Subject: TubThumpin V2 (The Living Death deck) Date: Fri, 31 Oct 1997 09:58:37 +0100 From: Matt Williams Hi folks, More experimentation with my Buried Alive/Living Death deck revealed certain weaknesses, namely counter decks, Worbs and other such nasties. You may remember from the first version (or not) that the deck was B/R with Shivans and a splash of burn. Weeeelll, after much deliberation I decided to drop the red altogether and switch to blue. Why? Well, blue has the Air Elementals and Waterspout Djinns, ok replacements for the Shivan. The Benthic Behemoth, another good fattie and of course counterspells. As I mentioned before, the deck performs quite consistently, a God draw can get you 3 fatties on your 2nd turn (although this is VERY rare). Usually you get your fatties out on your 5th-7th turn. I'm still not sure that this deck is tourney quality as it's rather combo reliant, kill the Living Deaths and the deck dies horribly. I need an alternate route to victory, or some other way of getting the creatures back from the graveyard but I just don't know what else to change. Anyhow, here's the listing. 4 Buried Alive 4 Dark Ritual 4 Living Death 3 Mana Vault The combo. I know that seems like a LOT of mana but I've seen a fair bit of LD around lately and this deck needs a lot of mana to make it work. 1 Waterspout Djinn 2 Air Elemental 2 Spirit of the Night 1 Benthic Behemoth 2 Necrosavant The biggies. Put 1 Spirit, 1 Behemoth and 1 Necrosavant in the graveyard with the Buried Alives ASAP. Then sit back and wait for a Living Death to come up. I originally had Vampiric Tutors in here but switched to Mystical Tutors as there aren't really any secrets with this deck, it's pretty obvious that after a Buried Alive you are going to have some way of getting them back. 2 Mystical Tutor 2 Crypt Rats 1 Dismiss 2 Dark Banishing 4 Nekrataal 3 Man-o'-War 4 Counterspell Protect the combo and control the early game (hopefully). Also, a nice little twist is that if any Man-O-Wars and/or Nekrataals happen to go to the graveyard before you cast your Living Death you can resolve their CIP effects after you've cast the Living Death, thereby killing or returning some of your opponent's returning creatures (if any). 4 City of Brass 10 Island 6 Swamp The Cities are there for the sideboard mostly (which is still being worked on), land count has proved adequate so far. The sideboard has been built with PBloom (Lobotomies), Burn and Counter (Honorable Passages, Mana Webs, Chill) and Stompy/Aluren/Recycle (Perish) in mind. Not sure what to change here if anything. Maybe some Disenchants? SB: 1 Dismiss SB: 3 Honorable Passage SB: 2 Perish SB: 2 Chill SB: 4 Lobotomy SB: 3 Mana Web Feel free to try it out and give me feedback. Oh yeah, it needs a better name. Matt