You can try to add burning wish to the deck to either combo off when you need too or to pull out protection pieces from your side board.
I would remove the abyss in favour of something else, maybe Goblin wielder to bring back your memory Jar?
Hey all, I am going to rebuild one of my past favorite decks, just for casual play. I was debating on what to build for sometime Trix came to mind but Force of Will is ridiculously over-priced, I felt silly pay 11.00 for them when I still had my collection. Necro-Pebbles was another deck I thought of, but it gets boring to play after a few games. So I have decided on a classic Rec/Sur deck, running a FEB combo. I want to keep it a toolbox build so I can easily switch between Full English Breakfast, and the standard toolbox build. The last time I played was right when Mirridon came out so I am not familiar at all with new cards. Thinking back to what previous builds were and looking at some other decklist posted I have come up with the following.
I figured with this it will give me two different decks to play for around $450, and I have always like the tool box approach of Rec/Sur rather than the control approach of Tradewind/Survival. I am not too sold on Lobotomy it can be good a wreck the other deck, but other times just too expensive to cast and slow by the time I cast it the cards I want to get ride of are already on the table. And I know "graveyard hate is going to wreck you" I just have to play around it and tutor the right tool at the right time. Spirit of the Night is expensive if I have to hard cast him, I don't know if there will be a better option I was thinking Spiritmonger as a replacement regeneration is a plus but might not be necessary with the Recurring Nightmare engine online, and changing colors. But loosing haste, trample, and first-strike when attacking is it worth the payoff? I am also debating between the painlands, or shocklands. If I want to keep it cheap the painlands will work fine I guess.
Did not know that about Ponder looks like I need to update my B/R List (deck edited to reflect). I haven't played in quite sometime when I was playing Vintage was still called Type 1 and Trix was dominating Extended. But is Blood Moon a major staple in the main board of decks now?
I agree with Wildfire, if you are going to continue playing this deck you should eventually try and trade up/save up for Liliana of the Vail. As far as lands again I say a play set of Mishra's Factory as well. If you want a mana ramp you could run Lake of the Dead but I am not sure it is necessary if you were running Drain Life I would recommend it. Wasteland would be another land I would recommend however it is vastly overpriced. But you can get Strip Mine for relatively cheap. I still think you need a board sweeper either main deck or sideboard. When you drop a Nevinyrral's Disk on the board it forces your opponent to play different, they will generally hold back on casting permanents until they have an answer for the disk, which gives you more opportunities to strip their hand away. Or they will drop a big threat and force you to blow the Disk up.
Ideally you would use Cabal Therapy after you got to look at their hand via Duress, Thoughtseizeor IOK then you know what to name. If you are casting it blind then a good rule of thumb is to name one of the bigger cards that you are sure they are running FOW, Delver, Goyf ect. Once you get a feeling what your opponent is playing naming cards becomes a little easier, but if they run a lot of 1 of cards it becomes more difficult and you would want to use it after a duress or other hand peak. Then you can flashback therapy with one of your critters that comes back to the battlefield, if needed. Another card you could add to your deck is Mind Twist with ritual acceleration you can empty a hand pretty quickly.
I know there was another Megrim thread but it hasn't been active for over a year so I thought I would start a new one. This is just something I was thinking of tonight. It is clunky right now and pretty fragile, but I am in the middle of the ocean with nothing to do so I have been thinking of decks. It is basically at it's heart a megrim jar deck.
I was thinking of a Keeper type shell but with a combo wincon. From the light testing I have been doing with it so far the mana base seems to be off, I am generally getting flooded with land. I have Scroll Rack as a way to put Reforge the Soul back on top of the library so it can be cast with Miracle. Underworld Dreams to hurt them while drawing for the multiple draw 7's. I am wondering if 3 Reforge is too much maybe knock it down to 1-2 and add Mindtwist or some other discard protection. I don't expect it to win any major tournaments, but it could be fun and unexpected to play.
I guess between Thoughtseize and Duress will mainly depend on what types of decks you usually face. If you are facing heavy creature based decks Thoughtseize may be worth it, if it is more control then Duress should be fine. Even if you are facing more creature based decks you can still run Duress then add more removal such as Innocent BloodDiabolic EdictChainer's Edict or even Terror. I would consider maybe 2 to 4 Cabal Therapy. Another thing I would consider adding is a board sweeper, black has problems getting rid of troublesome Artifacts and Enchantments, even if you strip their hand but they get some good top decks it could be a problem. A traditional board sweeper form mono-black has been Nevinyrral's Disk I would consider running 2 of them, and adding a set of Mishra's Factory uncounterable beaters that will survive disk and wrath effects.
Ah yes Miracle Gro, personally I was a bigger fan of Super Grow. I think the addition of white took the deck to the next level. If I remember (it has been around 10 years since I last played, and I am starting to get back into the game) some of the original gro decks ran as few as 10 lands. But they used Werebear to help smooth out the mana and have a good beat stick when threshold was reached and they also ran Merfolk Looter to help smooth out the draw. The Looter will give you the benefit of smoothing out your draws and also feeding the graveyard for TC. Running TC it is going to be hard to keep threshold So I don't know about Nimble Mongoose I think I would run Wild Mongrel instead he can feed TC get bigger, and dodge protection from colors.
I haven't had a chance to test the deck out, but on looking at it, I was wondering if you thought of running Innocent Blood in the Main Deck? Yes it is symmetrical but it will affect the your opponent more as you will keep pumping out tokens. And since it is non-targeting it can handle the likes of Mother of Runes and True-Name Nemesis. Also looking at Thoughtseize I would think that the 2-4 life in the early game would be rather important, until you can get your lifelink engines up and running would Hymn to Tourach cause an issue with your mana having the double black cc? Or main decking the Cabal Therapy see their hand with IKO follow up with Therapy sac a token for flashback, that could wreck their plans in a hurry.
As other posters noted Hymnn is a great card for discard decks, that being said going a straight discard route is rarely effective as they will build their resource and lay down threats that they top-deck. Have you considered running some Land Destruction with your discard theme to make the deck more of a Mono-Black control, using discard, resource denial and creature removal? Cards like innocent blood, diabolic edictSmall Poxare great removal cards as they don't target the creature. Sinkhole (depending on budget) Rancid EarthWasteland (again depending on budget) Ghost Quater and Dust Bowl for resource denial. Duress is good even if you can't grab anything because you can see your opponent's hand and have an idea of what they are going to play the next few turns so you can prepare for it. And Duress+Cabal Therapy works great to strip their hand of any threat they are holding, then flashback Cabal Therapy with a Bloodghast or Nether Spirit as both of those critters will keep coming back.
I haven't played Magic in over 10 years, sold all of my collection. But I have some free time recently and downloaded MTG Sandbox on my iPad, so I messing around building some decks with the newer cards that I haven't played with. I am considering getting back into local tourney's just for fun (nothing super competitive). Long story short here is the build I have been working with.
The idea is to create a soft lock with resource denial, then use shadow en-Kors and Mirran Crusader for the kill. I went with the en-Kors because having shadow makes them virtually unblockable, unless someone else is running shadow creatures, which isn't likely, and the ability to redirect damage makes them difficult to remove. I have been solo-playtesting and I have been running into a few issues. One of which is I don't think the mana base is there yet even with running 14 white sources, I often find myself needing a second plains. With the cheap casting cost of the creatures and Aether Vial on line the hand can get depleted fast and goes into top-deck mode, I don't think White wins in top-deck mode so some sort of draw or library manipulation, I was thinking of putting the Land Tax/Scroll Rack engine in there but I can't seem to find room; also I feel for that engine to be successful it will need some moxes in their either diamonds or chrome. I am not too sure about the sideboard, however I know that is usually a meta call, and I have no idea what the meta is now. So any help would be appreciated. If there's another deck with a similar build that you can point me to maybe I can get some ideas off of that.
I am not sure what the Meta is like anymore, and this isn't anything like I used to play. Back when I was still playing I was running Necro/Trix (I loved Necropotence, I think there is enough hate around to unban it Pithing Needle, and Phyrexian Revoker shut it down), RecSur, Pebbles and occasionally some random decks I thought would be fun like a RU control deck with phasing creatures or Pox.
I agree with both of these suggestions The Abyss can hose some decks but the majority of the time it is just a dead draw. And adding Burning Wish will allow me to cut down on the number of maindeck Reforge the Soul down to a one of, give me a wish board for threats and an alt win con; Empty the Warrens, maybe?
Here are my thoughts so far:
- 1 The Abyss
- 2 Reforge the Soul (moving one to sideboard)
+ Burning Wish
+ Goblin Welder (is one enough, don't know yet)
+ Lion's Eye Diamond
Sideboard:
Still working on....
1 Reforge the Soul
1 Empty the Warrens
3 City of Brass
1 Gemstone Mine
2 Underground River
2 Reflecting Pool
8 Forest
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Swamp
2 Undiscovered Paradise
2 Karplusan Forest
4 Birds of Paradise
2 Wall of Roots
The Engine
4 Survival of the Fittest
2 Recurring Nightmare
1 Squee, Goblin Nabob
4 Wall of Blossoms
1 Orcish Settlers
1 Dimir Infiltrator
1 Enternal Witness
1 Ukatbi Orangutan
2 Tradewind Rider
1 Spore Frog
2 Bottle Gnomes
2 Scroll Rack
1 Elvish Lyrist
The Kill
2 Volrath's Shapeshifter
2 Phyrexian Dreadnought
1 Hypnox
1 Phage the Untouchable
1 Cephalid Inkshrouder
1 Flowstone Hellion
1 Verdant Force
2 Nekrataal
2 Spike Feeder
1 Spike Weaver
1 Cloudchaser Eagle
1 Spirit of the Night
1 Man-o'-War
1 Thrull Surgeon
2 Lobotomy
2 Recurring Nightmare
I figured with this it will give me two different decks to play for around $450, and I have always like the tool box approach of Rec/Sur rather than the control approach of Tradewind/Survival. I am not too sold on Lobotomy it can be good a wreck the other deck, but other times just too expensive to cast and slow by the time I cast it the cards I want to get ride of are already on the table. And I know "graveyard hate is going to wreck you" I just have to play around it and tutor the right tool at the right time. Spirit of the Night is expensive if I have to hard cast him, I don't know if there will be a better option I was thinking Spiritmonger as a replacement regeneration is a plus but might not be necessary with the Recurring Nightmare engine online, and changing colors. But loosing haste, trample, and first-strike when attacking is it worth the payoff? I am also debating between the painlands, or shocklands. If I want to keep it cheap the painlands will work fine I guess.
Thoughts???
(edit) I could also through in a Academy Rector or two, Shield Sphere Goblin Bombardment and Enduring Renewal for a Wheaties build too and give me three decks that I can easily switch around.
2 Volcanic Island
3 Underground Sea
2 Tundra
1 Strip Mine
2 Plateau
4 Polluted Delta
2 Badlands
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Black Lotus
3 Dark Ritual
1 Sol Ring
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Enlightened Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Ancestral Recall
2 Preordain
1 Brainstorm
1 Tinker
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Ponder
1 Timewallk
1 Scroll Rack
4 Force of Will
3 Mana Drain
1 The Abyss
1 Balance
The Business
1 Memory Jar
1 Windfall
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Timetwister
3 Reforge the Soul
3 Underworld Dreams
2 Liliana's Caress
1 Yawgmoth's Will
I was thinking of a Keeper type shell but with a combo wincon. From the light testing I have been doing with it so far the mana base seems to be off, I am generally getting flooded with land. I have Scroll Rack as a way to put Reforge the Soul back on top of the library so it can be cast with Miracle. Underworld Dreams to hurt them while drawing for the multiple draw 7's. I am wondering if 3 Reforge is too much maybe knock it down to 1-2 and add Mindtwist or some other discard protection. I don't expect it to win any major tournaments, but it could be fun and unexpected to play.
Lands
4 Rishadan Port
4 Wasteland
1 Karakas
13 Plains
Creatures
4 Mother of Runes
4 Stoneforge Mystic
3 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
2 Phyrexian Revoker
4 Warrior en-Kor
2 Mirran Crusader
4 Mangara of Corondor
Instants/Sorceries
2 Cataclysm
4 Swords to Plowshares
Artifacts
4 Aether Vial
1 Umezawa's Jitte
2 Empyrial Plate
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Batterskull
Sideboard
2 Ethersworn Canonist
2 Pithing Needle
1 Circle of Protection: Red
2 Rest in Peace
3 Oblivion Ring
1 Solitary Confinement
2 Holy Light
2 Armageddon
The idea is to create a soft lock with resource denial, then use shadow en-Kors and Mirran Crusader for the kill. I went with the en-Kors because having shadow makes them virtually unblockable, unless someone else is running shadow creatures, which isn't likely, and the ability to redirect damage makes them difficult to remove. I have been solo-playtesting and I have been running into a few issues. One of which is I don't think the mana base is there yet even with running 14 white sources, I often find myself needing a second plains. With the cheap casting cost of the creatures and Aether Vial on line the hand can get depleted fast and goes into top-deck mode, I don't think White wins in top-deck mode so some sort of draw or library manipulation, I was thinking of putting the Land Tax/Scroll Rack engine in there but I can't seem to find room; also I feel for that engine to be successful it will need some moxes in their either diamonds or chrome. I am not too sure about the sideboard, however I know that is usually a meta call, and I have no idea what the meta is now. So any help would be appreciated. If there's another deck with a similar build that you can point me to maybe I can get some ideas off of that.
I am not sure what the Meta is like anymore, and this isn't anything like I used to play. Back when I was still playing I was running Necro/Trix (I loved Necropotence, I think there is enough hate around to unban it Pithing Needle, and Phyrexian Revoker shut it down), RecSur, Pebbles and occasionally some random decks I thought would be fun like a RU control deck with phasing creatures or Pox.