RGb - Gravebeatz

[Kholdestare]

Hello there,

I've been tinkering with the RG-Beatz build that took 1st place at SCG Chicago in 2007. I swapped some cards in and out and finally came to the idea of adding black for Oath of Ghouls. After some testing with friends and on MWS I found the deck quite promising. It lost a bit of its speed and burn options. However, the addition of Oath of Ghouls got the deck some nice lategame options. Well, here's the list:

Mana [20]

2x Bloodstained Mire
4x Wooded Foothills
2x Taiga   
1x Bayou
1x Swamp
1x Forest
3x Wasteland
1x Strip Mine
1x Mox Ruby
1x Mox Jet
1x Mox Emerald
1x Lotus Petal
1x Black Lotus

Creaures [24]

3x Eternal Witness
3x Magus of the Moon
3x Stingscourger
3x Tin Street Hooligan
4x Mogg Fanatic
4x Street Wraith
4x Tarmogoyf

Spells [16]

2x Sudden Shock
2x Seal of Fire
4x Cabal Therapy

1x Demonic Tutor
1x Vampiric Tutor
3x Oath of Ghouls

3x Skullclamp
4x AEther Vial

Sideboard [15]

4x Duress
2x Ancient Grudge
2x Ingot Chewer
2x Fire Imp
2x Ghitu Slinger
2x Viridian Zealot
3x Tormod's Crypt


There are a number of obvious synergies here. Oath of Ghouls combos with the "cip"-abilities of Eternal Witness, Stingscourger and Tin-Street Hooligan. Stingscourger does you the favor of getting in the yard again on its own and thus creating a bouncing machine. Skullclamp and Mogg Fanatic help you getting other critters in the grave. Street Wraith and Oath is netting you an additional card per turn and so on. After sideboarding you get Viridian Zealot, Fire Imp and Ingot Chewer that can come back again and again.

However, this deck does not "need" the graveyard to execute its game plan. You can still be fine by just dropping creatures and attacking. The loss of burn versus other aggro decks seems not overly relevant. You can gain card and board advantage via Oath. What hurts is that your winning turn is now delayed quite a bit. Then again, there is a better plan against a tinkered DSC because of recurring stingscourgers and an overall improved lategame.

The testing so far was promising. But the deck is quite new, so there might be some cards that should be included and some that do not belong in this list. Share your thoughts and give this deck a try. Its quite fun to play, because there are so many synergies and it is very stable in performing.

Any ideas?

[madmanmike25]

Looks like a fun deck.  A few comments:

Did you try/consider Dark Confidant?  Is Oath+Wraith testing better?  I would almost cut the Wraith's entirely and add in 4 Confidants, but I haven't tested this.

Do you need 4 copies of Oath of Ghouls?  The last list I saw that was based entirely around the card only ran 3 copies.  You have the option of replacing the 4th copy with either Vamp Tutor or Demonic Consultation.

I think 3 E. Witness might be too many in a 3 color deck since she is GG.  Since you have so many creatures, isn't she a tad redundant with Oath?

It lost a bit of its speed and burn options. However, the addition of Oath of Ghouls got the deck some nice lategame options.

You don't think Duress/Thoughtseize is good enough for the maindeck?  That might help make up for the loss in speed and ensure you actually get to see the lategame.

I like Ingot chewer in the SB, could be nice with Oath vs. Shop decks.

With 24 creatures, another card you could look into is Thorn of Amethyst.

Good luck, the list really does look fun.

Mike

[Everrid1234]

madmanmike already made good points (as always ).
The deck nearly totally lacks disruption. Skullclamp....well.....you play these in fundecks or ion Affinity because it takes way too long to overwhelm the opponent with the drawn cards. Confidant is much better here.

IMO the only deck type which is beaten by this deck regularly is control. Combo is not disrupted good enough and pure aggro will just beat you down.

It's a nice idea, there are many nice synergies... but against the tier1 decks....i think it will lose too often. Oath of Ghouls could also be replaced by Survival of the Fittest, if you want some creature-besed card advantage.

[matthewCURBSTOMP]

Instead of Fire Imp, have you tried Ghitu Slinger? It kills itself if needed with it's echo cost so it can more easily be recurred with Oath, and can target your opponent if they don't have any creatures on the board.

[ErkBek]

This deck looks very cool. I love the Street Wraith + Oath synergy.

I'm not sure if you play any extended, but I think you could benefit from looking at some of the Rock decks that use Genesis to create a long game advantage, much like you do with Oath. Cabal Therapy is a card I think you should look into playing. In extended these Rock decks can just tear apart your entire hand with a single therapy and Eternal Witness. Like you said though, Oath is great with all the come into play abilities on creatures in here, therapy allows you to kill off your guys and rip apart their hand. On blind therapies you should probably first go with Brainstorm, though Merchant Scroll, and FoW are always options.  idk something worth looking into, but I'd probably only play 2-3.

[TopSecret]

I know that they can't be played off Vial, but would a Shriekmaw or two be worth considering, either sideboard or maindeck?

[bakerorgg]

I've been toying with a build similar to this, but using Unearth instead.  It's nice to play a Magus of the Moon, have it countered, then tap for an additional black and get it into play anyways  .  The nice thing about Unearth is if they have graveyard answers (Leylines, Tormod's Crypt), you can just cycle it, so it's never a dead draw.

It also has some cute tricks with Eternal Witness; with an Eternal Witness in the graveyard, it becomes a Regrowth + 2/1 creature for only  .  Or you Unearth, bring back EW, which brings back Unearth, which brings back another EW, which brings back Unearth, to bring back....

[Kholdestare]

You made some good points. Thank you for that.
I cut Oath of Ghouls back to 3 copies and added Vampiric Tutor in the open Slot.
Sudden Shock and Seal of Fire seemed not to do that much, so i replaced them with Cabal Therapies.
After some testing its obvious that Therapy belongs in this deck.
To accomodate the (now) heavy black splash I added another fetch and a basic swamp.
I arranged the list in the first post and bolded the changes.

To address some arguments:

@TopSecret: Shriekmaw seems fine and I will try him out. I think he might end up in the sb.
@matthewCURBSTOMP: Slinger seems better than Fire Imp mainly because it can go to the dome.
@everrid1234: Skullclamp fills a lot of roles in this deck and is much more versatile than bob. It gets your guys in the yard so they can get back via Oath. It helps digging for answers if you need to find one "now". The CA it generates with Oath is much better than the extra card from a single Confidant.
@madmanmike25: Witness is not that easy to cast, right. However, I do run Vials which help a lot. I really like to see 1 Witness per game and 3 seems to be the right number to achieve that.

I really want more disruption in this deck but do not know what to cut. Maybe i should go down on creatures in general and add 4x Duress/Thoughtseize to the main?

[Everrid1234]

Kholdestare,
 
the problem is imo as I said: You have many nice synergies, but (!) :

-which creature do you want to equip with the Clamp? You have only 10 creatures to equip (which let you draw a card then). The Witness is really hard to be casted, the Mogg wants to do damage. The other ones shouldn't be equipped because this won't let you draw. So I think it becomes a bit unprobable that the deck runs the way you want it to run

-the optimal play is (in turns, without moxen) :  -Duress -play Oath -cast a creature, use it's effect (which has to fit perfectly in the game situation, e.g. Tin Street on
     a fat artifact (is TinStreeting a Mox worth the wasted turn??)  - recast the creature, clamp it, draw 2 cards, you did nothing this turn what could disturb your
     opponent.
     What I want to say: You don't do anything really important. You don't hate the opponent out heavily, you have no fast draw/tutoring engine which lets you find
     solutions very fast (drawing with the clamp is REALLY time-consuming)
-you play lots of duals, Magus of the Moon and (!) Witness. That doesn't fit together
-for Wraith to be effective the Oath is necessary. Dark Confidant draws cards on its own. Confi could also be equipped.

Sorry that this is just critics, but I don't think the deck can beat one of the tier 1s....

You have so many cards which need other cards to do something: Vial, Oath, Cabal Therapy, Skullclamp. This means that you are dependant on lucky draws and on the lategame, to be able to use all these synergies. I am pretty sure that you will only get this managed in the casual sector.