Part of the reason I’ve been playing around with new Legacy decks lately is that I’ve become dissatisfied with my Zombie deck. Deathrite Shaman has become more popular, and it’s definitely a difficult card to beat. I also find myself siding out most of my Zombies in many matchups. Lately, I’ve started to wonder if there’s a way to rebuild it without the Zombie shell.
Today, I’m going test the deck I came up with while trying to do that:
Creatures (11)
- 1 Tarmogoyf
- 1 Knight of the Reliquary
- 1 Qasali Pridemage
- 4 Bloodghast
- 1 Gravecrawler
- 1 Griselbrand
- 1 Deathrite Shaman
- 1 Borborygmos Enraged
Lands (24)
Spells (25)
- 2 Goblin Bombardment
- 2 Entomb
- 4 Cabal Therapy
- 2 Mox Diamond
- 2 Life from the Loam
- 1 Dread Return
- 1 Thoughtseize
- 1 Green Sun's Zenith
- 4 Faithless Looting
- 4 Lingering Souls
- 2 Abrupt Decay
Sideboard
This deck is definitely still in its infancy. It plays weird numbers of some cards just to try them out. There’s a good chance I want more Entombs or Life from the Loams and more Mox Diamonds. I might want maindeck Dark Confidant, but I’m a little worried about the eight-drops.
The basic idea is to use Life from the Loam and Faithless Looting to find Lingering Souls and Bloodghasts, which can fuel Cabal Therapy, Dread Return, Goblin Bombardment, and the attack step. I have a pair of Mutavaults to get cute with Gravecrawler (particularly with Goblin Bombardment) going late. Green Sun’s Zenith can find Dryad Arbor, Deathrite Shaman, Tarmogoyf, Qasali Pridemage, and Knight of the Reliquary. I’m not sure how much I’ll like this shell, so I’m trying it with a single Green Sun’s Zenith to make room for other things, but I could easily see playing three or four. I have Griselbrand and Borborygmos Enraged as maindeck Dread Return targets, but I have no idea how good Borborygmos will be. I have Angel of Despair in the sideboard as another possible target and bullet against Show and Tell.
The rest of the deck should be fairly self-explanatory with the understanding that where numbers don’t make sense, it’s probably because there were too many different ideas I wanted to test. Other cards I considered but didn’t find room for include Scavenging Ooze, Sylvan Library, Lotleth Troll, Swords to Plowshares, Golgari Grave Troll, and Gaea’s Cradle.
Let’s see some games.
My draw in the first game was outstanding. I had lots of pressure and disruption. The Faithless Looting + Bloodghast hands almost always win, which is one of the major draws of the engine.
In the second game, his draw was his deck’s equivalent of my draw in the first game, and I guessed the wrong piece to go after.
In game 3, we both did what we needed to do, and I had just enough to stop him from going off.
I mulliganed to oblivion that first game but proceeded to draw perfectly to get out of it. Game 2 he just had too much—I could have waited to cast the Lingering Souls to play around Price of Progress, but I think I stand by the choices I made. Game 3 was awesome, and it makes me much more excited about the Reanimator shell.
Well, the first game was pretty sweet. It felt like there was a little back and forth. It’s too bad he misclicked the second game.
Those were some epic games, and there were some excellent topdecks in the first game.
I don’t win all four matches in these videos very often. My opponents all made some mistakes, but the deck felt like it has a lot of potential. I’m still not exactly sure which direction to take it in though. I’m glad I got to do something sweet with each engine at least once.
Thanks for watching,
Sam
@samuelhblack on Twitter