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Feb 10, 2012 -- 12:40PM, rulesinquisitor wrote:

Feb 10, 2012 -- 11:09AM, mdjenkins wrote:

I prefer Bloodgift Demon to Gambit .

You'll almost never get full value out of gambit. I see it as a 3 cost cantrip that says: lose 2 life, draw a card. As far as cantrips go, that's not very exciting. Best case for gambit value is it will make your undied Messenger a 5/4, save Lili from a gut shot and kill an x/2 with virulent wound . Most of the time you would be lucky to get one of these, let alone all three.

With the demon, I get an evasive beat stick and targeted life for card draw. Making my opponent pay a life to draw and then +1 Lili to make him discard is a slow and risky mill but it is more consistant value for my mana. If I don't want to take the risk, then I can just treat him as a one sided mine with a 1 life upkeep cost. Worst case scenario with the demon is you just spent your turn baiting a removal card from your opponent.

I've always looked at Gambit as a bad Sign in Blood : instead of for the same result (-2 life, +1 CA). And they each have a highly niche edge on the other: gambit proliferates, SiB finishes an opponent at 2 or less life or with 2 or less cards in library. Make no mistake, Sign in Blood is massively better, it's really that difference between 2 and 3 mana that does it. And I've not tested the demon much precisely because he is removal bait, but he does have merit since he basically forces your opponent to have removal. I've been meaning to test him, but part of me wants to wait because I think he will be much better after rotation. no more dismember

I'm going to ignore the cost in life. Let's be honest, it doesn't matter. Life is a boolean, you either have it or you don't. Yes, you can have various levels of "not dead yet". But in the grand scheme, you're either above 0 life or you've lost the game.

Sign in Blood is what a cantrip should be... relatively cheap. 2 cmc is about most expense a cantrip should ever be. Almost every card in MBC is a 3 cmc card. There are some things to help you not die before you get to 3, but the meat and potatos of the deck is at 3. With a cmc of 2, I need an average of 5 mana available for the card to not take up my entire turn. At a cmc of 3, I need 6 mana available. Assuming a 40% land deck, 5 lands occur in 12.5 cards (turn 5-6); 6 lands occur in 15 cards (turn 8). We all know the shuffle gremlins have their own sick sense of humor so this doesn't refect a game to game scenario, but it is fairly consistent.

I'd love it if Tezzeret's Gambit was a replacement for Sign in Blood but it isn't. Not unless we can fill in the 1 and 2 spots with good replacements for all of the pertinent cards we have choking up the three spot. As is, Gambit is either 2-3 turns late or we get to waste a turn casting it with the hope that proliferate will support our board. OTOH, Bloodgift Demon lines up for turn 5-6 and bolsters our board state.

Still, I am dubious about Bloodgift. I like Smallpox and that pushes the demon late. So, I'm moving back towards Zombies. I'm not convinced there's enough pertinant cmc zombies to make Gambit a rockstar. With ghoulraiser , gravecrawler and ghoulcaller's chant I'm not conviced it needs to be.

Feb 13, 2012 -- 6:47PM, TheMightyPenguin007 wrote:

Feb 13, 2012 -- 11:27AM, FortexCross wrote:

This is the deck I ran at FNMs last week. Took first going undefeated 4-0.

 4x Gravecrawler
 4x Diregraf Ghoul
 3x Black Cat
 4x Geralf's Messenger
 2x Lashwrithe

 3x Liliana of the Veil
 4x Smallpox
 3x Tragic Slip
 3x Altar's Reap
 3x Despise
 3x Ghoulcaller's Chant
 2x Doom Blade
 2x Geth's Verdict

 20x Swamp

 I realize that most would consider this land count too low to run Smallpox safely but I play it more Suicide Black style. The absolutely insane interactions of Smallpox and Black Cat or Geralf Messenger or Gravecrawler as well as the interactions between Altar's Reap and the same cards gives me some pretty mean advantage overall. Combine that with an early Liliana and most of my opponents ended up with no hand to speak of while I still had Diregrafs and Gravecrawlers staring them down. I am not above doing a turn two Smallpox if my opponent misses a land drop and I have more one drop creatures in hand.

 My sideboard is:

3x Ratchet Bomb
3x Distress
3x Evil Presence (This and Smallpox together can neuter certain decks insanely quickly.)
3x Surgical Extraction
2x Geth's Verdict
1x Lashwrithe

 So what do you guys think?

I like this list, and I've enjoyed playing this style of deck in the past (think Death Cloud days - yes, it's been that long).  That being said, how do you handle the Delver matchup?  Is there enough removal maindeck to handle the onslaught?  Just my 2¢.

 I'm not going to lie. Delver, variant depending, can kick this decks butt eight ways from Sunday. Their early game aggro easily rivals and can exceed mine and they have the counters for my control. I side according to the variant with token decks getting Ratchet Bombs and Surgicals and non-token variants getting more Geth's Verdict and the third Lashwrithe. The only card I would universally side in would be Evil Presence. I won my match against a Delver deck last Friday thanks to Smallpox and Evil Presence locking them out of usable land. Turning a Seachrome into a Swamp after Poxing away their Island can absolutely devastate them if they're running a lower land count.