[Deck] Deadguy Ale (B/w Confidant)

[laststepdown]

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.


The really sick part? I was putting my Winter Orbs back in my Revised last night and saw Meekstone, thought "This would be awesome in Deadguy because it shuts off alpha striking with creatures Deadguy can't handle, but, alas, goblins don't care about it." and dismissed it. Tivitar's Crusade would be awsome here, if we could get to WW easier (I run 8 fetches and still sometimes have a problem getting one white mana), as Plague has been made obsolete by Dralnu's Crusade.

[Anarky87]

I've been running Perish and Virtue's Ruin in my SB to some pretty good success. The problem I've had in the past with Dystopia is that it's only hitting one creature at a time. I suppose that's ok against decks that rely on only 2-3 green creatures to win the game (Thresh), but I've also had people just continue to play out another creature and then beat in. That's why I've been enjoying just sweeping the board of whatever color is ailing me. My board at the moment is pretty much just global hating.

3 Perish (Hate on Green)
3 Virtue's ruin (Hate on White)
3 Infest (Been running this over Plague due to the absence of Goblins)
2 Swords to Plowshare (Might cut 1)
2 Serenity (Almost wanting 3 in here, it just seems that good)
2 Warmth (Random Burn and other red related whatnot)

[GamerSmurf]

As per Clark Kant's reply, I can see the statement of "...threats are always better than answers." in 2 ways. But thinking about that, and the aforementioned cards would almost be, if not completely, worthless against combo. Would a SB of True Believer vs combo or a forcefield against bigger threats work? I've tried the forcefield, and it seemed to work against the bigger creatures, but come against goblins or a mongoose and the like, its virtually pointless. I've even gone as far as using zombie infestations to rid my hands of seemingly dead cards and to just put more pressure on the opponent with a fairly good success. I have yet to try out the meekstone idea, but I'll make sure i try that next. Maybe my concept/ knowledge of the finer details of this deck are off, but with guidance and some feedback, I hope to gain as much as I hope to contribute to this deck and board. Ciao !

[DeathwingZERO]

I actually did some playtesting with the following list:

Deadguy Ale v1.2 (my second modified version of this)

Manabase: 24
4 Polluted Delta
2 Bloodstained Mire
4 Scrubland
1 Godless Shrine
9 Swamp
4 Dark Ritual

Creatures: 16
4 Dark Confidant
4 Hypnotic Specter
3 Nantuko Shade
3 Jotun Grunt
2 Withered Wretch (just for the last 2 cards I couldn't decide on, I didn't want only 2 Wasteland MD)

Disruption: 20
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Gerrard's Verdict
4 Sinkhole
4 Vindicate

SB:
4 Mutilate/Cursed Scrolls (to test viability against random aggro)
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Withered Wretch
3 E. Plague
2 (missing....due to Wretch's being split between maindeck and SB)

I played about 15 games last night, all against a pretty typical Raffinity deck, just to see what a fast aggro deck with no control elements can do.

Sad to say, Affinity vs my build was not even a matchup. His maindeck vs mine was hitting probably 80/20 in his favor. The pure speed of an aggro deck that can just win in the middle of combat coupled with a possible combo outlet via Rav+Disciple is nothing short of the best matchup vs this deck.

Post sideboard, I found that Mutilate shined like mad in this deck, especially going along with StP. Nearly every time I cast Mutilate it was a 4-for-1, one time I even hit a 5-for-1 taking otu 3 of his creatures and 2 Glimmervoids. Jotun Grunt loved that.

Current thought process: Mutilate is a must in sideboard. Stuff that hurts some of our bad matchups like Thresh, Raffinity, and other random aggro/aggro control are too selective. Mutilate easily does the same thing, and typically will kill off some things otherwise left behind. Never was I short of the 4 swamps when casting it, and it never hit less than 3 creatures on the opponents side of the board, to a maximum of 2 of mine.

Jotun Grunt, absolute garbage without something like Jitte or Sword of Fire/Ice to back him up. If you can't kill their creatures fast enough, or pack high enough disruption, he won't survive that 3rd upkeep counter. Trust me, I was throwing cards in the graveyard on both our sides, but hitting 12 by turn 5, that's a bit farfetched. Typically he swings twice, and dies.

In this particular instance, and I know the same goes for Goblins and R/G aggro decks, Nantuko Shade shined. Following a Mutilate, he's pretty much guaranteed to beat out anything your opponent will drop, because he'll typically swing for 7+ next turn.

So at this rate, I may end up testing the Jitte. Taking out the 2 Wretch back to SB and putting them in the place, 14 creatures SHOULD prove useful enough to pack this, and after seeing all the rediculousness I could have been pulling against Goblins and Raffinity with that card, I see that it could quite possibly pull wins vs Thresh as well.

12 Disruption + 8 Land destruction: A solid number between the two. Against Raffinity, I wished I had Wasteland, but at the same time, it's not really much of a question against the remainder of the field, as they pack many more basics than Raffinity does (at 0). I could easily change the deck back to -2 Swamp -2 Verdict +4 Wasteland, so testing that will also come about.

Still, the Grunt seems to be a viable card, though Rotting Giant is seeming stronger for the staying power. Grunt + Jitte should pack good speed, and Grunt is way more useful than Giant later in the game (mainly because he can last more than 2-3 turns), and getting a Jitte on a Confidant or Hyppie seemed to be worth possibly losing them in a battle.

I've pretty much completely lost interest in Cursed Scroll. It's good, being colorless damage, a good early drop, and recurring, but it's just too damn slow, and not enough damage late game to kill off threats.

As for combo, I still need to test that out. I think this build will be much more viable, as it has 7 good sized beaters + 12 Hand Disruption + 8 Land Destruction spells. That seems really good against both Solidarity and IGGY Pop.

[TheInfamousBearAssassin]

I think that the logic that there are never wrong threats was debunked a while ago. The entire problem with this deck is that it's full of wrong threats; it's guys can't really beat up on any other deck's guys in the entire format. Goblins will overwhelm you and pinpoint destroy creatures, whereas Thresh and whateverStompy's bigger, better equipped creatures will stomp over yours. As an aggro deck, the archetype seems to fail again and again when running up against other aggro decks; it's strictly worse in this regards than Red Death, basically. I think it's time to consider how to make either the aggro or the control part of this aggro-control deck stronger. You could try actually testing cutting some of your current disruption suite for creature- hate, losing either LD or discard, or some combination thereof. -4 Sinkhole, -4 Wasteland, -4 Vindicate for +2 Color-producing land, +4 StP, +3 additional threats, +3 Jitte, for instance. Or, if you're like Pikula and just like destroying lands, lose the Hymns and Duresses. As the deck plays right now, it's Threshold at Sorcery speed with less optimization and no line of text on your creatures that begins "Threshold-".

[DeathwingZERO]

The problem is this isn't an aggro control deck. The creatures are just as much utility as they are damage, typically more utility. This is the main reason people can't call this Suicide Black anymore, we lost the suicide build when we put in white for control elements. The way it's built now is more along the lines of a slow control deck, that's not very good at keeping control, because the format gets past it's two key elements: discard and land destruction. After the first few turns, both LD and HD start losing their effectiveness, mainly because the solid decks in the format are all stabilizing at the same time we are.

None of the creatures have shadow. Even if any did, they'd be useless without backup, or mostly dead (because the "good" shadow creatures all have 2 or less toughness). This makes the core of Sui useless here. Also, we've come to the conclusion Negator is pretty bad here, because unlike Red Death, our removal of resolved creatures is usually clunky or too mana intensive to support him swinging every turn, and our permanent count isn't that high either.

Looking over our lists of "threats" through Gatherer, it honestly comes down to Grunt or Juzam/Grinning Demon for our beatsticks, in addition to the Shade. The Juzam vs Demon may need to be tested though, as 6 usually = a 3 turn clock now, with pretty much every deck playing a minimum of 4 fetchlands, and 5 would still most likely be 4 turns. However, in a slow game, that additional life loss coupled with Bob may be bad.

If we went with this style, I'd advocate putting in more creature destruction maindeck, and taking out some of our disruption.

This may be the new way to go with the deck.

[Eldariel]

Here's a build I've been testing out recently:

Lands
4 Wasteland (I actually tested 3-Waste 1-Stronghold-build but noticed that the problem isn't really getting a guy to stick, it's getting a guy, period)
4 Polluted Delta
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Tomb of Urami
4 Scrubland (I play Tomb and Grunt, hence I really want my white mana and I don't like mana instabilities, so I play 4/4/4 Scrub/Mire/Delta to get it with some consistency)
2 Swamp

Creatures
4 Hypnotic Specter
3 Jotun Grunt (experimental card #1, I find it to be awesome here, it usually sticks around long enough to pay for itself and against graveyard-strategies, it's naturally great)
4 Dark Confidant
3 Bane of the Living (experimental card #2, I was analysing the list and came to the conclusion that Nantuko Shade is a problem-card since it has no role other than to beat, so I'm testing a sweeper-creature in its stead. So far, I haven't run any actual testing, just played it on MWS and the MWS-players don't like their creature-decks for a reason or another so I haven't really gotten to test it out. The fact that it's a 2/2 when Morphed is a problem, but the fact that it can be blown for 2 and it still survives makes it awesome for killing Goblins. I'm also considering Masticore, but I like how cheaply this guy can sweep the board and also be a legimate beatstick against combo)

Spells
3 Funeral Charm (experimental card #3, I try to attack the opponent's hand so just discarding a card is great as I can then go for the throat with Hymns and Verdicts to empty him. Also a Lackey-answer, a clock-speeder and occasionally allows me to 1-for-2 with a big guy (which is better than having 'em go about unanswered))
4 Hymn to Tourach
2 Duress (only 2 to have less dead cards game 1 against a lot of decks and because of the fact that in Type 1.5, the card power doesn't fluctuate as widely as in T1, so nailing a specific card isn't quite as necessary that often)
2 Cursed Scroll (I've found 'em awesome still, clock combined with repeatable removal=superb against both, control and aggro. I actually played a mirror where my opponent played Jitte and I played Scroll. I won the game through equipped Jitte as I got the second Scroll active and just went to the town. The amount of artifact-removal and Needles is still surprisingly low MD)
4 Sinkhole
4 Vindicate
2 Chrome Mox (experimental card #4, I really like the fact that it allows turn 1 Sinkhole on the draw without Ritual. I can also occasionally pitch Ritual to it in a mana-heavy hand. I really find this card heavily underused in the format, I think it gives this particular deck just the added speed it needs to make its disruption effective in this format)
4 Dark Ritual
2 Gerrard's Verdict (I like the added mass discard, helps Grunt and all that)

Sideboard
1 Jotun Grunt (duh)
1 Funeral Charm (I want 8 1-cost removal-spells, 4 Plagues, 2 Scrolls and beats against Goblins. Comes in also against combo or control if I have nothing better)
2 Duress (duh)
4 Swords to Plowshares (duh)
4 Engineered Plague (1-shot removal just isn't enough against Goblins, I find the permanent removal from Plague to be the best shot)
3 Serenity (artifact- and enchantment-removal of choice for me. Blows up Moxes, too bad, but I want to have an answer to those random Stax- and Affinity-decks that are around, as well as to Survival, Humility, Scepter, etc.)


The build is just to test a few cards, I really like where it's going though. I'm very happy with Moxes here, the deck makes up for the lost cards the first Hymn or Verdict it casts and if I can manascrew the opponent, all the better. Also has a decent removal suite even before board. Then again, I haven't gotten to test it thoroughly enough to really say anything conclusive. I might want an additional land though, the deck is very manahungry and 1-landers are almost invariably unkeepable.

[SillyMetalGAT]

Here's a build I've been testing out recently:

Lands
4 Wasteland (I actually tested 3-Waste 1-Stronghold-build but noticed that the problem isn't really getting a guy to stick, it's getting a guy, period)
4 Polluted Delta
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Tomb of Urami
4 Scrubland (I play Tomb and Grunt, hence I really want my white mana and I don't like mana instabilities, so I play 4/4/4 Scrub/Mire/Delta to get it with some consistency)
2 Swamp

Creatures
4 Hypnotic Specter
3 Jotun Grunt (experimental card #1, I find it to be awesome here, it usually sticks around long enough to pay for itself and against graveyard-strategies, it's naturally great)
4 Dark Confidant
3 Bane of the Living (experimental card #2, I was analysing the list and came to the conclusion that Nantuko Shade is a problem-card since it has no role other than to beat, so I'm testing a sweeper-creature in its stead. So far, I haven't run any actual testing, just played it on MWS and the MWS-players don't like their creature-decks for a reason or another so I haven't really gotten to test it out. The fact that it's a 2/2 when Morphed is a problem, but the fact that it can be blown for 2 and it still survives makes it awesome for killing Goblins. I'm also considering Masticore, but I like how cheaply this guy can sweep the board and also be a legimate beatstick against combo)

Spells
3 Funeral Charm (experimental card #3, I try to attack the opponent's hand so just discarding a card is great as I can then go for the throat with Hymns and Verdicts to empty him. Also a Lackey-answer, a clock-speeder and occasionally allows me to 1-for-2 with a big guy (which is better than having 'em go about unanswered))
4 Hymn to Tourach
2 Duress (only 2 to have less dead cards game 1 against a lot of decks and because of the fact that in Type 1.5, the card power doesn't fluctuate as widely as in T1, so nailing a specific card isn't quite as necessary that often)
2 Cursed Scroll (I've found 'em awesome still, clock combined with repeatable removal=superb against both, control and aggro. I actually played a mirror where my opponent played Jitte and I played Scroll. I won the game through equipped Jitte as I got the second Scroll active and just went to the town. The amount of artifact-removal and Needles is still surprisingly low MD)
4 Sinkhole
4 Vindicate
2 Chrome Mox (experimental card #4, I really like the fact that it allows turn 1 Sinkhole on the draw without Ritual. I can also occasionally pitch Ritual to it in a mana-heavy hand. I really find this card heavily underused in the format, I think it gives this particular deck just the added speed it needs to make its disruption effective in this format)
4 Dark Ritual
2 Gerrard's Verdict (I like the added mass discard, helps Grunt and all that)

Sideboard
1 Jotun Grunt (duh)
1 Funeral Charm (I want 8 1-cost removal-spells, 4 Plagues, 2 Scrolls and beats against Goblins. Comes in also against combo or control if I have nothing better)
2 Duress (duh)
4 Swords to Plowshares (duh)
4 Engineered Plague (1-shot removal just isn't enough against Goblins, I find the permanent removal from Plague to be the best shot)
3 Serenity (artifact- and enchantment-removal of choice for me. Blows up Moxes, too bad, but I want to have an answer to those random Stax- and Affinity-decks that are around, as well as to Survival, Humility, Scepter, etc.)


The build is just to test a few cards, I really like where it's going though. I'm very happy with Moxes here, the deck makes up for the lost cards the first Hymn or Verdict it casts and if I can manascrew the opponent, all the better. Also has a decent removal suite even before board. Then again, I haven't gotten to test it thoroughly enough to really say anything conclusive. I might want an additional land though, the deck is very manahungry and 1-landers are almost invariably unkeepable.

Interesting list. Bane of the Living certainly does help out. He also kills goose, granted he goes down too, but at least you can sweep them off. I used funeral charm in my pox deck when I played it at Philly, and oh man, that card is sooooooo sweet against Goblins. It can either 1. Rip a card from hand, 2. Kill Lacky, or 3. Help in the mirror when it comes to doing those last points of combat damage. Chrome Mox is an interesting choice too. The extra speed seems to outweigh the card disadvantage for this deck thanks to Bob. It seems like a solid list. Jotun Grunt seems kind of automatic since he's currently the hottest card in this format. Tell us how you do with it.

[DeathwingZERO]

Feeling slightly retarded for forgetting to look at artifact creatures when looking over possible beatsticks, Masticore might just be a really useful addition. At worst he's 4 for a 4/4, which is still solid. If there's no Needle's, he becomes instant speed spot removal, and an eternal blocker. He just might be the 2 card replacement for my Cursed Scrolls that went SB.

As for Wasteland, I'm still not completely sold on them. The only decks so far that they've been good against have been Affinity and on occasion Thresh, and to be honest, they're really not good against either of those. Your helping Thresh achieve it's goal, and not slowing it down nearly enough without hitting them with Sinkhole and Vindicate to keep them off 2-3 mana for a while, and Affinity really just doesn't care. The only thing I ever really kept my opponent from casting when hitting Affinity's lands was Cranial Plating, and honestly it was merely just buying time, I was hardly in control of that matchup, ever.

Tomb and Stronghold I'm still working on playtesting, though I think with a heavier threat base, Stronghold will be a much more solid choice. Especially being able to discard additional Bobs to 'Core and then put them back on top of the library before draw step. Seems like a good "reserves" way to play around his drawback.

I think I'm gonna stick with SB Mutilate over MD Bane, I really dislike the idea of requiring so much mana to attempt a -x/-x on a single turn if I really need to draw into him, as opposed to just nuking everything whenever I topdeck a Mutilate, which is always at minimum 4. E. Plagues + StP in the SB means Goblins really aren't a problem after game 1.

[Eldariel]

Never forget that Stronghold only produces colourless, and increases mana inconsistencies if played over a coloured land, the reason I opted not to ultimately run it. In my experience, Wasteland is awesome against anything, allowing me to conditionally fill up on my LD-suite if I've got sufficient LD going on anyways (against Iggy, all kinds of Tomb-decks, Thres, Gobs, etc.) and produces mana if I don't have the tools to hit the landbase.

SB-option is definately Mutilate, but I don't like trying to win games 2 and 3, I want a shot at game 1, Bane gives me the means to kill hordes pre-board. I'd really like one that did it when it comes into play. I actually considered Kagemaro, but 5 is a lot to flip from Confidant and it costs tons to get on board (for 3 mana, Bane can be Morphed and sweep for 1 the next turn).

Going second, I've noticed that the deck REALLY wants a Ritual or a Mox-opening unless you're up against combo since you need to get your Sinkholes and Hymns online before opponent drops his hand rendering them useless.

[Team-Hero]

Have you guys tried adding Pillor of Sleeplessness or Soul Link? A Soul link on your bomb creature (like Kezzerdrix) would be pretty good and the -4 life if opponent has no creatures wouldn't hurt as much.

[Lego]

Feeling slightly retarded for forgetting to look at artifact creatures when looking over possible beatsticks, Masticore might just be a really useful addition. At worst he's 4 for a 4/4, which is still solid. If there's no Needle's, he becomes instant speed spot removal, and an eternal blocker. He just might be the 2 card replacement for my Cursed Scrolls that went SB.

Actually, there are at least two scenarios worse than him being a vanilla 4/4. 1) He's stuck in your hand because you never hit 4. 2) You're forced to discard your disruption to him instead of using it to win. Heck, Juggernaut is probably better than him.

[Clark Kant]

No offense but Juggernaut is a horrible suggestion. It dies to a Nimble Mongoose or much less a lightning bolt.

I assure that Masticore is exactly what this deck is looking for. Your disruption is just to throw off your opponents initial plan. Cards like Dark Ritual, Duress, Hymn, Sinkhole or any of the 22 lands this deck runs start sucking it up in the mid and late game.

Masticore on the other hand serves many different functions, all of which this deck is lacking in. It's a resilient blocker that survives everything sans Swords (which you have Duress and 12 other potent threats to deal with), it's a solid threat, it's an extremely fast clock and it's a potent instant speed repeatable removal. Best of all it lets you run Jitte, the other card that serves a bunch of different functions that are precisely what this deck needs. Removal, clock, saving your creatures and lifegain.


Ever since I built Pikula's deck, while I had been pleased with the deck's performance against combo and control, I had been displeased with it's performance against the the four main stompy decks (Fairie Stompy, Angel Stompy, Zilla Stompy and 9 Land Stompy) and more generally, it's weak performance against well built aggro decks of any form.

If you had been following the other deadguy thread, you'll note that I had been testing various different directions in which to take the deck for some time now (everything from Exalted Angel and Jotun Grunt to Juzam Djinn and Spectral Lynx).

Now after much playtime against aggro decks, primarily against the decks Fairie Stompy, Goblins, 9 Land Stompy and Zilla Stompy, I finally arrived at a deck that I have been extremely pleased with, one that is quite different from the original deck, enough that I believe it warrants a seperate thread.

First, here is the list.

Deadguy Remix

8 Swamp
4 Duals
4 Wasteland
3 Bloodstained Mire
2 Polluted Delta
1 Volrath's Stronghold

4 Dark Ritual
4 Sinkhole
4 Vindicate

4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
3 Jitte

4 Hypnotic Specter
4 Dark Confidant
3 Rotting Giant (Withered Wretch in a select few metas) (Originally tested Jotun Grunt in this slot)
2 Nantuko Shade
2 Masticore

Update: I just cut 1 Shade for 1 Confidant as the mana cost is more managable. You can consistently play a 1B on second turn to at the very least act as a blocker. A BB often is sometimes unplayable till third turn when you have better cards to play and already took too much damage due to your inability to block their second turn onslaught. I also cut 1 Volrath's Stronghold for 1 Polluted Delta as was my original test list before I decided that higher artifact and lower white count lets me get away with running 2 Strongholds.

The key advantage of the above build is that it doesn't sacrifice Deadguys potency against combo and control by making such changes as cutting Wastelands to make room for more aggro hate, or subbing out Duresses with Funeral Charms in order to improve the aggro match.

Instead of replacing answers to combo and control with answers to aggro, it sought to improve it's aggro matchup by replacing previous answers to aggro with superior answers to aggro. One example of this is the replacement of Cursed Scroll with Jitte. Another such example is the replacement of Engineered Plague with Masticore. In testing, I have repeatedly found Jitte to be everything Scroll ever wanted to be, and then some. Lifegain, pump, and removal, without the conditionality of only being consistently useful if you have only one card in hand, without the limitation of only being able to kill threats with 2 toughness or less and without the need to invest 3 additional mana each and every turn makes for a far superior card.

Of course, the inclusion of Jitte required more threats and more resilient threats.

3 Ofs - Both Confidant and Shade are, though quite powerful, cards that you never want to see more than one copy of per game. Seeing as this is at it's core a controllish deck, this situation came up too often for comfort, and both cards were reduced to a 3 of.

Rotting Giant - A 3/3 for 2 mana with no drawback. The only arguement against this card is that it serves no additonal utility role. The other two replacements considered for this slot are Jotun Grunt and Withered Wretch. Jotun Grunt though an excellent creature, leaves play in just a mere two turns. Running it means that you are unable to play Jitte, and that in just two turns you run into the same situation the original Deadguy build runs into, being overwhelmed by threats. Withered Wretch on the other hand is a perfectly fine substitute in this slot as it does stay in play. In a meta with an abundance of Reanimator and Threshold type decks, Wretch is the obvious choice. In a meta with an abundance of traditional aggro, Rotting Giant deals with and trades with a far greater number of creatures. As by and far, most metas fit the latter criteria, Rotting Giant is more commonly the correct direction to go.

Nantuko Shade vs. Rotting Giant - I'll grant that overall Nantuko Shade is the stronger creature. The problem however is that early on, Giant is far better esp in the problem matchups. When you are being weenie rushed as early as turn 2 and 3, you are far better off having just cast a 3/3 on your side than you are tapping out to cast a 2/1 on your side. Shade requires a two mana pump each turn to get the same toughness that Giant has built in. Early on (the critical turns where you must stabilize against aggro) this is either not an option, or an option that disables you from playing the other threats in your hand.

Masticore - Originally tested Juzam Djinn in this slot but found Masticore all around a better choice. Testing has proved that Masticore is Jitte 3-4 in that it's every bit as potent, even more so, in wrecking aggro. The reason the card doesn't see much play in Legacy is because most decks are too fast to reliably be stopped by a 4cc creature. Deadguy on the other hand is the perfect fit, as it is the one deck that is extremely potent in slowing even the most aggressive of decks down to a more managable level. It also benefits from being one of the few decks very able to rob your opponents hands of any creature removal thus protecting your threats. The upkeep cost: discard is rarely painful, as Deadguy is notorious for having a glut of cards that though very potent early on, are far weaker in the midgame (Duress, Sinkhole, Hymn, Dark Ritual). The versatility of Masticore however is top notch. It can ping away creatures every bit as quickly as Cursed Scroll, all while dealing 4 damage to the face or providing a massive blocker. It can deal 6 damage a turn and provide a three turn clock for opponents running fetchlands. And regeneration is also quite a useful ability.

I highly encourage any previous Deadguy players or more generally, any fans of control decks, to take the above build out for a test drive.

[DeathwingZERO]

After speaking with a friend of mine, I'm thinking a really good idea against most of our bad matchups (typically aggro/aggro control), would actually be Engineered Explosives. Nearly everytime you're going to set it down @ 2 counters, which is enough to blow away any main threats of Thresh, Goblins, Affinity, and most of the remaining aggro based things, as well as randomly hating against Iggy (artificial manabase), and things like Survival (and most of it's utility/accelerants).

I'm considering running 2-3 in the SB now in place of E Plague, which is honestly only a solid thing against Goblins, and only if you find 2 fast enough.

Definitely keeping Masticore as a 2 of in the deck, after playtesting I never found myself running short, especially since all of us agree that random pieces of discard late game is almost always dead.

Volrath's Stronghold is still being tested in my build. Still don't have Wasteland, as I typically see Affinity, Rifter, Solidarity, IGGY Pop, Thresh, Control Slivers, RGSA, or anything else that doesn't run more than 4-8 non-basics, plus way more basics or acceleration to win around Wasteland without tempo loss.

Here's what I'm at so far:

Lands/Mana:24
2 Volraths Stronghold
4 Polluted Delta
2 Bloodstained Mire
4 Scrubland
1 Godless Shrine (or Tainted, your choice)
7 Swamp
4 Dark Ritual

Disruption:20
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Gerrards Verdict
4 Sinkhole
4 Vindicate

Creatures:16
4 Dark Confidant
4 Hypnotic Specter
3 Nantuko Shade
3 Jotun Grunt
2 Masticore

Sideboard:
4 Withered Wretch (may just use Crypt, with so many maindeck creatures now)
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Mutilate
2 Engineered Explosives
2 Umezawa's Jitte

Still working on getting Jitte into the maindeck (may take out something like 1 Hymn and 1 Duress/Verdict), and if more aggro decks start showing up, I'm definitely going to replace 4 discard for 4 StP maindeck. For now, this seems to be a very solid run, though I'm still worried certain decks will just literally outrun me.

I'll be doing more testing over the week, and give some insight to what's going on, and any changes.

Edit: @ Lego- Both of those cases you would lose regardless of if he's in the deck or not. At the point that after turn 4 (our average for casting Masticore, without Ritual) you're afraid to pitch your discard/disruption because it's more needed than a 4-5 turn clock, you're already far behind. Same with the lacking of 4 mana, especially allowing colorless sources to cast him. Rarely will I run myself short on mana, and I cut myself back to 20 lands, 6 of which are fetches.

[Clark Kant]

I think that any build that wants to run 4cc creatures, such as Masticore, pretty much has to run 22 lands atleast. Pikula's original build ran 23 lands, and his curve topped off at 3.

I can also say for certain that Jitte is worth it's weight in gold, hence why I'm running 3. Every one of it's abilities is insanely useful in this deck esp.

Unfortunately, if you want to run Jitte, you are pretty much forced to make sure that all your threats stick around for a couple of turns, hence forcing that you run Rotting Giant over Jotun Grunt.

[Team-Hero]

Hey guys. Wizards of the Coast is going to print (in Time Spiral) a 4cc (2BB) 5/5 Sliver. The only catch is that it reads "all slivers gain 'during your upkeep this creature deals 1 damage to you.'" Do you think this guy is going to see play in the deck?

[laststepdown]

Probably, if they cant afford Cursed Scrolls, Jittes, or Juzam Djinn.

[Elfrago]

Hey guys. Wizards of the Coast is going to print (in Time Spiral) a 4cc (2BB) 5/5 Sliver. The only catch is that it reads "all slivers gain 'during your upkeep this creature deals 1 damage to you.'" Do you think this guy is going to see play in the deck?

Better than Juzam, hoses enemy slivers.
But this deck dosn't need Juzam

[DeathwingZERO]

There is a chance the sliver could be used in this deck, but the problem of his constant life loss could be an issue in a standoff. 5 really isn't much better than 4 at this rate, it's still 4 turns to swing (average life loss of most decks by the end of the game is 4 due to fetches, and even more with things like Thresh running FoW in addition). Plus, it only really beats out thresh'd Werebear, whereas Masticore can block and regen, and possibly kill off something in addition with extra mana in the late game.

I would say at this point, the big difference is whether or not you see Pithing Needle. I personally consider a 4 colorless 4/4 with utility that requires colorless and has regeneration over a 2 and 2 core black 5/5 vanilla that hurts you every turn.

[Lego]

Edit: @ Lego- Both of those cases you would lose regardless of if he's in the deck or not. At the point that after turn 4 (our average for casting Masticore, without Ritual) you're afraid to pitch your discard/disruption because it's more needed than a 4-5 turn clock, you're already far behind. Same with the lacking of 4 mana, especially allowing colorless sources to cast him. Rarely will I run myself short on mana, and I cut myself back to 20 lands, 6 of which are fetches.

That's the problem with the deck: in both of these situations you would have already lost. My point was supposed to be that he seems win-more to me. By this I mean that for him to be good, you have to be already winning the game. If you've hit 4 mana, and have consistantly kept your opponent off of threats, then any creature will win you the game. If you haven't hit 4 mana, or haven't properly kept your opponent off of threats, they are going to be able to deal with Masticore, and he's simply going to slow down your game plan. What the deck needs is some way to win in these situations. I find that often on turn 4 your opponent is beginning to recover from your disruption, which is why a creature like Confidant is great because he allows you to keep disrupting while beating down. It's why Nantuko Shade is great because you can disrupt, disrupt, disrupt, and then win all at once. When you play Masticore, it seems that instead you are giving up on the disruption, going "all in" and allowing your opponent ample time to recover and deal with him.

[Clark Kant]

Your reasoning is off Lego Army Man.

Yes, if you haven't dealt with your opponents threats, then Juzam/Plague Sliver isn't going to deal with them for you.

But Masticore will be able to take out your opponents threats. Masticore does deal 2 damage to any target you want you know. Saying that it's a win more card is akin to saying Cursed Scroll and Jitte are win more cards.

All three of these cards... Masticore, Jitte and Cursed Scroll are disruption. Picking away your opponents threats is disruption. What makes Masticore and Jitte superior to Cursed Scroll IMO is that both Masticore and Jitte can quickly switch roles from a disruptive card, into a 3 turn clock after they do regain you control of the board.

In addition, the regeneration does make him a great blocker against cards like Iwamori of Open Fist. And the regeneration makes him a hard creature to kill as well unless you are playing a white mage and haven't already duress away their Swords.

Masticore is not a win more card. Masticore swings the game from a losing position to a winning one by letting you deal with all of your opponents threats especially in a build like mine below...

8 Swamp
4 Duals
4 Wasteland
3 Bloodstained Mire
2 Polluted Delta
1 Volrath's Stronghold

4 Dark Ritual
4 Sinkhole
4 Vindicate

4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
3 Jitte

4 Hypnotic Specter
4 Dark Confidant
3 Rotting Giant (Withered Wretch in a select few metas) (Originally tested Jotun Grunt in this slot)
2 Nantuko Shade
2 Masticore

But I admittedly didn't test Juzam Djinn in place of Masticore very throughly in the above build as only some of hte people that I play against let me proxy cards. So I was wondering if anyone thinks Juzam Sliver warrants more testing in the above build.

Also wondering if there's any changes you guys recommend to the above build. All of the card choices and numbers in the build above were explained in detail in my post on the last page. So I would be appreciative if you please read that before critiquing the deck. Thank you.

[Goblin Snowman]

n

[Goblin Snowman]

Before I even get started, I want to make clear that in no way am I saying the following is better than this deck. Just putting it out there.

Well, this started as a joke of me trying to get Zombies to be playable, and throughout the day, I was brainstorming the best way to do so. I decided to try a Deadguy (get it?) build, and it actully worked out. The biggest problem I've had with it is it's nature to kill itself off Graveborn Muse, and the fact that Nantuko Shade is not a Zombie. In exchange for this, you get

- Graveborn Muse: Well, it's a little spending, but it's a Bob. Only, you know, it can draw way more cards, for very little life. I'm in a good place with that

- Call to the Grave: Well, anyone who uses this knows that it can flatup win games by itself against the decks problem Matches (Stompy, RGSA, 5/3) since their creature base isn't that heavy. The only issue is if they sweep your board.

Those are the huge bonuses. The things you lose are

- Nantuko Shade's ability to go, Dark Rit, oops I win. The games take longer, meaning that unless you get Cabal Interrogater, they can recover.

- Your Bob is $$$er. Yes, it lives through Goblins and can kill someone itself. But 4 CC can hurt.

- Hippy. Cabal Interrogater and Haunted Cadaver work, but there is a reason this guy is hated by Combo everywhere.

But now the list

4x Withered Wretch - He's a Zombie, and good enough to be played in the norm. version.
2x Rotting Giant - Could be Cabal Interrogater. Meta call.
2x Cabal Interrogater - Could be Rotting Giant. Meta call.
4x Graveborn Muse - The Best Junk Rare ever!
2x Haunted Cadaver - Could be Rotting Giant/Interrogater/Sinkhole/Cursed Scroll. But I think he's pretty good, actully.
1x Bob - Yeah, he's good. I know. Could be any of the non 4 of things.

4x Dark Ritual
4x Duress
4x Hymn to Tourach
4x Vindicate
3x Sinkhole - I only have three
4x Swords to Plowshares - Could be any number of things... but it's always good.
1x Gerrard's Verdict - Could be a 2nd Bob, with 5 Bobs in here Life Gain's good.

10x Snow-Covered Swamps
3x Polluted Delta
1x Windswept Heath
2x Bloodstained Mire
4x Scrubland
1x Godless Shrine
1x Tomb of Urami

SB
4x Call to the Grave - Helps the horrid MU, and can randomly win against Goblins. Not so hot with Bob.
4x Gangrenous Zombies - A Clasm vs. Goblin? And it walks! And it has toughness larger than 2!
1x Verdict (Burn, Combo, w/e)
3x Planar Void
3x Umezawa's Jitte - Wanted to main it, not enough room.
This is just me trying to take the deck in a direction that hasn't been tried to my knowladge, and hopefully improve it. (Wait, I play Stax and Combo... do I really want to help!?!)

[rsaunder]

http://www.starcitygames.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=293235

Whit3_Ghost may have found our answers, or at least something to test out a bit.

So Smallpox in deadguy. It allows a sometimes useful out for bob, acts as NON-TARGETED removal, coupled with discard (a weak effect), as well as another quazi-sinkholeish effect. The life loss part seems like somewhat of a useless addition, but in theory, it counts as reach. Not very much, and I can count the games it would have won as reach on one finger, but the options is still open. The first card that this seemed similar to that I wanted to draw a comparison on was funeral charm. I had been quite taken aback by funeral charm's versitility, but not by its sheer power. Small pox seems like a multi-tasker of the same versitility, but at a much greater calibur, all for a mirror drawback.

So, is the tempo-loss of saccing a land not worth the benefit of untargeted removal in the same package? We should be ahead on resources. Perhaps this is what we were looking for, but perhaps not.

[DeathwingZERO]

This is definitely something that we've been looking for. The deck so far has constantly been messing with trying to split between land destruction and hand destruction while still keeping a balance, now we have a 4 of with both abilities, IN ADDITION to killing off a random creature. I now honestly have even less reason to want to run Wasteland, since this is our Sinkholes 5-8, and our discard is HUGE now (14-16 in my build, after this addition).

Personally, I fully believe much like Bob made this deck viable as a B/w Sui-black control deck, Small Pox is going to make this deck viable against the entire format. Aggro decks hate the idea of losing both a land and a creature, and in addition, they lose a card. This is completely savage for us, we'll never lose tempo advantage now, as most of the times we won't mind pitching a card to 2-1 or 3-1 the opponent.

On top of that, it now means Grunt is even more viable, as a single cast of this tosses a good 3-4 cards into the two graveyards on average.

Looks like we've got some serious playtesting to look forward to. Hopefully we get this thing back into the LMF.

[rsaunder]

I now honestly have even less reason to want to run Wasteland, since this is our Sinkholes 5-8, and our discard is HUGE now (14-16 in my build, after this addition).Why would you cut wasteland again? Tha manabase can support it, and it makes the land draws infinitely more consistant while providing more land destruction.

[Hanni]

Lands (20)
4 Bloodstained Mire
3 Polluted Delta
4 Scrubland
4 Swamp
1 Tainted Field
4 Wasteland

Creatures (14)
4 Dark Confidant
3 Nantuko Shade
4 Spectral Lynx
3 Jotun Grunt

Spells (26)
4 Dark Ritual
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Small Pox
4 Sinkhole
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Umezawa's Jitte

Spectral Lynx gives this deck a much better game against aggro, especially Goblins, by blocking aggro (usually killing it off) and surviving through regeneration. The pro green can be useful against Goblins, as well as other decks. The Jotun Grunts provide fat to a deck that will easily fill the graveyards (I stress both yards here) and it hoses alot of decks in the format. 14 creatures allows this deck to run to Jitte, a card which even further strengthens the Goblins matchup and other aggro matchups (and it's much better than Cursed Scroll IMO).

The lack of Hypnotic Specter may be discouraging, though I think that the Specter isn't really that great against aggro. The deck should already do fairly well against control and combo to not need the additional discard that the Specter provides, especially with Small Pox in the deck now.

The sideboard can consist of whatever is necessary in a given meta.

[DeathwingZERO]

Why would you cut wasteland again? Tha manabase can support it, and it makes the land draws infinitely more consistant while providing more land destruction.

Because, as I've said before, our metagame doesn't need it. The only decks that I can effectively control via wasteland vs card disruption don't show up here. Thresh/Sliver Control plays around it, Goblins have Rishidan Port + Wasteland, so mine are typically useless, and Rifter has enough basics to go around it no problem (plus dragon to search). The only other decks I'm seeing besides those are usually even more in their favor, as it's completely dead.

Honestly, I'd much rather pack more hand disruption or creatures anyways, since land destruction serves very little purpose with the way our metagame is shaping. Rarely will it win out games because most decks revolve around 2 mana anyways, and we don't pack enough of it to hate them out long enough for our threats to go online for more than a turn. If Wasteland were Strip Mine, that'd be completely different altogether, but alas, that's TOO good for us in in the tournament scenes. Every deck would pack 4 Strip.

[Clark Kant]

What do you mean our meta isn't hurt by wasteland. I find that statement to be false.

The only monocolored decks are solidarity and goblins, and you already beat both anyways if you're running Masticore and Jitte.

Everything else is packed with duals. They can't play around wasteland because of Sinkhole and Small Pox. Any basics they fetch gets blown up too forcing them to play their duals.

Turn one Hyppe, Turn 2 Sinkhole, Turn 3 Wasteland + Hymn is still the best play this deck has.

Small Pox is Sinkhole 5-8.

[Anarky87]

What do you mean our meta isn't hurt by wasteland. I find that statement to be false.

I think he's referring to the metagame in his own area. Mine is the same way where Wasteland is borderline useless.

[DeathwingZERO]

Correct. For multiple pages now I've said I've been running with 20 lands completely sans Wasteland, because the entire Portland area is completely unaffected by it. I actually had noticed I wanted to cut them only a few weeks into playing this deck, because I saw that the metagame was shifting away from requiring so many nonbasics and duals to play.

Aggro builds are two color at best, and could care less about losing lands past turn 2, and will fetch accordingly in the meantime, and anything 3 color is pretty much hosed by aggro, so they won't show, with the exception of Control Slivers, which packs enough basics.

Solidarity, Iggy= autodead card. Solidarity is monocolored, and Iggy packs 4-5 basics, JUST because it wants to be able to keep itself from dying to Wastelands and nonbasic hate. It rarely needs more than a single blue to go off anyways, so the Undergrounds are pretty much a last ditch effort when fetching, and on the turn before comboing off, or the turn they do.

Survival, and any other deck that requires Taiga for Anger or anything of that janky sort packs Witness and can recur her, so their lands come back at little cost, which causes us to attempt to race an acceleration we already are far behind. G/B Rock already packs Wasteland or land recursion, so it's unaffected as well. Both these decks are better beat by hand disruption and creature destuction.

All in all, it's honestly better this way anyways, as less land destruction = more threats or card dirsuption, which is much more solid a way to win in this format. Very little is affected by Wasteland, as it's a staple control card now.

[Summoner]

[...] as less land destruction = more threats or card dirsuption, which is much more solid a way to win in this format.

Ok... so you want to cut 4 Wastelands to put in 4 Disruption Spells? Even if Wasteland is dead in your Metagame, this sentence doesn't make ANY sense.

You could at best cut them for 3 Swamps (Or Tomb, Stronghold, ...) and ONE disrupting card. That won't make any more then the "random" Wasteland against some Decks. Oh - and casting a Witness after a Sinkhole and a Wasteland isn't that easy.

The Argument of recurring lands is if you would say "My opponnent plays V. Stronghold, so I side my removal out" or "He has got Counterspells. I better concede, cause he has an answer to everything in my deck, except lands."

At least recurring a Land costs them a Turn or three Mana for a Crucible. And who the f*ck wan't to Witness a Land anyways? Ofc, this sometimes happens, but most of the time you will recurr a FTK, a Survival, another beater or a Duress or...[...the list is nearly endless, so what?].

In your Meta cutting Wastelands might be ok, but you won't get more space for disruption by cutting Wastelands only.

So far,

[DeathwingZERO]

Who would need to cut more than just the 4 Wasteland to pack in more disruption? My point in posting that Wasteland now has an adequate replacement in Small Pox is in multiple factors:

1- Doesn't require the land to be non-basic
2- Kills off a creature
3- Hits a card in hand

Wasteland already has poor synergy with the deck, with Hymn, Hyppie, Shade, Wretch, and now Small Pox requiring core double black. Reverting back to a gameplan of having ALL lands tap for black mana streamlines us again, and with Small Pox taking the place of Wasteland, means we're going to have the same number of land destruction, with an additional 4 slots of creature removal and hand disruption. The only drawback: It's a turn 2 cast on the average. Oh well, at least then it'll guarantee to hit something.

In all honesty, even if Wasteland was so-so in the meta out here in Portland, I'd still cut Wasteland over any other 4 of this deck has for Small Pox. It's the least powerful card in the deck when disruption is concerned, Sinkhole and Vindicate both have it beat out on effectiveness, because they can hit basics. Plus, the format is too fast for it to be something viable as a solid tempo advantage, if we use it on the first turn, it means we didn't have Duress.....second turn means we more than likely didn't use Hymn, and anything past that, we've already either established good disruption, or a single loss of land is not going to swing the game in our favor.

Small Pox, however, can.


You could at best cut them for 3 Swamps (Or Tomb, Stronghold, ...) and ONE disrupting card. That won't make any more then the "random" Wasteland against some Decks. Oh - and casting a Witness after a Sinkhole and a Wasteland isn't that easy.

The Argument of recurring lands is if you would say "My opponnent plays V. Stronghold, so I side my removal out" or "He has got Counterspells. I better concede, cause he has an answer to everything in my deck, except lands."

At least recurring a Land costs them a Turn or three Mana for a Crucible. And who the f*ck wan't to Witness a Land anyways? Ofc, this sometimes happens, but most of the time you will recurr a FTK, a Survival, another beater or a Duress or...[...the list is nearly endless, so what?].

I've been playing a list of 20 lands for some time now, the deck DOES NOT need 23 lands. Ever.

Survival has a tendency to recur lands solely for the fact of getting ahead, this being either ATS or an Advantage build using E. Witness + Fetch for tempo gain. It's not completely uncommon for ATS style builds that only have 1 Taiga to Witness it back, and bounce her if able. While these are the only builds that do it, these are also the only ones playing more than a single set of non-basics, short of Thresh, which loves us throwing stuff in their graveyards, everything they have is 2 mana or less, sans Enforcer.

Neither of these situations are the same as your statements about Stronghold and Counterspells, mainly because Wasteland isn't a viable threat anymore. Decks play around it.

[Hanni]

Wasteland gives the deck additional reach with instant speed land destruction. Maybe it's not good in your meta, but it's better for a large event. The decks focus is to create tempo advantage via land differential and card quality/advantage via Duress/Hymn to Tourach. It might lower your land count, but in combination with Sinkhole and Small Pox, creates and even lower amount for the opponent (locking out key colors and sometimes causing land screw). The deck desperately needed Small Pox, but not at the expense of Wasteland.

[DeathwingZERO]

Wasteland in itself is NOT a tempo piece. Wasteland was used to breakdown decks that are already packing light numbers of basic sources, or abused in decks that recur them. When you combine it with Sinkhole, it's still only going to be a +1 in your favor AFTER the Sinkhole.

If there weren't an already fast aggro clock on this deck, and more decks packing an absurd amount of non-basics, I'd completely agree, typically your 1 for 1 is a fair trade. But with the number of double core spells, coupled with the fact that both Sinkhole and Small Pox are what we would consider tempo advantage (ie not killing off an equal amount of your own resources/threats in the meantime), then we could easily consider it a fair trade, by swinging in our favor. Wasteland doesn't pull this off.

If you look over my list, you'll see that I put in more creatures, and additional disruption for the lack of Wasteland. Since we had an ever increasing flow towards aggressive decks and a total lack of a dominant control build, we've seen an ever increasing number of decks that are now throwing down the same range of spells as our own, with more reliable threats than our own.

The argument has always been our creatures were lacking, and we would have to kill off either land destruction, or hand disruption, in favor of creating a larger threat base. Even Pikula spoke of this early on. Sinkhole = 100% success rate at destroying a land (basic or no), short of being countered. Small Pox, the same. Wasteland, possibly dead vs very important matchups, and whats worse, it's a colorless source, which could very well possibly hinder us.

At this point, the number of creatures is up enough to handle a very aggressive format, the number of card disruption is enough to easily 2 for 1 or 3 for 1 our opponents, and without Wasteland, we've lost 4 possible ways of taking down an opponents non-basic sources, which in all honesty to black, are nothing more than a basic land that taps for 2 types of mana. Black spells never care if it's non-basic, this already 1up's them compared to Wasteland.

We still pack a possible 12 land destruction spells, in addition to now 12-16 hand disruption spells. Do we honestly care that much about losing out on 4 "possibly dead" cards, when their replacements (Small Pox) never are?

Just remember, what my argument comes down to, is that I have added in Pox in place of Wasteland. If you want to still run both, remember that cuts your creature count, or your hand disruption. We can't have a balance of all 3, that's what the deck originally had, and we've already seen the results, it's not enough. Either disruption, or destruction needs to imbalance the other, and I favor disruption.

[Summoner]

Huhm, 20 Lands with Smallpox? :rolleyes:
Seems as if u would hurt yourself MUCH with that.
Don't understand me wrong, I'm not a very big fan of Wasteland, as I often have to mulligan a Hand with 2 of them as only permanent Manasources.
I'm Playing 21 Lands and this seems to be the lowest possible imo. With Swamps for Wastelands 20 might be okay, but with Smallpox you definately need 22+ Lands, even without Wastelands.
Or do you want to screw yourself with Smallpox? Oh, and Goblins will even more screw you with their Wastelands.
A hand like that:

Swamp, Scrubland, Ritual, Duress, Sinkhole, Smallpox, Wretch/Shade/Vindicate seems quiet solid imo. But after you smallpoxed and lost a land (probably swamp, cause u might want W for Vindicate) this hand doen't look that solid anymore. IF you then get hit by a Wasteland, your just f***ed up, imo.

That's why I'd say with Smallpox you'll need at least 22 Lands.

[Clark Kant]

Huhm, 20 Lands with Smallpox? :rolleyes:
Seems as if u would hurt yourself MUCH with that.


I think he's taking the term sui black variant a little too literally.

There's no way you should only run 20 lands, even if you cut wastelands and aren't running Small Pox. 21 is the bare minimum. With Small Pox, I would run 23 (that's how many Pikula ran in the only build of the deck that has done extremely well and that was before Small Pox). This deck runs too many 3cc cards from Vindicate to Engineered Plague to Cursed Scroll activations to Cursed Scroll's replacements Jitte and Masticore.

If anything Small Pox makes Wasteland even more of a must play even if only half the decks you play run nonbasics. It's 4 additional pieces of land destruction. This makes the land destruction strategy that much more viable making Wasteland extremely strong. It also gives you a way to destroy the few basics your opponents manage to fetch making Wasteland even stronger. And lastly it gives you an outlet to sacrifice Wasteland in those rare few matchups (9 land stompy, burn) where Wasteland does no good.

[rsaunder]

I think he's taking the term sui black variant a little too literally.

There's no way you should only run 20 lands, even if you cut wastelands and aren't running Small Pox. 21 is the bare minimum. With Small Pox, I would run 23 (that's how many Pikula ran in the only build of the deck that has done extremely well and that was before Small Pox). This deck runs too many 3cc cards from Vindicate to Engineered Plague to Cursed Scroll activations to Cursed Scroll's replacements Jitte and Masticore.

If anything Small Pox makes Wasteland even more of a must play even if only half the decks you play run nonbasics. It's 4 additional pieces of land destruction. This makes the land destruction strategy that much more viable making Wasteland extremely strong. It also gives you a way to destroy the few basics your opponents manage to fetch making Wasteland even stronger. And lastly it gives you an outlet to sacrifice Wasteland in those rare few matchups (9 land stompy, burn) where Wasteland does no good.
I think that summed it up about perfectly. If your opponent is playing around wasteland, thier deck is not performing optimally. Getting them to play around it could be just as much of a good thing as acually hitting land.

And the small pox awesomeness, too.

[DeathwingZERO]

I've listed off all the decks I see on a regular basis, and out of all of them, Goblins are the only ones playing 4 Wasteland. On the average, 0 Goblin players show up around here. The deck is that hated already. Two players have it, and both would rather play their better choices (Solidarity & Thresh, respectively) than constantly deal with hate. So for that instance, I'm never worried about losing out to opposing Wastelands.

As for Smallpox hitting off my own lands, that has yet to be fully tested. With the few games I had tested it, I only screwed myself out of mana once, and even if Wasteland was one of them, it wouldn't have helped (I was doing it off a Dark Ritual with 2 Swamps in play, for Duress backup), as I didn't get to draw into another land for 6 turns. With an even 1 in 3 odds of drawing a land, that just comes up as one of those "random statistical errors" that just screws you.

By no means am I advocating this deck to be a suicide or Pox based build. I'm merely stating that before, the deck didn't need 23 lands, it's cc ratio cuts at 3, and after removal of Scrolls, the only 3cc left were Hyppie and Vindicate. A lot of people have cut it to 21, but cutting out 4 Wasteland for a 4 of, I put it back to 19, which I decided I'd rather have the extra Swamp than a 4th Shade, because it's usually a bad choice to have 2 or more of them on the table at the same time (overextending into WoG 4TW).

In place, I've added in more disruption. As before, my argument comes down to land destruction vs card advantage. If you see a lot of nonbasics, Wasteland is fine. Cut back a couple creatures, and Verdict, which is what I added in in place originally. If like mine, however, you see no opposing Wastelands, no R.Ports, and decks packing 4 or less duals, it's bad. A colorless source, and like stated, a sacrificial outlet for Small Pox at best.

I have a few friends around today, so I'll be playtesting. We currently have IGGY, Solidarity, Goblins, Thresh, Deadguy, Rifter, U/G Madness & Affinity built. I'll run a gauntlet with a buddy of mine, and come back with results. We'll also make adjustments, as I assume it might be a good idea to go back up to 22 lands with Small Pox, but I have a gut feeling it actually won't be necessary. A new decklist will be coming later this evening.

[Eldariel]

Smallpox has so far been awesome for me, although I kinda feel like I'd want another draw engine, since occasionally Smallpox forces me to discard cards I wouldn't want to. Still, among other things, I've wrecked Thres by playing 'em into position to double-Pox, taking out Werebear, Mongoose, their 2 remaining handcards and dropping them to 1 land in the process. I've also got a trackrecord of nuking Mystic Enforcers with them. The one problem is that you don't want to cast it with a dude in play, but it's powerful enough to usually make up for that. I wouldn't drop Vindicate, but I'd drop something; it's hard enough to fit it in but if one does, it gives us pretty nice figures with 4 Edict-effects, 4-10 spot removal (Cursed Scroll, Funeral Charm and the omnipresent Vindicate), ~3 sweepers (in my case, Bane of the Living), 16 LD-spells (Sinkhole, Vindicate, Smallpox, Wasteland), while still maintaining some 16 discard-spells or so (Hymn, Funeral/Duress, (Verdict), Hypno, Pox).

[Drathro]

As for Smallpox hitting off my own lands ...
I just made a comment over at tmd aboout this:

This deck could probably run at least one Flagstones of Trokair (http://ww2.wizards.com/gatherer/CardDetails.aspx?name=Flagstones_of_Trokair) in place of one or more plains, depending on how the mana base is structured.

It foils the effect of Wasteland, and, if it is destroyed, you can fetch either a basic Plains for non-Wasteability or a dual for access to extra non-white mana (obviously Black in this deck). It's also an excellent land to sacrifice to a mid-game Smallpox, if you run it.

It's another one of those statistically small changes that incrementally add to the whole of the deck. The only drawback I can see is the inability to fetch it.

[rsaunder]

I'd be more worried about it's inability to add black mana to your mana pool. Is anyone running plains now?

[Eldariel]

I'd be more worried about it's inability to add black mana to your mana pool. Is anyone running plains now?

Well, at least the Flagstones may be the only land which does so, as it can fetch Scrubland/Godless Shrine. Still, the fact that it doesn't produce black makes it compete with cards like Volrath's Stronghold, Wasteland and Rishadan Port for the slots; my own change to accommodate Smallpox was just to go back to 22 lands with Volrath's Stronghold as the 22nd one. That way I shouldn't lose in terms of threat ratio, but I should retain a decent manaflow.

[al the great]

I just wanted to say that there is a discussion going on about Flagstones in the Angel stompy section.

I personally like Flagstones and I think it fits well in b/w.

[kicks_422]

How about taking the recent success of Red Death, and then replacing burn with the versatiltiy of Vindicate and everyone's favorite StP?... No Confidants though, so I don't know if this is the right thread for this, or if I should make a new one...

4 Scrubland
4 Wasteland
4 Polluted Delta
4 Bloodstained Mire
6 Swamp

3 Jotun Grunt
3 Rotting Giant
4 Hypnotic Specter
4 Phyrexian Negator

4 Dark Ritual
4 Duress
4 StP
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Sinkhole
4 Vindicate

SB
4 Rule of Law
4 Distress
3 Tormod's Crypt
4 Infest

12 LD (Wasteland, Sinkhole, Vindicate), 12 discard (Hypnotic, Duress, Hymn), and big, big beaters for a quick finish after the disruption...

[Whit3 Ghost]

I'd run Edict/Vendetta/ect over STP. Gaining life is counterproductive to the deck's strategy. Your list is definately interesting, and may deserve some testing.

[TheDarkshineKnight]

Here's the BW Confidant deck that managed to place 6th at Dual for Duels IV:

Maindeck:

Creatures
4 Dark Confidant
4 Descendant Of Kiyomaro
4 Jotun Grunt

Instants
4 Funeral Charm
4 Skeletal Scrying
4 Swords To Plowshares

Sorceries
4 Duress
4 Gerrard's Verdict
4 Hymn To Tourach
4 Vindicate

Basic Lands
4 Plains
4 Swamp

Lands
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scrubland

Sideboard:
2 Tormod's Crypt
4 Engineered Plague
2 Rule Of Law
4 Diabolic Edict
3 Kataki, War's Wage

Personally, I think it's totally sexy, but that's just me.

[kicks_422]

I also have a tweaked version of that deck that placed 6th... Just trying out which is the better build from these two decks that I posted...

4 Scrubland
4 Windswept Heath
4 Bloodstained Mire
3 Plains
5 Swamp

4 Dark Confidant
4 Jotun Grunt
4 Descendant of Kiyomaro
4 Hypnotic Specter

4 Dark Ritual
4 Duress
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Umezawa's Jitte
4 Vindicate

SB
4 Distress
4 Rule of Law
3 Tormod's Crypt
4 Engineered Plague

This is basically a port of the Hand in Hand decks of the Kamigawa T2, which takes the old Deadguy, removes Land D, and adds big beaters for a better aggro game, while keeping a relatively good game against combo and control...

Dark Rituals are still good here, even with the presence of a lot of white cards, as acceleration is always a good thing... Turn 3 Ritual into Descendant and Jitte, next turn equip is a boon against aggro... Not to mention the almsot-always dreaded Ritual into Hyppie...

SB for more combo hate (Distress and Rule come in for Jitte/Vindicate and StP), but I'm not sold on E.Plague anymore... Goblins already has enough answers for it, as most are already splashing colors for Disenchant effects...

I'm also thinking of taking out Confidant for Spectral Lynx, which is another threat with protection and a very formidable Jitte-wielder...

Thoughts? Which direction should this deck go, leaning on aggro with efficient beaters and hand disruption back-up, or leaning on control with land and hand disruption?

[laststepdown]

Taking out Dark Confidant for Spectral Lynx is a bad move. He's your only draw engine. Nuff said.

[nitewolf9]

I don't think dark ritual is very good in that build, mainly because half of your creatures can't come out off of one.

I would probably try mox diamond and up the land count by 1 or 2. Without rit, you could try replacing specter with lynx instead of taking bob out, who I think is better with descendant. Lynx seems pretty good in here with jitte.

[hagar852]

or take out dark rit and put in silver knights or the lynx instead.

[AnwarA101]

Isn't it possible that Chris Woltereck's deck is so different in nature that it represents a different deck than Chris Pikula's deck? I think the two decks are very different. Woltereck's deck discarded the Land destruction in favor of a more discard oriented approach as well as a better clock via better creatures. It also has 8 answers to Goblin Lackey (STP, Funeral Charm). In fact Woltereck's deck discarded one of the signature cards of Pikula's deck - Dark Ritual. I think this is a new direction and may require another thread.

[rsaunder]

Isn't it possible that Chris Woltereck's deck is so different in nature that it represents a different deck than Chris Pikula's deck? I think the two decks are very different. Woltereck's deck discarded the Land destruction in favor of a more discard oriented approach as well as a better clock via better creatures. It also has 8 answers to Goblin Lackey (STP, Funeral Charm). In fact Woltereck's deck discarded one of the signature cards of Pikula's deck - Dark Ritual. I think this is a new direction and may require another thread.http://www.starcitygames.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=293947

I agree. This is still BW confident, but not deadguy ale.

Another reason why our deck names in legacy are just fine :mad:

[DeathwingZERO]

Agreed. The deck completely lacks not only the core of the decks speed, but the consistency of it's creatures being dropped from turn 1 on.

Personally, I'm noticing a heavy trend of people getting rid of Shade. How is it with a deck that can run through cards so quickly with a solid manabase and leftover mana actually want to cut a clock like this?

EDIT: Oh, and Descendant sucks ass in a Deadguy style build. The deck has NEVER advocated using a WW spell, let alone one with a 3/4 at best, even if it's got life gain. If we want to use double core spells, might as well look into Wrath of God. You're not guaranteed card advantage enough to make him effective, and a modded 3/4 really isn't much to boast with. I'd much rather have Spectral Lynx or Jitte/SoFi in place of this.

[DeathwingZERO]

TRIPLE POST BABY!!!(lol)

Wow, looks like this thing's not nearly as hot as people wish it was. So I did a couple of smaller games running my then current build vs LinkXWing piloting Gobbo's.

Manabase:
9 Swamp
4 Polluted Delta
1 Bloodstained Mire
4 Scrubland
1 Tainted Field
1 Flagstones of Trokair
4 Dark Ritual

Disruption:
4 Vindicate
4 Sinkhole
4 Duress
4 Smallpox
4 Hymn To Tourach
2 Umezawa's Jitte

Creatures:
4 Dark Confidant
4 Hypnotic Specter
3 Nantuko Shade
3 Jotun Grunt

Basically, the deck got smashed. WTF happened here? We knew the deck originally had amazing game against Goblins, due mostly in part to E. Plague. But the pre-board games were still close to 60/40 in favor of Goblins, we could still pull out wins. Not really the case with the new version. Goblins have gotten smarter, apparently.....

The only times I was able to pull off wins was when he didn't draw into enough cheap Goblins, or he was relying on Vial for the play, which I'd get with Duress. Either way, I was going first more often than not.

We also watched out for these specific things:

How long was Grunt able to stay on the table?
With the addition of Smallpox, he's rediculous. Typically I was able to get him all the way to 4 counters (5 turns in play, total.....BADASS) after seeing multiple Hymns, Smallpox, and land destruction happen. So destruction = win for this guy. He's a great clock, and keeps your mana free for when you want to cast threats in addition. Him and Shade both on table with your opponent on a tight hand = priceless.

How effective was Jitte?
Absolutely USELESS. In all honesty, if I was playing with this, I'd want at least 3. Even then, against Goblins in particular, creatures never lasted long enough to be equipped, and if they did, the wouldn't do damage. Pretty certain these guys are being ditched real quick.

How often were you manascrewed due to 20 lands and Smallpox?
Twice, of 10 games. On these particular instances, I never drew into my 3rd land after the initial Smallpox. Honestly, I'd want 22 lands to be safe, but on the other hand, I had 3 games where I was mana flooded right after Smallpox, so I never drew a threat. Still a give or take on this situation.

Flagstones, keep or ditch?
Definitely ditch. There's too many downfalls to this card:
-new land comes into play tapped, and has to be a Plains type (IE Scrubland, I run NO basics of Plains, not worth it, can't be fetched otherwise)
-only taps for white mana (Shade, Hyppie, Hymn, Sinkhole HATES that)
-nonbasic land
-unfetchable

Creature base, modify?
Jotun as a 3 of is solid, I could probably keep him there. Shade as a 3 of is pretty much the same, drawing into them is shady at best. Confidant and Hyppie deserve being a 4 of, they're both great at what they do, and primarily the first targets on the table. As for their speed, they will win, if I disrupt enough.


Note:
My sideboard currently looks a lot like this:
3x Engineered Plague
4x Swords to Plowshares
4x Withered Wretch
4x Gerrard's Verdict

After plenty of thinking, we've come to a conclusion. Why not just ditch E Plague in general, as well as Jitte? Both of those cards at best are mediocre, needing either to go against a particular deck, or have your own creatures do the work.

Solution: Ghostly Prison. More effective against overall creature decks than Plague, being able to keep most aggro decks from serious damage repeatedly, and tapping the player out at the same time. Also a great solution against Gro, which wants to keep mana available to counter, or cantrip.

So, at this point in time, we've decided to cut the 3 E Plagues from the Sideboard, and the 2 Jitte's as well. Flagstones, also dead. Here's the new idea:

Manabase:
11 Swamp
3 Polluted Delta
2 Bloodstained Mire
4 Scrubland
1 Tainted Field
4 Dark Ritual

Disruption:
4 Vindicate
4 Sinkhole
4 Duress
4 Smallpox
4 Hymn To Tourach
1 Ghostly Prison

Creatures:
4 Dark Confidant
4 Hypnotic Specter
3 Nantuko Shade
3 Jotun Grunt

Sideboard:
3 Ghostly Prison
4 Withered Wretch
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Gerrard's Verdict

I will agree that the single inclusion of Ghostly Prison is odd. But the deck really should play 4 copies, as multiples are even more rediculous than multiple Plagues, but there just isn't room in the SB. If wanted, you could swap a single Verdict in place, which would probably be about the same effectiveness against most decks.

I'm still thinking that the deck may shift to ditching Sinkhole to the SB, and instead putting in more disruption. Funeral Charm or Swords to Plowshares seem to be a great idea for maindeck, especially if we're going to see more aggro. All these ideas and theories will be tested, and I'll come back with the results.

[rsaunder]

So you really found that grunt stayed around long enough? When I was testing him in here (before smallpox), he mostly took up room in my hand early game, and didn't last as long as I'd've liked him to in the late game (3-4ish turns didn't seem to be enough to play controlingly). Perhaps with smallpox it really is that much better, or my playstyle just doesn't fit grunt. Whatever.

In any case, when I was packing my list for the Kadi's second DFD, I had an excellent goblin matchup, even pre-board. I ran 4 funeral charm, which were nice, but I just seemed to have game even on games where they didn't come up. I ditched the funeral charms after admitting to a terrible threshold matchup, where I tried EE for a while, then stopped working on the deck. With EE (still pre-small pox) I had a MUCH better thresh matchup, taking out mongese with ease. The goblins matchup suffered a bit, but it was still very much winnable, even pre-board. Now small pox fills that role, working wonders against thresh, but I haven't extensively tested the goblins matchup with it yet.

So DeathWing, how is your thresh matchup right now, and are ghostly prisons really good against goblins? What else are they worth thier salt against?

[Eldariel]

In my experience, an early Smallpox can just be devastating to Goblins. If you answer their turn 1 Lackey with Swamp-Mox-Pox, it's very well possible that they won't be making another relevant play for the rest of the game (if they only have so many lands and not another Lackey, a fair assumption). Of course, later on it doesn't do much besides blasting a land, but the fact that it does something in the MU is really nice. And of course, it shines against Thres taking out their rare creatures while also continuing to smash their manabase.

On that note, I strongly suggest Chrome Moxes here (too, yea I'm cramming them to most decks I play with the capability to produce card advantage. Ever seen how busted turn 1 Mountain-Mox-Lackey-Lackey into turn 2 Matron-do stuff is?) as being able to cast disruption turn 1 instead of turn 2 even without Dark Ritual is an imperative factor in the Goblins-MU. Also, some number of Funeral Charms would probably help as having an answer to Lackey without acceleration is nice. I wouldn't get allured by the Flagstone/Smallpox synergy. Leave that to decks with free landslots and no need for BB throughout the game. As for the landcount, my own solution is to go 22 lands with Volrath's Stronghold and Tomb of Urami as lands 21 and 22, both serving as pseudo-threats too.

It honestly seems like Jitte would be hard to get active between your small guys and their Incinerators, Fanatics (can be used defensively against Jitte too, to keep counters off, and yea, that seems to correspond with your experiences), SGCs and the white-splash crap. This is why I still adamantly keep Cursed Scroll in the deck, it gives me a long-game tool to deal with Goblins with and is an artifact. Besides, I can't count the number of times my opponents have been praying 'please don't draw scroll' since it gives me direct damage to finish their suffering.


About Prison though, how are you winning with it? It seems to me like them not being able to attack is pretty inconsequential if you can't sweep their board; they just build up, make sure you can't attack and once they've drawn enough lands, start making calculated surgical strikes. If you played some sort of sweeper, I could see it helping, but honestly it seems like it's hard to go to race-mode when your guys have no evasion and you only have so many of them.


As for Sinkhole, I think, if you add Smallpox, you really want to keep Sinkhole in too. Sinkhole compliments the LD-strategy Smallpox drives, giving you effective 16 LD-cards in the main making for a very respectable portition against decks vulnerable to it.


But yea, I strongly believe, what the deck wants is some form of a sweeper, preferably a creature-based sweeper in the main, although Mutilate is worth consideration too. Something that doesn't hurt too much off Confidant and can sweep the board relatively early.

[DeathwingZERO]

With the addition of Smallpox, the average cards hitting the graveyard against Goblins is 6. You hit a card in their hand, a land, and a creature, plus your Smallpox, a land, and a card from you. It's INSANE synergy with Grunt early on. I drop a Smallpox turn 2 (or 1 fueled with Dark Rit + Duress for the nut play) and drop this guy turn 2 or 3, he's out for at least 3 turns.

Sinkhole + Smallpox is seeming really good, but a lot of the time I'd rather have ways to kill off creatures than hose lands. I'm still up in the air on it though, as it's becomming more apparent that Vindicate is actually the weakest of removal surprisingly, when Smallpox is factored in, mainly due to needing the 1 of 5 white sources in play, plus 3 mana just in general, which at times isn't easy to pull after multiple Smallpox resolve (or your opponent has Wastelands).

In defense of the Prison, the main point is just to use it to slow down the decks that start pulverizing quickly, mainly goblins and fast aggro. The problem they have to face once it's in play is a single Shade or Grunt in play causes them much problems in striking, especially when both can block at the same time. Just the tempo gain alone and being able to strike with Hypnotic in the air in the meantime is worth testing.

Still working on getting Mutilate into the deck somehow. It's either going to be that, or the cheaper Infest. Mutilate serves as a much better sweeper with the extra mana, though. It'll be able to rid Thresh'd Bears, Mongoose, pumped Slivers, and in late game those annoying as shit Enforcers. Still trying to fit at least 3 in the SB.

[xsockmonkeyx]

EDIT: Oh, and Descendant sucks ass in a Deadguy style build. The deck has NEVER advocated using a WW spell, let alone one with a 3/4 at best, even if it's got life gain. If we want to use double core spells, might as well look into Wrath of God. You're not guaranteed card advantage enough to make him effective, and a modded 3/4 really isn't much to boast with. I'd much rather have Spectral Lynx or Jitte/SoFi in place of this.

Just wanted to point out that the Descendant is a 3/5 at best. Its slightly significant with all those werebears running around. Id still rather have a Lynx instead though.

[al the great]

I think this deck has so much to improve on. I've been playing with the older build and IMO it's so inconsistent against top tier decks.

Sad to say I'm finally taking this deck apart tonight.

[DeathwingZERO]

It's not even an issue of inconsistency, it's an issue of tempo advantage. The deck is honestly much more consistent than most control decks, it's just got the issue where it's power lies mostly on it's own turn, and a lot of decks benefit from that.

Game vs Goblins is still pretty good, especially post board. Only the white splash can really do much, as the green splash is more commonly for Tin Street Hooligan.

Thresh is a total annoyance, but we have answers to their threats, we just need to get a good balance for it. Once we establish enough to get around their problematic creatures, we should be able to overcome this deck.

IGGY/Solidarity both have to outrace our land hate and hand disruption. Both decks can just topdeck for a win, but with 24 sources of "hate" for combo decks (re:the "Disruption" in my list + Hyppie), we have a good chance of at least putting the favor back on us. Plus, we can always look into SB slots if either deck pick up enough play.

All in all, the game is a metagame deck. We should be able to adjust it to make it more capable of at least improving it's matches against the DTB's, or at least improving it's matches against everything else. We're still working over the list, there's still plenty of choices on what to run. We just need to actually concentrate more on it, and not give up.

[rsaunder]

Quicksand.

In the place of wasteland (or something), could quicksand be the answer to goblins we've been looking for? And let us keep our lands for small pox?

On the goblins note, I tried it our last night. I played 6 games (all pre-board), won 3 games and lost 3 games. I think that that's excellent, as it only gets better from there post board. Scroll was big, as was small poxing thier first turn lackey and mtn. I played with 2 grunts in MB, and they lasted 5 and 4 turns the games I got them out. I also won one game due to a single tomb of uruami.

[Hanni]

Here's the list I'm tinkering with:

Lands (24)
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scrubland
5 Swamp
4 Wasteland
3 Quicksand

Creatures (10)
4 Dark Confidant
3 Nantuko Shade
3 Jotun Grunt

Spells (26)
4 Dark Ritual
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Smallpox
4 Sinkhole
2 Vindicate
4 Swords to Plowshares

I went with a lower threat density and more control. I run a total of 24 lands to accomodate the Smallpoxes but I put in 3 Quicksand to add as additional creature removal. The full 8 fetchlands help support Jotun Grunt. The lower threat density helps make Smallpox more asymetrical. Grunt is a house but I felt that 3 should be enough... even with Smallpox, multiples are probably gonna be dead. The same applies to Shade in the sense that multiples are usually less effective, so I also went with 3 of those.

I went with Duress instead of Funeral Charm because I felt the deck has enough removal, though this can always be changed. Smallpox is pretty amazing with the amount of discard and LD this deck has. StP is just too good not to run. I run only 2 Vindicate because the 3cc might be a little difficult to achieve with Wasteland and Smallpox and it is a very slow answer to creatures.

[Whit3 Ghost]

Sounds about right.
A few questions about your list.

1. Do you still have the singleton Jitte?
2. Would EE have been any better in the Scroll slot?
3. Has your opinion changed on Grunt? I like him more in here than in Fish because you also run Shade for big creatures.

[Eldariel]

Man, Hanni, if you run 24 lands, definately run a Tomb of Urami and Volrath's Stronghold. Even builds with 20 lands seem to have problems with their threat density and that's with their 16 creatures or so. You run 10. None of which recur. Only deck that plays less is Threshold and that deck is 40 cards anyways (with 12-16 cantrips and a billion fetches). I think the best way to make Smallpox most asymmetrical is to play around it. Also, it's nice to be able to off your own Confidants in sitiuations where you have the control of the game, but are in danger zone. In my experience, Grunts always do their job, especially with Tomb of Urami around.

Also, if you run Quicksand, I strongly advice also Chrome Moxes, since if you're on the draw, you really don't want to lead 'Quicksand-go', but that might just be your only answer to their Lackey. Mox allows you to pick up the speed. Also, in my build which still contains 2 Gerrard's Verdicts, it enables turn 1 Verdict, but that's a non-issue in most builds here.

[Hanni]

I just ran through about 5-6 test games and I was having serious land issues so I'm considering dropping the 3 Quicksands for 3 more Mountains. I'm not sure yet, it was probably a fluke to the MWS shuffler.

I will consider Urami, Stronghold, and Mox. However, I'm thinking I'm going to cut Ritual if I add those. Possibly:

-4 Ritual
-1 Quicksand
+1 Urami
+1 Stronghold
+2 Swamp
+1 Grunt/Vindicate

EDIT:

Actually, I think I'm going to drop 4 Rituals and 1 Quicksand for 1 Swamp and 4 Night's Whisper. Draw seems pretty important for aggro/control and it helps "increase" the threat density and fix over the manabase (grabbing W and BB). The life loss shouldn't be too bad since I have Smallpox to snuff Confidant when necessary. It also helps me draw into more creature removal, which is extremely important. Whisper grabs 2 cards for 1, so it's sorta like a double cantrip (I said sorta, don't bash lol).

Anyway, my goal for the list I presented above is to play the "control" and not the "beatdown" (I think that was referenced in a Flores article). I want to destroy the opponent's hand, lands, and creatures before I drop a fat Grunt or Shade as the kill condition.

-4 Dark Ritual
-1 Quicksand
+4 Night's Whisper
+1 Swamp
-1 Quicksand

[Eldariel]

27 lands? Are you serious? The reason I suggested Tomb and Stronghold is that you can keep a high landcount while still keeping a threatcount of some level too. Tomb can easily go in the place of a basic Swamp and Stronghold can replace any colourless land. That's a surefire way to draw nothing but lands for the half of the game. Even the most dedicated control-decks don't run that many. That's why I would never go over 22 lands in Deadguy, Rituals already add 4 more enabler-cards that do nothing alone, playing more lands means that you've only got ~30 actual effects in your deck, which is way too few to every actually do anything real.

[rsaunder]

Sounds about right.
A few questions about your list.

1. Do you still have the singleton Jitte?
2. Would EE have been any better in the Scroll slot?
3. Has your opinion changed on Grunt? I like him more in here than in Fish because you also run Shade for big creatures.My list as of last night:

4 hymn
4 duress
4 sinkhole
4 vindicate
3 smallpox
4 Bob
4 hippy
3 shade
2 grunt
2 cursed scroll
4 dark rit

4 bloodstained mire
1 polluted delta
4 scrubland
4 wasteland (could be quicksand, if I was expecting joblins)
1 tomb of uruami
8 swamp

SB:
1 perish
1 nature's ruin
4 e. plague
2 serentiy
3 pithing needle
4 other slots

In this deck, you don't want to run more than 5 fetches, as the life loss just becones too much with confident. The extra life loss isn't worth the deck thinning or the extra grunt fodder, as the deck generates quite enough of it on it's own. 3 smallpox because I only want to see one. The rest of the MB seems pretty self explanitory. Play grunts late and all that, but otherwise it's pretty standard. (Just for the record, my 50/50 with goblins was decided before the possibility of quicksand was considered, so it may be more consistant with an answer to turn 1 lackey.) EDIT: for clarity, I think grunt is a good late game card in here, but I wouldn't run any more than 2. ever.

My SB is pretty standard. The 2 perish effects go in against thresh in place of scrolls, the serentiys are just excellent in here, the plagues are obvious, needle just handles randomness like survival and belcher and such. I'm not sure what to do with the other 4 slots, though. I don't really need all that much combo hate, although negator or cranial extraction could work. Seal of cleansing could be played as could null rod and more general artifact hosers. STP, darkblast, a 3rd grunt, warmth (4-of in my local meta), or all kinds of other crap could go in there, too.

Hanni: That's too many lands. You'll kill yourself with Bob an whisper and fetches before you get to your desired game state. There also just isn't enough disruption when half of the deck is land. I'd try a more conventional (read: pikula's origional) to get a feel for the deck, then mess with it so it does what you want. EDIT: 4 vindicate is essential.

[Eldariel]

I personally wouldn't play any less than 8 fetches. With the addition of Grunt, the remaining Vindicate, the Verdicts in my build and the white SB-cards, I've really found 12 white sources to be the bare minimum for operating properly. Furthermore, I haven't really found the lifeloss to be a problem, usually I still have few life left when I stabilize if I'm forced on the control-role, and if I get to deny the opponent real good, I'm naturally never even close. Additional 3 cards that cause 1 point of lifeloss don't really feel relevant anyways, that's about 1 point of life more per game, which isn't really painful at all. Grunt-fodder and such feel like totally random benefits.

[Hanni]

Actually, my list right now is running 24 lands with no enablers, I swapped the enablers out for 4 Night's Whisper. I also said that I was considering adding more land cause I was getting screwed on the MWS shuffler, but I never really made those edits on MWS. The current list is -4 Ritual -1 Quicksand for +1 Swamp +4 Night's Whisper. The extra life loss doesn't really seem too bad as long as I can stabilize. I'll test it further to find out.

[Eldariel]

Actually, my list right now is running 24 lands with no enablers, I swapped the enablers out for 4 Night's Whisper. I also said that I was considering adding more land cause I was getting screwed on the MWS shuffler, but I never really made those edits on MWS. The current list is -4 Ritual -1 Quicksand for +1 Swamp +4 Night's Whisper. The extra life loss doesn't really seem too bad as long as I can stabilize. I'll test it further to find out.

That sounds about right. Either 23-24 mana sources or 21-22 with accelerants. If I was playing with 24, I'd definately fit in 4 Moxes though, since you make card advantage at a disgusting speed, it's only a matter of being able to cast your discard when they still have cards in hand.

[f|i[p]]

I was just wondering, has anyone tried The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale with this deck? I personaly haven't tried this yet.. although I thought it would be interesting accompanied by all the land destruction this deck holds...also, it wouldnt hurt you as much as you dont really play creatures early on... just thought it was worth testing...

@rsaunder

Although natures ruin and perish serve the same purpose... perish is strictly better.. as no other green creature can regenerate as well.. troll ascetic..

[rsaunder]

;95940']I was just wondering, has anyone tried The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale with this deck? I personaly haven't tried this yet.. although I thought it would be interesting accompanied by all the land destruction this deck holds...also, it wouldnt hurt you as much as you dont really play creatures early on... just thought it was worth testing...

@rsaunder

Although natures ruin and perish serve the same purpose... perish is strictly better.. as no other green creature can regenerate as well.. troll ascetic..Tabbernackle is an interesting idea, perhaps as a 1/2 of. I don't think it would hurt threshold that much, but the damage it could do to goblins with a little LD could be devistating. My only question would be is it really better than any other devoted anti-aggro strategies, and if so, what to cut?

I haden't even considered regeneration to be an issue in the perish/ruin debate. I suppose you're right, perish is superior, but I've been working against threshold almost exclusively recently and found that magi like calling perish.

My SB has changes a little, too. For reference:

3 dystopia (plays OK with grunt, they both die before too awful long and have great recurring abilities)
1 Grunt
2 negator
4 e. plague
3 pithing needle
2 serenity

[Whit3 Ghost]

So you like Negator over Extraction then?

[f|i[p]]

As for my list I personaly run 21 lands...and if it is proven the The tabernacle helps this decks against really fast aggro, Goblins, RG beats.. Any kind of stompy.. I would run 22 lands look for something to drop..perhaps 1 small pox..(I only run 2 by the way).. on your list, You can probably drop a swamp, but you would know better ofcourse...since you get to play with yours.. I dont get to test mine as often.. I still think the tabernacle would help against thresh...they dont really have much basic lands this is where wasteland and sinkhole comes with the added smallpox... and they usually save up mana for counter spells and draw..paying 1 to keep their creatures alive would hurt them as well..I think the tabernacle is good against any aggro deck..well thats the reason it was printed anyway...

[rsaunder]

So you like Negator over Extraction then?Extraction was good against some combo decks (glimpse, belcher, and the like), but negator is good against all of them, and is inside my mana curve (a minor point, but yeah). If I was playing at 3 guys, definitely extraction, but there would also be 4 warmth in there along side it.

[al the great]

What do you guys think of Avatar of Discord for this deck? I want to see it work but because it's only a 5/3 it can be targeted so easily.

[TheDarkshineKnight]

This deck can barely support Sinkhole's cost of BB. There's no way in hell it can support Avatar's cost of BBB.

[Anarky87]

I don't think mana cost is an issue, as I've never had trouble finding or achieving BB. Plus you have ritual to give you BBB. You're also running (At least I still am) Specter and Shade, both of which requires BB, so I don't think it's too hard of a task, being that almost your entire manabase is black based. I think the big reason for not including Avatar is the potential 3-1 it gives your opponent from a single Bolt, StP, Incinerator, Chain, Bounce, etc. The cost to bring it in is pretty high for a creature that's handled so easily.

[Goblin Snowman]

Has Garza's Assassin been considered?

[rsaunder]

@Avatar of Discord: It was considered, but found in the same boat as negator. This deck is the control deck, and cannot have that much card disadvantage invested in a single easily killed critter.

@Graza's Assassin: This deck has a hard enough time life-wise with aggro as it is. Perhaps if it had somewhay of taking out mongoose, it would be considerable, but the life loss is too much for the deck to handle.

[al the great]

Good point Saunder. Exactly my thoughts.

[rsaunder]

So, I'm a little confused. Looking back on my records with this deck, I have never lost a game in a tournament to goblins. This involves 8 matches, all of which were properly recorded, I assure you. 2 of the matches were when 2 e.plague were still MB, 2 matches with 4 funeral charms MB, 1 with 1 jitte, 1 with 2 EE, and 2 with the 3 smallpox build I'm playing now. 4 e. plague have always been present, but aside from those first 2 matches, they've been SB. I've always played scroll, and that's just a big thing against them. I'm not really sure how that happened, in retrospect.

How do you guys find your matchup with the little green men? And with threshold? Any playtips for that pain in the ass match? I lost 2-1 to pox last weekend, have you guys found similar results?

[al the great]

Black Lotus tournament that I never want to remember again.

I ran gobs other guy ran b/w confidant.

Game 1: lackey, siege gang, swing, swing.
My opponent top decks the 2 Engineered Plague. Ummmm ok game.

Game 2: lackey, siege gang, goblin king, swing, swing.
My opponent top decks 2 more EP's. Game.

So I dont know what's happening either. If he never got any EP's top deck he would've been completely hardcore owned.

Edit:
I just wanted to say that when I ran Cursed Scrolls I never had luck with them. I almost always had 2 to 3 cards in my hands even after I drop Scroll late game.

[Tao]

So I dont know what's happening either. If he never got any EP's top deck he would've been completely hardcore owned.
Edit:
I just wanted to say that when I ran Cursed Scrolls I never had luck with them. I almost always had 2 to 3 cards in my hands even after I drop Scroll late game.

I play the same tactic in my Survival deck that won both Source Tourneys. I don't Maindeck them so I either lose or I am lucky in game 1. In games 2+3 I play very defensive and for Plague advantage with E Tutor as win condition. It is quite effective.

To Scroll: I have no idea why you have cards in hand in the lategame with this deck. You play out your spells as soon as possible, the mana curve is really low and you have Rituals.

For the deck:

What about Swarmyard? It can regenerate Nantuko Shade (insect) which is really huge. With Rats like maybe Nezumi Shortfang this could be playable, maybe this is the wrong deck, but regenerating Shades (and maybe other stuff, too) is really great.

[Citrus-God]

I play the same tactic in my Survival deck that won both Source Tourneys. I don't Maindeck them so I either lose or I am lucky in game 1. In games 2+3 I play very defensive and for Plague advantage with E Tutor as win condition. It is quite effective.

To Scroll: I have no idea why you have cards in hand in the lategame with this deck. You play out your spells as soon as possible, the mana curve is really low and you have Rituals.


Wow... techy. My friend does the same thing with old school Rock. His deck was too slow and underwhelming against Goblins because he loses Domination od the board quite easily. So Plague was pretty much there to get him to rise back up.

@Scroll: If you dont topdeck a Confidant, this card is quite nice to have. Sad to say, I dont think Confidant is enough for the deck. I also sort or dislike the idea of aggressively mulling. I was also quite impressed by who strong Scroll is versus aggro.

[al the great]

Instead of Scrolls I put in 2x Spectral Lynx. Lynx equipped with Jitte has won me games like non other.

[rsaunder]

What was your list? I found that the deck just couldn't support jitte with so few creatures that stick around.

[al the great]

What was your list? I found that the deck just couldn't support jitte with so few creatures that stick around.


10 Swamp
4 Scrubland
4 Bloodstained Mire
3 Wasteland
1 Tainted Field

Creatures:
4 Dark Confidant
4 Hypnotic Specter
4 Nantuko Shade
2 Spectral Lynx

Spells:
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Sinkhole
4 Dark Ritual
4 Vindicate
2 Ummezawa's Jitte
2 Engineered Plague

[rsaunder]

Do you mind MB plage is still worthwhile? Why no small pox?

[al the great]

The plague has helped me but you're right I really should try out Smallpox. I'll give it a test run tonight and see how that goes.

[al the great]

I'm thinking of taking out my 2 Engineered Plagues (mainboard to sideboard) for 2x Quicksand for my meta. Right now everyone is playing random red, random green weenie stompies, white weenies. I have yet to try out Smallpox cuz I've been hella lazy.

I think Tao has some interesting ideas. Do you guys think that Nezumi Shortfang can have big potential in Legacy?

[nitewolf9]

I like the idea of shortfang, and also the interaction it has, along with nantuko shade, with swarmyard. I think we could probably eschew one of the disruption routes of this deck and go all out on attacking the hand, replacing wasteland with swarmyard, and perhaps including jitte (now that we can regenerate about 1/2 our creatures with swarmyard).
Also, funeral charm could provide another answer to lacky and great versatility along with vindicate, and it helps with getting your shortfang flipped.

An initial idea for a list could be something like this:
21 land:
1x tainted field
2x bloodstained mire
3x polluted delta
4x scrubland
7x swamp
4x swarmyard

15 creatures:
4x nezumi shortfang
4x hypnotic specter
4x dark confidant
3x nantuko shade

2 artifacts:
2x umezawa's jitte

23 other spells:
4x dark ritual
4x swords to plowshares
4x duress
4x hymn to tourach
3x funeral charm
3x vindicate

SB:
4x jotun grunt
4x cabal therapy
4x engineered plague
2x darkblast
1x umezawa's jitte

We have a great suite of cards to attack the hand, and jitte is better due to the regeneration swarmyard provides. You also don't have to hold back as much mana to keep shade alive from burn spells, so you can probably deal more damage with him.

Out of the board grunt handles a multitude of decks (thresh mainly), and the third jitte complements darkblast and plague as horde control against goblins.
The combo matchup should stay pretty good due to the massive amounts of discard (and vindicate acting as land d). This might be fun to try.

[al the great]

The Shortfangs I think are a good idea and I understand that the Swarmyards regen them but honestly will x4 Swarmyards in the deck hurt it more than it would help?

[nitewolf9]

They wouldn't cause mana problems if that's what you mean, since they are replacing wasteland and provide colorless mana as well. And I think in multiples they actually get better (you can regenerate a shade more than once in a turn for example).

Like I said this is just an idea, I'll see if I can throw this together and do some testing if people are interested in it. (plus I think the yards have potential to make jitte crazy...)

[al the great]

I see what you mean now with replacing Wastelands. I will try this out tonight sound pretty fun.

[GoTreK]

I really like the look of this build and might give it a try as well!

If we want to go the discard-route what about Gerrard's Verdict? It's a 2-for-1 and the potential lifegain isn't bad either.

[al the great]

Ok I changed some little things last night for my meta.

-2 Engineered Plague (back to sideboard)
-2 Wastelands

+2 Gerard's Verdict (I really am underestimating these cards)
+2 Quicksand.

It's working better already with Gerard's Verdict back in for me at least. Also the past few weeks I have only used Plague's to kill off 1 creature on the field it's really annoying so I think Quicksand will be a great add for me.

Ya ya I'm a horrible player I'll try Smallpox later this week with my friends.

[rsaunder]

So, what does everybody's SB look like now? Is anybody still using 4 e. plague? What's your thresh hate of choice? Negator or something else or nothing at all for combo? What do your plans look like?

I have it on good authority that Dystopia is more devistating to thresh's game plan than Perish, but I've won entire games against Mulletus with RGSA and against many secret force decks with a single perish. Especially with Grunt MB and SB (he would tend to be in there the same times dystopia would), there's no synergy. I'm torn, but if rifter or AS see much play ever, I'll totally go Dystopia.

@Negator: I love him in the combo matchup, as he's the best clock the deck could have. Given that I have 2 slots that out of the MB for combo (2 scroll), I was thinking that perhaps, I could cut it down to 1 negator and use the singleton grunt as well. That would give me an extra slot, but for what I'm not sure.

1 Jotun Grunt
3 Dystopia/Perish (Undecided)
4 E. Plague
2 Serenity
3 Pithing Needle
2 P. Negator

VS Thresh:
-2 Cursed Scroll
-1 Hippy
-1 [undecided]Hippy/Tomb of uruami/sinkhole/duress
+3 Dystopia/Perish
+1 Grunt

Combo of any sort:

-2 scroll
+2 Negator

Affinity

+2 Serenity
+2 Needle
-4 Duress

RGSA or survival

+3 Needle
+3 Dystopia/Perish
+1 Grunt
-2 Scroll
-4 sinkhole
-1 Duress

Goblins

-4 duress
+4 Plague

Control (rifter/landstill)

+3 Dystopia [not perish][rifter/wombat only]
+1 Grunt
+2 Negator [not V. Rifter]
+3 Needle [landstill only]

How do you do it?

[Drathro]

-2 Engineered Plague (back to sideboard)
...
Also the past few weeks I have only used Plague's to kill off 1 creature on the field it's really annoying

Actually, you used E Plague to kill off one creature and stop your opponent from playing any more X/1 creatures of that type, but point taken. I currently keep it in the sideboard, myself.


3 Dystopia/Perish (Undecided)
I personally prefer the flexibility and repeatability of Dystopia over the speed and predictability of Perish. I especially like keeping it on the board a few extra turns after the opponent has no more relevant permanents, and using it as a sort of "Orim's Chant" for Green and White permanent spells.

[rsaunder]

Teh brief tournament report!

I split first and second today at our local shop, playing the above deadguy list, with a few minor SB changes (-3 needle, +4 warmth).

Round 1: My buddy playing my rifter deck. Now, he's not the best player, but he's decent. Problem was its SB that was set up expecting pox kinda beats me too. I won game one with the draw power of confident and cursed scroll for a little extra damage, like I really expected to. Game 2 was not so easy. He sided in 8 cards (3 sacred ground, 2 spiritual focus, and 3 true believer), I sided in my serenities and negator, taking out smallpoxes. He drops a second turn focus, after I drop a first turn hippy, effectively neutering the poor spectre. I dropped a shade, and brought him down quite quickly untill he began using a pulse of the fields. I burned myself down as I beat him slowly with shade. He played a lightning rift, and the next turn I dropped a serenity. He took me down to 4, and I won that turn with a beefy shade and that first turn hippy.

Round 2: Janky affinity. I managed to keep him off of land very well game 1, although he managed to get an atog with a cranial plating online. I had enough guys to slowly "smokestack" away his permanents by throwing my guys in the atog's way, and eventually smallpoxed away his entire hand and board. I won with a hippy and a grunt. Game 2 I swapped out 2 duress for 2 serenity, and saw one in my opening grip. I was down to 10 by the time my serenity wiped his board of a chrome mox, a land, a ravaer (4/4) and a frogmite. I got a scroll online and won slowly with it and a hippy, although I had access to a tomb, I dodn't feel the risk necissary.

Round 3: BR aggro/control. Pretty good player. Game 1, I rip apart his hand and smallpox takes out his occasion l sedge troll or hippy. I finished it with grunt and a shade, it was just ugly. No SB. Game 2 I have to mull to five, and stabilize at 1 with a hippy and a scroll. He topdecks burn and wins. Game 3 I get a good start, duressing out a jitte, keep him off of black mana for the rest of the game and win at 16 life with, once again, a grunt and a shade.

Round 4: Semifinals: Solidarity: One of the best players there. The round begins with a little cursing on his part, being paired up with me instead of the secret force deck that made it. Game 1, he gats an excellent stalling hand with 3 remands and 2 FOW, and manages to comb off about turn 6 with 3 lands. I side out scrolls and side in a negator and a grunt. I lead off with a duress, taking his high tide, and keep him on 1 land for the rest of the game. Game 3, he lays a land, I lay a land, rit, duress, hymn. He reveals a second turn kill hand, and swears as I pull his meditate and hymn away a land and a reset. I sinkhole a land second turn, drop a hippy third turn, and hymn him agains fourth turn.

Finals: I had to leave, and at the other match that was going on, the guys agreed to split (nice guys). I pulled a demonfire in one of my packs $2 entry fee was totally worth it.

MVP of the day (other than the staples) : Grunt. He was amazing, and after he resolved, a game never lasted long enough for him to die. Serenity was no slacker either, nabbing me 2 games by it'self.

Least useful: Most of my SB. What can ya do :rolleyes:

So, TheBirdMan, who ended up winning that match?

[Eldariel]

So wait, what do you have in the MD again? The last post only has your sideboard, and while I can deduct a pretty close list from that report, I'm still not sure I've got all the details. Nice report though.

[rsaunder]

Sorry about the lack of a list, I thought I had posted it:cry:

In any case:

4 hymn
4 duress
4 sinkhole
4 vindicate
3 smallpox

4 hippy
4 Bob
3 shade
2 grunt

2 cursed scroll

4 dark rit

1 tomb of uruami
1 poluted delta
4 scrubland
4 bloodstained mire
4 wasteland
8 swamp

SB:
4 e. plague
3 dystopia
2 serenity
1 negator
1 grunt
4 warmth

[Whit3 Ghost]

To clear that up



4 hymn to tourach
4 sinkhole
4 duress
4 vindicate
3 smallpox

4 hypnotic spectre
4 dark confident
3 nantuko shade
2 jotun grunt

2 cursed scroll

4 dark ritual

4 bloodstained mire
1 polluted delta
4 scrubland
1 tomb of uruami
4 wasteland
8 swamp

[al the great]

Ok everyone keeps calling Dark Confidant "Bob". Is that the guy's name on the pic???

[Eldariel]

Ok everyone keeps calling Dark Confidant "Bob". Is that the guy's name on the pic???

Wizards of the Coast has a tradition of holding Magic-invitationals. Invitationals-winners get to design their own cards, which fans often tend to call after the winner himself. Dark Confidant is the card sub of invitationals winner Bob Maher, just like Meddling Mage is Chris Pikula's, Shadowmage Infiltrator is Jon Finkel's, etc.

[al the great]

Wizards of the Coast has a tradition of holding Magic-invitationals. Invitationals-winners get to design their own cards, which fans often tend to call after the winner himself. Dark Confidant is the card sub of invitationals winner Bob Maher, just like Meddling Mage is Chris Pikula's, Shadowmage Infiltrator is Jon Finkel's, etc.

Thanks that's what I thought. Didn't know about those other two cards. Cool.

[Anarky87]

Rsaunder, I like your list and I've been testing it out. For the SB, I've included 2 StP for the moment and 2 Negators. I want to test these out and see how well the perform. Did you try StP at all anywhere between MD and SB or did you figure it was too counterproductive to your strategy. My board is:

4 Plague
3 Needle
3 Dystopia
2 Negator
2 StP
1 Grunt

[rsaunder]

First and foremost: Thanks for the clarification, Whit3_Ghost.
Rsaunder, I like your list and I've been testing it out. For the SB, I've included 2 StP for the moment and 2 Negators. I want to test these out and see how well the perform. Did you try StP at all anywhere between MD and SB or did you figure it was too counterproductive to your strategy. My board is:

4 Plague
3 Needle
3 Dystopia
2 Negator
2 StP
1 GruntA while ago I played STP MB, but I really hated drawing dead in combo and control matchups and it didn't take out my main problem at the time: Mongose. I swapped it out for funeral charm (1 4-of at one point), which was excellent against goblins, but was just generally underpowered. Then I gave up on the deck for a while, then they printed smallpox.

STP was an excellent tool, but I felt that the 4 life they gained off of a threshed werebear or whatever made it a decent bit harder to win. I've been thinking of SBing copies, but my question is, for what? and what do I side out? I'd cut a needle and use my free slot for 2 copies, but I'm not sure what they'd go in against. Angel stompy and other things that rely on big creatures, but seriously, I just found it too narrow. Yeah, I just said STP was too narrow, I'm crazy, whatever.

Also, what do you side in and out for the combo matchup? I've been pretty convinced that the second negator is unnecissary, but I could see perhaps sideing out a land or something for another beater. Do you find you miss the "disenchant" effect at all? Serenity has just randomly won me so many games (of course, not against the trinity, just randomness), I'd just feel, well, naked without it.

[Anarky87]

A while ago I played STP MB, but I really hated drawing dead in combo and control matchups and it didn't take out my main problem at the time: Mongose.

I also used to play them MD as a 2 when I dabbled with the deck. I found that they were alright in most cases, I just remembered alot of people dismissing them because they said the lifegain it gave to the opponent was too much. But I felt it was worth it being able to deal with resolved threats. Since I've been trying your build out, I've moved them to the SB because in my meta, I'm pretty sure I'll still find them useful.


STP was an excellent tool, but I felt that the 4 life they gained off of a threshed werebear or whatever made it a decent bit harder to win. I've been thinking of SBing copies, but my question is, for what? and what do I side out? I'd cut a needle and use my free slot for 2 copies, but I'm not sure what they'd go in against. Angel stompy and other things that rely on big creatures, but seriously, I just found it too narrow. Yeah, I just said STP was too narrow, I'm crazy, whatever.

I've been siding out my Cursed Scrolls as they can really only hit Mage if the opponent MD's them. Or be pointed at their head. It can't hit Mongoose, and I've played very few people that lay down unthreshed Bears, so it's basically a shock against them for 3 when I want to be playing more beaters/disruption/pumping Shade. My older SB was kinda crazy and I had 3 StP there, so my SB'ing kinda went -2 Scroll, -1 Vindicate, -1 Sinkhole for +3 StP, +1 Grunt. Now with 2 StP, I'd probably go -2 Scroll, -1 Sinkhole for +2 StP, +1 Grunt I think. But I can see your point about its narrowness. Against Goblins, I'm not sure 2 copies are all that great, but with Plague+Scroll, it could help. And of course completely dead against combo, which is what eventually made me move them to the board.


Also, what do you side in and out for the combo matchup? I've been pretty convinced that the second negator is unnecissary, but I could see perhaps sideing out a land or something for another beater.

I've been going -2 Scroll, +2 Negator against Solidarity and I'm thinking -2 Scroll, -1 Something else (Perhaps land like you suggested) for +2 Negator, +1 Grunt for IGG. The extra Negator may not be needed after all, I just thought I'd give it a spin as another 5/5 couldn't hurt (But it might slow me down too).


Do you find you miss the "disenchant" effect at all? Serenity has just randomly won me so many games (of course, not against the trinity, just randomness), I'd just feel, well, naked without it.

I haven't played any matchups yet requiring Serenity, but it used to be in my SB and it was a house, so it may find its way back into it. Most likely in place of the StP if those don't work out. I should point out that that SB is pretty metagamed for me as where I play there is very little use of enchantments or artifacts. When Affinity was big in my area, I had Serenity as a 2-of in the board and it was amazing. I would definitely make room for it if I was to take the deck to a broader field. You are right about its godliness against randomness.

[rsaunder]

So, you don't side in Dystopias against threshold? In all honesty, that's the primary reason I had been playing it. I sided out scrolls, a sinkhole, and something else (usually a confident or a vindicate or something) for 3 dystopia and 1 grunt. Dystopia just seems > STP there.
I've been going -2 Scroll, +2 Negator against Solidarity and I'm thinking -2 Scroll, -1 Something else (Perhaps land like you suggested) for +2 Negator, +1 Grunt for IGG. The extra Negator may not be needed after all, I just thought I'd give it a spin as another 5/5 couldn't hurt (But it might slow me down too).
I think I'd rather have grunt than negator against solidarity. He comes out second turn if need be (the only reason I don't like him is 'cuz he can't come in off a rit), and makes the solidarity player acually make you draw or bounce him, which against a deck that spreads thier resources thin as it could mean the game. Negator is a friggin house, but grunt is also a very excellent anti-combo beater.

[Anarky87]

So, you don't side in Dystopias against threshold?

This has only been recently as I was waiting for Dystopia to come in the mail. The SB I posted was one that I was trying to finalize. Sorry for the mix up. I was just testing in the mean time while I was waiting for my Dystopia's and, to another extent, the usefulness of StP against Thresh.


I think I'd rather have grunt than negator against solidarity. He comes out second turn if need be (the only reason I don't like him is 'cuz he can't come in off a rit), and makes the solidarity player acually make you draw or bounce him, which against a deck that spreads thier resources thin as it could mean the game. Negator is a friggin house, but grunt is also a very excellent anti-combo beater.

Good point, I'll give both a try and see what I come to.

[DeathwingZERO]

I also believe that Grunt is better than Negator vs Solidarity. Here's a few of the reasons I came to that conclusion while testing:

1- He is almost always a 4 turn clock, due to Solidarity cracking on average 2 fetchlands per game (there's 6 fetch for 12 Islands, it can sometimes be higher), and needing to use FoW against big problems. In addition to Shade, make it more like a 3 turn clock. Pretty speedy.

2- He cripples the best dig spell they have: Flash of Insight. When he starts getting multiple counters, you've been tossing so many of the cards back into their deck, they will have to use Brain Freeze on themselves in a pinch if their in a corner.

3- He throws lands back into their deck, making their draw spells even more unstable. You start to hit them where it hurts here. Brainstorm, Impulse, and Meditate all get worse when the land ratio is never getting any thinner. Drawing 3 lands from a Meditate sucks.

All in all, I've never favored Negator in combo matchups, as both Iggy and Solidarity hit themselves with fetches, so the +1 power typically isn't as good. Though possibly coming out on turn 1 vs turn 2, which is typical for Grunt, does tend to get it some recognition. For me, I'd just rather burn my Rit's on discard and LD power plays.

[Goblin Snowman]

Also, Grunt has good synergy with Brainfreeze I hear. They have to make you draw, or else Grunt puts the cards back in your deck. That can be diffucult if you are making them go off around disruption. ALso, they might forget about it if they are stupid, or unfamilar with Grunt.

[Anarky87]

I did win a local tournament again this past Wed. with the deck using Rsaunder's list. My Dystopia's hadn't come by then, nor did my needle, so I settled for Perish and StP respectively.

First round I played against U/G Madness and he talked forever about how my discard was gonna help him so much...until I blew just about everything he had up and left him with one land. Game 2 was like the first, but he did get to play a Mongrel, Arrogant Wurm, and something else.

Round 2 was against this B/W Control deck that I thought was also Deadguy, but turned out it just used some of the same components. Game 1 was close, with us at very few permanents the whole game until I topdecked my way back into it and won with Grunt and Shade. Game 2 I lost due to drawing a total of 3 lands the entire time. Game 3 I just flat out won when he had the same problem I did in Game 2.

Got a bye Round 3.

Round 4 I had to play Goblins, since the Goblins guy and B/W Jank guy were friends, the B/W dude scooped to the Goblins (I don't know why, he had beat him before in round 1). He beats me game 1 as there's nothing I can really do. Games 2-3 involved E. Plageues and a bunch of my creatures just picnicing on his face. I offered him a split before the match to which he replied, "Why the hell would I split with you?"...Should have taken the split ;)

After that round I was the only undefeated so I got first and some store credit. The list seemed pretty strong, there was nothing about it I didn't like (Except maybe not getting my Dystopia's and Needle in time...)

[rsaunder]

I did win a local tournament again this past Wed. with the deck using Rsaunder's list. My Dystopia's hadn't come by then, nor did my needle, so I settled for Perish and StP respectively.

First round I played against U/G Madness and he talked forever about how my discard was gonna help him so much...until I blew just about everything he had up and left him with one land. Game 2 was like the first, but he did get to play a Mongrel, Arrogant Wurm, and something else.

Round 2 was against this B/W Control deck that I thought was also Deadguy, but turned out it just used some of the same components. Game 1 was close, with us at very few permanents the whole game until I topdecked my way back into it and won with Grunt and Shade. Game 2 I lost due to drawing a total of 3 lands the entire time. Game 3 I just flat out won when he had the same problem I did in Game 2.

Got a bye Round 3.

Round 4 I had to play Goblins, since the Goblins guy and B/W Jank guy were friends, the B/W dude scooped to the Goblins (I don't know why, he had beat him before in round 1). He beats me game 1 as there's nothing I can really do. Games 2-3 involved E. Plageues and a bunch of my creatures just picnicing on his face. I offered him a split before the match to which he replied, "Why the hell would I split with you?"...Should have taken the split ;)

After that round I was the only undefeated so I got first and some store credit. The list seemed pretty strong, there was nothing about it I didn't like (Except maybe not getting my Dystopia's and Needle in time...)
Congrats! About the goblin matchup: On the draw game one your chances suck, and generally involve ritting something out, like a kill spell or a hippy to get rid of that first turn lackey. On the play, though, you're in some better (although not amazing shape) with small pox and other answers ot that ever present lackey. I'd call the percentages 55/45 (I'm being nice. 50/50) for you on the play and 75/25 for you on the draw. Knowing you're playing goblins is big, though, as you can mull more agressively to get the answers you wanted. Keepable hands may not seem like they would have been keepable if your opponent says "lackey, go". I'm glad the plagues did thier business for you, though. Did you have to get out 2 plagues both games, or were you able to hold it down with 1?

[Anarky87]

Congrats! About the goblin matchup: On the draw game one your chances suck, and generally involve ritting something out, like a kill spell or a hippy to get rid of that first turn lackey. On the play, though, you're in some better (although not amazing shape) with small pox and other answers ot that ever present lackey. I'd call the percentages 55/45 (I'm being nice. 50/50) for you on the play and 75/25 for you on the draw. Knowing you're playing goblins is big, though, as you can mull more agressively to get the answers you wanted. Keepable hands may not seem like they would have been keepable if your opponent says "lackey, go".

Yeah, I think I won the die roll for game 1 against Goblins, and did use the Smallpox trick to get rid of his Lackey. But I really didn't draw anything else worthwhile from there, so he just got back in the game. I think at one point right after I Smallpoxed he threw down double Lackey and Piledriver while I only had a Specter. That led to some Siege-Gang Banging of me in the ensuing turns.


I'm glad the plagues did thier business for you, though. Did you have to get out 2 plagues both games, or were you able to hold it down with 1?

Plagues were the nuts against them, but I only ever had one in play in both games 2 and 3. For the most part, it shut off their annoying stuff like Lackey's, Matrons, Fanatics, SGC tokens, etc. which gives you some breathing room. I don't think it was a perfect Goblins deck, but he ran Goons to, I guess, offset Plague, but I rememdied that by just playing out every creature I drew and swinging in. But it did run all of the other Goblins, guess he was trying to metagame...But overall I was really pleased with the deck.
I think there's gonna be an even bigger tournament this Sunday that I'm gonna play the deck in, so I'll give some more feedback if that tournament pans out.

Edit: Oh, and the only thing that differs in my list from yours is -1 Tomb, +1 Volrath's Stronghold. I thought I had some Tombs, but I guess not, so I've just been playing Stronghold in its place.

[DeathwingZERO]

I still believe that the Tomb is going to be too overcosted compared to Stronghold. Getting a 5/5 flyer is pretty nice and all, but getting recursion with Grunt's that are too big to deal with, Shades that get chumped, Hyppies that get bolted, and Bob's that just get hit with damn near every piece of hate, I really like the idea of turning those 14 creatures I have into more like 28. On top of that, it's pretty much a guaranteed activation every turn you can't get a spell, because you'll have plenty of dead creatures to fish out if you don't have disruption. Also, being able to get multiple Grunts on the table against stuff like Goblins and Thresh is pretty good, I heard, especially when they can swing every other turn, if absolutely desperate. A 4/4 on the swing with a 4/4 blocking......sounds savage to me.

[Eldariel]

I still believe that the Tomb is going to be too overcosted compared to Stronghold. Getting a 5/5 flyer is pretty nice and all, but getting recursion with Grunt's that are too big to deal with, Shades that get chumped, Hyppies that get bolted, and Bob's that just get hit with damn near every piece of hate, I really like the idea of turning those 14 creatures I have into more like 28. On top of that, it's pretty much a guaranteed activation every turn you can't get a spell, because you'll have plenty of dead creatures to fish out if you don't have disruption. Also, being able to get multiple Grunts on the table against stuff like Goblins and Thresh is pretty good, I heard, especially when they can swing every other turn, if absolutely desperate. A 4/4 on the swing with a 4/4 blocking......sounds savage to me.

Umm, WTF? Those 2 cards aren't played in the same slot! Tomb of Urami produces black mana=Swamp with an additional threat-ability=coloured landslot! Volrath's Stronghold=colourless land with an ability=wasteland-slot! They aren't either/or, those 2 lands have nothing to do with each other!

[rsaunder]

I still believe that the Tomb is going to be too overcosted compared to Stronghold. Getting a 5/5 flyer is pretty nice and all, but getting recursion with Grunt's that are too big to deal with, Shades that get chumped, Hyppies that get bolted, and Bob's that just get hit with damn near every piece of hate, I really like the idea of turning those 14 creatures I have into more like 28. On top of that, it's pretty much a guaranteed activation every turn you can't get a spell, because you'll have plenty of dead creatures to fish out if you don't have disruption. Also, being able to get multiple Grunts on the table against stuff like Goblins and Thresh is pretty good, I heard, especially when they can swing every other turn, if absolutely desperate. A 4/4 on the swing with a 4/4 blocking......sounds savage to me.Eladriel said it pretty well. If stronghold tapped for black, I'd be all over it, but it doesn't. That's my main gripe about it, but Jotun Grunt is also a little sub-par with it. Just the dyssenyrgy of those two and the not tapping for black bit make me feel that tomb is the correct choice.

[Anarky87]

In my meta, Wasteland is pretty bad, but there are times when it hits something. I cut 1 Wasteland to add the Stronghold and since I didn't have the Tomb, I just added 1 more Swamp.

I think as a 1-of with the ability to become a 5/5 flying beatstick is good and its drawback isn't that backbreaking to the fact that if you're planning on cracking it, you would just hold some land in hand to drop afterwards; I know I'm always holding some lands in hand to pitch to Smallpox when I cast it. It's like the same way you play Pox, just hold back so that it'll hurt your opponent more than you.

[rsaunder]

My brief tournement report: (with my above list) Take this for what it's worth, it was a 15 player tournament with 2 battle of wits decks present. And I won!

Round 1: Bye

Round 2: Battle of wits: Game 1 Apperantly they don't like having thier lands blown up. I managed to keep him at 3 lands for the entire game, and rather low on hand. I won with a grunt and a hippy. Game 2 I sided in my combo plan (-2 scroll, +1 negator, +1 grunt). He kept me off of disruption with divert, force spike and mana leak for the first 3 turns, then I resolved a hymn and kept him off balance. I saw neither the negator or the grunt, bu kept him off of UU, and with 4 or less land the entire game. Apperantly a pivotal smallpox was what seemed to be the gamebreaker to him. I swung for the win with a shade.

Round 3: Battle of wits (different build) : At this point, I'm pretty sure it's about to start raining cats and dogs. Game 1 I ruthlessly rape his hand in the nasal passages and win with a confident and a grunt. I SB the same way game 2. The game goes later than I expected as I couldn't grab a beater fast enough, and he resolved an academy rector (damn near killed her! heh.). He diabolic intented it, grabbing an orim's chant and chanting me douring my turn to keep the vindicate I was holding from winning me the game. Game 3 I kept him off of 2 land the entire game and won with a negator, a tomb, and a confident on like 5th turn.

Round 4 (finals round 1) : Rifter with a good player: I won the die roll, and duressed out a rift. I sinkholed his land for the first 2 turns, vindicated it the third, then went "rit, hymn, hippy", and just kind of won from there. A grunt sealed the deal. A sided out all 3 smallpox, and in the negator and 2 serenities. Game 2 he was on the play, but I led off with a turn 1 rit, duress, hymn. I blew up his land for a while untill he played a sacred ground, and then I dropped a shade. The turn after that, he dropped a rift. I dropped a grunt the next turn and killed his red source. With him unable to do much of anything I won 2 turns later.

Round 5 (Finals) : The Rock: Game 1 he gets 3 duresses and anough land to make what disruption I manage to hold on to only marginally useful. He drops anough threats like baaloth and stuff so I'm like, "creatures, wtf?". I side out scrolls and a duress in favor of 3 dystopia. Game 2, I manage to keep him off of green for the longest time, and win with a grunt and a hippy. Game 3, I once agains destroyed his land, then his hand, then dropped a dystopia to finish off his 2 green creatures. I had 3 lands and a hippy against an empty hand and empty board. Win.

I got 3 pakcs, in which I pulled a restore balance, dragonstorm, a reiterate, and a few good uncommons (smallpox, clockwork hydra). Totally worth the $2.

I also played a fun match against secret force, with 3 games all of wich were pre-board, and lost 2-1. Apperantly this deck doesn't really like having SSS played against it with other creatures in play for pox fodder. Who knew?

[Blair Phoenix]

My brief tournement report: (with my above list) Take this for what it's worth, it was a 15 player tournament with 2 battle of wits decks present. And I won!


You're just lucky you didn't get to play me rsaunder :P. Really though congrats on the win. If only people would stop playing Battle of Wits around here now lol.

[Eldariel]

In my meta, Wasteland is pretty bad, but there are times when it hits something. I cut 1 Wasteland to add the Stronghold and since I didn't have the Tomb, I just added 1 more Swamp.

That's all fair, as long as you keep the cardslots straight, add or remove anything you feel like. As I said the longest time ago, I went up to 23 lands personally to support Smallpox a bit better, which also gives me an easy road to running Stronghold (so I essentially lose no threat density, but gain some power).

[Anarky87]

Congrats on the win. At least you guys drew 15 people, we're lucky if we get 4 to come play. The store I play at is having its monthly big Legacy tournament tomorrow and I shall be bringing this deck to play, so wish me luck (In hopes that I won't savagely scrub out, as seems to be my luck).

[rsaunder]

You're just lucky you didn't get to play me rsaunder :P. Really though congrats on the win. If only people would stop playing Battle of Wits around here now lol.I know, right? :tongue:

It was rediculous to walk in and see a "Battle mirror" going on, then a rifter V. tendrils combo on the other table.

Good luck Anarky! Did all of the cards come in for you, or do you need to make some subs?

[Anarky87]

Good luck Anarky! Did all of the cards come in for you, or do you need to make some subs?

My Dystopia's did come in, but my Needles did not (-.-;...) and I was kinda looking forward to those to just hose randomness. I'll have to retool my SB before I go, so I might put Warmth in the Needle spot (There usually seems to be some person there with a burn oriented monstrosity). Like:

4 Plague
3 Warmth
3 Dystopia
2 Serenity
2 StP
1 Jotun Grunt

(Didn't get my Negator's yet either...stupid eBay)

[rsaunder]

My Dystopia's did come in, but my Needles did not (-.-;...) and I was kinda looking forward to those to just hose randomness. I'll have to retool my SB before I go, so I might put Warmth in the Needle spot (There usually seems to be some person there with a burn oriented monstrosity). Like:

4 Plague
3 Warmth
3 Dystopia
2 Serenity
2 StP
1 Jotun Grunt

(Didn't get my Negator's yet either...stupid eBay)Speaking of warmth, the board I've been running for my local meta (some scrubby burn sometimes shows up) uses the 3 needle slots, as well as my random slot for 4 warmth. Just remember that you've gotta side out confidents against decks like that, everyone who has ever borrowed my deck and had to play burn with it hasn't sided like that and has lost terribly.

[Anarky87]

Well the report really isn't worth mentioning that much as only FIVE people showed up, so we played for store credit.

Round 1 I lost both games to Goblin Sligh, with me never seeing Plague.

Round 2 Bye.

Round 3 I lost game 1 to some weird Monowhitehate.dec. I drew 1 land the entire game, even with a Confidant out. Of course that didn't stop me from hitting 3 out of 4 Specters with Confidant...Always nice to take 9 to the dome on 3 consecutive turns. I won the next two, but barely. He also played a bunch of Pro-Red and Black guys...Wtf at people today...

Then Round 4 I played against some old school WW with a bunch of pro-red and black dudes and Winter Orb. So I lost game 1 because I drew nothing of relavence. Game 2 I sided in 3 Dystopia and 2 Plagues (Since his creatures broke down into Clerics and Soldiers). I won a close game 2 when Dystopia ate his board with a Specter and a Grunt with 6 counters on it took the game. Game 3 I just couldn't get anything established before he had dealt a large amount of damage to me. I managed to stick at 1 life when I topdecked the Plague I needed to kill the creature that would have killed me. On his turn he cast Soul Warden and a Mother of Runes, so he can pro-black and swing next turn. I topdeck a Grunt that can stall him hopefully until I draw some business. His turn, he drops Soltari Priest and passes turn. I draw Scrubland and go on to lose.

I think my mistake in the last game was not bringing the other Plagues in, I think they would have helped alot. So I ended up 2-2, but I'm gonna keep tinkering with the deck.

[rsaunder]

Wow. It sounds like you got rather screwed by pairings, and lack of competition. Seriously, who plays pro-blacks now adays? That sounds like racism to me...

[DeathwingZERO]

Umm, WTF? Those 2 cards aren't played in the same slot! Tomb of Urami produces black mana=Swamp with an additional threat-ability=coloured landslot! Volrath's Stronghold=colourless land with an ability=wasteland-slot! They aren't either/or, those 2 lands have nothing to do with each other!

If you had noticed my decklist pages ago, you'd see that I have already removed the 4 Wastelands, as they are useless for my metagame. Therefore, it takes up a Swamp slot now. With the deck already heavily relying on needing your life total, I see no reason to run a sub-par Swamp that hits you on the hopes it survives your opponents Wastelands long enough to get you a 5/5 flyer that is honestly no faster than Shade, nor does it have any protection to DD or StP.

As for the Grunt and Stronghold not having any synergy, that's completely incorrect. When your Grunt starts getting too heavy to rely on (usually anytime past 3-4 counters), you sacrifice him during the upkeep, bring him back on the draw via Stronghold, and play him again. Now he's completely reset to 0 counters, can block for the turn, and attack on the next. You can even use him to chump block and recur him during your upkeep numrous times, and he'll never need to see an age counter. Note that this is still a late game plan, but that's where Deadguy is weakest anyways, and you'll hardly have better reasons for that 4 mana. This in addition to being able to bring back everything else in your arsenal. Personally, a fine reason to run 1 less swamp, when I already had 11 + 5 duals.

Tomb requires 5 lands to be in play, or to waste a Dark Ritual in hand. If I'm playing against any deck that would pack StP or bounce (2 of the 3 top decks, the ones we're supposed to beat), that's probably literally the worst thing I could possibly do to attempt a win. I am now sacrificing my entire manabase, and hoping that the opponent has a slower clock than me. How is this good vs anything but dumb-aggro decks? Solidarity wishes for a bounce, and I scoop. Goblins outrush me (unless I am also lucky enough to have put out 2 Plagues in this timeframe), and Thresh just uses StP against it or blocks with Enforcer, and I am now in an unrecoverable game state. A single 5/5 flying creature that has no protection or recursion at the cost of a self-induced Armageddon is hardly comparable to recurring an entire deck worth of creatures.

Remember, Deadguy is a metagame deck, it shouldn't be packing subpar cards that the Top 3 can easily play around. Even if it is only a single land, having it as a crutch to rely on is really not worth the drawback.

[rsaunder]

http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=31414.0

So, a 2nd place finish for deadguy. Discuss!

[Anarky87]

I was pretty psyched to see two lists making the T8, as I know the deck is very strong. I also agree with moving 2 copies of Plague back into the MD. I never seem to win that many game 1's against Goblins, as alot of my deck is just flat out dead when they throw down a Lackey. Even Smallpoxing it away usually hurts me as much, if not more than, them. With 2 Plagues MD, the matchup I think will be smoother, I mean, Pikula was able to curb stomp Goblins all day on his way to the finals with them MD. They are dead in the combo/control matchup, but it's two cards. You're also packing 4 Duress, Hymn, Sinkhole, Specter, Vindicate, and Wasteland for those matchups as well, so I think it evens out.

In my list, I've cut 1 Scroll and 1 Smallpox for 2 Plague, with the final list looking:

4 Scrubland
4 Wasteland
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Polluted Delta
1 Tomb of Urami (Trying it out for now)
8 Swamps

4 Confidant
4 Specter
3 Shade
2 Grunt

4 Duress
4 Hymn
4 Sinkhole
4 Vindicate
4 Ritual
2 Smallpox
2 Plague
1 Scroll (Even with 2, I seemed to draw them all the time, so I'm trying 1)

Edit: As a side note, is anyone else from here planning on bringing this to Columbus? I'm most likely going to bring either this or Red Death and I was just curious to see if I could meet up with anyone else.

[rsaunder]

Anarky87, Are you really glad to have the plagues, especially over a scroll? It seems like you just cut one bomb against goblins for another with that slot. Perhaps I just have a thing for scroll in that matchup, as it's what's been best for shooting little red men down for years. And I'm glad you liked my deck!

In some metagames, or if your sideboard is really tight, I can see 2 plagues hitting MB again, but over perhaps a smallpox and a duress rather than a scroll. If plague didn't seem to have its uses in other matchups, I certainly wouldn't be advocating this, but I've called soldier against rifter and MWC, elves or birds against survival, and mongeese against threshold and had it win games. (Does this post look familiar to anyone so far?)


If I can go to colombus, I'll either be packing this or rifter. Perhaps some fast combo that no one would be expecting, but probably one of the first 2.

[NANTUKO_SHADY]

Anarky87,
Perhaps some fast combo that no one would be expecting,



And just what exactly would that fast combo deck be??.. Or is it teh secret tech? :wink:

[Anarky87]

Anarky87, Are you really glad to have the plagues, especially over a scroll? It seems like you just cut one bomb against goblins for another with that slot. Perhaps I just have a thing for scroll in that matchup, as it's what's been best for shooting little red men down for years. And I'm glad you liked my deck!

Yeah, I think I am prett happy with the 2 Plagues and 1 Scroll. I know Scroll is amazing at shooting down their dudes, but it always seemed to come online to slow, or I couldn't empty my hand fast enough to take advatange of it. So I decided to trim it to one, while adding 2 more bombs against Goblins. The testing so far has been positive.


In some metagames, or if your sideboard is really tight, I can see 2 plagues hitting MB again, but over perhaps a smallpox and a duress rather than a scroll. If plague didn't seem to have its uses in other matchups, I certainly wouldn't be advocating this, but I've called soldier against rifter and MWC, elves or birds against survival, and mongeese against threshold and had it win games. (Does this post look familiar to anyone so far?)

I do the same thing with my Plagues in calling Soldiers and whatnot, and I'm liking the 2 other Plagues in the side. If it's ever useless in a matchup, then it probably ends up being Pox fodder, which is also at 2 so they even out pretty well.


If I can go to colombus, I'll either be packing this or rifter. Perhaps some fast combo that no one would be expecting, but probably one of the first 2.

Well I hope you can make it, it'd be nice to meet some other people that I converse with on here. I know at Gencon I met and talked with Caboose and Herbig, and overlooked some of Overlord95's and Bigbear's games and that was really interesting.

[rsaunder]

And just what exactly would that fast combo deck be??.. Or is it teh secret tech? :wink:Perhaps TES or something of that nature. For whatever reason, I've been into tendrils recently:tongue:


@Anarky87-- I have had some similar feelings about scroll. Whenever I felt that I needed an active scroll, I never played a confident, to make sure it stayed active and frequently used smallpox to get rid of a card (another use!). I also found that scrolling whatever threat before your draw step or even confident's trigger was sometimes a good play in that later game. But those were just stratigies to keep it useful for longer, and I agree that it did take a while to comr online. I'm not 100% sold on MB plague, but I guess it may warrant consideration in a wider metagame.

I know, I know, I've been double posting and breaking the rules like crazy this morning, but I promise that this'll be the last one for a while.

Perhaps using the 'edit' button will allow you to remedy this. ~ Nightmare

The new mini-cranial extraction, do you guys think it'll have any place in this deck? I ran 3 cranials in the board against combo for a while about 3 months ago, and ditched them, decising that they were "too expensive". This new mini version, while not generating any real advantage for he who played it (and in fact card disadvantage) could, given our discard, be a real gem for late game winning. Get rid of the rest of those pesky LEDs at instant speed, get rid of those LfTLs, take out all of thier ringleaders after that first turn hymn, GET RID OF ALL MONGESE. The options seem endless. I'm very tempted to mess around with this, but what do y'alls think?

[Eldariel]

I'm not sure I'd want to MD cards that really 'do nothing' by themselves, rather relying on Smallpoxes and Grunts to handle Mongeese, but there are some promising applications for it. It definitely looks like a solid SB-option and I guess it might even find room in the MD eventually. I'll first want to see Smallpox adopted here though.

[B.C.]

I would like to get people's opinions about replacing Hypnotic Specter with Mesmeric Fiend. Both creatures have advantages, I just wonder why Hyppie is the standard.

Hypnotic Specter:
Bigger body
Evasion
Recurring discard effect

Mesmeric Fiend:
Immediate comes-into-play effect
Pick the card you want removed
Costs 1 less mana to play

Thoughts?

[Blair Phoenix]

I would like to get people's opinions about replacing Hypnotic Specter with Mesmeric Fiend. Both creatures have advantages, I just wonder why Hyppie is the standard.

Hypnotic Specter:
Bigger body
Evasion
Recurring discard effect

Mesmeric Fiend:
Immediate comes-into-play effect
Pick the card you want removed
Costs 1 less mana to play

Thoughts?
Hyppie can be Rit into play also, without mana burn. Also as Deadguy has relatively few win conditions, the evasion and bigger body are pretty important to the deck.

[Anarky87]

I'd pick Specter over Fiend because Specter is a recurring source of discard, whereas Fiend nails one card and that's it, no further pressure unless you play more discard. Specter's discard is also random, which can sometimes give combo and control players fits. Specter also has evasion and is a 2/2. There have been times where I've stalled the ground up with some Shades, but needed something to push through damage. That's where Specter comes in. While 2/2's for 3 are pretty slow when they're not Ritualed out first turn, Specter is the best creature with a power/ability/cost ratio. Fiend is only a 1/1, and while nabbing 1 card you want for one less B is cute, they need only bounce it or easily deal with it to get the card back, whereas the damage Specter has done to their hand will remain even after it has been dealt with.

I value Specter higher than Fiend, and I would choose him over Fiend every time.

[B.C.]

I agree with your assessment of Hypnotic Specter. In my testing it has been pretty effective. I do think Mesmeric Fiend could find a place in the deck, though. What are your thoughts on Duress? I know it's THE staple discard spell, but I've found that in the current Legacy meta it often times misses completely, especially against Goblins (which typically makes up a third of the field). Mes Fiend costs 1 more than Duress, and they have the ability to get that card back, but it can remove creature cards and at the least slow them down for a couple turns.

[rsaunder]

I agree with your assessment of Hypnotic Specter. In my testing it has been pretty effective. I do think Mesmeric Fiend could find a place in the deck, though. What are your thoughts on Duress? I know it's THE staple discard spell, but I've found that in the current Legacy meta it often times misses completely, especially against Goblins (which typically makes up a third of the field). Mes Fiend costs 1 more than Duress, and they have the ability to get that card back, but it can remove creature cards and at the least slow them down for a couple turns.What do you never have a target against? Goblins, right? I think that that's about it as far as duress's suckiness goes, as against everything else, you will always have a pull.

Duress is good because it is 1cc. The mana curve of this deck is rather high right now, with few 1 drops as it is. 4 less 1 drops means less hands that do in quick tendrils combo, less hands that are keepabale without a dark ritual, and less options to get rid of opposing counterspells. I feel fine cutting the number of duresses down to 3, if I really want to fit something in, but that's about it. It's a staple.

Just tossing this out there: http://mtgsalvation.com/planar-chaos-spoiler.html

Necrotic sliver. It's a vindicate on legs. I think that the 3cc and 3 mana for the activation is too much for the deck, but it might be interesting as a 2-of or something. Also, extripate looks like it's real. And how about a blue splash in here? could work. Just brainstorming.

[BiscuitVader]

What do you never have a target against? Goblins, right? I think that that's about it as far as duress's suckiness goes, as against everything else, you will always have a pull.

Duress is good because it is 1cc. The mana curve of this deck is rather high right now, with few 1 drops as it is. 4 less 1 drops means less hands that do in quick tendrils combo, less hands that are keepabale without a dark ritual, and less options to get rid of opposing counterspells. I feel fine cutting the number of duresses down to 3, if I really want to fit something in, but that's about it. It's a staple.

Just tossing this out there: http://mtgsalvation.com/planar-chaos-spoiler.html

Necrotic sliver. It's a vindicate on legs. I think that the 3cc and 3 mana for the activation is too much for the deck, but it might be interesting as a 2-of or something. Also, extripate looks like it's real. And how about a blue splash in here? could work. Just brainstorming.
I think that the new Sliver is a great card, but I dont think it can be put into the deck. Its three casting cost, and can't be Ritualed into play. That means, you have to burn a ritual on your second turn and have a white mana source in play if you want to get him out as early as possible. After that, you have to wait an additional turn (assuming you hit 3 land drops) if you want to activate him.

I would much rather Ritual out Hippy or Hymn, Duress.
Or Sinkhole, Duress. Or pretty much anything.

If he cost 1BB or BBB or something like that, then I would play him in a heartbeat, but you can not easily cast him.


If we went for a blue splash, what would we add to the deck?
Card draw?

[Anarky87]

I think if I added a blue splash, I'd rather just play U/W/b Fish instead. You'd have Confidant, Brainstorm, etc. for draw with Grunt and Avenger as beaters. You could add Duress to the MD, but you'd also get FoW, Stifle, and Mage against combo and Mother of Runes to protect your dudes. It also opens up your mana base more for other decks like Red Death or regular Deadguy to hate on. I don't see it being particularly needed.

And I'm also not much of a fan for the sliver. As has been discussed, his mana cost is prohibitive and he's at the 3cc marker and another 3 to activate, which kinda pushes the overall mana cost of the deck up. Extirpate, though, makes for a very powerful SB card.

[rsaunder]

I think if I added a blue splash, I'd rather just play U/W/b Fish instead. You'd have Confidant, Brainstorm, etc. for draw with Grunt and Avenger as beaters. You could add Duress to the MD, but you'd also get FoW, Stifle, and Mage against combo and Mother of Runes to protect your dudes. It also opens up your mana base more for other decks like Red Death or regular Deadguy to hate on. I don't see it being particularly needed.

And I'm also not much of a fan for the sliver. As has been discussed, his mana cost is prohibitive and he's at the 3cc marker and another 3 to activate, which kinda pushes the overall mana cost of the deck up. Extirpate, though, makes for a very powerful SB card.

Meh, twas merely a thought. Similarly with the U splash. If I were to make the deck 3 colors for any reason, it would be green for deed.

I don't remember if I posted that, but I tried it a while back. Kinda mediocre. Helped the thresh match, hindered the goblins (I never got to cast deed, I was just too bust getting my lands wasted). Obviously sucked against solidarity. Very meh.

[Bane of the Living]

A friend took third place this past sunday with Suppression Field in the maindeck. It added alot of pressure to decks playing fetchlands alongside the rest of the LD. That might be worth more attention.

[Anarky87]

A friend took third place this past sunday with Suppression Field in the maindeck. It added alot of pressure to decks playing fetchlands alongside the rest of the LD. That might be worth more attention.

So then I assume he didn't play Shade (4BB just to pump twice) or Scroll (5) and made his own fetches and Wastes (If he ran any) worse? I'd like to know the exact list before I make any real judgements though.

[Bane of the Living]

He played Serra Avenger and Plague Spitter. No Shade or Scroll. He still played 4 fetches and some amount of Wastelands. Obviously the anti synergy wasnt too much since he took 3rd.

[Anarky87]

He played Serra Avenger and Plague Spitter. No Shade or Scroll. He still played 4 fetches and some amount of Wastelands. Obviously the anti synergy wasnt too much since he took 3rd.

Apparently not too much. Avenger seems ok, since you'll spend most of your first couple turns playing disruption, and Spitter has always been kinda 'meh' in my opinion. Four fetches and I'm gonna guess at least 2 Wastes still seems like a lot of symmetrical splash damage from Field, depending on how many he ran. If you can get the list and post it, I'm sure that'd be great.

[laststepdown]

So I tried this whole Plague Spitter and Serra Avenger thing.
Spitter kills Confidant. Bad idea in my book. Serra Avenger, however, I've actually liked having a 2/2 split with Nantuko Shade. The reasoning behind this is that while Shade's benefit is being castable in early turns, the downfall is once 2 are on the board they become hard to manage. While the Avenger can't be played on the turns you usually go duress-smallpox-hymn, the turn after the hymn she is a cheap fat flier that won't be a thorn in your spine from Bob, and can deal 3 damage while blocking almost every goblin. This also makes 1/3(or so) of your threats white(3 Grunt). Not that CoP:Black is played in every deck or anything, I'm just saying a 3/3 goes a long way in this deck.

One last thing. Jotun Grunt has become a Withered Wretch/Rotting Giant on steriods. I really feel 3 is a must-have.

[DeathwingZERO]

I'd like to also chime in that Spitter with a Mogg Fanatic on the table will also shoot down your Specter, which is the only flying creature you have against them (unless you play Avenger). There would be some nice tricks you could pull with it's going to the graveyard trigger, but I don't think this deck could abuse it properly.

As for the Avenger, how often do you consistently see the WW by turn 4? I remember pages ago that people were very reluctant to have a board sweeper like WoG or Exalted Angel in the deck, and the main agreement was the WW in the casting cost/morph cost was the biggest culprit. My biggest concern is anything that's packing Wasteland would cripple this card from being played, as well as future spells, due to our small white manabase.

And Jotun Grunt is still amazing. With the addition of 3-4 Smallpox, I've never had issues running a minimum of 3 of this guy. I may actually turn him into the heavy hitter of the deck, and run my Shades down to 2, or cut them completely.

I'm also testing Extirpate in the SB now, so if I can get some results in some matches I'll post them. Also, Urborg is such an amazing card that I've decided to look into testing with Wastelands again. I'll see if that destabilizes my manabase at all, I'm considering running 2-3 Urborgs over swamps, just so I can get to them fast without cluttering the hand.

[rsaunder]

So yeah, I too am running 3 MB grunt now, with the third in place of one Hippy. I really like it.

Avenger would be awesome, but Deathwing hit the nail on the head. The WW cc is just too much for the manabase to handle consistantly.

So what's everyone's board looking like after the month or so since this thread has been bumped? Any new tech anyone wants to share?

Mine is, as of right now:
4 plague
3 dystopia
2 chalice of the void
2 pithing needle
2 STP (fine, it seems like a good call as a 2-of right now, shut up)
2 serenity

[laststepdown]

Deathwing: It's not getting 2 white on the table-it's keeping 2 white on the table. An opening hand with Avenger just means you'll probably be getting Scrubland before Swamp with your fetchlands. With only 2 Avengers, it's not so often that you see her to make a hassle to cast. I've also replaced my 2 Godless Shrine back to Tainted Field. For some reason, people don't Wasteland a Tainted Field half the time. I guess something subliminal about Shrine's life payment makes it enticing?

Rsaunder: My creature base has 3 Grunt 3 Specter as well. I think taking out a hyppie gives Dark Ritual it a little more freedom to pound the immediate disruption earlier, where hyppie just seals the deal afterwards. Jotun Grunt lets you shuffle all your Vindicates back into your deck for each fetchland you crack. Even goldfishing he can stick around for 8 damage played turn 3. Plus, he's a beast after that turn 3 Smallpox(potential 6 total cards in graveyards...gotta love it).
As for my board, I will be trying out Suppression Field at our City Champs here(only 2 of them are Legacy Format:/), but with only 2 Shade I think they could be quite potent against a few tough matchups for us. So. I suppose this is my current board:

2 Negator(Iggy/Tide are played here. hmph.)
2 Suppression Field(Above mentioned builds are running 8 fetchlands...and I can't afford Chains of Meph quite yet. This is probably going to make the PC shift to Extirpate.)
3 Dystopia(you know.)
4 Plague(All goblins players in Stl are incompetant. I could possibly make this Damnation. I'm wondering if the new white Drop of Honey will work in this slot.)
4 Swords to Plowshares(Eh. Gotta have 'em against good aggro.)

[Cait_Sith]

The white Drop of Honey would quickly eat up your own dudes too. Since the majority of your deck runs 2 power dudes you would have a slight advantage over goblins, but not enough to justify running it over Engineered Plague, which can just lock them down.

Exitrpate: It isn't half as good as people say it is. When you board it in Iggy boards in Xantid Swarm and Solidarity/Spring Tide boards in skill, making it a rather weak card. I would stick with the suppression fields since they come online earlier and wouldn't hurt you all that much.

[Anarky87]

Exitrpate: It isn't half as good as people say it is. When you board it in Iggy boards in Xantid Swarm

Which they then would have to find right away, play, and hope it doesn't die. And who's to say you haven't Duressed/Hymn'd something vital away that you can just Extirpate in response?


and Solidarity/Spring Tide boards in skill, making it a rather weak card. I would stick with the suppression fields since they come online earlier and wouldn't hurt you all that much.

I'm not even sure I'd bring it in against Solidarity. After playing Red Death (And this doesn't pertain to B/w, so I apologize), I'm not entirely sure that burn isn't just better. It doesn't really do a whole lote against them unless you can make them discard something useful, like Wish, and follow it up with Extirpate.

Is the card over-hyped? Yes, very much. Is it still a very powerful card in the perfect color? Absolutely. It fits right into black's function in Legacy, and I see no reason not to run some amount in your board.

[rsaunder]

Ooh, I like periphery nodes in the board here, it looks like a dystopia for all creature based decks a little, doesn't it?

When PC shifts in, I'm definitely fitting 2/3 nodes and 2/3 extripate in the board where chalice and swords are right now.

[laststepdown]

The way I look at it, Jotun Grunt would be probably the last creature to die, given a creature's dieing for each Node to fill is c. upkeep, and he's 4/4. It's completely untested though. As for Extirpate, yes, I'm sure it's all hype if you're not running discard...in Deadguy...something as simple as stealing all your Flooded Strands can be huge. Wait a second, you can't FoW it? ;)

[The Lotus Eater]

I know a lot of people don't like Serra's Avenger because of the double white in the casting cost, so what about Mystic Zealot (3W). It comes down the same turn as the avenger and with all of the sorceries, wastelands, and fetchlands in the deck most of the time it's a 3/5 flyer. Even when you don't have threshold he's still out of bolt range, unlike Serra's Avenger. The only disadvantages are that it costs four, so you can't disrupt and cast it on your fourth turn, it's not always flying, and it doesn't have vigilance. But the ability to block Werebears, Chimeric Idols, Moongoose, and more I think might even it out.

[laststepdown]

Because Vigilance is that sick. Avenger also allows you to cast 2 spells on turn 4 without a dark rit.

Reason 3? http://ww2.wizards.com/gatherer/CardDetails.aspx?&id=83771

[rsaunder]

Because Vigilance is that sick. Avenger also allows you to cast 2 spells on turn 4 without a dark rit.

Reason 3? http://ww2.wizards.com/gatherer/CardDetails.aspx?&id=83771There's also a little anti-synergy with jotun grunt, which is a problem.

[laststepdown]

Wait, how so? I'm not saying to take out Dark Rit my any means. I'm just saying with 4 land out, Avenger lets you cast it and Sinkhole on the same turn, where a 4 cmc creature wouldn't. This isn't the case if you have Dark Ritual in your hand, obviously. I just really don't understand the anti-synergy.

EDIT: I'm a moron.

[Anarky87]

I think he's referring to Grunt and Zealot's anti-synergy, not Grunt and Avenger.

[laststepdown]

"Well, we don't have Dance Dance Revolution here, so, you're dumb."

I totally didn't make the connection.
"Wow, where do you get your weed?"
"From you, Dante."
"Oh yeah! What's up!"

Regardless, I'm taking either this or Iggy with me to the 2 City Champs here...I'm leaning towards this since I have all the cards. I'll let you know how that goes.

[rsaunder]

I'm really tired of not T8ing with this damn deck. 11th at the GAGG :mad:

I'm not going to write a real report this time, because, well, it doesn't diserve it, but I'll toss out a couple things about the day.

The losses in my 4-2 record yesterday came from AS and goblins (the 3c AS and Rw goblins that T8'd). I was about 1 dystopia from pulling out game 3 against AS (although to be fair, he was probably 1 jitte away from me being completely SOL), which sort of bothered me. It's really odd to me how difficult that matchup is, be prepared to board for it with at least dystopias and needles for jitte. Against goblins, you really can't be scared of the off chance of disenchant in the post-board games. Get your hate out there. I played the tempo game game 2 against Rw and lost horribly to topdeck lands. Looking back, I would have won if I had gone more creature control.

Changes to my list as of now: -2 caball therapy (the only thing in the deck I was unhappy with), +1 duress, +1 smallpox (the MVP all day).

The SB was excellent. I'm really looking forward to periphery nodes becoming legal, to replace STP (which, as a 2-of was pulling its weight quite well, though). I don't really know if I would use extripate if it was legal, though. It just doesn't do that much for your problem matchups. Even though chalice seems sub-par, it's so good against both thresh and all sorts of combo that at this point, I don't think I would cut it.

If you guys need anything elaborated on, ask me, and I'll be happy to help. For right now, though, I'm going back to bed.

[hagar852]

I know what you mean... I also failed to make top4 at our local tourney on saturday. I lost to a random mono green deck with untargetable creatures and a MD sword of light and shadow.

post sideboard I draw NONE of my answers and lose easily again without a fight.

I am about to give up on this deck.. blah..

[Windux]

Since your'e going to go the aggroway here is my list, I played to the 2nd place at the monthly german event Iserlohn:

3 Black Knight
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Dark Confidant
4 Dark Ritual
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
3 Hypnotic Specter
2 Jötun Grunt
3 Nantuko Shade
4 Sinkhole
3 Swords to Plowshares
4 Vindicate
1 Godless Shrine
4 Scrubland
9 Swamp
4 Wasteland

SB:
3 Chains of Mephistopheles
4 Dystopia
4 Engineered Plague
1 Swords to Plowshares
3 Withered Wretch

Black Knight is just SICK.
It's a house against Goblins, AngelStompy and Fish.
It prevents the removal StoP, blocks EACH 2/2 to death and is unfightable by Grunts.
I Dislike Avenger in this deck, because you don't want to fetch 2 Scrublands.
Just 1 if you need it and that's not very often.

Dystopia is a House against Fish and NQG. Against Combo and NQG you can board the Chains (Fish don't have enough Cantrips to play it effectiv)

[Hummingbird TG]

What I posted on Starcity forums:

With the printing of Porphyry Nodes, from what I've seen, deadguy sideboards have the following: Serenity, Pithing Needle, Porphyry Nodes, Dystopia and Engineered Plague. Well, whatd'ya know...I see a lot of enchantments and artifacts, no?

I don't know if this has been tried before, but now my Sideboard for Deadguy looks somewhat like this:

4 Enlightened Tutor
3 Engineered Plague
1 Jotun Grunt
2 Dystopia
1 Pithing Needle
1 Porphyry Nodes
1 Serenity
1 Phyrexian Negator
1 Umezawa's Jitte

Jitte can be such a bomb sometimes, yet we don't run enough creatures. If we have it as a one-off tutorable, though...(I always end up losing the Goblins matchup)

So, what do you guys think?

[laststepdown]

How odd. On the way back from the tournament this weekend we came up with a similar idea-but it had Solitary Confinement w/Sword of Fire and Ice, and Phyrexian Totem instead of a single Negator. We didn't test it at all...seems solid. Hummingbird, you potentially could have Engineered Explosives as well as Crawlspace to deal with Goblins, with an Enlightened Tutor sideboard...I'm just saying, perhaps this idea should be looked into further, to pick out the best choices of the available slots.

[Tao]

How odd. On the way back from the tournament this weekend we came up with a similar idea-but it had Solitary Confinement w/Sword of Fire and Ice

Confinement is dead w/o sword, so that plan seems not reliable.


Hummingbird, you potentially could have Engineered Explosives as well as Crawlspace to deal with Goblins, with an Enlightened Tutor sideboard...

How is any of these cards better than ENGINEERED PLAGUE???



I'm just saying, perhaps this idea should be looked into further, to pick out the best choices of the available slots.

I agree.
But the board looks quite good right now except the single Negator. Other options would be Tormods Crypt, Pithing Needle, Rule of Law and Sphere of Law.

[Alfred]

About Black Knight, aren't the pumpknights better? Both are obviously immune to StP, and while Black Knight is better the first turn you play it against Goblins, pumpknights are better against Threshold, because they have the ability to trump every creature except the flying fat in combat. If StP is Threshold's only answer to creatures, then it gets much harder for them to overcome it later in the game. They also turn land drops into fuel.

I suppose that having to pay for First Strike is a point against pumpknights, but other than that, I think that they might have a slight edge in a random metagame.

[rsaunder]

The enlightened tutor SB is interesting, but imo, highly unpractical. Hitting a tutor costs you not only a turn of tempo in the early game, but creates card disadvantage. I've said it before about extirpate, cards that have no effect on the game state THIS TURN have almost no place in the deck. I'd also worry a little bit about showing the other deck that hate you just ripped off the top. The only reason this would be a plausabe option would be for the essentially 8 e. plague effects, although even that seems somewhat weak to me requiring you to have out a white producing non-basic on turn 1 or 2, and therfore not hitting 3 mana on turn 3 if they have a waste for it.


Prove me wrong guys, it'd be nice if this worked.

[Hummingbird TG]

Can't you EOT the hate card turn 2, then play it turn 3? Therefore from when they see it till it hits play, they don't have an untap phase to deal with it...This also allows you to cheat on sideboard space, and also hit the crucial 2 engineered plagues to sweep Goblin's board, or a Jitte to finish them off with a Plague on the board...

[rsaunder]

Even if we're talking about a perfect setup, with a sac-land to fetch a white source at EOT2, and an e-tutor in hand, that still assumes they tapped that wasteland, and it also means that you did absolutely nothing relevant with your turn 2. Don't get me wrong, it's OK, it just doesn't justify convoluting your SB to that extent.

[Hummingbird TG]

Maybe I'm wrong, but don't the enchantments in the board, hosers to certain deck types, just 'win' when they resolve(if you play correctly)? Why not increase chances to draw into them? Certainly giving up a turn wouldn't be too much to pay for your 'win now'?

[sammiel]

because card disadvantage is bad?

Black Knights are better than pump-knights because they don't die to mogg fanatic or a single goblin gempalm cycling, or lava dart, or darkblast, etc.

[laststepdown]

because card disadvantage is bad?

Black Knights are better than pump-knights because they don't die to mogg fanatic or a single goblin gempalm cycling, or lava dart, or darkblast, etc.

Face it. No one around you plays Darkblast correctly.

Also, when I was discussing the E Tutor sideboard with my friend, we were joking. It sucks.

[rsaunder]

My most recent list, because I've had 3 people request it this week. Not that I mind it, but I'm getting tired of typing it up ^_^

4 dark confident
3 hypnotic spectre
3 nantuko shade
3 jotun grunt

4 hymn to tourach
4 sinkhole
4 vindicate
4 duress
3 smallpox
2 cursed scroll

4 dark ritual
4 scrubland
4 bloodstained mire
2 polluted delta
4 wasteland
1 tomb of urami
7 swamp

SB:
4 e. plague
3 dystopia
3 extirpate
3 periphory nodes
2 serenity

Also, I missed Windux's post a while back. I'm curious about how chains of meph worked out for you. I tried them a while back and the SUCKED (I own 4, so no budget issues, don't bring that up here). They did almost nothing against gro, letting them just discard otherwise dead stuff (daze late game/other cantrips/whatever). The only decks that I found it didn't suck against were solidarity and rifter, both of which I can beat quite handily and don't require thier own specific hate.

I like black knight as a metagame decision, but I feel cursed scroll is a better overall card in the matchups and situations that knight can be good in (save perhaps chumping opposing grunts/serra avatars/what have you).

[Zilla]

I like black knight as a metagame decision, but I feel cursed scroll is a better overall card in the matchups and situations that knight can be good in (save perhaps chumping opposing grunts/serra avatars/what have you).
Black Knight doesn't fly. And where you said Avatars I assume you mean Avengers, which do fly. Just clarifying is all. I'd say Black Knight is pretty subpar outside of the Boros Deck Wins/Angel Stompy matchups.

[Pootank]

SB:
4 e. plague
3 dystopia
3 extirpate
3 periphory nodes
2 serenity


Cheers for the list, quick question about the sb.

Isn't the 4 e. plague 3 Dystopia 3 Periphory Nodes kinda over kill against creature decks>?

Wouldn't Swords be better additional kill than nodes, having plague for gobos and dystopia for thresh and fish?

I had also been thinking about how useful extipate would be, but haven't had much time to test, what match do you use them against (I assume Iggy pop, TES and Hightide) and what do you side out?

Cheers Pootank

[Nihil Credo]

I tried Porphyry Nodes in several Standard decks and they sucked ass. A lot. The new wording that prevents abuse with untargetable creatures makes them incredibly ineffective. I have a hard time believing they work that well in Legacy. How are you finding them to be?

[No_Life_No_Future]

I dont think that it targets.

7/15/2006 This card's ability is not targeted, so even untargetable creatures or those with Protection can be chosen.

That is striaght from the gatherer. Did it change since then?

[rsaunder]

If they target, they suck, but as far as I know (and everyone who I've spoken to/played against appears to know) they don't target.

I haven't had as much experience with them as I'd like, but in the times they've been on the field, they end up playing a reasonable amount like a slightly weaker dystopia. I can just drop one, and have it play crowd controll while I rip their hand and mana apart. Like I said, I'm not 100% sold yet due to lack of real playtime, but they seem quite promising. And I'm to retarted to remember their name, which kinda sucks.

EDIT: A few posts on the last page I didn't see.

@Zilla: I meant serra avatar. yeah, that one from saga with power and toughness equal to your life total. It was mostly an example of a fat white creature :tongue:

@Pootank: I don't think they're overkill because they tend to come in against different creature decks. Plague is almost solely there for goblins and Dystopia is mostly there for thresh, although it does tend to hit a bajillion other things. Nodes was mostly as a compliment to those two, which I still seemed to be having slight troubles with. As far as extirpate goes, I've had a similar amount of experience with it as nodes, but similarly, I like what I see. Generally scrolls and a smallpox/something else go out for them against combo, just the weakest cards in the matchup. It's a strong play to nab solidarity's tides or meditates and it's just mean to grab IGGY's tendrils, as most builds run no backup.


Cheers!

[Hummingbird TG]

Don't you find Porphyry nodes one turn too slow? You can't play it when there are no creatures, and from when you play it, it takes one more turn to work... Therefore you still take the damage at least once, making it hard to stabilize using Nodes on lower life...

Furthermore, unlike Swords, it doesn't answer t1 Lackey...

[frogboy]

Furthermore, unlike Swords, it doesn't answer t1 Lackey...

I would bet turn one Nodes does just fine against the Lackey draw unless they get SGC into play.

[Nihil Credo]

The problem was exactly that it doesn't target, so I couldn't keep it around forever by using pro-White creatures. At best, they worked as kind of a double Reciprocate - they'd kill a couple of creatures, but at the cost of letting them swing once or twice before dying. The exception was when I had Sacred Mesa in play (remember, it was Standard), which was quite an insane combo, if very mana-intensive.

The upside with the new wording is that it can kill Mongoose, but I strongly doubt you'd bring it in against Threshold (whose creatures are often bigger than yours).

[Hummingbird TG]

So, what's the verdict on Porphyry Nodes? Personally, with a control deck that tends to take so much damage, I'd prefer my removal to save me a few points of life instead of forcing me to take the damage first...

[rsaunder]

Just to put this into perspective, do we play dystopia? Doesn't dystopia take a few turns to kill a couple creatures? Doesn't dystopia cause us to take 6+ points of damage?

I like nodes not because it's massive or fast creature removal, but because it's cheap to cast and you can do other stuff while it's doing its job. It doesn't cause your opponent to gain life, and can create card advantage if you play it carefully.

[Hummingbird TG]

Dystopia can do its job before the upkeep after the turn you play it, as it takes effect on your opponent's turn. In other words, it can destroy a creature for 1BB and no life loss, although you're not going to do that often. Also, it sweeps the opponent's board before Nodes does(saving you a turn of combat damage, which could be more than Dystopia's upkeep cost).

EDIT:Also, when I draw Nodes later in the game when I'm out of gas, I generally wish it were a Swords...

[Hummingbird TG]

Is Sphere of Law playable here? It seems if you get it out early(on the back of the omnipotent Dark Ritual), Mono R Gobbos would have a tough time getting rid of it(Anarchy costs 4 on no accel, and can be Duressed or Hymned), and splash Gobbos would have to waste Disenchants on it, which wouldn't be directed to your Plagues...Also solves the problem of Burn(if any), and the time Sphere buys you gives you plenty to drop a Shade or Grunt and start winning...
Sorry if this has been discussed before...

[Hanni]

This is the list I've been playing on MWS and I've been pretty happy with it so far:

B/w Deadguy

Lands (21)
4 Polluted Delta
3 Bloodstained Mire
4 Scrubland
6 Swamp
4 Wasteland

Creatures (14)
4 Dark Confidant
4 Black Knight
3 Nantuko Shade
3 Jotun Grunt

Spells (25)
4 Dark Ritual
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Sinkhole
3 Phyrexian Arena
4 Swords to Plowshares
2 Vindicate

Sideboard (15)
4 Engineered Plague
3 Dystopia
2 Gerrard's Verdict
2 Vindicate
2 Pithing Needle
2 Umezawa's Jitte

I'll explain some of the weird choices.

I think 21 lands is more than enough without Smallpox... the deck has 4 Rituals and draw power to support it.

I realize I run no Specter. I don't like Specter. Evasion is great and so is random discard, but I don't like the fact that I'm paying 3cc for a 2/2 guy.

Black Knight is extremely strong. Being a 2/2 for 2cc isn't spectacular but the abilities are amazing. First strike stack blocking is great vs any midrange aggro, like Thresh. It's also nice that it dodges StP, since even 14 threats is still threat-light. It also takes down Goblin Piledriver pretty nicely. With the Jitte slapped on it postboard, it can get pretty strong.

I like the 4/2 StP/Vindicate split. StP is an answer to a 1st turn Lackey and fits much better into the curve early game. Reversing the split is an option, I'm not sure yet. I don't really think I need more than 2 MD answers to artifacts/enchantments though, and I don't think I need additionals to compliment the LD package due to my draw package.

Phyrexian Arena rounds the deck out. This is probably the biggest eyesore in my list to most people. 1BB for something that doesn't even do anything the turn it's cast. However, once it starts generating card advantage, it gives me more removal, LD, and threats. It's my late game piece, since B/w Deadguy often has problems in topdeck mode when the game goes late. 1st turn Ritual into Arena gives me such a huge advantage against just about everything. It's also harder to remove than Confidant, which likes to die very easily. I haven't had many issues with the life loss yet but I haven't played enough to really say for sure. I like what it does for the deck though.

As far as my sideboard goes, it's a work in progress. Plague and Dystopia handles Goblins and Thresh (and Fish/AS) respectively. Veridct gives me more discard vs combo, Vindicate gives me more permanent removal if needed, and Umezawa's Jitte handles small aggro hordes (Goblins) or larger midrange aggro. I like Pithing Needle because it not only answers randomness, it makes LD effective vs Goblins (Vindicate can deal with Vial too, but Needle shuts down all Needle's and lets me direct Vindicates elsewhere).

My build isn't fine-tuned yet by any means but I think some of the ideas deserve a good bit of testing before dismissing them (like Black Knight and Phyrexian Arena).

[Hummingbird TG]

IMO, a turn 1 Phyrexian Arena would mean your turn 1 is not spent to Ritual out some disruption. Especially on the draw, essentially playing something which does nothing but costs a Ritual isn't exactly something you want to be doing, as your opponent may get more threats on the table than you can answer comfortably(especially since you've blown a Ritual to play the Arena, meaning you wouldn't have enoguh mana to disrupt)...

I personally like the idea of running Phyrexian Arena, but probably as only a one or two of for the lategame...

[Hanni]

IMO, a turn 1 Phyrexian Arena would mean your turn 1 is not spent to Ritual out some disruption. Especially on the draw, essentially playing something which does nothing but costs a Ritual isn't exactly something you want to be doing, as your opponent may get more threats on the table than you can answer comfortably(especially since you've blown a Ritual to play the Arena, meaning you wouldn't have enoguh mana to disrupt)...

Well, that is very true, although most decks typically don't do much during the first turn (turn 1 Brainstorm, turn 1 Vial/Lackey, etc). Starting the card advantage engine on turn 2 and beyond means that I get to play sufficient disruption and beats thereafter. It's probable that it's a bad first turn play, whether that being dependant on situation or just in general, and I'd like to do more testing with it.

In the games where I have resolved it during the game, it has helped me greatly. Though the feeling isn't much different than what Confidant does... the only major differences are the consistent 1 damage a turn as opposed to the 0-3 of Confidant, the fact that it hardly ever gets removed, and the fact that it doesn't do anything besides draw me a card.

For the moment, the 3 Arena's have been doing fairly well, although large amounts of testing would need to be done in order to figure out how much it's actually helping as opposed to other options for the slots they hold in the deck. Another factor that needs weighed in is what it's actually doing for problematic or Tier 1 matchups... I could try to be speculative and theorize about this but it's much better to just playtest such instead.

[Hummingbird TG]

Also, about your list, is having only 10 cards that can possibly blow up land enough? Sometimes personally, even on 15 cards which can blow lands up, I find not enough land destruction to actually be more than a temporary distraction for an opponent...

[Drathro]

Also, about your list, is having only 10 cards that can possibly blow up land enough? Sometimes personally, even on 15 cards which can blow lands up, I find not enough land destruction to actually be more than a temporary distraction for an opponent...

The LD in this deck isn't about locking every opponent out of mana, it's about messing with each deck that rides the ragged edge of "just enough land," which, in Legacy, is a lot of decks. This is also the reason that Sinkhole is the most commonly boarded out card in the deck - when you do play against a deck with lots of mana, your dedicated LD becomes fairly ineffective.

That "temporary distraction" you observe is part of the plan to get ahead in card quality (discard spells) and board position (controlling the ground with Shade and out-drawing the opponent with Confidant).

However, I do agree that you should usually run the full set of Vindicates, since they aren't just vanilla LD overload.

[Hummingbird TG]

Ah, point noted, but you have to know that by 'temporary distraction', I meant until my opponent untapped and played another land, because I generally drew only one land destruction effect...The short duration wasn't long enough to capitalize on, yet it would have been different if I had an extra land-blowind effect.

[rsaunder]

I think I don't like arena for the same reason I don't like extirpate in a lot of matchups. It does nothing NOW. It also seems like a uni-tasker, only drawing cards and nothing else, which this deck has avoided very nicely (save perhaps shade). I've also rarely felt starved in the late game with this deck, especially when a 3cc draw spell that generates card advantage starting the third turn after it's cast would've helped. usually I want that sort of digging to grab lands to recover from my own smallpoxes , and arena sounds like a poor way to do it. In fact, I'd rather play top and up the fetch count to 7/8.

[Hummingbird TG]

Uh...pardon the noobish question, but how does this deck answer Mother of Runes maindeck? It seems that one would roll over and die to that thing, unless having an already dominant board position...

[Cait_Sith]

Mother of Runes can do nothing against Hippy without a flier, Plague, or Cursed Scroll. Plus, if they tap her to protect something else, you can Vindicate her.

[Hummingbird TG]

Yea, but about the Hyppie, Angel Stompy and Fish generally have faster clocks than us...I don't see how racing them gives us even a chance...

Also, I don't run Plague maindecked, and Cursed Scroll seems too slow to beat Angel Stompy's clock...

And, when they tap Mom to protect something else, they're probably trading the Mom for 2 cards...a creature of mine which blocked their creature protected, and the Vindicate, or 2 Vindicates... Sounds pretty good for them, no?

[Cait_Sith]

Scroll doesn't need to race. Scroll can just up and kill the Mother of Runes. She cannot give protection from artifacts. Once she is out of the way you can Vindicate/Darkblast/Swords to Plowshares to your hearts content.

Nitpick: Its not "us" its "you" (technically "me" when you are talking).

[Hummingbird TG]

I meant that the Scroll may not be enough to keep up with the clock of Angel Stompy; by the time the Mother of Runes dies, I may be on a low enough life for them to kill easily before I can finish scrolling their critters.

[Drathro]

I'm under the impression that AS with Mother of Runes is actually fairly difficult for B/W Confidant, pre-sideboard, and still difficult post-sideboard.

Sometimes it depends a little on how the opponent values their creatures. For example, B/W-C frequently has a card in hand that can kill an un-hasted Mother of Runes. So, if the AS opponent decides to speed out the MoR first turn, B/W can toast it. If the AS player first baits out removal with another creature (or, worse yet, they start with two MoRs), then yes, it becomes a rather difficult game for you. Even if you take out the first one, you can't afford to hold back on the removal on the chance anymore show up, so a top-decked Mother of Runes can be just as bad for you.

It's a little better match-up post-sideboard, when you bring in the non-targeted and colorless creature sanctions. Anyone who has ever played White or Green against me in a tournament knows that I think Dystopia (http://ww2.wizards.com/gatherer/CardDetails.aspx?name=Dystopia) is the bee's knees.

[rsaunder]

Scroll is one of the best cards in the deck against AS in my experience. Smallpox may be stronger in some situations, but scroll has won me many games against AS (and all sorts of other random aggro, for that matter) out of pure attrition advantage. Oh yeah, and you ought to be doing other stuff while scrolling their critters, like keeping your hand empty by playing your own creatures/whatever.

Dystopia is some good against AS I hear.

[JnC]

Hey Rsaunder,

I did give your latest published build a whirl. Here's some constructive feedback...

Lands: I have been testing some rogue versions of this deck that runs 12 lands capable of B&W and no fetches. When I play your mana base, I feel like a couple of cylinders are missing... it's not smooth. With your four sources of B&W and the 6 fetches there were many times I couldn't play Vindicates or Grunts. You may want to add Godless Shrines to the mix. Timing the fetch properly can eliminate the drawbacks.

Smallpox: I'm encountering the same difficulties with this card that I experienced in Extended. You have to either drop this card very early when you have some extra land. Or very late as a final crippling blow when the game is nearly decided anyway. The problem is that 90% of the time when I draw this card, it's between those two extremes. ;) And there's nothing that has any synergy with Smallpox (i.e. like Smallpox+Flagstones). I think Diabolic Edict (or StP) would be better here.

Some rogue concepts I'm exploring (not all in the same deck):
Firestorm (great synergy with all the cards you draw from Confidant. Provides an alternative win condition.)
Suppression Field (hoses about half the field straight up. Have to lose the Shades and fetchlands, and demote Cursed Scroll to a SB swap strategy.)
Unearth (The weakest of the three. Before you laugh, think of it as a Dark Ritual in reverse. Plus it cycles.)

[Hummingbird TG]

How well would Masticore work in Deadguy's SB? He sweeps up after Goblins after a plague, if a fast clock, and, if you survive till then, tears down random aggro...Only problem is that he gangs up with Bob to kill you...and is hard to cast w/o Rit...

[Hummingbird TG]

Also, without Engineered Plague MD, how do we win Gobbos pre-board, save for locking him out of land? Or do we just scoop?

[Hummingbird TG]

Since losing to Goblins tons of times pre-board, I decided to re-hash my version of Deadguy Ale...presenting

Deadguy Ale-now much more like Sui-Black!

//Land (22)

//Creatures (16)

3 Carnophage
4 Dark Confidant
4 Jotun Grunt
3 Nantuko Shade
3 Hypnotic Specter

//Others (22)

2 Umezawa's Fork of Doom
4 Dark Ritual
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Sinkhole
4 Vindicate


I disposed of the Smallpoxes. They're powerful, but very situational. They can devastate the board, but often I found I prefer to have anything else in my deck in my hand when smallpox is dead in hand... Without cards I actually WANT to discard except for excess lands and other Smallpoxes, and all my card advantage coming from critters(other than Hymn), why am I running this? Perhaps I just suck at magic...

-3 Smallpox, +3 Carnophage

Unlike Smallpox, Carnophage answers turn 1 lackey even on the draw. And, unlike StoP, it doesn't cost White. Oh, did I mention? It makes room in your deck for a less specific Gobbos hoser than Engineered Plague. Certainly, Jitte isn't a 'no questions asked' answer to Gobbos, as it requires creatures to work...But, it works in the Thresh matchu, makes Dark Confidant better by negating the life-loss, and wins games as a comeback(this deck can struggle into the lategame and need to topdeck something to win, and the lack of real POWER in the deck means Jitte gives it additional oomph). Therefore:

- 2 Cursed Scroll, + 2 Jitte

Jitte kills creatures like Cursed Scroll does. Jitte needs you to have creatures. Cursed Scroll needs you to have mana and no dead cards in hand. But Cursed Scroll is a slower clock AND doesn't gain you life. With 16 creatures, why play Scroll when you have a broken fork? Oh, they both get past Mother of Runes too. Just that Jitte helps against Goose while Scroll doesn't.

Any comments/suggestions/anything on my list? Advice is mcuh appreciated!

[Hanni]

I decided you guys were right about Phyrexian Arena and it just isn't very good in this deck. I think it would be really good in a mono black control deck but I just don't think this deck can afford the tempo loss.

However, I do like the more aggro strategy that Hummingbird suggested. It seems like it would give a better matchup against the Big 3.

B/w Sui

Lands (21)
4 Polluted Delta
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Scrubland
5 Swamp
4 Wasteland

Creatures (17)
3 Carnophage
4 Dark Confidant
4 Black Knight
3 Nantuko Shade
3 Jotun Grunt

Spells (22)
4 Dark Ritual
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Sinkhole
4 Vindicate
2 Umezawa's Jitte

[rsaunder]

Hey Rsaunder,

I did give your latest published build a whirl. Here's some constructive feedback...

Lands: I have been testing some rogue versions of this deck that runs 12 lands capable of B&W and no fetches. When I play your mana base, I feel like a couple of cylinders are missing... it's not smooth. With your four sources of B&W and the 6 fetches there were many times I couldn't play Vindicates or Grunts. You may want to add Godless Shrines to the mix. Timing the fetch properly can eliminate the drawbacks.

Smallpox: I'm encountering the same difficulties with this card that I experienced in Extended. You have to either drop this card very early when you have some extra land. Or very late as a final crippling blow when the game is nearly decided anyway. The problem is that 90% of the time when I draw this card, it's between those two extremes. ;) And there's nothing that has any synergy with Smallpox (i.e. like Smallpox+Flagstones). I think Diabolic Edict (or StP) would be better here.

Some rogue concepts I'm exploring (not all in the same deck):
Firestorm (great synergy with all the cards you draw from Confidant. Provides an alternative win condition.)
Suppression Field (hoses about half the field straight up. Have to lose the Shades and fetchlands, and demote Cursed Scroll to a SB swap strategy.)
Unearth (The weakest of the three. Before you laugh, think of it as a Dark Ritual in reverse. Plus it cycles.)Well thanks, I always appreciate the feedback:tongue:

I don't think I've ever noticed the color fixing issue outside of just a few games here or there, but you're not the first person whose mentioned that as a problem with the deck. If you're serious about it, I'd suggest cutting a couple swamps and 2 fetches for some other W producers, to cut down on the life loss and mono-colored sources. I haven't done this myself because, like I said, the color problem hasn't struck me as much of an issue, and because of wasteland. I don't normally end up needing more than 1 white source every game (generally it'll stick around at least long enough for a vindicate or two and a grunt), and with the reasonably shaky manabase with smallpox, I can't afford losing a land most times.

@Smallpox: I've been tooling around with the balance of them in the deck from 0 to 4 MB, and I've gotta say that generally, they're an MVP. It's all about playing them when it's adventagous to you. As a final card to take out that threat they were putting all of their hopes in and that last land, taking out that first turn lackey+mountain. It's one of those cards that I think how you play it has more effect on the game state and its usefulness in the deck than essentially any other card. It's all about making sure you can recover after it's played. Just curious, were you mostly casting it early game, or after you'd exploited most of your other options?

@Suppression field: Nah, losing shade, fetches, scroll and wasteland is just too much.

@Firestorm: Red splash?

@Unearth: Meh. So so. Rather have it be more disruption but whatever.

@Hummingbird: Edit features ROCK.

@Hanni: I'm still really not all that convinced that black knight is so teh goods. Has he been working for you?

[Seraphim]

I have played this deck for a while. I have posted several times on other sites about this deck and I think that the people on this forum are heading closer to the right direction.

While smallpox is a great card, it doesn't fit this deck's strategy. I would like to take this a step further. In most of my games in testing with a configuration of 4 sinkhole 4 vindicate, I want to end up doing something pretty close to the following:

turn 1 duress / dark rit out hippy
turn 2 sinkhole
turn 3 vindicate a creature by tapping wasteland

Wow...this appears to be an amazing start! Most opening hands do not end up playing out like this. The times they do, though, are the times we don't just win, we win big. If we change out the cards used, I think that you may see the nuance I am hoping should be apparent. My suggestion: -4 sinkhole, +4 swords to plowshares.

Here is why: Sinkhole almost always only wants to be played when you have a creature already on the board. Further, sinkhole forces you to want to have double black on the second turn. Not that this is necessarily a problem considering hymn to tourach and nantuko shade, but I think that having yet another double black 2cc card forces you to mulligan hands that have only 1 black mana source. Its bad enough that nantuko shade is extremely color-intensive, sinkhole intensifies color problems in decks running wasteland.

Two more rants about how bad sinkhole is in the maindeck: 1) Swords to Plowshares answers turn 1 Goblin Lackey. Sinkhole is horrible against good goblin draws because it does not get back some of the tempo / board control that goblins gains in its first 2 turns. 2) Sinkhole is bad against threshold and fish until after you have duressed them. Daze is an absolute nightmare for that card.


The decklist that I played at Gencon last year is probably just as good now as it was then with 3 changes (-2 withered wretch, -1 swamp, -1 fetchland, +2 jotun grunt, +1 Urgmoth, Tomb of Yawgmoth, +1 Flagstones of Trokair):

4 Dark Confidant
3 Hypnotic Specter
3 Nantuko Shade
2 Jotun Grunt (in place of withered wretch)

4 Vindicate
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
2 Cursed Scroll
2 Sword of Fire and Ice
4 Dark Ritual
3 Engineered Plague
3 Swords to Plowshares

4 Wasteland
3 Bloodstained Mire
2 Polluted Delta
4 Scrubland
1 Flagstones of Trokair (in place of fetchland)
1 Urgmoth, Tomb of Yawgmoth (in place of swamp)
1 Volrath's Stronghold
5 Swamp

sb:
4 Dystopia
1 Engineered Plague
4 Sinkhole
2 Darkblast
2 Sword of Light and Shadow
2 Disenchant

Why the Volrath's Stronghold? It answers lategame problems of running out of steam. A fresh nantuko shade or jotun grunt is amazing at locking out games.

Why the Flagstones? I have not encountered a player that will wasteland a Flagstones unless they have a LftL in hand or a Crucible on the board. This gives you one extra white source that isn't nuked with wasteland on sight.

Why the Urgmoth, Tomb of Yawgmoth? Adding these other 2 non-black mana sources furthers the need for some sort of mass mana-fixer. Being able to tap a wasteland for black mana has proven very useful in many situations.

Why the 3 engineered plagues in the maindeck? Goblins is that important. Engineered Plague serves as decent removal against many of the top decks (slivers are actually getting played in the online meta, unthresholed creatures die, mother of runes, couples well with cursed scroll to take down x/3s, etc...). I really don't understand why people say that engineered plague is a bad card. No, it is not as effective as some of the other cards in the environment at handling non-tribal creatures, but it is the only way to ensure that this deck beats goblins consistently.

I am open to comments and critcisms. Let me know if you think I am of my rocker, too (just do it politely). I think that this deck can use some agro elements, but I would be very wary of running jitte over the swords due to the toughness of the creatures in this deck being soo low.


Edit:
@Hummingbird - Masticore, while being very slow to start, could be amazing in this deck against some of its worst matchups (red sligh and other weenie strategies). It could merit inclusion of maindeck engineered plague, but that is something that should be severely scrutinized and tested. I think that a creature such as that would either significantly help the case of maindeck jitte or hurt it, I doubt there is much room in between.

[Hummingbird TG]

Whew, this thread isn't dead!

Anyway, just a few questions, if any of you don't mind answering:

-Where can I find a primer for B/w Deadguy other than Chris Pikula's Philadelphia report?

-As B/w Disruption and U/W/b Fish basically plan to disrupt the opponent, what are their primary differences? Which would you prefer to play if you were going to Colombus? From what I gather, Fish is more of Thresh, with 'free' countermagic to disrupt and a ton of cantrips, but what is Confidant similar to?

-Finally, is it wise to turn the deck slightly more aggressive? How?

Thanks in advance!

EDIT

@-Seraphim:

I find that adding more white into the maindeck makes us more vulnerable to Wastelands, and more dead cards against Control and Combo are never good. The original Confidant list has all non-land cards other than 2 capable of doing multiple things, unlike your 6 dedicated creature removal slots. In short, i think Swords shouldnt be main...

[Seraphim]

Whew, this thread isn't dead!

Anyway, just a few questions, if any of you don't mind answering:

-Where can I find a primer for B/w Deadguy other than Chris Pikula's Philadelphia report?

-As B/w Disruption and U/W/b Fish basically plan to disrupt the opponent, what are their primary differences? Which would you prefer to play if you were going to Colombus? From what I gather, Fish is more of Thresh, with 'free' countermagic to disrupt and a ton of cantrips, but what is Confidant similar to?

-Finally, is it wise to turn the deck slightly more aggressive? How?

Thanks in advance!

EDIT

@-Seraphim:

I find that adding more white into the maindeck makes us more vulnerable to Wastelands, and more dead cards against Control and Combo are never good. The original Confidant list has all non-land cards other than 2 capable of doing multiple things, unlike your 6 dedicated creature removal slots. In short, i think Swords shouldnt be main...


I usually find the following to be true when playing against control:
You play out a lot of disruption and play a couple threats. They answer by removing those threats before they die. You play some more disrution and play out a top-decked threat. They scrable to kill it or play their "finisher." Adding Swords to Plowshares in the place of sinkhole in this equation means that you can nullify their "finisher" and keep swinging through. I've always found that sinkhole is a win-more card or more particularly, a nail in the coffin type card when it is good.

The problem is that it doesn't win you games outright against good players. A good player will not keep a 1 land hand and hope it doesn't get blown up. Sure, sinkhole is amazing against that kid with the 90 card deck that keeps a 1-2 land hand. But is it good against the fish / threshold / madness player packing daze? Sinkhole was amazing when manlands were rampant. One of the 2 main decks Pikula was trying to beat when he orginally constructed the deck was landstill. The biggest problem cards for this deck from landstill are the manlands due to their abilty to stop the ground up long enough to let landstill drop a standstill and draw out of their problems. Sinkhole usually kept them down to 1 or no lands and thus unable to operate. Landstill has almost evaporated from the environment, and swords to plowshares is a better card vs the creature heavy meta.

If someone wants to argue that engineered plague should be taken out, I would like to point to Rsaunder's problems with beating goblins and ultimately keeping him out of the top 8.

@Rsaunder - If those smallpoxes had been engineered plagues in your deck, do you think you would have made the top 8?

In response to your request for a guide to play the deck or why to play it over fish...I have posted a bit of a primer on TMD's thread a few months back posing the same questions and ultimately coming to the conclusion that you have to pick what is more important to you: Power or Consistency.

[torgar]

I think Black Knight is a very worthwhile addition to the deck. It dodges the number one form of removal, works well with Jitte, and serves as a surrogate Silver Knight vs Gobs with the the heavy-black mana base. It still blocks and lives versus any Goblin but dies to Incinerator.

I know I've had more problems against the deck when I've seen it with Black Knight personally.

[nitewolf9]

The issue with black knight is that he doesn't put any pressure on the opponent.
He is okay with equipment but the lists I've seen here run too few creatures to really support equipment...plus there is no real draw engine outside of confidant (who simply dies to even mog fanatic against goblins anyway). This deck has the big problem of not having a fast enough way to kill your opponent to take advantage of your disruption. With a deck like red death for example, sinkhole gives it enough tempo for its huge creatures to put them in the red zone. Deadguy gives you enough time to recover and never really abuses the tempo gain from a card like sinkhole.

I really like where Chris Woltereck took this deck when he played it at the dual for duals last October. For reference this was his list:

Creatures
4 Dark Confidant
4 Descendant Of Kiyomaro
4 Jotun Grunt

Instants
4 Funeral Charm
4 Skeletal Scrying
4 Swords To Plowshares

Sorceries
4 Duress
4 Gerrard's Verdict
4 Hymn To Tourach
4 Vindicate

Basic Lands
4 Plains
4 Swamp

Lands
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scrubland

Sideboard:
2 Tormod's Crypt
4 Engineered Plague
2 Rule Of Law
4 Diabolic Edict
3 Kataki, War's Wage

While I don't agree with some of his sideboard choices (namely kataki and rule of law), and skeletal scrying in the main, the deck drops the land D element and goes for a more creature controlling and hand disrupting route. I think that's the direction this deck needs to go in the current metagame. Plus, this deck may benefit from some newer cards as well, namely serra avenger (perhaps). By the way, descendant of kiyomaro is a monster...

Why did this version die down so quickly after it successfully placed? I've played it a few times and I must say I think it's worth working on.

[Seraphim]

While black night "MAY" be better than engineered plague against non-goblin decks, I still feel that there is no better card that you can put in your deck than engineered plague to beat goblins.

That said, it is important to realize that engineered plague is not that bad against creature decks.


Edits:
@nitewolf - One of the primary reasons why I have not put extreme amounts of time into the white heavy build is that it loses the best tool that black has against 1/2 of the metagame (dystopia). Descendent of Kiyomaro is a good card against goblins and other aggro decks, no doubt. It just lacks the ability to shore up matches like angel stompy and fish the way that dystopia does. Further, its 3 casting cost hinders tempo significantly and leaves it open to be dazed much more readily by fish and threshold, two decks where losing dystopia is very bad.

[rsaunder]

Seraphim, I want you to understand what you're arguing. I don't agree with STP in this deck, and if anyone feels the need to read back a few pages, they ought to be able to tell why. That's not what I'm arguing. You're comparing a resource denial card to removal. By removing sinkhole and smallpox from you deck, you've essentially neutered your own mana denial suite. Not that it's a bad thing, the two cards just can't be directly compared as they serve 2 different functions.

In geneseo if I had been playing plague MB over smallpox, I think I still would have lost. Perhaps I would have won the goblins matchup I faced, but at what expense? Smallpox was THE BALLS against my second round opponent (GetSickAndDie) who I should have, in all reality, lost to due to his obscenely low curve and, well, rancor+dark confident. It also let me snag a game from AS round 5, and make it to game 3 where my deck decided to kick me in the nuts. Smallpox was also the main reason I beat Di in the final round of swiss (the other reasons involve neither of us caring, and that stupid comic that was preforming). For me, smallpox is a versatility thing; it's good against all things aggro-control and does double duty as bad combo disruption. Plague isn't bad, but I know for a fact that I would have lost some of those games without the smallpox.


And I think you guys are playing the land destruction part of the deck wrong. Sure locking your opponrnts out of the game is nice, but what sinkhole/wasteland give you is tempo. And the ability to cut off of splash colors making large amounts of your opponent's cards utterly dead is also a big thing if you can play it out right.

@Black Knight: There are matchups other than goblins. And there are better meta choices against goblins. And you need to severly mess with the creature base to run jitte, you just don't run enough as it is.

EDIT: @plague again: Whit3_Ghost pointed out to me a while back that plague is like a meddling mage for 1/1 creatures. And I think that's an awful good way to think about it. I might well play plague MB if a couple slots happened to open up.

[Hanni]

The issue with black knight is that he doesn't put any pressure on the opponent.
He is okay with equipment but the lists I've seen here run too few creatures to really support equipment...plus there is no real draw engine outside of confidant (who simply dies to even mog fanatic against goblins anyway). This deck has the big problem of not having a fast enough way to kill your opponent to take advantage of your disruption. With a deck like red death for example, sinkhole gives it enough tempo for its huge creatures to put them in the red zone. Deadguy gives you enough time to recover and never really abuses the tempo gain from a card like sinkhole.


I think Black Knight is a solid creature. On the defense, it can stack block Werebears. On the offense, it pushes through any x/2. It's also StP-proof, which is pretty nice.

I also don't think that Red Death's beaters are bigger. They both run Nantuko Shade and Jotun Grunt is larger than Rotting Giant. The main creature that B/w doesn't have is Negator, which I have yet to test in B/w. Other than that, I feel that Red Death is more aggressive from the burn where B/w is more controlling from the white elements (graveyard hosing, permanent removal). The fact that the list I presented runs Jitte should make up somewhat for the loss of Negator. I feel that Jitte does alot in the Goblins matchup, aggro matchups (like AS), and even the burn matchup.


@Black Knight: There are matchups other than goblins. And there are better meta choices against goblins. And you need to severly mess with the creature base to run jitte, you just don't run enough as it is.


Black Knight is actually better at Angel Stompy and white Thresh than it is at Goblins. It's not really a meta decision so much that it is an additional aggro guy that's a little durable. It's a pretty good answer to most aggro in general and gets much much better with Jitte.

The list I presented runs 17 creatures, which should be enough to support Jitte... The deck does run 4 Confidant as at least some form of draw. The Jittes also make Confidant a much better aggro creature; without Jitte, Confidant sucks as aggro.

I think Smallpox is fairly bad in this deck because this deck leans more towards aggro/control than control. I also think Engineered Plague is just too narrow to maindeck.


I really like where Chris Woltereck took this deck when he played it at the dual for duals last October. For reference this was his list:

While I do think abandoning LD for discard could very well be a viable strategy, I'm still skeptical on alot of his card choices. I think I'll tinker around with a LD-less version and see how it does.

[rsaunder]

Perhaps it's a playstyle thing with smallpox. 9 times out of 10, I find myself on the defensive, and it fits perfectly with what I'd be doing anyways. Whatever, I have this feeling that I won't be convincing you guys otherwise.

After a little thought, the black knight+jitte plan is interesting, it takes the deck in a different direction than I'm used to but it might be excellent. I'll play it off my list; -2 scroll, -3 smallpox, +2 jitte, +3 knight. I'm not 100% on cutting smallpox, but it'll be an interesting experiment for the deck, which I haven't done ANY innovating with recently.

/At the very least, we might be able to give the deck a new name that eludes to Monty Python in some way.

[nitewolf9]

If you're sold on black knight and smallpox, why not run haakon as well? I've been throwing around a "knight deck" idea for a little bit and maybe it would work with deadguy. This list eschews sinkhole, hymn and ritual, but runs mox diamond/crucible (also great for wastelock as well as smallpox recovery),
cabal therapy (which is nuts here...discard it to smallpox, sac a knight after attacking and bring him back w/ haakon for example), and jitte.

Grunt stays in because you can feed him and he seems good against alot of decks (if he can stick around), and bob stays as well. I like the idea of haakon and smallpox, as you can tell, so I'll throw out a list:

"Bring out your dead" (best I could come up with, sorry):
14 creatures:
3 haakon, stromgald scourge
4 dark confidant
4 black knight
3 jotun grunt

18 spells:
3 umezawa's jitte
4 smallpox
4 vindicate
4 duress
3 cabal therapy

6 artifact:
2 crucible of worlds
4 mox diamond

22 land
4 wasteland
3 urborg, tomb of yawgmoth
3 bloodstained mire
3 polluted delta
5 swamp
4 scrubland

example sideboard:
4 engineered plague
4 swords to plowshares
3 hymn to tourach
3 tormod's crypt

Thoughts? If urborg is in, maybe a couple of factories can be squeezed in as well, but I don't wana push it and wasteland is already amazing with crucible.

[Hummingbird TG]

On Specters and Sinkholes:

About Specter, is it currently general consensus that it be dropped? Both Hanni's and Nitewolf's lists do not run Specter...turn 1 Specter turn 2 Sinkhole is one of the most broken openings we can lead with...I see no reason to not run it.

On Sinkhole, our most broken plays generally involve it. Personally, I wouldn't drop our random wins cards...

@Rsaunder:

Why Black Kngiht over Carnophage? Firsty Strike is relevant at times, but Black Kngiht isn't a one-drop, thus cant block Lackey on the draw, barring Rituals... Once Lackey drops something big, the game is already over for us, no?

[rsaunder]

I honestly hate dropping a first turn spectre unless I feel some kind of lucky. It can just get shot down and two-for-one'd too easily. I usually rit out a hymn+manaburn for 1 over him. IMO, he's amazing, an excellent turn 3 and later creature that just utterly wins games against combo and control and some bad aggro, but he's just too risky a first turn drop.

I'm trying out knights because of their abilities. First strike and pro-white are just excellent with jitte. Carnophage just seems like he doesn't do enough of anything to warrant inclusion. If I were that worried about first turn lackey to devote slots t oit, I'd play funeral charm or darkblast. I may elaborate further, but I have to go to school now, so later!

[Hummingbird TG]

If they kill my turn 1 Specter(if I played it using Rit I probably have some kind of 2-drop more valuable, thus i play the Specter First), then all the better. They have less removal for my two drop, e.g. Confidant.

[bondafong]

Hey..
I'm new in legacy, this forum and this post..
But what i noticed the last couple of pages of reading is that there is a very big focus on the cards the deck should consist of.
Generally theres the deckcore and from there a few cards that differ from person to person/deck to deck. Instead of focusing on these minor tweaks that don't really change the deck alot, but more is personal preferences, i would like to know how you guys play the deck.

Is the drops like:
1. Discard -> LD -> Creatures/
2. LD -> Discard -> Creatures
or
3. Creatures -> LD/Discard

Ofcourse it depends on the situation. But i figure option 3 is the least optimal. This is due to the nature of disruption like discard and LD.

Counters most often improve as the game goes on, and spot/mass removal is fairly steady or improves a little as well.

Opposite the above, LD and discard are best early in the game. To draw a sinkhole turn 10 aren't really optimal.

Where it's difficult is on turn 1, 2 and 3..
Should you drop a sinkhole before a Black Knight or even a Dark Confidant, simply because you have the chance of disrupting your opponent to an extend where he can't come back?

In my opinion this is a very fine line, but i think that approach 1/2 is always better than approach 3.
I think that the way to play this deck is Distruption -> Aggro and not Aggro -> Disruption.

PS: Ofcourse the way you should play the deck depends on the opponents deck and whether on the play or not. For now my thoughts are about the big picture and not very detailed for every type of matchup.

-Bondafong

[Seraphim]

@rsaunder - I tested and tested and tested smallpox and I absolutely love the card. It made a lot of my matchups better, but it did not help the problem I was having with the tier 1 decks. Sure, smallpox is amazing against threshold and fish, but we shouldn't have trouble beating those decks anyways. The real problem decks in testing have been Goblins and TES. If TES drops 10 goblins on turn 2, your only possible answer to that is engineered plague. Smallpox can help you prevent that from happening, but not enough for it to merit inclusion in my opinion.

I do not agree with sinkhole in the maindeck of this deck due to the prevalence of both daze and goblins. I would much rather have swords to plowshares over sinkhole in every small aggro and aggro-control matchup. I have honestly found that wasteland and vindicate have been enough land destruction to color-hose the decks that really need color hosing (combo, survival, goblins 2nd color, etc...). If you were to run a combination of smallpox and stp, I think we could be onto something. But Goblin Lackey is a must answer threat, and smallpox only answers it on the play, when you have double black in your hand, and more likely than not will need to follow that up with another land that produces black so that you can actually do something post disruption. Further, I like the idea of maindecking plague and smallpox. In the matchups where smallpox is good, plague is bad and thus can be discarded to it.


In short, if you are going into random.meta, I would suggest leaving the engineered plagues in the sideboard. If you are going to GP Columbus, I would maindeck the crap out of them (3x in my list).


One final question: what sort of gauntlets of testing are you putting your decks through? How are your matchups? While I like the idea of the black knight and jitte (more aggro version), is it actually helping the deck in some way that the controllish (pikula style) version was failing?


edit: @bodafong
I think that your brief analysis of the fact that this is not the same for each matchup is very important. If I have duress in my hand and dark rit -> hippy that I can do turn one on the play, my choice on which to do is usually up to intuition. That said, duress is usually the right play. On the other hand, if I do not have the duress but I have hymn to tourach in its place, I will probably play the hippy with dark rit and then cast hymn on the 2nd turn. If I'm on the draw and my opponent drops a lackey, I feel the obvious play is to dark rit -> hippy so that you can stop the HUGE tempo loss.

[rsaunder]

If they kill my turn 1 Specter(if I played it using Rit I probably have some kind of 2-drop more valuable, thus i play the Specter First), then all the better. They have less removal for my two drop, e.g. Confidant.
You have no concept for wither tempo, or card advantage in that case. They just traded 2 cards for 1, no matter what 2 drop you may or may not have stick afterwords.

@Seraphim: Interestingly, before the inclusion of grunt/smallpox in my list, thresh was a horribly bad matchup. They ran very well off of 1 land, then counterted whatever was relevant. Truth be told, I've never tried it without 1 or the other, but I haven't really had a reason to recently.

Against TES after game 1, a full compliment of e. plagues come in, as well as everything else in the board that could possibly hurt them, but seriously? 3 MB? It's not like goblins is disgustingly prevalent right now, or that the pre-board TES matchup is that bad or prevalent.

This is all with the non-knight version. My gauntlet right now is whatever I can get games against. I go out of my way to play a lot of solidarity, TES, goblins, thresh, and randomaggro.dec. I also play against aluren, other storm combo, Shotgun Facelift on occasion, other lesser board control decks, landstill, pox, burn, and survival variants. I won't give numbers due to the nature of numbers to be guessed on and fabricated, so I'll give a general good/bad/variants therof.

Thresh: Good
Goblins: Even matchwise. Game 1 is negative but winnable, games 2 and 3 get way better.
Solidarity: Good, even with boarded diverts
TES: In our favor. A little. Be wary of burning wish=>etw.
Aluren: Wicked in our favor. Almost unlosable.
Landstill: Positive. <3 weak manabases.
Survival: Even. Depends a lot on an early smallpox.
SI/Storm: Even to a little in our favor.
Pox: Good
Burn: Winnable negative
Facelift: Negative
Other lesser board controll: Even to good depending on the build.
Iggy Pop: Depends on playskill a lot. I've got a very pos matchup so far.

With Knights, I haven't really had much time to work on it yet ^_^

[Whit3 Ghost]

For the record, I havn't released anything about Facelift to the general public, only to a couple of people at the running GAGG after which I changed the list substantially.

I'm not releasing the exact list, but it's BGR Board Controll in the spirit of Truffle Shuffle/Train Wreck except with a better Goblins and a dedicated aniti-Combo sideboard.

Also, as a general rule against combo, play disruption before creatures. No matter how good dropping specter turn 3 against a slightly disrupted opponent seems, chances are Vindicating their land is a better play.

Also, because it is making my screen stretch like crazy:-Slay

[Hummingbird TG]

You have no concept for wither tempo, or card advantage in that case. They just traded 2 cards for 1, no matter what 2 drop you may or may not have stick afterwords.

Well, giving Dark Confidant a higher chance to stick=a higher chance to win. If uninterrupted, Dark Confidant will give me more card adv. than StP on Hippy...

[rsaunder]

Okay, from a strictly card advantage standpoint (and viewing that casting creatures doesn't count as disadvantage, as they affect your board position) it goes -1 rit -1 hippy +1 opponent's removal. 0 dark confident, first draw +1. This means that on turn 3, you've done nothing except cast creatures and have netted a net of no card advantage. If I were to do this in any tournament against any player who was worth thier salt, I'd be in bad shape for the rest of that game. Creatures are the last thing you want to play generally; maybe that's why you don't like smallpox. The only time I'll hit the rit hippy first turn is if I know exactly what my opponent is playing and I don't fear cheap removal (i.e. solidarity) or if I'm feeling particularly ballsy on the play game 1. There are always other options for your mana that early in the game, turn 1 hippy is almost never the best.

[Hummingbird TG]

Remember that Turn 1 Hyppie, turn 2 Hymn is always good aganst Goblins, and Solidarity, and also against thresh or Fish if they don't have a Swords. You can't always be holding Swords...

[Seraphim]

@rsaunder

I think the primary reason why you are so against turn 1 hippy is the sheer amount of 2 drop land destruction you run. If you want to run 16 land destruction spells (including 2 that sacrifice your own lands and 1 that hits your creature and lands) then hypnotic specter is probably not getting played to its best ability. The entire reason to run hippy is for him to be played turn 1. Hippy + dark rit is a combo that every deck fears. It tells threshold that they must have a StP or FoW or will flatout lose their ability to control the stack for the rest of the game. It wins the combo match outright. It gives control nightmares (even though control doesn't see too much play). Midrange aggro usually has even fewer outs to that start (usually just stp or lightning bolt) since they usually plan to block a lackey instead of outright kill it. I can't really come up with a time when Dark rit -> hippy on the play is a bad play unless i'm playing against mountains.


OK, now for the meat of the conversation I am hoping to start. I compiled a list of cards that I think everyone agrees with in the maindeck and a list of cards that can be arguably included. No, I have not included every black / white card with CC < 3, but I have tried to be pretty liberal in my list.

slots that are auto-includes:

4 dark confidant
3 nantuko shade
4-9 more creatures


4 duress
4 hymn to tourach
4 vindicate

9-17 more nonland spells

4 wasteland
2 bloodstained mire
2 polluted delta
4 scrubland
4 swamp
4 - 7 more lands


cards to be included:
Creatures (4-9):
hypnotic specter
withered wretch
jotun grunt
black knight
black 2/2 bushido guy with prowhite (forgot his name, hand of something)
phyrexian negator
rotting giant

9-17 of the following:
removal:
cursed scroll (absolutely amazing in the more controllish builds)
smallpox (very good against midrange aggro)
engineered plague (excellent against goblins, slivers, and weenie aggro)
swords to plowshares (excellent against aggro and aggro-control)

possible equips:
jitte (very good against goblins and weenie aggro)
sofi (very good against goblins and red sligh)
solas (very good against red sligh and aggro-control)

generic:
gerard's verdict (great against control and bad players)
sinkhole (good overall card for most non-weenie aggro strategies)
night's whisper (questionable inclusion)

acceleration:
dark ritual (very strong in opening hand and coupled with cursed scroll or nantuko shade)
chrome mox (very good when coupled with smallpox or dark confidant)
lotus petal (better in decks with much more white in them)

lands (4-7):
flagstones of trokair (merits inclusion for white spells and smallpox)
volrath's stronghold (only usable if count of non-swamp lands is low)
urborg, tomb of yawgmoth (good at fixing heavy white / black mana bases)
tainted field (scrublands 5-?)
swamp (not wasteable)
polluted delta (deck thinning at the cost of life...)
bloodstained mire (same as delta)

sb (15):
dystopia (house against all things green or white)
perish (great against green)
engineered plague (goblins are annoying)
darkblast (goblins are still annoying)
swords to plowshares (aggro-control rules the format)
withered wretch (good against thresh and random graveyard strategies)
jotun grunt (better against thresh, worse against random graveyard strategies)
phyreixian negator (great against combo)
disenchant (artifacts and enchantments are bad, mmmkay?)
sword of light and shadow (great for white / black matchups and red sligh)
pithing needle (combo breaker, aether vial disabler, etc...)


As you can see, there is a lot of wiggle room here.

If you want to run equipment, I suggest going towards the higher end of the creatures range. Acceleration like dark ritual / chrome mox would probably be useful, too, in that scenario.

I'm not sure if I would run more than one flagstones of trokair without smallpox. If you do decide to run smallpox, you probably need to be at the higher end of the land range.

I believe I have put forth a fairly accurate assessment of the deck's open slot choices. I feel that creatures are almost a personal preference. Most people agree that jotun grunt is a 2-3 of in the maindeck. Hypnotic Specter is usually a 3-4 of in 50% of the decks I've seen. The rest is up for debate I guess.

ps - If I missed something that merits inclusion, please let me know and I will add it to the list as I get the chance. Thanks!

[rsaunder]

I always like analasys like that for some reason. Not sure why. A couple of inclusions you missed, though, Tomb of Urami in the land spot and nodes, Extirpate, and Serenity in the board. And that bushido guy is Hand of Cruelty.

I disagree with your analasys of Hippy. For me, he simply isn't at his best as a turn 1 play. I like playing him turn 3 after I've already played a strong tempo game to get a massive card advantage swing without walking into a 2-for-1+tempo loss. If it's my only option turn 1 (wither that or do nothing), I'll take it, but I usually like to explore my other tempo and disruption choices in the early game.

Say it's game 1 against an unknown deck, and I'm on the play. I have an option of turn 1 duress or turn 1 Hippy. I'll almost always play the duress to both see what the opponent is playing, hopefully screw up his mana curve, and make it safe to play out my threats after a turn or two. Perhaps it's just my more controllish playstyle with the deck, but I find playing the tempo game then dropping your threats is a stronger strategy. That said, against solidarity, turn 1 hippy is the best possible play and if it sticks, you kinda just win.

[Hummingbird TG]

I'll always play the Duress first. But if I'm holding Bob and no Duress(although a possible Hymn), I'd go with Hyppie first. Bob, if left unanswered, wins the game. I'm sure many can attest to that. Hyppie baits the removal for Bob, and Bob sticks for long enough for me to draw the nuts, then I win.

@seraphim:


I can't really come up with a time when Dark rit -> hippy on the play is a bad play unless i'm playing against mountains.

In fact, when I see basic Mountains, I prefer Dark Rit into Hyppie as one of my best turn 1 openings. Gobbos only has 2 answers to turn 1 Hyppie, Pyrokinesis and Incinerator, one of which needs a few turns before it can do something, by which time Hyppie would have done what it needs to. And Basic Mountains in Legacy generally mean Gobbos.

Also, Negator when we can't clear the way for him? To the board! And we can't possibly suppport BOTH Rotting Giant AND Grunt here...

BTW, Black Knight >>> Hand of Cruelty, because First Strike + Jitte is crazily powerful.


--
Discussion:

Who thinks we should run plague MDed? I find that having some bombs against Gobbos is necessary...it makes sticking Confidant more like a win to me. If yes, what number? 2? 3? Replacing what?

[Anarky87]

I'll always play the Duress first. But if I'm holding Bob and no Duress(although a possible Hymn), I'd go with Hyppie first. Bob, if left unanswered, wins the game. I'm sure many can attest to that. Hyppie baits the removal for Bob, and Bob sticks for long enough for me to draw the nuts, then I win.

@seraphim:



In fact, when I see basic Mountains, I prefer Dark Rit into Hyppie as one of my best turn 1 openings. Gobbos only has 2 answers to turn 1 Hyppie, Pyrokinesis and Incinerator, one of which needs a few turns before it can do something, by which time Hyppie would have done what it needs to. And Basic Mountains in Legacy generally mean Gobbos.

Also, Negator when we can't clear the way for him? To the board! And we can't possibly suppport BOTH Rotting Giant AND Grunt here...

BTW, Black Knight >>> Hand of Cruelty, because First Strike + Jitte is crazily powerful.


--
Discussion:

Who thinks we should run plague MDed? I find that having some bombs against Gobbos is necessary...it makes sticking Confidant more like a win to me. If yes, what number? 2? 3? Replacing what?


Before I switched to Red Death I ran 2 MD Plagues to some ok results. But I also hated seeing it in every other matchup that wasn't called Goblins.

[Seraphim]

well, if you choose to run jitte, black knight may be better than hand of cruelty. Something to note, however, is the fact that hand of cruelty does not die in combat to any 2/2 and can take down threshed mongeese without any help.

[Anarky87]

Something to note, however, is the fact that hand of cruelty does not die in combat to any 2/2 and can take down threshed mongeese without any help.

Black Knight also doesn't die in combat to any 2/2 the last time I checked because First Strike owns.

[rsaunder]

Any creature, if unanswered, wins you the game. Deadguy isn't a deck of furthering your own strategy in the early game, it's a deck of hampering your opponrnt's strategy. If you go into playing a Rit=>hippy for the sole purpous of getting rid of removal for Bob, then you're simply playing the deck wrong. Getting 2-for-1'd so that another creature has a better chance of survival is NOT a strategy a resource denial deck can utilize. Even if I didn't run 3 smallpox, Hippy still wouldn't be an optimal first turn rit play. Hippy is amazing because it nets +1 card advantage at random a turn while doing damage. Not because it can be played first turn off a rit.

You're mentioning Hippy against goblins doing quite a bit. From my experience, the one card I nab oout of their hand with the Hippy rarely does much to hamper thier game plan of running the hell over me with all of the other cards in their hand, even if it does hit turn 2. I mostly use Hippy off of rit in that matchup as a deterrant against a lackey attack.

Also, Black Knight is >>>> Hand of cruelty. First strike is the balls.

@E. Plague: Haha, free MB slots. Honestly, if it's worth running MB plagues, then deadguy is a bad choice for your meta. If you really think they'd be helpful, then 2 replacing like 1 duress and 1 something crappy in the gobs matchup.

[Seraphim]

I think its about time that someone responds to some pretty bold claims there. Number 1: Hypnotic Specter is not a good late-game card against non-blue, non-combo decks. Why? Because a 2/2 for 3 is a bad creature for an ability that is irrelevant past turn 4-5. The only way that hypnotic specter will do damage to a player's hand is if you are able to play him when they have cards in it. This means one of 2 things: 1) it is early enough for them to not have emptied the cards in hand or 2) you are forcing them to withhold cards by denying whatever resource they need to deploy them (ld usually). So to conclude point number 1, if you are not playing against a combo / blue deck, hypnotic specter is not a good play past turn 4 due to the fact that for 3 mana you can get much better game-finishers. Playing hypnotic specter turn 1 is right in probably close to 60% of the matches you will play at any given tournament.

Number 2: Baiting a hyppie is a very strong play if you have a dark confidant in hand against blue / combo decks. Dark Confidant will fill your hand up with more gas that will allow you to overwhelm your opponent with hand attack and ld. Times when this is suboptimal are when playing against midrange aggressive decks / red sligh.

Number 3: The amount of time and resources necessary to handle a 2/2 are significantly longer and much easier to handle than they are to handle say a 5/5 trampler. Arguing that any creature will fit the description is flatout wrong. The reason hypnotic specter is run instead of phyrexian negator is because it poses a much better threat to combo and aggro-control than negator does. No, it does not finish the game as quickly, but it puts its controller in a much more adventageous position every time he connects as opposed to hoping that they don't just draw play an stp / lightning bolt or the final combo enabler.


Concerning Eplague: Engineered Plague is amazing at shoring up 2 very popular matchups 1, goblins, 2, Igg and TES. Dropping a bunch of goblin tokens is TES's default way of dealing with disruption. Eplague whipes that answer away in a very timely and efficient manner. Eplague is the only way I can conceive to make this deck beat goblins game 1. Pikula apparently thought so too, when he made the deck. And finally, Eplague is very good at destroying threshold's creatures in the early game if you have any way to disrupt their graveyard (read jotun grunt or withered wretch).

If it were an ideal world and percentages played out how we always wanted them to, we would always win games 2 and 3 against goblins due to our disruption backed with plague. Considering that its almost impossible (only about 10-15% of game 1s) to win game 1 against goblins without it in the maindeck, I think its ludicrous to not give yourself somewhat of a chance (each maindeck eplague increases the matchup percentage by 10-15% in game 1). Assuming you lose game 1 versus goblins (85-90% chance is fairly likely) and you are able to make your matchup somewhere around 80-20 post-board, the goblin player still has a 35-40% chance to win the match because they only need to win 1 of the next 2 games!

I'm not okay with dropping 35-40% of my matches against the format's defining deck and what will almost definitely be the most played deck at the gp. The entire reason I play pikula is because my win % against goblins is around 75-85% because of my maindeck plagues.

[Hummingbird TG]

1) Even with 3 Maindeck Plagues, I don't think the Goblins Matchup can be 75-85%, due to the lack of other Gobbos Hate Deadguy runs maindeck. What other anti-aggro cards do you exactly run maindeck, and how many other matchups do you compromise?

2) 'Normal Deadguy' definitely doesn't have a postboard 80-20 against Gobbos. How much testing have you done?

[Seraphim]

I guess to have a good point of reference, my build for gencon was the following:

4 Dark Confidant
3 Nantuko Shade
3 Hypnotic Specter
2 Withered Wretch

2 Sword of Fire and Ice
2 Cursed Scroll
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Vindicate
3 Swords to Plowshares
3 Engineered Plague
4 Dark Ritual

4 Wasteland
1 Tainted (white one, forgot name)
4 Scrubland
4 Polluted Delta
1 Volrath's Stronghold
8 Swamp


sb:
1 Engineered Plague
4 Sinkhole
2 Sword of Light and Shadow
2 Darkblast
2 Withered Wretch (jotun grunt was not legal)
4 Dystopia

The best way I found to beat goblins and threshold was to lock them out...Engineered plague on mongoose / bear with a wretch on the board or 2x eplague on goblins or 1 eplague and a sword of fire and ice.

Game 2 against goblins, I boarded 2 more wretch, 2 darkblast, and the 4th eplague for 4 duress and 1 hymn to tourach. More creatures to hold the swords and another eplague helped ensure that I didn't lose matches against them. Game 1 was around 50/50 with them. Games 2 and 3 were 80-20 if you played smart.

[rsaunder]

@Seraphim: It looks like points 1 and 3 concerning hypnotic specter are contradictory. Specter keeps your opponents in topdeck mode after turn 4 when the might be able to refill them after your initial onslought of discard. I agree that it's better than negator in here (not sure when that was brought up, but OK...) due to its inherent strength against combo , controll, and aggro-control. I personally enjoy dropping hippy as the only creature on the board against control and making them spend some of thier already limited resources destroying that particular must-answer threat.

@ e. plague: In Pikula's tournament report, his decision to play the 2 plagues MB was something like "I only had room for 2 creature removal spells, so I decided that they ought to be really game changing creature removal spells". I'd link to the article, but I'm not sure if it was lost in the aether or whatever.

Your pre-board games against goblins sound a lot worse than mine. I generally go a little less than 50/50 (8 and 9 last test session with 2 jitte and 3 knight MB) pre-board, far better post board. As you say, it all has to do with tight play.

I like your analasys of plagues other applications. When talking to wastedlife, he's mantioned that he fears deadguy variants because they bring in plague to compliment thier disruption games 2 and 3. Having tested it a little bit recently, I think that such measures might be worthwhile, what with those belcher variants catching on.

That being said, I don't really like the 3 knight 2 jitte setup. It was dandy against goblins and all of that other stuff that plays 2 toughness creatures, but to be honest it just too much pressure on our already full 2cc slot. The way I see it, 3 knight can be cut for 3 plague, and the 2 jitte can be replaced by cursed scrolls, which I was desperately missing.

My list right now in that case:

The Staples (4 Bob, 4 Hymn, 4 Duress, 3 shade, 3 grunt, 4 dark ritual, 4 vindicate)
My Manabase (4 mire, 2 delta, 1 tomb of urami, 4 scrubland, 4 wasteland, swamps to 22 land)
3 Hippy
4 Sinkhole
2 cursed scroll
3 e. plague

And a SB, assuming 6-9 slots for thresh, 4 for goblins, 5 (thoughts for a 6th?) for solidarity, 2-6 for other combo:
3 Chalice (thresh, combo of all sorts)
2 Serenity (random decks)
3 Dystopia (survival, thresh, stampy, some enchantress stuff)
3 extirpate (combo, things that rely on 1 or 2 cards)
1 Plague (Duh)
3 Something else (ghostly prison perhaps?)

Man, I LIKE how much that frees up the SB.

[Hanni]

This is just something I threw together today and was foolin around with for a little bit on MWS.

B/w/u Deadfish

Lands (24)
4 Polluted Delta
4 Bloodstained Mire
3 Scrubland
3 Underground Sea
6 Swamp
4 Wasteland

Creatures (10)
4 Dark Confidant
3 Nantuko Shade
3 Jotun Grunt

Spells (26)
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Sinkhole
2 Smallpox
4 Vindicate
4 Stifle
4 Brainstorm

I've been tryin to throw Stifle into all kinds of decks lately for shits and giggles. In here, it compliments the LD strategy, gives a little additional (although unecessary) strength vs combo, and improves the Goblins matchup. Brainstorm adds a little additional consistency to the deck.

I dropped Dark Ritual in favor for a few extra lands to support the 2-of on Smallpox. The deck is focused moreso on LD than other versions of Deadguy that I've tested.

Not sure whether this is actually an improvement or not but it was solid in testing. I still think the aggro approach is the way to go with the deck in all honesty, but it's fun to throw weird ideas together and play with them on MWS.

EDIT:

This is the sideboard I came up with:

Sideboard (15)
1 Darkblast
4 Engineered Plague
4 Dystopia
2 Serenity
1 Kataki, War's Wage
3 Pithing Needle

Kataki and Serenity answer randomness like Enchantress, Stax, Affinity, as well as randomness like Faerie Stompy (Kataki at least).

For Goblins, I think the LD strategy is rather amazing.

-4 Duress
-4 Brainstorm
+1 Darkblast
+4 Engineered Plague
+3 Pithing Needle

Simply put, you attack their manabase. Vindicate and Pithing Needle deal with Vial. If you're blowing up their lands and keeping them off Vial, they cannot function. Goblins is a very mana hungry deck. No mana = bad times for them. The deck has 11 creature removal type spells postboard with 4 Vindicate, 2 Smallpox, 4 Engineered Plague, and 1 Darkblast. Play LD as aggressively as possible but keep them off of Warchiefs and Lackey's. The deck has answers to Lackey on the draw in Darkblast and Stifle, but Engineered Plague is also very strong.

EDIT: I think for the sideboard, I'm going to:

-2 Serenity
-1 Kataki, War's Wage
-1 Darkblast
+2 StP
+2 Engineered Explosives

With Vindicate already, I think the Engineered Explosives should be sufficient to deal with that sort of randomness. They have the added benefit of answering alot more randomness too. I felt that StP was worthy of sideboard space, 2-of seems appropriate. Darkblast was a bit narrow while StP is good all around.

New Sideboard (15)
4 Engineered Plague
4 Dystopia
2 Swords to Plowshares
2 Engineered Explosives
3 Pithing Needle

[Hummingbird TG]

@Rsaunder:

Does that mean you're cutting the Smallpoxes you used to be advocating?

@Hanni:

4 Stifle? Won't they be dead in plenty of occasions?

[rsaunder]

@Rsaunder:

Does that mean you're cutting the Smallpoxes you used to be advocating?I cut them when I tried out the jitte+knight combo. Now I'm trying the plagues in that slot.

EDIT: That doesn't necissarily mean they'll stay cut.

[rsaunder]

So, I think that the concept of sweepers needs to be discussed a little in here. A while ago, I tried out a 3c deadguy that splashed green alongside white for perniscious deed. It wasn't terribly impressive, but perhaps that had to do with my manabase. Recently, whenever I've run into an Aggro deck, I've been forced to think about how much easier the match would be with a sweeper to take out creatures and vials. In theory, it also does just as much against combo as e. plague, taking out goblin tokens like nobody's business. This list is purely hyopthetical, and my main list is still that one with smallpox from a while back, this is in no way a be-all-and-end-all list, it may well just be me being slightly hungover. I'll tell you after I try it out.

4 Scrubland
4 Bayu
4 Bloodstained mire
2 Polluted Delta
4 Wasteland
1 Tomb of Uruami
4 Swamp

4 Deed
4 vindicate
3 Hippy
3 Shade
3 Grunt
4 Confident
4 Duress
4 Hymn
4 Sinkhole
4 Dark Ritual (with this list, this might not be the optimal acceloration, not sure yet)

SB:
4 Plague
3 Dystopia
3 Chalice
3 Extirpate
2 Serenity

EDIT: It sucks. The manabase is too vulnerable to wasteland to have a good shot against goblins. Also, the mana investment for the next turn thing kinda sucks. Can anyone else think of any other sweepers that are on color? Damnation is a possibility.

[Hummingbird TG]

Probably Damnation, although Deed can(but will unlikely-ly be used to) scale to 2cc so as to leave Hyppie untouched.

Anyway, @ your green build: I stand by that Dark Ritual is the optimal acceleration. Due to green being a splash we cannot have a green accelerant,and our legacy Moxen gets killed by Deed, which is Anti-synergy, thus I go for ritual. Also, which do you prefer of your 3 builds, Plague, Deed or Smallpox?

[Blair Phoenix]

So, I think that the concept of sweepers needs to be discussed a little in here. A while ago, I tried out a 3c deadguy that splashed green alongside white for perniscious deed. It wasn't terribly impressive, but perhaps that had to do with my manabase. Recently, whenever I've run into an Aggro deck, I've been forced to think about how much easier the match would be with a sweeper to take out creatures and vials. In theory, it also does just as much against combo as e. plague, taking out goblin tokens like nobody's business. This list is purely hyopthetical, and my main list is still that one with smallpox from a while back, this is in no way a be-all-and-end-all list, it may well just be me being slightly hungover. I'll tell you after I try it out.

4 Scrubland
4 Bayu
4 Bloodstained mire
2 Polluted Delta
4 Wasteland
1 Tomb of Uruami
4 Swamp

4 Deed
4 vindicate
3 Hippy
3 Shade
3 Grunt
4 Confident
4 Duress
4 Hymn
4 Sinkhole
4 Dark Ritual (with this list, this might not be the optimal acceloration, not sure yet)

SB:
4 Plague
3 Dystopia
3 Chalice
3 Extirpate
2 Serenity

EDIT: It sucks. The manabase is too vulnerable to wasteland to have a good shot against goblins. Also, the mana investment for the next turn thing kinda sucks. Can anyone else think of any other sweepers that are on color? Damnation is a possibility.
The problem I see with sweepers in this deck against aggro, as it will more than likely hurt you more than your opponent, considering Deadguy on the whole has a low threat density and needs to really keep it's creatures on the board, while aggro decks tend to have a high threat density allowing it to come back from any sweepers faster than you can.

[rsaunder]

The problem I see with sweepers in this deck against aggro, as it will more than likely hurt you more than your opponent, considering Deadguy on the whole has a low threat density and needs to really keep it's creatures on the board, while aggro decks tend to have a high threat density allowing it to come back from any sweepers faster than you can.
That's true and a reasonably good analasys of the situation. I was thinking you could change your order of play to absolute disruption and tempo if you have a sweeper in hand while holding creatures rather than trying to balance out dropping early creatures and disruption. That ends up being a lot like how I played smallpox, balancing it by having no creatures in play. None of these experiments have been particularly successful, that's just how I'd think that they would work.

@Hummingbird TG:The green build was disappointing. Even though I added an extra land, the splash just wasn't working. So far Deed is the worst of the three, with smallpox being the best, anthough to be fair I need to test plague more against not only goblins and TES to draw and real changing conclusions.

[Blair Phoenix]

That's true and a reasonably good analasys of the situation. I was thinking you could change your order of play to absolute disruption and tempo if you have a sweeper in hand while holding creatures rather than trying to balance out dropping early creatures and disruption. That ends up being a lot like how I played smallpox, balancing it by having no creatures in play. None of these experiments have been particularly successful, that's just how I'd think that they would work.


Thats how they SHOULD work, but the problem is that the hands you draw aren't tailor made, and there will always be times when you have an opening hand with your sweeper that ends up with more threats than disruption. The other problem is that you're opponent is likely to get at least a few threats on the board pre-sweep, and if you aren't dropping creatures, they'll be able to get a few free swings in before your sweeper comes online which may or may not be game breaking in the example of goblins and such.

[JnC]

What about a red splash for firestorm? With the card drawing of this deck, I have a tough time accurately using cursed scroll. Horde a few land cards and pitch them to a firestorm to open a hole for your offense. Also provides a way to burn out your opponent.