"Dear Bmoor,

I am trying to make an aggro/control followed footsteps deck. OK, so here's the lowdown, I am somewhat a newcomer to the game so I have a limited knowledge of some of the best cards I can use. One problem my deck has is agains't my best friends b/g deck. It uses some dredge mechanics but has great mana producing cards, and lots of nice juicy fat guys in his deck. And he has a lot of Umezawa's Jittes... About my deck anyway, Dimir house guard can basically transmute itself into like 10 cards in the deck which is really helpful and i keep the brainspoils in there to transmute it into followed footsteps if i really need too. Oh yeah, if you could possibly keep in Szadek that would be great becuase in all the cases that i get him out (which is quite often despite his cost) he usually wins the duel for me in like 3 turns, if i don't beat my opponent to a pulp before then anyway. And I like to be original and he's cool. Anyway, if you could help out my deck that would be great, if not, oh well and thank you in advance. And i'm on a budget but cards under 20 bucks (respectably) are fair game. Again, thanks in advance.

Creatures: 20
4 Ninja of the Deep Hours
3 Morii
4 Dimir House Guard
4 Dimir Infiltrator
1 Szadek, Lord of Secrets
1 Ravenous Rats
1 Highway Robber
1 Keening Banshee
1 Nekrataal

Other spells: 17
2 Consult the Necrosages
2 Dimir Signet
4 Last Gasp
3 Followed Footsteps
2 Brainspoil
1 Honden of Night’s Reach
1 Honden of Seeing Winds
2 Infiltrator’s Magemark

Lands: 23
10 Swamps
10 Islands
3 Dimir Aqueducts"

 

Well, this is quite an undertaking.  For those of you who don't know, Magic: The Gathering's official website ran a series of articles where Jay Moldenhauer-Salazar evoloved the Dimir precon into a deck very similar to this through lots of playtesting.  I'm convinced that Nameless Nate here based his decklist off of those articles, with a few tweaks.  If that's the case, then this deck is already very polished.  I'm not sure what more I can do, but I have to at least try.

You mention a problem with Umezawa's Jitte.  Well, the best card I can think of in black or blue to deal with the Jitte is Carry Away.  A Blue enchantment that can steal any Equipment, it's pretty useless against any deck that doesn't use equipment.  But the Jitte is good enough so that a lot of people use it, and thosewho don't use Manriki-Gusari as a countermeasure.  Actually, you could just use Manriki-Gusari, it's more useful against non-Equipment-playing decks.  Carry Away, on the other hand, can deal with two Jittes because your opponent's second Jitte will just die along with the first that you stole.  And in the meantime, you can hoist your opponent on his own petard.

Your other problem was with Dredge.  The best way to stop a Dredger is to remove it from the game, put it on the bottom of its owner's library, anywhere but in play or the graveyard.  And the best cards in Black and Blue that remove things from the game are in Black and target the graveyard.  Nezumi Graverobber can eat your opponent's Dredger before it can come back, or Junktroller can put them where your opponent won't find it again.  Junktroller is also nice because Dimir House Guard can Transmute into it, it can then put that house Guard back into your library (and your next Transmute will shuffle the library and help it rise to the top), and the 0/6 body can hold off a lot as well.

So what would you drop for these things?  Well, Ravenous Rats is a bit unimpressive.  Other than that, there isn't really anything that says "I don't belong here".  As I said earlier, this deck is already a fairly streamlined, powerful deck.  You should have a good deal of success with it.
Good luck!                                                                        ~BMoor