I played this deck a while ago when my friend, who noticed I used a lot of
rares in my decks, challenged me to a match with only common cards. I put
together this deck, roughly based on the suicide black deck in Extended, but
with a little Drain Life insaneness. (He played a deck similar to 9-land stompy,
I forget his decklist.) All the cards are common, by the way, no uncommons are
involved.
Beatdown Creatures (16)
4 Carnophage (B for 2/2, lose a life each upkeep from Exodus)
4 Dauthi Horror (1B for 2/1 with Shadow, can't be blocked by white
creatures from Tempest)
4 Dauthi Slayer (BB for 2/2 with Shadow, attacks each turn if able from
Tempest)
4 Dauthi Marauder (2B for 3/1 with Shadow from Tempest)
Creature Pump (8)
4 Unholy Strength (Enchant Creature, B for +2/+1 from Alpha through 5th
Edition, and again in 7th Edition)
4 Endless Scream (Enchant Creature, XB for +X/+0 from Tempest)
Drain Life Insaneness (16)
4 Dark Ritual (B for BBB from Alpha-5th, and each 'main' expansion in a
block except for Invasion)
4 Culling the Weak (B, sacrifice a creature: BBBB from Exodus)
4 Bog Witch (2B for 1/1, B, Tap, discard a card: Add BBB to mana pool from
Mercadian Masques)
4 Drain Life (X1B, deal X damage to target creature or player, gain X life,
only black mana may be spent on X, from...I think Alpha-5th and Mirage, there
might have been more.)
Land (20)
4 Peat Bog (Comes into play tapped with two counters, tap, remove a
counter: add BB to mana pool, sacrifice when no counters are on it from
Mercadian Masques)
16 Swamp (Duh.)
The strategy is simple: beat with black weenie creatures, then power up a
drain life. I remember this one particular scene from a game I played with this
deck: I had a Dauthi Horror, Dauthi Slayer with Unholy Strength, and Bog Witch
in play. I attacked with my non-Bog Witch creatures, which brought him down to
10. I then tapped two Swamps (2 mana), discarded Endless Scream to activate Bog
Witch (4 mana), cast Culling the Weak sacrificing Bog Witch (7 mana), sacrificed
the Horror to another Culling the Weak (10 mana), then cast Dark Ritual (12
mana). He thought I was going to play a giant Endless Scream. That would not
have been necessarily bad, but it's much more fun to fire a huge Drain Life at
your opponent's head, no?
I don't think this deck is bad for a pile of commons. I want to leave you
with this: Commons aren't necessarily bad because they're plentiful or cheap.
Blastoderm is common. Rancor is common. Rogue Elephant, which I believe is one
of the best one-drops ever printed (Out of what I consider to be each color's
best 1 drop ever, 2 have been common, 1 uncommon, and 1 rare. Green has
Elephant, Black got Carnophage, Red got Jackal Pup, and White got Savannah
Lions. Blue doesn't get a say in this, the only one-drops they have that I can
even think of that are, in any way, shape, or form decent are Flying Men and
Spindrift Drake. Cloud Sprite if you stretch it. One blue's one-drop, I'd much
rather cast something like Whispers or Opt. Now, back to your regularly
scheduled article), is common. Where would blue mages be without their common
Counterspell?
Well, Invasion Block Constructed. But that's another story.
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