Date: Sun, 3 Aug 1997 23:33:41 +0200 From: Neumayr Sascha Subject: 4cb-deck needs help Hi there! So I need your helping hands this time. I'm currently working on a four-color-black deck which does quite well at tournaments and in playtesting but still needs plenty of help to be a winner. So here it is: Land: 21 7 Swamp 4 Underground River 3 Gemstone Mine 3 Undiscovered Paradise 2 Island 2 Quicksand Creatures: 25 4 Fallen Askari 4 Black Knight 3 Nekrataal 3 Man-o'-War 3 Cloud Elemental 3 Shadow Guildmage 2 Phyrexian Warbeast 2 Erg Raiders 1 Necratog Other Stuff: 15 4 Arcane Denial 3 Winter Orb 2 Incinerate 2 Contagion 2 Disenchant 2 Fellwar Stone ------------------ No. of cards: 61 Sideboard: 15 3 Hydroblast (vs. Burn, Aether Flash) 3 Knight of the Mist (vs. White Weenie and Black Weenie) 2 Dystopia (vs. TurboGreen and White Weenie) 2 Choking Sands (vs. Outposts, Lakes etc.) 2 Earthquake (vs. White Weenie and other heavy creature decks) 1 Pestilence (vs. Buried Alive-decks) 1 Disenchant \ 1 Swords to Plowshares / (general enhancement) This deck swallows any red, red/green or mono-green decks, does well against 5cg, Empyrial Falcon and other combo-oriented decks, but fails *utterly* against White Weenie (current record: 3-14) and Stasis-derivates. I try to compensate my weakness against white by sideboarding heavily ageainst it. Neverhteless, I don't seem to hit the mark against them. Also Squandered Stasis, Turbo-Stasis and - to a lesser extent - prison decks give it something to chew on. So in which direction shall this deck's tuning go? The following options come to my mind: - going heavier into red by including more Incinerates and possibly Suq'Ata Lancers to head for more diversity, - reducing creature-count to make room for more decent control-spells (Icy Manipulator etc.), - ditching red and probably white to go heavier into blue for more counters and blue creatures, - going heavier into black by including Haunting Misery/Drain Life and possibly more black critters like Hidden Horror, - replacing black with white to add White Knights, PumpKnights, Abeyance, Swords etc. Another problem is the Sideboard. There are currently so many promising decks out there that is is tremendously difficult to find a trend. Here in Austria it is very hard to make correct metagame-decisions. So what are IYHO the best options for an allround Sideboard? Additional Options include a fourth Winter Orb, Infernal Darkness, Mana Web, Power Sink etc. Any comment, privately or via the list, is *greatly* appreciated. MAGICally yours, Sascha ">Abort, Retry, Fail?_" - MS DOS