Hey, I was looking around for deck help, and I found your site...I was about to start heading into more serious play, but not too serious yet. My deck seems effective, but I am worried about size, and if it could be better. My deck is :

Land (x29)

Orzhov Basilica (x4)

Abandoned Outpost

City of Brass

Swamp (x10)

Plains (x11)

Terramorphic Expanse (x2)

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Creatures: (x21)

White:

Angel of Mercy (x3)

Ivory Giant

Lieutanant Kirtar

Veteran Armorer (x2)

Black:

Corpulent Corpse

Dimir House Guard

Poisonbelly Ogre (x4)

Black/White:

Agent of Masks (x3)

Angel of Despair

Souls of the Faultless (x2)

Artifact:

Dross Golem (x2)

-----------------------------------------

Enchantments (x21)

Black:

Fear

Hissing Miasma (x2)

Relic Bane (x2)

Seal of Doom

White:

Concerned Effort

Faith's Fetters

Glorious Anthem

Griffin Guide (x2)

Pacifism (x2)

Pentarch Ward (x2)

Proper Burial

Spirit Loop

Temporal Isolation

Black/White:

Pillory of the Sleepless (x3)

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Instants (x13)

White:

Chant of Vitu-Ghazi (x2)

Chastise

Fortify

Righteousness

'To Arms

Valor Made Real

Black:

Cremate

Douse in Gloom (x4)

Tendrils of Corruption

---------------------------------

Sorceries (x2)

Saltblast

Curse of the Cabal

---------------------------------

Artifacts (x6)

Angel's Feather

Mirari

Orzhov Signet

Phyrexian Hulk

Prismatic Lens

Skullmead Cauldron

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Card Total......92

Most people say that because of the deck size, this would be easy to beat...Until they play me.

I found your website, and was hoping that you could help me with my deck. I started working on my decks again a few months ago. I started playing MTG at a party, and apparently had a knack for it. Since then, my favorite decks have been my Red/Green/White sliver deck, and the one I need help with, my Black/White deck. The focus of this deck is mainly to keep their creatures useless, keep mine alive, get my life up, and keep their life falling. The only problem with my deck is the fact that direct damage decks, mostly red decks, get damage done before I am able to save myself. My budget is decent ( for a teenager ) , and is willing to shift to accomodate this, but access to buy from online sites is rare. Any reccomendations will help. Also, my deck is a " little " over the 60 cards reccomended, anything you think I could drop, or at least give me your build of this deck?

And if you are willing, will you tell me if a good version of my sliver deck would be better than this deck? Thanks for anything you answer.
 

Thanks, (anonymous reader) for sending in your deck. Let's see what we can do to make this thing tick a little better. Your strategy is what's called a "bleeding" strategy. Let's look at the cards you're currently running that best fit this strategy and make sure we have enough of each: 

4 x Poisonbelly Ogre

4 x Agent of Masks

4 x Souls of the Faultless

4 x Hissing Miasma

4 x Pillory of the Sleepless

4 x Douse in Gloom
 

These are the cards that most directly fit the strategy of your deck. All of them have the potential to deal damage to your opponent, while making their creature assault more difficult, so 4 of each just makes sense. After looking at these cards, I thought of another good strategy you might employ. The Miasma and the Souls of the Faultless damage your opponent if they attack, but if they're smart, they're not going to be doing much attacking until they can take care of these deterrents. Why don't we MAKE them attack you? You didn't mention if you were going for cards in a certain format (Standard, Extended, Vintage, etc.), so I'll mention several cards in your colors that would do the job:
 

Instigator - (Mercadian Masques rare)

Maddening Imp - (Tempest rare)

Master Warcraft - (Ravnica rare)

Nettling Imp - (Revised uncommon)

Season of the Witch - (The Dark rare)

Bullwhip - (Stronghold uncommon)

Imps' Taunt - Tempest uncommon)

Norritt - (Ice Age common)

Some of these may be hard to come by, but any of them should accomplish the desired result. I would probably play a total of four cards out of this group - whatever you can get your hands on.

What if your opponent has few/no creatures to attack with (i.e. those red burn decks)? Forbidden Orchard would be a perfect card for this circumstance. Every time you tap it, you get mana, and your opponent gets a 1/1 creature that does damage to them! Or another option would be the Hunted creatures (Horror and Lammasu would fit your colors) to give your opponents creatures and give you big, efficient creatures in case the bleeding strategy isn't quite enough to take your opponent out. Careful, though, if you choose the Horror, since the tokens have protection from black!
 

Even with all the defense you have, there are going to be times when their creatures get out of control and you won't be able to stop them. For this, mass removal is best. The best options are Wrath of God and Damnation. If these are out of your price range, some more spot removal would be okay. Taking from what you already have in your deck, Faith's Fetters is the top option, since it renders a creature useless, gains you life, and is a white source to get around any protection from black (Akroma, Hunted Horror tokens, etc.) that may be running around out there.
 

Oh, and since you are playing black and white, you might as well keep in your Angel of Despair. She makes a great finisher if things start to drag out. One more of her would be appropriate since she is so expensive.

I haven't really addressed how to deal with red burn decks. Ivory Mask comes to mind as a good way. Other possibilities would be simply to play C.O.P. Red or the more versatile Story Circle. Some players think that's a cheap way out, but it's no cheaper than them throwing burn spells at your face!
 

I feel like I've been a bit disorganized here in my suggestions, but hopefully you can make some sense of all this. Based upon what we've got so far, one possible build of this deck would be this:
 

4 x Poisonbelly Ogre

4 x Agent of Masks

4 x Souls of the Faultless

4 x Hissing Miasma

4 x Pillory of the Sleepless

4 x Douse in Gloom

4 x Master Warcraft

4 x Wrath of God

2 x Ivory Mask

2 x Hunted Lammasu

2 x Angel of Despair

4 x Forbidden Orchard

4 x Orzhov Basilica

7 x Swamp

7 x Plains

60 cards

The cards you were running before that I left out fit into one of four categories:

1) Offensive creatures. Offensive creatures work counter-intuitively with cards like Poisonbelly Ogre, so you probably don't need more than the few I have in the decklist above.
 

2) Life gain. Your best defense is reusable defense (Souls of the Faultless) or creature neutralization (Pillory of the Sleepless). Life gain by itself only provides a one turn solution.

3) Creature enchantments. Creature enchantments for your creatures have a strike against you before you start. If you enchant a creature and they destroy the creature, you've lost two cards to the one they used to kill it. Not a good trade.

4) Random 1-of's. Some of the other cards you were playing are fine cards, but we just can't fit everything in this deck, so I narrowed it down to the best options that would fit.

Taking your deck in this direction and really focusing it should yield more predictable and consistent results. As for which deck (this or the Slivers) you should run, why not play both? If you play one deck for a long time, it gets boring for your and your opponents. It's good to have a few favorites that you can switch between.