Have a Seat in the Brewpub!

Today I would like to start a regular feature called “The Brewpub” where I take a pool of cards selected around one idea and try to get a playable, competitive deck through a series of changes (and savage cuts).

For this first installment, I want to build a zombies deck that has options for the late game.  So often when playing Aggro Zombies (Rakdos, Jund, or Green/Black), the deck simply runs out of steam.  They start dropping Thragtusks and you just can’t win.  So to solve this problem I’m adding the Grimgrin/Gravecrawler/Rooftop Storm combo to the deck.  While mostly for fun, it can also be devastating if executed properly.

Here’s the initial pool of cards:

Gotta start somewhere…

Initial Cuts:

Dream Twist: Just not as good as the other digger spells.
Ghoulcaller’s Chant: Has potential, but also potential to be dead.
Think Twice: Other spells are better.
Dissipate: Countermagic’s not exactly what we’re trying to do. Sideboard.
Gnaw to the Bone: Sideboard.
Underworld Connections: Other digger spells are probably better.
Syncopate: See Dissipate.
Unbreathing Horde: Has potential? *shrug*

Sideboard cuts:
Golgari Charm: Not sure why I put this in.
Sever the Bloodline: down to two.
Ultimate Price: Let’s make it two.
Zombie Apocalypse: One at most.

Phew! We’re down to 68! That’s… not stellar. Looks like we need to cut some more…

Startin’ ta come together, Pepper!

Secondary Cuts:

For this cut I separated creatures and spells to get a better picture of how we’ll fight with this deck.

Forbidden Alchemy: Too expensive for us.
Cyclonic Rift: Just doesn’t do enough, and we’re not a tempo deck.
Tribute to Hunger: SB for Geist decks.
Garruk: Goodbye Garruk, we’ll miss you, GGG is too much green.
Rancor: I love a Rancor, but we’re more likely to get blown out.
Zombie Apocalypse: Relegated to the SB so we can be cute against Human decks.
Tracker’s Instincts: Mulch + Grisly Salvage are just better, methinks.
Abrupt Decay: Going down to 2 seems decent and now we’re only a few cuts away from a deck.
Diregraf Ghoul: *GASP* I know! My dream of this being a super-beatdown deck is quickly fading away and I think I would rather have quality zombies than quick ones.
Sideboard: Misc Cuts.

It’s time to add some lands and test drive this baby! Now, our mana is going to be pretty rough, but I think we can pull it off. We don’t have any heavy color commitments outside of black, but I think we should lean green for our early spells like Grisly Salvage and Lotleth Troll. Here’s what I propose:

4 Swamp
1 Forest
3 Hinterland Harbor
4 Woodland Cemetary
4 Overgrown Tomb
1 Drowned Catacomb
4 Cavern of Souls
1 Alchemist’s Refuge
1 Nephalia Drownyard

The reason for the 2 miser’s lands are control decks, plain and simple. Refuge gives our stuff flash allowing us to sneak in a Rooftop Storm, and Drownyard lets us win long games against control (maybe).

At this point we’re at 38 cards and I cut a Dreg Mangler to make it 37, even though I really like the Mangler.Here’s the final deck:

Initial Testing:

These matches were played in the 2-man Constructed Queue, as the testing room is simply too random for my purposes.

Round 1 vs. 4-Color Control

Game 1: I beat him down incredibly hard with Gravecrawler and three Messengers. Cavern of Souls kept him from countering anything.

sideboarding:

-3 Dreg Mangler
-2 Abrupt Decay
-1 Grisly Salvage
+3 Duress
+3 Syncopate

Game 2:

He opens with a Farseek into Deathrite Shaman + Centaur Healer x2 and I have a mere Gravecrawler and some mana issues with no access to blue but 2 Syncopates in hand. His Deathrite is too much as I’ve taken out all of my removal. I’m starting to think this deck may not need the combo! 🙂

Sideboarding:
-3 Syncopate
-4 Gravecrawler
+3 Dreg Mangler
+2 Abrupt Decay
+2 Sever the Bloodline

Game 3:

He Farseeks a few times while I play out a Diregraf Captain into Messenger. Oh, did I mention he’s playing Temporal Mastery? He miracles this in this game (also did it in game 2) and it’s super annoying. This lets him play Angel of Serenity then Increasing Amibition from the graveyard (Demonic Tutor for 2 cards, sick!) before I can even attack with my zombies that are now removed from the game. Sigh. I feel a second Angel and a Thragtusk or Shaman coming soon.

I get Grimgrin down and play a Messenger to kill his Angel on my attack (bringing him to 2 life) My uncounterable Messenger next turn kills him I think. AND IT DOES!!! woot.

Wow… It feels pretty good to win with your own brew! This post has been pretty darn long, so I will play some more matches and tweak the deck a little. It definitely needs a bit of removal maindeck. This is gonna be fun to tune!

New Set Announced!

The last set in the Ravnica block will be “Dragon’s Maze!” How interesting!

The picture in the announcement is likely of Ral Zarek, a blue-red planeswalker from the Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 expansion set.  Izzet Planeswalker, huh?  This ought to be a very intriguing set.  One thing is for sure, the Izzet have been tinkering and it seems like Niv-Mizzet may have some kind of master plan, ala Nicol Bolas…

Here’s the link to the official announcement:

http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/arcana/1101