I tried and tried to fit in Mortal Combat but it just was too slow. Every reanimate spell I play puts 30+ Damage on the board, allows me to pay 1 life to kill a creature, a black to sweep a lot of the field, or start Thoughtseizeing for 1 mana. For every bad spirit you run to have mortal combat as a win condition, I can run a good black card in its place. When you draw, you have a large possibility of drawing into a bad card, such as Willowisp, which is honestly awful for a deck that wants to win basically the turn after you play a mass reanimate by killing everything they have with Kuro + Horobi/Kagemaro. By cutting the Mortal Combat package along with its weak spirits, you can essentially increase good card density.
I would drop all of the single target reanimation like Dread Return, because it gives you a lot more room for disruption, mana effects, ways to search for Coffers, tutors, and Mass reanimation. Living End is too slow, I would cut it.
If anything, wait until the recent MWS EDH Tourney is over and Evergreen will most likely write a primer on the deck, as he has a very good and fine tuned build according to the results he gets in the tourneys.
I had the pleasure of playing against one big tool tonight. It was a legacy FNM so it was fairly casual, but there is this one guy, who couldn't have been more than 14 years old, who always runs incredibly high priced, top tier decks, tonight being a deck called 43lands. Going into round four with him having no way to win any prizes while I offered to split my prizes with him, he denies it and says that he is going for a "dream crush" match because his rating would drop a tiny bit if he let me go 3-1, where his 1-2 could not win any prizes at all. I wasn't angry about him not wanting to split prizes, but the fact that he deliberately wanted to screw someone over. Needless to say he plays a fetch land on turn 1 and does not fetch, telling me to go. Then after he says it he cracks the fetch land and tries to play a Manabond. I didn't let him and then ended up playing Cabal Therapy taking it, getting the sassy reply "Oh so your gonna be like that, huh?". I purposely call Manabond again after I had taken his only one when I knew he had a Treasure Hunt, and he just went "Ooooh you already said it too late too bad." Later on in the second match he starts moaning after he lost "This is just like the time I played against dredge in the 5k, I mulled to 3 every game and never got any hate cards". Needless to say he opens with something like Leyline of the Void, Engineered Explosives for 0, land, Mox Diamond, go. Late in the third game after I lost, a couple of nice guys were starting two pods of EDH multiplayer for fun, and he yelled out to them "Yea after I kill this guy in two turns real quick I'll play". I honestly did not like him. /rage
Graveborn Muse
Horobi, Death's Wail
Kuro, Pitlord
He Who Hungers
Scuttling Death
Kagemaro, First to Suffer
Midnight Banshee
Spirit of the Night
I tried and tried to fit in Mortal Combat but it just was too slow. Every reanimate spell I play puts 30+ Damage on the board, allows me to pay 1 life to kill a creature, a black to sweep a lot of the field, or start Thoughtseizeing for 1 mana. For every bad spirit you run to have mortal combat as a win condition, I can run a good black card in its place. When you draw, you have a large possibility of drawing into a bad card, such as Willowisp, which is honestly awful for a deck that wants to win basically the turn after you play a mass reanimate by killing everything they have with Kuro + Horobi/Kagemaro. By cutting the Mortal Combat package along with its weak spirits, you can essentially increase good card density.
Damping Matrix, Pithing Needle and Null Rod all can protect you from the infamous Tormod's Crypt effects along with annoying generals like Jhoira of the Ghitu. Black has the best tutors in the format in Imperial Seal, Vampiric Tutor, Demonic Tutor, etc. that allow you to tutor up any specific hate card or a mass reanimate spell to basically win.
I would drop all of the single target reanimation like Dread Return, because it gives you a lot more room for disruption, mana effects, ways to search for Coffers, tutors, and Mass reanimation. Living End is too slow, I would cut it.
If anything, wait until the recent MWS EDH Tourney is over and Evergreen will most likely write a primer on the deck, as he has a very good and fine tuned build according to the results he gets in the tourneys.
I was tired last night when I posted that, it was just a legacy event on a friday.