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BeJoSe's Deck Garage
Red/Black/Blue Control Beatdown
October 23, 2008

Hey. I saw your other deck fixes and though it'd be cool to get some help with my latest deck too. It's a weird Red/Black/Blue Control Beatdown hybrid I made after Shards came out. It's basically a cross of Shards with my old Red/Black control deck.
 
Creatures: 26

4x Demigod of Revenge

4x Fire-Field Ogre
4x Ashenmoor Liege
3x Goblin Deathraiders
4x Sedraxis Specter
4x Hell's Thunder
3x Sedris, the Traitor's King
Other Spells: 14
4x Damnation
4x Raven's Crime
4x Grixis Charm
2x Cruel Ultimatum

Lands: 20
4x Grixis Panorama
4x Crumbling Necropolis
5x Swamps
3x Islands
4x Mountians
 
Anyway. The basic strategy of this deck is simple. Control the Field and their Hand while playing my creatures and spells, then swinging for game. Cruel Ultimatum may seem weird and expensive and it is. It's really only in their because I couldn't think of anything else to play. Damnation/Raven's Crime both fit into the Control aspect and my higher swamp count is to acount for the duel black in Damnation. Sedraxis Specter and Grixis Charm are both control and beatdown. The other creatures are just to hit the field and hit it hard. Thanks to Unearth I can bring them back easily and swing for more if I need to and Sedris allows me to bring them all back regardless. He is probably the clutch of the deck because once he hits the field I've always won. 
 
The real problem here is with quicker and White Weenie decks. Me and about 10 friends throw our own little tournaments and 3 of them play White Weenie/Kithkin/And Swarm Green. Built in black protection allows them to pretty much take what I have and throw it back at me with a lot of damage. I really want to get as many wins as I can before I try this deck at true tournaments. Any ideas or suggestions you have to turn this into the T2 deck I want it to be would be appreciated. =)

 

ˇ         You’re going to see me mention this A LOT but unless you’re running a very aggressive deck you NEED at least 23 lands, with slow control decks you may go up to 26 – 27. Naturally if you’re running mana accelerants suchs as the RAV signets, mind stone or even Birds Of Paradise you can cut down on your lands, the general rule of thumb here is for every 2 non-land mana sources you can cut 1 land.

ˇ         As an example I run a W/U/R control deck with 24 lands and an extra 5 Signets. This sounds like I am running a lot of dead cards but it ensures I have the mana to cast my crucial spells as early as possible (E.g. Wrath Of God)

ˇ         Similar to my deck your running 3 colors, which means you need a higher land count. Because you want this to be agro/control at least 23 sounds good. Now because your running agro you don’t want to using signets/obelisks, because of this I’m going to suggest running a few of the painlands (Underground River, Sulfurous Springs etc) to smooth out your mana.

ˇ         Your choice of creatures is pretty good and the unearth mechanic is well suited to aggro/control. The specter is nice, both damaging the opponent are disrupting their hand. Hell’s Thunder and the Demigod can both hit hard out of nowhere which means you can prey on careless opponents.  The Liege is hard to remove and pumps most your creatures by +2/+2.

ˇ         The main creature that stands out is the Deathraiders. While it is an aggressive card one of the key cornerstones of aggro/control is CA (Card Advantage), unearth is an example of this allowing you to get 2 uses from 1 card. In its place there a few options:

ˇ         Corpse Connoisseur allows you to pull more unearth creatures out your deck

ˇ         Fleshbag Marauder will allow you to deal with creature who have protection from black

ˇ         Cunning Lethemancer, I’d say this is more efficient than Raven’s Crime and similar to the looter you can just unearth your creatures.

ˇ         Cruel Ultimatum IS out of place, at 7 mana it isn’t going to be often that you get the chance to cast it, far better to have a card that will reliably impact the game rather than every now and then** However if you’re playing multiplayer games you may have the time to build up to 7 mana, however if 2 – on – 2 games it won’t happen often.

ˇ         Raven’s Crime is average here. Most often you’re not going to retracting it in the early game and late game your opponent will have played out most their hand already.

ˇ         Since you want this to be T2 Infest can act as a replacement for Damnation.  In addition if you’re having trouble with Protection you might want to consider Everlasting Torment.

ˇ         An interesting choice for this deck might be Turn to Mist. The ruling for unearth means that the card can be removed from play (as opposed to the fact it can’t go to the graveyard), however because it was removed by the mist it will return at the end of the turn. Similar to this is Call to Heel, it allows you o reuse your unearth creatures and draws you a card in the process.

 

Well hope I’ve helped, and good luck.

 

**This is a mistake I see a lot of newer players making; I myself made this mistake a number of times when I first began playing. If a card like Cruel Ultimatum works once people assume it will work every time whereas in the majority of games they will never build up to the necessary mana/have the right game conditions

 


 

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