Teysa is currently pulled apart so I can use some of the White cards in a Bant idea I've got, and in the meantime I've put the Black cards in a deck designed especially for our new friend. It's a pretty limited pile of cards, because I made it strictly out of things that I already have. No sense in
dumping a ton of cash and trade bait into a deck I'm just using to knock a troll around, and it doesn't even need to be a tight pile because it'll always be one of three or four decks ganging up on one player. But it's gotten me to thinking, since I like deck building almost more than I like playing... if it were an actual deck, and someday I did decide to try and make it work, what could I do to make it more of an actual strategy than just a stack I'm using to hassle a griefer?
The general actually depends on what I need to be able to play around at the time. Lim-Dul the Necromancer, my default general, lets me play more of a control angle, but if I need more staying power because there's a fair bit of creature threat, or I need to accelerate into a combo, I can switch out to Mikaeus, the Unhallowed. The idea is to survive by way of using heavy removal to build a board presence out of
other people's dead creatures, yanked from the jaws of death with Lim-Dul's ability, and Necromancy effects, and hold off the opposition until I can end the game with a completely bullshit combo right in the guy's face...
- 1) Mikaeus, the Unhallowed + Triskelion
2) Exquisite Blood + Sanguine Bond + pushing a damage through to someone
3) With another zombie and Blood Artist in play, Gravecrawler sac'd to Phyrexian Altar for a black, which is used to recast Gravecrawler.
37gw75km]Eldrazi Conscription[/card] or Endless Scream + Tainted Strike.
Yeah, those first three are all infinite combos. And we don't allow those. But the transgressions are overlooked because we're not playing to win so much as we're playing to the griefer losing.
The deck list, for posterity...
With all that said, I'm not actually posting here to talk about how to be a hypocrite and grief people who are griefing me. If this were an actual deck with a strategy to win not based in petty spitefulness, what would change? The first thing that would have to go would be the combos. No going infinite. Triskelion is out, Sanguine Bond and Exquisite Blood are out, and Blood Artist is out. And I'll yank out all the creatures I only jammed in there because they had zombie subtypes while I'm at it.
OUT: Triskelion, Sanguine Bond, Exquisite Blood, Blood Artist, Pontiff of Blight, Phylactery Lich, Abattoir Ghoul
IN: Sword of Feast and Famine, Lashwrithe, Diregraf Ghoul, [card]Butcher Ghoul[/card:
37gw75km], Corpse Harvester, [card]Geralf's Messenger[/card], Withered Wretch
Second: Better removals and better recursion. Ditch being cute with Infect. Combat tricks are unecessary.
OUT: Eldrazi Conscription, Tainted Strike, Endless Scream, Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon, Hex
IN: [card]Black Sun's Zenith[/card], Grasp of Darkness, Victimize, [card]Ghoulcaller's Chant[/card], Plaguebearer
Third: Better mana ramp. Cut useless utility lands. Add better rocks.
OUT: Buried Ruin, Phyrexian Tower, Darksteel Ingot, [card]Thran
Dynamo[/card], 30 Swamps
IN: Vesuva, Crypt of Agadeem, Unholy Grotto, Caged Sun, Extraplanar Lens, 29 Snow-Covered Swamps
[deck]
General
1 Lim-Dul the Necromancer
Spells
1 Army of the Damned
1 Beseech the Queen
1 Black Sun's Zenith
1 Buried Alive
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Diabolic Tutor
1 Disentomb
1 Ghoulcaller's Chant
1 Grasp of Darkness
1 Reanimate
1 Rise of the Dark Realms
1 Toxic Deluge
1 Unearth
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Hero's Downfall
1 Murder
1 Tragic Slip
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Victim of Night
1 Victimize
Enchantments
1 Endless Ranks of the Dead
1 Grave Pact
1 Necromancy
1 Necropotence
1 Phyrexian Arena
1 Whip of Erebos
Artifacts
1 Caged Sun
1 Crystal Ball
1 Extraplanar Lens
1 Lashwrithe
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Nim Deathmantle
1 Phyrexian Altar
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Sol Ring
1 Sword of Feast
and Famine
Planeswalkers
1 Liliana of the Dark Realms
Creatures
1 Artisan of Kozilek
1 Butcher Ghoul
1 Cemetery Reaper
1 Corpse Harvester
1 Crypt Ghast
1 Death Baron
1 Diregraf Ghoul
1 Geralf's Messenger
1 Geth, Lord of the Vault
1 Gravecrawler
1 Gray Merchant of Asphodel
1 Lifebane Zombie
1 Lord of the Undead
1 Mikaeus, the Unhallowed
1 Nirkana Revenant
1 Phyrexian Delver
1 Plaguebearer
1 Sepulchral Primordial
1 Sheoldred, Whispering One
1 Stronghold Assassin
1 Unbreathing Horde
1 Undead Warchief
1 Withered Wretch
1 Zombie Master
Lands
1 Barren Moor
1 Bojuka Bog
1 Cabal Coffers
1 Crypt of Agadeem
1 Temple of the False God
1 Unholy Grotto
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Vesuva
1 Volrath's Stronghold
29 Snow-Covered Swamp[/deck]
And that's where it's at in my head. It can still benefit a lot from some tuning, but it's a better start than where it was before. My main concern is how vulnerable it is to graveyard hate. One Bojuka Bog
or [card]Tormod's Crypt[/card] (which everybody runs, thanks to the Karador player) and it's a bad day. But aside from [card]Feldon's Cane[/card] I don't know what to do about that other than just play around it.
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