Deathtouch-R-US

Today I bring you a deck that is, in my opinion, quite good. I have yet to come across this deck in any major competition, so there arent many builds that directly oppose it. Now, let's get to the list.

Creatures:
4 Turntimber Basilisk
4 Greater Basilisk
4 Vampire Nighthawk
2 Grave Titan
2 Death Baron

Artifacts:
4 Sword of Vengeance

Other Spells:
4 Diabolic Tutor
4 Harrow
2 Overrun
4 Doomblade

Land:
11 Swamp
11 Forest

Sideboard:
2 Acidic Slime
2 Juggernaught
2 Sign In Blood
2 Gigantomancer
2 Rise From The Grave
5 Cards of Your Choice

Let me break the deck down so you can see my reasoning behind it all.

Turntimber Basilisk gets equipped with Sword of Vengeance and becomes a 4/1 with Deathtouch, First Strike, Vigilance, Trample and Haste. He becomes rather hard to kill with creatures, but of course, he "dies to Doomblade". That too can be addressed, if your opponent is running removal of any sort you sideboard in Rise From The Grave. You Bring back your Basilisk and re-equip him. Now he's different though, he is also a Black Zombie creature, which means no more Doomblade AND he gets +1/+1 from Death Baron because he is now too a zombie. Creating a monstrous 5/2 Green/Black Zombie Basilisk with Deathtouch, First Strike, Vigilance, Trample, and Haste. Pretty scary if you ask me.

Another aspect of Turntimber Basilisk if his Landfall ability, which forces an opponents creature to block him. This gets rid of that creature AND tramples through him causing damage to your opponent. Harrow, allows you to tutor two lands and place them on the battle field, untapped, triggering the basilisk's ability twice! "Say goodbye to two creatures buddy!"

Now turning away from Turntimber Basilisk to a close relative of his Greater Basilisk. All I have to say is this, Combo'd with Sword of Vengeance, this card rocks. Who doesn't like a 5/5 with that annoyingly long string of mechanics? Your opponent.

Next on our list we have Grave Titan, not only is this guy crazy by himself I've paired him up with a match made in heaven... or,erm... Hell rather. Death Baron, a seemingly inane three drop, turns Grave Titans tokens into frightening 3/3 Zombie Deathtouchers.

And finally, we have Vampire Nighthawk. A staple in most Black decks right now, of course, had to be in this deck too. With Deathtouch and Lifelink, as well as being a flyer, you can't go wrong. Throw on this deck's favorite card, Sword of Vengeance, and he becomes even better.

The only other maindeck spell I feel that I need to talk about is Overrun. Why do I want this card in the deck? Because it gives all my creatures +3/+3 and Trample! Goodbye defending creatures, goodbye opponent, hello victory!

There's one card in the Sideboard I want to call attention to, and that is Gigantomancer. He's expensive yes, but he can make any of my creatures into a 7/7 in addition to any other effects that might be attatched to him.

now to put all of this into perspective let me illustrate to you what one of your creatures could look like.

13/8 Black Zombie/Vampire with Flying, Deathtouch, First Strike, Vigilance, Trample, Haste, and Lifelink. Not bad, right? (Vampire Nighthawk, targeted by Gigantomancer, equipped with Sword of Vengeance, brought back by Rise From The Grave, and targeted by Death Baron, with Overrun in play.)

Vampires on Fire

Hey guys, sorry for the long break between posts. I was out in the winderness where, sadly, there is no internet connection. Now I am back and ready to go with new content!

I recently picked up a deck list from the top eight of PTQ Amsterdam: Orlando. This particular deck was sported by Max Malesch. Here's the original list.

4 Black Knight
4 Bloodghast
4 Gatekeeper of Malakir
4 Malakir Bloodwitch
4 Vampire Hexmage
Creatures [20]
4 Blightning
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Sign in Blood
4 Terminate
Spells [16]
4 Akoum Refuge
4 Dragonskull Summit
4 Lavaclaw Reaches
12 Swamp
Lands [24]

SIDEBOARD
3 Doom Blade
4 Duress
2 Manabarbs
2 Slave of Bolas
4 Vampire Nighthawk

For my own deck I made a few changes with the mainboard. I substituted the Black Knights in for Nighthawks. This works better for me because I now have a flier that can block and kill a Baneslayer and a combat trick for any white decks that I might come across in a second game.

I have found, however, that having so many comes into play tapped lands hinders my ability to get my spells out quickly enough to be affective. So, soon enough I may just put in a few Mountains and be done with a set of the tapped lands.

That about wraps it up for this post, The M11 Previews will be up in a few days. With my impressions and possible deck ideas along with them.

Stay tuned,

Hatter