Strategy This deck is based around Dead Reckoning. For just 3 mana, it can kill basically anything we can target with it, all the while grabbing us a bomb. The catch is we need cards in the graveyard for it to work, but given the right deck we can accomodate that. Given that the card doubles as removal and recursion (sort of), it helps set up a deck that --- well, doubles as removal and recursion. Other than that, it's all pretty straight forward so I'm not going to spend too much time explaining it. The singleton Negate is there in case you don't have enough mana open for Dissolve after getting Rune-Scarred Demon on the board. As soon as you pick the card you want to tutor, his ability will have fully resolved and the card will be in your hand. So either they remove Rune-Scarred Demon before the ability resolves and you grab Griselbrand, or they don't kill it immediately and you can grab Negate or Dissolve and then counter their removal. There's other options in this slot such as Undying Evil or any bounce spell, but I figured Negate is the safest choice. I'm actually really excited about how many different ways there are to build this deck, especially when you start to look at splashing a third color - there's tons of options!
Deck Weaknesses 1) We're lacking good lifegain options in blue and black. Splashing green fixes this. 2) We're lacking mass removal. Splashing white or red fixes this. 3) I'd rather have blue be the deck's main color, but we're rocking a bit more black cards. Obviously splashing doesn't help here. 4) Mindless aggro decks will cause many a ragequit when playing a deck like this.
The core-idea was about Liliana's Specter combined with Undying Evil. Play the Specter, opponent discard, than block with specter and get it as 3/2 back and the opponent discard a card again. Only this is awesome, but with Agent of the Fates, this get really nasty. And than there are the blue spells.... not only you have 8 instant bounceeffects for the opponent, no, you can bounce your own creatures too. If the Agent of the Fates get bounced, it kill something, so every bounce could be a permanent removal !
Than there is Talrand, Sky Summoner. Blue decks would play him only, if they have some counter in their hand, you need only 5 mana to cast him. Undying Evil bring him stronger back and you get a drake and there is no need to cast him again. And everytime you bounce a creature or draw with Think Twice there are more drakes.
The deck have good carddraw too. Graveborn Muse is awesome, and new Indulgent Tormenter is maybe the best black controlcard in the game. The carddraw is useful, to put counters in the new Chasm Skulker, which get stronger after any draw and if it dies you get many tokens... perfect for blue control decks. The tokens are nice fodder for the Shadowborn Demon, what act es removal like the Dinrova Horror. Tribute to Hunger is for lifegain, ith all the bounce, you will kill the creature you want with this spell to the the maximum life.
Every discard, every new draketoken, every new sacrifice, every new bounce and every new carddraw let vanish the hope of the opponent for a win... damn i want to play this deck so bad.
Mill deck based on the Doorkeeper, but with some kill to keep it safe. It doesn't have a huge number of ways to win outside of Mill, or even outside the Doorkeeper - instead putting all its faith in the little guy and hoping to grind out defensive wins. To power him up, the deck has 15 defenders, and a set of Bracers to double the Mill. The large amount of cheap, high toughness creatures helps evolve the Raptors that provide a way to engage in combat if the mill isn't effective.
Control is provided by Negates and Assassinates, with Niblis' to tap utility creatures that stubbornly won't tap in your turn for Assassination, and allow the Doorkeeper two activations, mana permitting, or just to keep a fat creature locked down. Coral Barrier tokens can chump block or be sacrificed to the Corpse Blockades to give them deathtouch. Suffer the Past is lifegain, and anti Kozilek, Butcher of Truth tech. Negates also defend against Elixir of Immortality as well as keeping the Doorkeeper alive, as without him, you're in trouble.
Joined: Oct 30, 2013 Posts: 7305 Location: England
So I kinda wanted to make a deck using the abilities of Niblis of the Breath and Pestermite, in particular their ability to untap your dudes, but there really aren't enough abilities to make that a thing. So have a Dimir deck that uses it as disruption instead!
So yeah it's mostly disrupting the opponents attacks while building up a decent air force and slapping them about some. Question: You think it might be worth throwing in an Illusionist's Bracers to get the most out of Cruel Sadist and Niblis of the Breath?
_________________
Welcome! I'm Garren and I'll be your designated villain for the evening.
Actually, leaving 6 mana open is pretty standard in this deck, since beside your creatures and time warp, all your spells are instant. Basically, it's a Draw-Go kinda deck.
Counterlash into either a big monster / Archaeomancer or a Flesh to dust is pretty cool. The only time where it sucks in this deck is against Rituals... and even then, it's not like there are better counterspells available
1. soul of ravinca is from ravinca plane (big surprise) - not premium. 2. Garren - absolutely don't play illusionist's bracers - 8 creatures that dies to shock is not enough to justify using it. niblis ability doesn't worth the 5 mana investment to cast and equip in my opinion. 2nd cruel sadist ability looks great with it. 3. counterlash - It didn't work well with my experience. I found it more beneficial usually to cast my 6 mana creatures from my hand instead of waiting with the counterlash and hope that they will cast a creature spell - but whatever works for you. 4. Still no normal non premium build IMO. sure, I can take cards from both colors, but I didn't see any cross colors interactions.
Depends what you're against. I know very well that beeing able to counter a threat AND put down your own threat at the same time can be really crushing for your opponent.
Strategy This deck is based around Dead Reckoning. For just 3 mana, it can kill basically anything we can target with it, all the while grabbing us a bomb. The catch is we need cards in the graveyard for it to work, but given the right deck we can accomodate that. Given that the card doubles as removal and recursion (sort of), it helps set up a deck that --- well, doubles as removal and recursion. Other than that, it's all pretty straight forward so I'm not going to spend too much time explaining it. The singleton Negate is there in case you don't have enough mana open for Dissolve after getting Rune-Scarred Demon on the board. As soon as you pick the card you want to tutor, his ability will have fully resolved and the card will be in your hand. So either they remove Rune-Scarred Demon before the ability resolves and you grab Griselbrand, or they don't kill it immediately and you can grab Negate or Dissolve and then counter their removal. There's other options in this slot such as Undying Evil or any bounce spell, but I figured Negate is the safest choice. I'm actually really excited about how many different ways there are to build this deck, especially when you start to look at splashing a third color - there's tons of options!
Deck Weaknesses 1) We're lacking good lifegain options in blue and black. Splashing green fixes this. 2) We're lacking mass removal. Splashing white or red fixes this. 3) I'd rather have blue be the deck's main color, but we're rocking a bit more black cards. Obviously splashing doesn't help here. 4) Mindless aggro decks will cause many a ragequit when playing a deck like this.
The core-idea was about Liliana's Specter combined with Undying Evil. Play the Specter, opponent discard, than block with specter and get it as 3/2 back and the opponent discard a card again. Only this is awesome, but with Agent of the Fates, this get really nasty. And than there are the blue spells.... not only you have 8 instant bounceeffects for the opponent, no, you can bounce your own creatures too. If the Agent of the Fates get bounced, it kill something, so every bounce could be a permanent removal !
Than there is Talrand, Sky Summoner. Blue decks would play him only, if they have some counter in their hand, you need only 5 mana to cast him. Undying Evil bring him stronger back and you get a drake and there is no need to cast him again. And everytime you bounce a creature or draw with Think Twice there are more drakes.
The deck have good carddraw too. Graveborn Muse is awesome, and new Indulgent Tormenter is maybe the best black controlcard in the game. The carddraw is useful, to put counters in the new Chasm Skulker, which get stronger after any draw and if it dies you get many tokens... perfect for blue control decks. The tokens are nice fodder for the Shadowborn Demon, what act es removal like the Dinrova Horror. Tribute to Hunger is for lifegain, ith all the bounce, you will kill the creature you want with this spell to the the maximum life.
Every discard, every new draketoken, every new sacrifice, every new bounce and every new carddraw let vanish the hope of the opponent for a win... damn i want to play this deck so bad.
Mill deck based on the Doorkeeper, but with some kill to keep it safe. It doesn't have a huge number of ways to win outside of Mill, or even outside the Doorkeeper - instead putting all its faith in the little guy and hoping to grind out defensive wins. To power him up, the deck has 15 defenders, and a set of Bracers to double the Mill. The large amount of cheap, high toughness creatures helps evolve the Raptors that provide a way to engage in combat if the mill isn't effective.
Control is provided by Negates and Assassinates, with Niblis' to tap utility creatures that stubbornly won't tap in your turn for Assassination, and allow the Doorkeeper two activations, mana permitting, or just to keep a fat creature locked down. Coral Barrier tokens can chump block or be sacrificed to the Corpse Blockades to give them deathtouch. Suffer the Past is lifegain, and anti Kozilek, Butcher of Truth tech. Negates also defend against Elixir of Immortality as well as keeping the Doorkeeper alive, as without him, you're in trouble.
I tried that second build and only had one dual against the AI but damn its so much fun. Before I had a Doorkeeper deck but it wasn't fun and took ages to do anything relevent. It did help me get the mill achievement however.
The deck is basically based around Talrand and/or Agents and abusing them.
Guard Gomazoa is there to help defend until you can get Talrand and/or Agent kicking.
Time Warp will win you the game 100 times over with a few flyers on the field.
Pestermite is a good trick and another flyer that can deal damage through the air.
Vapor Snag is great for stall/tokens and I have used it more than once on my Agent as well. Think Twice is for extra draws and the Flashback enables it for more tokens from Talrand. Artful Dodge is amazing with both Agents and Talrand.
Tribute to Hunger is another good spell for tokens, has life gain, and is relatively cheap.
I went with 4x Phyrexian Ragers over Graveborn Muse after testing both for a while. The main difference was that I could get out Phyrexian for cheaper and 1 turn earlier for card draw.
Shadowborn Demon is a beast and with all the tokens and other cheaper flyers he will often stick around more than just 1 or 2 turns. Indulgent Tormentor is simply amazing.
I use all 4 Dimir Guildgates after messing with just 2 and then 3. It is really important to have both double blue and black so I ended up having to use all 4.
While the deck is somewhat heavy on the 3-spot it still works out well. On turn 4 you throw down a 3 cmc and have room to cast any number of the 1 cost spells. Turn 5 is a perfect time to throw down Talrand to make sure he is safe with an Undying Evil or Vapor Snag in hand (which will also produce tokens). On turn 6 any 2 of the 3 cmc spells can be cast.
A few things can be slightly altered (more or less of a couple spells, minor creature changes) but the gist is the same and this build worked really well for me. If anyone has any suggestions I am open to ideas. Decent draw, some discard, and mainly a lot of flyers and death to creatures for the opponent.
_________________
iOS Username: minddrifter Steam Profile Name: minddrifter BattleTag: minddrifter#1397 NGA: Formerly known as "Nebula"
Last edited by minddrifter on Wed Oct 01, 2014 5:21 pm, edited 5 times in total.
The deck is basically based around Talrand and/or Agents and abusing them.
Guard Gomazoa is there to help defend until you can get Talrand and/or Agent kicking.
Time Warp will win you the game 100 times over with a few flyers on the field.
Pestermite is a good trick and another flyer that can deal damage through the air.
Vapor Snag is great for stall/tokens and I have used it more than once on my Agent as well. Think Twice is for extra draws and the Flashback enables it for more tokens from Talrand. Artful Dodge is amazing with both Agents and Talrand.
Tribute to Hunger is another good spell for tokens, has life gain, and is relatively cheap.
I went with 4x Phyrexian Ragers over Graveborn Muse after testing both for a while. The main difference was that I could get out Phyrexian for cheaper and 1 turn earlier for card draw.
Shadowborn Demon is a beast and with all the tokens and other cheaper flyers he will often stick around more than just 1 or 2 turns. Indulgent Tormentor is simply amazing.
I use all 4 Dimir Guildgates after messing with just 2 and then 3. It is really important to have both double blue and black so I ended up having to use all 4.
While the deck is somewhat heavy on the 3-spot it still works out well. On turn 4 you throw down a 3 cmc and have room to cast any number of the 1 cost spells. Turn 5 is a perfect time to throw down Talrand to make sure he is safe with an Undying Evil or Vapor Snag in hand (which will also produce tokens). On turn 6 any 2 of the 3 cmc spells can be cast.
A few things can be slightly altered (more or less of a couple spells, minor creature changes) but the gist is the same and this build worked really well for me. If anyone has any suggestions I am open to ideas. Decent draw, some discard, and mainly a lot of flyers and death to creatures for the opponent.
I wish I had 4 gates...I'm missing one due to that bug that WotC needs to fix >< had to put in an extra island or swamp instead
Joined: Nov 10, 2013 Posts: 3347
Identity: Male
Preferred Pronoun Set: He
Yeah for some reason for a lot of people the gates didn't all get fully unlocked but the Ravnica collection still says 100% and they cna't get anymore packs, which is a pretty weird bug. Luckily I have a complete set of them.
Yeah for some reason for a lot of people the gates didn't all get fully unlocked but the Ravnica collection still says 100% and they cna't get anymore packs, which is a pretty weird bug. Luckily I have a complete set of them.
Yes, Kozilek can easily be chumped blocked, but I think he has a great place in a control deck for 2 reasons. First, when you do manage to get him out, which is a lot more often than you'd think with Counterlash, he generates 4 card draws which is great. The bigger reason though, is his annihilator 4. This functions as a pseudo-mass removal (Which we're severally lacking, except in white) against the rampant token decks. Even when blocked, he guarantees you wipe a huge chunk of the board and it's really a non factor if he dies since he brings your graveyard to your library and you can either just play Griselbrand or do the whole thing over again.
Out of curiosity what did you replace to add Kozi?
While I can't speak for Aranthys, I replaced the Elixir of Immortality with Kozilek, Butcher of Truth. It's essentially the same effect with returning the graveyard to your library, but with bonus card draw and the Annihilator 4, plus, you know, 12/12.
EDIT: I'm also tempted to sneak a Maelstrom Archangel into the deck to combo with Counterlash. Attacking with the Angel would then bring Kozilek in that turn. It's really tempting, but I think it's probably way too greedy.
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot post attachments in this forum
Login
Register
Card Search
NGAWiki
Search
abilities to make that a thing. So have a Dimir deck that uses it as disruption instead!
, 16 
, 24 
)
