Earlier today, I received quite an interesting e-mail. It was from my e-mail service provider, telling me about a glitch they'd just sorted out. Apparently, when I first received my smartphone, there was an error syncing it up with my E-mail account, causing several E-mails to fail to appear to me properly on my computer or my phone.

What this means is that this is the first time I've seen this decklist from Geoff, despite him having sent it to me last August. Errgh. Sorry about that!

________________________________________

Ok here are the cards. 95% of the time i'm playing multiplayer casual games with anywhere between 2 and 6 other players. The deck just doesnt seem to be consistent. mostly it seems to be that people kill my creatures or playing most things uses up a lot of my mana (the lightning reavers are my main creature, the Demigod's are powerful and a nice side win-condition) i'll tell you a bit about the main decks I play against - there is mono-green stompy beatdown, a blue-red replicate&swerve/willbender deck that uses splinter twin along with willbender or mnemonic wall or pestermite for shenanigans, a very aggressive and fast mono-black vampire bloodthirst beatdown deck with a splash of life control/steal, a White soldier deck, a green-blue infect deck, a multicolour ally deck, and an interesting and actually fairly powerful if slow rainbow and colourless Golem deck (yeah I know I'm as surprised as you are) there's one other player but he has like 24 decks and I'm not gonna waste your time naming them all lol.

Ok onto the deck - since making it I've discovered good multiplayer cards like Sizzle and Kazuul, I just don't own any and want your advice first before buying them
Instants:-
doom blade x2

go for the throat x1
(i face quite a lot of black and artifacts so these to add more kill than just terminate and to deal with the separate threats. - am thinking about cards like pyroclasm and defo Pyrohemia for mass field-kill/control though)

terminate x4

breath of malfegor x4

Sorceries:-
blightning x4 (was thinking of removing these for sizzle, blood tithe, Exsanguinate etc which are much better for multiplayer and sideboarding them for single-player)

Mana geyser x2 (lots of land on that battlefield.. Ta muchly! :P)

damnation x2

buried alive x1 (for demigods)

banefire x1 (hopefully kill someone off or a nice hit of burn)

Creatures:-
manaforge cinder x2

reassembling skeleton x2

lightning reaver x4

demigod of revenge x4

Deathbringer thoctar x1 (combos horribly with Night of Soul's Betrayal which i'm thinking of getting dunno what you think?)

Vampire nighthawk x4

Slavering nulls x2

Bloodseeker x2

Kaervek the merciless x1

Planeswalkers:-
Liliana Vess (mainly for searching, ulti is nice but not the focus)

Enchantments:-
pain magnification x1

no mercy x1 (love no mercy haha)

haunted crossroads x2

furnace of rath x1

rain of gore x1 (come across a fair bit of life gain where i play too)

Artifacts:-
veinfire borderpost x4
basilisk collar x1

Nonbasic Lands:-
terramorphic expanse x4
dragonskull summit x4

Basic Lands:-
mountain x7
swamp x7

Total 77 cards (would also like to streamline it more towards 60 and make it much faster and more deadly.)

If it gets going it can rip people apart quite quickly - especially if lightning reaver gets through (fear unfortunately doesn't work against the vamps and golems) and survives a turn or two, but more often than not it seems to stall, either hand-starved or i dont have the mana available. I tried adding in some lower-cost creatures (as it is right now- above) but it just added too many cards to the deck, bulking it out and slowing it down.

The other and obvious problem with playing multiplayer burn that hits everyone is that it generates a lot of hate from the table, which is why I thought about but didn't include Syphon mind, flame rift and such. Something like Kazuul will help with blockers but he'll need protection from the veritable storm of kill-spells and burn and oblivion rings etc the table will aim at him. Was also thinking of adding in avatar of woe as her alternate summoning cost seems like a good multiplayer idea. Subversion I thought might work well but again is yet ANOTHER high-cost card and massive-hate generator that paints a big 'kill me just so I can't bother you anymore' sign on my face.

I guess I want the impossible - a (preferably extremely) fast, hard-hitting multiplayer burn deck with good defences (or not if you can think of something that kills the table before they can all kill me - they have a strange predilection for ganging up on me anyway... - though that may have something to do with the fact I made an eldrazi deck that can reliably get out between 2 and 4 Eldrazi, for FREE, sometimes more than one turn in a row. On turn 6 :p hehehe;
and in single-player games people seem to have taken an immediate and irrational dislike to my Flash of Rotten Steel deck... Complaints about a turn 3/4 double-striking blightsteel colossus to the face being a 'metric fuck-tonne of broken' or something lol. They've banned me from playing either deck with them lmao! - In fairness though, my FoRS deck is just for when someone at the other, even more competitive, magic club i play at brags that their new, 'undefeated' deck will 'kick my ass all the way back to age of empires' and I feel the pressing and violent need to kerb-stomp them. Nothing gives a new deck a warmer welcome to the battle than a double-striking blightsteel :P

This deck though is their challenge of having a strong multiplayer deck that isn't 'broken' or combo-riffic. :P - I looove mah combos hehe

I just like the flavour of b/r, I always have - I love the creatures, the card art, watching my opponent's agitatedly trying to find the right number on their D20's as their life-points tumble :P
Most of all though I like to play with my own -original- deck ideas and combos - you won't catch me dead playing elves or Sligh, Faeries, slivers, or artifact decks (never liked artifact decks.. dunno why, they're just.. Bleugh to me somehow lol)

But yeah, I digress. In summation - A black-red multiplayer burn deck in a fairly creature heavy environment. Enjoy! :P

Geoff.

Sent from my iPhone

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So Geoff, you've got an iPhone too, huh? Hope yours didn't betray you as badly as mine seems to have. Anyway, I've kept you waiting long enough. Let's get into it.

Multiplayer is a whole different animal than 1-on-1 duels. Card advantage is more important than ever before, and it was always pretty darn important. Terminate is an amazing card in 1-on-1, but in a six-way grand melee, it means you and one other player are each down a card while the other four players are, relatively, up a card. If you want your deck to shine, you have to build it so that it doesn't run out of resources.

Black/red burn, sadly, is probably the worst strategy you could have picked in that regard, with the possible exception of Auras Voltron. Red has always been known for its ability to burn through its gas tank in a hurry. Black is slightly better in that regard, though you're still staring down the fact that you have to deal 20 damage to up to 6 opponents, which is going to take a lot of burn spells. We need to find some means to keep you from running out of steam, as well as some means of deterring your opponents from attacking you.

For starters, take out Doom Blade and Go for the Throat (we'll leave Terminate) in favor of Bituminous Blast. Cascade is a great ability for a deck that doesn't draw much extra cards, and it make the Blast into a double kill spell, a kill spell and a creature, or just about anything else in your deck. I'll concede that Bituminous Blast won't kill 5-toughness creatures, but that's why it's replacing the instants with targeting restrictions. If you regularly go up against creatures with bigger backsides (or don't want to replace two-mana instants with five-mana ones for concern of your curve) then replace them with Tragic Slip instead. It may not look like much, but you can get the Morbid trigger to go off pretty regularly if you pay attention and multiplayer does tend to spawn some pretty big creatures.

I'd also like to add in a few Backlash. As an instant, Backlash can be used to deter an opponent's ready-to-attack creature, or help one player who's attacking another by tapping a blocker and dealing some more damage. It's also hilarious when you hit someone else's Blightsteel Colossus or Hypnotic Specter or whatnot.

Adding Backlash would also set you up nicely for one of my favorite Red recursion spells, Surreal Memoir. The fact that you get two instants back makes it pretty close to a Red Divination, except you already know you're getting useful spells from it. You just don't know which ones exactly.

Blood Tithe and Exsanguinate are definitely good choices in multiplayer and I'm glad you thought of them. The only trouble is that X spells don't work well with Cascade. If you do choose to add Bituminous Blast, definitely choose Blood Tithe over Exsanguinate. In fact, that singleton Banefire isn't doing you much good either, so I'd recommend removing it along with Mana Geyser. Spells that do naught but give you more mana are a great way to run out of cards-- they're only good in Storm decks, decks full of X spells, and combo decks. You, Geoff, are running none of that and your solitary Banefire does not justify the presence of Mana Geyser.

I'm not thrilled with Haunted Crossroads either. It might look cute since it lets you get creatures back, but it really doesn't actually get you any extra cards. It just makes you harder to deck out. If you want to get creatures back, I'd replace the Crossroads with Torrent of Souls. Or to be really cute, Unhallowed Pact, which can double as a time-released Enslave. Better yet, Reaping the Graves, since it fits in with the Surreal Memoir subtheme.

I'd also like to add in some Undying. Undying solves both of your problems-- it discourages people from attacking you (since your blockers will just come back bigger) and it helps you to not run out of cards (since your opponents will have to kill them twice). Butcher Ghoul and Hound of Griselbrand are good chocies, but the best has to be Mikaeus the Unhallowed. He grants +1/+1 and Undying to all your creatures. Imagine an Undying Demigod of Revenge! He also comes with a psuedo-No Mercy effect, but only against Humans.

But since you mentioned that you enjoy No Mercy effects, perhaps you'd prefer Dread. No undying, but its No Mercy effect applies to everything and it's one bigger than Mikaeus (and every bit as evasive). No Mercy is very effective in multiplayer, as it encourages players to attack each other instead of you.

Finally, I'd remove Slavering Nulls and Blood Seeker, and up your Damnation count to four. I like the idea of playing this deck with a control mindset, and Damnation is great for when the rest of the table just seems to have it out for you.

I hope all this has helped, Geoff. I'm just sorry the fix came so long after you sent me the E-mail.

And there's plenty more E-mails that got lost in the smartphone shuffle, so it would appear I've got my work cut out for me for the next few weeks... or months. At least you all won't have to wait long for my next article!

Good luck!

~BMoor