MTG Salvation

Hello all,

Here's my preliminary B/G Dark Depths multiplayer deck. My group is usually around six people. I'm looking for help with the filler cards to help keep me alive long enough to pick people off with Dark Depths.

Fetches:
Into the North, Expedition Map, and Life from the Loam

Combos:
Vampire Hexmage and Thespian's Stage

Blockers:
Will-o'-the-Wisp, Vampire Nighthawk

Counters:
Not of This World

Alternate win:
Rite of Consumption (i.e. black fling)



Any comments would be appreciated!

WilloWisp is a horrendous card. It Stone Rains you for the privilege of blocking 1 creature from 1 player per circuit. If that's your plan to stifle the aggression of 6 players then you're doing it wrong. Black Knight or something maybe? Gatekeeper of Malakir? Having something that triggers Erebos seems ideal. Wall of Souls is obviously a card, so is something like Gloom Surgeon, the problem is that neither of those cards activates Erebos.

Sorin Markov? A wild 6 drop appears? What's he in here for?

3 Rancors and 4 Rites? That seems like an excessive number of "push damage through defenses" effects. Then again I don't hate Rancor on Hexmage and Nighthawk...

No Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth? The deck should run 4 in an ideal world.

I prefer Sylvan Scrying over Into the North given that it can fetch both essential combo pieces.

Volrath's Stronghold as a singleton to recur Vampire Hexmage? Might be unnecessary.

If you went b/u instead you can run tolaria west which acts as a land or a tutor and muddle the mixture which can also pull double duty as a counteor a tutor. You could also use the shell of the old extended deck that ran the hexmage depths combo and the shooter foundry sword of the meek combo which can also all be searched up by muddle. Using b/u also gives you a lot of removal options from blacks myriad of creature removal to blues into the roil and echoing truth both of which are excellent. cyclonic rift could also be very good.
That is a substantial change to the deck that you currently have so i totally understand if you wouldnt want to go that way. Either way, hexmage depths is a fun combo to run. If you want to keep it greenñ you might consider something like vines of vastwood or another instant speed spell that gives your token shroud. The biggest problem that you are going to run into if the deck is successful is your group running bounce.

The rite of consumption doesn't really feel like an alt win con as it really wants to combine with you primary win con in an active dark depths. It's more of a win more.

I agree that you should look at the dark depths / thopter foundry decks of old. That deck was amazing. Thopter foundry gives you a great multiplayer stategy with end of turn flying 1/1 that give you life.

As cz mentioned urborg is a must. Sometimes you just get the perfect 20/20 on turn two.

Thanks for the advise guys. This is my current build. I want to stay B/G for now. Added 3 Hero's Downfall. My group is starting to play with more Planeswalkers and I think I'll need the added protection.

I did a lot of research before posting this. I came up pretty empty handed as far as good posts about multiplayer Dark Depths decks. I thought posting this would help other people out as well. This deck sounds like a fun one to throw in my rotation. Want to keep my group on their toes.

Quote from Morkelin

I did a lot of research before posting this. I came up pretty empty handed as far as good posts about multiplayer Dark Depths decks.

It's hard to have fun games with friends when people are hitting you with 20/20 indestructible fliers on turn 3. Unless you're trying to get people to quit Magic then it's usually viewed as an excessively uninteractive combo. There's no prize money on the line or anything after all. Having people die on turn 3 is a wee bit more competitive than an average game needs to be.

Cz, this is the sort of deck I'd play with caution and pull out maybe once a year at best. I'm rotating about 20 or so decks right now of various levels (from a powerhouse Eldrazi to a twelve dollar Zendikon deck). The last thing I want to do is make people rage quit, especially when three of the people I play with are my brothers and son :).

Quote from Morkelin

Cz, this is the sort of deck I'd play with caution and pull out maybe once a year at best. I'm rotating about 20 or so decks right now of various levels (from a powerhouse Eldrazi to a twelve dollar Zendikon deck). The last thing I want to do is make people rage quit, especially when three of the people I play with are my brothers and son :).

Oh I wasn't trying to stop you from building it or anything. I've played way more broken decks than this too. Like you said, as long as you only play them sporadically then most people don't seem to care. If you can't play combo ever, well, that kind of sucks too. I'm just saying that it doesn't surprise me that you haven't found anything written about the archetype. It's not something that most people want to wield in a casual setting. It kind of doesn't matter what you pair it with after all and you don't really need to build an optimal deck to get it to work. As others have said, it's frequently paired with other combos as a result. I, for example, play Leyline of the Void and Helm of Obedience in mine. I also play another version that has Bloodchief Ascension and Mindcrank and a bunch of cheap 2/Xs for 1 and 2 mana.

I finally got to play this deck last night. We had four at the table. Here's the deck list I ran with:



I had Dark Depths, Thespian's Stage, and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth in my opening hand so the game ended on turn six. Definitely a deck you only want to play sparingly.

Your deck looks freakish close to something that I've ran before in the past. Like I said earlier though, I tossed in Bloodchief Ascension and Mindcrank as a secondary combo to abuse all of those aggressive 2/Xs. I obviously had to toss things like Rancor and Hero's Downfall but I was more than fine with that exchange. But yeah, like you said, it's not the kind of deck that you want to pull out every month.

If you enjoy using your other creatures as part of your strategy then I totally understand the Rancor. However, if you want to gear this more towards the winning combo, why not replace Rancor with a singleton Shizo, Death's Storehouse as your breakthrough method. Especially since you can fetch for it. That would even give you room for extra fetch. Could replace Not of This World with Steely Resolve to protect your boss. Sylvan Library and Crop Rotation for more card manipulation. Add in red for fast board wipes or stay black for slower board wipes + target kills (Check out the new Bile Blight as well). These would probably all make the deck a tad faster but more like the competitive Legacy version. Just food for thought if you haven't seen these cards yet.