I just shuffled some cards around and now my deck looks like this:
// Lands
16 [TE] Swamp (3)
4 [TE] Wasteland
// Creatures
4 [TO] Nantuko Shade
4 [4E] Hypnotic Specter
4 [UD] Phyrexian Negator
4 [EX] Carnophage
4 [RAV] Dark Confidant
// Spells
4 [TE] Sarcomancy
4 [FE] Hymn to Tourach (3)
4 [US] Duress
4 [MM] Snuff Out
4 [US] Dark Ritual
// Sideboard
SB: 3 [ON] Smother
SB: 2 [DK] Tormod's Crypt
SB: 2 [TE] Cursed Scroll
SB: 4 [UL] Engineered Plague
SB: 4 [US] Planar Void
The sideboard probably sucks but I have no local metagame anyway right now. How does that look? I'm thinking the lifeloss from Bob and the Carnophages probably don't work too well with Snuff Out. Should I replace the Carnophages with jump knights? I can't spring for Jittes right now but I want to add 2 or 3. I am also thinking maybe I should get rid of the wastelands and add a couple swamps. Do I have enough main deck removal with just 4 copies of Snuff Out?
What do you guys think of Oona's Prowler?
I saw very little about it. On page 33 Tacosnape mentioned it, but it wasn't enough discussed.
I can see it's ability being a drawback against Ichorid, but specially for those who are running main deck Leyline of the Void, that shouldn't be a problem.
I disagree with Tacosnape, that said that Prowler+jitte isn't a combo.
Allow your opponent the option of discarding two cards, so you can't deal damage in one turn is bad, since you give him the opportunity to choose. But if he actually chooses to do that, it's actually a great deal for you. It's big card disadvantage for him.
It provides a very fast clock with evasion. I seriously think it should fit in.
Also with the decay of goblins, do you still think the 8x 1cc 2/2 should be run?
It was a great meta choice at Columbus, when flash reigned alone. But now that thresh and fast combos made a huge scar on goblins, I don't know.
I think Duress, Thoughtseize, and 4x 1cc 2/2 should be enough for the 1cc slot (not mentioning dark ritual).
Personally I am not a big fan of the prowler. It seems very good in standard, but I find that it is a more vulnerable version of the specter, and should they choose to discard a card of their choice every turn that it attacks ,1 damage a turn is not much of a clock and they get to choose the card. I'm also not impressed with it's synergy with jitte
I also wanted to say that you should never, ever, be running less than four Nantuko Shades. It's really the only good reason to run black as more than a splash. It's one of the few creatures that can win a fight with Tarmogoyf, and it's a 3-4 turn clock at any point in the game.
It looks pretty good. I would take out the wastelands if you do not use Sinkholes. Your Suicide curve (a janky term I just made up meaning lifeloss) should be ok. That will change once you put Thoughtseizes in the deck as it goes from ok (still ouch) to a bit excessive. I am trying to figure out what to do with that myself. I am currently trying out Chrome Mox to replace the 1cc zombies with. Also, going down to 3 Snuff Out if you get yourself some thoughtseizes should be ok. If you can find the money for Jittes, that would go a long way too. Man, thoughtseize is making this deck expensive.Originally Posted by Ataxrxes
I think this is pretty dead on. Oona's Prowler + Jitte is bad for the same reason that Browbeat is bad, despite that half the planet never figures out that anything that gives your opponent the final option is bad unless the options are both ludicrous (And 2 cards versus 2 counters is not sufficient.)
It's also worth noting that in Legacy as we know it, anything that gives your opponent a free discard outlet is bad. So not only is Oogie Boogie's ability a drawback in the sense of it decreasing power, it's also a drawback in giving your opponent a chance to abuse his graveyard abilities. And you won't always have that Leyline to cover this.
This is pretty close to the most fundamentally true statement about Sui Black variants ever. Discard is fundamentally inferior to Countermagic as an aggro-control strategy (Though there are situations where discard is better), because with Discard you're always taking a tempo loss for your disruption and Discard is useless once a game goes into topdeck mode. Therefore if you're going to play an inferior strategy, you have to play some superior cards to compensate. Nantuko Shade, Dark Ritual, and the powerful sideboard options are the three biggest reasons to play this deck.
Who knows, if split second sees more print and they make some nasty ones... discard would gain a slight edge. Black has other control options that blue just doesn't have like LD and fantastic creature control. Of course that is why Blue is only a support color for the most part, and they use other colors for creature control but this is in Black's favor. You can have a simple and solid manabase, while everyone splashes ever color under heaven to fill in the gaps. We just need a few cards thrown our way, and maybe an advantageous unbanning to push Black up to the top.
As for Nantuko Shade, I have no qualms with only playing 3 but I won't argue the point. Any can feel free to say I suck or something
What creature is better than Shade in Suiblack?
Negator? If your opponent has no creatures, and you have a ritual, and your opponent has no burn.
Hyppie? If you have a ritual, on the first turn
Pumpknights? Pro:White is nice, but not "Half the power and one toughness" nice.
Zombies? If you drop it on the first turn, there's parity for a while, but wait, you'r playing disruption turn 1 if you hope to win.
Bob? In suicide, your best topdeck is a beater. Drawing extra discard is not fun, especially for life. If that Bob were a Shade, your opponent's topdecked Tarmogoyf'd mean so much less.
Shade is strong, fast, and cheap. It's so good that I would cut any creature before I cut Shade.
Even if they make Split Second discard, which will probably never happen in a form good enough to be Legacy playable, Discard will -still- be inferior to Countermagic out of principle. The reason for this is the mana that you're spending to get the effect.
For example, let's just at random take the card Survival of the Fittest. It's fairly common knowledge that the best way to deal with a Survival is to never let one hit play if possible. Discard and Countermagic, unless they're sitting on some Pithing Needles, will both strive to achieve this end. But Blue is going to be able to do it with less of a tempo loss because when you counter a spell, your opponent has already spent the mana for it.
Playing a Counterspell on Survival of the Fittest is an even trade. You both lose a card, and you both spent two mana. Playing a Force of Will, despite the card loss, is actually a tempo boost for you. They spent two mana and you spent none. This is a large part of why Threshold is so ridiculously good and why a lot of the games it wins it would have lost had the game gone two more turns.
However, nailing Survival with Duress, Cabal Therapy, or Thoughtseize requires you to spend mana where your opponent doesn't have to. In the case of Duress, you spent one mana and they spent none. Granted, the reason that Duress and company see play is because that one mana is almost always worth it to nail something as powerful as a Survival. But you're still spending mana for it when the opponent isn't.
I agree with you that excluding Countermagic and Discard, Black is a far stronger color than Blue. This is because in Legacy, practically the entirety of what Blue does is cantrip and counter. (There are exceptions: Cephalid Illusionist, Narcomoeba, Brain Freeze, Sea Drake, etc.) However, Black has some significant powerhouses. Engineered Plague is probably the single most identifiable sideboard staple in Legacy. Leyline of the Void is on the rise. Dystopia is a house in this sort of deck. Extirpate, Diabolic Edict, Smother, Ichorid, and tons of other black cards see play in various decks, as well.
So while a countermagic-based aggro control deck will always have a fundemental superiority over a discard-based one, the power level of all the cards in the deck must be considered and it's still quite possible for a top tier discard-based aggro control deck to exist. (You know, if they ever print a good black creature ever again. Which probably won't happen.)
Ozymandias is right. Shade is the reason to run the deck, because Black's creatures suck on the whole. Negator's the other reason, if you run a Negatorish build (And by this, I really mean Red Death.) All other potential creatures for Suicide Black are bad. Any argument about creature selection in Suicide Black is generally an argument over which black creature is less awful than the others.
Nah, this is a bit of a misunderstanding. I meant, discard handles split second by taking it out of their hand, while Blue is pretty much helpless. The spell will happen. So if they by some chance make some crazy split second spell or something, Black will have an advantage against it. Just pointing out some of the minor advantages of discard.
About Shade...I don't want to see him in multiples, and he is not a solid early play. Hyppie you can rit out and be fine... I never want to rit the Shade out. Still yeah, Shade is better than all the other creatures beside the Negator. Looking at my reasons, they no longer look convincing enough to keep the Shade at 3 so I will follow suit and add the 4th one in my deck.
Last edited by LordEvilTeaCup; 10-30-2007 at 09:52 AM.
Sorry for the double post. Well, for the last couple days I have been testing chrome mox like a madman. All I have to say is that I believe again! Chrome Mox is just what this deck needs. I do not think there are any other decks besides Faerie Stompy that can utilize this card like Sui Black. It gives this deck a faster clock without destroying consistency. Mid to late game if you happen to find yourself with a mox, you can just toss some of your now dead cards to it. That with Dark Ritual and Snuff Out, and you got yourself a nice tempo boost. I am not sure how it would pane out with a Stark build, but the mox gives the more traditional version a shot in the arm. Once again, not sure if Galroth was the first who came up with the idea but props anyway.
The nice thing about Chrome Mox is that it allows the deck to cheat on its mana curve in twice the number of ways, allowing the one-drop zombies to be ditched without hesitation. The bad thing is that in a deck without a source of CA beyond Hymn, Specter and/or BoB, losing a card to the Mox is bad times. Anyway, Land, Mox, Shade is a lot stronger than Land, Rit Shade, so here's a sample decklist.
17 Swamps
4 Chrome Mox
4 Dark Ritual
4 Nantuko Shade
4 Phyrexian Negator
4 Hypnotic Specter
4 ???
4 Duress
4 Thoughtsieze
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Snuff Out
3 Umezawa's Jitte
I'm not quite sure what mystery dude is, but I'm pretty sure it needs to be Bob, and absolutely needs to be a 2-drop. I shaved 3 lands and a "floating" slot for the 4 Mox, but I'm not sure that you ever want to draw 2, unlike Ritual.
The idea of Mox reminds me of this article
http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/3477.html
With Mox and Thoughtziese, there are enough 1-drops for the zombies to be somewhat obsoleted.
17 Swamps, 4 Chrome Moxes, and 4 Dark Rituals is too much mana in this deck. I can't see ever playing more than 16/4/4 with a high curve, and on some builds I'd go as low as 14/4/4.
Also, for whatever it's worth, I've come to the conclusion that Stromgald Crusader is better than Order of the Ebon Hand in almost all circumstances (Ebon Hand is better with a Jitte on him), and that Stromgald Crusader is absolutely ridiculous against a ton of decks, very hard to get rid of, and belongs in most builds. His immunity to STP/Shriekmaw/Snuff Out coupled with the fact that the deck can needle Deed post-board makes there very few ways to easily handle him (Fanatic and Smother are the few that come immediately to mind.) The fact that he flies makes you able to randomly topdeck him and finish an opponent off after they've somewhat stabilized, which is exactly what the deck needs.
The potential for obsoleting the 1-drop zombies is an interesting one, to be sure. I've never had any doubt that Sarcomancy and Chrome Mox don't belong in the same deck for a minute, though Carnophage might still pull his weight. If you maindeck Leyline, Mox helps solve the double Leyline problem (Or the single, if you know what you're playing against or need the mana worse.) And both Leyline and Mox have terrific synergy with Phyrexian Negator.
I'm contemplating trying a Chrome Mox version that runs anywhere from 14-16 Pro-White guys, also. Black Knight/Hand of Cruelty/Ebon Hand/Crusader has amusing potential, provided nobody drops a Chalice for 2 at any point.
EDIT: Or a Plague on Knights. Apparently Ebon Hand has, much to my chagrin, now become a Cleric Knight. Good job, Wizards. Let's see how far trying to roll a Cleric as a D&D race gets me.
Yeah, I play 15 swamps, 3 wastelands, and 3 Mox. That is all you need. Well, Galroth convinced me to put Mox in my deck and now Taco has convinced me to put Stormgald crusader in my build. *is so happy he found The Source* Really though, I think we have taken this deck a long ways. Its a good day to play Sui gentleman!
I guess taking a swamp out is doable, but I do not like the idea of adding in a another Jitte. Instead, I think one MD pithing needle is a good choice, because of its ability to never really be dead.
i know that sui black has to win as fast as possible, it has to play threat and beat the opponent to hell and all...
but, with card like dark ritual, chrome mox and such, don't you think that a way to draw card like bob or night's whisper should be include (or even sensei's divining top for card quality) ?
i mean, when you've disrupt your opponent and land (or not) your threat, we rely on topdeck, and i really hate that (keep in mind that my meta is full of threshold, so it's hard to land threat and keep them alive long enought to quickly end the game).
Any thought ?
Holo.
Edit : i wanna know your thought about this card, it always seems good to me, but well, it can be just me..
Sudden Spoiling
1BB
Instant
Split second (As long as this spell is on the stack, players can't play spells or activated abilities that aren't mana abilities.) Creatures target player controls become 0/2 and lose all abilities until end of turn.
Sudden spoiling:
It's not bad but 1BB is high.
I prefer the classics vendetta/smother/snuff out.
About the card drawing engine i've tried both wishpers and bob and i don't like these cards here.
Bob could be ok but it's too fragile and no evasive..you need the true power here like negator, hypnotic specters, shade and some others 2 mana cc creatures (giants, anurid or anti-stp knights).
Anyway if i have to choose i prefer bob to other options.
Fire walk with me.
Card draw in a deck where the majority of your deck is a bad topdeck isn't necessarily a good idea.
Night's Whisper blows, and Dark Confidant can't swing through -anything- in a deck that can't afford not to swing. And if your opponent lets Dark Confidant live, chances are your better attacker would have lived too, which means you wouldn't have needed the Confidant.
Suicide Black is best focused on having better, more explosive, more consistent starts, because these are the games it most wins.
Also, Smother >> Snuff Out >> Vendetta >> Sudden Spoiling. There's no use for a 3CC removal spell that can't kill a Tarmogoyf, unless you're running a ton of first strikers and want to do sneaky combat shit. For what it's worth, I'd pick Ashes to Ashes over Vendetta -or- Sudden Spoiling. A2A for the same cost can clear a pair of Tarmogoyfs out of the way and wins you games you have no business winning.
I don't know if you've went over this or not. I'm not even saying it's worth running in this deck, but since 3cc removal spells was brought up Eyeblights Ending will kill anything in Legacy including Goyf. I'm pretty sure there aren't any Elves in this format to stand in your way.
In painting, you have unlimited power. You have the ability to move mountains. You can bend rivers.
Rend Flesh kills everything in the format also. You don't see anybody running that, do you?
3 mana is too much for a removal spell in this deck or any Sui Black variant unless it does something astronomical. Bolt and Chain are the removal spells of choice in Red Death because they cost a mere one mana and can reach to a player. Deadguy variants run Vindicate, which removes absolutely anything, and sometimes STP. Sui Black runs Jitte, because, well, it defines astronomical.
Sudden Spoiling, Rend Flesh, and Eyeblight's Ending all fail to be astronomical, and killing a Tarmogoyf with one of them is a tempo loss for you in the one Legacy deck in the universe that can least afford a tempo loss.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Reply With Quote