I've been working on this deck for a while. It used to be UB, but it bugged me so much not being able to curve a turn 1 discard outlet to a turn 2 Stitchwing Skaab. A strong play made even stronger if you can discard a Prized Amalgam or two to pay Skaab's reanimation cost. Thus, the addition of Red. The only reason I didn't drop black completely is because the deck sometimes has to hard cast Amalgam and sometimes the curve goes to Ghoulsteed instead.
As stated in the Title, the deck runs $50. I bought the cards yesterday (minus the Foreboding Ruins because I already have them). The lands are the most expensive part of the purchase. Playsets costs about $12 for each set, plus or minus. Also, I decided to go with Choked Estuary and Foreboding Ruins instead of Shivan Reef because SOI will be in Standard going forward after Origins rotates out. I also feel like lands are a good investment for the budget player since you can use them in numerous future decks.
edit 6/8 - Made room for 4 Heir of Falkenrath and another swamp. -Geralf's, -Lightning Axe, -Negate, -Island, -Mountain (all 1 each)
edit 6/22 - Added a little more control. -1 Ghoulsteed, -2 Heir. +1 Negate, +2 compelling deterrence
edit 7/14 - ENM Update. Dropped most of the Black from the deck. Ghoulsteed changed to Advanced Stitchwing. Added K's Return and Elder Deep-Fiend. Added Take Inventory. Added 4 Wandering Fumarole. That all adds about another $40 to the cost. Sorry...
edit 9/20 - KLD Update. Moved EDF/K's Return to the Sideboard. added more early discard, more self revive zombies, more drawing/digging, making the deck more consistent. Added in Fast Lands.
The deck plays pretty simply. Turns 1 - 3, you're looking to get a discard-to-revive zombie into the GY. After that, you're a flash deck. Every play made EOT. Make good use of the counterspells, don't be afraid of trading with opponents since your zombies will be back!
Look at them! Beautiful, right? Get them to the GY, and they'll win your day. It's rare that you have to hardcast them, but if you do, it's not a big deal. Trade it in combat and start your GY shenanigans. By far the best card to discard to pay for their ability is Prized Amalgam. Timed to just before the endstep, you can get your zombie in play plus whatever amalgam you pitch to it for free. 2+ creatures for 2 - 4 mana is hard to pass up.
Those zombies are hungry for cards in hand. This is the best way I've come across to keep those cards coming. Not only does it keep giving cards every turn, but it also has the potential to keep pressure on your opponent. It's especially strong against control decks. They normally have a higher land count with no way to dump them from their hands. Against aggressive decks, it'll continue to enable recursion so you can overwhelm them. This is a great all around card.
It's important to note. The way the deck is set up, you at most need 8 lands in play. This will allow you to revive a Geralf's and madness cast a Broken Concentration. It's important to keep this in mind, because lands are valuable pitch cards to feed zombies that want to come into play. There are 24 in deck, and you can expect Fevered Visions to give you plenty. Make calculated plays. If you have the option to toss a land, and you have a couple in hand and fevered visions is going to give you more, then toss them instead of business cards like counterspells or removals. Also, never be afraid to toss creatures. They should always be the 1st choice to throw away, and I haven't ran into a situation beyond the first few turns where I ever cast a creature.
Also, I chose a counterspell package for this deck. It doesn't have to be that. It could just as easily be burn or removal. You just want instants. That's the most important thing. These zombies are among the best 'flash' creatures in the game. You want the rest of your deck to reflect that.
I'm rolling around a sideboard, but I don't have anything specific yet. I do think it would involve something like Heir of Falkenrath to make me more stompy against low creature decks (since Lightning Axe would be less effective). Other than that, I might add a little burn (possibly of the madness variety). Compelling Deterrence is also high on the list in my mind.
Like I said earlier, I bought the cards yesterday, I expect to get them sometime this week. I'll be taking this to FNM in roughly 2 weeks. I'll come back with results. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the list.
**If interested, I can post the UB list if people aren't so ready to invest in the 3 color. The 2 color is a bit more stable, but it's also a turn slower on the curve**
I'm kinda torn about Masterpiece - it seems a little too inconsistent for my liking. I'd rather just have a solid beater with flying (in Black or Red) over him. Sure, he can recur, but to inflict -1/-1 on himself kinda makes me leery.
Yeah, but which solid flying beaters come back with Prized Amalgams in tow? Also, when considering the revival cost, even if he's a 4/4 (which isn't very likely with this deck. your hand empties very fast) for 4 mana IS a solid beater. I rarely see him smaller than 5/5, even with Fevered Visions in play.
Compared to other flying beaters in black.
4 CMC Mindwrack Demon: Only 4 cmc flying beater on this list. Will eat you alive without delirium. 4/5
5 CMC Boltwing Marauder: Only 5 cmc flying beater with 5 power. All other are are 4 power. Not a bad dragon, but doesn't come back, doesn't bring Amalgams with him. Oddly enough, does manage to get up to 7 power, so even on that front. lol.
6+ CMC Dragonlord Kolaghan: Only 6 plus I like on this list. Flying/Haste is great. Plus he has a great ability, but he still doesn't come back and he also doesn't come in at instant speed. He wouldn't work with the Flash aspect of this deck. This deck has great potential for tempo plays, and you can't do that when you've tied up 6 mana on your turn.
That's my opinion/thinking when it comes to this build. I also tested with tweaked numbers of discard to come back zombies, and I kept finding over and over that the deck needs to dump zombies in the GY to come online. The two choices are self mill or self discard. I like choosing which cards go in better than letting it happen at random. Gotta have all 12 in to make that happen as fast as possible.
Added in 4 Heir of Falkenrath (Flip) and a swamp to add more early discard sources. Up from 8 to 11. Also has the added benefit of being extra pressure/blocker.
All that discarding. Seems like after recurring 1 or 2 of them you'll be in top deck mode and be really durdly.. I think I would just run Masterpiece and maybe Stitchwing. Along with, possibly, Call of the Bloodline for better on demand discard. Those are just blind thoughts though.
All that discarding. Seems like after recurring 1 or 2 of them you'll be in top deck mode and be really durdly.. I think I would just run Masterpiece and maybe Stitchwing. Along with, possibly, Call of the Bloodline for better on demand discard. Those are just blind thoughts though.
How does it play?
The only madness card is Broken Concentration. Having on demand discard isn't really an issue since I don't rely on the madness mechanic.
For playstyle, I have limited testing. My playtest friend moved away, and my other one got an evening job. I've also had some work and family obligations come up, which is going to stop me from going to FNM this week. I think really hard about getting a MTGO account, so I can do a lot of testing, but that would just double the cost of every deck I want to build (buying an online and a paper set).
From drawing up sample hands, I would say that 80% of hands work as intended. Get a zombie in the GY, play tempo style. Do everything during the opp's turn. 10% of games are super beatdown where a T1 Neonate curves into a T2 Skaab with a discarded amalgam/revive zombie and then turn 3 or 4 a Z-Horsie or Masterpiece, and counterspell backup makes it a quick game. The last 10% is when things just don't work out. Early, I don't get one of my colors, I don't get an early revive zombie, or I don't get an early discard. Sometimes the deck can come back from that just because there are cards that can chump block, dig or counterspell.
What I've been testing more than anything now is how well the deck comes back from a mulligan. It's actually pretty promising. Despite having 7 cards at the 5 cmc spot, those cards actually get played for a 3 or 4 cost respectively. If you look at the actually played cost of cards, the deck tops out at 3 cards in the 4 cmc slot.
Overall, I'm impressed with the deck, and I hope to take it for some actual play sometime soon. Maybe I'll just go to my LGS in the middle of next week just for some play testing.
Oh, btw. Fevered Visions is a bomb! It keeps my hand full, so I can overwhelm with zombies while also sometimes creating a clock of its own. It's amazing.
disclaimer - "full" is a relative term, most of the time my hand has 2-3 cards at most. I rarely want to hold cards in hand unless they're instants.
They do go together, but Heir plays such a small part of this deck that finding room for Heirloom just isn't practical. Typically, Heir only gets played once and early in the game. Beyond that, she's mostly discard fodder for zombies Skaab, Z-Horsie, or Masterpiece to come back.
Call wouldn't be used as a madness enabler in this deck, just as discard for your zombies that also give you a lifelinker to stall. I do understand that you won't use it's ability too often.
If you're interested, we can see about downloading a 3rd party program to test against each other sometime.
MOST of the time, I only need to discard 1 zombie. After that, they facilitate discards themselves, and then I don't like to discard again outside of bringing back a zombie (except Lightning Axe. sometimes you have to kill stuff...). Because of that, I like my discard outlets I have now. Because they're useful outside that 1 discard. After I discard for Heir, she keeps attacking/blocking. Neonate draws a card + he's turn 2 and can lead to that 10% beat down. And Lightning Axe, you know...kill stuff lol.
Turn 1 discard was the driving force behind adding red to the deck. Prized Amalgam was the main reason for keeping black. Playtesting showed that if I wanted to play the deck as a flash/tempo, I needed 10+ discard zombies to get online. Call the Bloodline is turn 3 discard at the earliest.
You mentioned using Masterpiece and possibly Skaab in a build, if you were doing it. Throw a list together. I'd love to see. I'm picturing a control deck. Would you go 2 colors or keep it 3?
Yeah, for some reason I didn't think about the cards using themselves as discard Outlets.. Mind fart I suppose. Um, I think I would probably keep it only two colors.. Go a bit heavier on the zombie theme, I'll see what I can throw together.
I look forward to seeing it. I originally was UB, but I couldn't get a turn 1 discard/turn 2 Skaab. That's where red came in. A guy in my LGS made a UB heavy zombie version that worked well, and I was basically just zombie overload on the boardstate, but if it didn't get a perfect draw it was really slow and didn't really have much to keep it in the game. I feel like the deck really needs Descend upon the Sinful/Declaration in Stone/all other exile effects protection. That's why I went counterspells and abandoned the other zombies, so I could do EoT revivals.
I haven't gotten around to building the deck yet, I'm going to try to throw something together tonight. However, I was thinking that Sin Prodder would be a perfect addition to yours because even if they decide to bin it, you can recur many of your creatures. If they don't, then you get an additional one sided draw without using Visions that also helps your opponent.
Decided to put a little more control in. Add in the 4th Negate and a couple of Compelling Deterrence. Those might become removal or more counterspells. I think I'm at the bottom of the card count where I've got enough discard/discard-zombies to make the deck work.
I'll be working this friday, so i won't be able to go to FNM. I plan on going next friday. Hopefully I'll have some results.
I fully recommend Deterrence. I haven't built mine yet, I need one more masterpiece and the heirs. I still don't know if ghostly wings are needed, I'm just invisioning them thrown on a pumped colossus and swinging into the red zone. Plus they also act as a discard outlets in a pinch.
The deck is around $70, you can get it below $50 if you replace the rare lands for their uncommon ETBT (enter the battlefield tapped) equivalents, but your tempo will suffer a lot.
I've only played a few matches since I'm focused on another deck right now, but it's very explosive. There's a lot of card drawing and madness so it can be pretty consistent (spell wise) and doesn't suffer from empty hand syndrome. The only thing I don't like is that it's 3 colors (with double black on your main threat): It can be easy to be color screwed.
In the 3 matches I played I had no problem with lands and/or colors, but I'm not 100% yet.
I don't like Mindwrack Demon in most decks, especially in this deck. With only 4 card types in the deck, combined with the fact that there are only 7 copies of 1 of those card types, I'm not sure delirium will come online consistently enough to prevent the Demon from eating me alive.
Valid concern. I've played almost 10 games were he's been in play and only lost life to him once (and I play him as soon as I have the mana). With all the discard and draw, it's almost certain to get delirium by turn 4-5.
He's too good. Few spells can deal with him right now.
For me, Geralf's Masterpiece comes into play at the same mana cost, and with all the discard zombies, my hand is rarely more than 3 cards, so he attacks for 4+ and he doesn't kill me like Mindwrack does. I especially like attacking with him, then when he gets blocked or goes unblocked, bringing back another zombie, discarding and reducing my hand size, and getting a sort of Giant Growth out of my recursion.
Dead Weight is out completely. It doesn't discard at all to facilitate putting zombies in the GY so I can bring them back at their reduced cost. Take Ghoulsteed for example. It's CMC is 5. 5th turn at the earliest, but its revival ability is 3, 2 turns earlier. That's a huge jump.
Sinister Concoction was actually in the deck in the 1st iteration of this deck, back when it was just UB. The entire reason Red was added to the deck was the fact that no Black or Blue card gave me a Turn 1 discard, which allows me to curve into a turn 2 Stitchwing Skaab. It would be silly to trade a card that can do turn 1 discard for one that can't.
I'd also like to just defend Lightning Axe itself. It's good, versatile removal. There aren't a ton of creatures seeing play in standard that are above the 5 toughness limit, and the ones that are I'm happy to put them up against a 7/7 Geralf's Masterpiece. The discard additional cost isn't such a big deal, since I have a good amount of zombies to toss to it, or even my 4 madness cards. It's a significantly minimized downside. Finally, it's instant speed. This deck likes playing during your opponents turn. Adding in non-instants/non-flash cards doesn't fit as well.
On an unrelated note, from looking at some of the cards that are spoiled so far, and I'll be looking to discuss them after the last cards are revealed, I'm likely going to drop black from deck (except for Prized Amalgam).
This deck looks super interesting, and I'm thinking of building it for use at FNM. I've got a couple questions about it, though.
In your experience, what are the good and bad matchups? My LGS has a lot of Super Friends and GW Tokens, how does it fare vs those?
Also, what are you doing about sideboard?
I'm very interested to see what cards from EMN you're gonna try out!
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As stated in the Title, the deck runs $50. I bought the cards yesterday (minus the Foreboding Ruins because I already have them). The lands are the most expensive part of the purchase. Playsets costs about $12 for each set, plus or minus. Also, I decided to go with Choked Estuary and Foreboding Ruins instead of Shivan Reef because SOI will be in Standard going forward after Origins rotates out. I also feel like lands are a good investment for the budget player since you can use them in numerous future decks.
4 Advanced Stitchwing
2 Geralf's Masterpiece
4 Insolent Neonate
4 Prized Amalgam
4 Stitchwing Skaab
Sorceries 8
4 Take Inventory
4 Cathartic Reunion
3 Broken Concentration
4 Lightning Axe
3 Negate
Enchantments 3
3 Fevered Visions
Lands 21
8 Island
7 Mountain
4 Spirebluff Canal
2 Wandering Fumarole
3 Compelling Deterrence
2 Elder Deep-Fiend
2 Fiery Temper
2 Geralf's Masterpiece
3 Kozilek's Return
3 Summary Dismissal
edit 6/8 - Made room for 4 Heir of Falkenrath and another swamp. -Geralf's, -Lightning Axe, -Negate, -Island, -Mountain (all 1 each)
edit 6/22 - Added a little more control. -1 Ghoulsteed, -2 Heir. +1 Negate, +2 compelling deterrence
edit 7/14 - ENM Update. Dropped most of the Black from the deck. Ghoulsteed changed to Advanced Stitchwing. Added K's Return and Elder Deep-Fiend. Added Take Inventory. Added 4 Wandering Fumarole. That all adds about another $40 to the cost. Sorry...
edit 9/20 - KLD Update. Moved EDF/K's Return to the Sideboard. added more early discard, more self revive zombies, more drawing/digging, making the deck more consistent. Added in Fast Lands.
The deck plays pretty simply. Turns 1 - 3, you're looking to get a discard-to-revive zombie into the GY. After that, you're a flash deck. Every play made EOT. Make good use of the counterspells, don't be afraid of trading with opponents since your zombies will be back!
Look at them! Beautiful, right? Get them to the GY, and they'll win your day. It's rare that you have to hardcast them, but if you do, it's not a big deal. Trade it in combat and start your GY shenanigans. By far the best card to discard to pay for their ability is Prized Amalgam. Timed to just before the endstep, you can get your zombie in play plus whatever amalgam you pitch to it for free. 2+ creatures for 2 - 4 mana is hard to pass up.
Those zombies are hungry for cards in hand. This is the best way I've come across to keep those cards coming. Not only does it keep giving cards every turn, but it also has the potential to keep pressure on your opponent. It's especially strong against control decks. They normally have a higher land count with no way to dump them from their hands. Against aggressive decks, it'll continue to enable recursion so you can overwhelm them. This is a great all around card.
It's important to note. The way the deck is set up, you at most need 8 lands in play. This will allow you to revive a Geralf's and madness cast a Broken Concentration. It's important to keep this in mind, because lands are valuable pitch cards to feed zombies that want to come into play. There are 24 in deck, and you can expect Fevered Visions to give you plenty. Make calculated plays. If you have the option to toss a land, and you have a couple in hand and fevered visions is going to give you more, then toss them instead of business cards like counterspells or removals. Also, never be afraid to toss creatures. They should always be the 1st choice to throw away, and I haven't ran into a situation beyond the first few turns where I ever cast a creature.
Also, I chose a counterspell package for this deck. It doesn't have to be that. It could just as easily be burn or removal. You just want instants. That's the most important thing. These zombies are among the best 'flash' creatures in the game. You want the rest of your deck to reflect that.
I'm rolling around a sideboard, but I don't have anything specific yet. I do think it would involve something like Heir of Falkenrath to make me more stompy against low creature decks (since Lightning Axe would be less effective). Other than that, I might add a little burn (possibly of the madness variety). Compelling Deterrence is also high on the list in my mind.
Like I said earlier, I bought the cards yesterday, I expect to get them sometime this week. I'll be taking this to FNM in roughly 2 weeks. I'll come back with results. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the list.
**If interested, I can post the UB list if people aren't so ready to invest in the 3 color. The 2 color is a bit more stable, but it's also a turn slower on the curve**
Compared to other flying beaters in black.
4 CMC
Mindwrack Demon: Only 4 cmc flying beater on this list. Will eat you alive without delirium. 4/5
5 CMC
Boltwing Marauder: Only 5 cmc flying beater with 5 power. All other are are 4 power. Not a bad dragon, but doesn't come back, doesn't bring Amalgams with him. Oddly enough, does manage to get up to 7 power, so even on that front. lol.
6+ CMC
Dragonlord Kolaghan: Only 6 plus I like on this list. Flying/Haste is great. Plus he has a great ability, but he still doesn't come back and he also doesn't come in at instant speed. He wouldn't work with the Flash aspect of this deck. This deck has great potential for tempo plays, and you can't do that when you've tied up 6 mana on your turn.
That's my opinion/thinking when it comes to this build. I also tested with tweaked numbers of discard to come back zombies, and I kept finding over and over that the deck needs to dump zombies in the GY to come online. The two choices are self mill or self discard. I like choosing which cards go in better than letting it happen at random. Gotta have all 12 in to make that happen as fast as possible.
How does it play?
For playstyle, I have limited testing. My playtest friend moved away, and my other one got an evening job. I've also had some work and family obligations come up, which is going to stop me from going to FNM this week. I think really hard about getting a MTGO account, so I can do a lot of testing, but that would just double the cost of every deck I want to build (buying an online and a paper set).
From drawing up sample hands, I would say that 80% of hands work as intended. Get a zombie in the GY, play tempo style. Do everything during the opp's turn. 10% of games are super beatdown where a T1 Neonate curves into a T2 Skaab with a discarded amalgam/revive zombie and then turn 3 or 4 a Z-Horsie or Masterpiece, and counterspell backup makes it a quick game. The last 10% is when things just don't work out. Early, I don't get one of my colors, I don't get an early revive zombie, or I don't get an early discard. Sometimes the deck can come back from that just because there are cards that can chump block, dig or counterspell.
What I've been testing more than anything now is how well the deck comes back from a mulligan. It's actually pretty promising. Despite having 7 cards at the 5 cmc spot, those cards actually get played for a 3 or 4 cost respectively. If you look at the actually played cost of cards, the deck tops out at 3 cards in the 4 cmc slot.
Overall, I'm impressed with the deck, and I hope to take it for some actual play sometime soon. Maybe I'll just go to my LGS in the middle of next week just for some play testing.
Oh, btw. Fevered Visions is a bomb! It keeps my hand full, so I can overwhelm with zombies while also sometimes creating a clock of its own. It's amazing.
disclaimer - "full" is a relative term, most of the time my hand has 2-3 cards at most. I rarely want to hold cards in hand unless they're instants.
They do go together, but Heir plays such a small part of this deck that finding room for Heirloom just isn't practical. Typically, Heir only gets played once and early in the game. Beyond that, she's mostly discard fodder for zombies Skaab, Z-Horsie, or Masterpiece to come back.
If you're interested, we can see about downloading a 3rd party program to test against each other sometime.
Turn 1 discard was the driving force behind adding red to the deck. Prized Amalgam was the main reason for keeping black. Playtesting showed that if I wanted to play the deck as a flash/tempo, I needed 10+ discard zombies to get online. Call the Bloodline is turn 3 discard at the earliest.
You mentioned using Masterpiece and possibly Skaab in a build, if you were doing it. Throw a list together. I'd love to see. I'm picturing a control deck. Would you go 2 colors or keep it 3?
4 Heir of Falkenrath
4 Rancid Rats
4 Relentless Dead
3 Prized Amalgam
4 Diregraf Colossus
4 Stitchwing Skaab
2 Geralf's Masterpiece
4 Compelling Deterrence
2 Ghostly Wings
3 Catalog
2 Pour Over the Pages
4 Choked Estuary
10 Island
10 Swamp
I'd probably start with that and tweak from there. Fliers are my win conditions with the Rats being a reusable kill spell in a sense.
I was really trying to fit Corrupted Grafstone in there for ramp but I don't think I can get cards in the yard quick enough to help.
I'll be working this friday, so i won't be able to go to FNM. I plan on going next friday. Hopefully I'll have some results.
3 Ghoulsteed
4 Mindwrack Demon
4 Prized Amalgam
4 Stitchwing Skaab
Instants (14)
3 Just the Wind
3 Corpse Churn
4 Fiery Temper
4 Lightning Axe
3 Pieces of the Puzzle
4 Tormenting Voice
Lands (24)
4 Evolving Wilds
4 Island
5 Swamp
6 Mountain
4 Shivan Reef
2 Smoldering Marsh
2 Sunken Hollow
3 Dispel
3 Thing in the Ice
3 Displacement Wave
3 Negate
3 Fevered Visions
The deck is around $70, you can get it below $50 if you replace the rare lands for their uncommon ETBT (enter the battlefield tapped) equivalents, but your tempo will suffer a lot.
I've only played a few matches since I'm focused on another deck right now, but it's very explosive. There's a lot of card drawing and madness so it can be pretty consistent (spell wise) and doesn't suffer from empty hand syndrome. The only thing I don't like is that it's 3 colors (with double black on your main threat): It can be easy to be color screwed.
In the 3 matches I played I had no problem with lands and/or colors, but I'm not 100% yet.
Edit: I want to try 1x Ever After and 2x Sin Prodder/Goblin Dark-Dwellers, but don't know where to fit them in.
He's too good. Few spells can deal with him right now.
But, I will explain why I want Lightning Axe over either Dead Weight or Sinister Concoction.
Dead Weight is out completely. It doesn't discard at all to facilitate putting zombies in the GY so I can bring them back at their reduced cost. Take Ghoulsteed for example. It's CMC is 5. 5th turn at the earliest, but its revival ability is 3, 2 turns earlier. That's a huge jump.
Sinister Concoction was actually in the deck in the 1st iteration of this deck, back when it was just UB. The entire reason Red was added to the deck was the fact that no Black or Blue card gave me a Turn 1 discard, which allows me to curve into a turn 2 Stitchwing Skaab. It would be silly to trade a card that can do turn 1 discard for one that can't.
I'd also like to just defend Lightning Axe itself. It's good, versatile removal. There aren't a ton of creatures seeing play in standard that are above the 5 toughness limit, and the ones that are I'm happy to put them up against a 7/7 Geralf's Masterpiece. The discard additional cost isn't such a big deal, since I have a good amount of zombies to toss to it, or even my 4 madness cards. It's a significantly minimized downside. Finally, it's instant speed. This deck likes playing during your opponents turn. Adding in non-instants/non-flash cards doesn't fit as well.
On an unrelated note, from looking at some of the cards that are spoiled so far, and I'll be looking to discuss them after the last cards are revealed, I'm likely going to drop black from deck (except for Prized Amalgam).
In your experience, what are the good and bad matchups? My LGS has a lot of Super Friends and GW Tokens, how does it fare vs those?
Also, what are you doing about sideboard?
I'm very interested to see what cards from EMN you're gonna try out!