Old Player new again

glenpugh · Joined: 25 Aug 2007 Posts: 1

I had stopped playing magic around 7 years ago or so, as you can imagine stuff has changed alot!! Well a buddy of mine just started playing again, and I need just a bit of help. I am running a black deck right now, but it seems to play too slowly sometimes. when I run this deck on magic workstation online, everyone seems to play these crazy fast decks and while I can control for a while, they will end up getting the cards they do before I do. I just need some ideas on how to tie this deck together better, since I do not know many of the cards out there. I would like it to play just a bit faster, and stay t1 legal if possible.

thanks for any help

here is my deck

25 x swamp
4 x guiltfeeder
4 x nantuko shade
4 x balthor the defiled
2 x sengir vampire
4 x phreyxian battleflies
4 x blood pet
4 x chainer's edict
4 x cruel edict
4 x cradle to the grave
4 x assasinate
4 x cabal ritual
4 x befoul
2 x bad moon
4 x damnation

CMA-Flippi · Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2007 6:24 am Post subject:

you need carddraw like phyrexian arena, dark confidant or others (skeletal scrying, nights whisper). Else, you'll run out of answers at some point

Ironicus · Joined: 08 Jan 2006 Posts: 135

Man your deck remember me the old school. Sengir Vampire... I loved him lol. Dark Confidant is good, but I'm not sure that it fit with Damnation. If you play mono Black control, you should play Korlash! and If it's t1.5, add some discard like duress and cabal therapy and maybe hymm to toorach

KeySam · Joined: 14 Oct 2005 Posts: 539

Yea card draw is needed, i suggest 4xnights whisper and 3xsceletal scrying. And as monoblack you should realy think about cabal coffers and mayb 2 Urborg, tomb of yawgomoth. You said you want to have it t1 legal on a casual base, I suggest looking at the restricted cards from t1. There are some hot ones you realy want to play. Yawgomoth will, demonic tutor, vampiric tutor, necropotence, Yawgomoths bargain... . I think if you want to play t1 you should have access to dark ritual and you should play them. Also hymn to tourach is a fine thing. For your spot removals, i suggest, smother, slaughter pact/dark baninshing/terror depending on your metagame, maybe a duress will also do fine, maybe tendrils of corruption are good. Get the rid of a lot of creatures you play, this deck is a control like deck, you dont need that many of them. i think like 4-6 are more then enough as a lategame finisher, maybe even recurring/untartable ones. Maybe add phyrexian totem as a kill condition and accelerator. Maybe darkblast is good. Maybe you also want to have fun cards like No Mercy. Maybe you want to have fun with infernal darkness(not that bad with cabal coffers). There are so many ways to go depending what you have to face, the real problem i see with this list is that it isnt focused enough. You should focus on what your going to do(control the game = winning through card advantage, winning with a combo(should be pretty clear), or winning as a weenie deck(i kill you as fast as possible and dont care if you have more cards or anything). Based on that and what your metagame is you should build a deck. And rember that the new creatures became great and the new removal spells became pretty bad.

I hope i could help.

KeySam

Curby · Joined: 06 Sep 2007 Posts: 5

The number of 4-5 casting spells in this deck make it too slow for even a casual Vintage/Legacy metagame. I'm rather partial to my own CAMBA design because it's so cheap, but for "powered" builds consider the two top8 finishers at Grand Prix.

If you are going to run such expensive spells, invest heavily in mana acceleration much like Dragon Stompy. Cabal Ritual is strictly inferior to Dark Ritual in this deck because rituals are mainly useful early, and you can't cast a first turn Cabal Ritual without further help (Moxen). Additionally, this deck is slow to reach Threshold, so it's unlikely that you'll often get 5 from Cabal Ritual. 25 basic land means that you'll consistently drop land every turn, but your midgame topdecking will be weakened by the low threat density.

Note that casual Vintage is a bit of an oxymoron. I'd skip the Tutors if you can't also afford the true power, because even in a casual environment, the legality of power means that it will be used. If you want to use old cards but not spend thousands on a mere 9 cards, just play Legacy. "Legacy Power" like Dual Lands, Tarmogoyf, and FoW will still be quite a money sink if you get anywhere near serious.

Deca · Joined: 24 Oct 2007 Posts: 1

I feel your pain (to the OP).

I played from The Urza Block right up to the release of Mirrdon before quiting.
I just started back as well pretty much the day Lorwyn hit the streets because 4 of my friends decided out of the blue to pick up Magic as a hobby.

I am trying to work at a good U/W Merfolk Deck with the Merrow Riverways as my base then working up from that. But along with the OP, I am blown away by the speed T2 decks have now.

If I wasn't about to go to bed I would throw up my deck list, but I will hold off on that.