Today's article comes in response to an e-mail from Mag Mar:

 

Hi I saw your post in Pojo and would like to ask for advice on this deck I bought. I have never played Magic so I don't know anything but I heard this was a good deck.

 

Underworld Herald

 

Lands

24 Swamp

 

Creatures

1 Agent of the Fates

1 Blood Scrivener

1 Crypt Ghast

1 Desecration Demon

1 Erebos's Emissary

1 Herald of Torment

3 Mogis's Marauder 

1 Pack Rat

4 Rakdos Cackler

4 Rakdos Shred-Freak 

3 Spiteful Returned

3 Tormented Hero 

2 Xathrid Necromancer 

 

Other spells

2 Bile Blight

3 Doom Blade

1 Fated Return

1 Gift of Orzhova

1 Hero's Downfall

2 Ultimate Price

 

Sideboard

3 Cremate

2 Dark Betrayal

4 Duress

2 Gift of Orzhova

2 Pharika's Cure

2 Staff of the Death Magus

 

Any tips would be great, thanks a lot.

 

---

 

Thanks for writing in, Mag Mar. First, since you're new to Magic, I'd like to direct you to a recent article I wrote about building your first deck: http://www.pojo.com/magic/Deck%20Garage/Mattedesa/2014/7-16.shtml. This link takes you through some basic principles you'll want to remember as you adjust your deck.

 

The first step in that article says to, "Play your deck as it is." In all honesty, I would still recommend that to you, Mag Mar. You were told this was a pretty good deck, and compared to a lot of new players' decks, it is. Before you can make too many big adjustments, I'd learn more about how it works.

 

But since you were kind enough to write in, Mag Mar, I'll help you out a little. Let's go over some of the things you would discover if you were to play this deck for a while.

 

1) This deck likes to kill stuff. Bile Blight, Doom Blade, Hero's Downfall, Ultimate Price, and even Agent of Fates help keep your opponent short of serious threats.

 

2) This deck likes to be aggressive with creatures. Rakdos Cackler, Rakdos Shred-Freak, Tormented Hero, Spiteful Returned, and Pack Rat all come down for 2 mana or less. Agent of Fates, Herald of Torment, and Desecration Demon, while costing 3 or 4, are aggressive creatures for their cost as well.

 

3) This deck likes to pump up its creatures. After the first few turns, a 2/2 creature can easily get outclassed. Erebos's Emissary, Herald of Torment, Spiteful Returned, and Gift of Orzhova all help to make your early creatures grow to be useful later in the game. 

 

4) There's a sub-theme of Humans in this deck. It comes with 13 humans, and with the Xathrid Necromancer, they can return as 2/2 Zombies when they die.

 

So, now that I've helped you discover what this deck is trying to do, the plan is to make it do these things more efficiently. I'm going to heed my own advice and keep the changes small for now. First is the "killing creatures" plan. 8 cards that kill creatures is pretty good, already. All of the kill spells are good in their own right, but all have their own uses. Hero's Downfall is the best of the bunch because it works against almost anything. The other cards have their own restrictions - Bile Blight, while it can potentially get rid of 2 or more creatures at once, is not very helpful if your opponent has a big creature. Doom Blade will work wonders until you play an opponent who's loaded with black like you are. Ultimate Price can get around creatures that have hexproof or indestructible, but it lets the opponent choose which creature they want to lose. If I were to make any adjustment here, I would take out the two Ultimate Price - as hexproof and indestructible creatures aren't terribly common - and put in two more Hero's Downfall. 

 

-2 Ultimate Price

+2 Hero's Downfall

 

Next, I'd like to look at the aggressive creature part of the deck. While Pack Rat is a great creature, you only have one, and I don't know that it really fits what this deck is trying to do. I'd drop him. Since we have the human sub-theme, I'd like to go up to 4 Tormented Heroes in place of one of the Cacklers. Also, let's go up to 3 on the Agent of the Fates. His deathtouch will be a big help if opponents get out bigger creatures against you. Plus, you might be able to target him once in a while and make the opponent sacrifice something! Desecration Demon is great, but we want to keep our mana costs low, so we'll leave him as a one-of.

 

-1 Pack Rat

-1 Rakdos Cackler

+1 Tormented Hero

+2 Agent of the Fates

 

The third thing was pumping creatures. The bestow creatures work great for this because they can be used as an early aggressive creature, or later in the game to pump up an existing creature. The highest mana cost of these is for Erebos's Emissary - I'd probably drop him and add one more Herald of Torment. The flying bonus the Herald gives could be very important. Speaking of flying bonus, Gift of Orzhova does this too, and gives lifelink. Black decks tend to lose life fairly quickly, so a way to gain it back is important. Let's add in one more of those.

 

-1 Erebos's Emissary

+1 Herald of Torment

+1 Gift of Orzhova

 

The human sub-theme hinges around Xathrid Necromancer. If we were going all-out humans, I would put in more of him, but I think that would hurt our aggressive strategy to put in more 3-drops - especially ones that are only 2/2. We'll just leave in the 2 we have for a nice little bonus sometimes.

 

There are a few other assorted changes I would like to make. Fated Return is way too expensive for what it does and really doesn't fit the deck. It can go. Crypt Ghast is most useful in expensive mana cost decks, and we don't have much of that. He can go as well. And while Blood Scrivener is a useful way to draw cards, if you don't have an empty hand, his ability doesn't work, and often, you're going to want to hold onto one of your kill spells instead of playing it immediately. Instead, I would put in 3 copies of another Human that has a similar ability - Pain Seer. Since we took out the higher casting cost cards and added in some more lifelink, we can afford the damage he would do to us. Plus, as a 2/2 for 2 mana, he fits right in with our aggressive creature strategy. A lot of times new players don't see the value in paying life to do things, but good players eventually recognize that paying a small amount of life is worth getting more cards. At the end of the game, it doesn't matter if you win 20-0 or 1-0. If you can spend some of that 20 life to help you get the opponent to 0, it's a good deal. Finally, with the cards we've added and taken out, we have too many cards. Since our deck is less mana hungry now, we can take out a couple of swamps.

 

-1 Fated Return

-1 Crypt Ghast

-1 Blood Scrivener

+3 Pain Seer

-2 Swamp

 

Before I finish, I noticed that you put a sideboard with this deck. A sideboard is very hard to advise for - especially if you are just starting playing. I would leave the sideboard as is for now, and really focus on learning what the deck does with the main cards. That way, you can learn what the weaknesses are against the decks you are more likely to see. That's a big part of what a sideboard is - cards that will help you deal with specific threats opponents might have.

 

If you were to make these changes, the deck would look something like this:

 

Lands

22 Swamp

 

Creatures

3 Agent of the Fates

1 Desecration Demon

3 Pain Seer

2 Herald of Torment

3 Mogis's Marauder 

3 Rakdos Cackler

4 Rakdos Shred-Freak 

3 Spiteful Returned

4 Tormented Hero 

2 Xathrid Necromancer 

 

Other spells

2 Bile Blight

3 Doom Blade

2 Gift of Orzhova

3 Hero's Downfall

 

Once again, the most important thing is to get comfortable playing the deck. Even if you lose a lot at first, learn what works well and what doesn't. Then you'll be able to make further tweaks to improve.

 

Best of luck in getting started with Magic!

 

-mattedesa