Subject: [DECK] Black Horde v.1.5a Date: Thu, 18 Dec 1997 11:28:52 -0700 From: Troy Abelseth Ok, this deck has been through so many revisions, I can't really remember what the first incarnation looked like. It works sooo well, I just have to share it. Strangely enough I started building it as a test deck to play against with my fast red burn deck. But the red burn with a week's worth of tuning, couldn't touch this deck, so I instead spent the next week working on the Black Deck. 4 weeks and many revisions later it is my all time favorite deck. Sit back and take a look. Black Horde Deck Contents: 4x Black Knight 4x Knight of Stromgald 3x Fallen Askari 2x Gravedigger 4x Nekrataal 2x Nightmare 2x Blood Pet 2x Hidden Horror 23 Creatures 2x Living Death 1x Diabolic Edict 1x Kaervek's Spite 2x Vampiric Tutor 2x Drain Life 8 Spells 2x Infernal Tribute 2 Enchantments 2x Jet Medallion 1x Nevinyrral's Disk 3 Artifacts 2x Quicksand 22x Swamp 24 Land 60 Cards Total As you can see, with 23 creatures, this deck has but one focus, Kill. Creatures are the most important resource to this deck. Play them fast and often, and attack every turn. If you are going to lose creatures in an attack, so be it, but the most important goal of this deck is to gain early creature superiority, through Recursion, Removal and raw numbers. Once you have your opponents life down to a reasonable number 4-7, other cards in the deck become powerful. Obviously Kaervek's Spite is a finishing card. Drain Life serves the dual purpose of removal and finisher. Living Death is a surprise card. Originally I built the deck around this card, but after a few revisions, the powerful black creatures began to shine and I realized that whatever gimmicks this deck may contain, the core focus will always be the creatures. For late-game mass recursion Living Death is the bomb! Preceded by a Disk, or Infernal Tribute, you will be in the high life, and should always ask your opponent if he would like to concede. :) Concerning the Living Death, you must recall that these creatures are being put into play, so their comes into play effects will trigger. The ruling is that they all enter play simultaneously, so the active player must choose the order in which the triggered effects resolve (triggered effects resolve one at a time, not as a batch). This leads to many nasty combo's. If your opponent gets a Man-O'-War back and you are getting a Hidden Horror back, but you have no creatures to discard for the Horror, play the MOW effect first and put that Blood Pet back in your hand, now you can discard it to pay for the Horror. One other note on triggered effects generated by Living Death, triggered effects can NEVER be responded to with fast effects. Therefore, there is no way for your opponent to save his creatures from the effect of a Nekrataal. Sideboard Issues: White: Gloom (3) Diabolic Edict (for Prot Black and Green Untargetables too) (2-3) Ersatz Gnomes!!! (3) Light of Day only affects Black creatures. Nevinyrral's Disk Blue: None: let them counter all your creatures, you have 23. That's more creatures than they have counters for. Plus you have Living Death to make all those creatures in the graveyard useful. Red: Fast Red is one of the traditional enemies of mono-Black decks. Necro in particular. This deck has no problem with Red. First Striking Knights shut down most Red creatures, if you are really afraid of Red, side in 2 Pestilences, they will shut down the Red Tims and put a hurt on Ball Lightning. Green: See White: most issues are the same. Black: Now why would I need a sideboard vs. Black? Nekrataal. Since he can not target black creatures, they are basically an expensive first striker. With E. Gnomes, this isn't too much of an issue, but the Gnomes are pretty weak and there could be more optimal creatures. I like to use Dirtwater Wraith or Odyl For Black vs. Black, I suggest some hand/land disruption. Maybe another Quicksand and definitely Spirit of the Night (if you've got one). Armageddon/Land Destruction: While focused land destruction decks are rare in Type 2 play, Armageddon is one of the most popular cards in weenie decks. Hence, you should always hold a spare land or two if you suspect your opponent is playing 'Geddons. Another solution would be to replace the Jet Medallions with Charcoal Diamonds. I personally am not a fan of Diamonds; however, they do perform nicely both under Winter Orb and against Armageddon. If you can think of any other cards or combo's which would give this deck problems, drop me a line, my ears are always open to suggestions. -- This message has been brought to you by: Troy Abelseth-- tapout@rapidnet.com "The blood on my hands is merely proof of my ambition." --Kaervek