I still might drop one land for either another recruit or a 4th plating or a single myr enforcer. What do you guys think?
Splashing an entire color for Ardent Recruit seems underwhelming. Having less than 4 Plating is a real sin in Affinity.
I would do this:
-1Glimmervoid
-3 Ardent Recruit
-4 Ancient Den
+4 DarkSteel Citadel
+1 Springleaf Drum
+1 Cranial Plating
+2 Myr Enforcer
+1 Mox Opal
Or you could even switch the Ancient Dens for Ancient Tomb and Steel Overseer instead of Ardent Recruit. With 12 free creatures and 4 Signal Pest, Steel Overseer creates an excellent swarm dropped, especially since Tomb or Mox can drop him turn 1.
Affinity's Pridemage 1W
Artifact Creature - Construct
Tap, put a -1/-1 counter on Affinity's Pridemage: Destroy target artifact or enchantment with converted mana cost 2 or less.
2/2
A solid way to fight against Null Rod for Affinity is what I really wanted.
Or, for Wildfire.dec:
Wildfireball XRR
Sorcery
Each player sacrifices X lands and Wildfireball deals X damage to each player, then exile the top ten cards of your library.
After one and a half year of testing and playing Pox decks of any kind I can say that this deck is hardly even a tier 2 deck. Sadly, but the deck loose vs most of the current meta. Let me explain.
After a lot of testing finally i choose this build :
Once you're no longer monoblack, I feel like you might as well just adopt to a Trisomy build, just by adding green and thriving against aggro while doing quite well against control. Only problem is its worse vs. combo. You're basically trading out discard for more permanent destruction, Bloodghast and Tombstalker for Gigapede/Worm Harvest/Entomb, and Crucibles for Loam. It still lets you landlock them with Waste+Loam+Smallpox+Sinkhole+Vindicate and lets you dredge into win-conditions with a nice draw engine.
// Lands
4 [ZEN] Verdant Catacombs
1 [ROE] Forest (4)
4 [DDC] Barren Moor
4 [MPR] Wasteland
3 [B] Bayou
2 [U] Scrubland
3 [BRB] Swamp (2)
1 [ZEN] Marsh Flats
1 [OD] Cabal Pit
1 [ON] Tranquil Thicket
1 [JGC] Maze of Ith
// Creatures
1 [ON] Gigapede
// Spells
3 [CHK] Sensei's Divining Top
2 [OD] Entomb
3 [RAV] Life from the Loam
4 [R] Swords to Plowshares
1 [EVE] Worm Harvest
3 [SH] Mox Diamond
3 [OD] Innocent Blood
3 [FD] Engineered Explosives
4 [U] Sinkhole
4 [TSP] Smallpox
4 [JGC] Vindicate
Try some manlands (Mishra's Factory or Blinkmoth Nexus, etc.) and Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth to balance this out. Add in Snuff Out, because it's much better than Tendrils of Corruption of Unmake because it's a free solution to T1 lackey, and if you survive to 4 mana, you can hardcast it.
Put him in a deck with Planeswalkers and soft locks (Tangle Wire) and/or disruption to slow the game down enough to drop a Planeswalker and ultimate the turn after with Gilder Bairn.
Graveborn Muse is my favorite zombie. I'd add in Peat Bog and Dark Ritual to help with acceleration. If you want ideas, there's some Legacy zombie decks on Deckcheck.net .
Just get them to practice as much as you can. Correct mistakes immediately so they don't become bad habits (like reminding them to tap their lands/creatures, doing untap-upkeep-draw in the right order). Once they get the hang of it, start telling them how to get better at it (like waiting until the end step to use instants or using multiple blockers to kill a major threat). Also, make sure they know how damage works. I was confused about this since no one told me after I'd been playing for a few weeks that damage resets at the end of each turn, so make sure that they know when a creature blocks another, each deals damage to the other, and that until the end of the turn, you can deal a couple extra damage to kill the bigger threat. Also, new players don't like being on the hurting end of too much of either land destruction, counterspells, or discard.
Add in Augur of Skulls and Nezumi Shortfang and another Nyxathid, perhaps even going to 4 total, because Nyxathid is a house. You need to be aggressive if you're going to win. Consider adding in Sinkhole to supplement the Wasteland.
Here's what I would build. It needs work, but it's 1 AM. I'm not sure how many cards are in it total but I just estimated and guessed at the number of plains to add in, but you definitely want no more than 60 cards (my list is probably over that, though). I added in the most useful cards I found in your total list, and reduced the quantities of some of the not so good rebels, but still kept 1x of all of them, so you maintain a toolbox. You may want to add the Flickering Ward but I'm not sure. I threw in Enlightened Tutor because you've got some nice enchantments (there's a few that boost creatures and Island Sanctuary). If you start with the Enlightened tutor, then either grab Island Sanctuary to stall while you using one of the rebels to fetch more rebels OR grab Skullclamp to generate massive card advantage, between that and you're rebels which generate CA by bringing more rebels onto the field.
A good cheap list would be a monoblack one, but if you want to splash blue anyway, then go for Spell Pierce or Dispel instead of Force Spike. The nice thing about casual is you can play a more flexible deck, so I'd replace the 2nd Iona and the Sundering Titan with something like Tidesprout Tyrant, Hellkite, Twilight Shepard or Woodfall Primus.
For a monoblack list (which would obviously be cheaper) you could do:
1x Iona
1x Woodfall Primus
1x Empyrial Archangel
1x Tidesprout Tyrant
1x Sphinx
1x Blazing Archon
4 Reanimate
4 Exhume
4 Animate Dead
4 Entomb
4 Buried Alive
4 Putrid Imp
4 Unmask
4 Thoughtseize
4 Lotus Petal
4 Dark Ritual
14 Swamp
This gives the deck wicked speed (Petals + Rituals). The key is to mulligan until you get either a creature in hand (where worst case scenario you can draw to 8, do nothing to discard then reanimate next turn) or a search spell. Obviously the creature base would need to be altered to suit what decks you're facing and so you can grab what'll save you, but a versatile creature base is a lot of fun in casual, and it helps when your opponents change up their decks!
Splashing an entire color for Ardent Recruit seems underwhelming. Having less than 4 Plating is a real sin in Affinity.
I would do this:
-1Glimmervoid
-3 Ardent Recruit
-4 Ancient Den
+4 DarkSteel Citadel
+1 Springleaf Drum
+1 Cranial Plating
+2 Myr Enforcer
+1 Mox Opal
Or you could even switch the Ancient Dens for Ancient Tomb and Steel Overseer instead of Ardent Recruit. With 12 free creatures and 4 Signal Pest, Steel Overseer creates an excellent swarm dropped, especially since Tomb or Mox can drop him turn 1.
Artifact Creature - Construct
Tap, put a -1/-1 counter on Affinity's Pridemage: Destroy target artifact or enchantment with converted mana cost 2 or less.
2/2
A solid way to fight against Null Rod for Affinity is what I really wanted.
Or, for Wildfire.dec:
Wildfireball XRR
Sorcery
Each player sacrifices X lands and Wildfireball deals X damage to each player, then exile the top ten cards of your library.
Once you're no longer monoblack, I feel like you might as well just adopt to a Trisomy build, just by adding green and thriving against aggro while doing quite well against control. Only problem is its worse vs. combo. You're basically trading out discard for more permanent destruction, Bloodghast and Tombstalker for Gigapede/Worm Harvest/Entomb, and Crucibles for Loam. It still lets you landlock them with Waste+Loam+Smallpox+Sinkhole+Vindicate and lets you dredge into win-conditions with a nice draw engine.
// Lands
4 [ZEN] Verdant Catacombs
1 [ROE] Forest (4)
4 [DDC] Barren Moor
4 [MPR] Wasteland
3 [B] Bayou
2 [U] Scrubland
3 [BRB] Swamp (2)
1 [ZEN] Marsh Flats
1 [OD] Cabal Pit
1 [ON] Tranquil Thicket
1 [JGC] Maze of Ith
// Creatures
1 [ON] Gigapede
// Spells
3 [CHK] Sensei's Divining Top
2 [OD] Entomb
3 [RAV] Life from the Loam
4 [R] Swords to Plowshares
1 [EVE] Worm Harvest
3 [SH] Mox Diamond
3 [OD] Innocent Blood
3 [FD] Engineered Explosives
4 [U] Sinkhole
4 [TSP] Smallpox
4 [JGC] Vindicate
// Sideboard
SB: 2 [WWK] Bojuka Bog
SB: 3 [TSP] Krosan Grip
SB: 3 [CHK] Ghostly Prison
SB: 4 [M10] Pithing Needle
SB: 1 [LG] The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
SB: 1 [OD] Nomad Stadium
For a monoblack list (which would obviously be cheaper) you could do:
1x Iona
1x Woodfall Primus
1x Empyrial Archangel
1x Tidesprout Tyrant
1x Sphinx
1x Blazing Archon
4 Reanimate
4 Exhume
4 Animate Dead
4 Entomb
4 Buried Alive
4 Putrid Imp
4 Unmask
4 Thoughtseize
4 Lotus Petal
4 Dark Ritual
14 Swamp
This gives the deck wicked speed (Petals + Rituals). The key is to mulligan until you get either a creature in hand (where worst case scenario you can draw to 8, do nothing to discard then reanimate next turn) or a search spell. Obviously the creature base would need to be altered to suit what decks you're facing and so you can grab what'll save you, but a versatile creature base is a lot of fun in casual, and it helps when your opponents change up their decks!