fuck it, one more

4x Vatmother

4x Viridian Emissary

4x Phyrexian Crusader

3x Stoneforge Mystic

2x Sun Titan

1x Bonehoard

2x Duress

4x IoK

3x Journey to Nowhere

2x Doom Blade

4x Sign in Blood

2x Sword of Vengeance

2x Black Sun Zenith

add land and poof! GWB...i think I am missing some things and the deck could probably use some work. When I get the cards for the deck it should be a lot easier to test. I am just missing the MBS cards so I am just watiting on those. Duress and IoKs are insane turn 1. I would have done more refining but I found my other Foil Sea Gate Oracle sooo I got really happy about that :]

catching up

I have to admit I am not impressed with Nakamuras first article on IoK vs Duress. Sure its somewhat important but you should be able to go to MTGsalvation.com and find that same argument there. Also when trying to compare those two cards in particular, your going to have to assess your meta and properly adjust. When IoK first came out I asked many people which they thought was the right choice between the two was and I got a lot of different answers. Turns out at that time Duress was the correct answer and even adding 2 IoK was ok. Hopefully the next one is going to be better than this one. I also look forward to Juzas article as I am sure everyone is also wondering what he is going to channelfireball.

Second thing I want to quickly say is thank you to the SuperStars employees like eric, emily,tim, byron,tommy people that I see that are hard workers and bust their asses to make everyone happy. And they have to deal with so many people wanting different things all at the same time. They remain cool, calm and collected during the time they are there and they dont get the recognition that they deserve. I am so glad I have people like that working at SuperStars instead of some fucking douche that could care less about what goes on their.

And the last thing I want to mention is a conversation my friend and I had about 2 weeks ago about me, 60cards, SCG and CFB. He mentioned that he had read my articles and that he things my articles are pretty good, people see what I have to say, I get feed back and on average they are as good as most articles on other sites(lol doubtful they are on par with SCG articles) he mentioned that although I seem to be getting kind of noticed in the MTG community that I will only go as far as my skill and winnings will take me. In other words, I will only get to where I want to be in MTG if I win a larger tournament and continue to place higher than I do when I actually try. But he repeated himself again with the winning larger tournaments and gaining notoriety.

He also mentioned the post about CFB and my support of SCG. I love SCG, the customer service the provide, Evan Erwin and of course their articles. As of late most people that read my blog have noticed my dissatisfaction of the quality of channel fireball articles other than Conley and LSV, the loss of Brad Nelson to SCG and how they seem to have fallen behind since last year. My friends says to me that its best to hold my tongue when speaking about CFB for now as I seem to be pushing a little too much. Keep support of SCG but kinda back off a bit about CFB...i think I might do that for a bit...

FNM

i have returned! i have to apologize to those that actually read my blog for my absence for my life has been consumed with A.getting a new car B.testing Kor Spiritdancer control C.work D.fighing a cold E preparing for MBS!

Lets start with the prerelease or as I like to call it, The Night I Made So Many Misplays and Why Do I Go To Prereleases If I Just Lose In Them.

Lets start the night off with a little bit of standard at the FNM. I brought my Spiritdancer control deck as I mentioned and I don’t think I have ever made so many mistakes in a tournament before. I know it was just FNM but shit, I made so many misplays and terrible SB choices. For instance, when I played against Valakut, my favorite match up ever!, I didn’ttt side in ratchet bombs, DoJ or even leylines...wtf. If there is any match up that I personally favor in this format its valakut.but shit did I drop the ball in this time. I have to admit, my loss to RUG was not as bad as I thought. I didn’t draw and stellar hands, and I kept him off his important cards for as long as I could. I shut down his titans which slows RUG down so much. I lost, but I think I did fairly well for my first time battling against it.

Second was UW control which was another match I don’t mind playing against. Spreading seas 4 times in a row will set anyone back and I learned that elspeth is a beast. Her tokens and life gain got me out of many problems. I ended up winning that match.

BUG was another deck I had yet to play. I knew exactly what was going to happen and what she needed to win and I shut that off with pacifism and proper counter magic. Again elsepth proves her worth and how underrated she is by placing tokens on the board to stop onslaughts from avenger tokens and cobra beats. I pulled game 2 out of my ass with elspeth pulling all of the weight

last match was valakut where I royally fucked up.

Overall my standard FNM was full of misplays and me not paying attention. Not the best way to start playing standard again.

sigh

i have decided to just fully commit to making SCG the place where i get cards. CFB isnt working out any more as they never have what i want...SCG may be all the way on the east coast but they get me my cards in 2 days likc CFB does.
its the inventory thats killing me. if i want to build an EDH deck SCG. if i want to foil out my deck SCG. if i want to get cards from other countries like Germany...SCG. with the phyrexian slogan All Will Be One...its looking like thats whats SCG is going for...All Will Be One :]

contaminated ground

OK so this is contaminated ground. now at one point there i speculated that this card was actually on par with spreading seas. now as we all know, that is clearly not the case but i want to just say that while this card may not be better than spreading seas, its only slightly worse than everything thinks it is. 

i have asked a few people what they think about this card and most of the time i get the same answer of it doesn't replace itself and that it will never be a spreading seas, leave it alone. so i left it alone but now i am building my MBC list and this card has continued to show up.

There are a few key reasons that and MBC build should be main decking 4 of these cards.

#1

i have said this a few times, but the options for mana in the current standard world are phenomenal. i have played for a long time and there are so many duels and there man lands that are important and there is a land the destroys the lands that you don't want and ones that make tokens. plain and simple the quality of lands in standard is great. so great that every land you play and in what order is so important these days. you can play your come into play tapped man land or you can halimar depths or drop your fetch and pass. what you do with your lands in the first 3 turns is extremely vital unless your playing a mono color deck. so what Contaminated ground actually does is completely ruins all but what 3 decks in standard and there are like what 10 good decks? By turning the land into a swamp you will completely cut off your WU opponent that needs every land that he can get to keep an advantage over you. hes going to need those DoJ's and those Jace's and removing one of those colors from play is quite devastating. 

At the SJ open i was stuck drawing islands and i finally dropped a glacial fortress after turn 3. so i drop the fortress, then the spiritdancer then passed. my hand was full of guard duty's and pacifism and he is playing mono black vampires so i am looking forward to shutting down his creatures. so he untaps and plays contaminated ground...i am instantly fucked because i have been drawing shit as far as white sources and now i cant lock down his creatures. fantastic. i wait 2 more turns to finally draw the other fortress and crush him.

simply put, he took away the land that i needed in a black deck.

#2

this is also the trade off you get from not drawing a card like spreading seas, you lose 2 life and the 2 damage adds up. it really does hurt when you have to tap in the early stages of a match. you have to realize that you may not have drawn a card to replace this one but your board presence is as equally significant. you have now cut off your opponent from his land effectively giving him a land he can only use with cards that have colorless but you have also giving your also causing your opponent significant loss of life. over 3 turns that 6 life...

#3 

its a pseudo LD spell for black that doesnt suck. its stops man lands and valakut thats pretty important these days considering a lot of standard metas contain both of those decks. Man lands are everywhere and Valakut players will never see this coming from a black deck.

MBC

a while a go i made an MBC deck that did really well at my FMN. at that time there was plenty of UW control, Jund, Naya and what ever else was play at that time...Goblins, i beat a goblins deck. and now with the release of  MBS on the horizon, I, like many other black players out there, am trying to get MBC to work again. the thing is that as of right now, i am a better player that i was last year. i am able to make better decks on my own, i follow the coverage of event and whats being played. i find the weaknesses and i study the fucking format... nobody does this that net decks. anyways, what i see now is that MBC is might be possible so i am going to take a stab at it like i do with every new set that comes out. so if you actually reading this, then i am going to bring you along the process in which i will be building my MBC deck. right now, Step 1 :D, i am going to lay out some of the cards that i feel are good! and will actually contribute to the deck itself :}
   also i want to point out to people that dont play MBC builds or people that do play MBC builds and think its the best deck ever! and think that the deck has few weaknesses when in reality it has many.the main reason that MBC hasnt been good for a really long time is becuase of 3 things!
thing1

MBC has no global sweeper. no mutilate, no decree of pain, forced march, nothing! whats happend in the last 2 years is that cards like infest had been reprinted. we got a little hope in Cosume the Meek, a card i fucking love and now we get something i hope to scratch off the lists that MBC doesnt have that needs to be competative and thats BLACK SUN ZENITH

this card is positioned well to do some damage. vampires, elves and Avenger tokens Beware... i am sure this card deals more damage to lots of other things but i wanna do this quickly lol

thing2!
black has barely any kind of card drawing . sure Sign in blood and dark tutalege but...thats about it. crystal ball is a great option but your investing too much into it and MBC wants things to happen now and disrupt its opponent as soon as possible and as effectively as possible. unfortunately there isnt much you can to to help black except add blue. there isnt a necropotence :[ or a phyrexian arena  :[

thing3!
there isnt a card that throws MBC ahead like there is for other color decks. we dont have a jace or an oracle of mul daya or a Koth or an Elspeth or something like that. MBC is lacking a card that just give a huge distinctive advantage over an opponent. Mind sludge comes to mind but by that point counter magic is up or your facing a Primeval titan or something. i am hoping that there is something that comes out of the rest of the set so that i can touch more on this subject :]

the list is just a list right now. like rightnow as i am writing this i am going to be putting this deck together in my head and adding numbers and blah blah blah.
go for the thoart
gruesome encore
black sun zenith
bloodwitch
gatekeeper
sign in bloog
nighthawk
wurmcoil
IoK
Duress
Doom Blade
Consume the Meek
Mind Sludge
Nantuko Shade
Memoricide
Sadistic Sacreament
Contaminated ground
black knight
Blood Husk ritualist
corrupt
deathmark
Diabolic tutor
skinrender
Hexmage
Grasp
leyline of the void
crusader

this list only included 1 artifact in wurmcoil engine. the list isnt formed yet and i have ideas floating around. right now its got what flores calls "vampires greatest hits" in hexmage, bloodwhich, gatekeeper,disruption and kill spells.
i didnt mention any infect cards becuase i dont feel like th MBC will actually be an infect deck, thats something completely different.

half written article

so the deck is basically a deck that i came up with after i read whose the beatdown by mike flores. and i was reassured that this deck was ok and somewhat well positioned in the extended world after BDM and Flores were talking about a blightning beatdown deck on the top 8 magic cast. i had the deck built already and was testing before they talked about it. and to be honest i dont really have a grasp for extended right now as my main focus is standard. so right now i am just having fun running Gavins Revival deck and crushing people that dont see it coming

a little bit before Christmas I received the gift of awesome, Deckade, and so far its a really great read. At this point in time I am reading about how sligh decks are powerful, red is possibly the strongest color in the format and Flores is tinkering around using black knights. I love this book and everything I have learned so far from it.so while going through it I find “Whose The Beatdown?” and I have so many great things about this article so I read it...then I read it again. And when I finally got down to the end of It, I realized how great it really is. Now its a pretty simple article but that doesn’t mean it isn’t great by any means. What I also grasped from this article is that I see a lot of players, including myself, doing this same thing. You play an aggressive strategy, run into a deck with a similar agenda and you either A. decide to become more conservative and play defensively or B. you do what your deck was designed to do and smash face. So I got to thinking and with all the control decks running around in extended, why I don I turn on the fire and put some pressure on some people with a beatdown deck. And why not use my favorite color combination of R/B to do it.

List number 1

4 flame javelin

4 blighting

4 goblin guide

4 hellspark elemental

4 lightning bolt

4 oona's prowler

4 sign in blood

4 slavering nulls

2 goblin ruinblaster

2 skinrender

7 mountain

8 swamp

4 akoum refuge

3 dragonskull summit

3 graven cairns

SB

4 duress

3 goblin outlander

3 smash to smithereens

2 goblin ruinblaster

2 volcanic fallout

1 spitebellows

now this is just a shell for the deck and it was pretty bad. I could occasionally get the right draw and have goblin guide followed by oona's prowler or hell's thunder in the early game. Whats key about the Prowlers and Nulls is that it easily puts pressure on your opponent by having them discard cards,Nulls having the effect by controlling a swamp and Prowler by having the option for your opponent to discard a card to give it -2. the power of blighting is increased when your opponent has to make the decision of removing your board presence or dealing with the blighting after you attack.

Having the direct damage of flame javelin is what really puts you over the edge as its instant speed is very valuable in the world of Cryptic Command. Overall I didn’t lose every game I played. Most decks I played didn’t really have a plan for aggro decks and just kind of beat me because I gassed and the sign in bloods were drawn too late in the game to make a difference.

I quickly want to mention that when I was testing this deck, I had no problem with prismatic omen decks. Goblin ruinblaster was my best card along side Slavering Nulls and Oonas Prowler. The Nulls put early pressure and removed cards that would help the deck progress to gain a significant advantage that I learned by playing against it so much. This decks worst match up was WW and it was a really bad time when I was matched up against it.

List 2

now list 2 has a number of additions and an almost complete revamp of the sideboard. I had went into the tank and came up with all of the cards I was playing with during the time of lorywn block and I came to the conclusion that I some how forgot how powerful cards at that time were and that this deck defiantly needed work to make it better.

4 Blighting

4 Boggart Ram-Gang

3 Dark Tutelage

4 Flame Javelin

4 Goblin Guide

4 hells thunder

4 hellspark elemental

4 lightning bolt

4 oona's prowler

1 skinrender

4 aunties hovel

4 dragonskull summit

4 graven cairns

5 swamp

7 mountain

SB

4 duress

3 thought hemorrhage

3 incendiary command

3 guttural response

1 skinrender

1 lightning reaver

first I want to thank jesse for letting me borrow the Tutelages.

Now to get to the deck.The deck is a smiple blightning beat down and when I was testing you should never change your strategey for the deck. The deck hits hard, fast and it causes to many problems for my opponents.i really want to say that you need to think about your board position if your going to play this deck because in extended you need to take advantage of every point of damage possible. Every spell counts, every play is important.i am going to say this but I realize that most people think that they do this and most players in the community dont really do it.

I know many of your are asking how it does against faeries, just and omen and my answer is excellent. In fact my best match up is against faeries and jund. Let me help you out with those match ups

Fae

From my persective, the problem with fae is that most players sit at wait for you to act, play your important spells, counter them and then counter attack you. With Flores Beatdown you just take the fight to them. In my matchs against fae, the only problems I had was which order of spells I was going to hit them with. Goblin Guide is an all start and puts the pressure on them early and while they are digging for something to stop him, your hitting with blightnings, prowlers and hellsparks.