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BMoor's Magic The
Gathering
Deck Garage
Welcome to the third E-mail of my seven-deck marathon, as I try to give an entire playgroup the benefit of my advice all at once so no one friend will be left out. Let's get straight to work.
Ah, Grave Pact. Such fun times, killing off all your own creatures and watching your opponent's die too. Let's see where this deck went awry. You've got plenty of good cards here-- Mortify, Debtors' Knell, Nantuko Husk, but there are a few issues.
First of all, the mana issue. Grave Pact costs 1BBB, so it requires a heavy commitment to black. A Black/White deck might have some trouble, but we can minimize that. You've got 4 Orzhov Signet, which is good, but I'd like you to replace 3 Plains and a Swamp with 4 Flagstones of Trokair. You might ask, why am I giving you more Plains if you need a lot of Black mana? Simple, really. When Flagstones of Trokair is put into a graveyard, you get to go search for a Plains card. So what? The Flagstones already tap for white mana. But Godless Shrine taps for white or black mana, and counts as a Plains. So, if a Flagstone is destroyed, you can search up one of your dual lands. How can you get your Flagstones destroyed? They have a built-in self-destruct mechanism called "the Legend rule"-- simply play a second Flagstone and they'll both become Godless Shrines. Clever, no?
That should help you get the colors of mana you need more easily, but getting land is one half of the equation. The other half is having spells to play. To wit-- what is Helldozer doing in here? This is just plain bad-- a 6/5 for 3BBB with no trample or evasion, that has an expensive ability which taps it so you can't attack! Yes, yes, it untaps if you target a nonbasic land, but by turn seven, why are you worried about spending BBB to destroy a nonbasic land? They should have all the mana they need at that point anyway. Take out Helldozer. In its place, you should add something that will be easy on your mana base. A really good choice would probably be Gift of Estates, since it can go get you three Plains (or Godless Shrines) and thus take land out of your deck, so you're more likely to draw a spell when you need one. You did mention your difficulties topdecking. But between Flagstones and Estates, this deck just doesn't have all that many Plains to search for. If you can't get Flagstones, Estates would make a good card here, but otherwise I'd prefer you found a creature to fill this slot, to ensure you'll have sacrifice fodder if you need it. Orzhov Guildmage would be a nice inclusion who can gain you life, and his black ability has a lot of impact in multiplayer. Mourning Thrull has the same hybrid benefit going for it, can also help you gain life, and has flying if you need such a blocker. Both the Thrull and the Guildmage are also both black and white, so they interact with Teysa well. And because their mana costs are fairly low, it's unlikely that either will trigger Endrek Sahr's self-sacrifice ability before you're ready by dumping too many Thrulls into play. Be aware, though, that Mourning Thrull is a Thrull too!
One more option for replacing Helldozer would be to bring Phyrexian Arena into the main deck. If drawing the right cards soon enough is difficult for you, the easiest solution is to draw more cards. You've got Gristle Grinner to gain life for you, so the 1 life loss is no consequence at all. And it's probably fine if ol' Dozer's replacement isn't a creature, Endrek and Teysa can crank out tokens fairly easily.
Hopefully that should give you the edge you need, between the souped-up mana base and the softened mana curve, and especially if the Arena's extra card drawing comes into the maindeck. This deck has a lot of potential, really, all it needed was a little fine tuning. Good luck!
~BMoor
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