4 Order of the Ebon Hand
  4 Knight of Stromgald
  1 Ihsan's Shade

  4 Drain Life
  4 Necropotence
  4 Hymn to Tourach
  4 Demonic Consultation

 Sideboard:
  3 Pyroblast
  3 Terror
  1 Disenchant
  1 Firestorm

  4 Lightning Bolt
  2 Incinerate
  2 Firestorm

  3 Disenchant




 Sideboard(Cont):
  2 Mind Warp
  2 COP: Black
  3 Honorable Passage

  4 Badlands
  4 Scrubland
  2 Bad River
  3 Gemstone Mine
  8 Swamp
  3 Lake of the Dead

The creator of Lauer'Potence, Erik Lauer, had these comments on the deck:

Once again a deck based around the mighty card drawing engine "lake/drain/necropotence" has won a pro tour. With a different environment, come different cards, hence a different deck concept. However the tremendous card advantage Necropotence offers is undeniably powerful -- though adapting it in the correct manner is obviously crucial. An important feature of this environment is multilands -- allowing the NecroDeck to use non-black mana without taking damage (or other drawbacks), and even using lands that can be sacrificed to Lake of the Dead. The most obvious off-colored spell is probably Lightning Bolt -- usually for quick creature removal, though 1 life and 1 mana for 3 damage to the opponent is a certainly a nice option.

With 4 Demonic Consultations and 4 Necropotence, the basic idea of this deck was to work reasonably well when Necropotence was not on the table, but to excel when Necropotence was on the table. While Dark Ritual made the deck work even better while necroing, it just made the deck too weak without Necropotence making up for the card loss (since Hypnotic Spectre is unavailable). So the deck's mana usage had to be extremely low casting cost spells (1 or 2), Necropotence itself, and spells which one would use Lake of the Dead to cast (there are 3 lakes in the deck) -- namely Drain Life and Ihsans Shade. Three lakes help the deck fight some of the powerful cards available in the environment (Land Tax, Winter Orb, and to some degree Tithe).

When Necropotence is used, basic "card advantage" ideas are altered. Life almost becomes equated with cards -- for instance blocking and simply losing creatures (often refered to as "chump blocking") changes from card disadvantage to card advantage. I think when one deck is necroing and the other deck is not, one should distinguish between card advantage garnished by additional cards and card advantage garnished by denying cards. For example, consider Nekrataal. Using Nekrataal to kill a creature gains card advantage -- not only do you kill the creature but you have a 2/1 first striking creature. However this is "postive" card advantage, you have an additional resource. Normally getting hit by a creature till you gain enough mana to Nekrataal it is good -- you lose a little life but gain card advantage. However when using Necropotence, I think it is probably better to Terror the creature, and simply play a pump knight later. The additional resource gained by the Nekrataal is not as powerful as the cards gained by having more life to use with Necropotence. Cards which gain card advantage by denying resources (for instance Hymn to Tourach) or "negative" card advantage is more powerful -- with fewer cards, the opponent's damage capability is reduced allowing you to gain even more cards with Necropotence.

Firestorm is usually card disadvantage -- to kill n creatures you must use n+1 cards (Firestorm + the cards discarded). However with Necropotence one can fill up to a high number of cards (say 10 or so), throw the weakest cards to Firestorm, and quickly kill a large number of creatures (and even direct damage the opponent). The life saved next turn by not being attacked makes up for the extra cards needed for Firestorm, and since you get to select the cards used you usually have a very potent hand (probably including a Lake of the Dead and a Drain Life). In a game between two Necropotence decks using small creatures, Firestorm can be quite powerful -- the low mana cost allows the Firestorm user to gain board control, and it becomes very worthwhile to necro for one more card so you can discard one more --- and target your opponent.

To me, the strange results of this deck are a result of the powerful, very exagerated, card advantage available through Necropotence.

-Erik Lauer