Subject: Deck: Big Black Graveyard (Type 1) - Damion Alexander

Deck: Big Black Graveyard

General:
This deck is basically an Incarnation deck (Judgement). It is very large, slow to start but once it gets going it's very hard to just kill off. Once I finalized the deck list my loses are contained to being completely mana screwed (not properly shuffling after last game) or very, very fast decks. Although the main theme is to create a massive Mortivore with all the trimmings (Incarnation effects), the deck has enough tricks to never get boring.

Card List:

Creatures:
x1 Anger
x1 Ayesha Tanaka
x2 GameKeeper
x2 Aquamoeba
x1 Valor
x3 Confessor
x2 Academy Rector
x1 Brawn
x1 Iridescent Angel
x1 Phantom Nishoba
x2 Teroh's Faithful
x2 Grotesque Hybrid
x2 Ancestors Chosen
x1 Genesis
x4 Mortivore
x1 Wonder
x1 Glory
x1 Filth

Artifacts:
x2 Whetstone

Enchatments:
x1 Hunting Grounds
x4 Rhystic study
x3 Mirari's wake
x1 Ground Seal
x3 Phantasmal terrain
x1 Unifying theory

Instants & Sorcery:
x3 Obsessive Search
x2 Stitch Together
x4 Buried Alive
x2 Pay no heed
x1 Wrath of GOD
x3 Ray of Revelation
x2 Cleasing meditation
x1 Demonic Tutor
x1 Replenish

Lands:
x7 Plains
x11 Island
x11 Swamp
x4 Riftsone Portal
x3 Tainted Isle
x3 Tainted field

Strategy:

Overall remember that most of your stuff is better off in the graveyard than anywhere else (for this deck). Always start out trying to get the incarnations into your graveyard. Buried Alive is in there for this. Since Buried Alive allows up to three creatures, I start out with Glory (2W: Your Creatures Protection from color of your choice), Wonder (All Creatures have flying) and the third is dependant on what type of deck(s) your playing against. For instance if you are playing against someone with mostly black, put Filth (Swampwalk) in there and none of your creatures can be blocked, otherwise Valor (First Strike) is a good choice. Remember though that most of the incarnations (except Glory and Genesis) require you have a certain land type in play. So don't play anger on the onset cause if you noticed there are no mountains (I'll get to that later though).

During most of the game you want to be drawing and discarding a lot. The main purpose for drawing alot (Ryhstic study, Unifying Theory, Obsessive Search) is to get creatures either out into play or into the graveyard. The Ultimate goal is to have a huge Mortivore in play that has flying, swampwalk, first strike, trample, haste and can be given Protection from any color. (The largest I've had so far is a 42/42 Mortivore). Since Mortivore (power/toughness = creatures in all graveyards) works on all graveyards you want to get as many creatures in to graveyards as possible, hence Whetsone, and Wrath of GOD. Oh in this regards Grotesique Hybrid (GH) is great. Since the GH will destory a creature after doing any kind of combat damage, the first strike given to it by Valor will make it an instant killer in combat. And you can discard cards to it, to give it protection from green (and white I believe).

You probably noticed that there are no forests, nor mountains but there are both green and red cards in the deck. That is the job for both Riftstone portal (when in the graveyard all your lands can produce White, Green or thier printed mana type) and Phantasmal Terrain (turn any land into any basic land). Since I wanted these cards in the deck for their respective abilities but didn't want to try and balance out forrests or mountains for 2-3 cards, I went with Phantasmal terrain. The added benefit is that if my opponent has a tough defense I can Phantasmal terrain his land into a swamp then make sure I get filth into my graveyard. Riftstone portal gives me extra ways to do white and green.

Academy Rector and Gamekeeper deserve mentioning (based on their card descriptions I think you can figure out why the other unmentioned cards are in the deck). They both have an affect that happens when going to the graveyard from play. Gamekeeper allows you to instead remove it from the game and then reveal cards from your deck until you hit a creature card , and then put that creature into play. Great for if you are starving for a creature, (or need threshold for Cleasing Meditation). Academy Rector has the same opt to remove but instead allows you to search you library for an enchatment and put it into play. If you are at threshold Hunting grounds may be good since you can punish your opponents for playing spells by putting out large creatures for free. Need more mana available? put in Mirari's wake, need to eat through your deck faster find another Rhystic study.

The other side affect of Academy Rector and Gamekeeper, is that the conscious players will realize that killing these 2/2's may cause a horrible event to happen, so they end up not attacking sometimes (so you don't block to kill it off), or even not blocking it and just taking the damage. Mmmm.... fear. If they do kill it off, well there you go.

Oh one last creature to mention: "Ancestors Chosen". Once into the later part of the game, and you have a decent size graveyard put him into play. You gain a life for each card in your graveyard. Definitly a card that can change the tide of the game (but beware False Cure). And since there are a few ways to bring back your creatures from the graveyard, you can just annoy your opponent into submission.

Natural Enemies:

Anything that removes cards from graveyards. Especially Tornod's Crypt. I put Ayesha Tanaka in the deck to counter Tornod's Crypt.

Very fast weenie decks. Since the deck is so slow, it's best suited for Mutiplayer games (although it does do well in duals sometimes).

Damion Alexander funknite@optonline.net