Howling Chains of Dredgery

[mrraow]

Untested deck; I'll be building it tonight, and testing it this weekend, wife willing...

4 x Chains of Mephistopheles
4 x Howling Mine
4 x Shred Memory
1 x Demonic Tutor
4 x Dark Ritual
4 x Cabal Therapy
3 x Ashnod's Transmogrant
2 x Gaea's Blessing
(26 other cards)

4 x Hypnotic Spectre
4 x Necroplasm
4 x Stinkweed Imp
2 x Akuta, Born of Ash
(14 creatures)

20 x Swamp
(20 land)

The idea of this deck is to get 2 x Chains of Mephistopheles into play, along with 1 or more howling mines; your opponent should never get to draw and keep another card. Since Derdge is a replacement effect, you can draw 1 card a turn and dredge any others that the howling mines give you :)

As for the rest:
- Hypnotic spectre and cabal therapy help your opponent to throw away any cards (s)he still has, the cabal therapy being quite happy if dredged to the graveyard
- Shred memories will transmute for either a howling mine or chains of mephistopheles
- Necroplasm will kill lots of early threats, can be dredged, and can avoid killing itself with a well-timed transmogrant if required
- Gaea's Blessing can't be cast, but should stop your deck from running out if the game goes long, and helps protect you from pesky disenchants and the like
- If Akuta hits the graveyard, he should be happy to hop out and say hello to the opponent

Aside: I don't actually have 4 Chains of Mephistopheles - I just checked online, and couldn't believe how expensive they were - ouch!

[PerfectCell]

I'll do more focus on this later, but the Blessing and Akuta could probably just both be Golgari Thugs and make you a lot happier. I would also seriously consider some form of on-the-board removal...a Waterfront Bouncer is going to make you cry very fast.

[mrraow]

I've been considering Golgari Thug - 2 mana for a 1/1 goes against the grain, but it gets better if I have a good way to kill it :)

Waterfront Bouncer doesn't hit the main combo; and hopefully my opponent won't have any cards to discard before long...

[PerfectCell]

I know, but he's keeping all your creatures off and smacking you with Morphling or Palinchron, there will be rapid weeping. The Thug is surprisingly good: think about it, you're going to give up a draw to Dredge out a Stinkweed Imp. Why not just put the Imp on top of your library, draw him anyway, and not lose any cards?

[mrraow]

he's keeping all your creatures off and smacking you with Morphling or Palinchron
Well, hopefully he'll never get that far before I get my combo into play; but if there's a specific build you have in mind, post it here, and I'll test my deck against it,

[PerfectCell]

Take the Simply Blue v2 deck I posted in Grunt's and (because I don't want to make another, more expensive version of that deck) throw out a Morphling as his action whenever he's got 6 land.

[mrraow]

Todd: I play a swamp, tap, dark ritual...
Me: If you cast a hypnotic specter, I'll punch you in the face.
Todd: ...aaand I take 3 points of mana burn.
Just thought... you need to give this one to Todd to play. Poor Todd.

[mrraow]

OK, I got in a copuple of games last night with a slightly modisifed deck list... I only have 3 Chains of Mephistopheles.

So, me playing this deck, Rosiebint (my wife) took a look at the deck list, and decided to play our sacrifice deck, which recurses Nether Shadows and Ashen Ghouls.

First game, my first draw was Gaea's Blessing, and I drew the upther one two turns later. Not good, since I now have no way to shuffle my graveyard back into my library. Rosie quickly got an Altar of Dementia into play, and started beating me up with a Nether Shadow. I got my combo down (actually got 2 x Chains and 3 x Howling Mine), but by that point, Rosie had a couple of Ashen Ghouls, a Fallen Angel, and 3 Nether Shadows either in play or in her garveyard, and was attacking gleefully, Necroplasm and Stinkweed imp helped hold the creatures off, but anything onI blocked was sacrificed to the altar to help me fill up my graveyard. Stinkweed Imp kept dying and coming back, but the dredge cost was beginning to show. Now, with 4 Shred Memory in my deck, you'd expect that I could kill her recursion engine dead, but no... they all went straight to the graveyard :( Eventually, my deck ran out, and with just 2 creatures (a 7/7 Necroplasm and a Stinkweed Imp), and no way of drawing more cards, I died with Rosiebint on 1 life.

Game 2, I added 4 Golgari Rot Farms, swapping out 4 swamps, so I could actually cast Gaea's Blessing, and increased the number of Blessings to three.

This time, things went much more smoothly... turn 1: swamp, sol ring; turn two, swamp, howling mine, chains of Mephistopheles; turn three, transmute Shred Memory for chains, cast chains. Meanwhile Rosie cast a buried alive for three nether shadows and got a few other bits and pieces into play, but I had another Shred Memory in hand, and it was more ot less all over. Blessing got dredged after 7 cards went to my graveyard, and again after another 20 or so. Rosie eventually conceded; and by that point, I reckon I had dredged a total of about 70 cards in my graveyard, so the blessings stay.

So, what have I learned?
- once you have two chains in play, best to stop playing howling mines; they can cramp your style almost as much as the opponent.
- since your graveyard keeps resetting, it's best to keep at least one dredge card in hand; then you can discard to the chains for your second draw and go back to dredging again.
- I probably have too much discard... best to remove some to make way for 4 x Chainer's Edict

[mrraow]

Originally posted by PerfectCell
Take the Simply Blue v2 deck I posted in Grunt's and (because I don't want to make another, more expensive version of that deck) throw out a Morphling as his action whenever he's got 6 land.
OK; maybe tonight...

[Einsteinmonkey]

Originally posted by mrraow
First game, my first draw was Gaea's Blessing, and I drew the upther one two turns later. Not good, since I now have no way to shuffle my graveyard back into my library.
Play one Gaea's Blessing returning three random cards to your library, and use the other Gaea's Blessing to return the first one to your library? :wink:

[mrraow]

First game, my first draw was Gaea's Blessing, and I drew the upther one two turns later. Not good, since I now have no way to shuffle my graveyard back into my library.
Play one Gaea's Blessing returning three random cards to your library, and use the other Gaea's Blessing to return the first one to your library? :wink:
That's why I put some green mana into the deck before my second game!

[mrraow]

Take the Simply Blue v2 deck I posted in Grunt's and (because I don't want to make another, more expensive version of that deck) throw out a Morphling as his action whenever he's got 6 land.
OK, I knocked up this deck, and got Rosiebint to play it... once. I kept 1 swamp off to guard against force spike, and a concealed dark ritual in case of mana drain, and didn't have much trouble getting a howling mine and chains of mephistopheles past Rosie's guard; then transmuted for a second chains. Guess the counterspells were hiding. We gave her a spellshaper ability, so she could cast any card in hand as a morphling... she got two down by the time I achieved lockdown, but my hypnotic spectres and good old stinky held them off; she slipped about 10 damage in when Man-O'-War bounced something back to my hand, but that was it. Admittedly, I had a good start, but once the chains and mine were down' the card advantage did the rest.

Time for a revised deck list, though. now that I'm splashing green, Ashnod's Transmogradnt should go and be replaced by Shambling Shell, I reckon.