March 2nd: Going to try this new build out since it's relatively inexpensive to build.
September 13th - It's been a long time coming, but I've made some major updates to the deck with the incoming Khans of Tarkir. I'll have a longer update later, but right now the thrust of the deck is still to overwhelm with tokens, though several additional win conditions have been added to supplement Purphoros.
July 5th - Happy belated 4th of July, fellow Americans!
A few weeks after the previous update, I ended up taking the deck apart and working on stuff for Modern such as Living End and some EDH decks, but the spoilers for M15 (along with the slowly-declining price for Purphoros) have gotten me interested in re-building the deck for rotation.
The good news:
-The deck is still cheap to build, for the most part! Temple of Malice is down, and cards like Akroan Horse,
Tymaret, the Murder King
, and so on are still considered too good to be used as toilet paper, but only just. Even Hero's Downfall isn't the most expensive thing to trade for.
-Necromancer's Stockpile is an intriguing card that effectively replaces Trading Post (more on that later), allowing us to discard excess copies of Purphuros in exchange for a free card. Combined with Tymaret, we can get a free card AND zombie token every turn for 2BB.
-Likewise, Goblin Rabblemaster is a good replacement for
Molten Birth
, and even gives us a decent Aggro path.
-Lots of tokens mean we play well with all of the neat little Convoke tricks. More on that as we get closer to release.
-Because a good chunk of the deck survives rotation, we still have stuff from Khans of Tarkir to add eventually.
The bad news:
-Trading Post is indeed not being re-printed in M15 (so long, flaming Goat token win-con :[ ), along with stuff like Rakdos Charm,
Electrickery
, Slaughter Games, and so on falling to set rotation.
-Even worse, this means the deck's unique name should be changed. I haven't decided on what to use just yet, but an early contender is just MURDERKING.dec or MURDERHORSE.dec
For now there is a very basic list up that I will hopefully edit as I get closer to rebuilding the deck.
March 4th, 2014: Happy Mardi Gras, everybody! Another small change to the sideboard today. For the past few weeks I've had Drown in Sorrow sit in the sideboard, and while I really like the card, I feel like it hasn't really done anything in the past few matches. Instead, Anger of the Gods has pulled a lot of weight - especially after seeing a rise in Voice of Resurgence play.
That said, I haven't had a reason to remove it until someone pointed out the usefulness of Bile Blight. It kills everything from
Elvish Mystic
to Xenagos Satyr tokens to Fleecemane Lion. And, notably, the latter two are creatures that Ultimate Price can't kill. As a result, it makes a perfect replacement for Ultimate Price in matches where I face those kinds of creatures. Deck changes:
Sideboard:
-3 Drown in Sorrow+2 Bile Blight+1 Purphoros, God of the Forge
The 4th copy of Purphoros has found its way back into the deck for Control matches where he's a bit more useful than Tymaret due to the other player having more removal than, say, an Aggro, or if I want to draw more copies in case the opponent is running
Revoke Existence
.
EDIT: I'm dumb and forgot that I had traded my excess copy of Purphoros. Will use an additional copy of Anger of the Gods instead.
Sideboard:
-1 Purphoros, God of the Forge
+1 Anger of the Gods
February 26th, 2014: Just making some small changes to test how the deck does against Control, which I'm running into more:
-1 Rakdos Charm-1 Dreadbore-2 Doom Blade
+2 Rakdos's Return (1 in the mainboard and sideboard, respectively)+2 Ultimate Price
February 8th, 2014: Took the deck to a 3-2 run at FNM, though I walked away feeling frustrated based on how the first two matches (ie, the losses) went. For starters, my dependence on Pithing Needle to deal with Planeswalkers made me forget that they can stop ANY card's activated abilities; this may or may not include Aetherling, especially when you have a Dreadbore in your hand. I also found myself having trouble with large numbers of creatures and running into black/Rakdos-colored creatures when holding Doom Blade.
To that end, I've gone and removed Ultimate Price and both the mainboard and sideboard copies of Act of Treason and upped the number of Mizzium Mortars by 1, and replaced the Acts with Anger of the Gods. In games where I need more removal and rely less on cards like Young Pyromancer and Tymaret. I also went and tinkered with the sideboard to include more Rakdos Charms to deal with opposing Ratchet Bombs.
From here on out, I'm going to try and keep the exact changes listed. Here's the list I'm working from:
3x Akroan Horse1x Anger of the Gods2x Beckon Apparition4x Blood Crypt1x Diabolic Tutor2x Doom Blade4x Dreadbore3x Hero's Downfall3x Mizzium Mortars3x Molten Birth10x Mountain3x Purphoros, God of the Forge2x Ratchet Bomb7x Swamp2x Temple of Malice3x Trading Post3x Tymaret, the Murder King4x Young Pyromancer
1x Akroan Horse1x Anger of the Gods3x Drown in Sorrow3x Pithing Needle3x Rakdos Charm3x Slaughter Games1x Trading Post
February 3rd, 2014: Happy belated New Year's, for anyone reading this! After a nice break, followed by a torturous couple of weeks of school (just kidding - we actually had a few days off due to snow), and one Born of the Gods prerelease, I'm ready to work on the deck you know and love. I ended up making a lot of piecemeal changes to the deck between this update and the last, so while I don't have the exact numbers, here are the major changes I made:
-I dropped a single copy of Purphoros for Diabolic Tutor; it's bad enough to draw multiple copies of Tymaret sometimes, but Purphoros can be worse. Throwing in a Tutor basically acts as a Purphoros+1 - allowing me to find a copy I need, some removal, or Ratchet Bomb - more on that later.
-Gnawing Zombie is gone. He was a nice alternative to Tymaret, but ultimately I had to find room for newer cards. He's staying in my personal maybeboard, depending on how the aggro matches go.
-Temple of Malice is in over Rakdos Guildgate. No surprises there. What IS a surprise is the fact that I haven't included any copies of Springleaf Drum in this post-BNG, 1.0 build. In truth, I wasn't liking them a ton during some goldfishing sessions, so I opted to replace them for an extra land and some change. I'm going to test them out later in the week and see if they make a difference, but as of now I'm a little leery of them.
-I went from a 4-2 Horse-Post ratio to a 50/50 split at 3 apiece. This is due in part to a prediction of mine that, between all the removal in BNG, Aggro will drop off slightly and Control (specifically Mono-Black Devotion/Control) will become more prevalent. I'd kept a singleton of each in the sideboard, depending on the matchup.
-The other reason I went with more Trading Posts? Ratchet Bomb. As a BR deck, our colors don't give us anything to deal with stuff like Chained to the Rocks or the dastardly Detention Sphere - the latter in particular is deadly due to it's ability to remove Purphoros. It also gives the deck the ability to deal with stuff like Auras (Madcap Skills and Unflinching Courage in particular are the deck's worst nightmare) and trouble creatures like Advent of the Wurm/Voice/Master tokens and Blood Baron/Obzedat. If not for Ratchet Bomb, I'd strongly be considering switching the deck to RW.
-I ended up with a third Hero's Downfall and decided to throw it in; it allows me to remove all three for Drown in Sorrow against weenie decks. I tinkered with the removal further, dropping Doom Blade down to 1 and adding a single Ultimate Price. Depending on how much MBD/C I run into, that might turn right back into 2 Doom Blades due to usefulness against stuff like Fleecemane Lion.
-Lastly, just a minor thing but I ended up dropping Young Pyromancer to 3; he makes the deck work and does some ridiculous stuff with Purphoros out, but oftentimes he's too valuable to do anything other than sit on the board untapped or becomes a lightning rod for removal (I mean, who else would you use it on? Tymaret? One of the deck's many tokens?). I doubt this is a trend of his numbers getting reduced, however.
December 26th, 2013: Hope everyone had a decent holiday, whether that meant Christmas or just sleeping in!
No major changes to the deck, but the Maybeboard has doubled in size. Not to make a football analogy, but I like seeing the mainboard as the 'starters' - the stars of the team along with necessary contributors. The sideboard is the bench: they rotate with the starters - even some of the stars, if need be - to attack the opponent from an unprepared angle, like replacing your bullrush guy with a speed rusher, but I'll stop before I get any deeper into the analogy.
What is the Maybeboard, then? The practice squad and free agents. Guys with potential, but ultimately what you're already working with is what you need. For example, an acquaintance recommended I throw
Massive Raid
in the deck, but that card fulfills a unique gimmick the deck doesn't necessary need nor is really built for. However, if boardwipes became more prevalent as Theros progresses, there might be some worth in using the card, especially if the deck trends from Red-Black to more mono-red with the use of cards like
Barrage of Expendables
, which is also sitting in the Maybeboard.
It's a fascinating process to chart, and I'm glad I have a deck to play throughout Standard before the second set of Theros has even been released.
EDIT
Spoke too soon. After playing the deck with some friends this evening, a few things came to mind: the deck hates flying stuff, the deck hates trample and needs to have removal for creatures that have it, and Lightning Strike and (Doom Blade stand-in) Magma Jet are terrible for dealing with that. In addition, Pack Rats have not been doing so great; they're just another creature I get to summon and generally die blocking without using their ability. To that end, I decided to add more straight-up removal over burn, and a way to help deal with blocking flyers:
-3 Lightning Strike-2 Pack Rat
+2 Hero's Downfall+2 Beckon Apparition+1 Doom Blade
Downfall is just another definitive removal spell (that also deals with Planeswalkers rather than dealing 3 damage, at most) to go with a maxed-out Doom Blade. Beckon Apparition is an interesting card that I'm surprised I hadn't noticed before. It's a cheap Instant (triggers YP) that creates a token (triggers Purph) and can block flyers. At half the cost of Pack Rat it has a lot more flexibility in line with what the deck needs. The only problem is halving the available discard outlets, though honestly multiple copies of Tymaret are not the worst thing.
EDIT2: On second thought, I'm going to try a singleton of
Act of Treason
in lieu of a 4th Doom Blade (or while I attempt to find one) and see how it works out.
December 14th, 2013: Just some minor tweaking. Akroan Horse, Dreadbore, and Molten Birth have been maxed out at four in the maindeck; I just feel like the maindeck needs more straight-up removal. I'd like to also get my hands on some Mizzium Mortars to deal with pesky Blood Barons and even look into Barrage of Expendables as a potential sacrifice outlet/source of red devotion for Purphy.
The sideboard has also undergone some changes; after getting creamed by Blue Devotion and Esper Superfriends a few weeks ago, I decided to switch from having Duress in the sideboard to having a few Rakdos Charms and Pithing Needle. Rakdos Charm is great for dealing with huge Master of Tide swarms; one game saw me dropping two Charms for a total of 18 damage to my opponent after I sacrificed my guys to Gnawing Zombie. Pithing Needle is great on a number of levels: it shuts down Ashiok and Jace, AoT (the latter of which is this deck's worst nightmare), as well as the various creatures running around with Monstrosity, not to mention guys like Frostburn Weird. And if they outlive their usefulness? Toss them to Trading Post for some card advantage, and then perhaps recur them to re-apply. Really nice little decktech there.
Looking forward to Born of the Gods, one card that has been (unofficially) confirmed is Springleaf Drum. What does this card mean for MURDERGOATS going forward? Mainly, it would allow the deck to ramp out a Post, Horse, or Purphoros on turn 3, and like Pithing Needle would be a nice source of card draw with Trading Post later in the game.
If that were the case, I could see the deck trending to a more mid-range build that uses Rakdos's Return maindeck. Aside from the drum, it also appears that the BR Scryland will be in the set, allowing us to finally replace the Rakdos Guildgates. I'll keep the list updated as we get closer to release.
Deck Changes: Main Deck-2 Shock-1 Mountain
+1 Akroan Horse+1 Dreadbore+1 Molten Birth
Sideboard:
-4 Duress-3 Skullcrack+3 Rakdos Charm+3 Pithing Needle+1 Trading Post
November 26th, 2013: No longer MURDERGOATS, but...MURDERHORSE??? I decided to increase the number of Akroan Horse copies in the deck, as it works better against Aggro builds and starts working a turn sooner than Trading Post.
Post is better-suited in decks that run Rakdos Keyrune and are generally slower. That iteration of the deck is better in control environments where sweepers such as Supreme Verdict are prevalent. That would mean killing the Horse and all of our lovely tokens, but the Post just continues on, pumping out tokens.
EDIT: I also went ahead and dropped a copy of Shock for a 4th Purphoros; starting any game with him in hand just makes things run smoother, and it gives me another copy to discard to Pack Rat.
Changes:
-1 Pack Rat-1 Trading Post-1 Shock-2 Skullcrack (Sideboard)
+2 Akroan Horse+1 Purphoros+1 Trading Post (Sideboard)+1 Duress (Sideboard)
November 23rd, 2013: Tinkered with the list more, making it a bit more resilient/defensive against aggro. Changes:
-3 Rakdos Charm
+3 Gnawing Zombie.
I like GZ because he's got a big booty for 2cc and can block stuff like Precinct Captain, Burning-Tree Emissary, and Ash Zealot. In addition, he acts as an additional trigger for Purphoros, a sacrifice outlet for my tokens (and can even sacrifice himself as oppose to Tymaret who can only go after others), and isn't dependent on Young Pyromancer if I had given the slots to, say, Magma Jet.
Sideboard is still a work in progress, but Electrickery may be necessary if only because of so many aggro decks running 1-toughness creatures.
November 10th, 2013: Variation of C-Euro's version seen here:
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3572508&pagenumber=24&perpage=40#post421628781
Just wanting to test out Ryder052's deck (and the iterations thereof) from here:
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=539788
