Endless cockroaches deck

wakejagr · Joined: 26 Oct 2006 Posts: 6

I've been a casual player on and off for a while. My friends and I play mostly multiplayer games, and we tend to gang up on people who play decks that pack rares, but we don't have a standard format, or a list of banned cards.

I'd like to get a 1.5 legal deck put together that is at least semi-competative at a local level. Most decks I play are probably 1.5 legal, but I've never actually sat down and figured it out until now.

I really like endless cockroaches, so I'm trying to build a deck around them:

//NAME: GU Endless Cockroaches

//Land: 12
4 City of Traitors
4 Tropical Island
4 Breeding Pool

//Artifacts: 12
4 Chrome Mox
4 Lotus Petal
4 Aluren
4 Altar of Dementia

//Creatures: 4
4 Endless Cockroaches

//Other: 28
4 Obsessive Search
4 Flash of Insight
4 Careful Study
4 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Force of Will
4 Breakthrough
4 Compulsion

//Sideboard: 15
SB: 3 Chill
SB: 4 Fog
SB: 4 Hydroblast
SB: 4 Mana Leak

As far as I can tell, this is 1.5 legal. I don't think it quite rates as a netdeck, but there's nothing really new.

blue draw and discard + flash of insight

aluren + roaches + altar of dementia

Any suggestions to make it more competative? Any expensive cards I can replace? As of the current setup, I'd need to get a number of cards to build this for real. Also, my sideboard is pretty heavily anti-goblin - do I need to balance that, or add for other threats?

I've tested against a few different goblin builds, and against solidarity/spring tide decks. The top-notch versions of both were too quick for me to deal with, but against the types of decks I usually play against, this worked out alright. The discard decks were pretty harsh, since I need to hold the aluren until I'm ready to activate the combo, and I don't generally have mana to drop the roaches until the aluren hits.

COOLBOY · Joined: 03 Jul 2005 Posts: 399

Wow, you guys sound pretty hardcore. I wish I could edit his post and take out the "roaches" part.

Apocalypser · Joined: 05 Jun 2005 Posts: 62

The card is named brood of cockroaches. And I don't see how you expect to deck them out when you have to pay 1 life for each card.

kfcman · Joined: 16 Sep 2006 Posts: 665

wakejagr · Joined: 26 Oct 2006 Posts: 6

GRAH · Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 599

Why play this instead of a regular Aluren deck, or, god forbid, Enduring Renewal + Ornithopter will the same combo, to allow you white for Enlightened Tutor?

super-gecko · Joined: 25 Feb 2006 Posts: 45

wheres the fun in that :p

wakejagr · Joined: 26 Oct 2006 Posts: 6

nephilim207 · Joined: 24 Sep 2006 Posts: 161

Copied and pasted from gatherer:
Creature - Insect
P/T: 1/1
Rules Text (Oracle): When Brood of Cockroaches is put into your graveyard from play, at end of turn, you lose 1 life and return Brood of Cockroaches to your hand.
Flavor Text
"It's like waking on a bed of a thousand olives during an earthquake of subtle force." —Afari, Tales

I don't really think that will work...

BigShow · Joined: 07 Apr 2005 Posts: 1306 Location: Igloo town

wakejagr · Joined: 26 Oct 2006 Posts: 6

From what I found in the Crystal Keep rules about Endless Cockroaches: Legacy tournaments (see Rule 801) banned this card until 2005/10/20 because it only appears in Portal.

Until 2005/10/20? So, it's legal now??

In any case, GRAH's suggestion that I try Enduring Renewal + Ornithopter instad has resulted in this:

//NAME: WU Endless Milling

//LAND: 12
4 City of Traitors
4 Hallowed Fountain
4 Tundra

//CREATURES: 8
4 Ornithopter
4 Phyrexian Walker

//ARTIFACTS: 12
4 Chrome Mox
4 Lotus Petal
4 Altar of Dementia

//OTHER: 28
4 Enlightened Tutor
4 Enduring Renewal
4 Careful Study
4 Energy Arc
4 Obsessive Search
4 Flash of Insight
4 Force of Will

//SIDEBOARD: 15
SB: 3 Chill
SB: 4 Thirst for Knowledge
SB: 4 Hydroblast
SB: 4 Angelic Shield

The first advantage of this setup is that the color needed for my main combo is white, not greeen, so I can add in Enlightened Tutor to pull Enduring Renewal, Altar of Dementia, or even my creatures (since they are both artifacts).

The second advantage is that, since I'm not tied to a specific creature (just any zero cost creature) I can add a few more to find.

Combo needs:
1 of 8 zero cost creatures
1 of 4 Enduring Renewals
1 of 4 Altar of Dememtias

Any of which can be pulled with Enlightened Tutor.

The deck is still about sac'ing the creature to Altar of Dementia, getting it back, and playing it again for free.

The only real downside with this version (as compared to the other) is that my combo is harder to fix if it gets broken. If my creature gets removed from the game or placed in my library, I can't play another, because any creatures I draw go to the graveyard (due to Enduring Renewal). Against decks that remove creatures from the game or return them to library, I'll need to be sure to have an extra Enlightened Tutor to pull another creature. In reality, if my combo falls apart, I'm probably dead before I can get it working again.

Should I have a Tormod's Crypt or two in sideboard? I was thinking that I don't need it because the decks I've seen that raid the graveyard usually can't do anything on an opponent's turn. Once this combo goes off, they won't get a chance to play cards from the graveyard unless they can stop the combo. Any suggestions?

Apocalypser · Joined: 05 Jun 2005 Posts: 62

I searched gatherer and it did not found anything, im not just randomly saying stuff.