[deck] count chocula

[racoooon!]

i love speed decks. really. i played hatred black all my life and all i can
say is that a turn 3 kill is funny and a turn 2 kill is orgasmic. after
piloting the original count chocula as a second deck ive found ways of achiving
such beautiful goal.butlet me tell you that this is not a regular combo deck
that goes off extremely fast, this deck can pack 8 copies of one combo piece,
which allows it to run very smothly.
here's the decklist

combo:

4 Corpse Dance
4 Shallow Grave
4 Buried Alive
4 Krosan Cloudscraper
2 Sutured Ghoul

disruption:

4 Duress
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Hymn to Tourach


tutors:

1 Rhystic Tutor
1 Imperial Seal
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor

mana sources:

12 Swamp
4 City of Traitors
4 Dark Ritual
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald

the deck basicly needs to play buried alive two cloudscrapers
and a sutured ghoul and then corpse dance the ghoul for a
26/26 trample haste creature.

since this is a combo deck and theres many ways to screw you,
we need duress, which praticly gets everything thats a treath, and
therapy that always gets everything if you know what youre doing.
the main targets are fow and chalice (even tho your opponent needs
a chalice set to 3 to really do some damage).

rhystic tutor works with city of traitors so its a fine partner to
the other cliche tutors. if you somehow see vampiric tutor and seal
as a lost turn dont run it and pack 4 tainted pacts or something(
dont forget to vault of whispers to lower the swamps number). but don't
worry about that, the combo is so easy to pull of that most times you
will find that these four slots are obsolete.of course ive considered
demonic consultation, but that might remove a useful creature from
the game, so thats a big no no.

city of traitors is really the key card since it allows you to cast
buried alive turn 2. corpse dance is a really sweet card with cot too,
etc...

...build the deck and play it. youll see how consistent it is.

[wethepeople]

Leyline of the Void, Planar Void, and Tormod's Crypt own your soul, and you have absolutely no answers to that. gl post board.

[scribe888]

hate usually does. just one question though, no necropotence?

great deck idea though, it looks nice.

[Discozombie]

Looks interesting.  I used to run a deck around corpse dance (it is actually were my screen name comes from, inquest once reffered to it as disco zombie).  I would replace the cloud scrapers with Phyrexian dreadnoughts. 

Dreadnaught you can drop him for 1 and let him fall in the graveyard to then reccur.  Plus then you just need to find 4 spaces and you can run illusionary mask main or sideboard and have two seperate win conditions.   So if they board graveyard hate you have another option.  Also loose the rhystic.  Consultation is better.  Spoils of the vault would be better too.

I would change it to this...

combo:  22

4 Corpse Dance
4 Shallow Grave
4 Buried Alive
1 Entomb
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
1 Sutured Ghoul
4 Illusionary Mask

disruption: 8

4 Duress
4 Cabal Therapy

tutors: 4

1 Demonic Consultation
1 Imperial Seal
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor

mana sources: 26

3 Polluted Delta
3 Bloodstained Mire
9 Swamp
4 Dark Ritual
7 SoLoMoxen

[wethepeople]

A cool idea that just crossed my mind would be g2, transition the deck into MaskNaught so they think that they are garunteed to win after boarding in all of this GY hate, and then you can Mask in a 12/12 and kick them in the nuts. Game three (if there is one), you can run both because by then they will most likely be packing Null Rods, Seal of Cleansings, GY hate, you will now need whatever win condition you get because they will now have the ability to shut off both of your win conditions with a little work, and you need all the help you can get.

This idea may be slightly baised due to the fact I have been doing a lot of tinkering around with a transitional sideboard, but I think it is worth a try.

Dreadnaught you can drop him for 1 and let him fall in the graveyard to then reccur.

One error that Discozombie may not be aware of that even when you reanimate Dreadnaught, you still need to sacrifice 12. This situation is similar to when you reanimate Worldgorger Dragon, because its "Comes into play" abilities still activates, as would the Dreadnaughts "Sacrifice a ton of shit when ~this~ comes into play" drawback. The only time you can really get out of this effect is Illusionary Mask because all properties of that specific creature are lost when played face down, but when it is flipped they do not activate because it is not just entering play.

[racoooon!]

Leyline of the Void, Planar Void, and Tormod's Crypt own your soul, and you have absolutely no answers to that. gl post board.

yeah of course that kind of hate sucks but thats the reason im running therapy maindeck, along with duress we have 8 quasi-answers to the problem. but i think splashing blue would be nice to solve that and to get some cliche draw engine.

hate usually does. just one question though, no necropotence?

great deck idea though, it looks nice.

thanks.

altho necro when casted wins me the game the only times i can cast it is with dark ritual. theres no other way, so i choose to just stick with the combo and use dark ritual for a possible turn 2 kill without necro.

Looks interesting.  I used to run a deck around corpse dance (it is actually were my screen name comes from, inquest once reffered to it as disco zombie).  I would replace the cloud scrapers with Phyrexian dreadnoughts. 

Dreadnaught you can drop him for 1 and let him fall in the graveyard to then reccur.  Plus then you just need to find 4 spaces and you can run illusionary mask main or sideboard and have two seperate win conditions.   So if they board graveyard hate you have another option.  Also loose the rhystic.  Consultation is better.  Spoils of the vault would be better too.

I would change it to this...

combo:  22

4 Corpse Dance
4 Shallow Grave
4 Buried Alive
1 Entomb
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
1 Sutured Ghoul
4 Illusionary Mask

disruption: 8

4 Duress
4 Cabal Therapy

tutors: 4

1 Demonic Consultation
1 Imperial Seal
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor

mana sources: 26

3 Polluted Delta
3 Bloodstained Mire
9 Swamp
4 Dark Ritual
7 SoLoMoxen

consultation may remove a ghoul (thats why im not running serum powder) and i not to found of mask in this deck because really thats not the point. running mask as a second winning condition would make this deck like a bad version of classic mask decks. i rather concentrate my efforts on pulling the combo the fastest possible and have some way to deal with gy hate.

A cool idea that just crossed my mind would be g2, transition the deck into MaskNaught so they think that they are garunteed to win after boarding in all of this GY hate, and then you can Mask in a 12/12 and kick them in the nuts. Game three (if there is one), you can run both because by then they will most likely be packing Null Rods, Seal of Cleansings, GY hate, you will now need whatever win condition you get because they will now have the ability to shut off both of your win conditions with a little work, and you need all the help you can get.

This idea may be slightly baised due to the fact I have been doing a lot of tinkering around with a transitional sideboard, but I think it is worth a try.

Dreadnaught you can drop him for 1 and let him fall in the graveyard to then reccur.

One error that Discozombie may not be aware of that even when you reanimate Dreadnaught, you still need to sacrifice 12. This situation is similar to when you reanimate Worldgorger Dragon, because its "Comes into play" abilities still activates, as would the Dreadnaughts "Sacrifice a ton of shit when ~this~ comes into play" drawback. The only time you can really get out of this effect is Illusionary Mask because all properties of that specific creature are lost when played face down, but when it is flipped they do not activate because it is not just entering play.

yeah but like i said above why run a bad version of masknaught if it seems possible to play this deck even with graveyard hate?




im thinking of splashing blue. brainstorm, careful study, and the likes along with fow would make this more consistent. the problem with that is that will slow the deck.

and remember guys you cannot afford to reach turn 4. this must kill on turn 3 or else the deck will just colapse.

the monoblack version gets me a turn two kill 30% of the time (dark ritual, moxen, buried alive 1st turn, 2nd turn shallow grave or corpse dance with cot)

but thanks for the feedback, im just a newbie i would like to see the decklists you can come up with. you get the idea, now lets just work on the deck because a turn 2 kill is nothing to snub about.

[Discozombie]

wethepeople: Actually what I was saying was that if you have a naught in hand and want to get it into the yard to fuel a ghoul, you simply cast him for one, you cannot satisfy his requirment and he goes to the yard.  This way you don't have to waste a therapy to drop a cloudscraper from your hand into the yard.   That's why I was advocating dreadnaught over cloudscraper, plus it gives the option of playing mask main or in the board to go transformer on them!

[wethepeople]

Ah, I understand what you are saying now. I thought that when you said "reccur" that it meant to reanimate him, which obviously would not work. I see now what you meant, and that does actually sound like a very good idea.

[racoooon!]

I was advocating dreadnaught over cloudscraper, plus it gives the option of playing mask main or in the board to go transformer on them!

the question is not the ability to abuse mask, you can run 3 copies of dreadnaught, while with cloudscraper you need to run 4, because you have to think about the chances of drawing a cloudscraper (without therapy you can't dump him into the yard) and still be able to feed 2 other copies to buried alive. dreadnaught opens a new slot any sugestions?

[wethepeople]

Buried Alives reads "Search your library for up to three creatures..." So you can still cast it if your have one of the Dreadnaughts in hand, even two of them, because you can either play it so it dies for 1 mana, or simply wait another turn to win and swing with a 12/12 Sutuored Ghoul, that is of course if you were to come across the problem of only having one Dreadnaught remaining in your library. All I am really suggesting is that you should actually run just two of the Dreadnaughts, this allows you to get two more slots for whatever you please.

However, if you are really worried about it, you can still run three, that last maindeck slot isnt entirely necessary I guess. I have seen other Sutured Ghoul-based decks that ran just two Cloudscrapers as their win, and they did just fine.

[scribe888]

i was thinking the same thing with blue

if you add blue

that would mean
-3 hymn to tourach
-1 cabal therapy
-2 corpse dance
-1 rhystic tutor
+1 tinker
+1 dsc/mem jar
+4 brainstorm
+1 mystical tutor

[Discozombie]

Well if you don't want to run the mask main, you should try something like this

combo:  19

4 Corpse Dance
4 Shallow Grave
4 Buried Alive
1 Entomb
4 Phyrexian Dreadnought
2 Sutured Ghoul

disruption: 12

4 Duress
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Unmask

tutors: 3

1 Imperial Seal
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor

mana sources: 26

3 Polluted Delta
3 Bloodstained Mire
9 Swamp
4 Dark Ritual
7 SoLoMoxen

This deck really is a one shot deal, but I threw in two ghouls for you just in case.  I STRONGLY reccomend a transformational sideboard into mask.  You have all the componets here to make it mask.  This would mean that your main deck nice and fast but graveyard hate is everywhere now.  game two they bring in all their graveyard hate and you switch to mask which does not use the yard at all. 

That's why I advocated the use of mask in the main since it splits your strategy giving you two paths  to victory that are not reliant on the same resources. 

Dance/Shallow Grave is very vulnerable to Tormod's Crypt, Planar Void, and Leyline of the Void which are fairly common.

Maskanaught dies to Pithing Needle, Null Rod, and of course all the artifact hate running around. 

If you run both then your opponent has to divide their resources to deal with your threats. 


But if you stay with the about build I do think that unmask is needed since you must go off turn 2-3 in order for this deck to be effective.  It is just like Hatred where all it needs is one clear shot, but if it misses that shot then you are dead.

[racoooon!]

But if you stay with the about build I do think that unmask is needed since you must go off turn 2-3 in order for this deck to be effective.  It is just like Hatred where all it needs is one clear shot, but if it misses that shot then you are dead.

thats why i love the deck.

you posted an interesting decklist. is entomb working for you?  i find no use for the thing because, even tho you can put dreadnaught in the graveyard, youll still need to bury more then just one creature. you need 3 creatures in the yard in order to go. entomb makes the deck clunky.

why dont you try a hybryd between this deck and MaskNaught using your sideboard to shift from one deck to another, and really confused your opponent. im saying this because as you pointed both decks have diferent weakness. but i have my doubts if its really possible to change to MaskNaught by switiching just 15 cards and not having to deal with dead cards in the deck.

another thing, why no city of traitors? its has incredible synergy with the deck (turn 2 buried alive, corpse dance)

here's what i'm playing:


        4 Krosan Cloudscraper
        3 Sutured Ghoul
        4 Unmask
        4 Cabal Therapy
        4 Duress
        4 Buried Alive
        4 Shallow Grave
        4 Corpse Dance
        4 Serum Powder
        2 Engineered Explosives
        1 Demonic Tutor
        4 Dark Ritual
        7 Swamp
        4 City of Traitors
        1 Sol Ring
        1 Black Lotus
        1 Lotus Petal
        1 Mox Sapphire
        1 Mox Ruby
        1 Mox Pearl
        1 Mox Jet
        1 Mox Emerald

ok, i know this is a very wierd build but let me explain. serum powder is like running 8 buried alives and, if by raising the ghoul count to 3 i can have acess to that, its really a small price to pay. this card allows you to get rid of a hand that wouldnt win by turn 3 giving you a second chance. try serum powder in any combo deck. you really have to play this card to realize its full power.  EE deals with everything except leyline of the void (how can i get rid of that without spalshing?)

[Discozombie]

Ghoul Combo Parts 14

4 Corpse Dance
4 Shallow Grave
4 Buried Alive
2 Sutured Ghoul

Overlap Combo Pieces 4

4 Phyrexian Dreadnought

Disruption: 12

4 Duress
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Unmask

Tutors: 3

1 Imperial Seal
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor

mana sources: 27

4 Ancient Tomb (2 damage is not enough for this deck to worry about since it has to go off by turn 4 at the latest)
12 Swamp
4 Dark Ritual
7 SoLoMoxen

Sideboard

4 Illusionary Mask
4 Hunted Horror
4 Spoils of the Vault
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Demonic Consultaion
1 Necropotence

Hunted Horror is my own secret tech I have been working on in mask.  I can safely post it here since most people are not even going to read this thread.  Putting horror into play through mask does not create the little 3/3 pro blacks.  So it ends up being naughts 5-8, ok at twice the cost and half the damage, but 2 mana for a 7/7 is not too bad.  This means you take out the 14 pieces of the ghoul combo and basically through in the sideboard.  Necro is the random card there against control as is will.

the real tech with decks like this is in how you sideboard.  You do not have to reveal to your opponent how many cards you sideboarded.  You simply had to verify that you have 60 in deck and 15 cards in your board.  So what you can do if people start to realized what you are doing is grab your entire sideboard, put it into your deck then remove 15 cards to bring it back to 60 cards.  Your opponent will not see how many cards you are boarding.  You can actually pretend to go transformational and actually put back all 15 cards with out your opponent knowing.   

Transformational boarding is fun when it is a surprise.  It is insanely fun when your oppoenet knows that you go transformational and you know that they know!  Then they don't know if you are taking out one combo for the other, keeping the same thing in, or even better, loose the unmask and bring in the masks and go for both combos at once!

oh that just makes me happy.

[misslehead3]

Sorry to break it to you, but everyone has known about the Hunted thing since Ravnica came out,
On the deck though... I defanately suggest adding blue to the maindeck, it might require a lot of deckwarping to do so though, so it's all your decision. Have you ever found yourself having too many reanimation spells in your hand at once, i would cut the count down to maybe 6 or 7. why isn't the list above me using 8 fetchlands, it doesn't make sense to be allowed to basicly run a 52 cards deck and then not doing it. I really like Serum powder in Ichorid and i think it would be a nice addition here. You would have to max out alll of your combo pieces though so that you wouldn't end up rfg'ing too many of them. What about Bazaar of Baghdad as just a random draw engine. Maybe add a couple Squee's and they work with the Buried alive thing also. What do you guys think.