Those bits came out of a casual deck loaded with Wrath, Jokulhaups, and Armageddons to go along with Collective Blessing & Assemble the Legion (plus Academy Rector to get them).
If you find that fun, at least then there's one guy who's having fun. Don't let others (like me) tell you how to have fun. But generally speaking, anything that keeps others from doing their thing is frowned upon, and everything that prolongs the game unnecessarily (like destroying all the lands) is a no-no. But it depends on the playgroup. On the other hands, sweepers like *** are okay (which seems a bit strange, since killing all the creatures certainly keeps people from doing their thing).
Good question. The baseline is 40 lands, you can subtract from that if you're running cheap ramp spells and mana rocks. Depending on your curve you choose which ramp spells or rocks you run. For instance, if you have a high curve, then Skyshroud claim makes more sense than Rampant Growth.
i see this is a awesome card to have i will do my best to grab a hold of this card thanks do you have other cards that you think that would fit the deck?
Well, my budget suggestion would've been Reassembling skeleton, but you're already running it. I'm running Gravecrawler as well, but you need a decent number of zombies to support it. There's Burnished Hart, doesn't trigger Savra though. You're light on mana anyway, so I'd cut something big (and annoying) like Vorinclex. I do have a couple of suggestions that are a bit less cheap:
-Harvester of Souls: great with Reassembling Skeleton and Grave Pact
-Nath of the gilt-leaf: you're already running Sadistic Hypnotist (should get a Hypnotoad alter) and this gives you green tokens to sacrifice plus a discard that could be valuable against control players
-Cauldron of Souls: your creatures come back for another round of sacrifice. Gives you some resilience against sweepers.
-Grave Betrayal: you are including some combo's, so I assume your meta is a bit fast... if it isn't, this card can have a high impact and (best of all) give you another win condition
-Glissa, the traitor + Executioner’s Capsule (+ any number of cheap artifact cantrips, like Nihil Spellbomb or Mind Stone: you're low on graveyard hate and, again, your mana is too light)
Speaking of Glissa: my Glissa deck used to have Savra as a general. I noticed there are mechanical ties between my Savra/Grave Pact deck and Glissa: both do things when something dies ("Whenever a creature dies"). I made this a recurring theme in my deck. With Savra that's a bit harder, since you're specifically looking for black and green creatures. I really like stuff like Pawn of Ulamog and Golgari Germination (which makes green tokens btw). Awakening Zone is good in my deck. It's crap with Savra, but it's a solid supply of self-sacrificing creatures and provides mana.
Is there a particular reason you're playing Jokulhaups? It's not something to make friends with at a casual table.
Some thoughts:
-you're running a lot of ramp. That's not a bad thing, but you need to draw more cards to actually DO something with all that mana. I'd cut the subpar artifact ramp (you're in green, there's no reason to run these... you're not running Yavimaya Elder, the best green creature there is (YMMV)) and play Regal Force and Sylvan library.
-speaking of draw, my preference is draw over tutoring: it makes games more random, and random is one of the reasons to play a 99 card deck.
-instead of boots or cloak I'd add Akroma's Memorial or In the web of war (because it's an enchantment), Fists of Ironwood because it's on theme and great with Sun Titan, and something like Legion Loyalist and Kamahl, fist of Krosa or Craterhoof Behemoth. You can find these last two with GSZ. You could expand the GSZ toolbox with something like Natural Order
-I like Asceticism, and as an enchantment it fits your theme. However, it's a bit of a trap: it doesn't protect your creatures as good as you think it does. I think you added this card because of The Fear. I give in to The Fear sometimes: I add cards to keep me from losing, instead of adding more cards that let me DO stuff. With Asceticism, you're not interacting with other players. That's boring, and while this card does solve some foreseeable problems, it's doubtful this card would let you win. It's also doubtful this card will help you solve the very big problems your opponents come up with.
All in all it looks like a decent deck for a first brew. Remember that in EDH you should consider if your deck lets your opponents have fun (Cathars' Crusade usually doesn't, as it requires tedious bookkeeping), and try to stick to a theme (unless your playgroup is cutthroat competitive, but then you're screwed with this deck anyway). As a final note, with Rith there's a trap that could make playing unfun. It's a bit hard to describe and you'll find out yourself eventually, but barfing out a lot of tokens with a non-broken commander could relegate you to a non-interactive player. This article describes it nicely: http://www.starcitygames.com/article/26688_Dear-Azami-How-I-Met-Your-Mayael.html
Although that article is about Mayael, Rith is even worse (although truth be told, some decks have a lot of problems with hardcore token decks). Find some ways to interact with other decks beyond the combat step (the Boros Charm you have is a good start). My semi-rant on Asceticism fits nicely here. Consider if it'd be so bad if that Asceticism was a Chaos Warp or Oblation: besides Rith, any card in your deck that is saved with Asceticism could be your target with Oblation, giving you cards and fizzling your opponent's spell. Or you tuck their annoying stuff into oblivion. What is the play that'd be more enjoyable for you?
BTW, if you're afraid of Rith getting tucked, there's your GSZ suite to get her back.
A sidenote on Twisted Abomination: if you manage to get hold of a dual like Overgrown Tomb, a card like Abomb can fetch it for you. It's a budget version of a Verdant Catacombs. Something similar goes for Skyshroud Claim, where a Cultivate would only fetch you basic lands. Overgrown Tomb is probably not in your budget, but it's a good card that'll make your deck a lot more consistent.
Another thought just occurred: you could run Tortured Existence. It's a very cheap card, and sees little play. People prefer Survival for obvious reasons, but it's not a budget card. Tortured Existence is, and together with a recurrable artifact creature you can not only recur your non-artifact creatures, but ditch unwanted creatures or those who better server their role in your graveyard (think Filth) as well.
What works in my Glissa deck is trample equipment: Loxodon Warhammer, O-naginata, Helm of Kaldra (plus Sword and Shield so I can live the dream). This way you can put some pressure on your opponents. I think that's one way to increase consistency.
As for mana, I'm a huge fan of Twisted Abomination (although I always end up cutting him, but since he's a zombie I figured it's worth mentioning), but Expedition Map is particularly good with Glissa. Smoothing the mana is surely a good way to increase consistency.
What I do to see where my deck goes wrong is to use an alternate listing: instead of card type, list your deck on card function. That way you'll quickly see if you're (for instance) light on removal.
The card you should be running is Tombstone Stairwell. Together with zombies like Noxious Ghoul, Shepherd of rot and Vengeful dead you can dominate the table. The Stairwell on it's own is already good enough to get you a lot of Glissa triggers.
Deglamer has helped shut down two combos and a god
Cool. It's worth mentioning that Chaos Warp and Oblation do the same trick, but are more versatile in the sense that they can take care of creatures as well but additionally are the ABSOLUTE NUTS (it's capslock day, so that was warranted) if you use it on one of your own tokens.
My current quest is to convince people that Dragon Breath et al. are worth running in EDH, but I'm also teaching thatSun Titan is awesome with Fists of Ironwood. I'm torn between the Fists and Dragon Fangs: sure, it's a token deck, but I'm trying to make dragon tokens... if everything fails, at least my creature could pretend it's a dragon. Difficult choices if you're a slave to the theme. But seriously, Fists of Ironwood is a lot better than people think it is. And that's a good feature in multiplayer
Old frames. If an old-framed erosion of a card is available, I will acquire that version.
Same here. I love the judge promo's of cards that are only printed otherwise with the modern frame, like SoFI. I do love the extended art on some promo cards, like Mitotic Slime.
I noticed Fists of Ironwood is not in the list. It doesn't look like much, but when your general lacks evasion this card can do a lot for you. It's pretty solid in a deck with Sun Titan.
I don't run Varolz, but my Sek'kuar morphed into Glissa. My vantage point was a bit earlier I guess My deck has (obviously) a bit more of an artifact theme, but since I want to keep the deck a bit casual I'm not going all-out on the artifacts. So with a similar heritage in Sek'kuar I'm sure you don't mind pointing out some cards I enjoy.
First off, I had a serious problem finding a theme for my deck. Every deck needs a theme imvho, otherwise it'll become A Pile Of Goodstuff(tm). I have the idea you have fallen into that trap with Sek'kuar (by the way, look at this article: you could turn it into a combo beast if you want to). So, theme, theme... the deck was more or less a Grave Pact deck. That's what made me play Sek'kuar in the first place, but GP makes Glissa trigger as well. With Varolz I guess you don't mind letting your creatures die. Grave Pact has been mentioned by other posters, but keep it in mind. It's a great card to build your deck around. It led me to the theme of my deck: ""Whenever a creature dies". Grave Pact and Glissa share this line of rules text . Well, almost, since it differs whether you or your opponent controls the dying creature. This lead me to a list of cards that are "coincidentally" (not really, since I had most of the cards in the list already) tied together by their rules text.
I know, it's a bit of a stretch.
Anyway, while you're in the process of adding Grave Pact, you might want to take a look at Nether Traitor. That card is a beast: you'll always have fodder to sacrifice, and as it has shadow it's very good at carrying Sword of This and That. Or scavenge counters, I assume.
Massacre wurm and Sangromancer do something similar to Falkenrath Noble. And while you're in the process of killing everything, try Grim Feast.
Also on a non Theros note I have been considering cutting Oblivion Ring due to it's random nature to let a threat back in when I don't expect it. I might go back to Return to Dust, since I really don't want Gods to be sitting across from me but I'm not sure if thats my best spot removal option. Any suggestions for a good swap?
Wipe Clean seems worth consideration because it cycles, or Erase because it's cheap. Deglamer is a nice one against God generals.
I don't think your general really has to be fog-able, you can go turbo fog by simply drawing boatloads of cards. So I'd pick at least blue as a required color identity, and then white or green for Fog and it's family. I prefer green, because of Tangle. There's some fun stuff in black, like Sudden Spoiling, and more card draw than in white as well. So, BUG... and because I can't say Edric, I'll go ahead and call Damia, Sage of Stone.
Although Glissa has an appealing BGG cost, my beef with her is that she only triggers on creatures, specifically only on your opponent's creatures. When your opponents don't have any creatures on the field, she won't do anything, so if you're relying on her for fuel, your opponents can simply refrain from playing creatures until you burn yourself out.
You are correct, but I'm not unhappy when my opponents don't play creatures: I'll just bash their head in with Glissa. I don't think that Glissa fits the stax archetype though, she's better with cheap artifacts: you get them in your hand, and replaying high CMC cards is a drain on your resources.
Speaking of cheap artifacts, you could consider Hex Parasite. It's a card with unparalleled utility, and you could use it to manage soot counters on Smokestack.
While I can see your point on reanimation, I think you could consider Necrotic Ooze. It does double duty with several of your creatures (well, the only one you're caring for is the hypnotoad I assume), but I've found it's particularly good with creatures your opponents play in a lot of situations. And with "particularly good" I mean that it leads to complicated and fun board states. I can see why you wouldn't play it, but I'd put it in the same pile as Geth, Lord of the Vault.
The state of the manabase is locked behind a budget wall atm so it is what I have to make do with.
You run only 35 lands, which is very little. If you run a lot of CITP lands, you'll have your mana available later, making you fall behind. Being on a budget is not an excuse for handicapping yourself as long as you're playing green!
First off, start with 40 lands and then subtract lands for ramp cards you could add. For every two to three ramp spells, feel free to remove a land (which a lot of people still will find greedy). I wouldn't go below 35 in any case, as it'd become increasingly hard to find enough lands to power out your first ramp spell.
Lucky for you ramp spells are cheap, and you can fix your mana with basic lands.
Ogre Battledriver does seem nice, mass haste is almost always awesome but I think I would want In the web of war more since for one more it's a lot harder to remove. Also Anger can be really good but my meta packs plenty of yard hate so he isn't as strong as he used to be
Yard hate is why I'd cut Anger, but it's just so nice with SotF tricks.
Nim Deathmantle's color-changing and type-changing effects override the equipped creature's previous colors and creature types. After Nim Deathmantle becomes equipped to a creature, that creature will be a black Zombie, not any other colors or creature types.
If you equip this to a reanimated creature, you'll get to keep it if someone kills Chainer. This seems like too much of a hassle to me, but it's a solid card in it's own right. Consider coupling it with Kagemaro...
If you find that fun, at least then there's one guy who's having fun. Don't let others (like me) tell you how to have fun. But generally speaking, anything that keeps others from doing their thing is frowned upon, and everything that prolongs the game unnecessarily (like destroying all the lands) is a no-no. But it depends on the playgroup. On the other hands, sweepers like *** are okay (which seems a bit strange, since killing all the creatures certainly keeps people from doing their thing).
Good question. The baseline is 40 lands, you can subtract from that if you're running cheap ramp spells and mana rocks. Depending on your curve you choose which ramp spells or rocks you run. For instance, if you have a high curve, then Skyshroud claim makes more sense than Rampant Growth.
Yes, that's a problem.
Well, my budget suggestion would've been Reassembling skeleton, but you're already running it. I'm running Gravecrawler as well, but you need a decent number of zombies to support it. There's Burnished Hart, doesn't trigger Savra though. You're light on mana anyway, so I'd cut something big (and annoying) like Vorinclex. I do have a couple of suggestions that are a bit less cheap:
-Harvester of Souls: great with Reassembling Skeleton and Grave Pact
-Nath of the gilt-leaf: you're already running Sadistic Hypnotist (should get a Hypnotoad alter) and this gives you green tokens to sacrifice plus a discard that could be valuable against control players
-Cauldron of Souls: your creatures come back for another round of sacrifice. Gives you some resilience against sweepers.
-Grave Betrayal: you are including some combo's, so I assume your meta is a bit fast... if it isn't, this card can have a high impact and (best of all) give you another win condition
-Glissa, the traitor + Executioner’s Capsule (+ any number of cheap artifact cantrips, like Nihil Spellbomb or Mind Stone: you're low on graveyard hate and, again, your mana is too light)
Speaking of Glissa: my Glissa deck used to have Savra as a general. I noticed there are mechanical ties between my Savra/Grave Pact deck and Glissa: both do things when something dies ("Whenever a creature dies"). I made this a recurring theme in my deck. With Savra that's a bit harder, since you're specifically looking for black and green creatures. I really like stuff like Pawn of Ulamog and Golgari Germination (which makes green tokens btw). Awakening Zone is good in my deck. It's crap with Savra, but it's a solid supply of self-sacrificing creatures and provides mana.
Some thoughts:
-you're running a lot of ramp. That's not a bad thing, but you need to draw more cards to actually DO something with all that mana. I'd cut the subpar artifact ramp (you're in green, there's no reason to run these... you're not running Yavimaya Elder, the best green creature there is (YMMV)) and play Regal Force and Sylvan library.
-speaking of draw, my preference is draw over tutoring: it makes games more random, and random is one of the reasons to play a 99 card deck.
-instead of boots or cloak I'd add Akroma's Memorial or In the web of war (because it's an enchantment), Fists of Ironwood because it's on theme and great with Sun Titan, and something like Legion Loyalist and Kamahl, fist of Krosa or Craterhoof Behemoth. You can find these last two with GSZ. You could expand the GSZ toolbox with something like Natural Order
-I like Asceticism, and as an enchantment it fits your theme. However, it's a bit of a trap: it doesn't protect your creatures as good as you think it does. I think you added this card because of The Fear. I give in to The Fear sometimes: I add cards to keep me from losing, instead of adding more cards that let me DO stuff. With Asceticism, you're not interacting with other players. That's boring, and while this card does solve some foreseeable problems, it's doubtful this card would let you win. It's also doubtful this card will help you solve the very big problems your opponents come up with.
All in all it looks like a decent deck for a first brew. Remember that in EDH you should consider if your deck lets your opponents have fun (Cathars' Crusade usually doesn't, as it requires tedious bookkeeping), and try to stick to a theme (unless your playgroup is cutthroat competitive, but then you're screwed with this deck anyway). As a final note, with Rith there's a trap that could make playing unfun. It's a bit hard to describe and you'll find out yourself eventually, but barfing out a lot of tokens with a non-broken commander could relegate you to a non-interactive player. This article describes it nicely: http://www.starcitygames.com/article/26688_Dear-Azami-How-I-Met-Your-Mayael.html
Although that article is about Mayael, Rith is even worse (although truth be told, some decks have a lot of problems with hardcore token decks). Find some ways to interact with other decks beyond the combat step (the Boros Charm you have is a good start). My semi-rant on Asceticism fits nicely here. Consider if it'd be so bad if that Asceticism was a Chaos Warp or Oblation: besides Rith, any card in your deck that is saved with Asceticism could be your target with Oblation, giving you cards and fizzling your opponent's spell. Or you tuck their annoying stuff into oblivion. What is the play that'd be more enjoyable for you?
BTW, if you're afraid of Rith getting tucked, there's your GSZ suite to get her back.
A sidenote on Twisted Abomination: if you manage to get hold of a dual like Overgrown Tomb, a card like Abomb can fetch it for you. It's a budget version of a Verdant Catacombs. Something similar goes for Skyshroud Claim, where a Cultivate would only fetch you basic lands. Overgrown Tomb is probably not in your budget, but it's a good card that'll make your deck a lot more consistent.
Another thought just occurred: you could run Tortured Existence. It's a very cheap card, and sees little play. People prefer Survival for obvious reasons, but it's not a budget card. Tortured Existence is, and together with a recurrable artifact creature you can not only recur your non-artifact creatures, but ditch unwanted creatures or those who better server their role in your graveyard (think Filth) as well.
As for mana, I'm a huge fan of Twisted Abomination (although I always end up cutting him, but since he's a zombie I figured it's worth mentioning), but Expedition Map is particularly good with Glissa. Smoothing the mana is surely a good way to increase consistency.
What I do to see where my deck goes wrong is to use an alternate listing: instead of card type, list your deck on card function. That way you'll quickly see if you're (for instance) light on removal.
The card you should be running is Tombstone Stairwell. Together with zombies like Noxious Ghoul, Shepherd of rot and Vengeful dead you can dominate the table. The Stairwell on it's own is already good enough to get you a lot of Glissa triggers.
Cool. It's worth mentioning that Chaos Warp and Oblation do the same trick, but are more versatile in the sense that they can take care of creatures as well but additionally are the ABSOLUTE NUTS (it's capslock day, so that was warranted) if you use it on one of your own tokens.
My current quest is to convince people that Dragon Breath et al. are worth running in EDH, but I'm also teaching thatSun Titan is awesome with Fists of Ironwood. I'm torn between the Fists and Dragon Fangs: sure, it's a token deck, but I'm trying to make dragon tokens... if everything fails, at least my creature could pretend it's a dragon. Difficult choices if you're a slave to the theme. But seriously, Fists of Ironwood is a lot better than people think it is. And that's a good feature in multiplayer
Same here. I love the judge promo's of cards that are only printed otherwise with the modern frame, like SoFI. I do love the extended art on some promo cards, like Mitotic Slime.
First off, I had a serious problem finding a theme for my deck. Every deck needs a theme imvho, otherwise it'll become A Pile Of Goodstuff(tm). I have the idea you have fallen into that trap with Sek'kuar (by the way, look at this article: you could turn it into a combo beast if you want to). So, theme, theme... the deck was more or less a Grave Pact deck. That's what made me play Sek'kuar in the first place, but GP makes Glissa trigger as well. With Varolz I guess you don't mind letting your creatures die. Grave Pact has been mentioned by other posters, but keep it in mind. It's a great card to build your deck around. It led me to the theme of my deck: ""Whenever a creature dies". Grave Pact and Glissa share this line of rules text . Well, almost, since it differs whether you or your opponent controls the dying creature. This lead me to a list of cards that are "coincidentally" (not really, since I had most of the cards in the list already) tied together by their rules text.
I know, it's a bit of a stretch.
Anyway, while you're in the process of adding Grave Pact, you might want to take a look at Nether Traitor. That card is a beast: you'll always have fodder to sacrifice, and as it has shadow it's very good at carrying Sword of This and That. Or scavenge counters, I assume.
Massacre wurm and Sangromancer do something similar to Falkenrath Noble. And while you're in the process of killing everything, try Grim Feast.
Wipe Clean seems worth consideration because it cycles, or Erase because it's cheap. Deglamer is a nice one against God generals.
You are correct, but I'm not unhappy when my opponents don't play creatures: I'll just bash their head in with Glissa. I don't think that Glissa fits the stax archetype though, she's better with cheap artifacts: you get them in your hand, and replaying high CMC cards is a drain on your resources.
Speaking of cheap artifacts, you could consider Hex Parasite. It's a card with unparalleled utility, and you could use it to manage soot counters on Smokestack.
While I can see your point on reanimation, I think you could consider Necrotic Ooze. It does double duty with several of your creatures (well, the only one you're caring for is the hypnotoad I assume), but I've found it's particularly good with creatures your opponents play in a lot of situations. And with "particularly good" I mean that it leads to complicated and fun board states. I can see why you wouldn't play it, but I'd put it in the same pile as Geth, Lord of the Vault.
I'm glad you like Chains.
You run only 35 lands, which is very little. If you run a lot of CITP lands, you'll have your mana available later, making you fall behind. Being on a budget is not an excuse for handicapping yourself as long as you're playing green!
First off, start with 40 lands and then subtract lands for ramp cards you could add. For every two to three ramp spells, feel free to remove a land (which a lot of people still will find greedy). I wouldn't go below 35 in any case, as it'd become increasingly hard to find enough lands to power out your first ramp spell.
Lucky for you ramp spells are cheap, and you can fix your mana with basic lands.
Another possibility is to play Emeria Angel and Rampaging Baloths. These guys make tokens (so they fit the theme) and combo nicely with Perilous forays. Add Amulet of Vigor to the mix, that would solve your CITP problem a bit.
Yard hate is why I'd cut Anger, but it's just so nice with SotF tricks.
If you equip this to a reanimated creature, you'll get to keep it if someone kills Chainer. This seems like too much of a hassle to me, but it's a solid card in it's own right. Consider coupling it with Kagemaro...