Tortured existence, updated

By Frédéric Meurin on Wednesday 24 January 2007, 10:38 - Decks - Permalink

You could see Christophe Deslandes and Chris Morling comments about my Tortured existence deck. I worked on these and tried to update the list with new releases from Time Spiral and Planar Chaos.

Here is the list Christophe Deslandes suggested. It's way much competitive with the 3 Sylvan Library having a heavy interaction with the 9 Dredge cards.

// Lands
11 Forest
10 Swamp

// Creatures
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Krosan Tusker
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Brownscale
4 Crypt Rats
4 Spore Frog
1 Battlefield Scrounger
1 Eternal Witness
1 Shambling Shell
4 Tortured Existence
3 Sylvan Library
1 Demonic Tutor
4 Moment's Peace

//Sideboard:
3 Dark Heart of the Wood
1 Nourish
3 Rofellos's Gift
4 Crumble
4 Naturalize

As you can see, the deck is nice, but quite slow.

First modification, I'd change the Shambling shell for the brand new Uktabi Drake. It's a wonderful turn 1 drop, a graveyard auto-filler and it can be recast for only 2 mana (one for the Tortured Existence activation, one for hard casting), against 4 mana for Shambling Shell. Of course, you loose one dredge card, but this one wasn't the most used.

Second change : Mana acceleration. One of the best mana acceleration is Dark ritual, but it's not so synergic with the deck. So what about Songs of the Damned. As you've got a lot of creatures, some of them easily going to graveyard, the spell should be powerful enough even in the early game to bring what's most needed here : mana. We need to out some cards, and I choose to replace Moment's peace with Songs.

Third change : mana acceleration and drawing. Krosan Tusker is nice but heavy : 3 mana to cycle is a lot. Planar Chaos brings us a Green Time Shifted Sindbad : the common Fa'adiyah Seer. It can only start to work at turn 3 (cast at turn 2), such as Krosan Tusker, but it leaves you with 3 mana free for doing whatever you want. It can be used to dredge or simply draw, and eventually fill your graveyard, which is not bad in this deck.

Fourth change : the side. Moment's peace is so good and usefull we can't afford to trash it. Dark Heart of the wood and Nourish can be left away, since we need mana and the deck should go faster with its new mana acceleration. By the way, Seal of Primordium is strictly better in this deck than Naturalize : it's an enchantment you can cast "in case of", leaving you with spare mana later, and as an enchantment, you can bring it back with Rofello's gift.

// Lands
11 Forest
10 Swamp

// Creatures
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Fa’adiyah Seer
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Golgari Brownscale
4 Crypt Rats
4 Spore Frog
1 Battlefield Scrounger
1 Eternal Witness
1 Uktabi Drake
4 Tortured Existence
3 Sylvan Library
1 Demonic Tutor
4 Songs of the damned

//Sideboard:
4 Moment's Peace
3 Rofellos's Gift
4 Crumble
4 Seal of primordium

Please feel free to comment this list :)

Comments

1. On Sunday 4 February 2007, 18:54 by kanoyams

Maybe I'm stupid, but I don't think that Demonic Tutor is worth your time. It may be great in your hand, but after dredging through your deck you'll be more likely to use a card with flashback out of the graveyard than an uncommon tutor out of hand.

The problem with my idea is that there's not too many good flashback cards in the common or uncommon slot. The best uncommon cards that I can think of are: Roar of the Wurm, Dread Return (you could probably build a deck around Dread Return), Recoup and well, cards like Wonder (no islands), Genesis, Etcetera.

Dread Return combos great with Acorn Harvest, BTW.

The Sylvan Library combo is pure awesome.

And the Eternal Witness is pretty much a must-have in this deck. Nice work.

2. On Monday 5 February 2007, 15:05 by Frédéric Meurin

Isn't Dread return just awful when you can play Unearth ?

Demonic tutor is the kind of card you want when you don't have a Tortured existence or a Silvan libraryy, or one in graveyard but no Eternal witness in hand.

3. On Tuesday 6 February 2007, 15:35 by kanoyams

Frederic, you are correct, Demonic Tutor is a great card. If it is in your hand, it can be turned into any card in your deck. It increases the likelihood that you will be able to play Tortured Existence or Silvan Library.

However, it's only a single card and the chances of you drawing it are low.

Because you will be dredging from your library into your graveyard, you are more likely to be able to play something with flashback. It's just statistics.

Dread Return has flashback and it's an animation card. Unfortunately, there's no creature fat in your deck - not even Blastoderm or Krosan Tusker? - for Dread Return to be effective. It was just a suggestion.

By the way, Songs of the Damned is a nice touch, but it's not really acceleration, not in the early game, at least. Even in your deck, it seems like it won't be accelerating anything until turn three or four (at the earliest).

4. On Thursday 26 April 2007, 17:16 by Chris

I'm not really sure what Uktabi Drake accomplishes. I generally find that this deck either fails to gain control (and loses) or gains control (and can win in all sorts of ways. Lots of lifegain followed by lots of Crypt Rats is probably my most common way of winning.) The two damage in the early game doesn't seem worth it. It might be worth it as a blocker -- especially vs. Somber Hoverguard, but in general it's not very exciting. I'd rather run 1 copy of Krosan Tusker or Twisted Automaton. Either card is useful in the early-mid game, and then makes a pretty good win condition once you've got control.

I'll test out Songs of the Damned. This deck is so mana-hungry -- you can always gain more life with Golgari Brownscale -- that the mana will be useful in the late game, but I'm not sure that you really <i>need</i> the extra mana.

The build I've been using has a couple more lands. I don't ever want to miss land drops. I usually find that the first cards I put on the bottom of my library with Battlefield Scrounger are Swamps, so that my recursed Sakura-Tribe Elders have something to fetch. I'm actually running 4 x Golgari Rot Farm (which are each something like two lands).

I'd also lean more towards Swamps than Forests. The mana is a little bit awkward in that you really, really want the first Green mana, but after the third or forth Green mana isn't very important. On the other hand, the first Black mana isn't nearly as important -- you can find it with Sakura-Tribe Elder or Fa'adiyah Seer. The third or forth Black mana, on the other hand, is almost as important as the first, since you're gaining more life, or using Crypt Rats for more damage, or playing Sakura-Tribe Elder more times (since you use a black mana each time you recur it.)

I'm not running Eternal Witness, but I think I'm making a mistake.

Cheers,

Chris