Subject: Urza's Saga's impact on Necro
Date: 14 Oct 1998 20:40:15 GMT
From: tgustafs@cc.hut.fi (Tommi Gustafsson)
Newsgroups: rec.games.trading-cards.magic.strategy

Although beign a weak set in overall, Urza's Saga gave some improvements to
decks that were weak in the recent past. This means slow control decks other
than blue; necrodeck for example.

I'll concentrate now on black. If you look through US black cards there
are no good small casting cost black creatures that you could play in a
weenie deck. I think that the only good black creature in the set is
Skittering Skirge (3/2 flyer for BB with about the same restriction as a
steel golem) and it doesn't fit in weenie decks. I also found that Corrupt
is a good addition to a necro deck, however I'm yet to playtest it.

I've designed a post-Urza's Saga necrodeck for Type II. While it needs some
tuning the skeleton is clear. It's in detail below and I've also included
it on my home page at
                http://www.hut.fi/~tgustafs/

Skittering Necro
----------------
Creatures (11)
4 Skittering Skirge (US)
2 Black Knight
4 Bottle Gnomes (TP)
1 Mindless Automaton (EX)

Spells (24)
4 Dark Ritual
4 Diabolic Edict (TP)
4 Necropotence
4 Nevinyrral's Disk
4 Corrupt (US)
4 Drain Life

Lands (25)
18 Swamp
4 Stalking Stones (TP)
2 Wasteland (TP)
1 Volrath's Stronghold (ST)

Some thoughts then. Corrupt is nearly always nearly as good as drain life
if you can cast it; in fact it's always better than drain life unless you
cast it with dark ritual. Necrodeck used to lack extra drains. When Ice Age
came out it was usually soul burn which was used though it were strictly
inferior to drain life.

Stalking Stones are the name of the tech today. When playing with a lot of
lands it doesn't hurt to have some uncounterable hill giants available.
Skittering Skirge is also amazing. You can cast it on the second turn, it
hits as hard as a steel golem and flies over walls. Pity it has only
toughness 2 so it is scrollable.

As you see my necro uses very many high casting cost spells but it is
compensated by some early blockers, early removal and dark rituals. I'd
like to hear what you think of the deck and the state of necro overall.
After all, it depends a much on careful deck design and the environment
whether a necro deck will be successful in the future.

                                        Tommi Gustafsson
                                        Tommi.Gustafsson@hut.fi
                                        http://www.hut.fi/~tgustafs/