[Deck] The Rise of the Ghouls

[Scorched]

Hello everybody.I am new to the site but some might recognize me from the swedish site www.svenskamagic.com. I am not sure how many of them swedes are hanging around here just yet :rolleyes: . However, I have been asked to submit a fairly newly designed deck of mine on this site in order to get some new and hopefully constructive critique to its design and functions.

The background to the deck is that I stumbled upon Oath of Druids back in the days when the Oath decks had their comeback in Vintage. I liked the way one could play around with the creatures and the grave. Anyhow, the format split and I got into the Legacy format aswell. I still like the oath decks in the Vintage format and was looking for a similar card to use in the legacy format. That particular card was Oath of Ghouls. Slowly I developed this deck and took it to the testing grounds [mws and local tourneys] where it performed extremly well. The deck won the only tournament it participated in so far(around 3 weeks ago) where 16 people participated.16 might not sound much but it is above averae around here. One Iggy pop, ichorid and 2 goblins participated so the meta had at least 3 tier decks in it.

And here is the deck that I played.


CREATURES (28)
4 Plagued Rusalka
4 Magus of the Moon
4 Chittering Rats
4 Street Wraith
4 Lyzolda, the Blood Witch
4 Flametongue Kavu
4 Braids, Cabal Minion
ENCHANTMENTS (8)
4 Oath of Ghouls
4 Leyline of the Void
ARTIFACTS (4)
4 AEther Vial
LAND (21)
4 Bloodstained Mire
5 Swamp
4 Mountain
4 Badlands
4 Wasteland
SIDEBOARD
4 Faceless Butcher
3 Engineered Plague
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Dystopia


Strategy

You can go two ways with this deck. One way is to aggro down your opponent and gain tempo advantage by using Chittering Rats and Braids to slow down your opponent. The other way is to take control and lock down your opponent with Rusalka/Lyzolda/Braids Oath of Ghouls and Chittering Rats thus gaining a huge tempo advantage and with Vial in play the opponent would never be able to draw a card or play a spell again, ever. The deck has "Johhny" written all over it which makes it even more interesting.


The critters

Plagued Rusalka and Lyzolda the Bloodwitch comboes well with the rats and are good on their own as creature control cards with P/T attached to them.

Braids, Moon Magus and Chittering rats are pure control and tempo cards whilst Flametongue Kavu is a recurring bomb.

Street Wraith is the card-drawing engine. I chose Street Wraith over Dark Confidant because of several reasons.

1. Wraith gives you the card instantly without giving away a read
2. It feeds the oath
3. you can choose when to draw your card and if you want to draw it
4. Bob has a tendency to die before it gives you the card advantage you want.


Enchantments

Oath of Ghouls is the card. The entire deck is based on this card and it functions really good. Especially when Leyline of the Void is in play, thus allowing only you to cycle creatures. Leyline has in fact 2 functions here. 1 is to ensure a constant flow of creatures in your favour and the 2nd one is to keep graveyard based decks on a proper distance from the win :). I've heard that's a good thing to have nowadays, graveyardhating cards. If you know you're up against a deck that uses the grave such as Ichorid and those pesky Goyf decks you would be wise to aggro mulligan after a LotV and buy yourself some time to set up your kill/lock.

Artifacts

AEther Vial is the glue that keeps this deck together. At the beginning it functions as a mana acc card, later it becomes a part of the locking combo, and finally when it serves no other functions you can toss it to Braids and let her feast on it for a while. Or you can always use it to come around counterspells.

Lands

Well we have the basics here.. Mires that goes with Wraiths and slims the deck. Wastelands for that extra tempo win, badlands for dual colours and finally huge chunks of basic lands to keep your mana production up and running. You would need 3 lands in play that can produce :R::B::B: at any time is basically what you need to be able to play all but 8 cards in the entire deck. 21 lands is therefore suitable and acceptable.

This is my first shot at posting a deck here so I'll already ask ask for forgiveness if I did something wron or if I posted the deck on the wrong fourm. I am also sorry if my grammar doesnt meet the standards set up by the native english speaking members here.

Please enjoy the deck and I'll be happy to read your constructive criticism.

I am not sure if the link works but if you want to "goldfish" with the deck go here and try it out
http://www.svenskamagic.com/medlem/lekar.php?ID=255&lekID=13430

[Scorched]

Oh my I forgot about the Sideboard. Well there is not much to say
Faceless Butcher takes care of the creatures that the Kavu couldn't handle
Dytopia stops white and green decks
Hymn is a poor attempt to stop the only decks that I have problems with namely Solidarity and Belcher wins.
Engineered Plague takes care of the tribal decks.. countersliver (hopefully) Elves and Goblins.

The archetypes that are the most diffcult or nigh impossible to win over are Solidarity and warrens.dec or belcher for the win.dec. Other problematic decks could be Countersliver if the deck is opted and the player good. As for the rest the deck has a good matchup against them.

[Bovinious]

Have you considered Oversold Cemetery over Oath of Ghouls? Some decks like Goblins and Ichorid may put more dudes in the yard than you.

[Scorched]

Yes I have.. The drawback is that you need to put it four critters before you can activate Oversold Cemetery. Leyline of the Void is in maindeck due to the drawback from the oath.... and it also helps to deal with other decks a 2 in 1 card :)

[Nihil Credo]

Or just as Oath of Ghouls #5-8. Without a way to tutor for your namesake, more redundancy would be nice.

Some number of Kavus could probably become Ghitu Slingers. They are easier to cast, and critters with 3-4 toughness aren't very common in the format; more importantly, the Slingers can go to the dome and sacrifice themselves for easier Oath/Cemetery recursion.

[94teen]

I know that personally, I'd like to see a little more disruption. You've got plenty of choices available, from cards that fit into your theme to cards that are just plain good:

Cabal Therapy
Duress
Hymn
Sinkhole
Mesmeric Fiend

And Dark Ritual might be worth trying? Some of the aforementioned disruption spells combined with Dark Ritual might give you a little more game against combo since you can either play a turn one discard spell or ritual into multiple discard spells.

I don't know what you'd drop to fit it in, but I think 1 FTK and 1 Lydzola could go pretty painlessly, along with a copy or two of Braids maybe?

I think the real problem with this is that you have no tricks. It's a really cool concept, but you don't have any tricks to back up your creatures. You have plenty of recurring CitP creatures, but no real way to tutor for them or set up your engine.

It's a really cool idea. I like it, and would like to see how this deck develops further.

[Scorched]

Ghitu Slinger costs 1 generic mana less to play than Flametongue and deals 2 lesser damage. Not that good in my opinion. Kavu is there mainly to kick Jötun Grunts ass and other creatures with toughness 3 or more Like Serra Avenger, Terravore and the ocasional Tarmoguyf. Vialing it out in the declare blockers step results in 8 damage to a creature which is lethal to the most of them.

Bone Shredder was an alternative to both Kavu and Slinger but I think that out of these three, Flametongue is the most efficient one.

Oversold Cemetery is not as good as Oath of Ghouls and with 12 slimming cards in the deck would be more than enough to dig up at least 1 oath during the game. If one would cut 4 cards to put in 4 more oaths you would have to either cut creatures or perhaps leylines, ultimately leading to weakening the deck in either way?

[Scorched]

that's why I have plenty of 4 ofs. The thing is that if you play with lesser creatures you will be weakening yourself to the creature based decks, in the meta that I play in here in Sweden evil combos such as belcher and Solidarity are far and few between. My SB is thus developed to deal with creatures. If I am to play in a more combo oriented matchup then Rusalka would easily replace maindeck Therapies, Mesmeric would take over Faceless butcher in . Engineered Plague would transform into sinkholes and dystopia would be duress.


there are plenty of tricks in the deck, but they are more subtle and revolves much around Aether Vial and Plagued Rusalka...(eg sacking Faceless butcher to her when he comes into play would result in an recurring Duplicant) Dodging Swords to Plowshares etc.

[Bane of the Living]

Not to come across as cruel but you've got the feedback you wanted. Some good ones at that. You shouldnt be so quick to scoff at them. Combo definitely looks like a problem for your deck and that needs to be adressed if you expect to compete at all. This isnt legacy two years ago when you could just take the Solidarity loss, now you have iggy/SI, Ichorid, Breakfast, belcher, and TES to worry about. All of them are more degenerate and focused.

Flametongue Kavu has long since been overshadowed by better options. He usually wont kill a tarmagoyf so the 4cc investment isnt really worth it. Look into Nekrataal or Boneshredder here.

[Scorched]

@bane

Aye some good feedbacks indeed and none are scoffed at quickly. I've already thought about those options once before. The deck is designed for the swedish meta whereas Ichorid and Iggy pop are the ones that are abundant and so far Leyline in maindeck has proven to give me the advantage needed to get the win before those decks can deal with it.

Solidarity is here up North still a deck you can take the loss with. 94teen posted some nice card options and I agree, in a meta where combo decks are in advantage many Maindeck cards such as Kavu and Rusalka are to be cut immediately. Maybe even now... further testing i required before one would know.

[outsideangel]

I suppose if you never see Belcher or TES or Breakfast then the deck is probably fine, but the version you have listed is going to lose to those decks. If you want the deck to see play outside of Sweden it's going to have to be changed a bit.

I would seriously consider running at least Cabal Therapy in the main. It's got as much synergy with Chittering Rats as Rusalka and does something your deck really needs. It helps against combo and isn't bad against Goblins, either.

Then you can at least sideboard Duress and maybe have a shot.

[Scorched]

@outsideangel

agreed. The only way for me to see what else is going around in the world is to log on to MWS and test there, which I do almost 2 hours every day. Bad thing is that I almost never get to meet decks from US and Japan that much and always end up meeting Italians (sigh) Spaniards, French and Germans 90% of the time and their decks of choice are either goyf based, UG *****, Black control or White control. The sum of all, they are creature based.

Breakfast is the cephalid Illusionist deck right? as far as my testing goes against that deck I would say that 4 MD Leylines takes care of that deck pretty well.

So I don't know how much to worry about combo decks. If I would go and play a meta where I do not know jack about the lay of the land, then I would go like this

-4 Rusalka + 4 Cabal Therapy
-1 Lyzolda
-1 Braids
-1 Flametongue
+3 Duress

and keep the SB intact.. how bout that?

[Happy Gilmore]

The deck is very intersting, but I wonder if you might consider a mono black Version:

4 Street Wraith
4 Chittering Rats
4 Braids
4 Mesmeric Fiend
4 Plagued Resalka

4 Duress
4 Cabal Therapy
2 Phyrexian Furnace
2 Oversold Cemetery
4 Oath of Ghouls
4 Layline of the Void

17 Swamps
3 Phyrexian Tower (works better with Fiend)

[DragoFireheart]

Unless you want this deck to just roll-over and die to storm combo [not sure if that is relevent anymore], you need some sort of disruption.

Might I suggest Duress?

[FakeSpam]

Mono-Black is probably the way to go on this. Sure, Magus of the Moon is a beating, but it's not worth it.

I see this deck evolving in one of three ways:

1) Monoblack. Like I just said, this is the one that makes it a deck that's not just some terrible version of some other, better, deck.

2) 4-5c Cemetary. Re-use and abuse the best critters in the format. Then, you should probably be playing survival of the fittest. Then you should probably not be playing oath of ghouls.

3) BG Cemetary. This one has potential. Recurring Eternal Witness is an amazing thing. However, this deck would play completely different from what's going on in the preceding posts. Because it's, you know, The Rock.

---

Lorwyn has those guys with Evoke. I'm really kinda getting all tingly in my nethers just thinking about how good that mechanic is with a deck like this.

This is definately a concept worth checking into. I don't have a list off the top of my head, but Happy is on the right track. Removal is curiously absent in his list, but it's one of those off-the-top-of-my-head things.

One idea that I've been throwing around for cemetary decks was Korlash, Heir to Blackblade. He's not a bad dude. He's friggin' huge and difficult to kill. Extras turn into extra land, and he can recur and discard via cemetary to just keep getting bigger. Of course, as a lock deck, you can really win without needing a huge friggin' guy. But he's an interesting card for the deck. Actually, all of the Grandeur legends could be interesting. With Linessa causing a pretty aggressive soft lock, or Tarox just flat out killing someone, or another soft lock coming from the Samite Guardian.

I'm interested to see where this goes. I'm going to kick some stuff around and see what comes out.

[Lemuria]

Actually, all of the Grandeur legends could be interesting. With Linessa causing a pretty aggressive soft lock, or Tarox just flat out killing someone, or another soft lock coming from the Samite Guardian.

I'm interested to see where this goes. I'm going to kick some stuff around and see what comes out.


You know what? This look extremly exciting

I'll may look out for something and do some playtests with this. I really like prison/lock decks and I think it should come back to meta.

[Happy Gilmore]

The Evoke Mechanic is something to look forward to with this deck for sure. And from what I can understand you can Envoke, then sack to Tower. Looks awsome. Plus 3/2 with fear are hard to block in this format.

Some cards I want to test:

Undead Gladiator
Shriekmaw
Plus the new Super Duress.

I don't see the point of red unless your splashing for Mogg Fanatic (the best red creature for this deck).

[Scorched]

I am not so sure.. although some suggestions are interesting, many of them would ulitmately result in a more mana hungry deck and weakening it against aggro and more creature based decks. Undead gladiator does the same thing as street wraith but slower and with more mana pumped into it.Pyre Zombie goes in that direction aswell but both loses to lyzoldas abilities. Shriekmaw? I can't find it... Voidmaw maybe? well that thing costs 4BB. Mogg fanatic is good.. infact awesome but 3 things makes it lose to Plagued Rusalka, 1 is its inability to kill creatures with p/t greater than 2. 2nd is that rusalka goes well with the rat and 3rd, Silver Knight poses a great problem and Rusalka is able to take care of mr Umezawa and his Jitte.

Phyrexian tower is good with the deck and works well with the concept. Unfortunately its unbasic and dies to wasteland and hits rock bottom when Magus comes into play.

I've tried out and still play a BW variant of this deck with Samite Guardian and it works fairly well but not better than this deck. A problem with that deck is that u need at least Leyline, Oath and 2 Samites to hit it off, which makes it a 4 card combo and that is most of the time too damn slow.

[Happy Gilmore]

I am not so sure.. although some suggestions are interesting, many of them would ulitmately result in a more mana hungry deck and weakening it against aggro and more creature based decks. Undead gladiator does the same thing as street wraith but slower and with more mana pumped into it.Pyre Zombie goes in that direction aswell but both loses to lyzoldas abilities. Shriekmaw? I can't find it... Voidmaw maybe? well that thing costs 4BB. Mogg fanatic is good.. infact awesome but 3 things makes it lose to Plagued Rusalka, 1 is its inability to kill creatures with p/t greater than 2. 2nd is that rusalka goes well with the rat and 3rd, Silver Knight poses a great problem and Rusalka is able to take care of mr Umezawa and his Jitte.

Phyrexian tower is good with the deck and works well with the concept. Unfortunately its unbasic and dies to wasteland and hits rock bottom when Magus comes into play.

I've tried out and still play a BW variant of this deck with Samite Guardian and it works fairly well but not better than this deck. A problem with that deck is that u need at least Leyline, Oath and 2 Samites to hit it off, which makes it a 4 card combo and that is most of the time too damn slow.

I got a chance to play around with a version of this deck on mtgo. I'm not rich so I don't have the really expensive cards that would make it good, however I discovered some very interesting things as well as possible card choices. I was just fooling around with it casually, this is the list I ran:

4 Resalka
4 Chittering Rats
4 Relentless Rats
4 Street Wrath
4 Stinkweed Imp
2 Dimir House Guard
1 Magus of the Abyss
2 Faceless Butcher

1 Damnation
4 Oversold cemetery
4 Darkblast
3 Shred Memory

4 Dakmore Salvage
19 Swamps

Dredge gives this deck a lot including a way to essentially draw either a mana source or a removal spell (both Imp and Darkblast). The other thing I noticed was that I never really wanted to get Oversold online till around turn 4 where I can return the rats and such that have been used up either blocking or to feed Braids aka magus. Using Oversold instead of oath turns it from a four card combo deck into a agro control prison deck with components that work fairly well on their own. Although it is very difficult to get everything in the deck that you want. Dakmor Salvage also gives you a recuring permantent to sack to Braids while digging in your deck for threats and answers.

take 2:

4 Relentless Rats
4 Chittering Rats
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Braids, cabal Minion
4 Street Wraith
2 Shriekmaw (from lorywn)

4 Oversold Cemetery
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Duress
4 Darkblast

4 Dakmor Salvage
2 Phyrexian Tower
16 Swamps