but I'm hesitant to change any of the creatures in the deck because they already work so damn well together, and especially hesitant on taking out any of the zombies
Desecration Demon certainly looks like a good option, though I'd have to test and see because I've never tried that card before, looks very nice though
Vampire Nighthawk and Knight of Infamy are both really good for their mana costs but I think there's just no room for non-zombies in the 1-3drop creatures or else we will start starving out Gravecrawler which will slow down our draw engine / sac feed and lower the chances that we can play turn 4 Demonlord of Ashmouth and saccing Gravecrawler and recasting him on turn 5
Not sure how to make this deck better now (besides getting Cavern of Souls to stop counterspells). Maybe remove 1 Mikaeus, the Unhallowed and add another Zombie Apocalypse because if both Mikaeus are in my graveyard and I cast Zombie Apocalypse, they will just die again (legendary creatures).
Another possible improvement might be to have less 1-drops and more 2-drops (currently only Sign in Blood are 2-drops), but I can't think of any good 2-drop zombies that would be better than the 1-drop Diregraf Ghoul. Highborn Ghoul is a possibility for the unblockable.... but sometimes I want to bait the opponent into blocking and killing Diregraf Ghoul so I can Tragic Slip but I suppose that's a minor advantage. All the other 2-drop standard black zombies suck horridly...
and also I've noticed that playing Gravecrawler or Diregraf on turn 1 is incredibly strong, so having a better chance to play turn 1 one drops is not too bad either
I've tested this deck on MTGO against some more casual decks as well as some more competitive decks to very nice results, but I'd like some feedback and suggestions!
Also, of course there is the obvious possibility of splashing another color, but I think it's best to keep it as black due to the importance of Mutilate and Liliana of the Dark Realms and the fact that some of the core cards have 3 black costs
The trouble is that this deck would be rather slow. Hence control gets build up card advantage and aggro just starts beating your face in.
The biggest problem is that the curses just cost so much mana. Each one is a 4 or 5 drop so you do not really get the advantage till turn 5 or 6 if you are lucky.
I really like the deck idea, but i feel that the cards are just not there to make it go off on a consistent basis. But don't get me wrong. When the curse combo goes off i do not want to be playing against it.
yeah I'm thinking of splashing green for mana ramp, but even then I'm not sure if it will be enough
I'm sure you can also just do a normal U/W control deck and then splash black for 3 Curse of Misfortunes, 2 Bitterheart Witch, 2 Curse of Thirst, 1 Exquisite Blood
since all you need is either one Curse of Misfortunes or one Bitterheart Witch to get the engine going
The idea is that you use stuff like Curse of Death's Hold, Martial Law, One Thousand Lashes, Sphere of Safety along with other B/W control cards to stop creature aggro
I would stick with zombies and run cards like Endless Ranks of the Dead that really work well a "Zombie" deck.
even though I'm just trying to use creature control though? I'm not trying to control their hand or anything, I just want to remove their creatures (even if it means sacrificing my own, since I have undying and Gravecrawlers)
That's my current deck. Idea is to have Zombies to recast Gravecrawlers, and using Gravecrawlers and other creatures with Undying to use for sacrificing to use very efficient cards (Disciple of Bolas, Demonlord of Ashmouth, Mutilate). You get nice early aggro from Gravecrawlers/Diregraf Ghoul/Geralf's Messenger, and you get very nice flying midrange with Demonlord of Ashmouth, and Bloodgift Demon (easy to find due to the amount of card drawing in the deck).
Sign in Blood, Bloodgift Demon, Disciple of Bolas, and Liliana of the Dark Realms ensures very good card advantage to keep the engine going. Tragic Slip and Mutilate yields very efficient results due to sacrificing, Gravecrawlers, and Undying creatures. Singleton Zombie Apocalypse with two Mikaeus, the Unhallowed as a situational insurance policy. Liliana of the Dark Realms can also end a stalemate with pump/removal ability, and of course her +1 swamp search gives you enough mana to chain your draw-engine all day long.
Not sure how to make this deck better now (besides getting Cavern of Souls to stop counterspells). Maybe remove 1 Mikaeus, the Unhallowed and add another Zombie Apocalypse because if both Mikaeus are in my graveyard and I cast Zombie Apocalypse, they will just die again (legendary creatures)
But in this case the alchemists are just getting little extras to the deck and lose their central role... not happy
I think the biggest problem I had when testing it on MTGO was this:
Ideally you open turn 1/2/3 with gravecrawlers and attack. They never block your gravecrawlers because they still have a good amount of life and they know you will just play them back from your graveyard so they let the damage go through. When you've taken a good amount out of their life, that is when they play their cards that allow them to regain balance of control on the board. At this point, you can remove their creatures or just keep attacking to get some damage through with gravecrawlers and recast them, but then you realize that it will take you too long to mill them with attacking, and you'll wish you can still hurt their life pool. You will then either play Undercity Informer or hope you draw it to play it, and then hope that they don't have burn/removal for him.
In the times that you can get all those combo cards out, you'll then realize that you don't have enough mana to mill them before they draw some responses like board wipes
There were so many times where I finally got my combo engine going, but it wasn't milling fast enough and they drew a response.
The combo is very strong when it works, but I think it's too inconsistent and slow, mainly because you need way too many vulnerable creatures to make it work. Another problem is that the deck contains a decent amount of creature aggro to win with damage to their life pool, but then when you must play Undead Alchemist, you can't touch their life pool anymore.
So in conclusion, one of the biggest downsides of the deck is that the cards give you two victory conditions:
- life to 0, and library to 0
and because it has two victory conditions, the deck isn't able 100% efficient focus on either one, so it will be inefficient compared to a deck that is pure mill, or a deck that is pure aggro/control
on top of this inefficiency, one of the victory conditions (milling) removes the possibility of the other (life to 0)
note that I haven't tested your new version you just posted so maybe that one has better results
- relies on too many vulnerable creatures to get the combo
- has almost no control/removal for being B/U
- no way to stop artifacts/enchantments
- you're completely screwed against an opponent that removes your creatures early game since you have no way to draw/fetch/any real durable threats
I don't see why it's bad? if your opponent keeps saccing creatures then it's like you paid 4cmc for an enchantment "your opponent sacs a creature every turn" which is pretty amazing?
on MTGO I beat a heavy pay2win B/W classic deck with all sorts of ridiculous lands, mishras factory, sensei's divining top, vindicate, and all sorts of ridiculous top dollar eternal format shenanigans
there was just nothing he could do against my board wipes and counterspells and I just combo'd him out
the ONLY thing you need to worry about is keeping a Seance on the board
with it there, you are guaranteed complete control due to returning self-milling blockers, 3/1 flying blockers that detain, draw sac 1/1's, and along with the cards in your hand
all you need to do is wait for a couple Skaabs and you'll get the mirror mad in no time
and because you will Seance Lab. Maniac during your upkeep AFTER you untap, you will have all the mana in the world to respond to anything that tries to remove the lab maniac before your draw phase (respond by flashing back think twice, or snapcaster flashback counterspells, counterspells from your hand, etc
I considered the Cartel Aristocrat with DT's (and Lingering Souls) but wasnt sure how effective it would, but sounds like I should definitely give it a try. And love the idea of the Avenger.
The only thing I would comment on, is that I actually have had heaps of success with the Fencing Aces, and quite often has been the win for me. Double Strike with at least 1 enchant has done a lot of good.
But will need to place another order in, so hopefully will be able to try in out in 2 weeks lol
Cartel Aristocrat is really really good when I played this deck on MTGO. They can't get rid of him, and saccing Doomed Traveler gives you an unblockable
the thing I didn't like about Fencing Aces is that he's so easily killed before enchanting him, and even if you enchant him, he's easily gotten rid of with creature removal, but Cartel Aristocrat isn't. And since he's only a 1/1 with double strike, many times there's way better things to enchant than him. And since you have Silverblade Paladin, you can make any other creature doublestrike
Wakedancer
but I'm hesitant to change any of the creatures in the deck because they already work so damn well together, and especially hesitant on taking out any of the zombies
if I'm reading that card correctly... there's no penalty if he's the only creature you control then? interesting!
Demonic Taskmaster
Desecration Demon certainly looks like a good option, though I'd have to test and see because I've never tried that card before, looks very nice though
Vampire Nighthawk and Knight of Infamy are both really good for their mana costs but I think there's just no room for non-zombies in the 1-3drop creatures or else we will start starving out Gravecrawler which will slow down our draw engine / sac feed and lower the chances that we can play turn 4 Demonlord of Ashmouth and saccing Gravecrawler and recasting him on turn 5
4 Geralf's Messenger
4 Diregraf Ghoul
4 Gravecrawler
3 Bloodgift Demon
3 Disciple of Bolas
2 Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
3 Demonlord of Ashmouth
4 Sign in Blood
3 Mutilate
3 Tragic Slip
1 Zombie Apocalypse
2 Liliana of the Dark Realms
Lands
24 Swamp
That's my current deck. Idea is to have Zombies to recast Gravecrawler, and using Gravecrawler and creatures with Undying to use for sacrificing to use very efficient cards (Disciple of Bolas, Demonlord of Ashmouth, Mutilate). You get nice early aggro from Gravecrawler/Diregraf Ghoul/Geralf's Messenger, and you get very nice flying midrange with Demonlord of Ashmouth, and Bloodgift Demon (easy to find due to the amount of card drawing in the deck).
Sign in Blood, Bloodgift Demon, Disciple of Bolas, and Liliana of the Dark Realms ensures very good card advantage to keep the engine going. Tragic Slip and Mutilate yields very efficient results due to sacrificing, Gravecrawler, and Undying creatures. Singleton Zombie Apocalypse with two Mikaeus, the Unhallowed as a situational insurance policy. Liliana of the Dark Realms can also end the game in 1 turn (especially with all the flyers), and of course her +1 swamp search gives you enough mana to chain your draw-engine all day long.
Not sure how to make this deck better now (besides getting Cavern of Souls to stop counterspells). Maybe remove 1 Mikaeus, the Unhallowed and add another Zombie Apocalypse because if both Mikaeus are in my graveyard and I cast Zombie Apocalypse, they will just die again (legendary creatures).
Another possible improvement might be to have less 1-drops and more 2-drops (currently only Sign in Blood are 2-drops), but I can't think of any good 2-drop zombies that would be better than the 1-drop Diregraf Ghoul. Highborn Ghoul is a possibility for the unblockable.... but sometimes I want to bait the opponent into blocking and killing Diregraf Ghoul so I can Tragic Slip but I suppose that's a minor advantage. All the other 2-drop standard black zombies suck horridly...
and also I've noticed that playing Gravecrawler or Diregraf on turn 1 is incredibly strong, so having a better chance to play turn 1 one drops is not too bad either
List of some very nice synergy/combos:
Recurring creatures:
Gravecrawler
Geralf's Messenger
Demonlord of Ashmouth
Sacrifice your recurring creatures:
Disciple of Bolas
Demonlord of Ashmouth
Mutilate
Tragic Slip
Victory conditions that will end stalemates on the board:
Mutilate (because you'll get to keep your Undying creatures and recast Gravecrawlers, or use Zombie Apocalypse)
Zombie Apocalypse
Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
Liliana of the Dark Realms (pump, swing, and win)
Disciple of Bolas and saccing Demonlord of Ashmouth to draw 5 cards and +5life (optional: pump it first with Liliana of the Dark Realms and you'll draw a stupid amount of cards, keep Mutilate and Zombie Apocalypse in hand, discard all zombies, gg) and then saccing a Gravecrawler or Geralf's Messenger to the Demonlord when it comes back from Undying
I've tested this deck on MTGO against some more casual decks as well as some more competitive decks to very nice results, but I'd like some feedback and suggestions!
Also, of course there is the obvious possibility of splashing another color, but I think it's best to keep it as black due to the importance of Mutilate and Liliana of the Dark Realms and the fact that some of the core cards have 3 black costs
4 Geralf's Messenger
4 Diregraf Ghoul
4 Gravecrawler
3 Bloodgift Demon
3 Disciple of Bolas
2 Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
3 Demonlord of Ashmouth
4 Sign in Blood
3 Mutilate
3 Tragic Slip
1 Zombie Apocalypse
2 Liliana of the Dark Realms
Lands
24 Swamp
yeah I'm thinking of splashing green for mana ramp, but even then I'm not sure if it will be enough
or maybe splash blue for Supreme Verdict and Terminus and counterspells
I'm sure you can also just do a normal U/W control deck and then splash black for 3 Curse of Misfortunes, 2 Bitterheart Witch, 2 Curse of Thirst, 1 Exquisite Blood
since all you need is either one Curse of Misfortunes or one Bitterheart Witch to get the engine going
The possible Curse combos:
Curse of Misfortunes
Curse of Thirst
Exquisite Blood
Curse of Death's Hold
Bitterheart Witch
Other synergies:
Martial Law
Sphere of Safety
One Thousand Lashes
The idea is that you use stuff like Curse of Death's Hold, Martial Law, One Thousand Lashes, Sphere of Safety along with other B/W control cards to stop creature aggro
and buy yourself time to draw Curse of Misfortunes or Bitterheart Witch and use it to bring Curse of Thirst into play (or more misfortunes to bring two curses per upkeep)
you can also bring Exquisite Blood into play to buy you time while your Curse of Thirst and Curse of Misfortunes engine is grinding their life
Red has some really nice burn curses as well, but I feel it's not necessary once you get your Curse of Misfortunes Curse of Thirst Exquisite Blood engine going
even though I'm just trying to use creature control though? I'm not trying to control their hand or anything, I just want to remove their creatures (even if it means sacrificing my own, since I have undying and Gravecrawlers)
4 Geralf's Messenger
4 Diregraf Ghoul
4 Gravecrawler
3 Bloodgift Demon
3 Disciple of Bolas
2 Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
3 Demonlord of Ashmouth
4 Sign in Blood
3 Mutilate
3 Tragic Slip
1 Zombie Apocalypse
2 Liliana of the Dark Realms
Lands
24 Swamp
That's my current deck. Idea is to have Zombies to recast Gravecrawlers, and using Gravecrawlers and other creatures with Undying to use for sacrificing to use very efficient cards (Disciple of Bolas, Demonlord of Ashmouth, Mutilate). You get nice early aggro from Gravecrawlers/Diregraf Ghoul/Geralf's Messenger, and you get very nice flying midrange with Demonlord of Ashmouth, and Bloodgift Demon (easy to find due to the amount of card drawing in the deck).
Sign in Blood, Bloodgift Demon, Disciple of Bolas, and Liliana of the Dark Realms ensures very good card advantage to keep the engine going. Tragic Slip and Mutilate yields very efficient results due to sacrificing, Gravecrawlers, and Undying creatures. Singleton Zombie Apocalypse with two Mikaeus, the Unhallowed as a situational insurance policy. Liliana of the Dark Realms can also end a stalemate with pump/removal ability, and of course her +1 swamp search gives you enough mana to chain your draw-engine all day long.
Not sure how to make this deck better now (besides getting Cavern of Souls to stop counterspells). Maybe remove 1 Mikaeus, the Unhallowed and add another Zombie Apocalypse because if both Mikaeus are in my graveyard and I cast Zombie Apocalypse, they will just die again (legendary creatures)
I think the biggest problem I had when testing it on MTGO was this:
Ideally you open turn 1/2/3 with gravecrawlers and attack. They never block your gravecrawlers because they still have a good amount of life and they know you will just play them back from your graveyard so they let the damage go through. When you've taken a good amount out of their life, that is when they play their cards that allow them to regain balance of control on the board. At this point, you can remove their creatures or just keep attacking to get some damage through with gravecrawlers and recast them, but then you realize that it will take you too long to mill them with attacking, and you'll wish you can still hurt their life pool. You will then either play Undercity Informer or hope you draw it to play it, and then hope that they don't have burn/removal for him.
In the times that you can get all those combo cards out, you'll then realize that you don't have enough mana to mill them before they draw some responses like board wipes
There were so many times where I finally got my combo engine going, but it wasn't milling fast enough and they drew a response.
The combo is very strong when it works, but I think it's too inconsistent and slow, mainly because you need way too many vulnerable creatures to make it work. Another problem is that the deck contains a decent amount of creature aggro to win with damage to their life pool, but then when you must play Undead Alchemist, you can't touch their life pool anymore.
So in conclusion, one of the biggest downsides of the deck is that the cards give you two victory conditions:
- life to 0, and library to 0
and because it has two victory conditions, the deck isn't able 100% efficient focus on either one, so it will be inefficient compared to a deck that is pure mill, or a deck that is pure aggro/control
on top of this inefficiency, one of the victory conditions (milling) removes the possibility of the other (life to 0)
note that I haven't tested your new version you just posted so maybe that one has better results
- relies on too many vulnerable creatures to get the combo
- has almost no control/removal for being B/U
- no way to stop artifacts/enchantments
- you're completely screwed against an opponent that removes your creatures early game since you have no way to draw/fetch/any real durable threats
2 dispel
1 rewind
4 supreme verdict
2 detention sphere
1 oblivion ring
2 think twice
and everything else being about the same
on MTGO I beat a heavy pay2win B/W classic deck with all sorts of ridiculous lands, mishras factory, sensei's divining top, vindicate, and all sorts of ridiculous top dollar eternal format shenanigans
there was just nothing he could do against my board wipes and counterspells and I just combo'd him out
the ONLY thing you need to worry about is keeping a Seance on the board
with it there, you are guaranteed complete control due to returning self-milling blockers, 3/1 flying blockers that detain, draw sac 1/1's, and along with the cards in your hand
all you need to do is wait for a couple Skaabs and you'll get the mirror mad in no time
and because you will Seance Lab. Maniac during your upkeep AFTER you untap, you will have all the mana in the world to respond to anything that tries to remove the lab maniac before your draw phase (respond by flashing back think twice, or snapcaster flashback counterspells, counterspells from your hand, etc
yeah but why would you ever use Orzhov charm to get Doomed Traveler instead of for creature removal?
Cartel Aristocrat is really really good when I played this deck on MTGO. They can't get rid of him, and saccing Doomed Traveler gives you an unblockable
the thing I didn't like about Fencing Aces is that he's so easily killed before enchanting him, and even if you enchant him, he's easily gotten rid of with creature removal, but Cartel Aristocrat isn't. And since he's only a 1/1 with double strike, many times there's way better things to enchant than him. And since you have Silverblade Paladin, you can make any other creature doublestrike