I feel bad for having written up that big story about the deck i was going to play at states and now be telling you that i have drastically changed my outlook. Upon closer inspection of some of the Type 2 decks available, i feel that my current choice to play Red/Black is a better one. I started out playing the Red/white/black deck based on the angry gerrard design....but after reading over the World Champion deck built by Van de Logt i thought heavily about this alternate structure. Characterized as "a metagame powerhouse", the black/red beats deck was built with beating in mind. Granted, it took a massive hit in the speed department with loss of dark ritual, i began to think that this deck could be reshaped to fit and compete in the new environment.

Some of the cards are in the deck for obvious reasons....Duress of course to dispatch counterspells which may hinder a second turn Blazing specter, Skizzik, or Scuta courtesy of the Dark Rituals. However, instead of the first turn duress, Van de logt could also have dropped a first turn Plague Spitter if he was in the second game of a match against an opposition deck. Van de logt would have realized by then whether or not the spitter could upset the lock usually set by 1/1 merfolk or other small creatures. Thus, by buying the time with the spitter, he could afford to wait out the control deck untill he could unleash the bigger guns to wreak havoc upon anything that made it through the plague. Plus, with all the removal he could basically get rid of any blocker that stood in his way and get around any Meddling Mage that nullified one of the three removal.If he needed to use an unkickered skizzik, he could get it back later with the crypt angel....or the specter, or the f

First and foremost, the issue of speed. In the early designs of the deck i merely left out the speed issue and continued on my way using the plague spitters and the other creatures with haste, usually knocking down anything that took more than a few turns to get going. Then, after playtesting against a newer, ultra fast threshold deck, i realized speed was a problem. To make matters worse, it couldnt win a game against a top notch Fires deck. So now i had the dilemma of how to make the deck faster, i felt that the cards in the deck were very well suited, i just needed them a turn or two sooner. And so i found myself looking at Nightscape Familiars, cheap, very effective, and it brought out 12 of the 16 creatures with Haste one full turn faster....the only problem is that it absolutely cannot be used with plague spitter at the same time, and so, the familiars sit in the sideboard, awaiting a very fast deck to play against when i am in need of speed. I chose to sideboard their turn causing them to lose something, take the pain, or use a counterspell....freeing you during your turn. But even when playing with the plague spitters and not familiars....toughness 3 creatures are suddenly brought into range of early flame bursts, thus completing the combination. I chose to play Addle because although a little slower than duress, it can grab creatures too....if an opponent counterspells your addle because they have a good creature in hand...then it would have done the job the duress would have done anyway. And of course there is Innocent Blood, because if that good creature they have in there hand is an Irridescent Angel..you need a special kind of firepower. Due to speed constraints of the deck i would highly recommend this over sandstone deadfall as a removal for the angel. I know they could always just sack a puny little 1/1 or bear or something else insignificant to get around the Blood...but if you nuke everything else and apply a steady stream of fire...they wont be able to.