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I'm the kind of person to take an idea and run with it. Phoenix posted an idea earlier in the Show Ideas section about people submitting a deck and having the guys tinker around with it to see what improvements could be made, or at least what they would do with it. The idea is that hosts and audience members can bring a decklist on here, ask for some suggestions, and hopefully come out the other side with a better deck. When asking for help with a deck, let others know what kind of environment we're talking about(Standard, Extended, tabletop free-for-all, anything you can tell us about any metagame there might be). Bring your decks. Bring your ideas. Bring your creativity. Let's see what we can do to help each other out.

This one isn't actually in the deckbox yet, but it's on the way to being there soon. I'm working on a Blinking Snake deck. It revolves around Momentary Blink interacting with creatures that have comes into play effects, notably Mystic Snake and Venser, Shaper Savant. Let's get to the list, shall we?

4 Search for Tomorrow
4 Riftwing Cloudskate
4 Mulldrifter
4 Momentary Blink
4 Mystic Snake
4 Aven Riftwatcher
3 Venser, Shaper Savant
1 Austere Command
2 Galepowder Mage
1 Seht's Tiger
3 Quirion Dryad
1 Evacuation
2 Wrath of God

2 Gemstone Mine
2 Vivid Creek
5 Island
5 Forest
5 Plains
4 Terramorphic Expanse

It's a Standard legal deck, but it needs a sideboard. Galepowder Mage is used as a secondary way to abuse CIP effects, potentially drawing 2 extra cards a turn, bouncing an opponent's permanent, or gaining 4 life each time it attacks. Any suggestions as far as improving the deck or ideas for potential sideboard slots would be appreciated.

Just put this deck down on paper and figured I'd put it up here and see what you guys think! Any feedback would be appreciated!

Side Impact Damage - Black / White

Creatures (13):
4: Sleeper Agent
4: Wall of Souls
3: Souls of the Faultless
2: Peacekeeper

Other (27):
4: Parasitic Bond
4: Festering Wound
4: Dark Ritual
4: Pillory of the Sleepless
4: Weight of Conscience
2: Wrath of God
2: Retether
1: Enslave
1: Unnatural Hunger
1: Orzhov Signet

Land (20):
4: Spawning Pool
4: Tainted Field
8: Swamp
4: Plains

This deck is based around Parasitic Bond and Festering Wound, so that it will deal more and more damage every turn until it starts dealing 10 a turn, and can take down even those life gainers because the damage increases each turn with the festering wound.

The deck used to be mono black, and utilize creature killers like Boneshreader and Neckretaal, both of which fly back into play with Unearth. Once Pillory of the Sleepless came out, I immediately rebuilt it to splash white. At that point, instead of killing the creatures, I figured I could Wrath of God them or immobilize them with Pillory or Weight of Conscience while I enchant them to deal damage to the opponent.

The super 1st turn move is still there: Swamp, Dark Ritual, Wall of Souls, Sleeper Agent. Then, before the opponent has even played a card, they have a creature that deals them 2 damage during their upkeep that if they attacked, they would deal themselves 3 more instead of hurting me. It's also great in multi, because they can swing at your opponents and deal them damage for you, since this is too focused to be a good multiplayer deck.

The problem was that it was too easy for an opponent to attack someone else with the Sleeper Agent and get it killed, which would throw away my enchantments. This new version focuses on keeping them from attacking by way of Weight of Conscience and Pillory of the Sleepless. Weight of Conscience also fits well in the deck now that it runs Retether. After a Wrath, or if someone disenchants something of mine, I can just bring every enchantment (capable of enchanting a creature) back into play. If they spring back from the Wrath with two big creatures, I play the retether and put at least 2 enchantements on each - keeping them from attacking and keeping the damage flowing.

Also, Retether allows me to put countered or discarded enchantments on creatures from the graveyard. Sha-bing!

And the Spawning Pools survive the Wraths and add much needed blockers.

Cards I will add if testing reveals that this current version needs them: More Peacekeepers, Retethers and Wraths. Also I think a Nevinyrral's Disk would be a good way to blow everything up if it got out of hand. It would handle any pesky enchantments or artifacts that the Wraths would leave behind. Also a Royal Assassin or Pentarch Paladin might be nice, since I can't squeeze in any more non-creature spells for removal. I need some creatures that take care of removal for me. And what about Magus of the Disk or False Prophet for the big bada-boom?

So there it is - any suggestions on what to add and what to take out? It's hard to imagine how the tempo goes unless you actually play it, but it seemed to have answers to lots of scenarios when I tested it, so I think it should work out.

Offhand, I'd say that one change you should make is switching Weight of Conscience out for Pacifism. With Weight, they can still block with it to get it killed. Pacifism also keeps dudes out of the way so your opponents can attack each other freely.

Maybe Arrest then, because one of the differences with Weight of Conscience is that if there is a Wellwisher on the table causing a problem for me, I can use Weight of Conscience as spot removal and just destroy the Wellwisher, and then bring it back with a Retether.

The deck needed a way to get rid of creatures that have pesky abilities other than attacking...

Then Arrest would definitely be the way to go. You only have 9 creatures that stay on your side of the table. That two creature requirement for Weight might be a bit hefty for this deck. Good call on the Arrest. Haven't used those in a deck yet, so they didn't cross my mind.

Yeah it doesn't have a lot of creatures. I was considering putting in Sun Web since it's AWESOME, but it hurt too much to take anything out and dilute the combo.

I'm going to play it a lot tomorrow and see what happens.

Would you add anything else, along the lines of the damage-during-upkeep?

Would the Sunweb just for another way to get damage through? I'd never seen that card before. Kinda cool. 5/6 flyer for 4 and the only drawback is it pretty much has to smash face. I hate when I have to do that.

Haha

Yeah it's a sweet card, and since I don't deal combat damage with the deck, it's a great blocker. Tough to burn, too. And it only costs 4!

garthok84 wrote:Would the Sunweb just for another way to get damage through? I'd never seen that card before. Kinda cool. 5/6 flyer for 4 and the only drawback is it pretty much has to smash face. I hate when I have to do that.

I'm missing something. How does it smash face? It's a wall. To use modern terms, it has defender. But it can't block little guys, only big ones. I'm sure I'm missing something here.

Unless he's talking about using Wakestone Gargoyle or Rolling Stones, I think he means "smashing the face of target blocked creature"...

Incidentally, Wakestone Gargoyle and Sunweb are a match made in MTG heaven.

Actually, I was looking at the Mirage version and didn't see the creature type being wall. I thought that was way too good to be true. 3W 5/6 Flying can't block small guys, can attack. This is why we read the newest version of a card.

Hey how do you link to cards in this BBCode? Is it the word "card" in brackets or something? I looked around the FAQ and couldn't find it...

You can use the link to the page on Cardshark that sells any given card. That helps me as well as you!

There's no tag that links right to the card of that name? I could be mistaken but I thought you mentioned something about that in a post. Is it done by looking up the card, copying the URL, and then pasting it in the URL tag with brackets?