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BMoor's Magic
The
Gathering
Deck Garage
Ex-Zubera-nt
September 14, 2007
After the last few
decks were Mirrodin block, I decided to move into more
recent territory. Fortunately, there was this Kamigawa-based
deck in my inbox. And it does use a few Ravnica cards, so
let's dive right in!
I looked at your Zubera Deck that you
fixed on October 2, 2006 for Sean. I didnt really see any
thing that could help me with my Zubera deck because mine
runs differently. Here's the deck list:
Zebra Control
Total: 64
Creatures:25
4 Dripping Tounge Zubera
4 Silent Chant Zubera
3 Floating Dream Zubera
3 Iname Life Aspect
4 Ember Fist Zubera
3 Ashen Skin Zubera
4 Theif of Hope
Other Spells:18
4 Pyroclasm
4 Devouring Greed
4 Skulltap
3 Aether Vial
3 Plague Boiler
Land:21
1 City of Brass(I only own one)
1 Grand Colieseum (Same as above)
7 Swamp
4 Mountain
4 Forest
2 Plains
2 Island
Side Board:15
4 Devouring Rage
4 Fertile Grounds
4 Carrion Feeder
1 Floating Dream Zubera
1 Ashen Skin Zubera
1 Mountain
Basically the way its supposed to run is mass zuberas and
then sacrifice them at the same time to get sick effects
using one of my many mass kill cardsand then use Iname to do
it all over again. Heres a breif decription of how the cards
are supposed to function:
Zuberas: Core of the deck
Thief of hopes: leeches opponent when i basically play
anything in the deck.
Iname: After i sacrifice all those zuberas, it allows me to
bring the hurt all over again
Plague Boiler: Since i dont have wrath gods this kills
everything except lands and while they are recovering from
the hit, im dropping cheap zuberas to keep the pain coming.
Aether vials: free zuberas
Skulltap: that little bit extra speed to draw zuberas, iname,
ect.
Devouring Greed: Large scale leech
Pyroclasm: sacrifices my zuberas, and gives me the chance to
wipe out some of their creatures(usualy pretty much clears
their board if they are playing elves soldiers or goblins).
The problems i have are that it's not fast enough. I cant
get zubera out fast enough. by the time i get enough out im
already toast. It needs speed bad. also i have no way to
search out my spirits, so i have to wait to draw them.
Counters tear this deck apart, because they counter the one
card that kills them one hit, Devouring Greed. I dont have a
terribly large budget for magic, but if you can help i would
greatly appreciate it. A guy i played against said my zubera
deck sucks, and i would like nothing more than to pwn him
with them and prove him wrong. Thanks.
-------
Thanks very much for the E-mail, and thanks again for doing
what some correspondents don't bother to: compare the deck
they're sending in with decks I've fixed in the past. You'll
notice the reference to my last Zubera deck fix? That really
makes me happy, because it tells me that people are reading
my deck fixes. Not just scanning them over when they're
bored, but really reading them and looking for advice they
themselves can use. If that's all I ever accomplish here,
it'll be more than enough.
Enough of that though, onto the deck. Step one is to try and
speed up the deck, since you did mention that it isn't fast
enough. Well, for starters, replace one each of Mountain,
Forest, and Swamp for three Terramorphic Expanse. I totally
understand that more Cities of Brass is out of your league,
but the Expanse is a common card. And it helps thin your
deck, so you've got the advantage of improving the odds on
all yoru future draws.
Next, let's replace Skulltap. My first
impulse is Perilous Research-- a blue instant speed Skulltap
that has you sacrifice as part of the effect, not the cost
(so you can play it even if you have no creatures). However,
traditionally the best way to speed up a deck is with small,
one-mana cantrips. Cards like Bandage may seem useless, but
they essentially are like a free mulligan since they
immediately dig you a card deeper. In essence, they're like
playing with fewer cards in the deck.
But don't actually use Bandage itself. Blue has much better
one-mana cantrips. Opt was the standard for years and
wouldn't lead you wrong. Then it was overshadowed by Serum
Visions, another excellent way to smooth your draws. And
speaking of Scry, Mystic Speculation is good both in the
early game as a quick way to get the chaff out of the way,
or in the late game as a reusable deck-stacker. If you're
reluctant to increase the Blue aspect of your deck so
heavily, Commune with Nature would also be a good choice, as
it would get you to a Zubera early, and even one Zubera
makes a good blocker while you draw another.
Speaking of your creatures, I think you can pull Iname, Life
Aspect. It's six mana, it only works when it goes to the
graveyard, and while it's in play it's just a 4/4. Granted,
you can send it to the graveyard whenever you want by
playing another one, but then you're wasting two Iname
triggers. The only reason I'm leaving the non-Zubera Thief
of Hope in the deck is because it has Soulshift 2, which is
just the right amount to bring back a Zubera. And the life
draining ability stalls for time as well.
But wait! Iname, Life Aspect was the key to the deck! Play a
bunch of Zuberas, sack them, then bring 'em all back! BMoor,
how could you cut such a vital card?
Simply put, there's other cards that can do the same job.
The first one that came to mind was Second Sunrise. Go ahead
and look that one up it you need to; I don't expect you to
know all the quirky rares from Mirrodin block. Basically, if
you can follow up a Plague Boiler
with
that, you'd get back not only all the Zuberas, but also the
Boiler itself along with anything else that it destroyed.
The only trouble with that is, if you wiped the board,
Second Sunrise brings back everything your opponent lost
too. It basically resets the entire board. Granted, the
board is back the way it was plus all the Zubera triggers,
which probably means you're better off than you were, but
maybe you would rather that your opponent's stuff stayed
dead.
My next idea was Gleancrawler. It not only brings back all
your Zuberas, but it also does it each of your turns, while
swinging for six. The downside here? One, it can only bring
back Zuberas that die on your turn, which makes chump
blocking with them suddenly look much less appealing. And
two, it has to still be in play at the end of your turn for
its ability to trigger. Which means it has to survive
whatever killed them. It can survive Pyroclasm, sure, but
not Plague Boiler. That very reason was why Shirei, Shizo's
Caretaker didn't get much of a response from me.
The third idea comes from way back in Magic history,
courtesy of Tenth Edition: No Rest for the Wicked. Drop it
on turn two, and at the end of your Big Turn, sacrifice it
to bring all your Zuberas back. Straightforward, eh? Feel
free to use whichever of these ideas works best for you.
Fnally, my next major revision: pull out Devouring Greed in
favor of Fallen Ideal. I know, I know, Devouring Greed is a
beating, but by replacing it with the Ideal you actually
solve a lot of problems. First is the counterspell problem.
You see, sacrificing Spirits is part of the cost to play the
Greed, not the effect. If it gets countered, as you've said
it does, then you still lose all your creatures (unless one
of the sacrificed was a Dripping-Tongue, in which case
you're down to mere 1/1 tokens). With Fallen Ideal, the
playing of the actual spell is divorced from the
sacrificing. If your opponent counters Fallen Ideal, you're
just out 2B and a card. You do still have Pyroclasm and
Plague Boiler to do the dirty work, so the Ideal was
probably just "win more" anyway.
The other problem the Ideal solves is the "all my creatures
are 1/2's and none of them can block fliers" problem.
Seriously, you must do a lot of chump blocking. With Zuberas,
every block is a chump block, and every attack is a joke. If
one of them is wearing a Fallen Ideal, however, it could
easily become a 3/3 and then a 5/4 while triggering its
brothers' abilities. And if the Ideal creature is killed
before it can swing, the Ideal goes back to your hand. No
worries. Of course, since the Ideal would be cards 9-12 for
instigating Zubera genocide, you don't even need four of
them. And you are running 64 cards right now. Just sayin'.
Finally, your mana base. I added a few cheap blue cards,
replaced a double-green with either a doule-white, a
single-black, or a triple-hybrid-black-green, and then
knocked a double-black down to a single-black. Your balance
of basic lands might need adjustment to reflect this. I'm
not doing the math for you, though, because, well, it's 1 AM
as I write this and I still haven't seen today's Lorwyn
preview card. The sacrifices I make for you....
Good luck!
~BMoor
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