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BMoor's Magic The
Gathering
Deck Garage
It's hard to ignore praise like that, and yet somehow I managed to do so for over a month. Sorry folks! But anyway, onto the task at hand. Assassin tribal, is it? Looks cool, and a ot of fun, but there are some pretty big problems with it:
1. Your creatures, assassins all, are small. Your biggest creature is a 2/2, or a 2/1 first strike, or a 0/4 that can be a 3/1 for BBB a turn (not a good price to have to pay each turn). I doubt this deck has ever dealt a point of damage to a player.
2. Garza's Assassin and Orzhov Euthanist are just bad in general. Garza's will never kill more than one creature unless you pay way too much life, and the Euthanist will never kill anything because your only means of damaging anything is to attack into it with a 1/1 assassin and hope that your opponent blocks with the creature you're trying to kill.
3. All your creatures can kill other creatures, and then your noncreature spells are kill spells. How many creatures do you expect your opponent to have, anyway?
4. You have two really good Madness creatures, but no Madness outlets.
That said, let's look at the positives:
1. Assuming you just forgot to list your lands, and assuming 24 Swamps (which would bring you to 60), you have a good amount of land for this deck.
2. Big Game Hunter can kill anything Unliving Psychopath can't. Between them, you can kill any creature in Standard except Stuffy Doll (which is no match for Nightshade Assassin).
3. Royal Assassin makes your opponent very reluctant to tap any important creature, which means your opponent won't be doing much attacking.
Now then, let's see what we can do to improve your deck, working on those four problems without disturbing the three good points. Problem #2 is the easiest to fix: out come Garza's Assassin and Orzhov Euthanist. Problem #3 is a bit trickier, since I looked through all the black noncreature spells in Standard, and it seems like most of them are kill spells. Assassinate and Dark Banishing can come out, but for what? Treacherous Urge looks like fun, but if you're killing creatures left and right, I doubt your opponent will be holding creatures back in his hand when you play this. The same problem for Enslave, although that would be a spicy finisher. Dash Hopes actually looks pretty good, since you'll take whatever life loss you can get. But hold on-- maybe we can solve Problem #3 (too many kill spells) by also solving Problem #4 (not enough Madness outlets). The best Madness enablers in Standard are currently Trespasser il-Vec, Gathan Raiders, and any of the Spellshapers. Trouble is, those creatures aren't Assassins. We're going for a theme here, so no non-Assassin creatures. That leaves instants, sorceries, or enchantments that would make you discard a card. And there aren't many good ones I'm afraid. The new Future Sight card Gibbering Descent would work well and empty your opponents hand, but ironically it doesn't work well with one of your Madness cards, Nightshade Assassin (which wants you to have a lot of cards in your hand). A lot of Madness decks use Smallpox, but since Smallpox costs BB and isn't an instant, you're not really saving any mana. You are, however, making your opponent do nasty things while you get to "skip" the discard, and get a creature to replace the one you sacrifice. The third option is Macabre Waltz-- your creaturea are small, and may die easily, so if you can bring back two and then Madness one out, you'll be in good shape. Definitely add in 4 Macabre Waltz, and maybe Smallpox or Gibbering Descent if you choose as well.
Finally, the first problem. Your creatures are small, and you have no real win condition. What to do? Well, you could try Consume Spirit, the old
 standby win condition for Black mages, but what fun is that? You could break theme and bite the bullet with a Demon or Horror, but that'd be even worse. What's the best option here? I would say, Equipment. Think about it: once your creatures have assassinated all your opponent's blockers, they slip their daggers back into their boots and pick up a Warhammer! Now, I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't suggest Loxodon Warhammer, but any Equipment will work. I urge you to consider Vulshok Morningstar: it would turn Nekratall or Nightshade into a 4/3 first strike, a formidable creature in combat. And Unliving Psychopath would be a 2/6 that could turn into a 7/1 with enough mana, allowing it to take down Dragons as easily as Big Game Hunter-- if you have BBBBBB to spend, of course. Sure, Loxodon Warhammer can do those things too, and gain you life as well, but as a rare, the Warhammer may be hard to come by. The Morningstar is also less mana, and is a pretty underused card. Your choice though.
Okay, so by replacing your excess kill spells with a few Madness outlets and some Equipment, I think this deck should really start to hum. The only problem that remains, if you want to call it a problem, is that you really need to get to four mana as soon as possible. I'm not really sure how you'd best go about that besides a few mana rocks (Signets, Prismatic Lens, Fellwar Stone), but if I were you I'd steer clear of adding any more cards that cost four mana. Your curve is a bit clogged at that slot.
That's all I can say about this deck. I hope you two have a lot of fun playing it, and kick a lot of ass... assins!
~BMoor
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