1 Arcane Denial (All)
2 Boomerang
4 Careful Study (Ody)
3 Mana Leak
3 Obsessive Search (Tor)
10 Island
10 Swamp
Yep, it’s a Black/Blue deck that animates Green creatures –
there’s
no way to hard cast-those. It is vitally important to get
those big
green stompys into your graveyard as fast as possible, so
it’s not
unheard of to play nothing turn one, and just discard a
Rhino. Far
better is Island/Careful Study/discard two stompys on turn
one, then
Swamp/Animate on turn two. With a little luck, your opponent
will
be dead by turn five.
The deck’s biggest weakness is the Animate spells – use your
counterspells almost exclusively to protect them. I chose
counterspells that use only one blue mana, because with the
blue/black
mana mix I don’t always have two blue available.
Sideboard & Card variations: a Tutor isn’t really needed
because of
all the blue draw effects. Force of Will would be great, but
I need
the Uncommon slots for animate spells. There are other
animate
spells out there, like Zombify, but they take too much mana.
Of course,
if Rares were allowed, Darksteel Colossus would be in here
so fast, and
Kokusho too … The worst matchup for this deck is a control
deck, and the
only solution I’ve found is more counterspells, Force Spike
in
particular. As a last-ditch effort thing, Feldon’s Cane will
let
you reshuffle all your animate cards back in, but if you
need to do that,
it’s probably too late.
