Death Pit Offering and Manlands

[Cavius The Great]

Death Pit Offering has incredible synergy with manlands considering that you can play a Death Pit Offering with no disadvantage if you design a deck with manlands as your key creatures. Death Pit Offering reads:
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2BB - Enchantment

When Death Pit Offering comes into play, sacrifice all creatures you control.

Creatures you control get +2/+2.
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Usually a drawback like sacrificing all your creatures turns people off and is the main reason this card hasn't seen much play. But when you combine this card with efficient manlands such as Mishra's Factory, Blinkmoth Nexus, Treetop Village and Faerie Conclave, the card becomes quite the powerhouse.

Death Pit Offering makes your manlands significantly bigger putting your opponent on a faster clock. I've played games where I've gotten Treetop Villages attacking as 7/7s or bigger depending on how many Offerings you have in play.

Playing a creatureless deck, besides your manlands of course, makes it possible to utilize efficient creature removal such as Innocent Blood and Barter in Blood. I chose to mention those cards due to the fact that I would obviously be playing black. Innocent Blood is as effective as Swords to Plowshares in this type of deck. Barter in Blood also works like a mini Wrath of God. Cards such as Drop of Honey also work well in this sort of deck.

I've designed numerous decks over the past six months contemplating on which colors to use and which manlands are most efficient. I've broken it down to this list of manlands avaliable.

-Mishra's Factory
-Blinkmoth Nexus
-Treetop Village
-Nantuko Monastery
-Spawning Pool

The rest of the manlands such as Forbidding Watchtower are excluded due the the fact they're terrible. I'm also a little skeptical about Nantuko Monastery because of the threshold factor. Genjus of all colors also have great synergy with Death Pit Offering but only a few are actually playable.

If we can start a discussion of which color manlands should be used and why, my job with this thread is complete. hopefully we can come to a conclusion as to what cards would be optimal and which colors to play while designing a "Death Pit Offering" deck.

[SpencerForHire]

Since it seems that I won't be bother with my Landstill/b variant.  Keep in mind that you also have the ability to run Lethal Vapors which quite frankly, makes you win any matchup against creature decks when your manlands are 4/4s etc.

[Cavius The Great]

Lethal Vapors is techy. But is a four mana time walk really that good? It seems like I would be spending my whole turn playing it.

[Anusien]

Death Pit Offering seems weak.  In other words, you want to make your Factories 4/4, but I can't see where that would ever be viable.  I know I would almost never want to draw that in Landstill; it's not going to make your creatures more effective blockers, it's going to provide a disincentive to use Disk, and I'd think even something as simple as Drain Life would be better.  If you want to try it, I would suggest Vedalken Shackles.  Steal your dude, kill it to the Offering and steal something else seems neat.  I wouldn't be surprised if Death Pit Offering ends up win-more though, especially if you already have BoBtown (Treetop Villages).

[SpencerForHire]

First, lethal vapors would almost never be a full spending of your mana because I could see running Ritual.  Also, this deck would be quite different from landstill and one of the differences would be the use of black board clearers over disk.  Running green you get access to Deed which is pretty good, and you get access to their manland which gives you 5/5 tramplers.
Before deciding how viable this is I would have to see a decklist so we could start tinkering and seeing how it plays against all the main matchups.

Also, you don't necessarily have to run zero creatures but instead only run 4ish.  That way you don't have to play any after you get the offering down.  If you think you'd like to run more than 4, then I believe Aether Vial might be another card to invest thought in.

[Cavius The Great]

Death Pit Offering seems weak.  In other words, you want to make your Factories 4/4, but I can't see where that would ever be viable.  I know I would almost never want to draw that in Landstill; it's not going to make your creatures more effective blockers, it's going to provide a disincentive to use Disk, and I'd think even something as simple as Drain Life would be better.  If you want to try it, I would suggest Vedalken Shackles.  Steal your dude, kill it to the Offering and steal something else seems neat.  I wouldn't be surprised if Death Pit Offering ends up win-more though, especially if you already have BoBtown (Treetop Villages).

Who said anything about running Death Pit Offering in Landstill? I'm talking about designing an entirely different deck here. How is Death Pit Offering weak when it can easily be casted with mana accelleration such as Dark Ritual, Charcoal Diamond, etc.? One Death Pit Offering makes Treetop Villages 5/5s tramplers, Blinkmoth Nexuses 3/3s flyers, Faerie Conclaves 4/3 flyers. With two in play it gets even more insane and I commonly play two copies in each game that I play. How is Death Pit Offering weak when all my creatures can dodge Wraths and Disks and I'm able to run efficient creature removal which normally wouldnt be playable in an aggro deck, such as innocent blood and barter in blood?

First, lethal vapors would almost never be a full spending of your mana because I could see running Ritual.  Also, this deck would be quite different from landstill and one of the differences would be the use of black board clearers over disk.  Running green you get access to Deed which is pretty good, and you get access to their manland which gives you 5/5 tramplers.
Before deciding how viable this is I would have to see a decklist so we could start tinkering and seeing how it plays against all the main matchups.

Also, you don't necessarily have to run zero creatures but instead only run 4ish.  That way you don't have to play any after you get the offering down.  If you think you'd like to run more than 4, then I believe Aether Vial might be another card to invest thought in.

But anyways, here is a rough decklist that I've been toying with. It's a green/black build but it's untested. I've made numerous decklists in the past but cut it down to this one decklist.

Death Pit Aggro.DEC (Legacy)

// Lands
    4  Bayou
    4  Blinkmoth Nexus
    4  Treetop Village
    3  Forest
    7  Swamp
    2  Polluted Delta
    2  Wooded Foothills

// Creatures
    2  Gigapede

// Spells
    4  Rampant Growth
    4  Duress
    4  Pernicious Deed
    4  Putrefy
    4  Innocent Blood
    4  Dark Ritual
    4  Death Pit Offering
    4  Nature's Lore

// Sideboard
SB: 4  Naturalize
SB: 3  Drop of Honey
SB: 4  Wasteland
SB: 2  Cranial Extraction
SB: 2  Crucible of Worlds

The deck is pretty self explanatory and I've made the basic explanation on my first thread. Well, there you go Gimbles. Lets work on this list.

Posts merged - Godder

[SpencerForHire]

There are a few initial thoughts I would like to bring up.  First and foremost, in a format filled with creatures, even if you are running loads of disruption, is Gigapede going to be any better then say Grave-shell Scarab?  The scarab is no loss of card advantage and is in a much more durable shell.  I was thinking that if you keep the deck cheap enough you could run Dark Confidant as the sole creature.  Confidant is a nice liittle beater in his own right with Pits and he is a great draw engine which the deck really needs to keep the advantage.

Secondly, I'm confused about the use of Nature's Lore and Rampant Growth.  I would be more inclined to run the deck cheaper and since none of your land tutors grab manland I really don't see use for them.

Putrefy seems really expensive for a piece of spot removal that could easily be replaced by Last Gasp or if you wanted to have the more expsensive option: Barter in Blood.  Both of these options are superior as creature removal in this deck in comparison to putrefy.  This way, you'll be able to take out things faster, or if you use barter, create a larger advantage for yourself.

I also think this deck could really benefit from Life from the Loam which would allow for wastelands maindeck and an easy way to gain the advantage over other decks with pure overwhelming force.

[Cavius The Great]

There are a few initial thoughts I would like to bring up.  First and foremost, in a format filled with creatures, even if you are running loads of disruption, is Gigapede going to be any better then say Grave-shell Scarab?  The scarab is no loss of card advantage and is in a much more durable shell.  I was thinking that if you keep the deck cheap enough you could run Dark Confidant as the sole creature.  Confidant is a nice liittle beater in his own right with Pits and he is a great draw engine which the deck really needs to keep the advantage.

Secondly, I'm confused about the use of Nature's Lore and Rampant Growth.  I would be more inclined to run the deck cheaper and since none of your land tutors grab manland I really don't see use for them.

Putrefy seems really expensive for a piece of spot removal that could easily be replaced by Last Gasp or if you wanted to have the more expsensive option: Barter in Blood.  Both of these options are superior as creature removal in this deck in comparison to putrefy.  This way, you'll be able to take out things faster, or if you use barter, create a larger advantage for yourself.

I also think this deck could really benefit from Life from the Loam which would allow for wastelands maindeck and an easy way to gain the advantage over other decks with pure overwhelming force.

I dont really think that dredge is the way to go. Unless I can keep key enchantments from going to the graveyard, I really can't picture the deck going in that direction. Gigapede is also good becuase it's unaffected by Swords To Plowshares. I realize you can sac the graveshell scarab in response to an STP but I tend to like the 6 power rating on the gigapede, plus I dont think dredge would benefit the deck like I've already explained. Also, Dark Confident is sexy, but I imagine too many instances where I would be reluctant to cast a Death Pit Offering if I had one in play.

Nature's Lore and Rampant Growth serve as mana accelleration which is much needed in the deck. I would of went the moss and charcoal diamond route, but those artifacts are too susceptible to Pernicious Deed which I run maindeck. Both Rampant Growth and Nature's Lore also serve as card quality control becuase it ultimately thins out my deck so I can get better draws.

I think Putrefy would be the right choice over ANY other creature removal including Last Gasp because not only is it versatile (I can remove artifacts as well) but it also gets rid of large creatures that would otherwise be a nuisance, such as Exalted Angel, Psychatog, etc. Last Gasp won't do anything against a timely played Pyschatog or a morphed or hardcasted Angel.

Agian, I really don't think that Life from the Loam would really fit in the deck. I do admit it's extremely broken, but then we would have to design an entirely different deck to abuse the dredge mechanic which I'm quite reluctant to do.

[SpencerForHire]

I'm not saying to make the deck dredge.dec.  But if you run Life From the Loam your creatures will stick around forever, you don't even have to run the cycling engine.  At that point you could also land lock people which tends to be nice.  Graveshell doesn't require you to cast him every turn which makes him alot better than Gigapede in many cases.  A 1/1 block makes Gigapede useless and they will end up time walking you for 1 mana every turn.  That's a complete time walk, no card advantage from the draw and your tapping out to play an untargetable piece of glass.  I really don't see all the expensiveness you are referring to that makes you want to run 8 land grabbers.

[Vegeta2711]

Why the deck isn't that great and was ignored.

1 land drop a turn
Costs 2-3 mana to actually use the creatures (remember your using a land as a creature, which means no mana usage)
Only stick around 1 turn before having to 'recast' them

On some constructive notes.
Exploration seems like a no brainer for this type or deck and the same with Life from the Loam.
4 Plague maindeck is the only way you'll ever beat Goblins with the thing.
Nexus is weak as hell without Offering, Factory might just be better.
Since we're playing essentially an updated MM block deck, we may as run old MM tech. Natural Affinity anyone? Or Living Plane combined with a board clearer that isn't Deed? (Oh Thrashing Wumpus, how I miss thee)

[Godder]

'Fetch-land' cards to consider are Sylvan Scrying and Crop Rotation, and Sakura-Tribe Elder seems strictly better than Rampant Growth since it can play speed-bump and be a 3/3 later on. Drop of Honey looks interesting in this deck, and so do The Abyss and Nether Void, because once Offering is in play and you've dealt with their initial rush, either of these will seal the deal.

Also, for a deck based around Offering and man-lands, there seem to be very few man-lands actually in the deck. There are quite a few man-lands (or Genjus) that don't come into play tapped, so they should be automatic includes. Crucible or Life from the Loam is required, because otherwise you'll be Wastelanded/Port-locked out of the game.

[Matt]

Guys, this interaction is kind of neat, but it really isn't going anywhere seriously. Spending four mana on a glorified pump spell is awful. Double-black in a deck that wants lots of manlands makes the card even harder to use. I'm gonna have to move[/color] this to casual.

[Godder]

R&D did hear the wails of the people, and they were moved by the suffering. Verily, they sent forth:

'Earth's Rage'
Enchantment, 3G
Lands get +2/+2 as long as they are creatures.

And the people rejoiced.