I was planning to record a video with my B/W Humans deck this week, but sometimes my interest shifts quickly. Today I built a new deck, so I figured I’d show it off since I already wrote about B/W Humans.
I’d explain the purpose of this deck, but if you’ve ever seen any deck I’ve ever made, it will probably be immediately obvious. This deck is focused on playing as many of the best sacrifice outlets and creatures to sacrifice as possible. I like the discard spells a lot, but because this deck is based so strongly on synergy, I’m experimenting with just playing them in the sideboard.
Creatures (32)
- 4 Carrion Feeder
- 3 Greater Gargadon
- 4 Mogg War Marshal
- 3 Sprouting Thrinax
- 2 Skirsdag High Priest
- 4 Strangleroot Geist
- 4 Young Wolf
- 4 Blood Artist
- 4 Deathrite Shaman
Lands (21)
Spells (7)
Sideboard
While I’m not sure that I played every turn perfectly, game 1 featured a pretty impressive recovery by the deck and definitely showcased how it can play a long game. In the second game, I got into a similar spot but never managed to draw out of it to cast my spells. My mistake of sacrificing my Deathrite Shaman in the third game was so bad that I was tempted to scrap the video and start over, particularly after the previous mistake of shooting him instead of the Stoneforge Mystic and losing my Strangleroot Geist to kill his Mystic, but I decided there was still a lot worth watching.
After losing that game to Lingering Souls (I lost to Perish, but the Lingering Souls killed me), I remembered that Dread of Night is a card I can play. Given that Death and Taxes just won a Grand Prix, this seems like a pretty good card for it, so I cut Mark of Mutiny and a Hymn to Tourach in my sideboard for two Dread of Nights.
Well, despite the mulligans, those draws were both excellent. The goal is to make the deck play out roughly like that every time.
Matches like that do a lot to show why some people are so committed to playing Brainstorm in Legacy. In the second game, I drew six of my seven targeted removal spells and lost to my opponent’s shroud creatures. That specific thing won’t happen often, but by playing a deck without Brainstorm or Faithless Looting, I am exposing myself to simply drawing cards that line up badly with my opponent’s draws more often than I would if I had those cards. It’s possible that the solution for this deck is to simply add Bloodghast and Faithless Looting.
I’ll try that for my last match:
Creatures (32)
- 3 Carrion Feeder
- 3 Greater Gargadon
- 4 Mogg War Marshal
- 4 Sprouting Thrinax
- 4 Bloodghast
- 2 Skirsdag High Priest
- 4 Young Wolf
- 4 Blood Artist
- 4 Deathrite Shaman
Lands (21)
Spells (7)
Sideboard
Well, that was just embarrassing, which I should have expected. I don’t have the discard in my maindeck, which means I’m using sideboard slots for it, which means I don’t have room in my sideboard for the sideboard cards I’d have to supplement the discard spells in Zombies (not to mention that I don’t even get up to the twelve that I have there, only eight); it just isn’t close to enough. Because I’m only really using the discard against combo decks, what I need is better direct hate, but I’m not really sure what that would look like. It’s possible that I just have to put cards like Mindbreak Trap and Angel of Despair in my sideboard and hope to steal games with them, but that seems like a very unreliable strategy, especially if I play against an unexpected combo deck.
Anyway, that’s the deck. It’s fun, and I like the synergies. I think if I get the mix right it could do quite well against the fair decks, but I’m definitely skeptical enough of its position against combo that I don’t think it’s ready for the big time unless I think of a better solution.
Thanks for watching,
Sam
@samuelhblack on Twitter