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Paul’s Perspective
Personal Affair's Episode One:
Bane of My Existence
September 30th, 2010  

Welcome back readers and today I have decided to start a brand new column, where I take you through one of my own personal decks from my collection. This episode will focus on an interesting mono black combo deck revolving around a seldom appreciated and lesser known card, Baneful Omen.

Look familiar? I'm sure some of you player's cracked one of these in your Rise of The Eldrazi booster packing just hoping for a gigantic monstrosity and not a janky rare card. Today I will go over a slightly successful and consistent combo deck I have developed for casual play. I will run through the card selections I chose and give a brief summary of how the pieces interact, if you feel you could improve the deck by all mean's make adjustment's as well as suggestions for the deck. By sharing these decks with you reader I ask for criticism and interesting ideas to improve the deck. I respond to every email I receive and will take all considerations into regard, now without further ado onto the deck.

Mana Base:

X20 Swamp

x4 Lake of The Dead

Normally I run at least 23 lands depending on the build, differing between control and combo and how mana hungry my spells are. Lake of The Dead is interesting it provides a quick mana boost to power out our namesake enchantment Baneful Omen. The high number of basic swamp's is to ensure that we have swamp's for Lake of The Dead to sacrifice. Another option would be to use Urborg Tomb Of Yawgmoth and possibility utilize utility lands of splash another color, something to keep in mind. The part that makes most deck's tick, creatures are surprisingly low here. Running only 12 creatures 4 are directly related to our combo while the others provide an explosive amount of mana and could provide an early beat down or line of defense.

X4 Priest of Gix

x4 Bog Witch

x4 Draco

Draco appears to be the odd man out, with only one basic land type casting it may seem impossible and keeping it on the field even more unlikely, hush young padiwan Draco is the primary kill condition of this deck it when revealed by Baneful Omen deal's 16 damage to each opponent hopefully sealing the deal, similar to an Erratic Explosion deck tuned for multiplayer. How to insure we have the kill is a up to the rest of our deck.

X4 Baneful Omen

x4 Doom's Day

x4 Diabolic Tutor

x4 Cabal Ritual

x4 Dark Ritual

x4 Culling The Weak

Doomsday allows us to pay half our life and search our library an graveyard for five card's then exile our library and put the top in any order, see where this is going? Activate Doomsday with a Baneful Omen on the field or if you need to one of the top five card's  just make sure you have enough mana to cast it. Then during the end of your turn you can reveal a Draco for at least 4 turn's and cause each opponent to lose 64 life which should be enough to take them out of the game barring crazy life gain shenanigans. The deck is moderately speedy as it only need's two cards to function properly. Culling the weak may seem like the weak link in the deck ( no pun intended)  as we are only running 8 creatures to sacrifice it to but being able to discard a drawn Draco to Bog Witch and then use Culling The Weak to get 7 mana for Baneful Omen is too good. Diabolic Tutor is our form of tutoring for our combo pieces, adding Beseech The Queen is a nice answer for finding our lake of the dead and Doomsday, it more then likely will not fetch Baneful Omen as this deck want's to win before having 7 lands on the field, but it can fetch our other tutor to find it. The ritual's are for explosive start's and early combos, Priest of Gix allows us to conceivably win as soon as 4 or earlier depending on our draws.

There you have it a deck from my personal collection the combo has gone off consistently and although I may not win every game its always a blast to play and unleashes my inner Johnny. If you have any suggestions for the deck or comments, criticism, concerns, or recipe tips send email me.

PlatinumFUBU5@hotmail.com