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Hey guys!

I'm relatively new to Magic the Gathering, as having just started early November of last year. This is my first deck, and I'm looking to get some feedback. It's a red/black deck, with the theme being undying creatures, and creatures coming back from the graveyard, and good things happening when they do. It's a little slow at first, but the hope is to get some undying creatures or reassembling skeletons out in the early game, while getting some control through Barter in Blood, Murder, and Bone Splinters, and then get some of the bigger guys out later for some real damage.

Any feedback is appreciated, whether that be cards to remove or cards to add, or general pointers :-).

Thanks!

2 x Barter in Blood
3 x Blood Artist
2 x Bone Splinters
3 x Butcher Ghoul
1 x Demonlord of Ashmouth
1 x Desecration Demon
2 x Evernight Shade
1 x Flayer of the Hatebound
2 x Fling
1 x Ghoulcaller's Chant
2 x Goblin Arsonist
2 x Grave Exchange
2 x Harvester of Souls
1 x Havengul Vampire
2 x Heirs of Stromkirk
11 x Mountain
2 x Murder
1 x Rakdos Guildgate
2 x Reassembling Skeleton
12 x Swamp
2 x Unhallowed Pact
2 x Vampire Nighthawk
1 x Wrack with Madness

This deck seems much less focus than how you descibe it wanting to work.  Since this is a casual deck, are you interested in dipping a little further out of the Standard card pool?  Because if you are, there are a lot of slightly older cards that would make this deck hum.

Jan 10, 2013 -- 7:15AM, AzureShade wrote:

This deck seems much less focus than how you descibe it wanting to work.  Since this is a casual deck, are you interested in dipping a little further out of the Standard card pool?  Because if you are, there are a lot of slightly older cards that would make this deck hum.

I would be more than okay with going a bit out of the Standard pool if there are cards that could help make it more focused and get it working better! I don't intend to use this deck in competition or anything, it's just the first one I made with the cards I had. What cards were you thinking?

if you're willing to use blue in some form, River Kelpie is one of my favorite cards with undying/persist/unearth/ Reassembling Skeleton .

you should also run Altar's Reap which is a great card that will usually have no drawbacks as long as you sacrifice an undying creature (and with River Kelpie is 3 cards for at instant speed for just one card).

Hound of Griselbrand is probably my favorite undying creature ever.  Double Strike takes great advantage of Undying's +1 counter  

Undying is fun with Sage of Fables which removes +1/+1 counters for a card.  You can use her ability in response to your undying guys dying again to make them come back a third time.  Pretty nasty I think.  You could also use the other Lords from Lorwyn like Oona's Blackguard and Rage Forger depending on how much undeath ends up happening

Ok, when playing red and black counters you want a few of the older cards.

ion storm
power conduit plus something that wants counters
murderous redcap something that wants counters.
everflowing chalice another something that wants counters.

Your removal is a bit lacking and your deck is keyed a bit high. You need to remove some high cost stuff and replace with low cost stuff. The easiest way to do this is to run removal. Both dismember and lightning bolt are excellent. Goblin arsonists is not bad of course but I generally confine it to the sideboard against everything but aggro.

I am not really all that fond of blood artist and you already have two really good 2 drops for counters with the conduit and the butcher ghoul.

Desecration demon seems random, it has counters but no persist or undying. You should probably run an additional hateflayer instead.

4 Butcher Ghoul
3 Reassembling Skeleton
3 Demonlord of Ashmouth
3 Evernight Shade
3 murderous redcap
2 Flayer of the Hatebound

4 dismember instead of bone splinters
4 lightning bolt instead of Goblin Arsonist
3 power conduit instead of blood artist
3 everflowing chalice
2 grave pact instead of Grave Exchange
1 consuming vapors instead of barter in blood
1 ion storm

12 Swamp
11 Mountain
1 Rakdos Guildgate

There are things I would use that are very pricey and hard to find, they include things like
recurring nightmare
phyrexian tower
urborg, tomb of yawgmoth
demonic tutor
vampiric tutor

Awesome! Thanks for all the help! I wasn't aware some of these cards existed. I'll be sure to put some of them in and try to make this deck more focused and work better!