Unmasks you ritual Necro, Necro on opp's turn for like 15 and kill with Tendrils.
Necropotence puts the cards into your hand at the beginning of your next end step. Using it on your opponent's turn means that you don't get the cards until the end of your next turn.
On your turn 1 end step? Most of the key cards there (PIF, Tendrils) are sorceries. If you really want to go "draw a ton of cards, kill you," you might have better luck with some kind of Solidarity-ish "kill you with Brain Freeze" build, but that would be so ridiculously unstable that it's not worth consideration.
Your turn 2 kill rate, on the other hand, would be downright frightening.
Also, Necrologia seems like a worse Ad Nauseam to me, at least in a Storm build, since the average converted mana cost in Storm is less than 1, so you pay less than 1 life per card on average.
As I mentioned earlier, I played this deck a lot in Classic on MTGO before Necropotence got restricted. I'm not sure if this would be the best Necro strategy in Legacy (probably not) - but it's a starting point. Here's a sample list from around 2008.
1. Play Necropotence with Dark Ritual or whatever.
2. Pay 19 (or less) life, draw tons of cards.
3. During your end step, cast Soul Spike once or twice on your opponent.
4. Discard down to a hand that can win with Tendrils on the next turn.
It's pretty straightforward to sculpt a monster of a hand for the next turn, with the win plus protection. The Soul Spikes really help with this. If you are able to hit your opponent with one or two Spikes, then you don't have to storm very much to get to lethal. This allows you to keep more protection.
As I mentioned earlier, I played this deck a lot in Classic on MTGO before Necropotence got restricted. I'm not sure if this would be the best Necro strategy in Legacy (probably not) - but it's a starting point. Here's a sample list from around 2008.
1. Play Necropotence with Dark Ritual or whatever.
2. Pay 19 (or less) life, draw tons of cards.
3. During your end step, cast Soul Spike once or twice on your opponent.
4. Discard down to a hand that can win with Tendrils on the next turn.
It's pretty straightforward to sculpt a monster of a hand for the next turn, with the win plus protection. The Soul Spikes really help with this. If you are able to hit your opponent with one or two Spikes, then you don't have to storm very much to get to lethal. This allows you to keep more protection.
You can Tendrils on your turn with Manamorphose and Quicken, with a lot of counter backup. It would only require a marginal amount of luck to pull off, you'd need to hit 10 specific cards after drawing 28 cards (4 cards in hand, 19 off Necro, and 4 cards during the combo). That's 18 draws you can whiff/draw into countermagic and still win T1
You can Tendrils on your turn with Manamorphose and Quicken, with a lot of counter backup. It would only require a marginal amount of luck to pull off, you'd need to hit 10 specific cards after drawing 28 cards (4 cards in hand, 19 off Necro, and 4 cards during the combo). That's 18 draws you can whiff/draw into countermagic and still win T1
It is possible to get a turn one kill with the decklist I posted - it's just not the primary gameplan. You don't even need Necro or Quicken or anything:
Swamp
Ritual
Ritual
Ritual
Ritual
Tendrils of Agony
Tendrils of Agony
I was playing in a PE and won both games of a match on turn 1. The first game I had a hand like the one above and just hit Tendrils for 20 on T1. In game two my opponent went first. He was playing Necropotence also, played turn one Necro and drew 19 cards. I Soul Spiked him before he got his cards.
The card should definitely stay banned, but there is a fair amount of over-exaggeration in this thread. It would have enough impact to make every deck in the format shift to respond to it, but it wouldnt completely destroy everything.
It still has to get through all the same issues that current storm decks do. It just digs up answers to those issues better to combo off turn 2-3. You wouldnt want to build for the turn 1 kill. Theres no need to argue over some inconsistent turn 1 kill drawing 19 cards to validate why the card should be banned. Seriously, you die to Gutshot at that point.
The card should stay banned because it forces every other deck to run large amounts of mainboard hate for it just to remain viable.
Is necro a very powerful card? Yes. And it would definitly impack legacy, but it wouldn't make storm that much better to be honest. There's a reason they run Ad Neauseum over Necrologia. You will actually usually draw more cards with AdN (at least in TES) and you can use the cards THAT turn.
Any deck that revolved around having an instant speed win after necroing would be so diluted with bad cards (like quicken, manamorphose, etc) that it would not work very well.
Necropotence, if anything would spawn a UBx control/tendrils deck that got to run high CMC free spells like FoW, Pact or misdirection in addition to some traditional rituals and tutors, but probably look closer to a goodstuff that just happens to have tendrils in it.
Also, if you've played vintage you know that Necro isn't actually used that much. Not even all tendrils decks run it, and those that do it usually is just a backup plan.
It is possible to get a turn one kill with the decklist I posted - it's just not the primary gameplan. You don't even need Necro or Quicken or anything:
Swamp
Ritual
Ritual
Ritual
Ritual
Tendrils of Agony
Tendrils of Agony
I was playing in a PE and won both games of a match on turn 1. The first game I had a hand like the one above and just hit Tendrils for 20 on T1. In game two my opponent went first. He was playing Necropotence also, played turn one Necro and drew 19 cards. I Soul Spiked him before he got his cards.
Tendrils is not an instant, you can't play it during your end step after you draw the cards.
Seriously, you die to Gutshot at that point.
You'll probably have a good 5-6 free counterspells to counter that gutshot. You're T1 win % would be way better than TEPS.
Any deck that revolved around having an instant speed win after necroing would be so diluted with bad cards (like quicken, manamorphose, etc) that it would not work very well.
Cards aren't bad when they win you the game on the spot.
Tendrils is not an instant, you can't play it during your end step after you draw the cards.
I understand that Tendrils isn't an instant. The kill I posted didn't use Necropotence at all, just the cards mentioned as your opening hand. I was just showing that the deck was capable of a turn one kill, and not just the two or three turn plan.
There is the 1 big risk - you have to activate necro before your end step. At latest the post combat main phase. You do it, pay 19 life, goto 1, then when you pass priority for the phase, they gutshot you and you can't even force it.
That's why if I were running it, I'd be paying 17, not 19.
You still have 4 cards in hand after you cast Necro. Any decklist would have 4 Force's, 4 Pacts, and 4 Dazes in there. You have a solid shot of countering the Gutshot before you even draw the 19. Drop in a few Intervention Pacts just to be safe
I would start every deck with Necro or with 4 Pithing Needle + 4 Phyrexian Revoker.
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Necro is strong, but it's nowhere near as bad as people are making it out to be. Yes, if Necro was unbanned we'd see plenty of Necro decks, but due to the power rise of cards as a whole it just won't be the broken monster that it once was. The delay in the draw is actually more relevant than people think.
Necro is strong, but it's nowhere near as bad as people are making it out to be. Yes, if Necro was unbanned we'd see plenty of Necro decks, but due to the power rise of cards as a whole it just won't be the broken monster that it once was. The delay in the draw is actually more relevant than people think.
Vintage plays Bargain as an occasional bomb and Griselbrand as an Oath fatty. It's difficult to reliably get BBB for Necropotence (and to draw the one-of), so the format no longer builds around it.
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Cards aren't bad when they win you the game on the spot.
Running Quicken clogs up your deck and reduces the consistency (in more ways than one) for a really marginal benefit. If you have the kind of countermagic you are positing elsewhere, you don't need to go all-in on turn 1, you just draw enough cards to sculpt your hand, then go off the next turn. Attempting to win on your own end step is additionally stupid because it cuts you off from using any artifact mana you draw (which is indispensable). Other awful cards like Children of Korlis or Intervention Pact don't solve any of this. Try piloting a Legacy Tendrils deck sometime (ANT, TES...)
Playing to Necro's strengths doesn't mean turning it into Belcher 2.0. Belcher is bad. Necro is VERY good and yes, it's broken, but people are being so hyperbolic about it that they end up exaggerating things. Ad Nauseam is already a very good ritual-storm engine. The biggest advantage of Necro over Ad Nauseam is that it allows you to play Force as well as more maindeck Tendrils. It also means that a non-lethal Tendrils is actually still very good for you, so long as you have Necro out, which means you can chain Tendrils and run more of it maindeck.
But the way in which Necro delays your draw, and exiles any cards you discard, actually results in two very relevant drawbacks. The exile part, for example, weakens Cabal Ritual and Past in Flames.
Vintage plays Bargain as an occasional bomb and Griselbrand as an Oath fatty. It's difficult to reliably get BBB for Necropotence (and to draw the one-of), so the format no longer builds around it.
The decks that run Necro run Ritual so BBB isn't hard to get, and the format has plenty of tutors that turn all of your singleton cards into multiples easily. The correct answer is that while Necro is good the decks that want it can win faster off of Bargain, Grisel, and Jar than they can off of Necro. So it really comes down to Necro being Bargain/Jar/wheel/windfall/twister number 6 instead of those cards being Necro 2-6.
Like I said, Necro is a good card, but it has draw backs and there are plenty of cards that are just as strong.
Like I said, Necro is a good card, but it has draw backs and there are plenty of cards that are just as strong.
Not in Legacy there isn't (although there are some that are situationally stronger).
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Not in Legacy there isn't (although there are some that are situationally stronger).
Necro can go in a wider variety of decks, yes. It doesn't just have to be storm combo. That's a huge strength, and I think Necro overcentralizes the format around Dark Ritual decks, but it's still not the nuclear bomb some people seem to think it is.
In storm decks built to abuse necrologia in the past the kill con was this:
Exile a pair of spirit guides into manamorphose. Cast all the rituals + quicken. Cast tendrils of agony. But the point is, it is not worth it to win on turn 1 with necro as it requires that you jump through way too many hoops decklist wise. You just win on turn 2 with a stacked hand that can push a win through virtually anything. Hell, you don't even need to win turn 2 as necropotence as a card advantage engine is just pure brokenness. Look at the mono black control necropotence decks from 1999. They killed you with corrupt and drain life.
Necropotence would wreck legacy. It's like old extended when necro was legal. They kept banning all the cards surrounding necro to try to make it fair in that format. Then they STILL had to ban necro because paying 1 life to draw a card is ****ing busted. It is in the top 10 cards of all time in terms of power level I'd wager because of how busted a 3 mana card drawing you 10+ cards is.
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"Yawgmoth," Freyalise whispered as she set the bomb, "now you will pay for your treachery."
Someone (better than me) should actually make a list with Necro and then play it against all the tier 1 legacy decks. Seems like the best way to actually test all this theory crafting
Yup, no "up to" on that card, was a neat thought at the very least :p.
Thanks for the clarification.
Necropotence puts the cards into your hand at the beginning of your next end step. Using it on your opponent's turn means that you don't get the cards until the end of your next turn.
As I mentioned earlier, I played this deck a lot in Classic on MTGO before Necropotence got restricted. I'm not sure if this would be the best Necro strategy in Legacy (probably not) - but it's a starting point. Here's a sample list from around 2008.
4 Polluted Delta
4 Swamp
1 Island
3 Underground Sea
4 Brainstorm
4 Demonic Consultation
4 Ponder
4 Duress
4 Force of Will
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Chrome Mox
4 Dark Ritual
4 Soul Spike
4 Tendrils of Agony
Here's the gameplan:
1. Play Necropotence with Dark Ritual or whatever.
2. Pay 19 (or less) life, draw tons of cards.
3. During your end step, cast Soul Spike once or twice on your opponent.
4. Discard down to a hand that can win with Tendrils on the next turn.
It's pretty straightforward to sculpt a monster of a hand for the next turn, with the win plus protection. The Soul Spikes really help with this. If you are able to hit your opponent with one or two Spikes, then you don't have to storm very much to get to lethal. This allows you to keep more protection.
@MTGClue - Haakon, Stromgald Scourge in the Moorland Haunt with the Hammer of Purphoros.
You can Tendrils on your turn with Manamorphose and Quicken, with a lot of counter backup. It would only require a marginal amount of luck to pull off, you'd need to hit 10 specific cards after drawing 28 cards (4 cards in hand, 19 off Necro, and 4 cards during the combo). That's 18 draws you can whiff/draw into countermagic and still win T1
It is possible to get a turn one kill with the decklist I posted - it's just not the primary gameplan. You don't even need Necro or Quicken or anything:
Swamp
Ritual
Ritual
Ritual
Ritual
Tendrils of Agony
Tendrils of Agony
I was playing in a PE and won both games of a match on turn 1. The first game I had a hand like the one above and just hit Tendrils for 20 on T1. In game two my opponent went first. He was playing Necropotence also, played turn one Necro and drew 19 cards. I Soul Spiked him before he got his cards.
@MTGClue - Haakon, Stromgald Scourge in the Moorland Haunt with the Hammer of Purphoros.
It still has to get through all the same issues that current storm decks do. It just digs up answers to those issues better to combo off turn 2-3. You wouldnt want to build for the turn 1 kill. Theres no need to argue over some inconsistent turn 1 kill drawing 19 cards to validate why the card should be banned. Seriously, you die to Gutshot at that point.
The card should stay banned because it forces every other deck to run large amounts of mainboard hate for it just to remain viable.
If Necropotence were unbanned, there would be an emergency banning that week.
Any deck that revolved around having an instant speed win after necroing would be so diluted with bad cards (like quicken, manamorphose, etc) that it would not work very well.
Necropotence, if anything would spawn a UBx control/tendrils deck that got to run high CMC free spells like FoW, Pact or misdirection in addition to some traditional rituals and tutors, but probably look closer to a goodstuff that just happens to have tendrils in it.
Also, if you've played vintage you know that Necro isn't actually used that much. Not even all tendrils decks run it, and those that do it usually is just a backup plan.
Tendrils is not an instant, you can't play it during your end step after you draw the cards.
You'll probably have a good 5-6 free counterspells to counter that gutshot. You're T1 win % would be way better than TEPS.
Cards aren't bad when they win you the game on the spot.
I understand that Tendrils isn't an instant. The kill I posted didn't use Necropotence at all, just the cards mentioned as your opening hand. I was just showing that the deck was capable of a turn one kill, and not just the two or three turn plan.
@MTGClue - Haakon, Stromgald Scourge in the Moorland Haunt with the Hammer of Purphoros.
seems good.
You still have 4 cards in hand after you cast Necro. Any decklist would have 4 Force's, 4 Pacts, and 4 Dazes in there. You have a solid shot of countering the Gutshot before you even draw the 19. Drop in a few Intervention Pacts just to be safe
Legacy
UWR Miracles UWR
GWB Maverick GWB
GB Elves GB
UBR ANT UBR
RG Combo Lands RG
Vintage
BUG BUG Fish BUG
Modern
GBW
Junk PodMagic: the BuylistingI'd throw in Lotus Petals/Chrome Mox's/Mox Diamonds, and toss in a few Children Of Korlis. Pay 19 life, sac them get it all back, 19 free cards!
Honestly, when playing Vintage I'm far more afraid of a Yawgmoth's Bargain or Griselbrand than I am of a Necropotence.
Vintage plays Bargain as an occasional bomb and Griselbrand as an Oath fatty. It's difficult to reliably get BBB for Necropotence (and to draw the one-of), so the format no longer builds around it.
Legacy
UWR Miracles UWR
GWB Maverick GWB
GB Elves GB
UBR ANT UBR
RG Combo Lands RG
Vintage
BUG BUG Fish BUG
Modern
GBW
Junk PodMagic: the BuylistingRunning Quicken clogs up your deck and reduces the consistency (in more ways than one) for a really marginal benefit. If you have the kind of countermagic you are positing elsewhere, you don't need to go all-in on turn 1, you just draw enough cards to sculpt your hand, then go off the next turn. Attempting to win on your own end step is additionally stupid because it cuts you off from using any artifact mana you draw (which is indispensable). Other awful cards like Children of Korlis or Intervention Pact don't solve any of this. Try piloting a Legacy Tendrils deck sometime (ANT, TES...)
Playing to Necro's strengths doesn't mean turning it into Belcher 2.0. Belcher is bad. Necro is VERY good and yes, it's broken, but people are being so hyperbolic about it that they end up exaggerating things. Ad Nauseam is already a very good ritual-storm engine. The biggest advantage of Necro over Ad Nauseam is that it allows you to play Force as well as more maindeck Tendrils. It also means that a non-lethal Tendrils is actually still very good for you, so long as you have Necro out, which means you can chain Tendrils and run more of it maindeck.
But the way in which Necro delays your draw, and exiles any cards you discard, actually results in two very relevant drawbacks. The exile part, for example, weakens Cabal Ritual and Past in Flames.
0 Karn
W Darien
U Arcanis
B Geth
R Norin
G Yeva
UW Hanna
RB Olivia
WB Obzedat
UR Melek
BG Glissa
WR Aurelia
GU Kraj
BRU Nicol Bolas
RGB Prossh
BGW Ghave
GUB Mimeoplasm
WUBRG Sliver Overlord
GWU Treva, the Renewer
EDH Spike:
U Azami, Lady of Scrolls
Trades
The decks that run Necro run Ritual so BBB isn't hard to get, and the format has plenty of tutors that turn all of your singleton cards into multiples easily. The correct answer is that while Necro is good the decks that want it can win faster off of Bargain, Grisel, and Jar than they can off of Necro. So it really comes down to Necro being Bargain/Jar/wheel/windfall/twister number 6 instead of those cards being Necro 2-6.
Like I said, Necro is a good card, but it has draw backs and there are plenty of cards that are just as strong.
Not in Legacy there isn't (although there are some that are situationally stronger).
Legacy
UWR Miracles UWR
GWB Maverick GWB
GB Elves GB
UBR ANT UBR
RG Combo Lands RG
Vintage
BUG BUG Fish BUG
Modern
GBW
Junk PodMagic: the BuylistingNecro can go in a wider variety of decks, yes. It doesn't just have to be storm combo. That's a huge strength, and I think Necro overcentralizes the format around Dark Ritual decks, but it's still not the nuclear bomb some people seem to think it is.
0 Karn
W Darien
U Arcanis
B Geth
R Norin
G Yeva
UW Hanna
RB Olivia
WB Obzedat
UR Melek
BG Glissa
WR Aurelia
GU Kraj
BRU Nicol Bolas
RGB Prossh
BGW Ghave
GUB Mimeoplasm
WUBRG Sliver Overlord
GWU Treva, the Renewer
EDH Spike:
U Azami, Lady of Scrolls
Trades
Necrostorm
Necro BUG/Rock/Jund/Esper/Grixis/Dega
RUG that hates Nerco decks
:-(
Legacy:
RWBG Goblins
RRR Burn
WBU Affinity
UBR Sac-Land Tendrils!
BBBPox
Next possible deck: D&T, but that just wouldn't be right.
Modern: R Goblins (work in progress)
Standard: I only care about standard when Goblins is a deck.
Limited: I only care about limited when Goblins are in the set.
Pauper:
RGoblins
URCloudpost
other decks
Goblins.
Exile a pair of spirit guides into manamorphose. Cast all the rituals + quicken. Cast tendrils of agony. But the point is, it is not worth it to win on turn 1 with necro as it requires that you jump through way too many hoops decklist wise. You just win on turn 2 with a stacked hand that can push a win through virtually anything. Hell, you don't even need to win turn 2 as necropotence as a card advantage engine is just pure brokenness. Look at the mono black control necropotence decks from 1999. They killed you with corrupt and drain life.
Necropotence would wreck legacy. It's like old extended when necro was legal. They kept banning all the cards surrounding necro to try to make it fair in that format. Then they STILL had to ban necro because paying 1 life to draw a card is ****ing busted. It is in the top 10 cards of all time in terms of power level I'd wager because of how busted a 3 mana card drawing you 10+ cards is.
Currently Playing:
Retired
bla bla bla... pay 19 life, draw 19 cards.... bolt you, I win.
end of story.
truth is, Necropotence is REALLY powerful....
but wouldn't destroy the metagame.