U/B Sui needs help

[DokFerien]

hallo all...

I am totaly newbie to vintage this time. I have not played for many years and i saw that some vintage tuniers are going on in my nightbourhood. I thought i will try to have some there but i think my old siublack will not win more than a "shakehand-and-there-is-the-door". I have no power fpr the deck.
I got an idea from a friend to splash blue and so i tried to build a U/B SUI deck.

Decklist
Land:
6 Swamp
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
4 Underground Sea
2 Island
4 Mishra’s Factory

Kreaturen:
4Carnophage
4Skittering Skirge
4Phyrexian Negator

Other Spells
4Sarcomancy
4Standstill
4Sleeper’s Robe
4Seal of Removal
4Unsummon
4Dark Ritual
3Cranial Extraction

Sideboard:

3 Hymn
4 Duress
2 Chalice of the void
4 Diabolic Edict
2 Tormonds Crypt ---  maybe Planar Voids vs the oath and welder decks----

Idea is:  creature --> standstill --> mishra --> more DMG
            ritual --> negator --> sleepers robe --> standstill --> more DMG
What do you think about this deck?

• blue for standstill, evasion (sleepers robe) and unsummon/seal for standstill and DSC
• are sacromancy, carnophage and mishra enough for a 2nd turn standstill
• are 4 wastelands and 1 stripmine to much
• are the craniels good in the main (4 mana CC are many much for that kind of deck)
• i dont have any fetchlands (i know they would be better)

Please post yout thoughts about this try of a deck and its sideboard.

Thankx for your thoughts.

Dok

[Draven]

Welcome!

I am actually testing a B/U Sui type deck right now. Now I am not going to post my deck and say if it doesn't look like mine, it is crap. However I am going to give you some heads up on some of your choices.

First of all, Duress x 4 main deck is a MUST in this deck type. This deck has absolutly no protection (counters) so you have to rely on the disruption. You may also consider Hymn to Torach *consider*

4x Seal of Removal and 4x Unsummon is WAY too much bounce. Unless you are in a aggro only metagame, this will just clog your hand up, slot. Look at Diabloic Edict maindeck.

5 Strips is a must, I run 5 strips and 4 SinkHoles. Not advocating, just saying that 5 Strips is good.


The Standstill is an interesting idea, my fear is Sui is a very aggressive deck. It really wants to tap out every turn casting Duress, Hymn, Threat etc. However, I have never tested Standstill, so if it works go for it.

The Sleeper's Robe is another interesting idea, but look at Dimir Cutpurse out of Ravinica. It will do everything the Robes do plus it has a 2/2 body attatched to it with a discard effect as well.

Personally, I am a fan of Cranial Extraction. Everyone on this forum will tell you not to play it, but I have pwned quite a few decks with CE.

You brought up the Fetch Lands, but if you can get the 4 Delta's it will help dramatically.

I feel bad you are splashing blue and not running Time Walk and Ancestral Recall. If you can proxy those, I would. (Along with the moxen)

There is another card out of Ravnica that was made for decks just like this. It is Shadow of Doubt. Try it out. It is the best thing this deck is going to get to a "counterspell."

Good luck with this deck. It may not win as much as other decks, but it is a dman fun deck to play.

[Beatdown]

Dark conifdant is also a great card in suicide black. It's a 2 power for 2 mana and if it stays on the board it gives you great card advantage.

[Fubar]

Welcome

For a stronger deck try to splurge a bit and get your hands on da powerful black cards Demonic Tutor & Yawgmoth's Will.
Necropotence is also relatively cheap

[Zomar]

In my opinion the clock that suicide black puts out is not fast enough to warrent playing aggressive creatures like negator and skirges. I think disruption is necisarry to  ride to victory on. Thus I advocate 4 withered wretch in all black aggro decks.

[lordmayhem]

There is another card out of Ravnica that was made for decks just like this. It is Shadow of Doubt. Try it out. It is the best thing this deck is going to get to a "counterspell."

  Mana Leak.

@ Dokferien : How's Standstill without Aether Vial doing? Also, Unsummon and Seal of Removal are crap. If you're on a tight budget, you might want to try Aether Spellbomb and Dark Banising, though I would really recommend Diabolic Edict.

Have you considered Necropotence?

[Draven]

  Mana Leak.

I submit... I was thinking of my version, which is mainly mono-black with blue splash for power blue. His deck has more blue in it, so Mana Leak would work well.

[allstarhunk69]

I thought that I would chime in on this discussion.

There are a few problems with using blue in a sui deck...the main one being that you are straying from the goal of the deck-winning as fast as possible. Each turn that you are playing you are closer and closer to losing.  In order to deal with this fact, disruption (of the hand, and at times manabase of your opponents) has classically been the solution.  I would drop blue completely there is no advantage at all.

I am now going to suggest cards which I think are of merit:
Unmask - Its free and is pretty tech when combined with a first turn negator
Duress - I think its self explanatory
Hymn - Again, self explanatory Im not sure if playing 4 of this AND unmask is a good idea, try to find a balance, maybe 3 hymn 2 unmask?

Maindeck planar void I would imagine is your only hope for winning (against top tier decks)...its going to be a pain in the ass for most decks quite frankly thus disabling such brokenness as: Yawgs Will, Recoup, Welder, Intuition (well disables the abuse of it), Gifts (again hitting the abuse of the card + recoup for walk, etc you know the deal), Dragon.dec, Oath (all versions), I dont think I need to keep going.

I mean obviously sui isnt a Tier 1 deck, and without certain tech that will be unexpected (atleast as far as maindeck is concerned) for the most part/versatile in the meta its just going to lose every match quite frankly.

Upon thinking about your splashing of blue, the only color I really see being effective atm is white (Kataki, Suppression Field) which I would expect to be relatively strong considering the major archtypes today.

[pyr0ma5ta]

A few good cards that probably should make the deck, or at least be considered:
Duress/Cabal Therapy
Dark Confidant
Ninja of the Deep Hours
Mesmeric Fiend

Unsummon and Sleeper's Robe should probably get cut. 

[P_f]

Hey people. I've been toying with U/B Sui/Fish a little bit and here's a few speculations from me:

Dark Confidant: This card alone makes a sui-esque deck viable. It is vastly superior to Standstill (or curiosity)in the traditional fish builds b/c by being a creature, you save valuable slots for playing something else. As a bonus, its not horrible against other fish decks either (unlike standstill).

Ninja of the Deep Hours versus Dimir Cutpurse: These 2 creatures basically do the same thing. Realistically they don't come online until turn 3 or 4, which is really pretty slow and wouldn't make the cut at all if you do not have tempo disruption. Right now, I vastly prefer the Cutpurse since it can cripple the opponent much more than the ninja can if it can swing unblocked. One can argue that ninja is slightly faster since it cost less and comes out of the gates already swinging but it also requires you to play a dude first. Compare 1UB and 1U and an unblocked creature and you'll realize they are basically about the same speed.

# of Cutpurse: Three. They are too slow to run 4. Running 2 might be too few.

Countermagic: Despite running the Confidant and the obvious heavy amounts of discard, countermagic is vital for the deck, as they are for all blue-based decks. Too many tier 1 decks out there can simply combo you out or topdeck random brokenness to negate whatever insane amounts of discard you threw at them the previous turn. Discard is not enough against tier 1 decks. The best 2 for the deck are FoW and Daze.

Discard: There's only 3 potential cards you can consider for this: Duress, Cabal Therapy, and Mesmeric Fiend. While the Fiend is great, it is also a turn slower than the other 2 discard spells, making it a lot worse. Furthermore, you really don't want to be running more than 8 discard spells since drawing them later in the game is usually bad.

Dark Ritual: This card doesn't belong here although one might be tempted to play it. Dark Ritual is at its most powerful in combo decks, not in decks that have the ability to play rit, duress, duress, cabal therapy, or any other combination of 1st turn discard spells. As good as it sounds to cripple your opponents hand on your first turn, in practice, its not as good as it seems when your opponent is either going first, or can just topdeck an awesome card.

Necro: Without Ritual, Necro is not at its best. It won't be able to consistently played until turn 3. While powerful, I'm not a fan due to its hard casting cost and the fact that even a resolved necro sometimes isn't as good as something like null rod, wretch, or confidant.

# of blue spells: 16 blue spells is a nice round number in order to support Force of Will. Run any fewer and you'll soon find out you can't counter 1st turn threats as consistently as you want. You've got Ancestral, Time Walk, 3 Daze, 4 Fow, 1 blue bounce, and 3 Cutpurses. That's 13 blue spells, which is not enough. Here's the other blue spells you can consider adding: Mystical, FoF, Brainstorm, Tinker, Blue utility creatures.

Mystical: Doesn't get null rod. No.

FoF: Too Expensive, no.

Brainstorm: Eats up tempo, yes it only cost 1 blue mana, but it this deck, every single mana is valuable, also dilutes your threat counts, no.

Tinker: Without brainstorm, no.

Blue Utility Creatures: This basically boils down to voidmage prodigy, hatchling, or cloud of faeries. Voidmage is a tremendous tempo eater and when it finally comes online, its usually too late. Cloud of Faeries, while good, doesn't play into the mana denial strategy that the hatchling can.

Null Rod: 4 is too much since its pretty dead against other aggro decks. Only 3 like traditional fish.

Withered Wretch: Only 3 because its function is similar to null rod and is quite deck against other aggro decks.

After all these speculations/observations, here's the deck I would build:

Creatures: (13)
4X Dark Confidant
3X Dimir Cutpurse
3X Spiketail Hatchling
3X Withered Wretch

Disruption: (17)
4X Force of Will
3X Daze
3X Duress
4X Cabal Therapy
3X Null Rod

Others: (7)
1X Ancestral Recall
1X Time Walk
1X Demonic Tutor
1X Vampiric Tutor
1X Yawgmoth's Will
1X Rushing River
1X Darkblast

Mana: (23)
3X Mishra's Factory
1X Strip Mine
4X Wasteland
4X Polluted Delta
4X Underground Sea
2X Island
2X Swamp
1X Black Lotus
1X Mox Sapphire
1X Mox Jet

The deck only runs 23 mana b/c the curve tops at 3 and there's only 5 of them. I chose not to run 4 factories because I needed more color sources and between cutting wasteland and factory, I chose factory.

[Draven]

Hey people. I've been toying with U/B Sui/Fish a little bit and here's a few speculations from me:

Dark Confidant: This card alone makes a sui-esque deck viable. It is vastly superior to Standstill (or curiosity)in the traditional fish builds b/c by being a creature, you save valuable slots for playing something else. As a bonus, its not horrible against other fish decks either (unlike standstill).

Ninja of the Deep Hours versus Dimir Cutpurse: These 2 creatures basically do the same thing. Realistically they don't come online until turn 3 or 4, which is really pretty slow and wouldn't make the cut at all if you do not have tempo disruption. Right now, I vastly prefer the Cutpurse since it can cripple the opponent much more than the ninja can if it can swing unblocked. One can argue that ninja is slightly faster since it cost less and comes out of the gates already swinging but it also requires you to play a dude first. Compare 1UB and 1U and an unblocked creature and you'll realize they are basically about the same speed.

# of Cutpurse: Three. They are too slow to run 4. Running 2 might be too few.

Countermagic: Despite running the Confidant and the obvious heavy amounts of discard, countermagic is vital for the deck, as they are for all blue-based decks. Too many tier 1 decks out there can simply combo you out or topdeck random brokenness to negate whatever insane amounts of discard you threw at them the previous turn. Discard is not enough against tier 1 decks. The best 2 for the deck are FoW and Daze.

Discard: There's only 3 potential cards you can consider for this: Duress, Cabal Therapy, and Mesmeric Fiend. While the Fiend is great, it is also a turn slower than the other 2 discard spells, making it a lot worse. Furthermore, you really don't want to be running more than 8 discard spells since drawing them later in the game is usually bad.

Dark Ritual: This card doesn't belong here although one might be tempted to play it. Dark Ritual is at its most powerful in combo decks, not in decks that have the ability to play rit, duress, duress, cabal therapy, or any other combination of 1st turn discard spells. As good as it sounds to cripple your opponents hand on your first turn, in practice, its not as good as it seems when your opponent is either going first, or can just topdeck an awesome card.

Necro: Without Ritual, Necro is not at its best. It won't be able to consistently played until turn 3. While powerful, I'm not a fan due to its hard casting cost and the fact that even a resolved necro sometimes isn't as good as something like null rod, wretch, or confidant.

# of blue spells: 16 blue spells is a nice round number in order to support Force of Will. Run any fewer and you'll soon find out you can't counter 1st turn threats as consistently as you want. You've got Ancestral, Time Walk, 3 Daze, 4 Fow, 1 blue bounce, and 3 Cutpurses. That's 13 blue spells, which is not enough. Here's the other blue spells you can consider adding: Mystical, FoF, Brainstorm, Tinker, Blue utility creatures.

Mystical: Doesn't get null rod. No.

FoF: Too Expensive, no.

Brainstorm: Eats up tempo, yes it only cost 1 blue mana, but it this deck, every single mana is valuable, also dilutes your threat counts, no.

Tinker: Without brainstorm, no.

Blue Utility Creatures: This basically boils down to voidmage prodigy, hatchling, or cloud of faeries. Voidmage is a tremendous tempo eater and when it finally comes online, its usually too late. Cloud of Faeries, while good, doesn't play into the mana denial strategy that the hatchling can.

Null Rod: 4 is too much since its pretty dead against other aggro decks. Only 3 like traditional fish.

Withered Wretch: Only 3 because its function is similar to null rod and is quite deck against other aggro decks.

After all these speculations/observations, here's the deck I would build:

Creatures: (13)
4X Dark Confidant
3X Dimir Cutpurse
3X Spiketail Hatchling
3X Withered Wretch

Disruption: (17)
4X Force of Will
3X Daze
3X Duress
4X Cabal Therapy
3X Null Rod

Others: (7)
1X Ancestral Recall
1X Time Walk
1X Demonic Tutor
1X Vampiric Tutor
1X Yawgmoth's Will
1X Rushing River
1X Darkblast

Mana: (23)
3X Mishra's Factory
1X Strip Mine
4X Wasteland
4X Polluted Delta
4X Underground Sea
2X Island
2X Swamp
1X Black Lotus
1X Mox Sapphire
1X Mox Jet

The deck only runs 23 mana b/c the curve tops at 3 and there's only 5 of them. I chose not to run 4 factories because I needed more color sources and between cutting wasteland and factory, I chose factory.

Nice decription and list... My question is why only 3 Duress and 4 Cabal Therapy? It seems Duress is a stronger card, so you would want 4 Duress and 3 Therapy. Can you convince me otherwise?

[P_f]

I really don't have a strong argument for not running 4 duress 3 therapy instead of the other way around. My inclination for playing 4 therapies is pretty much based on the fact that therapy can nab more than 1 card per cast and you can flash it back.

Its obvious weakness is you have to name the correct card, but I think a lot of times, its strengths offsets the occasional few times you miss with it. Duress is at its best against bluebased and combo decks, and in those matchups, its only better than therapy if you can take a bomb like tinker, will, ancestral, dtutor, lotus, etc. But trying to go for fow,  drain, thirsts, gifts,  or even brainstorm using therapy isn't bad either and sometimes, has a chance of hitting 2 drains etc.

Against stax or welder based decks, duress can't hit welders and if the only cards you can take are their artifacts, you've probably also played into their game plan.

Against aggressive/tempo decks, therapy at least have a chance to take their mongrel/juggernaut/fatty whereas having duress isn't quite as good.

[Wikoogle]

Here's what's currently being considered in Legacy, you could borrow some of their tech...

CREATURES (15)
4 Dimir Cutpurse
4 Hypnotic Specter
2 Ninja of the Deep Hours
1 Psychatog
4 Shadowmage Infiltrator

SPELLS (23)
4 Aether Vial
4 Cabal Therapy
4 Duress
4 Force of Will
4 Standstill
3 Umezawa's Jitte

LANDS (22)
4 Island
4 Mishra's Factory
4 Polluted Delta
4 Underground Sea
2 Wasteland
4 Watery Grave

Ofcourse, to make it Vintage worthy, you'll need to add the following cards...

3 chains of mephistopheles
4 Dark Confidant
1 Lib of Alexandria
4 Waste lands
1 strip
4 Mish Factory
1 lotus
2 mox
3 Null Rod
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 vamp tutor
1 mystical
1 imperial seal
1 demonic tutor
1 personal tutor
1 tinker
1 dsc
4 Spiketail Hatchling
4 sinkhole
Negator
Daze
Withered Wretch
Mesmeric Fiend
Misdirection

tinker dsc is actually quite solid in fish.

fish can lock your opponent down pretty consistently. the problem is that it takes too long to win.

it also loses to random aggro/newb decks - all those people that come into a vintage tourney with their legacy or extended decks, proxying in a few pieces of power.

dsc addresses both problems. and now that you have black and it's 3 awesome tutors (as well as necro), you can find it consistently enough that it's well worth playing.

if not tinker, atleast jitte should be run. it addresses those problems as well and even standard fish uses it. this deck has more use for it since it can be tutored out, can gain back life lost by confidant etc.

but yeah, you actually have a good reason for not wanting to run jitte. you have no reason not to run tinker though.

Sinkhole is AWESOME with your full set of Null Rod, Wastes and Spiketails. Mana denial can the main theme of your deck as you have enough ways to do it consistently.

you're off to a great start though.

There are just far too many great cards.

If everyone ran 80 card decks, this deck would be absolutely perfect LOL.