9.01.04  [Mono/Darkness]
“Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.” Those 3 words are the mantra of the environmentally conscious. Although Darkness critters aren’t known for their love of Nature—because Darkness creatures hate Nature—those 3 words are certainly the tenants by which a mono-Darkness Jack Viper deck operates. There is creature destruction (reduce), returning creatures to the hand (reuse), and graveyard recursion (recycle). Here’s what Patrick W. had to say about his Jack Viper deck:

This deck’s main focus is around control and creature destruction. It can win without Jack Viper, but it's usually much easier to win with him. That way I can easily use my blockers again and again, along with no drawback on stinger worm, and multiple creature effects. There's a lot of hand destruction and creature removal as well. The way I play it is conservatively at first with almost no attacks or suicides. Then I'll try to control the board and set myself up in a good position. To win I try to take as many easy shots as possible, and use snake attack, whenever the board is clear. With control, I found this deck doesn't really need a fattie to win. It's mono dark, and I made it cause I wanted to use Jack Viper.

Here is Patrick’s Jack Viper Recycling Plant, Inc.:
4 Marrow Ooze, The Twister
4 Jack Viper, Shadow of Doom
4 Wailing Shadow, Belbetphlo
4 Gray Balloon, Shadow of Greed
3 Horrid Worm
2 Swamp Worm
3 Stinger Worm
2 Chaos Worm
4 Snake Attack
4 Terror Pit
4 Ghost Touch
2 Lost Soul
40 cards

Patrick’s deck manages to do a lot of devastating things at once, but let’s see if we can wiggle around with some card choices to make the deck more compact.

[Creatures]

[Jack Viper Evolution Line]
There is nothing to fix in this department. Patrick has the ideal evolution bait to evolution creature ratio, 2:1. Given the choices for Ghost creatures in the game currently, Patrick chose solid ones for Jack Viper—Gray Balloon and Wailing Shadow Belbetphlo. Night Master, Dark Raven, and Masked Horror are too slow for most people’s taste even though 2 can block/hit and one has an enter-play discard effect. Black Feather is just too much creature sack for a deck that already grinds its own creatures to a pulp—even with Jack Viper out. So I’ll keep the Ghost lineup foundation the same.

[Parasite Worm Evolution Line]
At first glance Patrick’s creature selection suggests that he wants a Ghost-Parasite Worm hybrid deck. Upon closer examination of the Parasite Worm choices he made, I think what he’s really trying to capture is the additional creature kill afforded by Swamp Worm and the ‘speed’ represented by Stinger Worm. Including those 2 creatures in the deck equal more fodder for Chaos Worm, but Patrick only put 2 Chaos Worms in his deck. It appears that a fleshed out Parasite Worm line is not Patrick’s true agenda. So, I’m going to focus on the two most useful worms in the deck—Horrid Worm and Chaos Worm—by increasing Horrid Worm’s count to 4. By now most players know the combo possibilities of Horrid Worm and Ghost Touch. Horrid Worm is especially irksome if the deck’s signature creature—Jack Viper—is on the field because it’s going to come back for the chance at more discard action. As for Chaos Worm, it’s a walking Terror Pit. In the Post-Rampage environment it’s wise not to put your entire creature kill into spells. Chaos Worm can sometimes knock off 2 creatures the turn it drops and somewhat compensates for the lack of “kill blockers” (ones that trade shots) and Death Smoke in the deck.

While Swamp Worm is more creature destruction, it’s not going to be that effective against increasingly popular speed and bounce decks. By the time Swamp Worm makes an appearance on the field versus a good number of builds, it’s going to kill an opponent’s “extra.” While destroying and opponent’s creature is always nice, Patrick could do it a bit quicker with Death Smoke because the spell has a greater chance of stopping some nasty evolutions before they happen. Even though the sack effect of Stinger Worm is ‘negated’ by Jack Viper, one cannot always assume Jack Viper will be out when trying to drop it. The strategy of losing 1 creature to bring another slightly stronger one out is going to be left out of the deck. Having Stinger Worm get killed or bounced without Jack Viper out is wasteful. Changes to the deck so far are:

-2 Swamp Worm
-3 Stinger Worm
+1 Horrid Worm

[Other Hitters]
Marrow Ooze doubles as attacker & chump blocker. It’s just a given partner in crime to Jack Viper—the funniest and quickest candidate for a Snake Attack run. The deck needs a 1-drop anyway. With the loss of an early drop ‘power hitter’ in Stinger Worm I’ve turned to Bone Spider. Bone Spider is very underestimated--but it can't be Tornado Flame or Hammered and packs the same power as Stinger Worm. Bouncing it won’t equal more loss of Patrick’s creatures either. Bone Spider’s self-sacking when something smaller rams it or its being destroyed can be offset by Jack Viper. Bone is especially useful for ramming evolutions like Barkwhip, Paladin, Larba and other 5000 and below threats. If Patrick’s willing to use Stinger Worm, then Bone Spider shouldn’t be too awkward to run. So we have:

+4 Bone Spider

[Spells]

[Destruction]
Patrick’s lineup of spell destruction “mysteriously” omits Death Smoke. Well, that’s not really a mystery to me. The rise in popularity of evolution creatures has significantly diminished Death Smoke’s effectiveness. But Death Smoke is still a competent Darkness destruction spell because it can knock off a fair number of evolution bait creatures and blockers. I’ll add 2 copies to the deck. Terror Pit needs no explanations and should always see 4 copies in a mono-Darkness deck, which is the case in Patrick’s original build. As for Snake Attack, many believe it’s the glue that holds a Jack Viper deck together besides Jack Viper. Whenever you build a deck around a creature or spell conventional wisdom dictates that you should have 4 copies of that card, and that is precisely what Patrick has done. In playtesting I’ve noticed that sometimes 1 or 2 Snake Attack end up as mana more often than not, but 4 copies is still ideal for the deck since the deck must hit hard when attack runs manage to jump off. So we have:

+2 Death Smoke

[Discard]
Ghost Touch is the cheapest hand discard in the game. As mentioned before it can combo with Horrid Worm. It gives this deck something to do on turn 2 besides drop another Marrow Ooze, and sometimes it may target a player’s last card in hand or the most devastating. Patrick seems very enthusiastic about the deck’s hand control tactics so the Ghost Touches will be left at 4. Lost Soul is a slow drop—especially in a mono-Darkness deck—without mana acceleration or heavy blocker stall. Unless Lost Soul knocks down a sizable hand it’s really not worth waiting until the 7th turn to drop it instead of multiple hitters. Both Horrid Worm and Ghost Touch should provide enough hand discard mayhem for the deck. However, if Patrick’s meta is rampant with Water decks that like to do a lot of drawing throughout the game, then Lost Soul will be fun to run. Last round of changes:

-2 Lost Soul

With the fixes, here’s the new build:

4 Horrid Worm
2 Chaos Worm
4 Bone Spider
4 Gray Balloon, Shadow of Greed
4 Wailing Shadow Belbetphlo
4 Jack Viper, Shadow of Doom
4 Marrow Ooze, the Twister
4 Terror Pit
4 Ghost Touch
4 Snake Attack
2 Death Smoke
40 cards

The deck runs a bit faster than the original build, but still keeps most of the original’s basic tactics. If Patrick wants to amplify the discard aspect of this build, then he could take the deck to 42 cards and add back 2 Lost Soul or drop 2 of something to add them and keep the deck at 40 cards. Many Jack Viper builds experiment with “kill blockers” like Bloody Squito and Dark Clown. Those 2 blockers are a great fit for creature recursion decks because they can take out potentially harmful hitters like Valdios and Baby Zoppe and can come back to do it again. There are at least 4 ways to make a viable Jack Viper deck; the one you make depends on what your deck’s overall focus will be besides creature recursion.

Hope this helps! And keep recycling!