For those of you saying that Hellrider + Curiosity is winmoar...Card Advantage wins games. Just look at Consecrated Sphinx. Just like with Hellrider, if left unchecked, it will let you take over the game. Difference is that Hellrider + Curiosity can get you even more card advantage ON the turn you cast him than a Consecrated Sphinx surviving past your opponents' untap step.
I've been trying to break Ravenous Demon since it was spoiled. It's very conditional, and if you're not paying attention and not on top of things, it can likely kill you.
At first I was running it in a WB Human deck. It's ok...but very inconsistant. Then I realized that it was 9/9, flying, trample...and I was suddenly reminded of my Turn 4 wins with Demon of Death's Gate using Tainted Strike. A new build came to mind.
Using a UB control shell, the plan is to get Ravenous Demon on the board, protect it for a turn, stick a human on the board if there isn't one, swing, cast Tainted Strike, and win. There are other issues though, such as if your opponent has flying blockers. That's what Artful Dodge is for.
Here is the working list for now. There will likely be changes.
not that its really relevant, but is there any gameplan vs actual mill? That seems pretty scary. And with all the dig and stuff being included in decks tese days, I could see a control deck switching over to that gameplan postboard for success.
Elixir of Immortality + Memory's Journey solve the issue. I would say have 2 of each in sideboard. Journey can be sided in vs many match ups as well.
@Monkey Sammich- I'll post the list later today, but it's crap. Most of the list is the same as the Frites with exception of DA cards.
I've got Shriekhorn in place of Faithless Looting and Desperate Ravings in place of Tracker's Instinct.
Shriekhorn really shines as an alternate to Faithless Looting. You're able to get 6 cards into your gy by turn 3 if you cast it on turn 1.
Gnaw to the Bone seems like a good sideboard card vs fast aggro. You're throwing in everything into the GY, when the life starts to dip, double cast it and gain a crapton of life, putting yourself back into the game.
It's proved effectively efficient in GU self mill. (Yea, it's not a deck, but the life gain it provides is stupidly good)
Unfortunately I havn't gotten my 3rd Sorin yet. As soon as I get him he'll be placed in here, not sure what to replace with him.
For FNM, I played against an assortment of decks.
Round 1-2/0 I played against B/U Zombies/Mill- I crushed him pretty easily. He just wasn't fast enough. Orings on GraveCrawlers really helped out.
Round 2-2/0 I got paired up against Wg Tempered Steel. He got me low on life very early in each game, but I was able to come back and steam roll him both games once I got Vault of the Archangel Active.
Round 3-1/2 Was against a B/U Tezzeret-"Anti-meta" deck as he called it... Game 1 I stomped the crap out of him and he couldn't find any answers. Game 2 I got rolled over by Wurmcoil Engine and 2 Batterskulls. Game 3 I drew a lot of my sideboard answers early, and kept him from really doing anything. But then I started drawing land after land, anthem after anthem, and no token spells. A resolved Tezzeret followed by a lot of +1'ing took me down.
Round 4-UBR Control-2/1 Game 1 he got me with Grave Titan, Game 2 and 3 I managed to overwhelm him before he could get any serious threats out.
Round 5(Top8) 2/1 Played against W/U Humans. This was a very tough match and it felt like a 50/50 matchup the whole way through. Angelic Destiny is a beast. If I recall right, he smashed the crap out of me in Game 1 with Geist of St. Traft, Mirran Crusader, and Angelic Destiny. Not much I could do. I sided in my 3 Despises and Revoke Existance along with my 3rd O-ring and Day of Judgements. Never drew a Despise, or Revoke, but fortunately didn't need them. I pulled through with Vault, and we went on to game 3. Game 3 was really tense. We basically traded blows for most of the game, and eventually our lives were at me with 6 life, and him with 8. I had a shrine with 4 counters on it. He swung at me with Angelic Destinied Geist, Mirran Crusader, and Champion with 1 counter. He also had Honor of the Pure on the board and a Fiend Hunter he just cast, killing one of my tokens. I cast Midnight Haunting, counter on Shrine, and block all of his attackers with the 3 spirit tokens I had. I pop the shrine, and swing for 10 with him only able to block one of them. Very close game.
Round 6(Top 4) 0/2 Practically a repeat of round 5. W/U Humans-diff opponent. He was a much better player than the previous, and among the best in the shop. Game 1 He blew me away. Game 2 I had a lot of early answers, he played into a Day of Judgement, allowing me to kill 2 Doomed-Spirts, a Champion, and Geist of St. Traft. After that, I drew almost nothing but land and anthems.
For my first time playing this deck in a tourney it was a blast. The deck is very resilient and doesn't fold easily unless you get a lot of bad draws. Late game draw is very needed, I like Altar's Reap, but don't like it's conditions. I'll likely try to fit 2 into the main for next week. And hopefully I get my 3rd Sorin by then.
Vault of the Archangel is my biggest MVP. I only got to play Sorin twice, but he took away the game both times.
Curses are fun! You'll have to forgive me, I've never done anything like a primer or anything, but I figured this would be a good start. Curses likely wont be competitive, but it should be a fun deck for FNM at the very least.
[I will update this periodically with suggestions, feedback, and ideas. Once the pics are all posted I will go through and replace the card names with the pics]
Cursing at people can be fun, but why curse at them when you can outright [I]Curse them[/I]??
Seems like a good fit! Whenever BH Witch dies, go fetch a curse, your go-to would be the Curse of Misfortunes. This isn't the only curse though! There are a good handful of curses you can choose from. What we want to go for is a tool box setup, with BHW and COM being the fetches.
Most curses are in Black and Red, so we're going to stick to those for now. Here are the curses that we're most likely going to abuse.
Curse of Death's Hold is a fantastic curse. It kills non-boosted Inkmoths and 1/1 tokens. Who doesn't love that? And the more the merrier!
Curse of the Pierced Heart - This is great in multiples. Even greater when you throw down the Curse of Bloodletting! Double damage! BAM!
Curse of Thirst- On top of COBloodletting and the other curses you're going to stick to 'em, this will absolutely devastate your opponent quickly if they can't find an answer. Let's all be glad that Ancient Grudge doesn't target enchantments! Unfortunately Ray of Revelation does
Perhaps the biggest issue that we're looking at now is the fact that all of these cards with the exception of Curse of the Pierced Heart is that they all cost 4 or 5cmc. That sucks! So we need to improvise a way to fix this!
We need a form of ramp, and a good bit of cheap spells to use in the early game. Here's what I'm thinking.
There are some very interesting interactions with Heartless, Plunge, and Priest. Especially if you combine other cards like the Bitterheart Witch, and Morbid based cards. If you have heartless on the board, T3 you pay R, cast Priest, and now you have 5 mana. The priest will die, so this will also allow you to unleash some morbid awsomeness such as Tragic Slip. Infernal Plunge also gives you morbid, and a way to get rid of the Witch with your opponent not being able to do anything about it. Solemn also gives us card draw when it dies. Sweet!
How about some support or other interesting cards to use?
Tragic Slilp- Conditional- yes. Which is why you make the conditions you need. There are several ways to kill off your witch. Morbid shouldn't be too hard to achieve if you build the deck right. You want to kill the witch afterall. You can even use the Slip itself to kill her(should you have Heartless out)
Fiend of the Shadows is interesting here. She can sac the Witch, or even Priests if you don't have Heartless Summoning out. Her card-stealing ability could prove very useful, but she's probably best off as a sideboard card for when you face matches sharing the same colors.
Brimstone Volley seems pretty obvious. The morbid function here is fairly relevant when you're wanting to sac your Witch.
Glistening Oil is a fun janky card. Not great, but can prove useful here. Cast it on an opponent's card to save your life for another turn or two, or cast it on your Witch to kill her and fetch a curse.
We need card draw though. We have Solemn, but he's not good enough. So we shall use a new card of awsomeness! Faithless Looting!
And of course, there's Olivia Volderen. She's an all-star. Great for early game, and almost always a good top-deck in late game. She can also peg your witch should you need to.
If you're interested this archetype, then I suggest you dig into the spoilers for all of the cards in standard and do some building of your own. There are many cards I have overlooked, or just havn't bother checking out in a BR Heartless Curse build. I encourage you to provide the best advice/feedback on what you're working on. Lets make this a fun challenging deck!
Here's what I've put together. (without TRULY testing it out or anything. this is just to give a general idea of what the deck could look like)
You should likely have one or two more of each curse in here. Curse of Death's Hold is highly recommended as 4of in the 75. Curse of Oblivion is also useful as well as Nihil Spellbomb. Sweepers should also be considered-such as Black Sun's Zenith and Slagstorm. Ratchet Bomb also deserves a slot. And remember, a lot of this revolves around your meta in your local area
Other cards to consider in the 75. (will add more and more as they are suggested)
1st GWRB Frites- Robert Huffmon
2nd WG Humans- Michael Rogers
3rd BR Zombies Jeremy Null
4th Grixis Control- Ethan Hughes
5th GBW Frites-Charlie Stepp
6th BR Zombies- Alan Chavez
7th GWB Tokens- Mathew Long
8th UWR Miracle/Control- Andy Iwamoto
Results link- http://www.sleeveup.com/Oklahoma_2012_DL.html -
On a side note, they misspelled my name -_- lol
At first I was running it in a WB Human deck. It's ok...but very inconsistant. Then I realized that it was 9/9, flying, trample...and I was suddenly reminded of my Turn 4 wins with Demon of Death's Gate using Tainted Strike. A new build came to mind.
Using a UB control shell, the plan is to get Ravenous Demon on the board, protect it for a turn, stick a human on the board if there isn't one, swing, cast Tainted Strike, and win. There are other issues though, such as if your opponent has flying blockers. That's what Artful Dodge is for.
Here is the working list for now. There will likely be changes.
4x Invisible Stalker
4x Snapcaster Mage
4x Ravenous Demon
Sorceries
2x Artful Dodge
1x Blacksun's Zenith
4x Gitaxian Probe
4x Ponder
3x Tainted Strike
3x Mana Leak
2x Negate
2x Doomblade
2x Go For The Throat
4x Darkslick Shores
4x Drowned Catacomb
8x Island
7x Swamp
1x Nephalia Drownyard
Still needs a lot of polishing. But I feel that this is about right for the basic skeleton of it.
Elixir of Immortality + Memory's Journey solve the issue. I would say have 2 of each in sideboard. Journey can be sided in vs many match ups as well.
@Monkey Sammich- I'll post the list later today, but it's crap. Most of the list is the same as the Frites with exception of DA cards.
I've got Shriekhorn in place of Faithless Looting and Desperate Ravings in place of Tracker's Instinct.
Shriekhorn really shines as an alternate to Faithless Looting. You're able to get 6 cards into your gy by turn 3 if you cast it on turn 1.
It's proved effectively efficient in GU self mill. (Yea, it's not a deck, but the life gain it provides is stupidly good)
4x Gather the Townsfolk
4x Lingering Souls
4x Midnight Haunting
Creatures
4x Doomed Traveler
2x Grand Abolisher
3x Hero of Bladehold
Anthems
4x Intangible Virtue
1x Honor of the Pure
2x Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
Removal
2x Doomblade
2x Go For The Throat
2x Oblivion Ring
Artifacts
2x Shrine of Loyal Legions
Land
4x Isolated Chapel
3x Vault of the Archangel
6x Swamp
11x Plains
2x Revoke Existence
2x Stony Silence
2x Suture Priest
2x Day of Judgement
1x Oblivion Ring
3x Despise
1x Mortarpod
2x Tragic Slip
Unfortunately I havn't gotten my 3rd Sorin yet. As soon as I get him he'll be placed in here, not sure what to replace with him.
For FNM, I played against an assortment of decks.
Round 1-2/0 I played against B/U Zombies/Mill- I crushed him pretty easily. He just wasn't fast enough. Orings on GraveCrawlers really helped out.
Round 2-2/0 I got paired up against Wg Tempered Steel. He got me low on life very early in each game, but I was able to come back and steam roll him both games once I got Vault of the Archangel Active.
Round 3-1/2 Was against a B/U Tezzeret-"Anti-meta" deck as he called it... Game 1 I stomped the crap out of him and he couldn't find any answers. Game 2 I got rolled over by Wurmcoil Engine and 2 Batterskulls. Game 3 I drew a lot of my sideboard answers early, and kept him from really doing anything. But then I started drawing land after land, anthem after anthem, and no token spells. A resolved Tezzeret followed by a lot of +1'ing took me down.
Round 4-UBR Control-2/1 Game 1 he got me with Grave Titan, Game 2 and 3 I managed to overwhelm him before he could get any serious threats out.
Round 5(Top8) 2/1 Played against W/U Humans. This was a very tough match and it felt like a 50/50 matchup the whole way through. Angelic Destiny is a beast. If I recall right, he smashed the crap out of me in Game 1 with Geist of St. Traft, Mirran Crusader, and Angelic Destiny. Not much I could do. I sided in my 3 Despises and Revoke Existance along with my 3rd O-ring and Day of Judgements. Never drew a Despise, or Revoke, but fortunately didn't need them. I pulled through with Vault, and we went on to game 3. Game 3 was really tense. We basically traded blows for most of the game, and eventually our lives were at me with 6 life, and him with 8. I had a shrine with 4 counters on it. He swung at me with Angelic Destinied Geist, Mirran Crusader, and Champion with 1 counter. He also had Honor of the Pure on the board and a Fiend Hunter he just cast, killing one of my tokens. I cast Midnight Haunting, counter on Shrine, and block all of his attackers with the 3 spirit tokens I had. I pop the shrine, and swing for 10 with him only able to block one of them. Very close game.
Round 6(Top 4) 0/2 Practically a repeat of round 5. W/U Humans-diff opponent. He was a much better player than the previous, and among the best in the shop. Game 1 He blew me away. Game 2 I had a lot of early answers, he played into a Day of Judgement, allowing me to kill 2 Doomed-Spirts, a Champion, and Geist of St. Traft. After that, I drew almost nothing but land and anthems.
For my first time playing this deck in a tourney it was a blast. The deck is very resilient and doesn't fold easily unless you get a lot of bad draws. Late game draw is very needed, I like Altar's Reap, but don't like it's conditions. I'll likely try to fit 2 into the main for next week. And hopefully I get my 3rd Sorin by then.
Vault of the Archangel is my biggest MVP. I only got to play Sorin twice, but he took away the game both times.
Mirror match would suck if both get the curse out before someone casts the Pool... lmao.
Just for this scenario...Elspeth would be good for mirror if you can have her stick prior to the lock.
Fill your gy up with creatures, then double cast Gnaw to the Bone for a crapton of life.
Chalice could fit well in a shell of that deck as an additional win con other than Postmortem Lunge+Kessig Cagebreakers
for example.
4x Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
You should have at least 3 of him in this kind of list anyways
[I will update this periodically with suggestions, feedback, and ideas. Once the pics are all posted I will go through and replace the card names with the pics]
Cursing at people can be fun, but why curse at them when you can outright [I]Curse them[/I]??
Let's look at the key pieces.
Bitterheart Witch-Curse of Misfortunes
Seems like a good fit! Whenever BH Witch dies, go fetch a curse, your go-to would be the Curse of Misfortunes. This isn't the only curse though! There are a good handful of curses you can choose from. What we want to go for is a tool box setup, with BHW and COM being the fetches.
Most curses are in Black and Red, so we're going to stick to those for now. Here are the curses that we're most likely going to abuse.
Curse of Death's Hold - Curse of Thirst - Curse of Bloodletting - Curse of the Pierced Heart - Curse of Oblivion
Curse of Death's Hold is a fantastic curse. It kills non-boosted Inkmoths and 1/1 tokens. Who doesn't love that? And the more the merrier!
Curse of the Pierced Heart - This is great in multiples. Even greater when you throw down the Curse of Bloodletting! Double damage! BAM!
Curse of Thirst- On top of COBloodletting and the other curses you're going to stick to 'em, this will absolutely devastate your opponent quickly if they can't find an answer. Let's all be glad that Ancient Grudge doesn't target enchantments! Unfortunately Ray of Revelation does
Curse of Oblivion- I don't know about you, but I hate playing against Burning Vengeance decks. This would be a great sideboard card in conjunction with Nihil Spellbombs.
Perhaps the biggest issue that we're looking at now is the fact that all of these cards with the exception of Curse of the Pierced Heart is that they all cost 4 or 5cmc. That sucks! So we need to improvise a way to fix this!
We need a form of ramp, and a good bit of cheap spells to use in the early game. Here's what I'm thinking.
Heartless Summoning-Solemn Simulacrum-Infernal Plunge-Priest of Urabrask
There are some very interesting interactions with Heartless, Plunge, and Priest. Especially if you combine other cards like the Bitterheart Witch, and Morbid based cards. If you have heartless on the board, T3 you pay R, cast Priest, and now you have 5 mana. The priest will die, so this will also allow you to unleash some morbid awsomeness such as Tragic Slip. Infernal Plunge also gives you morbid, and a way to get rid of the Witch with your opponent not being able to do anything about it. Solemn also gives us card draw when it dies. Sweet!
How about some support or other interesting cards to use?
Undying Evil-Fiend of the Shadows-Falkenrath Marauders-Brimstone Volley- Glistening Oil
Undying Evil could prove very useful in getting your Bitterheart Witch back or even one of your other critters.
Tragic Slilp- Conditional- yes. Which is why you make the conditions you need. There are several ways to kill off your witch. Morbid shouldn't be too hard to achieve if you build the deck right. You want to kill the witch afterall. You can even use the Slip itself to kill her(should you have Heartless out)
Fiend of the Shadows is interesting here. She can sac the Witch, or even Priests if you don't have Heartless Summoning out. Her card-stealing ability could prove very useful, but she's probably best off as a sideboard card for when you face matches sharing the same colors.
Falkenrath Marauders is a good play for T3 after Heartless Summoning. However there are likely better cards that can fill this slot, such as Olivia Volderen.
Brimstone Volley seems pretty obvious. The morbid function here is fairly relevant when you're wanting to sac your Witch.
Glistening Oil is a fun janky card. Not great, but can prove useful here. Cast it on an opponent's card to save your life for another turn or two, or cast it on your Witch to kill her and fetch a curse.
We need card draw though. We have Solemn, but he's not good enough. So we shall use a new card of awsomeness! Faithless Looting!
And of course, there's Olivia Volderen. She's an all-star. Great for early game, and almost always a good top-deck in late game. She can also peg your witch should you need to.
If you're interested this archetype, then I suggest you dig into the spoilers for all of the cards in standard and do some building of your own. There are many cards I have overlooked, or just havn't bother checking out in a BR Heartless Curse build. I encourage you to provide the best advice/feedback on what you're working on. Lets make this a fun challenging deck!
Here's what I've put together. (without TRULY testing it out or anything. this is just to give a general idea of what the deck could look like)
2x Curse of the Pierced Heart
1x Curse of Thirst
1x Curse of Bloodletting
2x Curse of Death's Hold
1x Undying Evil
2x Tragic Slip
3x Brimstone Volley
2x Doomblade
3x Fiend of the Shadows
3x Olivia Volderen
4x Solemn Simulacrum
3x Faithless Looting
You should likely have one or two more of each curse in here. Curse of Death's Hold is highly recommended as 4of in the 75. Curse of Oblivion is also useful as well as Nihil Spellbomb. Sweepers should also be considered-such as Black Sun's Zenith and Slagstorm. Ratchet Bomb also deserves a slot. And remember, a lot of this revolves around your meta in your local area
Other cards to consider in the 75. (will add more and more as they are suggested)
Skinrender
Ghost Quarter
Other Spot removal such as Go For The Throat, Victim of Night
Culling Dias(Great if you're using a lot of creatures-not so great with less than 16-18 creatures I believe)
Pyroclasm is not in standard(in other formats sure). I believe the card you meant was Ratchet Bomb.
Doomblade my Creature? NAH BRO