Here's my most recent endeavor: geth. The deck is mostly devoted to accelerating into insane mana, disrupting combos through instant-speed removal, and then basically going crazy on everyone else's graveyard. Enjoy!
urborg, tomb of yawgmoth, deserted temple, thawing glaciers, vesuva are all pretty good
And is amulet of vigor really in there to untap the cards you bring back with geth? Because it seems to me that if you are bringing cards back with geth, your already winning and amulet feels almost like a win more because of that, but i could be wrong. Being able to bring things back and chump block eternally does have serious potential.
also, yawgmoth's will is pretty decent.
Exsanguinate is pretty good if you are already generating lots of mana.
Memory jar is a great card. It does 2 things: draws you 7 cards for you to play in your turn. It mils your opponents for 7. Its pretty awesome
Myojin of night's reach seems like pretty good discard if thats what you are going for. Strip mine and wasteland both have good uses.
I hate to say it, but it almost seems like you have to much card disadvantage tutors. Just a few powerful ones like insidious dreams, vampiric tutor and its ilk are generally good. (diabolic intent, night dealings, cruel tutor). diabolic intent doesn't let you get out of those desperate situations when you have no board presence. And night dealings seems to have the issue that if you aren't already in a good spot, its essentially 8 mana to tutor up mana crypt (which feels lackluster to me). If you do want to run it though, slaughter pact is a good target.
Another card I wouldn't run is betrayal of flesh, but it does have some versatility. Altar of shadows is good repeat destruction (as is the predator flagship).
Tsabo's decree is clearly a meta choice. But if you are generating massive amounts of mana, decree of pain is always nifty. Damnation isn't bad, and mutilate helps get rid of those indestructible creatures. But again, it all depends upon what you want.
urborg, tomb of yawgmoth, deserted temple, thawing glaciers, vesuva are all pretty good
And is amulet of vigor really in there to untap the cards you bring back with geth? Because it seems to me that if you are bringing cards back with geth, your already winning and amulet feels almost like a win more because of that, but i could be wrong. Being able to bring things back and chump block eternally does have serious potential.
also, yawgmoth's will is pretty decent.
Exsanguinate is pretty good if you are already generating lots of mana.
Memory jar is a great card. It does 2 things: draws you 7 cards for you to play in your turn. It mils your opponents for 7. Its pretty awesome
Myojin of night's reach seems like pretty good discard if thats what you are going for. Strip mine and wasteland both have good uses.
I hate to say it, but it almost seems like you have to much card disadvantage tutors. Just a few powerful ones like insidious dreams, vampiric tutor and its ilk are generally good. (diabolic intent, night dealings, cruel tutor). diabolic intent doesn't let you get out of those desperate situations when you have no board presence. And night dealings seems to have the issue that if you aren't already in a good spot, its essentially 8 mana to tutor up mana crypt (which feels lackluster to me). If you do want to run it though, slaughter pact is a good target.
Another card I wouldn't run is betrayal of flesh, but it does have some versatility. Altar of shadows is good repeat destruction (as is the predator flagship).
Tsabo's decree is clearly a meta choice. But if you are generating massive amounts of mana, decree of pain is always nifty. Damnation isn't bad, and mutilate helps get rid of those indestructible creatures. But again, it all depends upon what you want.
Wow, thanks for the well-thought-out response. There's a lot of good suggestions...I'll go through it piece by piece.
Yep, all those lands are solid. I wanted to get the thing posted before I had to get off the computer so I threw the mana together at the last second.
I haven't gotten to test the deck so I'm not sure how powerful the amulet is. still, at 1 mana it doesn't seem like a huge commitment. My main thought was that it'd let me pull tons of mana rocks into play in a hurry, and pull blockers into play as needed, which is probably good since I'm likely to be on the defense once everyone gets pissed off at me. I think it's at least worth a shot.
the one-shot removal is in there basically as combo disruption. I figured it like this: I've got a lot of tutors, so when I tutor for removal, I want something powerful and possibly multi-use - i.e. o-stone, argentum armor, plague wind, or avarice totem. When I'm just drawing it, though, I'm probably going to want something to deal with the problem I'm having NOW - something like chill to the bone. There's not a lot of multi-use removal, but the idea is that I'll tutor what I need, and the single-use stuff can be a surprise blow that people weren't expecting.
Avatar of woe (/visara) was in the list for a long time, but ultimately i decided not to because it makes you a massive hate magnet and has to wait a full turn to do anything. It's too slow to deal with an immediate problem creature, and it's too inneffective against a big swarm (which it's likely to draw). I'd rather drop a plague wind or argentum armor.
duplicant I dislike because it's sorcery-speed. same for shriekmaw and marauder. All 3 are great if you've got efficient recursion engines, but since I don't have many creatures in my deck I decided against it. I'd use all of them in a chainer deck, but with Geth I'd prefer to devote my mana towards him.
I have ostone instead of disk - i hate etbt and i should have plenty of mana to use ostone. all is dust is cool, but also expensive and doesn't kill artifacts. I guess that could be a plus in certain circumstances, but I figured it'd be most versatile to include the broadest wipe. avarice totem is sort of a trial run, but the deck is trying to generate tons of mana so I'm hoping it will allow me to perform multiple switches and wreak havoc.
grave titan doesn't really fit into the theme. it's plenty good, but i prefer to build my decks towards a common goal - in this case, winning by insane graveyard abuse.
nirkana is excellent, I forgot about her. lens is already on there. Candelabra is simply out of my price range (I use all proxies anyway most of the time, but I typically follow a gentleman's rule that it's lame to play with cards that cost more than $10-$15 unless I actually own them (as in the case of mana crypt)).
"yawgmoth's will is pretty decent" would totally be in my signature right now if I wasn't already up against the character limit Anyway, yes it's very good but I kind of like to build my recursion engines (at least in black decks) to be able to recur endlessly, which yawgmoth's will sadly does not. I know it's sort of a weird eccentricity and I should probably include it, but will is also the sort of card that's like to draw a lot of "wtf"s if I play it in a proxy deck.
Exsanguinate will probably never go in, for the same reason grave titan won't: because it doesn't fit my strategy. It would mean that, in a lot of situations, It'd be better to use it than to play my general and win the way the deck is supposed to win. If my goal was merely to win I'd probably play a different deck...I want to win with STYLE.
Memory jar should probably go in. I'm just having a hard time finding places to cut, and it's a little more...disposable, I guess, because it's not easily reusable. compared to, say mind's eye or graveborn muse, which let me draw indefinitely. I just don't see myself choosing memory jar over them when I cast demonic tutor.
myojin and mindslicer waffled for a long time in my list. maybe myojin is better, i just sort of liked mindslicer since it was more of a rattlesnake in some ways...but i guess myojin could do the same. i dunno, it's kind of a close call.
strip mine and wasteland I feel are made irrelevant by dust bowl. If I need land removed, I'll tutor dust bowl and use it as many times as necessary. If I don't need land removed, then I'd prefer not to have extra colorless lands slowing down coffers and whatnot (although i guess urborg could solve this problem somewhat). Clearly this is sort of a long-term-plan and it might be better against some decks to have an answer to cradle on, say, turn 2-3 instead of turn 4-5, but i doubt i've got a chance against fast combo decks anyway.
CA-loss tutors I don't really mind. Once I've got Mind's eye or Graveborn muse (probably via a tutor), I shouldn't really need to worry about it. Obviously I prefer the no-loss ones, but there are only so many tutors in mono-black. The deck sort of revolves around being able to tutor the right answer for any given situation. Night dealings is in there since I figured Geth would be able to put an easy 5 counters on it, which would immediately give it some good targets and be repeatable plus instant-speed. It'll probably require testing, though.
altar and predator were on the list at one point, but they do seem awfully expensive to use. They sort of suffer from the same problems as avatar of woe (slighly less so because it doesn't have summoning sickess, but it does cost 14/12 to play/activate in the same turn).
tsabo's I went with because of its instant-ness (also because it doesn't target). it's a good rattlesnake sort of card to wave around early-game. decree i voted down in favor of plague wind, but it could go either way. damnation doesn't really do anything special, so I decided against it.
Anyway thanks for the advice, I'll make some changes to include some of those.
If you want even more mana production, consider Bubbling Muck. I play this sucker in my own Geth deck and I like it simply because it's a great way to suddenly surprise everyone by dropping a mana doubler that no one is expecting.
I've also been wanting to try out Altar of Dementia when I get my hands on one. It synergizes very well with Geth and is a nice way to keep abusing CiP abilities on the creatures that you plunder.
1 Geth, Lord of the Vault
discard (2):
1 Mindslicer
1 sadistic hypnotist
Deter (2):
1 Dread
1 Stinkweed imp
Draw (2):
1 Graveborn Muse
1 Mind's Eye
Other (3):
1 Amulet of Vigor
1 Bloodchief Ascension
1 Mesmeric Orb
Protection (3):
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Null Brooch
1 Shield of Kaldra
Recursion (2):
1 Grim Harvest
1 Myr Retriever
Removal (14):
1 Argentum Armor
1 Avarice Totem
1 Betrayal of Flesh
1 Chill to the bone
1 Devour in Shadow
1 Eyeblight's ending
1 Oblivion Stone
1 Plague Wind
1 Reckless Spite
1 Rend Flesh
1 Slaughter
1 Sudden Death
1 Sudden Spoiling
1 Tsabo's Decree
1 beseech the queen
1 citanul flute
1 demonic collusion
1 demonic tutor
1 diabolic intent
1 diabolic tutor
1 dimir house guard
1 cruel tutor
1 liliana vess
1 netherborn phalanx
1 night dealings
1 planar portal
1 sensei's divining top
1 shred memory
1 tainted pact
1 vampiric tutor
Mana Acceleration (15):
1 Ashnod's Altar
1 Black Market
1 Coalition Relic
1 Dreamstone Hedron
1 Extraplanar lens
1 Gilded Lotus
1 Gauntlet of power
1 Magus of the Coffers
1 Mana Crypt
1 Nirkana Revenant
1 Sol Ring
1 Soldevi Adnate
1 Solemn Simulacrum
1 Thran Dynamo
1 Worn Powerstone
1 Cabal Coffers
1 Deserted Temple
1 Dust Bowl
1 High Market
1 Miren, the Moaning well
1 Phyrexian Tower
1 Thawing Glaciers
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Vesuva
1 Volrath's Stronghold
30 Swamp
WUB Merieke Ri Berit BUW
GWU Phelddagrif 1 2 3 4 UWG
BR Kaervek the Merciless RB
B Chainer, Dementia Master B
WUB Sen Triplets BUW
BG Sisters of Stone Death GB
WUBRG Scion of the Ur-Dragon GRBUW
GWU Angus Mackenzie UWG
R Kumano, Master Yamabushi R
WB Teysa BW
U Higure U
B Geth B
WUBRG Child of Alara 1 2GRBUW
R Zirilan R
U Arcum U
UR Nin RU
BRG Sek'Kuar GRB
U Teferi U
G Melira G
GU Edric UG
BG Glissa GB
Casual
GUB Knacksaw Clique BUG
RWU Sunforger UWR
And is amulet of vigor really in there to untap the cards you bring back with geth? Because it seems to me that if you are bringing cards back with geth, your already winning and amulet feels almost like a win more because of that, but i could be wrong. Being able to bring things back and chump block eternally does have serious potential.
Also, skullclamp, reassembling skeleton, avatar of woe, visara the dreadful have decent abilities.
Personally, I would remove:
1 Chill to the bone
1 Devour in Shadow
1 Eyeblight's ending
1 Reckless Spite
1 Rend Flesh
In favor of:
Duplicant
Shriekmaw
Avatar of Woe
Visara the Dreadful
Fleshbag Marauder
style removal
Personally, I like nevinyrral's disk and all is dust as they both help by dealing with enchantments. Avaris totem seems highly inefficient.
Grave titan provides an instant board presense, the is somewhat useful.
Other ways of generating lots of mana:
candelabra of tawnos
nirkana, revenant
extraplanar lens
also, yawgmoth's will is pretty decent.
Exsanguinate is pretty good if you are already generating lots of mana.
Memory jar is a great card. It does 2 things: draws you 7 cards for you to play in your turn. It mils your opponents for 7. Its pretty awesome
Myojin of night's reach seems like pretty good discard if thats what you are going for. Strip mine and wasteland both have good uses.
I hate to say it, but it almost seems like you have to much card disadvantage tutors. Just a few powerful ones like insidious dreams, vampiric tutor and its ilk are generally good. (diabolic intent, night dealings, cruel tutor). diabolic intent doesn't let you get out of those desperate situations when you have no board presence. And night dealings seems to have the issue that if you aren't already in a good spot, its essentially 8 mana to tutor up mana crypt (which feels lackluster to me). If you do want to run it though, slaughter pact is a good target.
Another card I wouldn't run is betrayal of flesh, but it does have some versatility. Altar of shadows is good repeat destruction (as is the predator flagship).
Tsabo's decree is clearly a meta choice. But if you are generating massive amounts of mana, decree of pain is always nifty. Damnation isn't bad, and mutilate helps get rid of those indestructible creatures. But again, it all depends upon what you want.
Legacy:WUBG Jace Rock
Trade thread
Sig by: heroes of the plane studios
Wow, thanks for the well-thought-out response. There's a lot of good suggestions...I'll go through it piece by piece.
Yep, all those lands are solid. I wanted to get the thing posted before I had to get off the computer so I threw the mana together at the last second.
I haven't gotten to test the deck so I'm not sure how powerful the amulet is. still, at 1 mana it doesn't seem like a huge commitment. My main thought was that it'd let me pull tons of mana rocks into play in a hurry, and pull blockers into play as needed, which is probably good since I'm likely to be on the defense once everyone gets pissed off at me. I think it's at least worth a shot.
the one-shot removal is in there basically as combo disruption. I figured it like this: I've got a lot of tutors, so when I tutor for removal, I want something powerful and possibly multi-use - i.e. o-stone, argentum armor, plague wind, or avarice totem. When I'm just drawing it, though, I'm probably going to want something to deal with the problem I'm having NOW - something like chill to the bone. There's not a lot of multi-use removal, but the idea is that I'll tutor what I need, and the single-use stuff can be a surprise blow that people weren't expecting.
Avatar of woe (/visara) was in the list for a long time, but ultimately i decided not to because it makes you a massive hate magnet and has to wait a full turn to do anything. It's too slow to deal with an immediate problem creature, and it's too inneffective against a big swarm (which it's likely to draw). I'd rather drop a plague wind or argentum armor.
duplicant I dislike because it's sorcery-speed. same for shriekmaw and marauder. All 3 are great if you've got efficient recursion engines, but since I don't have many creatures in my deck I decided against it. I'd use all of them in a chainer deck, but with Geth I'd prefer to devote my mana towards him.
I have ostone instead of disk - i hate etbt and i should have plenty of mana to use ostone. all is dust is cool, but also expensive and doesn't kill artifacts. I guess that could be a plus in certain circumstances, but I figured it'd be most versatile to include the broadest wipe. avarice totem is sort of a trial run, but the deck is trying to generate tons of mana so I'm hoping it will allow me to perform multiple switches and wreak havoc.
grave titan doesn't really fit into the theme. it's plenty good, but i prefer to build my decks towards a common goal - in this case, winning by insane graveyard abuse.
nirkana is excellent, I forgot about her. lens is already on there. Candelabra is simply out of my price range (I use all proxies anyway most of the time, but I typically follow a gentleman's rule that it's lame to play with cards that cost more than $10-$15 unless I actually own them (as in the case of mana crypt)).
"yawgmoth's will is pretty decent" would totally be in my signature right now if I wasn't already up against the character limit Anyway, yes it's very good but I kind of like to build my recursion engines (at least in black decks) to be able to recur endlessly, which yawgmoth's will sadly does not. I know it's sort of a weird eccentricity and I should probably include it, but will is also the sort of card that's like to draw a lot of "wtf"s if I play it in a proxy deck.
Exsanguinate will probably never go in, for the same reason grave titan won't: because it doesn't fit my strategy. It would mean that, in a lot of situations, It'd be better to use it than to play my general and win the way the deck is supposed to win. If my goal was merely to win I'd probably play a different deck...I want to win with STYLE.
Memory jar should probably go in. I'm just having a hard time finding places to cut, and it's a little more...disposable, I guess, because it's not easily reusable. compared to, say mind's eye or graveborn muse, which let me draw indefinitely. I just don't see myself choosing memory jar over them when I cast demonic tutor.
myojin and mindslicer waffled for a long time in my list. maybe myojin is better, i just sort of liked mindslicer since it was more of a rattlesnake in some ways...but i guess myojin could do the same. i dunno, it's kind of a close call.
strip mine and wasteland I feel are made irrelevant by dust bowl. If I need land removed, I'll tutor dust bowl and use it as many times as necessary. If I don't need land removed, then I'd prefer not to have extra colorless lands slowing down coffers and whatnot (although i guess urborg could solve this problem somewhat). Clearly this is sort of a long-term-plan and it might be better against some decks to have an answer to cradle on, say, turn 2-3 instead of turn 4-5, but i doubt i've got a chance against fast combo decks anyway.
CA-loss tutors I don't really mind. Once I've got Mind's eye or Graveborn muse (probably via a tutor), I shouldn't really need to worry about it. Obviously I prefer the no-loss ones, but there are only so many tutors in mono-black. The deck sort of revolves around being able to tutor the right answer for any given situation. Night dealings is in there since I figured Geth would be able to put an easy 5 counters on it, which would immediately give it some good targets and be repeatable plus instant-speed. It'll probably require testing, though.
altar and predator were on the list at one point, but they do seem awfully expensive to use. They sort of suffer from the same problems as avatar of woe (slighly less so because it doesn't have summoning sickess, but it does cost 14/12 to play/activate in the same turn).
tsabo's I went with because of its instant-ness (also because it doesn't target). it's a good rattlesnake sort of card to wave around early-game. decree i voted down in favor of plague wind, but it could go either way. damnation doesn't really do anything special, so I decided against it.
Anyway thanks for the advice, I'll make some changes to include some of those.
WUB Merieke Ri Berit BUW
GWU Phelddagrif 1 2 3 4 UWG
BR Kaervek the Merciless RB
B Chainer, Dementia Master B
WUB Sen Triplets BUW
BG Sisters of Stone Death GB
WUBRG Scion of the Ur-Dragon GRBUW
GWU Angus Mackenzie UWG
R Kumano, Master Yamabushi R
WB Teysa BW
U Higure U
B Geth B
WUBRG Child of Alara 1 2GRBUW
R Zirilan R
U Arcum U
UR Nin RU
BRG Sek'Kuar GRB
U Teferi U
G Melira G
GU Edric UG
BG Glissa GB
Casual
GUB Knacksaw Clique BUG
RWU Sunforger UWR
I've also been wanting to try out Altar of Dementia when I get my hands on one. It synergizes very well with Geth and is a nice way to keep abusing CiP abilities on the creatures that you plunder.