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BMoor's Magic The Gathering Deck Garage
Ex-Zubera-nt
September 14, 2007

After the last few decks were Mirrodin block, I decided to move into more recent territory. Fortunately, there was this Kamigawa-based deck in my inbox. And it does use a few Ravnica cards, so let's dive right in!

I looked at your Zubera Deck that you fixed on October 2, 2006 for Sean. I didnt really see any thing that could help me with my Zubera deck because mine runs differently. Here's the deck list:

Zebra Control
Total: 64
Creatures:25
4 Dripping Tounge Zubera
4 Silent Chant Zubera
3 Floating Dream Zubera
3 Iname Life Aspect
4 Ember Fist Zubera
3 Ashen Skin Zubera
4 Theif of Hope

Other Spells:18
4 Pyroclasm
4 Devouring Greed
4 Skulltap
3 Aether Vial
3 Plague Boiler

Land:21
1 City of Brass(I only own one)
1 Grand Colieseum (Same as above)
7 Swamp
4 Mountain
4 Forest
2 Plains
2 Island

Side Board:15
4 Devouring Rage
4 Fertile Grounds
4 Carrion Feeder
1 Floating Dream Zubera
1 Ashen Skin Zubera
1 Mountain

Basically the way its supposed to run is mass zuberas and then sacrifice them at the same time to get sick effects using one of my many mass kill cardsand then use Iname to do it all over again. Heres a breif decription of how the cards are supposed to function:

Zuberas: Core of the deck
Thief of hopes: leeches opponent when i basically play anything in the deck.
Iname: After i sacrifice all those zuberas, it allows me to bring the hurt all over again
Plague Boiler: Since i dont have wrath gods this kills everything except lands and while they are recovering from the hit, im dropping cheap zuberas to keep the pain coming.
Aether vials: free zuberas
Skulltap: that little bit extra speed to draw zuberas, iname, ect.
Devouring Greed: Large scale leech
Pyroclasm: sacrifices my zuberas, and gives me the chance to wipe out some of their creatures(usualy pretty much clears their board if they are playing elves soldiers or goblins).

The problems i have are that it's not fast enough. I cant get zubera out fast enough. by the time i get enough out im already toast. It needs speed bad. also i have no way to search out my spirits, so i have to wait to draw them. Counters tear this deck apart, because they counter the one card that kills them one hit, Devouring Greed. I dont have a terribly large budget for magic, but if you can help i would greatly appreciate it. A guy i played against said my zubera deck sucks, and i would like nothing more than to pwn him with them and prove him wrong. Thanks.

-------

Thanks very much for the E-mail, and thanks again for doing what some correspondents don't bother to: compare the deck they're sending in with decks I've fixed in the past. You'll notice the reference to my last Zubera deck fix? That really makes me happy, because it tells me that people are reading my deck fixes. Not just scanning them over when they're bored, but really reading them and looking for advice they themselves can use. If that's all I ever accomplish here, it'll be more than enough.

Enough of that though, onto the deck. Step one is to try and speed up the deck, since you did mention that it isn't fast enough. Well, for starters, replace one each of Mountain, Forest, and Swamp for three Terramorphic Expanse. I totally understand that more Cities of Brass is out of your league, but the Expanse is a common card. And it helps thin your deck, so you've got the advantage of improving the odds on all yoru future draws.

Next, let's replace Skulltap. My first impulse is Perilous Research-- a blue instant speed Skulltap that has you sacrifice as part of the effect, not the cost (so you can play it even if you have no creatures). However, traditionally the best way to speed up a deck is with small, one-mana cantrips. Cards like Bandage may seem useless, but they essentially are like a free mulligan since they immediately dig you a card deeper. In essence, they're like playing with fewer cards in the deck.

But don't actually use Bandage itself. Blue has much better one-mana cantrips. Opt was the standard for years and wouldn't lead you wrong. Then it was overshadowed by Serum Visions, another excellent way to smooth your draws. And speaking of Scry, Mystic Speculation is good both in the early game as a quick way to get the chaff out of the way, or in the late game as a reusable deck-stacker. If you're reluctant to increase the Blue aspect of your deck so heavily, Commune with Nature would also be a good choice, as it would get you to a Zubera early, and even one Zubera makes a good blocker while you draw another.

Speaking of your creatures, I think you can pull Iname, Life Aspect. It's six mana, it only works when it goes to the graveyard, and while it's in play it's just a 4/4. Granted, you can send it to the graveyard whenever you want by playing another one, but then you're wasting two Iname triggers. The only reason I'm leaving the non-Zubera Thief of Hope in the deck is because it has Soulshift 2, which is just the right amount to bring back a Zubera. And the life draining ability stalls for time as well.

But wait! Iname, Life Aspect was the key to the deck! Play a bunch of Zuberas, sack them, then bring 'em all back! BMoor, how could you cut such a vital card?

Simply put, there's other cards that can do the same job. The first one that came to mind was Second Sunrise. Go ahead and look that one up it you need to; I don't expect you to know all the quirky rares from Mirrodin block. Basically, if you can follow up a Plague Boiler with that, you'd get back not only all the Zuberas, but also the Boiler itself along with anything else that it destroyed. The only trouble with that is, if you wiped the board, Second Sunrise brings back everything your opponent lost too. It basically resets the entire board. Granted, the board is back the way it was plus all the Zubera triggers, which probably means you're better off than you were, but maybe you would rather that your opponent's stuff stayed dead.

My next idea was Gleancrawler. It not only brings back all your Zuberas, but it also does it each of your turns, while swinging for six. The downside here? One, it can only bring back Zuberas that die on your turn, which makes chump blocking with them suddenly look much less appealing. And two, it has to still be in play at the end of your turn for its ability to trigger. Which means it has to survive whatever killed them. It can survive Pyroclasm, sure, but not Plague Boiler. That very reason was why Shirei, Shizo's Caretaker didn't get much of a response from me.

The third idea comes from way back in Magic history, courtesy of Tenth Edition: No Rest for the Wicked. Drop it on turn two, and at the end of your Big Turn, sacrifice it to bring all your Zuberas back. Straightforward, eh? Feel free to use whichever of these ideas works best for you.

Fnally, my next major revision: pull out Devouring Greed in favor of Fallen Ideal. I know, I know, Devouring Greed is a beating, but by replacing it with the Ideal you actually solve a lot of problems. First is the counterspell problem. You see, sacrificing Spirits is part of the cost to play the Greed, not the effect. If it gets countered, as you've said it does, then you still lose all your creatures (unless one of the sacrificed was a Dripping-Tongue, in which case you're down to mere 1/1 tokens). With Fallen Ideal, the playing of the actual spell is divorced from the sacrificing. If your opponent counters Fallen Ideal, you're just out 2B and a card. You do still have Pyroclasm and Plague Boiler to do the dirty work, so the Ideal was probably just "win more" anyway.
The other problem the Ideal solves is the "all my creatures are 1/2's and none of them can block fliers" problem. Seriously, you must do a lot of chump blocking. With Zuberas, every block is a chump block, and every attack is a joke. If one of them is wearing a Fallen Ideal, however, it could easily become a 3/3 and then a 5/4 while triggering its brothers' abilities. And if the Ideal creature is killed before it can swing, the Ideal goes back to your hand. No worries. Of course, since the Ideal would be cards 9-12 for instigating Zubera genocide, you don't even need four of them. And you are running 64 cards right now. Just sayin'.

Finally, your mana base. I added a few cheap blue cards, replaced a double-green with either a doule-white, a single-black, or a triple-hybrid-black-green, and then knocked a double-black down to a single-black. Your balance of basic lands might need adjustment to reflect this. I'm not doing the math for you, though, because, well, it's 1 AM as I write this and I still haven't seen today's Lorwyn preview card. The sacrifices I make for you....

Good luck!

~BMoor