[Deck] Deadguy Ale (B/w Confidant)

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?

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!

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.

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

@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.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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 ^_^

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

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rsaunder

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.

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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...

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.

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...

@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!

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.

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:

Quote:

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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.

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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.


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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?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 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:



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?

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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.

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.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Seraphim

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.

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Black Knight also doesn't die in combat to any 2/2 the last time I checked because First Strike owns.

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.

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.

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?

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.

@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.

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

@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?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hummingbird TG

@Rsaunder:

Does that mean you're cutting the Smallpoxes you used to be advocating?

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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.

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.

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?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by 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.

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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.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Blair Phoenix

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.

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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.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by rsaunder

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.

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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.

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.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by rsaunder

Can anyone else think of any other sweepers that are on color?

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I've always wanted to run Engineered Explosives in this deck, maybe with a singleton Bayou or something. It'll at least take out Vials, Jittes and smaller dudes.

Pity Damnation wouldn't work against TES, or we'd have our sweeper...

I think that we are trying to turn this deck into a b/w control deck with cheap cards so that we don't die from our bob. While I do agree that this is possible, I don't think that this is the right move. I did read Pikula's article thoroughly (two times in the last week in fact) and I do agree that the deck is lacking in only one thing against every matchup. It appears to be different in every matchup.

Against non-goblin aggro, engineered plague is rarely better than a 2 for 1, and sometimes as poor as a 1 for 1 with higher mana cost than what was paid for the creature.

If we take out the plagues for damnation / mutilate, we face a serious problem in how to deal with goblins. Eplague is our best shot at beating goblins because of its ability to outright lock them out of the game in games 1-3.

As far as a 3-color build, I have been working on something that may have some promise.

4 Dark Confidant
3 Hypnotic Specter
3 Nantuko Shade
2 Psychatog
2 Withered Wretch

2 Umezawwa's Jitte
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Vindicate
2 Swords to Plowshares
1 Cursed Scroll
2 Engineered Plague
4 Brainstorm
1 Serum Visions

2 Chrome Mox
4 Wasteland
3 Scrubland
3 Underground Sea
2 Swamp
1 Island
1 Plains
2 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta

Sb:
4 Dystopia
2 Engineered Plague
3 Stifle
2 Sphere of Law / Pithing Needle (meta call)
2 Sword of Light and Shadow
1 Withered Wretch
1 Darkblast

I don't really want to change the thread to a debate on 2 or 3 colors, I just want to point out that I feel that something like this can work and may be worth testing if time permits.

Seriously guys, adding a 3rd color is the wrong way to go about any of these things. I'd rather add a more significant white splash and be able to take advantage of some of the things that it offers that splash another color at this point. It's just such an inherently weak manabase for a deck that, despite its low mana curve, is excedingly mana hungry. Especially if you want to cut it to 20 land.

No Jotun grunt? That can't be the right call.

I'll be trying damnation against goblins tonight, if it works well, I may work with it other places, if not, I see no merit in its inclusion.

Hmm, pretty sure the mana cost + p/t makes it too restrictive to see play here, but I'll post it here to get your guys opinion anyways. New card spoiled from FS

Shimian Specter 2BB
Creature - Specter (R)

Flying

Whenever Shimian Specter deals combat damage to a player, that player reveals his or her hand. Choose a nonland card from it. Search that player's graveyard, hand and library for all cards with the same name as that card and remove them from the game. Then that player shuffles his or her library.

2/2

Ok, if the third color splash is out, what about Powder Keg?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Nydaeli

I've always wanted to run Engineered Explosives in this deck, maybe with a singleton Bayou or something. It'll at least take out Vials, Jittes and smaller dudes.

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QFT. Not to mention Needle, Chrome Mox and Mox Diamond. Goblin tokens..
This card beat the hell out of me recently in my metas deadguy varients. Even set from 0-2 is killer.

@BlairPhoenix: You win, damnation wasn't amazing.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by bane_of_the_living

QFT. Not to mention Needle, Chrome Mox and Mox Diamond. Goblin tokens..
This card beat the hell out of me recently in my metas deadguy varients. Even set from 0-2 is killer.

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Okay, 3 plague is a plausable call in here, and I love it. In those 5 swing slots, I'd been testing 3 plague 2 smallpox, but EE might get pulled back from the discard bin. I remember running a singleton of these back before grunt and smallpox were legal as an answer to threshold's mongese, and it might be worthwhile to bring back now.

So what does anyone think: 3 plague and (please mix up these numbers for your own lists, these are just what I'm running with right now)...
2 EE (thresh, goblin token hate, blows up vials, jittes, SoTF, etc.)
2 Smallpox (thresh's creatures, punish aggro decks with mediocre curves, LD 13-15)
2 cursed scroll (late game V. gobbos, reach against controll)
2 black knight (decent with e. plague v. thresh, good against AS, good against goblins, another creature which is always good)

BlairPhoenix mentioned to me earlier the concept of cutting shade. I don't think our clock can afford to do that completely, but with 3 grunts and at least for me 1 Tomb of Urami, I think one can be cut. What could we do with this extra slot? Is having the extra creature and clock better than anything else that could be in here? Shade's been underperforming, but is it a necissary evil? I dunno.

Another thing I experimented with this evening was a 2-of lotus petal cutting that shade and a land to help get our massive number of 2-drops online a little earlier. It wasn't bad, obviously it's another sucky late game topdeck but it allowed for far more frequent busted first turns dropping black knights against gobs without rits, hymns, sinkholes on the draw, and one instance combined with a rit to drop a hymn+bob, which was devistating.

So, Discuss! Or keep discussing!

2 of Lotus Petal? Won't it be 4 or none in this case, as 2 would be too low a chance to get them early but enough to screw you up later on your topdecks?

@humingbird: not necessarily...the point is to get to a critical mass of acceleration. It takes approximately 8 cards with the same effect to consistently have 1 in your opening 7. The problem with this theory is that statistics say that even if its 80% that you will have one in your opening 7 with 8, having 8 also means its like a 40% chance of having 2 or more. This deck really wants to see 1 accelerant. That accelerent needs to get the job thoroughly done on the spot or be a constant source of mana (chrome mox / mox diamond) to fuel further turns. I think that somewhere between 4 and 6 is the right number for the competing reasons of not wanting to draw too many and really needing one in the first 10 cards.

I would really like to thoroughly test chrome mox in the place of dark ritual. I think that it helps the mana light hands and can help stop the dead draws from taking control of the game turns 7-12 (I know, I know...it is in fact one of those dead draws turns 7-12).

I like Jotun Grunt (he is in good company on my list of favorite 2 drops ever), I just have a problem with the fact that he does not have good synergy with dystopia...an important factor due to his ability to break the same matches that dystopia does. Withered Wretch has served as an excellent late-game topdeck vs many decks for me. Many situations in which Jotun Grunt would be too late, I found that wretch can improve the situation 1-2 turns faster and I don't have to worry about my graveyard or my opponent's not having enough gas for him to stick around.

@rsaunder - I'm glad that Eplague is working out for you. I've been advocating its use for so long now...I think that the card is proving its worth over and over.

A couple more things: I find cursed scroll to be amazing as a finisher and as a board controller. The problem is that swarming aggro will overrun your ability to control the board with scroll with any good series of topdecks unless you have sweepers (plague in most cases). It gives the deck reach (fairly important in quite a few matchups) against control, but does not help the early game out at all. If I could run vindicates 5-8, I would...but we don't really have that option.

I've recently gone down to 1 scroll in my lists to make room for more beaters / equipment. I think that scroll is amazing at finishing many decks, but I also feel that creatures + equipment + solid disruption wins just about every matchup that I've tested.