I'm kind of new to the game, and I would love some feedback on a deck idea.

[Skyhammer]

Hi,
I started playing magic recently, like in late 2009, just before Christmas. I really only play in casual games and no cards are particularly banned in our house rules, but we do ban slivers. I was thinking of building a deck that uses Mortal Combat as a kill condition, and using cards like ancestral memory, and obsessive search to help me get the cards I want, and using creatures like Cephalid Vandal to help me get my creatures into the graveyard. I am kind of working on a budget, and I am just looking for a fun deck to play with friends. I was wondering what type of thoughts people might have on this concept. I have built a sort of millfolk deck before, as well as a deck centered around howl of the night pack, but this deck seems like it could blow up in my face much easier than those types of decks do.
So, any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated. I work off of U.S. Seattle time.

Thanks

[Ferridge]

Hi Skyhammer,

If your using Mortal Combat as your win condition how are you getting creatures into your graveyard? Have you thought about milling yourself with cards like Tome scour and Hedron crab. Do you have deck a list you could post, to help us suggest alternatives? or ensure your using cards to tutor up your Mortal combat

Or have you thought about making it Red and Black and using fast creatures like Ball lightning, so you can swing in with a fast and build up the creature count in your graveyard

[browncoat]

Mortal combat is a fun card. One of my friends has a deck based on it. He uses cards like mogg fanatic, frostling and shriekmaw for creature based removal that will eventually win him the game. He also runs cycling creatures. It is a decent deck though it takes a while to win which can make the games with it pretty boring. If you do try using a discard based strategy try to play gibbering descent, one of the most fun cards ever printed.

[Skyhammer]

I never considered red as a secondary color. I always figured i would use cephalid as a base creature type, and just sort of mill my own deck away until i get twenty creatures in the graveyard, and then use stuff that makes me take a certain amount of cards from the top of my library and discard the unchosen cards, that way I could get Mortal Combat easier and possibly increase the creature count in the graveyard.I don't have a deck list yet. I am still choosing cards that might work. The red cards you all showed me could work great. Do you think it could work to go red black, and splash blue with use of stuff like the vivid lands? I have a few of those I could use. I was thinking of using false memories and compulsion as well, if I was going to go with blue.

[browncoat]

The real problem with self-milling decks other than dredge (dredge gets to play in its own little world) is that you normally are only set up to win with a few cards left in you deck and if your combo stumbles, you lose. As an example of this I will talk about a deck I made called DredgeATron. I wanted to build Urzatron (a control deck build around Urza's mine, Urza's tower, and Urza's powerplant). Many of the decks rares were singletons that I had. The real problem was gifts ungiven which I did not have. I decided to use dredge to solve this using discard engines and dredge to get all the cards I needed in the graveyard. The way Urzatron wins is through the Mindslaver lock. You use Mindslaver and academy ruins to take control of every turn you opponent takes. Unfortunately I would have around three cards left in my deck by the time I was ready to go off. This lost me games as I did not have the board presence or had some other issue that blocked me from winning (admittedly it was fun to play and everyone wanted to see if I could win, as the deck won or lost in a humorous fashion).

What this slightly off-topic rambling post is supposed to convey is that a self milling deck (apart from dredge) turns games into all or nothing type game where you lose or win depending on if you are lucky or not. I hope this helps.

[Skyhammer]

Hey everyone,
I thought I would let you all know what I ended up deciding on. The deck is mainly used for casual play that is just for fun, so I decided to go with Cephalids as my main creature typw, backed up by some merfolk for early game support. I decided to just go for an all or nothing type win structure, and let hilarity ensue one way or another. alltogether, the deck is only going to cost a few dollars to put together, and I guanarntee nobody in my group of friends will see it coming. While I am shopping I am also picking up some banding cards, as well as a playset of Bestial Menace and Seijiri Merfolk.

I'll let you guys know a decklist as soon as I make my order official. SHould have game results as early as thursday. Thanks for all the help everyone, and I did end up using gibbering descent.

[Skyhammer]

Allright everyone, Here is the deck list
3x Calcite Snapper
1x Curse Catcher
3x Coral Trickster
3x Mothdust Changeling
1x Reckless Scholar
4x Halimar Excavator
4x sandbar Merfolk
1x Cephalid Looter
3x Cephalid Illusionist
2x Cephalid Inkshrouder
4x Cephalid Aristocrat
1x Cephalid Vandal

2x Gibbering Descent
4x Ancestral Memories
4x Mortal Combat
1x Selective Memory

3x Terramorphic Expanse
7x Island
6x Swamp


I'm going to give it a go tomorrow, seeing as how the cards just came to my door about three hours ago. Something that I think I should note hear, is that i only spent about five American dollars on this deck. I already had singles of alot of the cards I needed, the exception being Mortal Combat and Gibbering Descent. I think If I had all the basic land, I could probably assemble this from scratch for just under ten dollars. So If this works out, it could be a great cheap deck for casual players who do not want to win by swinging with big creatures.
I also got a bunch of cards for my banding deck, so I will give that a few games as well. Thanks for all the help you gave me. I would have totally forgot about cycling if it weren't for everybody here.

[Ferridge]

Is banding still about? I thought that ability was gone

[browncoat]

I am interested to hear how your list does. Something you may want to work towards is the Cephalid Breakfast deck. It may also give you some inspiration for tweaking your current deck.

(2010-04-08 10:48 AM)Ferridge Wrote:  Is banding still about? I thought that ability was gone

It has not seen print for a while and was written out of 6th edition due to its uselessness as an ability.

[Ferridge]

But if they stopped printing it, do creatures lose all abilites when multiple blocking?

[browncoat]

(2010-04-08 12:57 PM)Ferridge Wrote:  But if they stopped printing it, do creatures lose all abilities when multiple blocking?

I'm not sure what you mean. Banding really only allowed you to place combat damage as you choose throughout the band. The effect still works even though they stopped printing it.

[Skyhammer]

well I am about to go to my main playing area for the day, but I put the deck to a test last night with my brother and managed to field Mortal Combat. I lost with fourteen creatures in the grave against one of the planechase pre-made decks. I forget to use reckless scholars ability every turn, and I dropped selective memory about three turns later than I should have after I got my last selective memory into my hand. Overall, I lost because of me playing like a newbie, and by the time I dropped selective memory, and was ready to do ancestral memory again, he had fielded ivy elemental and mage slayer. So, a very near loss, but let me tell you, that game was FUN! and the deck ran smooth as the sultans silk.

[Skyhammer]

Here is the play report for today.

It was a pretty successful day for the deck. I only clocked one win of five, but they were all very narrow losses to one very big win. In the turn I had won the game, my opponent had destroyed Mortal Combat the turn before. The next turn I untapped, dropped a Island, and Played Ancestral Memory. I saw two Mortal Combat, a swamp and four creatures. I took the two mortal Combat, dropped one, and was tapped out of mana. Luckily I had a couple of blockers out, and the Ancestral Memory brought me up to something like twenty two creatures in my graveyard. I ended the game at ten life.
The losses were still interesting, and they showed me things about this deck that made me realise how I could get it to run much better. I managed to bring an opponent down to four life just swinging with creatures, due to the fact that he was using shadow. I talked it over with my friends, and I made a few edits to the deck, that I think will make it run much smoother. took out the mothdust changelings and Gibbling Descent's. The Descent's will be going to my Quest for the Nihil Stone deck. I put in two compulsions, two Mulldrifters, one Diplomatic Escort and one mana maze.