Curse of Echoes resolved against a control deck is GG.
Tragic Slip (-1/-1, -13/-13 morbid) obviously has a pace here;
Dungeon Geists (2UU for a 3/3 flier that taps down a creature permanently) and Tower Geist (3U for a 2/2 flier with mini-ponder attached) are decent but underwhelming;
Black Cat is tough to evaluate (1/1 for 2 that makes opponent discard randomly when it dies)
Gravecrawler might be acceptable in some build with one other zombie (black cat probably is not that zombie) as a late-game recurring threat
Undying Evil reuses Snapcasters, which is adorable but there are probably better choices
Helvault is actually interesting as a late-game card, once you reach 7 mana you can definitely use it to grind out games...
But I agree, most of the options are underwhelming
yeah clearly
the big shiny enchantments are kind of amusing to think about but since they both fail post-wrath there's not a lot to do with them
gravecrawler and black cat seem like plausible enough early drops and i think there's enough recursion here to keep pressure on... like you said, everything tier 1 is pretty likely to outshine this (although curse and BSZ make a couple of those matchups easier)
I also think that Phyrexian Crusader paired with reasonable ways of recurring him would make some of those matchups much easier on us (although one ends up pretty close to infect/control that way)
I'm thinking a zombie deck that applies constant pressure (for relatively little mana) could be quite strong here... there are plenty of ways to use/abuse smallpox here, so I think that card might be a good include.
1 Drop Creatures Gravecrawler - 1 coster that can be played from graveyard... seems to me that this guy might be a good way to follow up a smallpox Diregraf Ghoul - undercosted guy Hex Parasite - Kills pw's and shrines, seems ok
2 Drop Creatures Black Cat - 1/1 great "dies" effect, super cute with smallpox and/or undying evil Highborn Ghoul - 2/1 with evasion, wears a lashwrithe alright Phyrexian Revoker - 2/1 Not a zombie, but a cute follow-up to Despise
3 Drop Creatures Geralf's Messenger - Burn spell on a 3/2 undying is ok.... how big is this drawback? Wakedancer - 2 2/2s for 3? seems alright Ghoulraiser - 2/2 and get back discarded zombies, seems good Cemetary Reaper - 2/2 which doubles as graveyard hate and a lord AND a token maker Unbreathing Horde - ?/?, equip with lashwrithe and you have a nigh-unkillable fatty Phyrexian Crusader - Relevant Protections, wins the game real fast with a lashwrithe on him
4+ drop creatures Phyrexian Obliterator - 5/5, not a zombie but I guess he can play with us if he wants... dies to dismember like everything else ;_; Vengeful Pharoah - pretty bad except for the Pox/Liliana use... Geth, Lord of the Vault - hahaha Grave Titan - Mono-B should probably always run this
Artifacts Lashwrithe - the only really good reason to be in mono-black right now, but it's a pretty decent reason. One of the best equipments going.
Manalith/Gargoyle/Talisman - I dunno, might want this if we go the pox route? But our stuff is mostly cheap enough as it is.
Spells Smallpox - sac a creature you can get back, discard a card you can get back, sac a land that you don't need, lose a life that doesn't matter... all we need is a swamp with undying :3c Undying Evil - one black for a pseudo-counterspell that ALSO allows us to reuse a CiP ability? Seems good. Despise/Distress - Discard to take out the stuff that can hurt us, like Sever the Bloodline - Exiles undying cards, takes out token swarms - (btw i think this card is a sleeper hit) Black Sun's Zenith - Counter-intuitive but at least a sideboard card, since we're not the fastest deck Curse of Death's Hold - more permanent solution to most token swarms Liliana of the Veil - Too good to say no to, enables some shenanigans Ghoulcaller's Chant - Effectively Draw 2 for B might be good enough for our purposes, depending on creature density Altar's Reap - probably not too good here, but with Gravecrawlers, Black Cats lying around it might be ok Tezzeret's Gambit - a real draw spell Endless Ranks of the Dead - this can give us a pretty big advantage as long as we can get keep 2 zombies in play Moan of the Unhallowed - 2 2/2s for 1 card is pretty good value Mimic Vat - we've got a few good CiP effects, maybe we can abuse this? Black Cat under it is pretty irritating Nim Deathmantle - hahaha Call to the Grave - One-sided abyss, anyone?
Adding blue, we lose lashwrithe, geralf, and obliterator (we also can not play pox as reliably)
but we gain Havengul Lich (unpleasant combo with black cat) and another lord in Diregraf Captain, as well as some additional control ability (and access to better draw spells in think twice and forbidden alchemy)
I'm not enthused by most of the blue zombies, however.
Going this route, Call to the Grave could be a reasonable include, since it's feasible with Endless Ranks + Gravecrawlers + Ghoulraisers to keep a zombie in paly indefinitely.
skeleton is pretty bads though, I dunno if things will work out to where paying 2 to always have a vanilla 1/1 on the board is actually something a deck in standard will want to do
in order to make the skeleton less bads, (and the phoenix less, uh... middles) I think some number of equipments is necessary.
I dunno about Pharoah... if he goes in ANY deck it is this one, but at most I see him as a 2 of because... well... I'm never that excited about PLAYING him, honestly and am much happier when he is a No Mercy... worse comes to worse he's a recurring "finisher" and recurring "removal" but probably never the one of those that you want. If there were another discard outlet that did something productive at a reasonable price (i.e. probably not zombie infestation) i'd be less cautious about running him. Lightning Axe? lol
Anyway, in a deck that is running at least 2 important 5 cost cards (and probably a titan or two to be perfectly frank) I don't see being able to really abuse smallpox beyond a weird giant barter in blood. Double smallpoxing can be pretty devastating especially with cheap board-controlling walkers on the field but I dont think its really the way to go. Might be wrong, though.
Lashwrithe or Batterskull seem good. BOth are equipment for your skellingtons, boost your effective creature count, and lash is 'free' to equip. If you stay mono black theres not a lot of reason to leave it out of this kind of deck.
Nobody can argue that he hits a few of the themes of this set (zombies, graveyard recursion, general horror) and I don't think that Madness being in this block (or at least nearby) is too far of a stretch. Reasoning (and wild stabs into the dark) to follow.
There's a lot of emphasis on discarding cards (in ways that aren't straight up discard spells) in this set. Liliana, Grimoire, Frightful Delusion, plenty of looting-style effects.
Obviously this stuff synergizes with filling up the graveyard, but aside from making lhurgoyfs stronger and enabling Ancestal Recall or Skaab Ruinator, there's precious little to be DONE with that graveyard. Additionally, Maro said the discarding cost on Grimoire of the Dead was inspired by the theme of "madness"... which, okay, maybe a bit tenuous of a connection considering discarding cards has always been associated with insanity (or tar pits) but still...
would he be so careless as to say Madness next to discarding? He's a tricksy guy.
Additionally: Madness/insanity fit very well with the horror theme. Especially if the next couple sets take a lovecraftian bent (the grimoire is really the only piece of that I can see right now) it would make a lot of sense and be very flavorful if some of the transformations represented going insane, and could be "fueled" by Madness cards (or even "When X comes into play, if you paid its Madness cost, transform it")
I don't like to have to wait with mana open to draw the cards. I also don't like to be locked out of using my draw spell by not having the board position to sacrifice. Too often it was kill skeleton, altar's reap, reassemble, which is 4 for 2 cards... given the prolif's bonus to my walkers, I think gambit is just stronger. Maybe i'll be shown up.
Most of the good GY interactions dont involve casting from the GY. Maybe if they "reprint" chainer's edict, or a fb duress, or a fb tutor, or something, it'll be worth doing, but atm the only FB spells I really consider are Devil's Play, Moan of the Unhallowed, and uh
I'll post my general core here in a second but the actual list has been very in flux.
Ok, here's my current list, which suffers from too many finishers, none of which I can bring myself to cut.
Grave Titan is just good stuff, and he's pretty tough to stop. You all know why he's good.
Vengeful Pharaoh is cheaper while still pretty big and (slowly) recurs himself, as well as providing an interesting interaction with Liliana. I find people attack into him (in the grave) to try to screw me out of a draw... whether or not this is something that can be exploited is something that waits to be seen. Free(?) removal isn't something I'm likely to overlook.
Batterskull makes use of the tremendous number of recurring creatures while being a not insignificant body on its own. Less impressive when he's not being windmill slammed off of SFM, but still good value.
Reassembling skeleton is pretty bad most of the time. He can stall forever, but if that's the best you can do with 2 mana, you're losing. He's decent at carrying batterskulls and being tossed to Liliana, though perhaps something like Devil's Play would be more appropriate. This is my most-questioned card in the deck right now. Dropping him for either Grim Lavamancer or some more problematic 2-drop seems likely.
Sphere of the Suns works well with Tezz's Gambit, and provides a nice piece of ramp... especially into stuff like Monomania in the side. T4 Monomania makes other control decks unhappy, and lets us keep them in topdeck with Lili. Also allows us to play ancient grudge as our artifact destruction, which is rad. Right now, it seems like the better choice over Manalith, but that could change. I think some kind of mana rock is necessary.
Arc Trail could be Incinerate. Not really sure ATM since Arc Trail can kill a dude AND pop back some phoenixes , as well as 2-for-1 versus fast aggro (which I believe to be real) but Incinerate is generally better as an instant, or in a field with less aggro.
Here's my notes from playing around with various builds of this deck:
Tezzeret's gambit is very good here. Forking it is obviously amazing, even moreso with a Liliana on the field. Keeping Liliana healthy is pretty important. The deck I started building with ran 4 Phoenixes, 2 Pharoahs, and a varying number of flashback cards and Reassembling Skeletons... and what I found out was that often the best play with Liliana is to do nothing. Tezzeret's gambit offers a really good one-two punch with her: it gives you cards which you MIGHT use to fuel her +1, but it automatically allows you to at least get another edict out of her, which is pretty nice.
Reassembling Skeleton I am on the fence about. It's nice to have another card that you aren't worried about tossing to liliana, and the ability to get board presence at the end of an opponent's turn is pretty nice. Unfortunately, the creature itself is almost always just going to chump block, and there aren't a lot of good ways to power him up that synergize with the rest of the deck. Sword of Feast and Famine is one option, and isn't a bad one. Batterskull also does pretty well here. Bonehoard is another interesting option.
Vengeful Pharoah is nifty. Free removal is pretty decent and it's hard to get effectively locked out especially if you can manage a Liliana.
Smallpox could see play here? The mana costs on the cards are mostly low... obviously it has anti-synergy with any X spells but i think it'd be tough for a lot of decks to come back from forked smallpox if you've got your walkers out.
I have always argued for Dismember over Doom blade variants even in Mono-black decks because of its versatility. The ability to not commit any sideboard slots to cards like disfigure , the ability to cast this off of any land, it's just such a good card. For the rest of the removal, i'd probably use some burn that will turn on my Chandra's Phoenixes before I would run blades, but maybe that's a bad call.
Distress is pretty good... we've been spoiled by IoK. Despise isn't that interesting because we can probably deal with creatures. There's a lot of pesky non-critter stuff to worry about, that isn't so easy to deal with.
Altar's Reap is interesting... when I can cast it to good effect (or at least fork it), it's really solid. For a little while I played Act of Aggression, and the advantage you can get off those two spells in unison for 5 mana is pretty high. But it's dead a LOT of the time, and leaving that mana up for a convenient time is hard with some of our high drops.
Haven't seen a lot of fanfare around Sever the Bloodline
I feel like it's pretty darned good, especially with token shenanigans going on.
Additionally it keeps the thing from hitting the grave and doesn't permit any of that Morbid tomfoolery, if such things exist.
At the very least, it'll dig a deck out from under a zombie/spirit flood.
You had a boyfriend who plays MAGIC at 15?
TT_TT
Black Cat
Tower Geist
Dungeon Geists
Curse of Echoes
Wakedancer
Tragic Slip (-1/-1, -13/-13 morbid) obviously has a pace here;
Dungeon Geists (2UU for a 3/3 flier that taps down a creature permanently) and Tower Geist (3U for a 2/2 flier with mini-ponder attached) are decent but underwhelming;
Black Cat is tough to evaluate (1/1 for 2 that makes opponent discard randomly when it dies)
Gravecrawler might be acceptable in some build with one other zombie (black cat probably is not that zombie) as a late-game recurring threat
Undying Evil reuses Snapcasters, which is adorable but there are probably better choices
Helvault is actually interesting as a late-game card, once you reach 7 mana you can definitely use it to grind out games...
But I agree, most of the options are underwhelming
the big shiny enchantments are kind of amusing to think about but since they both fail post-wrath there's not a lot to do with them
gravecrawler and black cat seem like plausible enough early drops and i think there's enough recursion here to keep pressure on... like you said, everything tier 1 is pretty likely to outshine this (although curse and BSZ make a couple of those matchups easier)
I also think that Phyrexian Crusader paired with reasonable ways of recurring him would make some of those matchups much easier on us (although one ends up pretty close to infect/control that way)
1 Drop Creatures
Gravecrawler - 1 coster that can be played from graveyard... seems to me that this guy might be a good way to follow up a smallpox
Diregraf Ghoul - undercosted guy
Hex Parasite - Kills pw's and shrines, seems ok
2 Drop Creatures
Black Cat - 1/1 great "dies" effect, super cute with smallpox and/or undying evil
Highborn Ghoul - 2/1 with evasion, wears a lashwrithe alright
Phyrexian Revoker - 2/1 Not a zombie, but a cute follow-up to Despise
3 Drop Creatures
Geralf's Messenger - Burn spell on a 3/2 undying is ok.... how big is this drawback?
Wakedancer - 2 2/2s for 3? seems alright
Ghoulraiser - 2/2 and get back discarded zombies, seems good
Cemetary Reaper - 2/2 which doubles as graveyard hate and a lord AND a token maker
Unbreathing Horde - ?/?, equip with lashwrithe and you have a nigh-unkillable fatty
Phyrexian Crusader - Relevant Protections, wins the game real fast with a lashwrithe on him
4+ drop creatures
Phyrexian Obliterator - 5/5, not a zombie but I guess he can play with us if he wants... dies to dismember like everything else ;_;
Vengeful Pharoah - pretty bad except for the Pox/Liliana use...
Geth, Lord of the Vault - hahaha
Grave Titan - Mono-B should probably always run this
Artifacts
Lashwrithe - the only really good reason to be in mono-black right now, but it's a pretty decent reason. One of the best equipments going.
Manalith/Gargoyle/Talisman - I dunno, might want this if we go the pox route? But our stuff is mostly cheap enough as it is.
Spells
Smallpox - sac a creature you can get back, discard a card you can get back, sac a land that you don't need, lose a life that doesn't matter... all we need is a swamp with undying :3c
Undying Evil - one black for a pseudo-counterspell that ALSO allows us to reuse a CiP ability? Seems good.
Despise/Distress - Discard to take out the stuff that can hurt us, like
Sever the Bloodline - Exiles undying cards, takes out token swarms - (btw i think this card is a sleeper hit)
Black Sun's Zenith - Counter-intuitive but at least a sideboard card, since we're not the fastest deck
Curse of Death's Hold - more permanent solution to most token swarms
Liliana of the Veil - Too good to say no to, enables some shenanigans
Ghoulcaller's Chant - Effectively Draw 2 for B might be good enough for our purposes, depending on creature density
Altar's Reap - probably not too good here, but with Gravecrawlers, Black Cats lying around it might be ok
Tezzeret's Gambit - a real draw spell
Endless Ranks of the Dead - this can give us a pretty big advantage as long as we can get keep 2 zombies in play
Moan of the Unhallowed - 2 2/2s for 1 card is pretty good value
Mimic Vat - we've got a few good CiP effects, maybe we can abuse this? Black Cat under it is pretty irritating
Nim Deathmantle - hahaha
Call to the Grave - One-sided abyss, anyone?
Adding blue, we lose lashwrithe, geralf, and obliterator (we also can not play pox as reliably)
but we gain Havengul Lich (unpleasant combo with black cat) and another lord in Diregraf Captain, as well as some additional control ability (and access to better draw spells in think twice and forbidden alchemy)
I'm not enthused by most of the blue zombies, however.
Going this route, Call to the Grave could be a reasonable include, since it's feasible with Endless Ranks + Gravecrawlers + Ghoulraisers to keep a zombie in paly indefinitely.
Thoughts? Is there a playable deck here?
Noxious Revival isnt worth it to me... at least not right now.
turns her into 2 edicts at the cost of +2 cards
oh my
run it
skeleton is pretty bads though, I dunno if things will work out to where paying 2 to always have a vanilla 1/1 on the board is actually something a deck in standard will want to do
in order to make the skeleton less bads, (and the phoenix less, uh... middles) I think some number of equipments is necessary.
I dunno about Pharoah... if he goes in ANY deck it is this one, but at most I see him as a 2 of because... well... I'm never that excited about PLAYING him, honestly and am much happier when he is a No Mercy... worse comes to worse he's a recurring "finisher" and recurring "removal" but probably never the one of those that you want. If there were another discard outlet that did something productive at a reasonable price (i.e. probably not zombie infestation) i'd be less cautious about running him. Lightning Axe? lol
Anyway, in a deck that is running at least 2 important 5 cost cards (and probably a titan or two to be perfectly frank) I don't see being able to really abuse smallpox beyond a weird giant barter in blood. Double smallpoxing can be pretty devastating especially with cheap board-controlling walkers on the field but I dont think its really the way to go. Might be wrong, though.
One-sided Abyss seems worth the 5...
Heck, i've considered running it in non-tribal.
Nobody can argue that he hits a few of the themes of this set (zombies, graveyard recursion, general horror) and I don't think that Madness being in this block (or at least nearby) is too far of a stretch. Reasoning (and wild stabs into the dark) to follow.
There's a lot of emphasis on discarding cards (in ways that aren't straight up discard spells) in this set. Liliana, Grimoire, Frightful Delusion, plenty of looting-style effects.
Obviously this stuff synergizes with filling up the graveyard, but aside from making lhurgoyfs stronger and enabling Ancestal Recall or Skaab Ruinator, there's precious little to be DONE with that graveyard. Additionally, Maro said the discarding cost on Grimoire of the Dead was inspired by the theme of "madness"... which, okay, maybe a bit tenuous of a connection considering discarding cards has always been associated with insanity (or tar pits) but still...
would he be so careless as to say Madness next to discarding? He's a tricksy guy.
Additionally: Madness/insanity fit very well with the horror theme. Especially if the next couple sets take a lovecraftian bent (the grimoire is really the only piece of that I can see right now) it would make a lot of sense and be very flavorful if some of the transformations represented going insane, and could be "fueled" by Madness cards (or even "When X comes into play, if you paid its Madness cost, transform it")
Furthermore: Narcomeba (or re-themed version), Nix, Bridge from Below. Probably.
Most of the good GY interactions dont involve casting from the GY. Maybe if they "reprint" chainer's edict, or a fb duress, or a fb tutor, or something, it'll be worth doing, but atm the only FB spells I really consider are Devil's Play, Moan of the Unhallowed, and uh
Ancient Grudge out of the side?
Ok, here's my current list, which suffers from too many finishers, none of which I can bring myself to cut.
Grave Titan is just good stuff, and he's pretty tough to stop. You all know why he's good.
Vengeful Pharaoh is cheaper while still pretty big and (slowly) recurs himself, as well as providing an interesting interaction with Liliana. I find people attack into him (in the grave) to try to screw me out of a draw... whether or not this is something that can be exploited is something that waits to be seen. Free(?) removal isn't something I'm likely to overlook.
Batterskull makes use of the tremendous number of recurring creatures while being a not insignificant body on its own. Less impressive when he's not being windmill slammed off of SFM, but still good value.
Reassembling skeleton is pretty bad most of the time. He can stall forever, but if that's the best you can do with 2 mana, you're losing. He's decent at carrying batterskulls and being tossed to Liliana, though perhaps something like Devil's Play would be more appropriate. This is my most-questioned card in the deck right now. Dropping him for either Grim Lavamancer or some more problematic 2-drop seems likely.
Sphere of the Suns works well with Tezz's Gambit, and provides a nice piece of ramp... especially into stuff like Monomania in the side. T4 Monomania makes other control decks unhappy, and lets us keep them in topdeck with Lili. Also allows us to play ancient grudge as our artifact destruction, which is rad. Right now, it seems like the better choice over Manalith, but that could change. I think some kind of mana rock is necessary.
Arc Trail could be Incinerate. Not really sure ATM since Arc Trail can kill a dude AND pop back some phoenixes , as well as 2-for-1 versus fast aggro (which I believe to be real) but Incinerate is generally better as an instant, or in a field with less aggro.
4x Blackcleave Cliffs
6x Mountain
9x Swamp
4x Dragonskull Summit
2x Stensia Bloodhall
2x Grave Titan
2x Vengeful Pharaoh
4x Chandra's Phoenix
4x Reassembling Skeleton
Spells
2x Batterskull
4x Tezzeret's Gambit
4x Dismember
2x Black Sun's Zenith
3x Sphere of the Suns
3x Arc Trail
3x Chandra, the Firebrand
3x Liliana of the Veil
Tezzeret's gambit is very good here. Forking it is obviously amazing, even moreso with a Liliana on the field. Keeping Liliana healthy is pretty important. The deck I started building with ran 4 Phoenixes, 2 Pharoahs, and a varying number of flashback cards and Reassembling Skeletons... and what I found out was that often the best play with Liliana is to do nothing. Tezzeret's gambit offers a really good one-two punch with her: it gives you cards which you MIGHT use to fuel her +1, but it automatically allows you to at least get another edict out of her, which is pretty nice.
Reassembling Skeleton I am on the fence about. It's nice to have another card that you aren't worried about tossing to liliana, and the ability to get board presence at the end of an opponent's turn is pretty nice. Unfortunately, the creature itself is almost always just going to chump block, and there aren't a lot of good ways to power him up that synergize with the rest of the deck. Sword of Feast and Famine is one option, and isn't a bad one. Batterskull also does pretty well here. Bonehoard is another interesting option.
Vengeful Pharoah is nifty. Free removal is pretty decent and it's hard to get effectively locked out especially if you can manage a Liliana.
Smallpox could see play here? The mana costs on the cards are mostly low... obviously it has anti-synergy with any X spells but i think it'd be tough for a lot of decks to come back from forked smallpox if you've got your walkers out.
I have always argued for Dismember over Doom blade variants even in Mono-black decks because of its versatility. The ability to not commit any sideboard slots to cards like disfigure , the ability to cast this off of any land, it's just such a good card. For the rest of the removal, i'd probably use some burn that will turn on my Chandra's Phoenixes before I would run blades, but maybe that's a bad call.
Distress is pretty good... we've been spoiled by IoK. Despise isn't that interesting because we can probably deal with creatures. There's a lot of pesky non-critter stuff to worry about, that isn't so easy to deal with.
Altar's Reap is interesting... when I can cast it to good effect (or at least fork it), it's really solid. For a little while I played Act of Aggression, and the advantage you can get off those two spells in unison for 5 mana is pretty high. But it's dead a LOT of the time, and leaving that mana up for a convenient time is hard with some of our high drops.
I feel like it's pretty darned good, especially with token shenanigans going on.
Additionally it keeps the thing from hitting the grave and doesn't permit any of that Morbid tomfoolery, if such things exist.
At the very least, it'll dig a deck out from under a zombie/spirit flood.