The Hizzouse

[BigChuck]

I was playing some games with Spin13 last night, and Suicide can still be very much viable. Unearth is completely unneeded, and sinkhole + 5 strips is a house against a lot of the current decks right now. Withered Wretch singlehandedly makes all of your worst matchups significantly better, and Null rod helps against the other bad matchups(Mask mostly). Honestly, there really isn't a horrible matchup for suicide right now.

[Milton]

Quote -->In fact, no optimal build of Suicide would include Null Rod.  

I would say that every Suicide deck worth it's salt should be playing 3 Null Rods.  Null Rod is good against all the decks you play Suicide Black in hopes of beating.

Clearly.  That's the point.  You had stated that Suicide should't be about answering threats, just playing its own threats.  Suicide shouldn't try to pull itself out of the maw of doom... so on.

But Null Rod is a must.  Why can't that logic trancend to other hosers?  Also, you mentioned that Unearth is horrible in your opening hand and it works well in select situations.  The came could be said about Null Rod in certian match-ups.  In reality, no good suicide deck should run less than three maindeck.  GenCon required four maindeck.

By your earlier logic, however, Null Rod would fit the criteria of an answer, not a threat.  So, which is it?  Can Suicide splash answers for threats, or does it have to pack threats only.  That's what I was trying to argue.

[Fever]

Null Rod would classify as a proactive answer to certain threats such as Mask and Keg, however that is only part of it. The real reason its in there is that it also disrupts your opponent's mana, which is a perfect fit with the concept of the deck.

I know that you know this, just clarifying.

[Milton]

Quote Null Rod would classify as a proactive answer to certain threats such as Mask and Keg, however that is only part of it. The real reason its in there is that it also disrupts your opponent's mana, which is a perfect fit with the concept of the deck.

I know that you know this, just clarifying.

The point of Null Rod at GenCon wan't to be proactive agaisnt Kegs or Masks at all.  It was to shut down the rampant combo decks that go off on turn two.  A turn one Rod was game.

We were listening to gansta rap all weekend.  Ice Cube's "Down for Whatever".  The part where he is talking about Ike Turner turning the party out saying "This is my mutha fuckin house".  That's how you feel when you play Null Rod against Tendrils decks.

[herby]

null rod is my motha fuc*in hizzouse

[Matt The Great]

Oh man, I'm listening to Down For Whatever right now. 'Mad props', or whatever those kids say these days, to you.

[Ruboonia]

Quote (Matt The Great @ July 31 2003,15:33)Oh man, I'm listening to Down For Whatever right now. 'Mad props', or whatever those kids say these days, to you.

Thats weird, I'm listening to it too!  Mad props, Matt!  

(Null Rod) is my motha fuckin house!

[wuaffiliate]

lol word

[herby]

nice to see that team showercap is getting respect from non teammembers.

nice signature wuaffiliate.

[wuaffiliate]

yep

[Methuselahn]

Ok, so it seems red and rods are good.  My next question would be.. what is everyone cutting for a hulk meta?  what about a hulk-less workshop filled meta?  Sui already has a nice balance of disruption.  Is the general opinion to cut Negators? or the proverbial 4th creature after hyppie, shade, negator?

[herby]

for hulk you would want to cut 2 skirges and put in the 3rd and 4th wretch main.  and maybe side edict instead of contagion.

even with the rack and ruins, stax is still a pretty bad matchup for this deck.  you might want to cut a skirge or 2  for a few artifact removal main:

mox monkey
rack and ruin
hammer mage
meltdown
nevinyrals disk

i know there's better but that's all i could come up with.

[Mykeatog]

I would have to agree with Herby and Milton (and I am assuming the whole of team showercap?), on the following points...

Null Rod- it sure as hell beats combo, however, so does duress + Hymn, or Sinkhole, or pretty much anything in the deck. Yea, Suicide rocks the shit out of combo.

Cutting Hyppie- He doesn't win games. Ever. Ever. Ever. If he is your clock against and blue based control deck, that gives them 10... TEN! turns to topdeck the answer, and fucking kill you. Do I play hyppie? Hell yes, but it isn't cause I like him-- I simply have no sack.

Unearth- Yeah, well... we may disagree as to who put this card in print (me.), but it is great- you can review all the threads in the old metagame, and most arguements still apply. When there was a switch... FORCE OF WILL was not added to any list, and neither was lightning bolt. I completely agree with Milton on this point, if you don't like unearth you jsut don't play enough suicide.

On a side note....

Suicide's Worst Match Ups- Stax, and "The Vagina" Any form of stax just kills suicide, Null Rod is key, Wretch is helpful, but I am not going to lie... The Workshop.deck has always fucked up suicide REGARDLESS of how many sinkholes they are playing.  "The Vagina" is my personnal pet name for the deck more commonly referred to as any of the following... ComboKeeper, The Shinning, Your Mother, or WishKeeper.
Whatever you call it.. all it has to do is burning wish for a balance, and the game is waaaayyyyy over. I have a fairly good win percentge against the match do to incredible luck, and some good mana hosing, but I still fear the match because when both decks get decent draws, then Balance just wins vs. all of my guys.

Creatures- that are considerable in the mono-black mana base include Shade, Negator, Hyppie, Wretch, Reaver, and Skirge..
Brought Suicide currently uses this base...

4 Shade
4 Hyppie
4 Negator
2 Wretch

I am strongly considering adding more Wretchs, cause against every match they can devestate opponent strategies. This would mean either opening up other slots, or just cutting Hyppies.

On color splashing...
My personal belief is this, the more you get from another color the more you lose from mono-b. All of the ideas I have worked with are cute, and can skew some matches into your favor. But I have yet to find a splash that is holding the same awesome dominance over Keeper as the monob build, that is giving enough to another match up.

That is what I got for you for now kiddies, you'll be seeing alot more of me in September when I debut the "Playstation 2" deck, and I should have a new Suicide article done before October breaks.

Check the sig fuckers-- Sorry Shower-guys, it's mine.

[Matt The Great]

Keeper isn't exactly the deck you need to be "awesomely dominating" right now.

[Maxx Matt]

I test a lot with my version of SuicideBlack, to try to see if it can work well in this new metagame.
My worst nightmare are Keeper and Hulk game 2 and 3 and TnT, and Stax Game 1.
I decided to go all agaisnt combo and control, as most of you do, but i haven't feel the need to run uhheart maindeck. for no reason.

i rise the count of treats in the maindeck, not to be forced to use some recicle creatures for the late game.

and i need hypnotic  specters agaisnt too much match-up to cut them entirely. the discard effects could be not rilevant only against "massivedraw.dec" as hulk and keeper, but the other decks in the meta suffer too much the soft discard lock that the specter offers to. so it is in and i sided them out only against hulk for the 4 reb, as templative of a side strategy and it work well.

I propose to you that list. Perhaps it is a bit extreme but really really solid against Hulk and Keeper. The addition of red is great to fight agaisnt stax and tnt game two and three and not to be beaten by bad.dec or not too much updated decks.

Creatures (16)
4 Hypnotic Specter
4 Nantuko Shade
4 Phyrexian Negator
4 Withered Wretch
Disruption (17)
4 Sinkhole
4 Hymn To Tourach / 4 Cabal Therapy
4 Duress
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
Broken Things (7)
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Demonic Consultation
1 Yawgmoths’ Will
4 Null Rod
Mana(21)
4 Fetchland
4 Badlands
19 Swamp
4 Dark Ritual

Sideboard (15):
4 Rack & Ruin
4 Red Elemental Blast
2 Nevynirral's Disk
2 Dystopia
3 Spinning Darkness


i can keep Hulk in defence and keeper low on solution during the game 1. Wretches are real pain for the first because he need to Wish for removals and keeper need to find them soon if don't want to see all his graveyard eaten very soon.
of course you can play around it by wishing for the isatnt speed spell that are taken out of game, but they aren't always good solution.

the side is a little suboptimal only agaisnt keeper and his high count of land disruption. Agaisnt hulk, trix and combo stormbased deck, the LD effetc are null, so 3 badlands are enough. if keeper would be largely used i'll rise the count to 4.  exposing me too much to wateland, i think, but letting me to cast red spell, game 2 and 3 , more consistently.

blood moon are good choices, but i feel that having  a real possibility to remove an Hungry Atog (REB), should be  better. B.Moon  let the control player too often to Drain for 3 and go off the following turn.

rack and ruin are MVP agaisnt all artifact.dec so 4 is the correct number for me


talking about Unheart, it is a great card, but it could be Duressed away if it is in my hand dureing the early game, with me wothout targets in the Grave, or be only a reactive card in a deck that shold be only Proactive in every spell!

the therapy /tourach debate could be solved, IMHO, only by reducing it to a playstyle debate. i feel better casting tourach a discarding two FOR SURE, but some of my testing-players have had better results naming key spells in the right moment of the game and after a possible error sacrificing one of the creatures in play, depleting my hand , and removing from the game them via Withered Wretch.

my 2 cents.

-------------
Maxx Matt
-------------

[Methuselahn]

Quote (Mykeatog @ Aug. 03 2003,00:40)Cutting Hyppie- He doesn't win games. Ever. Ever. Ever. If he is your clock against and blue based control deck, that gives them 10... TEN! turns to topdeck the answer, and fucking kill you. Do I play hyppie? Hell yes, but it isn't cause I like him-- I simply have no sack.

I don't see how hyppie is a bad card.  Compare it to Ophidian.  Both set up your game so that the bruisers can come in and swing for massive amounts.  Overall, this guy is better than the Wretch AND Skittering Skirge.  For everything he does and the casting cost being what it is, this guy is wicked awesome.

Quote On color splashing...
My personal belief is this, the more you get from another color the more you lose from mono-b. All of the ideas I have worked with are cute, and can skew some matches into your favor. But I have yet to find a splash that is holding the same awesome dominance over Keeper as the monob build, that is giving enough to another match up.

I don't understand this logic.  Perhaps you could elaborate.  Why is a color splash directly proportional to the 'strength' of the deck in this manner.  Sure, it may hurt your manabase a little, but the splash helps overall against the workshop decks and other decks that Sui is inherently poor against.   I don't get why you would have to focus on beating keeper.  Suicide was born to hate keeper already.

WotC invented all the cards.  Claiming to invent any of them is ridiculous.  Wouldn't natural deck evolution eventually find them anyway?  No matter who it was?

[Moxlotus]

Quote (Maxx Matt @ Aug. 03 2003,05:06)I test a lot with my version of SuicideBlack, to try to see if it can work well in this new metagame.
My worst nightmare are Keeper and Hulk game 2 and 3 and TnT, and Stax Game 1.
I decided to go all agaisnt combo and control, as most of you do, but i haven't feel the need to run uhheart maindeck. for no reason.

i rise the count of treats in the maindeck, not to be forced to use some recicle creatures for the late game.

and i need hypnotic  specters agaisnt too much match-up to cut them entirely. the discard effects could be not rilevant only against "massivedraw.dec" as hulk and keeper, but the other decks in the meta suffer too much the soft discard lock that the specter offers to. so it is in and i sided them out only against hulk for the 4 reb, as templative of a side strategy and it work well.

I propose to you that list. Perhaps it is a bit extreme but really really solid against Hulk and Keeper. The addition of red is great to fight agaisnt stax and tnt game two and three and not to be beaten by bad.dec or not too much updated decks.

Creatures (16)
4 Hypnotic Specter
4 Nantuko Shade
4 Phyrexian Negator
4 Withered Wretch
Disruption (17)
4 Sinkhole
4 Hymn To Tourach / 4 Cabal Therapy
4 Duress
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
Broken Things (7)
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Demonic Consultation
1 Yawgmoths’ Will
4 Null Rod
Mana(21)
4 Fetchland
4 Badlands
19 Swamp
4 Dark Ritual

Sideboard (15):
4 Rack & Ruin
4 Red Elemental Blast
2 Nevynirral's Disk
2 Dystopia
3 Spinning Darkness


i can keep Hulk in defence and keeper low on solution during the game 1. Wretches are real pain for the first because he need to Wish for removals and keeper need to find them soon if don't want to see all his graveyard eaten very soon.
of course you can play around it by wishing for the isatnt speed spell that are taken out of game, but they aren't always good solution.

the side is a little suboptimal only agaisnt keeper and his high count of land disruption. Agaisnt hulk, trix and combo stormbased deck, the LD effetc are null, so 3 badlands are enough. if keeper would be largely used i'll rise the count to 4.  exposing me too much to wateland, i think, but letting me to cast red spell, game 2 and 3 , more consistently.

blood moon are good choices, but i feel that having  a real possibility to remove an Hungry Atog (REB), should be  better. B.Moon  let the control player too often to Drain for 3 and go off the following turn.

rack and ruin are MVP agaisnt all artifact.dec so 4 is the correct number for me


talking about Unheart, it is a great card, but it could be Duressed away if it is in my hand dureing the early game, with me wothout targets in the Grave, or be only a reactive card in a deck that shold be only Proactive in every spell!

the therapy /tourach debate could be solved, IMHO, only by reducing it to a playstyle debate. i feel better casting tourach a discarding two FOR SURE, but some of my testing-players have had better results naming key spells in the right moment of the game and after a possible error sacrificing one of the creatures in play, depleting my hand , and removing from the game them via Withered Wretch.

my 2 cents.

-------------
Maxx Matt
-------------

Um-this deck has waaaaaay to many freaking cards. Can I assume that 19 swamp is supposed to be 9?

[Matt The Great]

Quote (Methuselahn @ Aug. 03 2003,06:48)I don't see how hyppie is a bad card.  Compare it to Ophidian.  Both set up your game so that the bruisers can come in and swing for massive amounts.  Overall, this guy is better than the Wretch AND Skittering Skirge.  For everything he does and the casting cost being what it is, this guy is wicked awesome.

It's not that Specter is a bad card. It isn't. But there are lots of cards that, while GOOD, are not GOOD ENOUGH. Back to Basics is a good card, but with the advent of fetchlands->island it is no longer good enough. In my eyes, Specter is much like Back to Basics: a card that used to be a game winner that now can be almost ignored.

[Methuselahn]

Quote (Matt The Great @ Aug. 03 2003,14:36)It's not that Specter is a bad card. It isn't. But there are lots of cards that, while GOOD, are not GOOD ENOUGH. Back to Basics is a good card, but with the advent of fetchlands->island it is no longer good enough. In my eyes, Specter is much like Back to Basics: a card that used to be a game winner that now can be almost ignored.

I really don't see how he can just be ignored.  The hypnotic provides redundancy on 2 levels, damage and disruption.  Comparing hypnotic to Back to Basics even for an example is quite a stretch.  Hippie covers random discard, which imo, is far better than blue based land disruption.

If you are looking for something better, maybe the answer is to play a different deck type entirely.

Edit: After thinking about it more and seeing the questioning of the specter slot more and more... I would have to ask what would the deck want instead?  Is Therapy that much stronger here?  Are we taking out specters for rods?

[Matt The Great]

The damage is almost totally inconsequential, as Specter is just not that fast. The disruption is becoming less and less a factor, too, because just as random discard is better than nonrandom, so too is it more important to forcibly remove the right cards than a random card. Random discard is, slowly but surely, becoming not good enough.

Also, I clearly showed how the two cards are alike. I'm really totally bewildered how you could read what I said and not see the connection. It has NOTHING AT ALL to do with what the cards' actual mechanics are. It has EVERYTHING to do with the way that they are losing their power to win games.

I'll spell it out again:

In the same way that Back to Basics is not as good as it once was, Hypnotic Specter is not as good as it once was. And thus, it should NOT be automatically included in every B/x deck, the same way that Back to Basics is no longer an automatic inclusion in every monoblue deck, though it once was.

To put it another way, and to paraphrase a mantra long past: for three mana, you could have a Psychatog, For three mana, you could have a Dreadnought. For three mana, you could be winning the game. Hypnotic Specter will not do that.

Why, you might ask? Well I think that because discard is better the sooner you use it, that waiting until turn two to attack with a Specter is just too slow. Seriously, what decks fear a Specter nowadays? None of the artifact decks give a hot, sticky damn. The combo decks just idly give thanks it's not a Null Rod. Tog could almost care less. Madness just laughs and laughs. Venguer Masque doesn't really care. About the only thing Specter is any good at is beating Keeper, and possibly combo keeper - and combo keeper has four maindeck Balances, which was always black's most hated card.

It's time for aggro players to start being more experimental, more inventive. Once again, control has passed aggro by, because control players are always trying out new things. Who would have thought, a year ago, that Abyss would leave both the maindeck AND sideboard of Keeper? The lesson is that if you hang on to relics, prepare to lose. For an underdog deck, no card slots must be sacred. And of paramount importance is that you not reject what your own eyes tell you. If you see Specter winning you games, play Specter. If your games are ending before specter can grab two cards, then perhaps you should re-evaluate those slots.

[wuaffiliate]

On that note  i've been testing for some time now with no hippys and i cant say im dissapointed wretches are just so much better and it let me run sinkholes again.

//NAME: spankmachine
// BY: Al "wuaffiliate" Dubuc
// Stank Ass Hoes (12)
        4 Phyrexian Negator
        4 Nantuko Shade
        4 Withered Wretch
// BoomBettyByeBye (4)
        1 Demonic Tutor
        1 Yawgmoth's Will
        1 Demonic Consultation
        1 Necropotence
// Jack You Back (15)
        4 Duress
        4 Hymn to Tourach
        4 Sink Hole
        3 Null Rod
// Tequila Sunrise (3)
        3 Unearth
// Valley of Chrome (27)
        15 Swamp
        4 Dark Ritual
        4 Wasteland
        1 Strip Mine
        1 Mox Jet
        1 Black Lotus
// Sideboard (15)
SB:  4 Contagion
SB:  4 Powder Keg
SB:  3 Masticore
SB:  3 Coffin Purge
SB:  1 Null Rod

of course for online and gencon type metagames i would splash to beat stax, but i would rather stay mono-b unless i need to metagame with moons and RnRs . Also im thinking of SBing 4 edicts in place of contagions for togs and the like. edict is used far too little and misd is much less of a problem so i see no reason not to run alot of them.

[herby]

after further testing...

The Hizzouse:
4 phyrexian negator
4 nantuko shade
4 withered wretch
2 hypnotic specter/cabal therapy

4 unearth
4 duress
4 hymn to tourach

4 null rod

1 necropotence
1 demonic tutor
1 demonic consultation
1 yawgmoth's will

4 dark ritual
1 black lotus
1 mox jet
4 bloodstained mire
3 badlands
8 swamp
4 wasteland
1 strip mine

SB:
4 rack and ruin
4 contagion
3 chains of mephistopheles
2 diabolic edict
2 blood moon

the hypnotic specters are back in for the moment for a lack of a better creature/disruption card.  unearth has great synergy with yet another card, cabal therapy.  so the therapy might end up taking the slot but it's still undecided.\n\n