We Have Internet Back!

Hello everyone!

It's been a very long time since I last posted, and that is because today we finally got internet here at camp and I have been able to catch up on Magic 2013 and get a chance to finally post something up! Magic 2013 is a very cool set for a lot of reasons, but there are some certain subtleties that I feel do need to be addressed in the set, starting primarily with the bread and butter commons:

Counterspells:
There will no longer be mana leak in standard! The good counterspells that will be around post rotation will be Negate, Essence Scatter, and Dissipate. That really isn't a lot of choices, and frankly Essence Scatter is never really good so it's just Negate and Dissipate.

Creature Spot Removal:
Doom Blade, Go for the Throat, Galvanic Blast will no longer be around, so our default creature removal is taking a hit. Our choices include Dead Weight, Geistflame, Pillar of Flame, Tragic Slip, Unsummon, Victim of Night, Murder, and Barter in Blood are basically where our choices lay which are either muck more narrow or more expensive than before.

Sweepers:
Day of Judgement is not being reprinted! Magmaquake, Mutilate, and Terminus are our go-to choices which all have their drawbacks.

Hand Disruption:
Duress is back!! This is huge! We're losing the completely useless hand disruption we had before and now we're getting one of the best pieces of hand disruption ever printed back!

Library Manipulation:
We're losing Ponder and it is being replaced by Index which does not replace itself upon resolution so it is basically useless.

All of these things combined makes control seem like a very difficult task to accomplish. However some specific cards, most notably Duress, Barter in Blood, and Mutilate make me think that mono-black control could become a legitimate thing. I haven't had much time to mull it over, but here is where I would start with a mono-black control deck:

4x Duress
4x Tragic Slip4x Sign in Blood
2x Murder
2x Barter in Blood
4x Mutilate

2x Curse of Death's Hold



4x Liliana of the Veil
4x Vampire Nighthawk
2x Bloodline Keeper
4x Bloodgift Demon


24x Swamp


I feel like there are some clunky elements to it, like being too dude-heavy, however I do think it's a good start. One thing I considered doing is adding Liliana of the Dark Realms, Griselbrand, and Army of the Damned, but I think Bloodgift Demon is the way of the future! Two cards that stifled it from seeing play - Go for the Throat and Dismember are rotating out and our big Dark Confidant will have its time to shine! In the list above, Bloodline Keeper is the odd man out since Nighthawk is so good with Sign in Blood and Bloodgift Demon in addition to simply being amazing by itself, and so I would consider looking for something else to replace it.


As I was looking at the black cards, some other ideas came to mind, and that is going back to my good old trusty Zombies!


4x Diregraf Ghoul
4x Gravecrawler
4x Blood Artist
4x Geralf's Messenger
4x Vampire Nighthawk
4x Disciple of Bolas

4x Duress
4x Tragic Slip
2x Vile Rebirth
2x Dead Weight
1x Killing Wave

23x Swamp

The special additions here are with Vampire Nighthawk and Disciple of Bolas. Both of these may actually be complete duds, but they seem good. Nighthawk is good on its own right, but Disciple of Bolas in exciting! Sacrificing Gravecrawler or Geralf's Messenger is where we get our super value from. I think Disciple will be better than Nighthawk, but Nighthawk is so good on its own that I feel it deserves a slot.

That's all I have for today! Now that I have internet back, I should be able to post periodically whenever ideas start developing so hopefully you shall hear from me more often. It feels great to be back online posting my ideas again! But until next time, stay classy!

Ryan Lackie
Ryan.Lackie92@gmail.com
@ThingsILack