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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?
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?
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!
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...
I would bet turn one Nodes does just fine against the Lackey draw unless they get SGC into play.Quote:
Furthermore, unlike Swords, it doesn't answer t1 Lackey...
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).
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...
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.
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...
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...
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).
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...
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.Quote:
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)...
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.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by Hummingbird TG
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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?
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).
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.
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 is the bee's knees.
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.
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.)
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...
Also, without Engineered Plague MD, how do we win Gobbos pre-board, save for locking him out of land? Or do we just scoop?
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!
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
Well thanks, I always appreciate the feedback:tongue:Quote:
Originally Posted by JnC
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?
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.
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...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hummingbird TG
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.Quote:
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 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 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.Quote:
@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.
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.
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.Quote:
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:
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.
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.