Monday, January 4, 2010

Deck Construction: Three Concepts for January- Death Bailout

Concept the Second Concept the Second is an update on my current Death Profit deck. As built, the deck is FW/SP, with a brace of Death Harvesters but no Tolltakers (I don't have any). It abuses Moga Dens to feed either Cyclops Battlefiends or G'hern Gluttons, with the goal being to both profit (or rather break even) due to the Harvesters and bring the Battlefiends online in stupid-swift time. I also run a single Collection of Souls at present, since they interact wonderfully with the Battlefiends- a fiend devours a moga and gains a +1 to damage, bumping the Collection's damage by 1. The Collection then Imparts that damage back to the fiend. The Collection can bump the fiend every turn, and there's a double bump at least every other turn, depending on the number and disposition of Moga Dens on the board. The nice thing is that Gluttons can sit at home with the Dens while the Battlefiends go running into battle, trusting in their ridiculous initial Defense and Health to keep them going. Once the Battlefiend procs, equipping them with a Sacrifical Dagger tends to keep them in the fight until there's nothing left to fight. Implants provide another quick source of Battlefiend/Collection pumping, though it's not as great now that they can't target Crested Feshes.

I really enjoy this deck, as it's one of the first examples I have of taking a thematic concept and successfully putting it into practice. However, the current build is slow. There are a number of exciting new runes, most significantly Utterdark Voidhowlers and Revenants, which I would like to try in this archetype. The inclusion of more martial creatures, in turn, suggests I also bring a pair of Suicidal Attacks online. The biggest challenge with this deck is ascertaining what to cut, so I think it might be best to burn the entire deck down and start from scratch. That's the real challenge, as looking at my original list I'm not sure what I even could do without.

I figure the core is double Battlefiend, double Death Harvester, double Implant, double Voidhowler, double Essence Drain, and one to two Soul Collections. This more aggressive build would do well to run other short-lived creatures besides the spellbought Feshes, so two of either the Bloodfiend or the Skeletal Berserker will probably make the cut (or both, or one of each?). Beyond that, though, this deck requires a fair amount of tinkering and I'll probably have to lose at least one of the Gluttons. I also enjoy the idea of bringing in more death nova creatures like Festering Corpses, since the new Suicidal Attack grants Pounce to at least marginally counteract Lumbering, then provides a sure kill at the end of the turn. Combining Suicidal Attack with the Voidhowler is the idea at the core of this deck; that, in turn, encourages me to have as many AoEs as possible to keep enemy health within Voidhowl range.

This, then, is Concept the Second: improving my current death benefit deck into something more aggressive, which advances with expendable creatures begging to die while holding the line with the ever-worsening Battlefiends and Collections of Souls.

No comments:

Post a Comment