Koboldpotence

[Charlie]

//NAME: T1 Koboldpotence
4 Skullclamp
4 Serum Powder
2 Tendrils of Agony
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Demonic Consultation
1 Enlightened Tutor
4 Carnival of Souls
4 Crimson Kobolds
4 Kobolds of Kher Keep
4 Crookshank Kobolds
4 Xantid Swarm
2 Blood Pet
4 Myr Moonvessel
1 Sol Ring
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Crypt
1 Black Lotus
1 Chrome Mox
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Mana Vault
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Emerald
4 Gemstone Mine
4 Dark Ritual

The basic game plan would be get a Skullclamp out as soon as possible, find a Carnival of Souls, drop lots of Kobolds for mana and cards, then kill with a big Tendrils. The Xantids make excellent skullclamp food, and still disruptive enough. It can't race other combo in T1 in this moment, and have an average of Turn 3-4 kill, but it should be possible to improve.


Edit: I forgot the Sol Ring and Lotus Petal. Not sure if 22 creatures are enough, though, as it would fizzle without a considerable creature count.

[TheRealSuperman]

why do u play with the serum powder?? I know, free muligan... but......

[Pern]

A deck with a viable use for Carnival Of Souls.
Amazing.

It has the same weakness to Null Rod that Egg Academy had.
You want a main deck answer.

No Lotus Petal?

The Serum Powder is four more Carnivals and Skullclamps, in theory.
The trouble with the theory is the hand that has
a Carnival or a Skullclamp along with a Serum Powder.
I'm not a fan.

[boink0r]

awesome

[TimeBeing]

There was a version of kobolds that used Future Sight and coat of arms to drop a whole lot of koblods very fast and make they very big. made top 8 somewhere a few months ago. a possible mutation of this deck. i like the skull clamp idea. adds a lot to the older deck.

[Tank]

I know that deck, I used to play it a bit- a friend did too so I stopped- when we both have 6 or seven cobold and a coat or tow, it just starts getting really, really strange...

Anyways, i like the basic idea a lot! an idea would be to combine that dck with your skullclamp-idea (I love it!) to give you more kill-conditions- can't hurt, you know!

On that note, I also tried a different version once, featuring Goblin Bombardment, Lifeline and kobolds, ornithopters, and other 0-cost creatures. With skullclamp, it might be even better than it was.. Wonder if all three could be merged?

Whoa, I need to get back in line here! Anyways, I like the idea behind it a lot! If you still need some more creatures added, think about adding things like ornithopter and the 0/3 walker-dude from Visions (Phyrexian Walker I think). Just an idea, seeing as you only have 12 creatures to feed the skullclamp with and I figured nother 4 or 8 might make a difference...

[Manpriest]

No MD draw 7's?  I know the skullclamps are nice and all, but combo needs draw 7's, I mean it just begs for em.  Also, if you're looking at getting a few key cards out as fast as possible, stuff all the fast mana you can in there.

[Tank]

With draw sevens, you mean stuff like wheel of fortune, right? Apart from that, he's got all the mana he needs, apart from maybe a sol ring...

[Manpriest]

Draw 7's for this deck, I was thinking memory jar and wheel.  For fast mana I was thinking sol ring and mana crypt, though I missed that crypt was already in his deck, sorry about that.

[Tank]

ah, I forgot jar. I thought crypt too, but found it on my second scan of the deck- can't think why he didn't add sol ring immedeiatley though...

[Pago]

You probably wont need much of draw7s. The whole deck itself is a concentrated draw engines anyways.

The only limitation to this deck is the 1 life you lose, giving you a "potence" of only 19 cards, unless you have some way to boost your life like the old necro decks did with Ivory Tower, Drain Life, etc..

but it should really matter, just dig 10 cards deep and get tendrils.. somehow

[Jacob Orlove]

[card]Honor the Fallen [/card]

[frimble]

Perhaps a Blossoming Wreath to help with the life gain.

or perhaps a Soul Net if more mana can be generated?

Any way to find room (mana) for Mana Echoes - 'cause wow -- if only there were more Kobolds

[Harry Lime]

This is a really, really cool deck. Bravo  

I haven't tested this, so I'm not sure if this suggestion would be a real improvement, but how about Urza's Bauble over the Serum Powder? It could help with the storm effect, and would provide a small bit of protection against weaker draws, especially in conjunction with YawgWill.

[Pago]

Problem with Bauble is that its draw effect comes next turn, and all the digging you spent this turn will be wasted by the end of turn discard to seven. Serum powder is actually quite useful. Considering that Long.dec had to sort of aggressively mulligan to grab a good hand, this is a perfect choice, allowing you to ditch grab hands (things out your deck) and grab new, potentially powerful ones. And of course, if you have a semi-good hand, you can take an old-fashioned paris too

[Fuzzedball]

Have you thought about Culling the Weak? It can function as an extra ritual  for you to grab more mana with. Also, would grafted in Death Wish/Burning Wish engine be a bad thing. Giving yourself up to four extra copies of Yawgmoths will can't be bad or would the life lost end up being too much? And along the lines of Draw7s, Tinker/Jar seems like an automatic inclusion here.

[everythingitouchdies]

I have been working on kobolds with future sight but this deck is amazing. I simply must try it.

EITD

[Ephraim]

If Honor the Fallen has been suggested, then apparently White is under consideration.

Why not Auriok Steelshaper, which lets you equip the Skullclamp for free, negating the necessity of Carnival of Souls, or Soul Warden, which negates the life loss of the Carnival?

If you're afraid that cutting the Carnival out of the loop would prevent you from having the mana to fire up the Tendrils, you might consider Culling the Weak or Songs of the Damned.

[Charlie]

I've been testing this with 4 Gaea's Cradle. Not sure what to take out, though. Maybe the Sapphire/Emerald/Ruby/Pearl.

[Jacob Orlove]

If you're using serum poweder, and you're at risk of running out of life, it seems like you'd want more Tendrils in the main.

[Robert the Swordsman]

Have you thought of [card]Tangleroot[/card] instead of / in addition to Carnival of Souls?

Granted, black mana is more useful and Carnival is cheaper, but only colorless mana is required to cast 'Root and it doesn't have the life-loss effect.

Just a suggestion.

Good luck.

[TheRealSuperman]

Robert the Swordsman, i think tangleroot is a nice idea... and then u could play with the mana vault to accelarate your mana further...  And then u could play with chromatic sphere, 2 mana u have a black mana + draw a card...

I like the deck alot... i think it is very fun to play with, but can u play a tournament, and still have a chance to win???

[Pago]

You need more disruption in this deck, i.e. Duress, because as Charlie said, it goes off turn 3-4 and in the prvious turns you NEED someway to drop a threat, because 4 xantid simply isnt enough.

[PossessedAven]

I cannot see a reason for serum powder and the deck does need disruption...so why not kill the powder for 4 duress? (or 3 if you insist on having one of R&D's new creations)

I dont think tangleroot is the way to go since most of your stuff that needs a color is black, and it costs more than carnival.  A solution does need to be found for the life loss though.
    I also want to point out that chrome mox should be taken from the list.  Most of your cards are colorless, making this card a burden rather than a mana accelerant.

Good luck on the deck.

[Fuzzedball]

If you needed too, you could pop off an early tendrils to recover lost life and keep going from that point. OR you could play soul warden, which is pretty bad anyway.

[Tempe]

If you're going purely for speed, I've been playing a similar version for a bit, and its average win is turn 2-3.

//NAME: ClampATack
        4 Bayou
        4 City of Traitors
        1 Mana Crypt
        1 Sol Ring
        4 Elvish Spirit Guide
        1 Mana Vault
        1 Lotus Petal
        4 Songs of the Damned
        4 Serum Powder
        1 Fastbond
        1 Tendrils of Agony
        1 Yawgmoth's Will
        4 Myr Retriever
        4 Myr Moonvessel
        4 Crookshank Kobolds
        4 Crimson Kobolds
        4 Kobolds of Kher Keep
        3 Xantid Swarm
        2 Fecundity
        4 Tangleroot
        4 Skullclamp

[card]Fecundity[/card] solves the problem of fizzling because you run out of creatures, and [card]Songs of the Damned[/card] solves the mana problem. Tada!

I love the deck, but I would never play it in a tournament, since I'm too nice. I guess I'm not a "real" Type 1 player, since I get that dirty feeling whenever I play pure combo, which this definitely is.

--Tempe

[jsg7440]

As far as I'm concerned with the deck, Serum Powder is a very powerful card.  It allows you to throw back those hands that would otherwise be total losers.  It will almost always give you 1-2 extra 6-7 card mulligans, which turns out to be a huge factor to consider with a combo deck like this.  Also, the Powder is dead if drawn later, but my testing of an unpowered version of this deck has shown that the sheer magnitude of the drawing offered by this deck should easily provide you with more cards then needed, lessening the effect of drawing the "dead" powders.  

My testing has shown me, at least with an unpowered version, that Serum Powder is almost a must have.  It singlehandedly lowers your critical turn by almost ½.  As anyone can tell you, this is a huge swing for a combo deck that wins in the first 2-3 turns of play.

Let me know what you guys find out from testing this deck.  I think this deck, or a variant of it, will be a strong contendor in the T1 environment, simply because it will be largely unplanned for, and is not hosed easily by the regular combo hosers (stifle sux big ballz though).