A new and (hopefully) improved version of my Ebenezer Scrooge's Ghosts deck, which has performed pretty well at FNM, but needed a few tweaks. Let's see here....
First big change: while the last version boasted about running without any mythics, I acquired a Drogskol Reaver and just HAD to find room for it. 0:-) I also dropped Niblis of the Urn from the main deck. While a cool creature in concept, in practice its ability didn't usually didn't have enough impact on the game, and I found myself wishing for more tokens instead. So I maxed out tokens to compensate by throwing in a full playset of Lingering Souls and Midnight Haunting. I also swapped out Moorland Haunt for Vault of the Archangel, since the Haunt barely ever got used with the vast majority of the creatures (tokens) never hitting the graveyard in the first place, and the Vault is pure awesome, especially if the Reaver happens to be out. I also beefed up black a little bit in the mana base to ensure you can trigger the Vault or flashback Lingering Souls without having to wait around.
The other big change was to the instants and sorceries. For card draw, out with Divination, in with the more flexible Ponder, which solves the problems I was having with drawing that Drogskol Captain or counterspell when I need it most. Speaking of counterspells, in addition to the playset of Mana Leaks the old deck had, I added the thematic Vapor Snag to my arsenal, which pretty much negates the need for Feeling of Dread (which never worked as I hoped anyway). I also dropped the similarly dissapointing Saving Grasp: I often found myself with a copy or two just rotting away in my hand, and usually when I DID need it, it was because I was having enough problems that it wasn't nearly enough to turn things around.
For the most part, though, the deck plays the same. Spirit tokens are the focus (now more than ever). Not only do they get the same benefits as other Spirits from Drogskol Captain and Honor of the Pure, but they get additional boosting and vigilance from Intangible Virtue, making them a constant threat on the attack and on defense. Good thing, then, that we have ways to generate lots of them; aside from the ones we get from chump blocker extraordinaire Doomed Traveler and token "lord" Geist-Honored Monk, we can create as many as TWENTY FOUR more from Midnight Haunting and Lingering Souls. That's enough to overwhelm most opponents right there, but combine them with True Conviction or the aforementioned Vault of the Archangel and it's pretty much game over.
Can't wait to try this out. I think the few issues I was having before should be cleared up now, and hopefully I can rise even further up the leaderboards next Friday night. Any comments or suggestions? Or ratings? ;-)
