Revisiting Mask

[Beatdown]

There are many different ways that one can play mask naught, and I'm attempting yet another with black/green. Green not only gives you hate in various forms, but it also gives you a lot of utility. Also it gives you squee/survial which is probably the best draw engine that you are going to see without blue. I would greatly appreciate some help with this deck. I suck at mana bases, so some help with the %'s would be good 

4 Bayou
5 Forest
6 Swamp
5 Fetch
4 Dark Ritual
1 Sol Ring
1 Mana Vault

4 Illusionary Mask
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
3 Hunted Horror
4 Elvish Spirit Guide
4 Squee Goblin Nabob
3 Sylvan Safekeeper
4 Survival of the Fittest
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
4 Duress
2 Mermeric Fiend

I attempted to play hymn instead of fiend, however it didn't really ever seem to work out. I'm still looking for more disruption, and I may up the fiend count to 4. I'm looking for more tutor power to pull the illusionary masks, however as this is semi budget I'm not going to spend $100+ for imperial seal which isn't even that great. Try to fit dark confidant in here somewhere, maybe with cabal therapy for that extra disruption?

What is your opinion on safekeeper vs. lightning greaves? Safekeeper fits into the curve better and you don't really need many land to run masknaught, while greaves takes up yet another 2-drop spot, which is already pretty full.

[yespuhyren]

You need to post more about the deck.  The theory is fine, we have all heard "Oh, mask + dreadnought + hunted horror could be good"

Post some results and we'll believe you.  Right now this is a tried and failed theory.  If you can prove us wrong, do so with numbers

[Methuselahn]

I would think that you have to explain why you are not playing blue and not playing answers to a resolved Null Rod.  Everyone knows that Maskcombo is great with a fish like skeleton/mana curve, you have options including the broken blue, bounce, and counters to protect you combo.  Plus, blue offers a way to effectively handle other combo decks whereas the limited black disruption that you are sporting is barely enough to (hopefully) get your own gameplan through.  I think throwing more tutors in your deck is the incorrect approach here.

[lordmayhem]

You're splashing green and yet not throwing in Oxidize, Naturalize or any other arti hate in there against Null Rod and Pithing Needle.

What is your gameplan against Rod and Needle?

[cssamerican]

The biggest problem I find with your deck is you have seven cards that depend on you resolving one of your four Illusionary Mask. That is a pretty big bottleneck and you haven't done anything to address it, such as running tutors to find Illusionary Mask more consistently or running other outlet cards such as Volrath's Shapeshifter or Dimir Doppelganger to double as additional masks. Maybe you should search the forum for Ninja Mask decks. It has the same general gameplan as what you have presented here, but it addresses the problems I and others have mentioned. I understand if you don't want to net deck, but you should at least look at that deck to see how it overcomes the bottleneck problems.

[Beatdown]

You're splashing green and yet not throwing in Oxidize, Naturalize or any other arti hate in there against Null Rod and Pithing Needle.

What is your gameplan against Rod and Needle?

I was planning on having all of the artifact hate in the board, though with it being so common maybe it deserves maindeck slots.

[Beatdown]

I would think that you have to explain why you are not playing blue and not playing answers to a resolved Null Rod.  Everyone knows that Maskcombo is great with a fish like skeleton/mana curve, you have options including the broken blue, bounce, and counters to protect you combo.  Plus, blue offers a way to effectively handle other combo decks whereas the limited black disruption that you are sporting is barely enough to (hopefully) get your own gameplan through.  I think throwing more tutors in your deck is the incorrect approach here.

I'll try to work up a u/b list, but trying to keep it in budget recall and walk are out of the question. Drains also would be a bit of a stretch, but do-able.

[Beatdown]

After some working on this deck for a while this is a U/B list that I've come up with.

Mana
6 Swamp
3 Island
4 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
4 Dark Ritual
1 Mana Vault
1 Sol Ring
1 Lotus Petal

Search
4 Lim Dul's Vault
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Mystical Tutor
4 Dark Confidant

Disrption-Can you have too much?
4 Duress
4 Cabal Therapy
2 Mesmeric Fiend
4 Force of Will
2 Echoing Truth

Combo
4 Illusionary mask
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought

I win
1 Yawgmoth's Will

[UR]

I'm also toying with this deck (although I only have 2 masks) but I was thinking about splashing red for Goblin Welder and MoxMonkey. They both cost one mana (so you can really fool your opponent, mwhuahaha), have great synergy and provide the deck with some answers against the meta.

The trouble is that my list looks more like control slaver than mask and that isn't what I'm after  .

[Gabethebabe]

Greetings.

I salute any person that manages to post two proposals for a deck that runs black and dark rituals, without including Yawgmoth´s Will in any of them.

[UR]

It is an Illusionary Mask deck... it isn't meant to win.

[Beatdown]

Does goblin welder really have synergy with this deck? Welding in a nought would be bad times, and welding in a mask isn't really a big deal because the cost isn't really proactive. It would of course be good for opposing dreadnought's though! And yes, I should probably add in yawg will for those random topdeck wins.
-1 Merchant Scroll
+1 Yawgmoth's Will

[Beatdown]

It is an Illusionary Mask deck... it isn't meant to win.

Ouch. Of course mask can win, it's just meant to do it with face smashing flair.

[UR]

I added welder to get around the Null Rod problem. The Monkey will eat a Mox (or something) and then you 'weld out' the stick, making sure you can use your Mask again. Or you could just add a Mindslaver to your own deck and make it work just like CS with an alternate win.

Mask doesn't really win anything tounament wise. I suppose it could win fast, but there is just sooo much artifact hate out there that it is hard to win anything. Maybe if Stax drops in popularity you'll stand a chance, but until then I have little hope that this deck will be anything more than casual.

[Beatdown]

It's definitly not going to be tier one a top performing deck, but tier two competitive I could see. Do you think 5 strips could fit/deserve slots in here? That would give me 21 disruption, thoughts?


Edit - try not to talk about tiers, it just leads to meaningless arguing.  www.themanadrain.com/forums/index.php?topic=18027.msg299976#msg299976
If you just describe what you mean {see my edit above}, rather than refer to tiers, it will be a lot more clear and we can avoid senseless tier arguments.  - Dante
[/b]

[UR]

My current list has 3 (1 Strip Mine, 2 Wasteland) which combines nicely with Intuition and Crucible of Worlds. Also, this is where the welder comes in handy, bringing the Crucible back if they don't want to give it to you.