My first pack was pretty empty for a Temple of Deceit, so I snapped that up and hoped for something in pack 2. I was passed a mostly empty pack, the rare was missing but it did have a
I've heard people love this guy and he went from underrated to awesome to slightly overrated. I decided to pick it and keep an eye out for a black deck to come together. At this point I was not willing to go all in and take a mediocre black card over something of value. My next pack was again pretty sparse but did have a Nessian Asp which I took. At this point I hadn't seen any clear signals. The next pack had an Insatiable Harpy
I quite like this guy especially as he pushes towards the devotion angle. The next pick was a Lash of the Whip and I decided that black was pretty open. Which is good for what I'm trying to do. However the next few picks didn't have any black, but they did have some green. I picked up a Nessian Courser and a Leafcrown Dryad.
At this point it felt to me like black and green were open so I decided to go that route. I can't remember what rounded out pack one but there was some dorky stuff like Scourgemark.
Pack two I opened a Gray Merchant! Sweet, now we have a plan. I also snapped up pretty quickly a Rescue from the Underword
Gray Merchant for Gray Merchant anyone?
Next I picked a Nylea's Emissary. This is pretty sweet, I would prefer to play mono black but I very well may have to bring in some green dudes, and so far they are all only single green and pretty beefy. The rest of pack two was unremarkable.
Pack 3 is where I genuinely started to get excited. Pick 2 and Pick 3 Gray Merchant
Hell's Yeah. Let's 4-0 this b. The rest of the time I spent trying to take every black card I could. Oh yeah and a pick 4 Keepsake Gorgon followed by a pick five Disciple of Phenax
~~~
Ok time to build the deck. I laid out everything and had a few random late White and Red cards. They weren't interesting so I set them aside. What remained was a huge pile of black cards and some decent green cards.
I decided that the Battlemaster would be out because it was double green and I didn't have a ton of heroic enablers. I felt I didn't need the combat trick so savage surge was out. That left 7 green cards and I decided to use Artisan's Sorry and Shredding Winds out of the board as necessary. That leaves us with a bunch of black cards. I pretty much played them all except for Viper's Kiss and Cavern Lampad. This list is below.
I felt like it was critical for this deck to get to 5 (with BB) and start banging out Gray Merchants. Therefore I decided to go 18 lands. I played the Temple because I had two Returned Phalanx but decided to only get their activation if I was lucky.
I figured they would be a good road block and I wouldn't really need their attacks to win so why destabilize the mana base. That left 17 slots and I elected to go 10/7 in favor of swamps. I really need to hit my double black on time and if I have to wait a little bit on the green then so be it.
1 drop: Tormented Hero, Ashphodel Wanderer
2 drop: Leafcrown Dryad (or 4), Baleful Eidolo (or 5), 2x Returned Phalanx
3 drop: Nessian Courser
4 drop: Returned Centaur, Insatiable Harpy, Disciple of Phenax, Nylea's Emissary
5 drop: 4x Gray Merchant of Asphodel, Keepsake Gorgon, Nessian Asp
Removal: 2x Lash of the Whip
Enchantments: Feral Invocation, Scourgemark
Combo Time: Rescue from the Underworld
Lands: Temple of Deceit, 10 swamp, 7 forest
Board: Viper's Kiss, Shredding Winds, Savage Surge, Time to Feed, Cavern Lampad, Centaur Battle Master, Loathsome Catoblepas, Artisan's Sorrow
see you next time with the match reports.
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