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Just advanced into the Top 4 of the 2nd Source Cockatrice Tournament with this list, thrown together the night before the first round was posted:
21*Land
1*Forest
1*Plains
2*Swamp
1*Bayou
4*Marsh Flats
1*Savannah
4*Scrubland
1*Shambling Vent
1*Verdant Catacombs
3*Wasteland
2*Windswept Heath
15*Creatures
3*Mother of Runes
4*Stoneforge Mystic
3*Dark Confidant
1*Drana, Liberator of Malakir
4*Deathrite Shaman
24*Other Spells
3*Lingering Souls
3*Swords to Plowshares
2*Bitterblossom
3*Cabal Therapy
2*Inquisition of Kozilek
2*Painful Truths
2*Sylvan Library
4*Abrupt Decay
1*Sword of Fire and Ice
1*Sword of Light and Shadow
1*Umezawa's Jitte
Sideboard
1*Ethersworn Canonist
2*Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
2*Siege Rhino
2*Phyrexian Revoker
1*Swords to Plowshares
1*Cabal Therapy
2*Zealous Persecution
1*Manriki-Gusari
1*Nihil Spellbomb
2*Tormod's Crypt
Brief aside: I played Deadguy back in 2010 right after Worldwake was released. I played the version with Sinkhole, Hymn, Dark Rit, etc., backed with Confidant and SFM. It was fun, but lacked power. I switched to blue decks afterwards, but then I took a 4 year hiatus. Coming back into the game, I noticed how ridiculously underplayed Bitterblossom was, and in addition to the package of SFM and Lingering Souls, the card advantage is ridiculous. Add in the versatility of DRS and the absolute power of the catch-all answer of Abrupt Decay, and I think melding DGA with a more midrange strategy is the way to go. I don't even think most blue decks can match the card advantage available in Abzan now; I fondly remember a long game against Esper Stoneblade where we were both around 30 cards left in library, but even with all the cantrips in the blue suite, my library was actually thinner than theirs!
There's a reason B/W tokens is a common strategy in Modern and certain Standard environments, and the cards are there to support a similar go-wide strategy in Legacy too. Yeah, there's Terminus, but BB and Souls DGAF.
BFZ was just released before I made the deck, so I wanted to shoehorn some interesting cards into the deck. Drana was interesting. She eats Delvers and Cliques for breakfast, but that never came up in a match for me. She's obviously insane with tokens, but unless we're in a token mirror, I think that's win-more. The first strike makes for interesting interactions with equipment as well. Not relevant for SOLS, but SOFI lets us take out a blocker before it can kill our guy, and we can use the Jitte counters to pump an unblocked guy for extra damage. As a one-of it didn't do much, but there's potential.
Shambling Vent was included because it's a 21st land, a threat, and a source of lifegain all in one. It wasn't impressive, mostly because I rarely had the mana or need to activate it. I also sided it out against faster decks. This deck is so good at finding threats or answers that I was rarely flooded out of a game, so my mana was better used on actual cards in my hand than to turn on a threat. I think more testing in long, drawn out matches would prove whether it's useful or not. Probably not, but I can dream, right?
Painful Truths is the shit though. Definitely adds a bit to a long-term range for this deck.
Non-BFZ card choices:
IOK vs. Thoughtseize:
Seize is obviously better, but I went with IOK due to running Confidant, Bitterblossom, and Truths. Especially with so much Burn running around, too many cards that burn our life total is not good.
Equipment suite - SOFI, SOLS, Jitte, 0 Batterskull:
All 3 equipment I picked are boss with tokens. Jitte is a no-brainer. Flying makes it so much easier to connect for the Sword triggers, which are insane BTW. Both SOLS and SOFI are great sources of card advantage: SOFI is a raw one card off the top, so if we connect it always triggers. SOLS is actually better IMO, because it will let us reuse a threat (DRS, Bob, Mom, SFM, fucking Siege Rhino post SB), which is better than a possible land. SOFI either gets us 2 damage or a removal, which is nice, but the 3 life from SOLS is better in some situations. I think we have a ridiculous, almost unstoppable late game. Using so much life as a resource for cards or tokens, having a recurring 3 life per turn lets the other powerful cards in our deck do their thing.
I usually sided SOFI for Manriki against Stoneblade (could have kept all 4 though) and sided out Jitte for Manriki against Miracles (after seeing decklists, I knew a SFM + Batterskull package was coming in). SOLS really is the best equipment in the deck and I wouldn't play without it. I chose not to run Batterskull because without SFM, the cost is rather prohibitive. The reason why BS is so good is that it comes with a body already, but we have so many 1/1 flyers to carry equips that we can manage well without.
Sideboard:
A general mish-mash of answers for things. As I built the deck the night before, I didn't think too much about metagame concerns. Ethersworn/Thalia/Revoker is a decent hatebear package against combo decks, with Revoker doubling as a Needle effect for fair matchups. Grave package of Tormod's/Nihil (probably should have went 2 Nihil/1 Tormod) deals with opposing graveyards, but leaves our graveyard untouched for Souls/Therapy/SOLS. Extra STP against fast aggro decks, extra Therapy against combo. ZP is great against any mirror decks, Pyromancer, or TNN; also a possible maindeck card depending on meta.
Manriki caught a couple people off-guard, and it came in at least half my matches. SFM is played pretty heavily right now, and that gives us a huge edge. Pretty sure it won me a game against Stoneblade. Siege Rhino is a total house. There's a reason every Standard deck runs 4. Definitely comes in against aggro decks (6 total life swing is nothing to sneeze at, and it's huge ass is great for blocking), and also it's a total beast against Miracles. STP/CJ are the only ways to deal with it, and if they spend their CJ on it, that's a good thing. Terminus puts it on the bottom, which is ok for them, but once we shuffle we can redraw it and trigger again. The big thing with Rhino though is that he beats Jace hard. Just try bouncing him. ;)
I didn't have much testing going into the tournament, but I love this deck and there is so much raw power here. More card advantage than most blue decks (except maybe Shardless?), with an almost inevitable late game. A couple times I was down to 3-4 life but able to stabilize and win (and get back over 10 life to boot) on the back of SFM + SOLS/Jitte + tokens.
In a Miracles-heavy meta, this deck is boss. I just slaughtered Dragonslayer 2-0 in Top 8 and we talked briefly how bad this deck was for him. At no point in either game was I sitting with less than 3 relevant cards in hand, while he was spending his whole turn fishing for a way to deal with tokens. I didn't even cast a Decay, even though I saw 4 of them over both games. Bitterblossom and Souls both let us recover immediately after a Terminus, and post-board Siege Rhino just wins if they don't have STP. Game 2 I IOKed to take his SFM, and just ran threats into his countermagic to land it and he scooped.
I lost to Burn, which is pretty much expected with so much self-damage, and also to Fry's Daretti Welder pile, which happens. The other rounds (mostly blue decks, maybe a D&T or something?) I won very handily.
