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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 |
| Gladiator | Legal |
| Highlander | Legal |
| Historic | Legal |
| Historic Brawl | Legal |
| Legacy | Legal |
| Leviathan | Legal |
| Limited | Legal |
| Modern | Legal |
| Modern Beyond Horizons | Legal |
| Oathbreaker | Legal |
| Pauper | Legal |
| Pauper Duel Commander | Legal |
| Pauper EDH | Legal |
| Pioneer | Legal |
| Planar Constructed | Legal |
| Planechase | Legal |
| Quest Magic | Legal |
| Tiny Leaders | Legal |
| Vanguard | Legal |
| Vintage | Legal |
Festering Mummy
Creature — Zombie
When Festering Mummy dies, you may put a -1/-1 counter on target creature.
legendofa on
2 years ago
Welcome to the club, JHM921!
For this deck, I see a focus on getting Sarevok, Deathbringer as big as possible, but I also see some bits and pieces that I think can be switched out. Cards like Butcher of Malakir and Grave Betrayal would work better in a more graveyard-focused deck than what I think this deck wants to be. There's some ramp and mana modification, with Nature's Lore, Sakura-Tribe Elder, and similar cards, but I think some more early cards like Elves of Deep Shadow, Golgari Signet, and Elvish Mystic would help accelerate early game into mid game.
Virus Beetle, Ravenous Rats, and Festering Mummy are all kind of underwhelming in this deck. If you want to force discard, you either want to affect every opponent or choose the discard yourself, and Festering Mummy just has too small of an effect that the deck doesn't really have ways to capitalize on. I recommend adding some more targeted permanent destruction. Depending on how much money you're willing to spend, Nature's Claim, Maelstrom Pulse, Abrupt Decay, and Assassin's Trophy are all viable.
Since your commander is a big part of your win condition, you need to be able to protect it. Regenerate effects like Golgari Charm or Wrap in Vigor, indestructibility from Tamiyo's Safekeeping or Heroic Intervention, or simple unkillable-ness from Supernatural Stamina or Undying Malice will help keep Sarevok fresh and deathbringing.
Look through your deck, and for each card, ask yourself, "Why is this card in here? Does it advance my win condition? Does it remove an opponent's specific threat or problem? Does it protect my board?" If the answer to any of these is no, then it can probably be replaced with something more directed to this particular deck.
For some more specific suggestions, I assume Cloak of the Bat is to make Sarevok harder to block. I would switch that for something like Whispersilk Cloak. You don't have a solid Vampire base for Indulgent Aristocrat, and the Vampires you do have don't contribute much to your winning strategy, so I would save the Vampires for another deck.
I think if you tighten up the focus, this deck will become very solid. Happy brewing, and above all, have fun!
wallisface on
Greatness, at any cost
2 years ago
Youvegotplasticinyourlungs here's my thoughts:
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Some of your 1-mana creatures don't have a lot of utility, particularly Night Market Lookout. Something like Festering Mummy might at least give you some better on-death triggers.
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Spoils of the Vault feels incredibly dangerous when you still need to lose an additional 6 life for Demon of Death's Gate. I'd thing something like Profane Tutor would be a much safer way to fetch up cards... although that might be too slow.
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both Lightning Greaves and Swiftfoot Boots feel really weak in Modern, because your opponent can always just kill your creature in response to trying to equip the equipment - and its usually just wasted card slots. In any case, 8 copies of this effect is waaay too many (even running a single copy of this kind of equipment is dubious imo). Importantly Lightning Greaves gives Shroud, which will stop you being able to target it for Tainted Strike.
pea_body on
-1 Counters
2 years ago
wallisface Thanks for the advice, I have been playing this deck with only Archfiend of Ifnir and often struggle to keep it in play long enough to trigger its ability and should have foreseen the problems of running twelve 4+ mana cost cards.
Obviously, I should change out the 4x Splendid Agony, but would replacing Archfiend of Ifnir with Black Sun's Zenith be an okay change?
In my actual deck at the moment I have Dismember and Tragic Slip to easily kill creatures. I assume that it would be okay if I replace Wasteland Scorpion and Nezumi Bone-Reader with those if I replace Archfiend of Ifnir.
Random card replacements
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Fatal Push over Tragic Slip? Or both??
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Less Skinrender and Sickle Ripper, 4x Fume Spitter and add more swamps.
Again thanks for the ideas! I'm just playing against friends so I can't make it too good if you know what I mean. :)
wallisface on
-1 Counters
2 years ago
Some thoughts:
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your mana curve feels very high at the moment. In particular, modern decks generally struggle to run more than 4 cards costing 4-or-more mana… you’ve got a whopping 12 in this range. Your mana curve is also very heavily weighted towards 3-mana stuff, which could be a problem.
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even with a lower mana curve, i think you need more lands… like 23-24 minimum. I’d advise against Cabal Stronghold because its a really bad card - you need it and 4 swamps in play just to break even! You’re already at the peak of your curve by that point. There’s never going to be a situation where it’s useful.
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Grind / Dust is better than Splendid Agony.
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A lot of your wither creatures aren’t going to help you too much, they’re all super fragile so most the time in combat they’ll die in exchange for just weakening a creature… that’s not a good trade. Fume Spitter is an amazing card though, and Festering Mummy would probably also serve you well here. But i think in general you’re running too many creatures (especially a lot of creatures that provide limited value). You’re prolly better off playing more disruptive spells to give your higher mana cards a better chance of seeing play.
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not sure if its in your budget, but Black Sun's Zenith. Outside of that the next best thing to do in a -1/-1 counter deck is be playing it as Black-Green, to get access to better payoffs, and better interactions
wallisface on
Demonic Sacrifice
2 years ago
I think your 2 weakest demons are Archfiend of Depravity and Goremand. Archfiend feels like its not going to do much with how much removal you’re currently running - your opponent is unlikely to have more than 2 creatures anyway. Goremand is a LOT of mana and has a potentially-annoying cast condition. Though personally I think Indulgent Tormentor is your best big-mana creature by a long way here, as it plays to your strengths - i’d suggest dropping Blood Speaker entirely, and just running 3x Indulgent Tormentor and 1x Reaper from the Abyss as your demon suite. Alternatively, a playset of Desecration Demon would be really strong here.
For alternate better low-mana creatures, I can suggest Gatekeeper of Malakir, and Festering Mummy.
As far as better killspells, Infernal Grasp is amazing and seems like it’d be a great option for you. Other options include Victim of Night, Go for the Throat, and Fatal Push
Typically modern decks want their average CMC being just-below 2, so that they can be performant and maintain tempo. You are running some larger creatures that could skew that, but i think aiming for a lower curve would still be good. Maybe 2.2 is a good point to aim for.
Henchman31 on
Notorious B: Ready to Die [Remastered]
2 years ago
Gattison: Thanks again for the tips on updating the decks. To celebrate getting out of quarantine, last night I took this deck to my LGS to test it out with the other Pauper players. I made some minor changes beforehand:
Lands: +2 Mortuary Mire, +2 Barren Moor Instants: +4 Deadly Dispute
Sideboard: 2 Nihil Spellbomb, 2 Sylvok Lifestaff, 3 Tragic Slip, 4 Dash Hopes, 2 Feed the Swarm, 2 Shrivel
We're normally a small group but that night we were only 4: myself, another Pauper regular, and two others who are very active in the competitive Modern league. We settled into 3 rounds and... oof: 5 losses, 1 win, and one undecided due to overtime. Here's how it went down:
Round 1: vs. BG Dredge/ Tortured Existence 0-2-0 Not a good matchup at all, I'm afraid. Spore Frog made the combat step irrelevant, Thoughtpicker Witch kept me drawing lands and exiling my answers, and saccing his chump blockers to the deck's namesake kept me from activating any beneficial death triggers. All my card-draw got shuffled to the bottom in both rounds and there wasn't much I could do until he got a couple Gurmag Angler out to end my misery. On a side note: I hate playing against Dredge almost as much as Blink or Tron--all of which are beloved in this local meta. Maybe it's just ze Germans -_-. I'm always on the lookout for answers against these.
Round 2: vs. UB Looting/Control 0-2-0 Things were looking hopeful while I was developing my board and he was just casting different versions of Preordain for the first few turns. His main beater turned out to be Shipwreck Sifters, which got uncomfortably swole thanks to repeatable looting. Dross Golem was a star in this round and almost killed him in the first match. However after sideboarding, his removal became much more aggressive and I wasn't even left with blockers. Missing answers and sigh card draw, he took it home with some beefy spirits.
Round 3: vs. Temur Cascade or Gruul Walls + Mulldrifter -_-' 1-1-1 This was a weird one: aggressively defending and ramping with Tinder Wall, Overgrown Battlement, and Tuktuk Rubblefort until he could cascade into Boarding Party and other beaters. By turn 3 he had at least 6 walls out, each with at least 3 toughness that brushed off anything I could turn sideways. We were both surprised when my card draw engine started working in match 2 and I could slap out my own beaters with multiple rituals and disputes in a single turn. While he was missing his and Winding Way, I managed a Soulcage Fiend and Mortis Dogs by turn 2. After taking the 5-life hit from Dash Hopes twice, I had him on turn 5; clinching it with Howl from Beyond. Although the last round was undecided and he was prepared to kill me with hasty Pirates again, I was still pleased to pull off the primary wincon at least once.
Overall thoughts: This was my first outing with the deck so I still need to play it more to see the clear differences between the inherent weaknesses and my own misplays. I like aggressive decks and when this got going, I was down to clown. All-stars of the night were Mortis Dogs, Dross Golem, and especially Deadly Dispute. So much value. Add a dash or two of Dark Ritual and Sign in Blood in a single turn? chef's kiss That being said, I still think some adjustments are in order: First, that Mortuary Mire got to go. It slowed down the deployment of creatures and messed with my draws. Silly me. Unearth is much better recursion hands down. Second, sadly the goblins and newts must make room for another 1 or 2 Festering Mummy and a full set of Shambling Ghast. The latter does the same thing as the others but gives the option to ramp--which is especially relevant in my meta where creature decks are scarce. Third, better quicker removal? I left out Innocent Blood this time but either that or the asymmetrical Geth's Verdict could work. Fourth, mass removal or damage-dealing ala Crypt Rats or Pestilence? Sure, it would kill our forces but isn't that the point?
After looking at some other Suicide Black lists, I've seen what makes this deck unique and I'm still interested in making it work. I like the focus on death triggers and I'd love to find more ways to exploit them. Other creature-based lists use beaters like Guul Draz Vampire, Dauthi Slayer, and Carnophage to drop that life total to the floor. Pumping beaters like these and/or giving them lifelink seems appealing, but I'd like to stay true to the spirit of this deck as much as I can.
Sorry for the wall of text, I just wanted to get this all out now while it was still fresh. I hope this proves interesting to you or any others looking to try this deck out.
mobizque on
<20$ Undying demons
3 years ago
I'm building a similar deck with Demon of Catastrophes and Feaster of Fools (which you might consider--with Devour 2 it can get big, and with Convoke it can come out as early as turn 3).
Fetid Imp seems weak here. Your demons will dominate the sky, so you might consider more sacrificial creatures like Festering Mummy or Undead Augur .
All that said, I'm putting Tragic Slip in my deck. It's definitely > the Dismember I'm running.
+1!
Halbrechtt on
BLACK ZOMBIE
4 years ago
I love Zombies! Probably one of the first tribes that got me interested in tribal decks, after I saw the power of my friend's Zombie deck. +1 from me just for Zombies!
Question 0: Before we can offer any meaningful help, we need to know if you truly mean this to be a deck for the Modern format? Or will it be casual and you won't care about format that much?
(As an aside, when I first started Magic and joined T/O, I didn't really understand that Modern was a competitive format and I just labeled any deck that could be legal in Modern as Modern. LoL. Pretty sure some of my decks on T/O still mistakenly have Modern set when really they should be Casual!)
I'm going to offer my advice assuming you want it to be Modern, but if you're going more for a casual build, then feel free to ignore some of this.
I would remove the "swamps matter" subtheme, as you don't really have ways to dump extra swamps onto the battlefield nor do you take full advantage of it (where is Defile for example?). Korlash might be worth keeping, since he's a zombie, but get rid of both Nightmare and Squelching Leeches, as they're not even zombies and they're on the higher end of CMC. Personally, I'd get rid of Lashwrithe as well, but if you really love the card and want to keep it, at least you can equip that to a zombie.
Then I would choose between full-on zombie tribal including tokens, or devotion and recursion. Neither of the latter play nicely with tokens, which don't have mana costs for devotion or stay in the graveyard for recursion. A few incidental tokens are fine, but cards like Moan of the Unhallowed and Shamble Back are not synergistic at all with devotion/recursion.
Next, are you more interested in recurring your graveyard or exiling it for tokens? I.e. do you want to do Ghoulraiser, Gravecrawler, Lord of the Undead, etc., or do you want to do Cemetery Reaper, Graveyard Marshal, Tymaret, etc.? You can't do both. Personally, I'd go the recursion route, add more ways to sac your zombies for value, and cycle them in and out of the graveyard at will.
So in summary, I would go with 1) zombie aggro including tokens, or 2) zombie recursion, with a subtheme of devotion for Gray Merchant. Going either route, I'd cut Nightmare, Leeches, Lashwrithe, and Tymaret (he's not a zombie, and provides only inefficient graveyard hate). If you go route 2, I'd also cut the sorceries Moan and Shamble. That's at minimum 8 cards out. What you add depends on which game plan you choose.
Relentless Dead and Unbreathing Horde are difficult to get rid of, the former because it can easily come back to hand (and bring a friend), the latter because of his damage prevention clause.
Graveborn Muse can provide some serious card advantage. Geralf's Messenger is amazing for devotion, he drains a little himself, and he's hard to get rid of.
If you go the route of cycling your zombies in and out of your graveyard, consider Undead Augur, Plague Belcher, and Quest for the Gravelord.
You didn't label this deck as "budget", so if you can afford it, Cavern of Souls is a must-include land in any tribal deck.
I don't like Sands of Delirium. It's only function is self-mill and there's more efficient ways to do self-mill. You also currently don't take full advantage of self-mill, with things like Dredge or Flashback-style effects. If you go full force into graveyard synergies, then self-mill is important, but even then, I'd play Stitcher's Supplier over Sands. For 1 mana, you can easily get 6 cards into your graveyard, and you can easily recur him, and he's a zombie that can attack. That would take 9 mana with Sands, which is just a dead artifact.
Lastly, some sacrifice options: Gnawing Zombie isn't amazing, but the effect is relevant. I would replace Sign in Blood with Village Rites — same card draw, but one less mana, instant speed, and no life loss. You also have cards that like to die, like Festering Mummy, Black Cat, Tattered Mummy, and the above-mentioned Stitcher's Supplier.
Sorry for the wall of text. I just love zombies! So I hope at least something in there was useful.
