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Legality
| Format | Legality |
| 1v1 Commander | Legal |
| Archenemy | Legal |
| Arena | Legal |
| Block Constructed | Legal |
| Canadian Highlander | Legal |
| Casual | Legal |
| Commander / EDH | Legal |
| Commander: Rule 0 | Legal |
| Custom | Legal |
| Duel Commander | Legal |
| Highlander | Legal |
| Legacy | Legal |
| Leviathan | Legal |
| Limited | Legal |
| Modern | Legal |
| Oathbreaker | Legal |
| Pauper | Legal |
| Pauper Duel Commander | Legal |
| Pauper EDH | Legal |
| Planechase | Legal |
| Quest Magic | Legal |
| Vanguard | Legal |
| Vintage | Legal |
Balustrade Spy
Creature — Vampire Rogue
Flying
When Balustrade Spy enters the battlefield, target player reveals cards from the top of their library until they reveal a land card, then puts those cards into their graveyard.
legendofa on
pauper spy dread return
8 months ago
Good information! I was rushing the Balustrade Spy and Dread Return in playtesting, so ensuring you don't hit any lands makes sense. It took some aggressive mulligans, but the playtesting feels a lot more cohesive. With permission, I'm going to borrow this idea and see where I end up with it. I'm still learning and feeling my way through Pauper, and this deck has pretty much everything I like.
MeneerDutchy on
Henzie “The Toolman” Taylor ETB
1 year ago
Torgaar, Famine Incarnate Dusk Mangler Gruul Ragebeast Hornet Queen Meteor Golem Overseer of the Damned Regal Force Rune-Scarred Demon Terror of Mount Velus Titan of Industry Verdant Sun's Avatar Baleful Beholder Bane of Progress Blight-Breath Catoblepas Blitz Leech Brutalizer Exarch Cleanup Crew Dakmor Lancer Dark Hatchling Duplicant Earthshaker Giant Goremand Grave Titan Great Oak Guardian Greenwarden of Murasa Kodama of the East Tree Kogla, the Titan Ape Massacre Wurm Noxious Gearhulk Patron of the Vein Ravager Wurm Regal Behemoth Soul of the Harvest Sower of Discord Thief of Blood Ulvenwald Hydra Whiptongue Hydra Bloodtithe Collector Blossom Prancer Cavalier of Thorns Conclave Naturalists Custodi Lich Demanding Dragon Emrakul's Hatcher Fury Giant Ambush Beetle Gilt-Leaf Winnower Gray Merchant of Asphodel God-Eternal Rhonas Gruesome Scourger Ingot Chewer Indrik Stomphowler Invader Parasite Keldon Firebombers Massacre Girl Mindclaw Shaman Morkrut Banshee Nessian Game Warden Obsidian Charmaw Pharika's Mender Phyrexian Delver Predatory Nightstalker Priest of the Blood Rite Puppeteer Clique Qasali Slingers Regisaur Alpha Serpent Assassin Shadowborn Demon Shriekmaw Silverglade Elemental Stuffy Doll Stingerfling Spider Whiptail Moloch Wei Assassins Wild Celebrants Agent of Erebos Ancestral Statue Balustrade Spy Bloodboil Sorcerer Bramble Sovereign Cackling Fiend Carrion Imp Chain Devil Coal Stoker Dagger Caster Disciple of Bolas Dread Presence Flametongue Kavu Foundation Breaker Grief Intellect Devourer Kozilek's Predator Llanowar Empath Masked Admirers Mausoleum Turnkey Misfortune Teller Myconid Spore Tender Nekrataal Nantuko Cultivator Ondu Giant Oxidda Scrapmelter Quirion Trailblazer Rampant Rejuvenator Ravenous Chupacabra Sawblade Slinger Slippery Bogbonder Solemn Simulacrum Summoner's Egg Sylvan Messenger Traxos, Scourge of Kroog Umori, the Collector Voice of Many
wallisface on
2 years ago
Some thoughts:
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Merfolk Secretkeeper and Wall of Lost Thoughts aren't worth running. If you compare mill to a burn deck, they're the equivalent of running a worse Shock (doing the equivalent of around 1.6 damage). That's a pretty awful return as far as milling, regardless of mana cost.
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Similarly to the above Balustrade Spy is awful, it's only going to get somewhere between 1-3 cards on average, for 4 mana. In all honesty, there's a good reason why mill decks don't run any creatures outside of Hedron Crab and Ruin Crab - it's because everything else just isn't worth it.
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I get you want fetches for the crabs, and that's probably outside of your budget - but Evolving Wilds is not an alternative. Having lands enter tapped is disastrous, as it will slow down your tempo faaaar too much, and give your opponent too much of a chance to win. If you want ways to trigger crabs multiple times, i'd suggest Field of Ruin.
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You have enough lands, you have absolutely no reason to run Dimir Signet
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Mind Funeral gives terrible returns for its mana value, and will often cause the deck to lose to itself by not getting enough cards milled. Focus on running full playsets of the better mill cards (Fractured Sanity and Maddening Cacophony) instead
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Both Crypt Incursion and Archive Trap should be mainboard, not sideboard.
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Jace Beleren has no place in this deck. 3 mana is slow, and he doesn't do anything for you. You can't reasonably expect him to ever be able to ultimate, so often he's just going to draw a single card then die.
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I would also ditch Drowned Secrets, because its return is just soo low - you have to play 4 blue spells after this card just to mill 8 cards. Many mill-specific cards (i.e. Maddening Cacophony) can just do that on their own. Drowned Secrets is unlikely to give you enough benefit during a game even if its played early, but becomes a terrible late-game draw.
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Your deck currently has no interaction at all, which is going to put you in a really rough spot as most decks will be able to out-race you. Mill needs to throw the opponents plans off-track to get enough time to secure the win. I would have expected to see playsets of both Drown in the Loch and Fatal Push here, as well as a 3-4 copies of Extirpate to remove your opponents best cards from their deck.
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While being at 65 cards might not seem much above 60, its going to lead to you having overall worse hands and draws, in both strength and consistency. You should always be aiming to cut a deck back to 60 cards.
This link here is a good example of a competitive mill deck - I think you should be aiming towards something like this, just accommodating for your particular budget
YamishiTheWickedOne on
Sexy Vampires
2 years ago
If you're looking for further advice still, here's my list of best 1 mana vampires:
More niche 1-drops include
Skymarcher Aspirant really only if you wanna be hyper aggressive and run like 8-12 lords.
If you want my opinion on the best vampires in MtG in no particular order:
Champion of Dusk (because Sorin's a thing, before 5 mana was really pushing it)
and a narrow niche that makes him the best vampire in the game but ONLY in manaless dredge: Balustrade Spy
lagotripha on
2 years ago
Hi, can I check how competitive you'd like to be? Casual tables, FNMs, Tournaments?
I've got a few landfall ideas on the back burner that you might be able to make work with this. White black will rely more heavily on supporting cards than other landfall lists as 'lands matter' hasn't been printed on many cards in those colours. Overall, I'd look at being a lot lower on the curve, playing 1/2/3 drops that affect the boad - bodies, killing creatures or similar.
Try to focus budget on lands. Especially with landfall. Evolving wilds/Terramorphic Expanse/Warped Landscape for pure budget, the more expensive fetches when you can. Shocks can let you cheat on the exact colours of the fetches. Lands are the most important part of (almost) any deck, and with landfall that is emphasised somewhat.
Options;
Steppe Lynx. Most of the other options are in other colours, but decks it is in basically just 'play 1 drops, attack, crack fetches, maybe burn'.
Knight of the White Orchid is a great body with ramp, while Loyal Warhound a solid extra 4 copies. If you can turn them on, they make 'being on the draw' games a lot better - something not a lot of cards can say. Solemn Simulacrum is good. Especially if you get it back from the graveyard.
Felidar Retreat/Retreat to emeria are incredible value engines if you can turn them on. The rest of the deck would be setting up for that and making use of it.
Sword of the Animist + Sword of Hearth and Home points to an equipment and attacking list.
Unearth + graveyard matters stuff, self mill and bloodghast shenanigans.
Black has land destruction, which is almost like ramp - a deck that gets itself lots of basic lands and casts Smallpox will work.
Balustrade Spy/Endless Horizons. Yes its dumb, yes it catches people by surprise.
taylorfisdboss on
U.S.S. Deathstar: NCC-1701-FU (Paunza)
2 years ago
oops! @Gattison came back to mention I found another Psychic Venom effect and realized I totally missed your bigger message on the 9th. The place holders make sense and the Ninja of the Deep Hours Balustrade Spy combo honestly sounds legit! also makes sense to run preordains or some other cantrip action to filter for important pieces. Ninja also combos with Jace's Phantasm's for some early draw to find key pieces so I like that addition even more!
The card I was going to mention was Erosion. seeing the color break down for the deck makes me less hopeful for it, as is a tough casting cost in multicolored pauper decks : /
I'm not sure how well it would play either, but a critical mass of "ouch my lands hurt" cards and land destruction seems to be one way to build this deck and that card works for both! My excitement to make suggestions aside it is more mana, more color requirement, and less damage if they don't sac it.... so.... and we can't stack it on lands with other damage effects without making them more likely to sac it.... which might be bad? Either way I saw the card and thought of you XD <3
Gattison on
U.S.S. Deathstar: NCC-1701-FU (Paunza)
2 years ago
taylorfisdboss: Had some time to fiddle with this deck some more, and this is where I'm at currently. I could only find 1x Contaminated Ground, 1x Destroy the Evidence and 3x Psychic Venom in my collection. So I'm using 4x Singing Bell Strike and 3x Ninja of the Deep Hours as placeholders. I like the ninja's ability to let me re-use Balustrade Spy, so he may stay.
(My LGS isn't good for pauper singles, so next time I buy cards online... I'ma spend like 80 bucks on 10 cent singles. At least I'll get my money's worth lol)
Beyond that, Duress and Dark Ritual didn't work out as well as I thought in "playtesting", I felt like I needed to be more of a dick and have some legit removal, so Vapor Snag is back. Preordain is back because this is turning out to rely heavily on a few key cards, which makes it combo in my mind, which in turn means I either need to find redundancies to use as backups, or add draw power to find my pieces on time. Since there are no redundancies for Balustrade Spy and Destroy the Evidence in pauper, I went with draw. It's not enough though, so I'm back to brainstorming. Not using Brainstorm the card, just you know, using my brain.
My bad for the wait for a response. Also, I assume you're last sentence that got cut off was something along the lines of "love what you've done with the place." To which I say, thanks!
taylorfisdboss on
U.S.S. Deathstar: NCC-1701-FU (Paunza)
2 years ago
Gattison The pay offs you just mentioned for black actually synergize with the Cleansing Wildfire and Geomancer's Gambit in that by helping our opponent search up lands we leave them with less lands and make both Destroy the Evidence and Balustrade Spy mill our opponents for more. Black also has the diverse Befoul for land or nonblack creature removal. Another cool idea is to lean into your Psychic Venom and also run Contaminated Ground so that you can really make their spells cost them.
I totally get what you're saying about playtesting in a vaccum and not wanting to make people play against it a bunch XD - that makes building ponza all the more difficult! love what you'v
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