Considering mainboarding Mindshrieker and sideboarding Flight Spellbomb after facing the dreaded GW tokens dead. All those spirits were hard to deal with.
My main dilemma is whether to keep Ponder which would let me dig a little for my key cards. I could swap in Dream Twist for the extra milling, Gitaxian Probe or Despise/Distress to take a look at the opponent's hand.
I've had success running Geth, Lord of the Vault recently. His combination graveyard-mucking and milling effect have worked nicely. Vengeful Pharaoh is also currently being tested but hasn't seen play yet. It'll be a nice card to have in the graveyard and can be used as sacrificial fodder to Grimgrin.
It's pretty satisfying to get an obscene amount of zombie tokens on the field and then sacrifice them indefinitely to Grimgrin to power him up. I got him up to 20/20 in one game.
If I can get my hands on them, I'll try playtesting a couple Grimoire of the Dead
Edit: Also, thinking of swapping out the Stitched Drakes for some Walking Corpses so I have more options on turn 2
Had a game with this last night and milled my opponent 37 in one turn, producing 15 more zombie tokens.
Some problems I've found with this deck while playtesting:
It has zero protection against flyers, so a white deck with angels or spirit tokens would eat me alive while all I'm able to do is create more zombies. I need a way to reliably remove Undead Alchemist from the field to let my zombies do actual damage, because the milling just isn't fast enough.
I'm thinking of adding either some Stitched Drakes, or some more control spells. Altar's Reap might work nicely as well.
Hi everyone. As the title says, this is my first deck submission. It's very much a work in progress. I wanted to create a deck surrounding Grimgrin, Corpse-Born after I opened him in a box, that could also be a zombie tribal.
I had to begin by thinking of ways to activate Grimgrin's abilities. The first is by swarming the field with cheap zombie tokens to be used as sacrificial fodder to Grimgrin. The second is by using Ghoulcaller's Chant to pick up any dead or sacrificed zombies back out of my graveyard (tokens excepted, obviously). Then I wondered how I could take advantage of sacrificing a good zombie card to Grimgrin. At first I had considered Grimoire of the Dead but Mimic Vat seemed like a good late-game solution.
Undead Alchemist with Trepanation Blade, Nephalia Drownyard, Dream Twist. With the Alchemist out, these 3 effects mill the opponent and produce zombie tokens for you. Increase the power of your favourite zombie using Trepanation Blade while exiling all the creatures they mill and turning them into your own zombie horde.
Grave Titan, Grimgrin, Corpse-Born and Mimic Vat. Sacrifice Grave Titan to Grimgrin to power him up, copy him with Mimic Vat, and watch the insanity as the titan is copied every turn for just 3 mana, producing 4 zombies every turn as he hits the battlefield and attacks. He can always be brought back to your hand using Ghoulcaller's Chant.
Resurrect 2 of your zombies with Ghoulcaller's Chant, or exile creatures out of your opponent's graveyard with Cemetery Reaper to be used against them.
Want to finish the opponent off if milling isn't working? Sacrifice Undead Alchemist to Grimgrin and begin walloping.
From the single playtest I've done, the one thing I lack complete control over is how much milling I'm actually doing to the opponent. Against Wolf Run Ramp, I managed to mill and exile their Viridian Emissarys and a Wurmcoil Engine, so I'm enjoying the milling effects. Once I get a horde of zombies on the field, I will want to remove Undead Alchemist so the zombies do some actual damage. For that, I was thinking of either Unsummon or Silent Departure.
Unsummon is nice because of it's instant speed, but Silent Departure jives better with a self-mill strategy and can be cast twice (albeit, for quite an expensive flashback cost), but can only be cast at sorcery speed. So I'm leaning towards Unsummon, but don't know where to put it.
Unsummon would also work nicely with Unbreathing Horde. If Unbreathing Horde takes damage (or comes onto the field early) and becomes flimsy, simply unsummon and re-cast to come in at full strength (and hopefully a whole lot bigger late-game).
Looking for comments and suggestions, and maybe some help tweaking the numbers on how many of each card I'm running.
Let's say I cast Act of Aggression on an opponent's creature and during the turn the creature dies (combat damage, removal, or sacrifice effect). Where would the creature card go if it's still my turn and the "until end of turn" trigger still hasn't gone off?
Would casting the spell (before it even resolves) put a counter on the Shrine, and then after the spell resolves, would it put a 2nd counter on it due to proliferate? Or would I only get 1 counter for having cast a red spell, and since there were no counters on it at the time I cast it, it would not proliferate to 2?
Played a game at lunch and this was a hot point of contention.
I guess the only exception to the rule is Celestial Colonnade, which, because it has vigilance, wouldn't tap when it's declared as an attacker, but can respond to a spell such as Condemn by tapping itself for 1 blue mana and casting Spell Pierce as a response, then the damage would go through to the player.
I think the part that made me wonder if an animated mountain could do the same was that I missed the fact that Celestial Colonnade has vigilance. -_-
My own mistake for missing that. Thanks fellas.
EDIT: Fixed the typo "Collonade" -> "Colonnade" so the links aren't broken
So let's say I use Koth of the Hammer's +1 ability to turn a mountain into an elemental. When I tap the mountain to declare it as an attacker, do I also automatically gain 1 red mana?
If I used the Goblin Fireslinger to deal 1 damage to an opponent, could I choose a Planeswalker? And if so, would Chandra's Spitfire's triggered ability still work?
Hi there, first-time poster and have only been playing Magic for about a month now, so I've got a pretty simple question...
Let's say I have a Chandra's Spitfire and 2 Goblin Fireslingers on the battlefield, and none of them have summoning sickness and it's now my turn. Is the following legal?
I declare Chandra's Spitfire as a (1/3) attacker and the opponent decides not to block. I then tap both of my Goblin Fireslingers, deal 1 damage with each of them respectively. Would this then charge up Chandra's Spitfire to (7/3) before the combat damage step is resolved?
In other words, can I use the Fireslinger's tap ability mid-combat step to charge up my Spitfire?
2x Dismember
3x Dissipate
2x Doom Blade
3x Ponder
3x Mana Leak
2x Tribute to Hunger
Land (24)
4x Darkslick Shores
4x Drowned Catacomb
8x Island
2x Nephalia Drownyard
6x Swamp
3x Cemetery Reaper
3x Diregraf Ghoul
1x Grave Titan
2x Grimgrin, Corpse-Born
4x Undead Alchemist
Enchantment (3)
3x Curse of the Bloody Tome
Artifact (2)
2x Trepanation Blade
Planeswalker (2)
2x Jace, Memory Adept
2x Nihil Spellbomb
3x Steel Sabotage
3x Flashfreeze
2x Spectral Flight
3x Deathmark
2x Go for the Throat
My main dilemma is whether to keep Ponder which would let me dig a little for my key cards. I could swap in Dream Twist for the extra milling, Gitaxian Probe or Despise/Distress to take a look at the opponent's hand.
I'm going to pick up some Black Sun's Zenith as well.
3x Cemetery Reaper
4x Diregraf Ghoul
1x Geth, Lord of the Vault
2x Grimgrin, Corpse-Born
3x Stitched Drake
3x Undead Alchemist
1x Vengeful Pharaoh
Enchantment (2)
2x Endless Ranks of the Dead
Sorcery (3)
3x Ghoulcaller's Chant
3x Trepanation Blade
Land (24)
4x Darkslick Shores
4x Drowned Catacomb
6x Island
2x Nephalia Drownyard
8x Swamp
Instant (9)
3x Doom Blade
2x Forbidden Alchemy
4x Mana Leak
2x Jace, Memory Adept
3x Go for the Throat
3x Nihil Spellbomb
3x Steel Sabotage
3x Phyrexian Crusader
I've had success running Geth, Lord of the Vault recently. His combination graveyard-mucking and milling effect have worked nicely. Vengeful Pharaoh is also currently being tested but hasn't seen play yet. It'll be a nice card to have in the graveyard and can be used as sacrificial fodder to Grimgrin.
It's pretty satisfying to get an obscene amount of zombie tokens on the field and then sacrifice them indefinitely to Grimgrin to power him up. I got him up to 20/20 in one game.
If I can get my hands on them, I'll try playtesting a couple Grimoire of the Dead
Edit: Also, thinking of swapping out the Stitched Drakes for some Walking Corpses so I have more options on turn 2
3x Cemetery Reaper
4x Diregraf Ghoul
2x Grave Titan
1x Grimgrin, Corpse-Born
3x Stitched Drake
2x Unbreathing Horde
3x Undead Alchemist
Enchantment (3)
3x Endless Ranks of the Dead
Sorcery (3)
3x Ghoulcaller's Chant
4x Darkslick Shores
4x Drowned Catacomb
6x Island
2x Nephalia Drownyard
8x Swamp
Instant (12)
4x Doom Blade
3x Dream Twist
2x Forbidden Alchemy
3x Unsummon
4x Go for the Throat
3x Nihil Spellbomb
Took out the Trepanation Blades and Mimic Vat and slid in some Stitched Drakes and Unsummons.
Still need to adjust the numbers.
Some problems I've found with this deck while playtesting:
It has zero protection against flyers, so a white deck with angels or spirit tokens would eat me alive while all I'm able to do is create more zombies. I need a way to reliably remove Undead Alchemist from the field to let my zombies do actual damage, because the milling just isn't fast enough.
I'm thinking of adding either some Stitched Drakes, or some more control spells. Altar's Reap might work nicely as well.
I had to begin by thinking of ways to activate Grimgrin's abilities. The first is by swarming the field with cheap zombie tokens to be used as sacrificial fodder to Grimgrin. The second is by using Ghoulcaller's Chant to pick up any dead or sacrificed zombies back out of my graveyard (tokens excepted, obviously). Then I wondered how I could take advantage of sacrificing a good zombie card to Grimgrin. At first I had considered Grimoire of the Dead but Mimic Vat seemed like a good late-game solution.
4x Diregraf Ghoul
3x Cemetery Reaper
4x Undead Alchemist
2x Unbreathing Horde
2x Grave Titan
2x Grimgrin, Corpse-Born
1x Mimic Vat
3x Trepanation Blade
Enchantments (2)
2x Endless Ranks of the Dead
Instant (9)
3x Doom Blade
3x Dream Twist
3x Forbidden Alchemy
4x Ghoulcaller's Chant
Land (24)
4x Darkslick Shores
4x Drowned Catacomb
4x Island
2x Nephalia Drownyard
10x Swamp
The Plan:
Zombie creators: Endless Ranks of the Dead, Cemetery Reaper, Undead Alchemist, Grave Titan, Mimic Vat.
Mill the opponent with: Dream Twist, Nephalia Drownyard, Undead Alchemist, Trepanation Blade.
Bombs: Grimgrin, Corpse-Born, Grave Titan.
Combos:
Endless Ranks of the Dead with Undead Alchemist and Grave Titan. With the above milling effects producing waves of zombies for you, Grave Titan and Endless Ranks will keep adding more every turn.
Grave Titan, Grimgrin, Corpse-Born and Mimic Vat. Sacrifice Grave Titan to Grimgrin to power him up, copy him with Mimic Vat, and watch the insanity as the titan is copied every turn for just 3 mana, producing 4 zombies every turn as he hits the battlefield and attacks. He can always be brought back to your hand using Ghoulcaller's Chant.
Resurrect 2 of your zombies with Ghoulcaller's Chant, or exile creatures out of your opponent's graveyard with Cemetery Reaper to be used against them.
Dig for the card you want with Forbidden Alchemy. Throw away zombie cards (or Dream Twist) this way and simply pick them up later with Ghoulcaller's Chant or pay the flashback cost.
Unbreathing Horde with basically everything else in this deck.
Want to finish the opponent off if milling isn't working? Sacrifice Undead Alchemist to Grimgrin and begin walloping.
From the single playtest I've done, the one thing I lack complete control over is how much milling I'm actually doing to the opponent. Against Wolf Run Ramp, I managed to mill and exile their Viridian Emissarys and a Wurmcoil Engine, so I'm enjoying the milling effects. Once I get a horde of zombies on the field, I will want to remove Undead Alchemist so the zombies do some actual damage. For that, I was thinking of either Unsummon or Silent Departure.
Unsummon is nice because of it's instant speed, but Silent Departure jives better with a self-mill strategy and can be cast twice (albeit, for quite an expensive flashback cost), but can only be cast at sorcery speed. So I'm leaning towards Unsummon, but don't know where to put it.
Unsummon would also work nicely with Unbreathing Horde. If Unbreathing Horde takes damage (or comes onto the field early) and becomes flimsy, simply unsummon and re-cast to come in at full strength (and hopefully a whole lot bigger late-game).
Looking for comments and suggestions, and maybe some help tweaking the numbers on how many of each card I'm running.
Would the creature card go to my graveyard?
Would casting the spell (before it even resolves) put a counter on the Shrine, and then after the spell resolves, would it put a 2nd counter on it due to proliferate? Or would I only get 1 counter for having cast a red spell, and since there were no counters on it at the time I cast it, it would not proliferate to 2?
Played a game at lunch and this was a hot point of contention.
I guess the only exception to the rule is Celestial Colonnade, which, because it has vigilance, wouldn't tap when it's declared as an attacker, but can respond to a spell such as Condemn by tapping itself for 1 blue mana and casting Spell Pierce as a response, then the damage would go through to the player.
I think the part that made me wonder if an animated mountain could do the same was that I missed the fact that Celestial Colonnade has vigilance. -_-
My own mistake for missing that. Thanks fellas.
EDIT: Fixed the typo "Collonade" -> "Colonnade" so the links aren't broken
You need card tags in future posts. Read the Forum Guidelines. -Carsten
If I used the Goblin Fireslinger to deal 1 damage to an opponent, could I choose a Planeswalker? And if so, would Chandra's Spitfire's triggered ability still work?
Let's say I have a Chandra's Spitfire and 2 Goblin Fireslingers on the battlefield, and none of them have summoning sickness and it's now my turn. Is the following legal?
I declare Chandra's Spitfire as a (1/3) attacker and the opponent decides not to block. I then tap both of my Goblin Fireslingers, deal 1 damage with each of them respectively. Would this then charge up Chandra's Spitfire to (7/3) before the combat damage step is resolved?
In other words, can I use the Fireslinger's tap ability mid-combat step to charge up my Spitfire?