the slow player, and it's much easier against Iggy than it is Solidarity, due mostly to Withered Wretch and destroying their manabase with efficient 1-1 card hits, while swinging for 2-4 a turn with Scroll, Wretch, Hippie, and Confidant.

I am still thinking about Grunt. My issue is that with what we've got right now, why is it none of our creatures (especially access to white), don't have protection abilities? We have creatures that all go Plowing, typically die to Bolt (Negator especially sucks for this aspect, poor guy), or are taken out by the simplest of removal, which is an abundance. Is there anything that at the very least can dodge StP, or survive burn/targeted removal that isn't something dumb like a White/Black knight variant?

SuckerPunch

08-22-2006, 08:09 PM

destroying their manabase with efficient 1-1 card hits, while swinging for 2-4 a turn with Scroll, Wretch, Hippie, and Confidant.

Wait. So you're actually arguing that swinging for 2-3 a turn is fast enough to beat combo, but somehow, swinging for 5 isn't?

I play 3-4 Negators in my side everytime I play this deck. I always side them in against sol and iggy, and I'm always glad that I do.

Note, I've never suggesting cutting disruption slots for negator. Your scenario of typically having 2-3 discard/disruption spells in your opening hand is right. (And when it's not, you always should mulligan). How this works out in the actual game however, you're wrong about. In the actual game, those two or so disruption spells, plus maybe on avg on one more you draw in the first few turns slows them down to the point that an early Negator is fast enough to win the game 90% of the time. But in that same scenario, all your other clocks that do 2-3 damage a turn, I've many times found too slow because even though you've successfully disrupted them, they give them such a slow clock that they have a chance to recover.

But by focusing on Negator, you've missed the entire point of my post. I'm not saying this deck should run Negator. All I'm saying is that this deck should borrow some insight for Red Death's success. Interpret however you want.

laststepdown

08-22-2006, 11:48 PM

I've begun to run Negator main, Cursed Scroll main, and Delerium Skeins...which oddly enough isn't as bad as I thought. More coverage to come.

NANTUKO_SHADY

08-22-2006, 11:51 PM

I've begun to run Negator main, Cursed Scroll main, and Delerium Skeins...which oddly enough isn't as bad as I thought. More coverage to come.

I'm not sold on Negator, especially when played MD. The card seems too situational, and it is a dead card in many matchups. It's prime uses are against control and combo decks. And like DeathWingZero said, Negator is just too damn slow to race combo. I don't see Negator in this deck at all, even in the sideboard.

dre4m

08-23-2006, 09:17 PM

DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT play Negator in the maindeck of Deadguy!! He probably doesn't even belong in the sideboard! Yes, he is good against combo and control without burn spells, but we thrash those already with discard and LD! Deadguy has poor matchups against aggro decks, which unfortunatly make up most of this format. Negator is NOT the answer! I personally opt for maindeck StP to help the aggro matchups, but definatly do not play Negator, as it is a classic example of making great matchups a little bit better and bad matchups infinatly worse. Nantuko_Shady, he is not just situational, he is downright awful when he is forced to block and starts eating away at your board, and you WILL be forced into defensive mode against fast aggro.

The Marco

08-23-2006, 09:26 PM

Lego

08-23-2006, 11:50 PM

I don't see the word suicide in the name of the deck...

What's in a name though, seriously? There's no "High Tide" or "Reset" in "Solidarity" but we play them anyway, no? And we don't play Rabid Wombat in Rabid Wombat.

For what it's worth, Pikula advocated removing the Negators from his board. He didn't think they did enough to improve the combo matchups, and they were too volatile.

NANTUKO_SHADY

08-24-2006, 12:47 AM

For what it's worth, Pikula advocated removing the Negators from his board. He didn't think they did enough to improve the combo matchups, and they were too volatile.

QFT. I read Pikula's tournament report he did for Starcity Games. In it he stated how the big change he would make to his deck was the removal of Negator, for the exact reasons Lego Army Man stated. Now I haven't played this deck in about two months, because I just wasn't pleased with the deck, but does the optimal build now run 1x Tomb of Urami? I have seen multiple lists containing it but I was never sure what the true deal was with it. Good? Bad? Iffy?

Lego

08-24-2006, 01:20 AM

Does the optimal build now run 1x Tomb of Urami? I have seen multiple lists containing it but I was never sure what the true deal was with it. Good? Bad? Iffy?

I love Tomb because my buddy drathro randomly threw one in literally five minutes before the first DLD started, and he went on to T8. I gather that Tomb won him one game, and should have won him another (he forgot that it was in play, which can be attributed to lack of playtesting with it.) It's basically there because it will randomly win you games while rarely losing them. Not an auto-include, but you might as well play it if you have it.

NANTUKO_SHADY

08-24-2006, 02:31 AM

Lol I think I remember one of those games where he smashed that Solidarity guy. Wasn't he all like EOT Dark Ritual with no hand and the Solidarity player just look baffled until he activated Tomb and sent a big 5/5 flyer at his face lol. Good times.

DeathwingZERO

08-24-2006, 07:59 AM

Just for kicks, I actually did a serious test of Deadguy vs Iggy Pop. Lets put it this way, you win 95% of the matches, and I gurarantee no less than a 5% margin of error here.

We played through 3 series of 35 games, myself playing both decks for as long as they've been out, and my friend whom I've taught the basics (and backups) of Iggy Pop, both in the straightforward win (9 mana with access to Intuition and LED or Ritual in the same turn), as well as the backup plans (Infernal tricks) and out of all that, he beat me in this "game 1" 5 of 35 matches (both of us played tournament enforcements, drawing 1 less for mulligans).

After that, he won 1 game, of 70 (myself making SB changes in both sets of 35, and him going between adding bounce for the first 35, and no changes for the second 35).

With siding in the extra scroll, and the 4 Wretchs, he couldn't do a thing. Even with bounce, my damage sources were too bountiful. 4x Wretch, 4x Hyppie, 4x Scroll, 4x Shade, and 4x Confidant, with a set of Duress, Hymn, Sinkholes, Wastes, and the Verdicts still in the maindeck, he literally was sitting on less than 2 cards about 80% of the time from turn 2 on.

THIS is exactly why I say Negator is useless. He's 3 mana, which requires a Ritual even on turn 2, and provides no backup to the decks function. Wretch completely and singlehandedly kills off most of their combo ability, Hyppie continues to punch when hand disruption is tight, and Confidant gives so much card advantage it's insane. Couple this with Shade = Win, and you've got the reason why I say Negator just isn't worth the slots, because we've come to the conclusion we already destroy IGGY, and even Negator can't balance Solidarity's matchup, we just need to play even more aggresive disruption than against IP.

This now brings me to an interesting conclusion. Goblins aren't as common around here, so I've gone with just completely cutting back E.Plague from MD when I see none showing, and I also cut back 2 Wasteland (because I sold them), and against most decks am not really sad I don't have them. At this point, I'm considering putting the 4 Wretch maindeck, in place of the 2 Plagues, 1 Scroll (back to 2MD-2SB plan), and 1 more land (cutting me back from 23 original to 21 total, probably another swamp or fetchland).

I'm honestly thinking this is the most solid the deck is going to be, giving a huge threat range in game 1 against things such as Survival, IGGY, and any graveyard abusers, as well as 4 more threats at 2cc (replacing a land, 2 3cc enchantments that are dead about 75% of the time game 1, and a 1cc artifact, which does the same amount of damage, only as spot removal) and making the deck a solid 16 creatures. I'm pretty certain I'm not going to bother playtesting anything else (short of Grunt), as I see this deck being at it's damn near peak up until we see if Time Spiral has anything new to offer.

I'm still finding it hilarious that a "metagame" deck is now a top contender, having matchups being more in favor than people would like to admit. Sounds like Legacy is continuing it's uphill trend on making solid decks.

Benie Bederios

08-24-2006, 08:56 AM

I don't think you're completely right. I play with IGGy-Pop about 35/65 against Confidant( in favor of Confidant). Game 1, if the Confidant doesn't play wretches I just wait until I can play IGG and win from that point. Game 2 I board in Confidant and Disrupt and just go for a double Tendrils plan and win. So I suggest you test it against someone who knows more, then just the basics.

I do agree Negator is not really needed against that deck though. I'm testing Jotun Grunt and Negator in the SB though, and I like boarding both in against Solidarity. This changes the deck in to Sui-Black, and it will run over Solidarity. I also like to do this against control decks, playin extra bodies is the way to defeat them( except Rifter.)

The Marco

08-24-2006, 11:31 PM

What's in a name though, seriously? There's no "High Tide" or "Reset" in "Solidarity" but we play them anyway, no? And we don't play Rabid Wombat in Rabid Wombat.

For what it's worth, Pikula advocated removing the Negators from his board. He didn't think they did enough to improve the combo matchups, and they were too volatile.

Right...Dude you gotta be kidding me here... read between the lines!

Tacosnape

08-25-2006, 12:37 AM

What's in a name though, seriously? There's no "High Tide" or "Reset" in "Solidarity" but we play them anyway, no? And we don't play Rabid Wombat in Rabid Wombat.

How cool would it be if we did?

I'mma go put a Solidarity in Solidarity, a Nausea in Nausea, and a Rabid Wombat in Rabid Wombat.

No, but seriously. Negator does not belong in this deck to me. Certainly not maindeck. Deadguy Ale is -all- disruption and I'd rather spend my board on a diverse array of solutions to decks that just hit me in the mouth.

The Marco

08-25-2006, 12:17 PM

The main argument for the Negator seems to be that its good against combo... Why not just play Rule of Law instead... I know it cannot be cast turn 1 with ritual but a turn 1 Negator does nothing if they combo the following turn.

DeathwingZERO

08-26-2006, 05:50 AM

If the deck is so amazingly worried about combo being a problem, why don't we just put 4 Orim's Chant or Gilded Light into the SB? Both Solidarity and Iggy Pop basically die mid-combo to either, though Solidarity runs FoW when needed. Good chance you've ripped it from their hands before they try going off though, and keeping 1-2 mana open on your turns is relatively easy unless your playing disruption, which is good enough to force them into bad plays, or keep them off good ones.

Negator really isn't favorable compared to just outright stopping them in their tracks, or denying them a chance to randomly kill you. The only problem I see here is that Solidarity can win in response to your play, while Iggy cannot. This forces a predicament of whether or not we want instant speed we can put up against them mid combo, or something to sit on and hope it's not bounced (Ivory mask/ True Believer, for example). Either way, it's gotta be between the 1-2cc range, and hopefully only single W source, otherwise you Time Walk Solidarity casting something like Rule of Law.

Tao

08-26-2006, 12:01 PM

The correct Number of cards this deck should have in its SB to combat combo: ZERO

Heavy discard plus yard hate plus heavy LD annihilates every combo deck and I claim that Deadguy has at least 70% against every Combo deck in the format.

If you play cards like Swords to Plowshares MD you should have some slots in the SB to replace them against decks without creatures. For example Gerrard's Verdict. But these cards should be good in other problematic matchups, like Burn or Gro, too.

laststepdown

08-26-2006, 06:46 PM

The correct Number of cards this deck should have in its SB to combat combo: ZERO

QFT.

I see a whole page dedicated to the fact that I'm testing Negator, when in fact it's one of many solutions to the problem this deck has: lack of a clock.

Jotun Grunt and Rotting Giant are decent-either way you have to up the fetchlands. To be completely honest, this deck has yet to perform very well recently. I feel the meta has changed enough that we should start looking at other options for this deck to have fair game-maybe creatures aren't what needs to be added.

SuckerPunch

08-27-2006, 01:35 AM

To be completely honest, this deck has yet to perform very well recently. I feel the meta has changed enough that we should start looking at other options for this deck to have fair game-maybe creatures aren't what needs to be added.

QFT. That's actually the bulk of my point. The performance of this deck has faltered massively and its time we get to the heart of that matter.

But as for the theory that maybe creatures arent what needs to be added. That's possible, but I honestly can't think of any spells this deck needs to add to shore up it's weaknesses. The biggest weakness time and again for this deck seems to be the lack of a clock. I'm not sure why people assume that if you want a clock, it's so you can beat combo. Red Death's Negators are never sided out against any of the aggro matchups sans burn either. The reason is simple, if you have removal, Negator is awesome even against aggro. And this deck, esp if it ups to 4 Swords would have just as much removal as Red Death.

DeathwingZERO

08-27-2006, 01:42 AM

Anyone attempted to use Soul Spike? If the deck is stuck to a long game, 7cc isn't hard to come by, and if it needs quick hits and finds itself with dead cards and not much of a sideboard option, ditching 2 black cards in addition doesn't seem like a bad drawback. Card advantage should help cover this loss, barring Bob doesn't go Plowing. Just a thought, as I've had instances where I wish I just had damage sources, or better creature removal than Vindicate maindeck. If Goblins start slowing, we could look into ditching the 4 E.Plagues.

Ridiculous Hat

08-27-2006, 03:06 AM

DeathwingZERO

08-27-2006, 03:59 AM

I will admit the testing was not done by players competent to play both sides, he's very much lacking when playing Deadguy than I am, mainly because he's incapable of deciding when to use what land destruction, or hand removal, etc.

I will say however, that Deadguy was running NO Vindicates, and 2 Wasteland (Mortify was my maindecked removal, due to Vindicates not being available). This severely hinders Deadguy in the matchup, as both would cripple the manabase to nearly uselessness had I had them. LED would have been the only necessary target, next to lands, and Wasteland keeps the Seas from staying.

I will say that my matchups weren't with 100% competency, but even then, the matchup is highly in Deadguys favor, especially if IGGY's typical play would be to side in Confidant, it only helps Deadguy's clock, and they can use their destruction to get the potential threats out of the way.

Even if it comes down to the opponent needing to topdeck a tutor, there's 8 in the deck, that's a good enough number to make Deadguy's land destruction, hand disruption, and artifact destruction good enough to slow them. Statistics on that would prove Deadguy favorable.

EDIT: Combo arguments like this also further my wants for Cranial Extraction. 4 mana is a good possibility on turn 2, with Dark Rituals. Even if it's not turn 2, the probability of casting it just gets better from that point on, and it's really not a dead card against any deck, especially against things that have a limited threat base, or one that you typically have trouble answering once it resolves. I will test this, and let you all know if I feel it's casting cost is too much of a deterrent.

laststepdown

08-27-2006, 05:44 AM

Why Soul Spike over Spinning Darkness, or Kaervek's Spite? 7 is alot of life to pay from Bob, especially when you're getting rid of 2 other cards in your hand to cast it-I'm not going to get into the thought of trying to hardcast it.

Suckerpunch: In addition to the Negators, I pulled the Plagues out too-for Infest, merely for the fact they board sweep and hit x/2s. It's usually a 3 CMC Wrath of God. I think most people don't realize just how much resource denial this deck plays-there are (in theory) very few permanents to even block the Negator to begin with-if so, they're usually an x/2(if you've played the deck properly of course, and cast your disruption, then there may not be any blockers). The key word on Negator is "Trample". Your resource denial puts them into topdeck mode beforehand. Toss out Negator, sac a few lands, win game(faster than a Shade, I might add).

<rant>
Regardless, I'm done suggesting creatures. To many people on this board would rather copy+paste a list than try something different-and I'm fine with that-but when you don't read the thread, and ask questions that have already been covered on previous pages, you are *NOT* helping to solidify the deck or contribute to the forum, and you are certainly not helping to evolve the format.
</rant>

I feel that had to be said-we've had quite a few (all but) pointless posts in the past few pages, and if we aren't responsible in evolving this deck properly to fit the changing meta(such as all the other decks in the metagame forum), we'll be doomed to the same fate as Landstill-a deck that works in theory but just doesn't put the results out that it should.

Deathwing: Have you tried Cabal Therapy first? It's definitely cheaper than Cranial, and has a slight bit more synergy with the rest of the disruption package. Let us know how it(Cranial) works out in other matchups!

SuckerPunch

08-27-2006, 11:21 AM

I'm pretty sure the Soul Spike suggestion was just sarcasm. Everyone realizes just how horrid that card is.

I love infest, but it has horrid synergy with Hypnotic Specter and Confidant and pretty much your entire creature base. And there are lots of decks whose creatures are too big for Infest to hit, thresh for example. So it can hurt you more than your opponent.

DeathwingZERO

08-27-2006, 02:41 PM

The Soul Spike was halfass sarcasm, only because a friend of mine and I developed a U/B combo deck around it that's actually got a relatively fast clock for a casual deck (Usually turn 5-6). After posting I realized there's a good chance you'd draw into it with Bob, and that would suck, but I figured it'd be funny to get peoples reactions after I realized how bad it'd be in this deck.

As for Infest, have you ever wanted to go one step further for Mutilate? I've noticed that Infest can't really take down Thresh creatures after about turn 4, and those would seem bad to run into with Negator (Mongoose being a 3/3 and Bear a 4/4). Have you had any issues where you wanted more than -2/-2?

As for Cabal Therapy, it was actually in my Sideboard for a little while, and I didn't mind it that much. It was a good outlet to get rid of Bob if things turned around unfavorably and abruptly, and at times I'd pitch to a creature to take out either a combo piece or a threat I knew was coming that I wouldn't be able to deal with (Mystic Enforcer after thresh, Mongoose, Exalted/Decree/Dragon, basically anything that puts ME on the clock) so the flashback option does end up happening more than people wanted to admit on here so far. Plus, as my arguments earlier stated (probably a few pages back now), it hits creatures, something the deck REALLY wants to do against unfavorable beats.

Whit3 Ghost

08-27-2006, 08:58 PM

On saturday I played a local shindig with Deadguy, which I borrowed from rsaunder who decided to play Wastedlifes UGR Gro list.

The list
4x Waste
4x Scrub
5x Fetches
Xx Swamps
1x Tomb of Urami

Creatures
4x Confidant
4x Hyppie
3x Withered Wretch
4x Nantuko Shade

Disruption/Destruction
4x Duress
4x Hymn
4x Sinkhole
4x Vindicate
2x Cursed Scroll(could very well become Jotun Grunt or Spectral Lynx)

Randomness that can win the damn game
1x Umezowa's Jitte

Sideboard
3x Warmth
4x Plague
3x Negator(NEEDs to be extraction, as this cost me a game)
2x Serenity
3x Dystopia

About 11-14 people showed(a lower turnout than usual)

//Round 1, GW beetz
Game 1- I duress, seeing creatures and double Ascetic. He drops a BOP on his turn and passes. My turn 2 Hymn picks up BOTH of the suckers and I think I'm home free. He casts armadillo cloak on the BOP and I can't draw the White source for Vindicate.

Sideboard out- 4 duress
Side in- 3 Dystopia, 2 Serenity

Game 2- Ritual Hyppie. Turn 2 sinkhole. He eventually gets the swords, but Dystopia wrecks his day.

Game 3. One thing about Chris' list is that the random 1 ofs can just steal games.
I keep a lot of his stuff off of the board untill he stabilizes with a Watchwolf. With the Wolf coming at my head, I ritual and activate Tomb, and block the dog. I kept a few land in hand so tomb didn't hurt me at all. He scooped it up when I ritualed into Dystopia a turn later.

1-0
2-1-0

//Round 2- rsaunder with UGR Gro(12 burn spell)
He's a terrible matchup for me, but I convince him to ID due to the low turnout

1-1
3-2-1

//Round 3- Red Death
First, let me say that this list was suboptimal and ran Lotus Petal MD.
Game 1
I smash face. The random Jitte is sick and my Hyppie rides it to victory.

Game 2
I die to turn 1 hyppie, turn 2 Jitte

Game 3
I get a good start, Duress Hymn and creatures. Unfortunately I can't find any LD and am starting to get a little worried. She drops her Jitte and I'm left scrambling to find an answer. I swing for 10 with a Confidant and a Shade to drop her to 3(at this point I'm banking that she'll kill herself off of her own confidant with a Specter or a Negator). She equips Jitte to her Confidant and kills both my doods and Drops Wretched Anurid. Me forgetting about Anurid, thinks that its gg. I drop double confidant and pass my turn. She reveals a Chain Lightning.
rsaunder, who was watching the match(and is my new guardian angel) points out that she lost two life because of Anurid. I pump the fist and laugh.

//Top 4- Kobold combo(!)
Game 1
I disrupt and smash. Nothing much to this game other than that I drew 3 Hymns.

Game 2- I have decent disruption(and a turn 1 Negator), but I mess up and cast a Specter over Vindicating his land. He goes off with that land and I kick myself in the teeth.
However, I'd like to say, that if Negator was Cranial Extraction I would have won the game.

Game 3- My ride shows up and I can't bargain for time. We played the first few turns and I had the game in the bag, I just couldn't get through his shit tons of blockers in time. I grudgingly concede and leave empty handed.

NANTUKO_SHADY

08-27-2006, 09:19 PM

So... is anyone planning on bringing Deadguy to The Mana Leak Open!?! :confused:

Whit3 Ghost

08-27-2006, 09:27 PM

So... is anyone planning on bringing Deadguy to The Mana Leak Open!?! :confused:
If rsaunder or I go, one of us would play it. However, this is highly unlikely

laststepdown

08-27-2006, 10:12 PM

So the only time Negator was really bad for you was at a misplay-doesn't seem too bad. I think the single Jitte could be even more amazing with the Grunt(as you stated, over Cursed Scroll)-but I'm unaware how many fetchlands your build runs. Not that anyone cares, but personally I run Grunt in SB to bring Negator out against Threshold.

As for the debate of Infest, do you personally bring in Plague against Thresh to begin with? That's a rhetorical question. I'm going to see if Mutilate is a better option, but I don't like raising the mana curve any more than I have to.

Phantom

08-28-2006, 12:28 AM

As for the debate of Infest, do you personally bring in Plague against Thresh to begin with? That's a rhetorical question. I'm going to see if Mutilate is a better option, but I don't like raising the mana curve any more than I have to.

I like Mutilate, but isn't Dystopia > Mutilate against Thresh? It's a one sided, slightly slower Wrath that is in your curve. It's perfect against Thresh because they rarely overrun you with threats and you can play it around Daze about the time they are achieving Threshold.

I like the 1-of Jitte, but I've never really understood why people run 3 Shades instead of 4. They are so deadly (assuming you drop him on turn 2 and make your third land drop he's a 4 turn clock that eats your mana) and yet so easy to kill that I would always rather draw 2 than draw none.

To be completely honest, this deck has yet to perform very well recently. I feel the meta has changed enough that we should start looking at other options for this deck to have fair game-maybe creatures aren't what needs to be added.

I agree. I've done a fair bit of testing with the deck as it's in my gauntlet, and have been impressed with it's strengths, but I think I have identified it's major weaknesses (note:these are not ground breaking)

1) Resolved threats, especially big creatures are hard to deal with.
2) The creature base.
3) Many strong matchups are easy to lose.

I actually think #1 is a tad overrated as a weakness. It always suffered at the hands of FS when it dropped a Sea Drake first turn, but it deals much better with slower ground threats via Vindicate, pumped shade, and sometimes StP. I actually think what the removal suite is missing most is a good sweeper. We hit the hand and mana base as fast as possible, but Legacy is so fast, we can't deny all decks permanents, all of the time. Some are bound to slip through. But, if we spend the first 3is turns hitting their hand and mana base, then sweep the board, well that would be pretty sweet.

As for the creature base, I don't really have a problem with the number of creatures (12-15 seems solid) I have a problem with their durability. Follow my logic here. Deadguy is a mana denial deck. Our job is to cut them off from a color, often times their removal color (like cutting off W or R from Thresh). Legacy is a fast format. Every deck must run turn one answers to Lackey. Nearly all of those turn one answers kill any of our creatures. So all a deck must do to kill one of our threats is topdeck one measly fecth/dual/basic and it puts us back at no clock. In many ways, Deadguy is like Thresh. They are both denial decks, they simply have different denial methods (discard and LD vs. Mage, Needle, and Counters). I think one of the differences in the decks performances of late is the quality of creatures each deck runs. Ironically enough, their creature mana curve is often lower than ours.

The matchups are a bit subjective, but it seems that this deck was built to smash combo, crush Thresh, and hose random decks with bad mana bases. To some extent, it has recently been failing to do all three. I can't personally attest to the combo matchups, but I know Thresh matchup is not as favorable as it should be, or at least as I'd like it. Lastly, because of this deck and Goblins running 4 Ports and Wastes, mana bases have become the tightest they've ever been.

So I'm sure you're wondering if I am just going to list problems and leave the solutions to others. Please, I'm action oriented. There are a ton of ways you can go to fix some of these problems. Maindeck Mutilate and Negator (or Lynx). Or you could support WW for Wrath and Angel. Here's mine:

Phantom's Modest Proposal in 2 Parts

1) I tested the deck with Deed a while back. I was surprised at how easily the mana base supported it. Up the fetches and simply fetch G or W as needed. You generally run less than 8 white spells and I was only running 3 Deeds. The slightly shaky mana base hurt me in two matchups, the mirror and Goblins. Luckily, Deed is an absolute beating in both those matchups so at worse it seemed a wash. Meanwhile, Deed was improving my Thresh, Angel Stompy, FS, Random Aggro and Rifter matchups. I think everyone should at least test this and see if I'm right or yell at me.

2) So I've decided on a Green splash. This opens the door to a ton of interesting creatures. The one I'm most interested in (I think) is Nimble Mongoose (at least till they print a 2G Troll Ascetic). With the upped fetch count, Ritual, Wasteland, discard, etc. I would imagine we achieve Threshold fairly timely (turn 5 maybe?). I'm not even really concerned with that right now, so much as I am focusing on how much Goose brings to the table for this deck. At worst, he's the best turn one Lackey answer we have, and at best he's a nightmare for opponents to deal with through the discard and land destruction. As for where to run him? I'd say cut Wretches and/or Hypys for him. I've found that first turn Hypy's never connect with non-combo decks and third turn Hypys are laughable late. We can move him to the board if we don't have better combo hate located there. Here's a rough build of what I'm talking about:

B/w/g Phantom Confidant: A Dorm Brew

//Creatures (15)
4 Dark Confidant
4 Shades
4 Mongoose
3 Spectal Lynx

//Spells (23)
4 Duress
4 Ritual
4 Hymn
4 Sinkhole
4 Vindicate
3 Deed

//Lands(22)
4 Wasteland
hmm. Not sure yet. I do LOVE Tomb here, so I'd like to keep that. Also, I'm not the best mana base builder, so we'll see what I come up with.

Well, I guess that's the end of this monster. I'm sure some people will have some thoughts, lol.

laststepdown

08-28-2006, 04:31 AM

Phantom: The reason to run 3 Shades over 4 is because you can rarely keep 2 alive on the board while still disrupting their hand and board. I do agree with you about Dystopia. Infest is my choice over Plague against gobbos(for clarification). I've been complaining about the creature base's durability for quite a while. Someone agrees with me (finally). As for the green splash, I started playing this format with Nimble Mongoose. This deck does achieve Threshold quickly-but I believe you've created a hybrid of Deadguy. (Deadguy Deed?) I highly suggest starting a different thread for it, where we can discuss your build, isolated from the original, to avoid confusion in an already busy thread.

As for the 1-of Jitte, it seems stronger than Scroll. Under the same philosophy that Scroll was, it could be the board control (in theory, cheaper board control at that) we've been looking for-and makes Infest that much more fun. :)

rsaunder

08-28-2006, 06:13 PM

As a clarification to Whit3_Ghost's post, I (he) ran 5 saclands, 3 mire and 2 delta, 4 shades and only 2 scrolls.

@The green splash: If it didn't kill all my stuff, too, I'd be all over that. If I want a sweeper that kills everything, I'd go mutilate. At least it lets scroll and jitte stick around. I guess the splash could be done easily (3 bayu for 3 swamps, keep the fetch base the same.)

@Cranial extraction>negator: I think it's a great idea. What do you guys think?

I'd be willing to give a serious shot to sweepers, such as mutilate and deed, while cutting the jitte and wretches from my build. I just wish there were something good in the 3-cc range that was on color.

Also, one quick nooby question: I have e. plague on the board, naming [whatever werebear's creature type is], why doesn't that kill the bear (the bear isn't in play yet, he just cast it from his hand)? I thought that e. plague's effect always happened first (matron not getting the tutoring ability and all).

Anarky87

08-28-2006, 06:31 PM

Also, one quick nooby question: I have e. plague on the board, naming [whatever werebear's creature type is], why doesn't that kill the bear (the bear isn't in play yet, he just cast it from his hand)? I thought that e. plague's effect always happened first (matron not getting the tutoring ability and all).

I always thought that when you, for instance, had a Plague out naming Goblins, they could still cast Matron, his effect will trigger, but it will die when SBE's are checked. Then afterwards, its tutor ability will go on the stack, letting you search for a Goblin. Like this example:

Q: I resolve Engineered Plague, naming druid. If a player casts a Yavimaya Elder, do they get to search out two lands and put them in hand?

A: Yes. The Elder must come into play in order for the Plague to affect it. The game sees it go to the graveyard from play, so its ability triggers.

I'm not sure about the Werebear though.

quicksilver

08-28-2006, 06:34 PM

Also, one quick nooby question: I have e. plague on the board, naming [whatever werebear's creature type is], why doesn't that kill the bear (the bear isn't in play yet, he just cast it from his hand)? I thought that e. plague's effect always happened first (matron not getting the tutoring ability and all).

Matron does get to tutor. E. plaugue kills the matron but he can still tutor for a goblin just fine. It doesn't kill a werebear whith thresh, because one says -1/-1, the other says +3/+3. They aply at exactly the same time, and neither takes precedence of ther other, so it is a 3/3.

Also, your avatar I think Mulletus used to have that exact same one, I think it is mulletus posting every time I see it.

rsaunder

08-28-2006, 06:47 PM

Matron does get to tutor. E. plaugue kills the matron but he can still tutor for a goblin just fine. It doesn't kill a werebear whith thresh, because one says -1/-1, the other says +3/+3. They aply at exactly the same time, and neither takes precedence of ther other, so it is a 3/3.

Also, your avatar I think Mulletus used to have that exact same one, I think it is mulletus posting every time I see it.

Really? I thought I stole the avatar fair and square from someone over at the Starcity vintage forums.

Matron gets the tutor? Well, some judge at Philly diserves to be canned in that case:mad:

In any case, though, thanks for clearing that up.

laststepdown

08-28-2006, 06:48 PM

@Cranial extraction>negator: I think it's a great idea. What do you guys think?
I just wish there were something good in the 3-cc range that was on color.

There is...it's just that no one besides me has the courage to play him.

Also, one quick nooby question: I have e. plague on the board, naming [whatever werebear's creature type is], why doesn't that kill the bear (the bear isn't in play yet, he just cast it from his hand)? I thought that e. plague's effect always happened first (matron not getting the tutoring ability and all).

I'm assuming you mean a Thresholded Bear. Power/toughness attributions are the last applied state based effect-threshold is a static ability, as well as E Plague's -1/-1. They happen at the same time-continuously. If you were to activate a Tormond's Crypt, targeting the Werebear's controller's graveyard, then Werebear would lose threshold and become a 0/0, and be placed in the owner's graveyard. You can read about State based effects on your own time, in the comprehensive rulebook, rule #420.1 through #420.5. As for Matron, yes, you can tutor. Things like Fanatic though, can't be sacrificed in response to a static ability-they're in the graveyard before you have the priority to activate the ability.

Now my question to you, to stay on topic (discussion of the build, not rules of the game itself) why would you not name Mongoose? You can target Bears with removal, but not the Goose.

rsaunder

08-28-2006, 06:54 PM

It was simply the way I chose to ask the question. Goose would of course be the correct choice, but werebear popped into my head first while I was typing the question.

"@Cranial extraction>negator: I think it's a great idea. What do you guys think?
I just wish there were something good in the 3-cc range that was on color."

Those lines were on two seperate topics.

laststepdown

08-28-2006, 06:58 PM

Indeed they are-it's just my opinion that Negator answers the question you posed. ;)

I hope I answered your question appropriately though. If you have any more questions about state-based effects, or rules in general, don't be afraid to message me through here or an instant messanger.

rsaunder

08-29-2006, 11:28 AM

"Indeed they are-it's just my opinion that Negator answers the question you posed. ;)"--laststepdown

Gotcha.

So I tried the green splash, and I've got to say that I'm impressed. While it didn't drasticly improve the thresh matchup like I was hoping for (I did take out 3 wretch for it, so...) it really did help beat the ever loving heck out of creature based aggro. Most of the time, though, I found that it was killing creatures and not any artifacts/enchantments (getting rid of jittes was nice, but I felt that vindicate would be rather adequite for that). I'm going to try mutilate in it's place, and see if the on-color sweeper could do the trick. Admittedly deed is better, but the change to the manabase, the waiting for a turn, and the destruction of my scrolls and such was annoying.

This has proven to me, though, that the deck absolutely needs a sweeper, at least as a 2-of.

M.Maddox

09-01-2006, 11:53 AM

Aren't sweepers really ruining your creatures, as well? Or are you holding back on your creature plays?

The Marco

09-01-2006, 12:10 PM

I like Mutilate in the side against random aggro, goblins and even Threshold... It's just a matter of playing it smart...

DeathwingZERO

09-04-2006, 12:34 AM

I really like the idea of Mutilate myself, it's just a matter of figuring out what we would take out of the SB or modifying the MD in order to fit maybe 2-3 of these guys.

In almost all cases though, Maddox, you rarely will hit more than 1 of your own creatures by turn 3-4 (which is the golden opporunity, in my experiences), unless your the aggro player of the matchup. Most of the time it's considered x-1 in your favor, especially against aggro decks like Thresh, Gobs, and R/G beats.

nitewolf9

09-06-2006, 11:07 AM

I run 2 maindeck mutilates and one in the side now, and it's been pretty useful. I find I'm playing disruption for most of the early game anyway, so it's actually really common against aggro to mutilate all their threats away turn 3-4, with them not having a hand/enough land to recover, then dropping a shade/hippie/whatever ftw.

It's a good addition, it just kinda sucks to turn it over w/ confidant (which almost never happens actually, and it's only one more point than the 2 md plagues of the original build). Pikula himself said that he wanted his only 2 creature destruction spells to be high impact, and I'd say mutilate fits that bill.

Tacosnape

09-06-2006, 02:35 PM

What are thoughts of Jotun Grunt in this deck over Withered Wretch? He can't get rid of a card whenever you choose like Wretch can, nor can he be played off a Ritual turn one. He does, however, fit the bill of needing a large face-beater, hating on Threshold/Flashback/LFTL/What have you, synergizes fairly well with all the discard you run, gets around protection from black, and doesn't die horribly to any damage-based spell.

nitewolf9

09-06-2006, 02:57 PM

^^ all the reasons why I run him over wretch.

My creature base for my build looks something like this:

2x Jotun Grunt
3x Nantuko Shade
4x Hypnotic Specter
4x Bob

2 MD and 2 Side seems to be the best combination, but I'm not sure...might try to sqeeze in a 3rd one, simply because he solves so many problems (namely being a big beater to finish games) and is so synergystic with a deck based on dark confidant.

Anarky87

09-06-2006, 05:32 PM

I plan on trying this deck out for the first time tonight at our local Wed. tournament. I assume it'll do relatively well, being that tier decks are rarely found there unless I loan them out. I'm going with a creature base of:

4 Confidant
4 Shade
4 Specter
3 Wretch

And the rest of the package being:

4 Duress
4 Hymn
4 Sinkhole
4 Ritual
4 Vindicate
2 StP
2 Jitte

I'm not sure about the SB yet. I'm gonna wait and see who all shows and then go from there, but it will probably contain the 4th Wretch, a couple Grunt if our shop has them (He's been pretty slow in getting Coldsnap singles), the two remaining StP's, and perhaps some Infest. The rest will be based on attendance.

I'm not sure about that build, but I thought I'd give it a go. I thought I read in here that Jitte wasn't really that hot in the deck, but I don't know what else to put in as Scroll hasn't really appealed to me. And I'm thinking it'll trash what I'm expecting to see tonight, since most of our players have that, "ZOMG JITTE, I'M BONED!!!11!1" mentality whenever I drop it. I'll definitely look into Mutilate when I can. Anyway, I'll get back to you all.

Clark Kant

09-07-2006, 04:57 AM

I just wanted to post this here...

Serra Avenger WW
Creature - Angel (R)
Flying, Vigilance
You can't play Serra Avenger during your first, second, or third turns of the game
"Those who endure in the face of suffering, those whose faith shines long in evil days, they shall see salvation."
-Song of All, canto 904
3/3

It would work in a deck like Deadguy Ale if the deck ran more 4 more fetchlands for more consistency. You spend your first three turns playing disruption or Confidant or Hypnotic Specter anyways. Vigilance is a very nice bonus for something that won't cost you a ton of life when Confidant reveals it. 8 Fetchlands + 1 Tainted Field + 4 Duals means you can run this along with 4 Swords (the best removal ever printed) and maintain consistency.

If you're stuck at 3 lands, you can supplement this with a duress on turn 4.

Do you guys think Deadguy will start running this?

laststepdown

09-07-2006, 05:06 AM

Over Jotun Grunt?

No way. It's double white(which is retarded for a splashed color to attempt), is smaller than Grunt, and has no utility to deny any resource of an opponent's whatsoever. If that p.o.s. was the only creature in my hand, I'd mulligan. How do I cast it off of a Dark Rit? Also, unless I drew into Duress on turn 4, it would have already been cast, turn 1, then in the graveyard and finally RFG'd to either Grunt or Rotting Giant. The synergy with this deck and that angel sucks.

Speaking of which.

What's with the Tundra suggestion? I'd rather run Godless Shrine or Plains over a Tundra-the deck *still* has no blue. That's like the 4th time in this thread someone suggested Tundra. STOP SUGGESTING TUNDRA. PLEASE.

Thank you.

Clark Kant

09-07-2006, 06:31 AM

Good point.

I wouldn't run this over grunt. But I was saying to possibly run both.

I just though that an undercosted creature with both evasion and vigilance is exactly what this deck needs to help against weenie hoards, even goblins.

The disruption and sinkholes can slow golbins down, but if they recover you usually lose.

Having a creature that can not only fly over all of them to deal damage, but still remains able to block most everything short Piledriver is pretty strong.

Especially one that unlike Exalted Angel doesn't deal a ton of damage when revealed by Confidant.

kicks_422

09-07-2006, 07:10 AM

laststepdown's explanation really sums it all up against Avenger for this deck... It's a good card, only not for Deadguy...

If this were straight B/W Control or B/W Stompy, maybe it has a place... but for a mono-black control deck that splashes white, I don't think it could be fitted in, or even needed at all...

DeathwingZERO

09-07-2006, 07:40 AM

My biggest problem with it is that it's incredibly underpowered. For a dual white spell, it's a 3/3 body, from turn 4 on. On top of that, it has no protection abilities, and short of flying, does really nothing in this deck.

In comparison, Confidant = card advantage, Hyppie = disruption, Shade = threat, and Wretch = utility. Even Grunt can be considered disruption/threat/ and when necessary utility.

We want our creatures to either A) Trade blows, and win, a la Shade/Grunt style, B) have utilitarian purposes, or C) have a faster clock than 6 turns. 3 power really isn't any better than 2 in most cases with this deck, even if it does fly. It'll still get shot down by anything else this deck's creature base loses to.

At this point, it still comes down to the deck needing something that's threatening in the 2-3cc range, even possibly 4cc. As long as it's clock is better than 5 turns, it's got potential. If it can't at least meet that requirement, it's more than likely not worth the effort.

Clark Kant

09-07-2006, 04:25 PM

Yeah, I think you guys are right. I was just trying to speed this deck up a bit.

I saw that Green Death deck thread and I wound up with this.

White Death

//Disruption
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Sinkhole

//Creatures
4 Phyrexian Negator
4 Nantuko Shade
4 Hypnotic Specter
3 Jotun Grunt
1 Flesh Reaver/Wretched Anurid

//Removal and Reach
4 Vindicate
3 Isamaru, Hound of Konda/Vendetta/Swords

//Mana and Lands
7 Swamp
3 Duals
4 Bloodstained Mire
3 Polluted Delta
4 Wasteland
4 Dark Ritual

I haven't tested this and you're probably much better off with Red Death.

The main things this deck has going for it are the versatile bomb that can double as land destruction that is Vindicate, and the massive size of Jotun Grunt which doubles as a bomb versus Threshold.

Vendetta is on the table because the life gain your opponent gets from Swords might be bad. Taking out a blocker can deal as much damage as Bolt to a player does. Of course, burn is better against solidarity but then again so is... Vindicate. Though it doesn't double as removal and burn it does double as removal and land destruction.
Removing a land when your opponent already got Sinkholed or Wastelanded forces them to take your beatings for anywhere from one more turn to several more turns. The idea that it can take out big blockers like Werebear that Red Death can't take out, letting your Negator punch through to deal more damage is a nice bonus too.

Grunt is also a bigger beater, though it also stays around for less time. This deck is better than Red Death against the Solidarity (because Vindicate can help mana screw them) and Threshold matchup IMO though likely worse against goblins, which seems to be seeing less and less play. Maybe this should be moved to the Red Death thread.

Once again, this is all completely untested. I just got the idea from Green Death.

nitewolf9

09-07-2006, 04:58 PM

I think the problem with this deck is the combination of two different goals that tend to contradict each other more than complement. Adding white instead of red slows down your kill rather than speeding it up, even though you get to use the versatility of vindicate. B/W, I feel at least, is much more suited to a controllish route (even though we do get grunt, which is about as undercosted as a beat stick can get).

With "green death" I simply thought that the addition of berserk (and to a lesser extent rancor) to a suicide style deck, running large creatures like negator and flesh reaver, would let you speed up the clock, even more so than with red's burn...not only because of damage, but because it gives us the ability to have our monsters trample right over anything in their way to pound damage through.

These are just my opinions though...the "hybrid" approach could definitly work, but on the surface it seems like a bad idea. Worth testing at least.

DeathwingZERO

09-07-2006, 06:22 PM

The gameplan for Deadguy was always a slow one with it's win conditions, the whole concept of the deck, though, is to basically slow your opponent down to even less speed than you have.

Once Shade hits the board, they've seen the decks best play. Deadguy really only has to protect him for a few turns, this is where all the land, hand, and creature destruction comes into effect. The reason the deck did so well overall was because it's disruption made it's win condition a pretty much guarantee, when it's played out correctly.

What we're seeing now though, is a general shift of the metagame. Goblins are still around, but not in full force, because Solidarity, Iggy Pop, and Deadguy all have relatively good matchups against them. With more decks beating out Goblins, Deadguy has to either shift it's focus on something else, or basically evolve again, from the original concept of Sui-black with a white splash.

It's not necessarily our clock that needs to be looked at, though that has been a focal point as of late. It's mainly just trying to figure out what would keep this deck it's "metagame" status, rather than it just being another deck that did it's job in disrupting the top contenders, then died out because it didn't beat anything else.

Anarky87

09-07-2006, 06:34 PM

Does anyone really know exactly what the problem is for the deck? I was thinking that with the format leaning towards Solidarty, Iggy-Pop, and Gro (And apparently now, to a lesser extent, Goblins) it would actually make Deadguy a more viable option. I'm not sure about the creatures, but at my tournament the other night, I really felt there was nothing wrong with them. I think that the creature base is pretty solid, though the addition of Grunt MD may be needed eventually.

So do we need to sit down and focus on just what it is that is making the deck unviable? Find what's hamstringing our game and try to fix that. Last night between Sinkhole's, Hymns, Duresses, and efficient creatures, most of the decks couldn't keep up (Save for that one odd deck that ran a ton of Pro-Black dudes, making me wish I had Virtue's Ruin). I've sorta kept up with the deck's discussion, but briefly, can someone tell me what people are having trouble with?

quicksilver

09-07-2006, 06:48 PM

So do we need to sit down and focus on just what it is that is making the deck unviable?

What is making the deck unviable is its inherent lack of power. It has a hard time dealing with resolved perments, it only has one draw engine, which is extremly easy to stop, as well as the rest of the threats it has are vunerable to removal. It doesn't do anything that is overly powerful, most decks can still top deck and resovle things through discard, and most decks can deal with the land destruction. The main problem with the deck is the cards its using are just too underpowered for the legacy format.

Clark Kant

09-07-2006, 07:32 PM

With more decks beating out Goblins, Deadguy has to either shift it's focus on something else, or basically evolve again, from the original concept of Sui-black with a white splash.

I think this gets to the heart of the matter.

The problem it seems to me isn't combo though. Deadguy is the ultimate answer to combo. The problem is nongoblins aggro.

Deadguy can deal with Goblins decently though it's still not a matchup to look forward to. But a couple of pumps of Shade, Cursed Scroll, Plague, they can all answer goblins.

The problem is decks designed to beat goblins, because they run bigger creatures, like Faire Stomy, Angel Stompy, Zilla Stompy etc.

As someone said, this deck has awesome disruption. It just can't deal with resolved threats.

I think the best route maybe to either go all aggro as I suggested above, or better yet, take out the dependence on creatures altogether.

Play 4 Swords, 4 Mutilate and some grand finisher that can survive Mutilate. Perhaps Exalted Angel (I know the double white hurts your ability to play it, or something like that.

The disruption is there to severely impede combo. Swords is there. We just need a way to deal with permanents, which Mutilate offers. Lets see any of the ____ Stompy decks that keep beating this deck deal with that.

Of course Mutilate runs counter to both Hypnotic Specter and Confidant. I guess I would consider slowly heading in the direction that Truffle Shuffle does.

The difference would be, this deck would refuse to go the 4 color route that can't support Wasteland or Sinkhole to supplement the Vindicate. Both are insane cards that we need to retain. But that doesn't mean we can't looking at Truffle Shuffle strategy. Sure Mutilate isn't as good as Deed, but Deed eats two turns anyways. The deck however would need to run 8 Fetchlands to reliably get White.

P.S. Please lets not slow the deck down TOO much though. We don't want to essentially end up with Dirt and put a 7cc creature in here as our win condition. Mutilate should probably be the top of our curve. If we splash green for Deed like Dirt however, we could always run Nantuko Monastary/Mystic Enforcer or possibly even Spiritmonger. Eternal Witness would've been a huge bomb here if it costed 2G instead.

Also I was looking at an old Pox deck I used to have and I was thinking that a Pox, Pikula hybird could work very well. The white splash for Vindicate adds a ton. Vindicate can take out the permanent of your opponents that would best enable you to abuse Pox. For example, if they have 2 creatures, one of which is Untargetable, you Vindicate the other one so they have to sac the other one to Pox. It's also one more Land Destruction spell.

DeathwingZERO

09-08-2006, 02:31 AM

At this rate, my biggest "flaw" I feel this deck has: Total lack of recursion or continuous effects.

1- We have 11-13 creatures depending on the build, NONE can come back from being killed off to the easiest of kills.

2- We have awesome disruption, but none of it (except those few of us willing to try Cabal Therapy on the whim it may come back more than once a match), has any repeated threat aspect, and most decks catch up

3- Removal. We have Vindicate, StP, and Cursed Scroll. Possibly need to look into something of the likes of Chainer's Edict, or even something that can be used more than once/ x-for-1 removals.

I'm seriously pondering throwing in Volrath's Stronghold as a 1 of, just to keep threats recirculating. Everytime I play the deck, I look at creatures that have gone to my graveyard and think they're such a waste of power in there.

I'm also still thinking twice about excluding Nezumi Graverobber, or Shortfang. Both are in the casting cost ratio we'd want (between 2-4), and both have abilities that are very useful to the decks focus (discard, graveyard hate, then direct damage or reanimation). Graverobber would be downright sick against the right decks, by stealing away their creatures after hitting their single card in the graveyard off a turn 2 Ritual. If there isn't much to reanimate through your opponents deck, he's still a 4/2 after the flip. Not a bad threat there. Shortfang has the problem of needing to tap, but he is continuous discard, and his flip would make him even more dangerous, especially if you're able to keep their manabase corrupted.

I'm also thinking of adding in more consistent means of land destruction. Far too often I'm seeing Wasteland becoming even less of a threat, most decks either pack their own, or have so many lands it's not really slowing them down (Rifter for example). Unfortunately, nothing has really compared to Sinkhole, other than Crucible + Wasteland lock, and there's really very few decks right now that consistently works against. So far this has left me with Vindicate + Sinkhole, and most of the time Vindicate is either going after annoying critters, or even more annoying enchantments or artifacts.

I was also considering Pox in this one, to make it more of a Deadguy Pox deck, because the manabase and creature base are both very tight, you're almost always going to 1 up your opponent on everything. We may need to look into that style of a build.

All of these are ideas, but at the very least, it should be very obvious now that we have a large amount of areas we can cover with this deck, it's basically back to the drawing board with a really solid base to work with.

laststepdown

09-08-2006, 02:59 AM

I'd think by the time Graverobber's ability would be useful, they'd have an answer for it-regardless, it wastes their removal on something other than Shade or Grunt(who, in theory, has excellent synergy with the action of getting Graverobber flipped in late game-which is currently when we're winning).

Crucible could be an option-but then I'd want it immediately-it makes me want to run 3-4 Enlightened Tutors-with a package of Jitte(by preference of the rest of the board), Scroll, and E Plague.

I don't know. That's a lot of slots to fill up in an already tight base. You're right though-as for recurrable threats, Darkblast was about as good as it got-and it didn't quite meet the requirements we were looking for.

DeathwingZERO

09-08-2006, 03:11 AM

The thing I've noticed about this deck, is that there really isn't a late game. Either you can disrupt them long enough to hold off, or they come rushing you from the gates and just murder your guys.

I know at this point we've got pretty much nothing to go on when it comes to removal free creatures, but I do like the idea of Graverobber basically being a backup to wretch, and another 2 power creature in the 2 casting cost slot. Flipping him really wouldn't be hard, unless of course he's being followed up by a huge amount of discard. Even late game he'd be a decent creature to throw mana into, and potentially turn him into a threat. I guess more testing will be the only way to really tell at this point.

What I'm noticing, though, is that we're starting to be able to lessen our MD slots. From Pikula's original build, we're already bumping as far back as 20 lands, cutting the Plagues to SB (or completely out of the deck, in some instances), and modifying the maindeck to be more aggressive. We may very well be on the verge of making Deadguy into what it was originally crafted from, a sui-black with white control elements.

Summoner

09-08-2006, 08:11 AM

For a Suicide Black with white for controlcards, the metagame might be too red i think.
Suicide Black (I played it long time ago in Vintage) has huge problems with burn. And Gro, as well as Goblins and Landstill all have a couple of them.

The problem of Negator might be solved with Sarcomancy and maybe another 1-Drop. For example a 1st Turn Scroll is often useless until turn 4 or 5. If a bolt hits your Negator u might sacc it for him.
On the other Hand, a turn 3 Negator is far from being a such big tread, as a first turn Negator is.

Wretched Anurid isn't that well for an aggrometa as well. Of course he can block many Weenies without dying to them, but he might cost you a lot of life.

I think it might be better, letting Dead Guy be Dead Guy and maybe add a little more treads. For that, we have the Grunt and the Giant, which both have good bodies (for blocking). And the Grunt is kinda utility too. Still I'd say 11-15 creatures should absolutely be the maximum for Ying-Yang (or maybe some more in the SB).

Probably Mutilate is still vailable for the SB or MD. You could see it like this:

1st Turn you want to Disrupt. Or you want to get a Confidant or Specter into play. Most of the time it'll hit some removal.
2nd Turn you want to Sinkhole, Hymn or lay down a Wretch most of the time.

Until turn 4 - when u might cast Mulitate (or Infest on turn 3) you should have between 0 and 2 creatures on the board. If you then hit 5 to 7 Goblins, it's worth it, I'd say.
On the other hand u can get rid of things, StoP and Vindicate (and maybe even Scroll) cant handle. Infest might handle it. Mulitate WILL handle it. If you can stall enough, even an Enforcer will not kill you, until you Mutilate (or it will not do it very often). Mongoose can be easily Mutilate'd as well.

I played
3 Scrolls
3 Vindicate
4 StoP

for removal the last weeks. But I was testing with Mutilate in the Scrolls Slots, and it often did well. Still, against BDW (RW Aggro) I liked Scroll much more.

Whatsoever, I don't see why you should do cruel things to Pikula's list, cause it's really good in the basics (Slots like Plague not included). And if you want to go Suicide Black, you should imho not think of Pikula's list. You should think of Vintage lists. With Sarcomancy, Negator and Hatred for the win ;)

So far,

Anarky87

09-08-2006, 10:11 AM

I didn't really have that much trouble dealing with resolved threats, for the most part. In the first couple turns, I played disruption and used my creatures defensivley. My removal base was 4 Vindicate and 2 StP (And to a lesser extent Jitte, but hey, it worked). But I would never really blow a Vindicate unless it was needed; like they were playing more than one color and I had the opportunity to screw them. I just kinda hung onto it in case of an emergency.

But maybe the package as a whole needs to be reworked. Perhaps we need to just go through the creature base, and agree upon what's solid and what's kind of...bleh. Then do the same with non-creature base, and finally the lands. And this would give us the opportunity to think about the idea of recursion (Which may be what's needed to give the deck longevity).

I liked the idea of Shortfang, as his ability would become more relevent coupled with all the other discard you run. Upon flipping he becomes a nice 3/3 beater with a built in Rack. Along with your other creatures, that would be a pretty decent clock, which is something the deck lacks. Graverobber would be nice to grab their discarded/killed creatures to add to your army.

laststepdown

09-08-2006, 02:45 PM

DeathwingZERO

09-08-2006, 04:13 PM

My appologies on referring to Sui-Black and not giving adequate terms of which I was referring to, I was actually speaking of the original Sui-Black, around the time of Black Summer, not the newer and more well known, with Hatred, etc. That version actually ran a lot like this list's core, with efficient creatures and removal, unfortunately......it had Necro. *tear* Wish we'd have gotten an adequate replacement to that card.

My main thoughts with that was keeping the manabase to 3, and if at all possible, taking Scrolls out of the maindeck completely. I've started actually modifying my deck towards a more controllish route than originally crafted (Scrolls, Plagues both went SB for Wretch and StP maindeck, 2 Wastelands turned into Verdicts), and in all honesty, it's really smoothlined the deck. The loss of 2 colorless sources isn't bad, and most times I'll hit one of the 2 Wastes if I really need them, though Vindicate and Sinkhole REALLY pick up where Wasteland can't, hitting the lands I actually want to: basics. But getting in another 2 slots of disruption, 4 slots of beef, and 3 slots of instant removal, that's done a TON to what the deck wanted for it's curve.

In most cases now, aggro is pretty fair of a matchup. The deck lost Scroll, but in all honesty, when you count Wretch in as a replacement to it, you really didn't lose much for early-mid game, when Scroll would be really useful against it. StP in place of the E.Plagues means I have removal I normally wouldn't, which has helped the matchup against various Gro decks incredibly, and in combination with Wretch, Mongoose isn't nearly as threatening as he used to be.

I don't actually have my list on me, but when I get to the shop, if I'm still the last post, I'll edit it in, if not, I'll add it down a few posts. I've been looking into putting Grunt into the deck somewhere, but it's really hard to decide where (it might be in place of the other 2 Verdicts and last 2 Wasteland).

Anarky87

09-08-2006, 05:35 PM

I was pondering creature bases today and I wondered about a lineup akin to:

4 Confidant
3 Specter
4 Shade
3 Grunt
2 Shortfang

That would completely replace Wretch from the deck with Grunt (Maybe even moving Wretch to the SB) or is Shortfang just kind of a 'meh' creature? For those who've been playing Grunt, have you ever had problems with not getting in enough damage with him before his CU kicks in too much? I know that our deck usually amounts quite abit of cards in its graveyards, and with all the LD and hand disruption against the opponent, they'll have some in their graveyards. So maybe it isn't too much of a problem then, I'm thinking. I should most likely just test the card first.

I've also cut back on 1 Wasteland in my build, as it seems people in my area are leaning more towards mono-colored/heavy in basics decks, so it has performed less than stellar. I've also wanted to add StP to the MD for a long time and when I did and played in my tournament, it was great. Sure they gained some life, but it allowed you to do something everyone has complained about the deck since the beginning: Deal with a threat once it's in play.

DeathwingZERO

09-08-2006, 06:25 PM

My biggest issue with comparing Wretch vs Grunt in these two instances is mainly when the abilities (or ability and upkeep cost, for those of you who are technical about it) actually happen. Grunt requires a continuous upkeep increment of 2 cards per turn, for a 4/4 body. That's really good. Only problem, is this is a requirement for him, not an ability, and only happens on your turn (usually when things have either already happened, or haven't happened yet). Wretch, on the other hand, only a 2/2, and the ability costs 1 to use per card, but it's targeted at instant speed. So at this point, the comparison really depends on what you plan on facing, in my opinion.

Wretch's "strength" decks- Survival, IGGY Pop, Salvager Game, Dredge decks, upkeep recursion (E.Dragon, Ichorid, etc), Eternal Witness abilities, and anything with flashback.

Grunts "strength" decks- Dredge decks (due to insane amounts of cards "thrown away"), cycling decks (Rifter, for example), Threshold (a key DtB for this deck)

So we see that Wretch's activation on the spot ability seems to win out vs Grunt. Now onto our ability to keep them alive:

Wretch- Dies to damn near anything. Bolt, StP, Smother, Infest, a "chained" Darkblast, Contagion.....the list really does go on. 2 mana, and 2/2, with no "fix" to the dying.

Grunt- Dies to ALMOST everything. Bolt/direct damage can't really get rid of this guy as well, causing typically a 2 for 1 (or even a 3 for 1 if they need to use Fireblast). Also lives through Infest, and multiple E.Plagues, and Contagion (even if it is only a 0/2, still a chump blocker).

So Grunt almost hands down has advantage, as commonly seen removal hits both of these guys, but the lesser common burn and black removal spells tends to lose out against him, or have to 2-for-1.

So it's still a bit of a toss up. Casting costs aren't really that much of an issue, depending on how long you can keep your white sources out. Double black is nearly impossible NOT to have, so Wretch has favor there, comapred to Grunt needing one of our 5 sources of white (all of which are non-basic, and mostly dependant on fetchlands). Also, Wretch can be a first turn drop through Dark Ritual, and combine with Cursed Scroll or Duress, that's a good first turn. Small favor in Wretch.

The "cost" to keep around isn't really a comparison. Wretch stays around as long as he doesn't die, Grunt requires continuous payment, but in most cases, he's easy to keep around for probably the first 3-4 turns he's in play, since you're able to split the cost between graveyards. Small favor in Wretch, but not much.

But now we get to threat comparison. Grunt is a 4/4 body, that's really all we want him for. He's a solid clock, and a good blocker. Wretch, a 2/2, with utility ability, can cripple the right decks to the point of losing. So at this point, we come down to speed vs utility. Against typical opponents, what decks will we see, and what is better for them. I'd say this is the easiest "split' case of the deck, where either of them actually really depend on the metagame people are seeing. So my conclusion, consider these 4 slots your "metagame" choices for MD, and adjust accordingly. IMO, there really isn't a right or wrong to choosing one of these over the other.

So after people make their decisions on these two, what else do we think needs to be looked at for possible replacement?

Clark Kant

09-08-2006, 07:57 PM

Anarky87

09-09-2006, 01:00 AM

A.) I would never ever ever cut Wasteland. Every good deck runs nonbasics for one reason or another. They're often the best lands in the deck. Wasteland is SInkhole 5-8.

B.) I would never cut Scepter.

C.) I think Grunt is superior to Wretch. Because the hate ability is mostly there for the prevalent Thres matchup. But the 4/4 beat stick is far more important generally.

D.) Nezumi Graverobber may be better than Shortfang for it's synergy with Grunt, not sure though. But it's 4B ability is very relevant. Graverobbing your opponent or your own threats is very strong.

A) I'd say it would depend on what you plan to see. In my meta, they're borderline useless and are tapped for colorless mana about 90% of the time. I didn't cut them completely, just down to 3.

B) I didn't even know Scepter was added.

C) DWZ covered those points very nicely.

D) Truth be told, I'm not sold on either one right now. I'm liking the creature base so far the way it is, so only testing will tell whether either is needed.

I added Grunts to the deck over Wretch for the time being, just to see how it works out.

DeathwingZERO

09-09-2006, 02:08 AM

A) It's literally 80% of the time a dead card out here. Threshold loves it, because it makes their graveyard grow that much faster, with no tempo loss vs us, since it's land for land, and they're already typically running more than us. Every other deck out there is 2 or less colors, and work just as many basics in as we have Sinkholes, if not more, so it's still not putting tempo in our favor.

B) Scepter, or Scroll? Cause cutting Scroll honestly is much better than keeping it in, especially if your matchups aren't against Goblins. It was there to pick off the things that annoy us, SGC, Piledriver, Warchief, etc......not to attempt hitting Thresh creatures or other x/3+ stuff, which we see more often now. Most aggro decks now outrace Scroll, it was great against Goblins because their threats really are mainly the Piledriver, which is always x/2.

C) As stated before, it's a metagame choice. I personally don't see Grunt doing much better than Wretch at this point, with Rifter, U/G/w Thresh, Solidarity, or RGSA being the typical matchups I see in the finals. None of those decks are honestly that scared of Grunt, they all pack removal or work around him.

D) Still uncertain myself if either of them work in here. They both cover issues I feel the deck is weak on: continuous utility. One forces discard, one forces graveyard removal. Both are pretty damn useful in this format right now. But Graverobber seems much better, simply because we have ways to kill opponents creatures that are online, and with most situations, we can flip a Graverobber and hit 5 mana pretty consistently.

I will be doing more testing with changes, since I'm already missing most of my Wastelands, I'll continue playing without them. I'm probably still going to be more geared towards playing Solidarity or IGGY, but I still want to see this deck stay a top contender.

Tacosnape

09-09-2006, 12:40 PM

I'll have to admit, I've had 3 Jotun Grunt in place of Withered Wretch for quite a while. It's huge compared to Wretch-while it comes down the same turn-That's sideboard though-I still run Rotting Giant main. Perhaps I should just take the leap and pull out Giant?

I think this is a solid move. Jotun Grunt fills every reason you'd want to run a giant (Being an undercosted huge body), and simultaneously takes over Wretch's job as Graveyard Janitor. The dissynergy between Jotun Grunt and Rotting Giant makes a huge difference, as often one or two cards is the difference between getting 2 swings with a Grunt and 3. Rotting Giant seems incredibly weak to me now.

Clark Kant

09-09-2006, 04:15 PM

Here's my current test build...

-8 Swamp
+8 Fetchlands

-4 Cards (Samples: Dark Confidant, Scroll, Verdict, Plague (Or Withered Wretch if you have a build that plays that))
+4 Exalted Angel

Confidant has lost me one too many games due to the lifeloss.

This deck needs a finisher desperately. It can annihilate combo and control without the help of Confidant and it can slow the kill of any aggressive deck by a turn or two with the disruption without the help of confidant either.

But the ground battle reaches a stalemate far too easily. Confidant sucks in those many situations where you just stuck there with the ground war at a stalemate desperately hoping to topdeck a Swords or Vindicate.

You can't attack them because they have too many threats, most of them bigger than yours. That seems to happen virtually any time you are facing any of the stompy deck from Fairie Stompy to Angel Stompy and Zilla Stompy.

When you get a Confidant, it only speeds up their kill. Angel is the answer to those situations, the answer that you so wish you could cast with Confidant.

I urge everyone to try this out.

At the very least, I want to and fully plan to run Exalted Angel alongside Confidant, where people squeeze in 4 Withered Wretch. Plenty of decks feel comfortable running FoW alongside Confidant. Atleast Angel gives you the life back.

Tao

09-09-2006, 05:30 PM

Here's my current test build...Confidant has lost me one too many games due to the lifeloss.

The subtitle of this thread is B/w Confidant. Dark Confidant is the best card in the deck. There is no discussion about 4x Dark Confidant.

___

Jotun Grunt is an absolute bomb. I don't know if there should be 2 or 3 played because you can't keep 2 alive and because it requires W but having one is extremely strong. A 4/4 body combined with Yard hate is insane for this deck. The upkeep is pretty easy. Wasteland pays the first, Ritual/Hymn the next, Wasteland, Duress, Confidant etc.

DeathwingZERO

09-09-2006, 05:41 PM

In all honesty, losing Confidant turns this into a bad suicide/control deck. It's already pretty much been agreed he's what Suicide black needed years ago, being the draw engine that's removable + a hitter (unlike Phyrexian Arena and such). He's the core of what the deck functions on, which is why it's such a low curve and so utility driven.

It's true Confidant can lose you games when he's sitting there in a stalemate situation, but the deck would lose at that point with or without him. If at any point in time your so far behind that he's a liability, your going to lose even if it's a finisher in his place, because chances are you wouldn't have drawn into half the cards you had that were keeping you alive without him.

Exalted Angel would be a nice threat, but the deck VERY rarely has double white, which is needed for both casting her, or flipping her. And even then, she'll still die to a majority of the same things that kill most creatures. If we want a solid finisher, it HAS to dodge either StP, bounce, Incinerators, or have some kind of protection elements. If we wanted to go as far as to get a "finisher" that cost that much, we could find better under that casting cost. Not to mention, her life gain wouldn't do this deck any good without providing synergy for Bob to dig further (but it hurts a lot seeing her from his reveal), so we'd have to get a new draw engine to replace him. If we ditch the card advantage he provides, we're basically trying our best to keep up tempo with the opponent.

Also, Exalted is much more the control deck creature. She belongs in a deck that packs enough countermagic to keep her on the table for 5 turns, this deck cannot do that. We would have to hold back disruption just so we have it when she hits the table, because it won't cost much for the opponent to take her out, flipped or not. She slows the deck down too much keeping her alive to provide an adequate clock.

Clark Kant

09-09-2006, 06:14 PM

Like I said, Exalted Angel can replace the 2x Plague and 2x Verdict slots in the original build.

Thus it would have synergy with Confidant.

The WW cc shouldn't be a problem when you're running 4 Duals, 8 Fetches, and a Tainted Field or two. That's about the same amount of white sources Angel Stax and about a billion other decks that utitilize Angel run.

Angel is actually fairly hard to remove. Bolts, Smothers, and now that you're running 16 creatures, Edicts won't get rid of her. The only thing that would is a Swords. And I promise you that the Swords would've been well spent on that Specter or that Shade or Confidant as well. Plus you infact do run a lot of disruption. Duress should get rid of their Swords before hands if nothing else.

This is a control deck. Sure it doesn't run countermagic, but it runs Duress, Hymns, Swords and Vindicates to produce nearly the exact same effect (disrupt combo and slow down aggro to the point that you survive till turn 4 when Angel produces huge swings).

We've been saying this deck needs a nice threat for a while now haven't we. Why not sideboard the Verdicts and Plagues in the original build which really don't do all that much, and run Angel in their place.

laststepdown

09-09-2006, 06:41 PM

Tainted Field has really been obsoleted by Godless Shrine, as it's a white source you can search for with fetchlands, and the opening hand of wasteland-field is unkeepable.

The problem I have with Angel (besides the WW of course) is the promotion of 8 fetchlands and more than 1 Shrine, while running Bob. Yes, it gains you life, but I'b be more inclined to run Jitte than Angel for it's casting cost along with board control. When compared to Jotun Grunt, we're talking about the same amount of removal that can kill it (besides Smother) at less than half the CMC.

Clark Kant

09-09-2006, 09:19 PM

There's no question that Jitte would be absolutely incredible in this deck. It's incredible in any deck that can support it.

The problem is, this deck can't support Jitte. It simply doesn't run enough creatures. And those that it does run die very easily.

Jotun Grunt similarily is awesome. But it only sticks around for two turns. It's not going to win you any wars of attrition.

DeathwingZERO

09-09-2006, 10:24 PM

Really it comes down to either having a nice threat, which Grunt takes care of, or having continuous disruption, either with Shortfang or Graverobber.

The deck either needs to continue being able to short the opponent on lands, cards in hand, or graveyard hate to keep what we have being enough, or we need to make the Grunt and Shades more abled to kill off the opponent faster.

This is literally what it comes down to.

Clark Kant

09-09-2006, 11:38 PM

Disruption is not this deck's weakness. This decks weakness is it's complete incapability to deal with any resolved threat with a butt larger than 2. Sure, it might be able to Vindicate or perhaps trade a Shade with the first. But this is the main reason it has trouble against nongoblins aggro decks.

I've tried Grunt. He does help a bit. But the fact that he only sticks around for two or perhaps 3 attacks if you're lucky, makes him incapable of answering this problem by himself. This is why I'm looking towards Angel.

jazzykat

09-10-2006, 12:50 AM

With a grunt and another dork they may be dead in 3 turns.

Summoner

09-10-2006, 02:45 AM

The deck either needs to continue being able to short the opponent on lands, cards in hand...

Then let's try Panoptic Mirror! Awesome with Sinkhole or Vindicate. *cough*

I loved Angel myself, but the problem is, that Incinerator and Swords still get her. Not to talk about Landstill, which can burn her down with Bolt+Jet/Fire as well as WoG her.

The second thing is, if you want a Turn 4 Angel its cc are 5WW... you can't disrupt in the 3rd Turn then, unless you have a Ritual to get Angel out and Hymn before.

I'd say because of that, even Sarcomany + Negator would do better in this deck. And this is still not very considered at all - cause it's 8 Slots for a 5/5 Body with a huge drawback. If you can get out Sarcomany before, its much better, but then you can't ritual the Negator out, what will make him less dangerous.

I think Shortfang and Robber are not needed too. I like the idea of putting in Mutilate much more, then upping the creaturecount.

So far,

DeathwingZERO

09-10-2006, 05:45 AM

This may seem REALLY farfetched, but what about Mother of Runes? She's a quick drop, can protect herself if she lives for a turn (short of -x/-x mass spells), and can make any creature typically a threat, or a strong blocker at the very least.

Given, she's not big, and she probably won't stick around long, BUT, she's literally more of a threat than anything else in the deck, just because she makes removal harder to pull off against the real threats.

Anybody got any ideas on this one? There's a good chance it'll get shot down immediately, but the idea of making each of our creatures typically either unblockable or infinite blockers, seems at least worth testing.

Anarky87

09-10-2006, 11:11 AM

The problem is, this deck can't support Jitte. It simply doesn't run enough creatures. And those that it does run die very easily.

I've actually been playing 2 Jitte in my build and have yet to have problems with supporting it. So far it's been more of a blessing than a disappointment.

Angel seems like it would be nice, but I think not what the deck needs. I'd be more inclined to hold onto her till the middle/late game when I've disrupted my opponent enough. Of course if I'm winning by then, I'd still be less inclined to drop her. And there have been times when I've been glad the highest cc of the deck was 3. When I've been at 4-6 life, the last thing I'd wanna see would be a random flipped over Angel nailing me to the dome for 6.

@Mother of Runes: She may be definitely worth testing. I just feel that with the whole format gunning for certain other 1/1 body, her chances of surviving could be zilch. But then if they're pointing removal at her, that's a removal spell that's not going to be pointed at one of your other creatures. Still, the ability to make our creatures into infinite blockers is appealing. Or even pushing through that stalemate with a Shade to seal the game. Definitely worth testing.

Clark Kant

09-10-2006, 11:36 AM

Anarky87

09-10-2006, 12:17 PM

Do you run Cursed Scroll along with Jitte?

A big problem for me had always been keeping one of your 12 threats alive in a format packed to the brims with removal. Even running 2 Grunts as well doesn't help since Grunts only live for two turns.

Without an accompanying threat, Jitte is downright worthless.

No, I've long since dropped Scroll, as I found it really lacking. I play 15 (I think) threats, along with the disruption to keep most of them safe. So it's never been that much trouble for me.

throst54

09-10-2006, 01:37 PM

Can we take a look at your deck list anarky?

Has anyone tried using Cabal Pit at all? Obviously it would only be useful in the builds w/o Grunt. Though it lets your small creatures trade with werebear and gets rids of meddling mages that name your creature removal. I recently put it into my casual mbc deck and have found a lot of success with it.

Anarky87

09-10-2006, 02:24 PM

Can we take a look at your deck list anarky?

My creature and spell base were posted on the last page, but to bring it altogether in one place:

//Land//
4 Scrubland
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Polluted Delta
1 Godless Shrine
3 Wasteland
8 Swamps

//Creatures//
4 Dark Confidant
4 Nantuko Shade
4 Hypnotic Specter
3 Jotun Grunt (Currently giving him a try, was 3 Wretch)

//Other//
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Vindicate
4 Sinkhole
4 Dark Ritual
2 Swords to Plowshares
2 Umezawa's Jitte

The SB, I think, is mostly irrelevant as I board for what I expect to see. There are a few staple slots, such as the last two StP's, some Disenchants, and Infests. The rest are mostly meta slots (i.e. Perish, Serenity, Virtue's Ruin, Plague). But that's what I played last Wed. to 1st place split.

Clark Kant

09-10-2006, 08:13 PM

That build certainly looks like a solid improvement. I have a few questions though.

Since your 4 Confidants die rather easily, and the 3 Jotun Grunt die on their own within 2 turns, don't you some times find yourself with a Jitte on the board but no threats of your own to use it. Or even a Jitte with a single threat which you forcibly lose during combat as a result of having it blocked. I would think 3 Rotting Giants (or even better, the aforementioned Exalted Angel) in place of the Grunts would be more stable if you're looking to abuse Jitte.

I definately see Jitte shoring up this decks weaknesses against decks like Angel Stompy, Fairie Stompy and Zilla Stompy a little bit. But I'm still not convinced that 8 pieces of removal (counting the Jitte and Vindicate), are enough to deal with decks that consistently play threats that are bigger than all of your own threats. How has your matchup against them been.

Zilla

09-10-2006, 08:40 PM

That build certainly looks like a solid improvement. I have a few questions though.
I would think 3 Rotting Giants (or even better, the aforementioned Exalted Angel) in place of the Grunts would be more stable if you're looking to abuse Jitte.
The manabase can't currently support Exalted Angel with any degree of consistency. Getting WW with 10 total white sources (all of which are non-basic) is going to prove very difficult in practice. You can drop Swamps for white sources, but unless they're duals, you're going to be weakening your Shades. If they are duals, it will mean a) more lifeloss and b) greater weakness to mana disruption. All things considered, I think Angel is the wrong creature for this deck.

hagar852

09-10-2006, 09:45 PM

I like the concept of the deck with disruption and all but I also ran into the same problem. Dealing with threats bigger than your creatures.

So I actually changed the deck quite a bit and made it more aggro control. I have been using Mask of Memory as a 2 of for more draw WHEN Bob dies.

Basically I replaced some disruption for equipment like Sword of fire and ice and Jitte.

I am still playing with the creature base to maximize the random aggro matchup pre-sb.

But I have had success at local tournaments.

DeathwingZERO

09-10-2006, 09:47 PM

Ya, this has been spoken about a few times now, I'm not sure if Kant has actually tried casting or morphing an Angel with consistency, but I know with our build without serious mana modification (for the worse), and she's really not going to do much with a Jitte the turn she's cast or flipped, so she's already much slower than Grunt.

Anarky87

09-10-2006, 10:24 PM

That build certainly looks like a solid improvement.

Thanks, I do what I can.

Since your 4 Confidants die rather easily, and the 3 Jotun Grunt die on their own within 2 turns, don't you some times find yourself with a Jitte on the board but no threats of your own to use it. Or even a Jitte with a single threat which you forcibly lose during combat as a result of having it blocked.

As of right now, I've only done minimal testing with the deck. So far I've not had any MAJOR problems with Jitte, but no creature. There have been a few times when it sat in play for abit before being picked back up. I'm usually hanging onto 1-2 creatures in my hand with maybe 1-2 on the board. I then let those go as far as they can (Or until they are dealt with), then I deploy the rest. So far the combat incident hasn't been a problem. Sure I've lost my one threat with Jitte's on it in combat, but in that case, I was losing already.

I definately see Jitte shoring up this decks weaknesses against decks like Angel Stompy, Fairie Stompy and Zilla Stompy a little bit. But I'm still not convinced that 8 pieces of removal (counting the Jitte and Vindicate), are enough to deal with decks that consistently play threats that are bigger than all of your own threats. How has your matchup against them been.

Again, I've only done minimal testing with the deck so far (Picked it up for something else new to play). I've yet to do any real testing against the stompy variants, I assume they would be challenging, and most likely not in your favor. But that's what I'm running the color haters for in my SB. Virtue's Ruin for AS, Persih would hit ZS (Though I've yet to ever see anyone playing this in any tournament around me). FS might be a pretty steep hill to climb, but I can't say anything for sure. I'm going to be heading to a more competitive tournament environment this Wed. and I'm going to play with the changes I've made. I'll post back with what I played against and how I did. I have tested against Affinity alot recently (Deck my friend loves to play) and I've been doing pretty well against that and they were pre-board games.

I'm not saying that my changes are a divine answer to the deck. I just tweaked it for what I thought might help. Feel free to try the changes or dismiss them =)

Clark Kant

09-10-2006, 10:47 PM

The manabase can't currently support Exalted Angel with any degree of consistency. Getting WW with 10 total white sources (all of which are non-basic) is going to prove very difficult in practice. You can drop Swamps for white sources, but unless they're duals, you're going to be weakening your Shades. If they are duals, it will mean a) more lifeloss and b) greater weakness to mana disruption. All things considered, I think Angel is the wrong creature for this deck.

Already covered in...

The WW cc shouldn't be a problem when you're running 4 Duals, 8 Fetches, and a Tainted Field or two. That's about the same amount of white sources Angel Stax and about a billion other decks that utitilize Angel run.

You can even add a Godless Shrine or two if you wish. The lifeloss is minimal esp considering the lifegain you get from being able to run both 3 Exalted Angel and 2 Jitte. The 3 Angels + 2 Jitte gives you a consistent out against aggro decks that run bigger creatures than you and often manage to beat this deck. Not to mention the synergy of fetchlands with Grunts should you side them in.

I really think a build like Anarky's but with a threat that actually stays in play for more than 2 turns would work extremely well...

//Land//
4 Scrubland
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Polluted Delta
1 Godless Shrine
4 Swamps
4 Wasteland

//Creatures//
4 Dark Confidant
4 Nantuko Shade
4 Hypnotic Specter
3 Exalted Angel/Rotting Giant/Serra Avenger (Nothing like Vigilance to abuse Jitte)/Something Else (Or some other nice threat that actually stays in play for more than 2 turns)

//Other//
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Vindicate
4 Sinkhole
4 Dark Ritual
2 Swords to Plowshares
2 Umezawa's Jitte

Eldariel

09-11-2006, 08:56 AM

You can even add a Godless Shrine or two if you wish. The lifeloss is minimal esp considering the lifegain you get from being able to run both 3 Exalted Angel and 2 Jitte. The 3 Angels + 2 Jitte gives you a consistent out against aggro decks that run bigger creatures than you and often manage to beat this deck. Not to mention the synergy of fetchlands with Grunts should you side them in.

You need ~18 white sources to get WW with any degree of consistency. In a format with Wasteland and all your white sources wasteable, the number might need to be even higher. Naturally you'll want at least full 8 black fetches if you do decide that route, since you need the consistent white mana for Grunt and the graveyard fuel as well. I'd also consider Gerrard's Verdict back as it does a great job fueling Grunt, can gain life in those tricky positions and is just overall solid.

Clark Kant

09-11-2006, 10:42 AM

18 maybe overkill. A lot of decks that ply Angel, like Angel Stax, ww/u A Stompy etc get away with running 14-16 or so white sources.

nitewolf9

09-11-2006, 11:17 AM

I think Jotun Grunt is far better than angel in this deck. Based on the tournament I attended this weekend, he is absurdly powerful...he helps all your bad matchups.

The build I ran used mutilate, which I'm not sold on. It did help me win against goblins game one, but I don't think it was really all that better than STP in the main deck (considering enforcer still ruins my day as well). The list I'm running now would be this:

creatures (14):
4x dark confidant
4x hypnotic specter
3x nantuko shade
3x jotun grunt

spells (22):
4x dark rit
4x hymn
4x sinkhole
3x duress
4x vindicate
3x swords to plowshares

artifacts (2):
2x cursed scroll

land (22):
4x wasteland
3x polluted delta
4x scrubland
3x bloodstained mire
1x tainted field
7x swamp

sideboard:

4x diabolic edict (was dystopia, but with grunts edict just seems better. Plus with reanimator's potential comeback, this is more versatile)
4x engineered plague (needed)
1x swords to plowshares (obvious)
2x gerrard's verdict (these are still good, usually go in for stp with the 4th duress in matchups like solidarity and burn)
1x Jotun Grunt (mvp, 4th one goes in against thresh and any other deck that lets me have a field day with the 'yard)
2x darkblast (also needed for goblins, helps make game 2 largely in your favor)
1x duress (the 4th one seems to belong in the board, but I could be wrong)

At the tourney, I my losses were against a threshold deck (due to mana screw on my part, no white source with 2 stp and 2 grunt in hand :frown:) and madness...jitte is bad for me, and my discard helps them sometimes. I still think the madness matchup is not terribly bad, but it's tough. The edicts will help that along hopefully.

My wins were against solidarity, goblins (we drew technically, but game on I was just an idiot. Not even a misplay really, I just decided to let him win by not scrolling him to death for some reason), and red death.

I like my build with grunt, seems really solid. If you guys test angel and find her to be good though, let me know. It seems with a deck like this though that overcommiting to white when it's really just a splash is a bad idea (or maybe it just changes the deck into something different).

Eldariel

09-11-2006, 02:25 PM

18 maybe overkill. A lot of decks that ply Angel, like Angel Stax, ww/u A Stompy etc get away with running 14-16 or so white sources.

WW/u plays 18+, Angel Stompy plays 16-18, but 16 is often found too low by AS-players who fail to draw their second W in due schedule, and Angel Stax is a different matter entirely; it doesn't want to cast Angel until WAY into the game anyways, so it has to find 2 white sources in about 20 cards, rather than in about 10 cards. Don't you think we'd run Silver Knight if we could support the colour requirements? Would certainly make Goblins much better, but there honestly is no room for 18 white sources in the deck.

Anarky87

09-11-2006, 05:32 PM

I know that I would probably never want to drop to 14 white sources if I needed to hit WW by turn two. 16 is bare minimum, and I don't even feel comfortable with that, so for me, I say 17. 18 is probably the most reliable amount to consistently hit the double colors you need. I think AS can afford to go to 16 white sources due to them also playing Chrome Mox, which can act as the second source.

I'm not sure about Angel yet, has anyone actually tested so far? I'm just now getting around to testing a few games against the stompy variants (College does that for ya...), so hopefully I'll have some data to post back here.

Edit: Did 10 games against AS, all preboard (What I had time for). Final record was 3-7 in AS's favor. They usually just swarmed me faster than I could handle. Post board you'll have things like Infest and Virtue's Ruin, so it will most likely improve.

hagar852

09-11-2006, 05:44 PM

I also like grunt myself but after testing I found him sub par against gobbos and other random aggro matchups.

But the Grunt is a house against Thres and can be good against combo. It was the random aggro matchups that made me make him more of a SB.

Eldariel

09-11-2006, 06:04 PM

laststepdown

09-11-2006, 06:35 PM

I don't think this deck runs enough white period to rely on a Chrome Mox. Lotus Petal would give the same boost and not cost a card in hand.

Eldariel

09-12-2006, 08:23 AM

I don't think this deck runs enough white period to rely on a Chrome Mox. Lotus Petal would give the same boost and not cost a card in hand.

Our conversation was regarding Angel Stompy... Obviously, if you have ~12 white cards, chances are your Moxes will produce black. I dunno, Moxes seem kinda nice in this deck, as they go to the Swamp-slots and douple with Dark Rituals to make stuff happen faster, which makes all the difference with cards like Hymn, Sinkhole, Verdict, Specter, etc.

Goblin Snowman

09-12-2006, 12:07 PM

rsaunder

09-12-2006, 06:17 PM

So is Tomb of Urami not played anymore? i don't see why you would drop suck a powerful card with minimal drawback for one swamp? Surely it getting wasted or you losing 2-3 life is worth a massive evasive beater?
I don't think that was an issue. I think it was mostly a discussion on why exhalted angel is a bad idea in here. For manabase reasons, your draw engine, and the tempo of the deck, it has been put off.

DeathwingZERO

09-12-2006, 07:31 PM

Everything with this deck requires one main thing: Lands.

If we put too much focus on Exalted Angel, we lose an incredible consistency with the deck to be capable of splashing for white, and only needing minimal resources to cast our very few white spells.

This also means our deck requires INCREDIBLE amounts of thinning, seeing 8 fetchlands, making Bob even more likely to hit spells as opposed to lands, which is also a figure to be taken into effect. We could very well lose the game an extra number of times just due to life loss. A small thing over a few rounds, maybe, but a killer for matchups overall in a large tournament.

Putting too much into Tomb of Urami is also bad. If decks packing Needle see it, they can call that. There's only a total of 3 permanents that need an activation cost: Cursed Scroll, Nantuko Shade, and Tomb. Typically most will hit Shade, but if they see the early Tomb and have answers for Shade, this could be a problem.

Also, both of these ideas cause us to lose to any type of land hate. Many aggro decks are already packing the same 4 Wasteland as we do, and much less to destroy on their side than ours would after the modifications. On top of that, running any number above our already high 6 non-basics makes random junk like Back to Basics and Blood Moon incredible tech to swing us completely into a loss.

If we were to plan to use basic Plains, this lessens the threat base of Nantuko Shade as well, meaning he's typically only going to swing for maybe 3-4, rather than packing the heat of something like 6-8.

All in all, I personally think anything running double white, or random "I win" things like Jitte or Tomb are just unnecessary. The deck wants consistency and solid scores, not random luck-sack wins. At the rate that we'd be putting in something that kills off our lands, or worse, turning our manabase into something worse than 4cc, we completely disregard the deck is black with a white splash, not a white core.

Having Shade with a consistent black manabase + Grunt should be perfectly fine to push through wins. If not, then we may need to start looking into what is killing this deck yet again, because it's obviously not killing itself.

Clark Kant

09-12-2006, 08:15 PM

I don't think 2 Jitte is random in a build packing 15 threats (3 Jotun Grunt or Rotting Giant for more consistency) ala. what Anarky runs. Angel may not be the best solution. But this deck does indeed need more fat threats that stick around, Wretch isn't fat and Grunt doesn't stick around. I would of course run 3-4 Grunt in the side versus thres, but I really think that this deck needs a more stable threat.

I don't think 1 or even 2 Tomb of Urami hurts that much.

And we already know what this deck is losing to... any deck that packs bigger threats than 2/2s ala. Angel Stompy, Fairie Stompy, Zilla Stompy etc.

AnwarA101

09-12-2006, 08:31 PM

And we already know what this deck is losing to... any deck that packs bigger threats than 2/2s ala. Angel Stompy, Fairie Stompy, Zilla Stompy etc.

Or Madness, or Red Death, or Stompy, or basically any resolved threat. This deck has really failed to do anything. I've seen it played in reasonable numbers and it hasn't made a recent Top8 in the US since like April of this year and that was only 1 spot. This decks lack of ability to beat creature-based decks is a virtual death knell for it. Would you run this deck in a real tournament knowing that you can't beat over 30% of the field?

laststepdown

09-12-2006, 11:09 PM

Honestly, I think this deck lost something when it lost Gerrard's Verdicts-hymns 5 and 6 were just that good IMHO. Not that it would make any matchups better besides combo, but just for the sake of card consistancy.

Lego

09-12-2006, 11:48 PM

Or Madness, or Red Death, or Stompy, or basically any resolved threat. This deck has really failed to do anything. I've seen it played in reasonable numbers and it hasn't made a recent Top8 in the US since like April of this year and that was only 1 spot. This decks lack of ability to beat creature-based decks is a virtual death knell for it. Would you run this deck in a real tournament knowing that you can't beat over 30% of the field?

Basically QFT. My big problem with Deadguy has always been that it's a metagame deck that doesn't really win in the metagame it's designed to win in. Take Angel Stompy for instane. It was designed to beat everything that wins with creatures, and it does a very, very good job of that. Deadguy is basically designed to do the opposite, win versus combo and control. It fails in two respects. One, aggro and aggro-control are more prevelant right now than combo and control. This looks like it's changing, but not drastically enough for metagamed anti-combo decks yet. Second, and perhaps much more important, Deadguy doesn't beat combo and control very well. Where Angel Stompy does an amazing job at beating the metagame that it was designed to beat (creatures,) Deadguy too oft randomly loses no matter what it's playing.

In short, it's a metagame deck that doesn't fare very well against the metagame for which it was designed, which bares little resemblance to our current metagame.

Clark Kant

09-13-2006, 12:52 AM

I don't know what deck you're referening but this deck does indeed beat combo and control.

You're right that aggro is it's death knell when the disruption doesn't come through just perfectly though. But I think it's an easy problem to fix... a nice big creature that sticks around as a 3 of, along with 2 Jitte. That's 5 cards that other aggro decks have a very uphill battle against. The deck already has many tools to take out opponent's removal, so keeping one of these 5 cards in play isn't that big an issue. The deck can also play 2 MD Swords and 1-2 Tomb of Urami for additional anti aggro. The issue is to find that 3 of creature. I wanted that creature to be Angel, but people do have a good point that WW is hard to come by even with a dramatic increase in the number of fetches.

So we're just waiting around till Wizards printed a powerful undercosted creature in black. Till then I am running either Rotting Giant or Spectral Lynx as the 3 of. Neither creature fulfills the role perfectly, but it's a step in the right direction I am convinced, and gives us something more to stick a Jitte onto.

On a completely unrelated note, I was wondering if any of you thought Forbidding Watchtower could find a place as 1 of or 2 of in this deck. Odd thought I know. But effectively neutralizes one of your opponent's biggest threat, be it a Werebear or something similar. And unlike Maze of Ith, it can actually serve as a mana source when you want it to. It does eat up quite a bit of mana though so probably not. God I wish Spawing Pool was a half way decent card.

DeathwingZERO

09-13-2006, 01:10 AM

I can't see how it's been so "horrible":

8th Place- D4D February
7th Place- Kadilak's DLD
5th AND 6th- Iserlohn June tourney
7th- Aschaffenburg, Germany Championships

The deck is still placing. The only decks having a better run than this currently this year are the ones in the LMF. How does this make this deck so horrible, when obviously Germany lately has done better with it (with much larger player base by average, I might add), than the US has? Their metagame isn't complete shit, for one. People have a diversity of decks to play against, rather than just seeing Solidarity, Thresh, Goblins, and Angel Stompy. It would seem very apparent that when there's more than just LMF and almost LMF material, this deck does better. Check out the top 8 when this deck places, it's not just top 3 decks + random Deadguy, or complete jank + Deadguy. It's holding up against a lot of diversity, because it's nearly an impossible deck to hate against, and still relatively under the threat radar.

Not every aggro deck out there smashes this deck, otherwise it wouldn't hit T8 anywhere. Most of the field is aggro, barely anyone runs Combo, and there's no such thing as total control decks, short of the occasional BBS or Landstill decks here and there. Angel Control is up there as well.

With that said, let's continue on with what the deck's doing. In my build, I haven't killed off Verdict at all, in fact I've replaced 2 Wastelands with 2 more copies. I play 12 maindeck disruption, as well as SB StP to go along with Vindicate to hit resolved threats, which could very well come into the maindeck in place of my other 2 Wasteland and a Cursed Scroll's. Still trying to get a good setup to playtest against to see how this method does. I still REALLY like the idea of Grunt, but am torn on what to cut.

As for what is "beating" this deck, I'm personally saying specific threats, things that there's literally no answer to. Chump block, StP, Cursed Scroll, Vindicate, Shade, and now Grunt...that's PLENTY of answers to a resolved threat. Obviously 30% of the meta isn't beating 2 toughness, or else this deck wouldn't have even put up T8 results, especially next to decks we have in the LMF. We don't scoop to any specific thing resolving, there's always a chance to pull something or race it.

Here's things I've noted the deck doesn't like: Mystic Enforcer, Meddling Mage, Exalted Angel, Humility, Lightning Rift, Eternal Dragon, Nimble Mongoose, Werebear (only after thresh), and on the rare occasions we see it, a few of the Survival creatures (Titan, Troll, for examples).

Out of these creatures, Mystic Enforcer, Troll, and Nimble Mongoose are the ONLY things we have serious problems with (untargetable via black spells). Enchantments can be Vindicated. Eternal Dragon, Werebear, Mystic Enforcer, Mage, Angel.........all can be hit by StP. Nimble, and Troll are the only things that can't be removed for good.

Looking over the list of creatures we need to deal with, is exactly why I decided it was a good idea to look into Mutilate. Chances are when a Mystic resolves that's going to be Thresh'd, we'll be close to 6 swamps. With a heavy enough base of discard and destruction, Mutilate would have a very good chance of going off. This answers the entire field around turns 5-6, as no creatures have defense against it. Untargetable, pro black....you name it, it's gone. This is the best thing we have to a black Wrath of God. Nothing has a toughness over 6. If it does, we're probably going to die to that creature anyways, regardless of if we could target it.

Here's another something I was looking into, especially when running against aggro metas, and heavier on creatures: Mortivore. 4cc, a reputable curve number, can regenerate (good for chumping), and gets continuously bigger the more we can kill off, or let die. Against Goblins, he'd be a beast. Vs random U/G/x decks, he'd have relatively good consistent numbers, and would force an StP (saving Shade).

Again, the big thing is changing while still keeping itself "cheap". Something that regenerates, protection aspect, a solid toughness, first strike.....all are good things. We just need to figure out what we want 4 of to make a difference.

SuckerPunch

09-13-2006, 01:55 AM

Mortivore really seems like a win more type of card.

It's worthless against combo (as is mutilate) and control, and is only good against aggro after you managed to take out a bunch of your opponents threats, not before.

But regardless, I really like the direction you guys are pursueing.

A solid fat beatstick may be just what this deck needs. Mortivore is unfortunately dead far too often, nuked by graveyard hate, and worthless early on and against nonaggro matchups.

But perhaps something like Jozum Djinn (Or Phyrexian Scuta) could work well.

DeathwingZERO

09-13-2006, 03:17 AM

Man, the looks on people's faces once they see a Juzam played in Legacy for the first time in..........what like 10 years? I'd almost cough up the $400 just to get a deckset of those bad boys so I could toss them out at people's faces.

I'm doing a full Gatherer search for black or white creatures that have at least a healthy body size (4/4 or greater), with minimal drawbacks. I'll come back to this post later with what I've found.

hagar852

09-13-2006, 08:14 PM

I have done the same thing. I didn't come up with very much except Juzam as you said.. Well there is Grinning Demon which is 4cc but has a huge body.

I don't like the phyrexian negator at all, not worth mentioning.

nitewolf9

09-13-2006, 10:31 PM

Just MD Jotun grunt, he hoses entire decks on his own, and is very supportable with all the disruption this deck runs. He stops aggro rushes with his huge 4/4 body, doesn't die to burn...what more do you want for two mana?

laststepdown

09-14-2006, 01:46 AM

I want a threat that goes through Chalice @ 1, Chalice @ 2 in the sideboard.

And a Cursed Scroll that just taps to activate. As well as a less mana-intensive Nantuko Shade.

I'm thinking about trying Djinn over MWS instead of Shade and seeing what happens. If anything overly interesting happens I'll post it up.

Team-Hero

09-14-2006, 01:47 AM

cards like Juzam:
Kezzerdrix
Phyrexian Scuta
Phyrexian Nigator

Ok. This is probably going to sound stupid but have you guys play tested with Paralyze? I used it in a Legacy about a year ago and it's pretty good. If you pull it off early, chances are that the opponent is not going to pay 4 any time soon to untap a 1-2 cc creature. Late game is a little worthless other than the fact that you get to tap a chump blocker but what do you expect from a 1c black card?

It's really hard to help out this deck because of its complexity. Like people don't know what to sideboard in for it, the same goes for people don't know how to make the deck any better (or fix it). Faith's Fetters would be nice but it costs too much.

laststepdown

09-14-2006, 02:33 AM

cards like Juzam:
Kezzerdrix
Phyrexian Scuta
Phyrexian Nigator
Kezzerdrix isn't a bad choice, but Juzam is still the best option at a 5/5 (kills anything short of a Mystic Enforcer). This deck can't afford to run Negator, since there's no burn element to clear a path(such as Red Death). Scuta is an investment that lets the opponent glorify its death.

but what do you expect from a 1c black card?

To let me see their hand, pick the best card out of it, and throw it in their graveyard....err...I mean Duress. Either way it can't get rid of a Nimble Mongoose. I'd rather have Darkblast, which can actually remove turn 1 (targetable, mind you) threats.

raudo

09-14-2006, 02:56 AM

The problem is that against creatures (goblins, elves, whatever) this deck just have too many dead cards in mid-game: dark ritual, hymn, duress, gerrard's verdict, even sinkhole and hypno are quite bad against fast creatures.

Of course it's a strong meta call, but when the goblins are running rampant even 2 maindeck engineered plagues don't help. There should be some way to catch'em when you need'em and maybe there is room for a tutor or two instead of 2 duress?

Anarky87

09-14-2006, 11:06 AM

Kezzerdrix seems interesting, but once I've finally cleared the board of dudes on my opponents side, the thought of me then taking 4-7 damage to the dome every turn isn't exciting. Scuta isn't all that bad, but if it's off a Confidant, you'll be paying 7 life just to get him in play. But, it's still a 5/5 for 4 which isn't easily dealt with outside of StP. And even then, you gain two more life than the initial investment of 3. Djinn is the overall best option as he's a big beater for a small amount with a very minimal drawback.

Scuta and Djinn seem like the best options for 'big' creatures in my opinion. There's no way I'm going to be able to afford Djinn's anytime soon and Scuta seems rather 'meh.' I'm not really sure though, I'm still gonna mess around with the regular creature base a little longer as I'm not really having too much trouble with it.

On a side note, I split for first again last night, but it's really not worth mentioning, as NOTHING remotely good showed up. And this deck beats up on random jank pretty well. Round 1 was against some U/W/g Hippo/Honden/Confinement deck (This is why I hate where I live), which I beat both games and left with 0 lands in play. Round 2 I played some sub-par Zombie deck, meh, 2-0'd him. Round 3 was against an Affinity build that apparently the guy playing thought he could make better by taking out the good Affinity cards and replacing them with Slagwurm Armor...Yeah...2-0. Then I was the only undefeated player (duh) so I didn't have to play in the semi finals, and I would have played the Hippo deck again, but he said he would split (Because he'd get smashed again), so we each got $15 in store credit. Usually we get at least some decks that are at least decent like Iggy-Pop and Ravager Affinity. Not last night I guess...I was supposed to go a couple towns over to a more competitive tournament, but a 5 page paper and a test today said otherwise. So I stayed home and made an easy $15.

Clark Kant

09-14-2006, 12:20 PM

The problem with Jotun Grunt is that it doesn't stay in play too long, not long enough to abuse Jitte. The whole idea for a big threat came from seeing how incredible a 4/4 was in this deck, but wishing ever so often that the 4/4 actually stayed in play.

I would NOT replace Shades with Djinn as someone above advocated. The main reason for the 4cc threat is to bring the threat count up to 15 like Anarky's build, but have all the threats be able to stay in play so that you can replace the Cursed Scrolls with the far superior Jitte.

I think Djinn, and to a much lesser extent Scuta and Grinning Demon are the best options we have. Demon just hates getting chumped, Scuta abhores getting killed, and I can't afford Djinn.

So until the DCI prints a halfway decent black or white or gold threat that only has a single W in it's casting cost, I'll make due with running 3 Rotting Giant and wishing they were Djinn. Giant is really good against Goblins though, and if paired with a Jitte is an absolute bomb even against nongoblins aggro decks. But Djinn would be a bomb with or without a Jitte in play.

GamerSmurf

09-14-2006, 01:38 PM

Tacosnape

09-14-2006, 01:58 PM

I've actually tested all of those at one point. The -problem- with Retribution of the Meek is that it doesn't hit much outside of Exalted Angel, Sea Drake, Werebear, and Mystic Enforcer. While these are all certainly worthwhile threats, the former two are generally the only power 4+ creatures in their decks (Excluding SOFI pumps), and there's a fair chance you'll be stuck holding Retribution while they beat you down with Silver Knight / Serendib Efreet respectively. The latter two are both hit by Perish. If Retribution said "3 or greater" instead of "4 or greater", i'd run it. But not quite as it is now.

Makes one wonder if Meekstone has a place in this deck, though. Meekstone's incredibly easy to cast, comes in off a Ritual combined with Hymn/Sinkhole/Wretch/Shade/etc, and is a dynamite replacement for something like Cursed Scroll, which can generally handle anything Meekstone can't (Except for like, 2/3's) and vice versa. Shade gets around Meekstone beautifully.

Perish and the ever underrated Virtue's Ruin are both solid Sideboard options, if you can fit them in alongside Plague and STP and whatever else. Personally, however, I've been having a lot better luck merging Perish and Virtue's Ruin into Dystopia. My current quandary, however, is that Dystopia hits my own Jotun Grunts, which is making me lean back towards the more reliable Withered Wretch. Between Dystopia, Plague, and STP in board, I feel pretty equipped to handle hordes of large creatures, and I'm tempted to see if I can squeeze in a couple Meekstones now.

Clark Kant

09-14-2006, 02:04 PM

Hey guys, long time shadow lurker, but first time posting...obviously. Nice to meet you all.

After reading all these posts, I noticed people saying that it loses to big creatures found in decks such as Angel Stompy, Faerie Stompy, etc. On a personal note, I found out after playing with this on MWS, that once something like a SSS or an angel hits the board, I die more often than not. Since most, if not all (depending on negator build), of the creatures in the deck are small, would something like Retribution of the Meek work? Or Perish/ Virtue's Ruin? Was thinking along the lines of hunted horror + perish or forced march for 0. Or even a sunscour (obviously using the alt casting cost) and then laying down the quick threats? Maybe these ideas are leading into a different direction or too expensive?

As a rule of thumb, threats are always better than answers.

If you want more of an explanation, all the cards you listed are only good against those matchups that we are talking about. They are useless against combo and control. They also don't increase your own threat count and thus don't enable you to play Jitte over Cursed Scroll. I think the best bet is to stick with testing a creature like Juzam Djinn.