Hey Im just trying to give you a cake....Baked cake just for you why doncha eata bit.

What? How was that better than Urza's Saga? 16 cards from that set have been banned from play at some point in their existence. That set introduced "combo decks". Mark Rosewater even said in his podcast that that set almost got him fired, and if he made another one that OP, he'd get the axe.

That aside, I probably will do it, but considering I still need the Hydras and a couple of the rare removals, the Heartless Summoning is lower on my priorities. But if I manage to get all the cards before rotation, I'll do it.

I've built a similar deck, but designed for post-rotation (Lust For Power). Which one is better? Only one way to find out, FIGHT!

I'll do the first playtest, and then sideboard appropriately (changing the spells in the mainboard for a later playtest). You can do the next one, if that's agreeable, if not then well then I've wasted both our time!

I won the roll off, and choose to play.

My Hand: Overgrown Tomb , Blood Crypt , Stomping Ground , Elvish Mystic , Scavenging Ooze , Dreg Mangler and Lotleth Troll

Your Hand: Overgrown Tomb , Stomping Ground , Doomblade, Hellhole Flailer , Exava, Rakdos Blood Witch , Dragonskull Summit and Rootbound Crag

I felt mulligans were unnecessary, so onto the match up:

My Turn 1: Overgrown Tomb , pay 2 life, Elvish Mystic . (Your Life: 20, My Life 18)

Your T1: Draw Dragonskull Summit , play Overgrown Tomb (20,18)

My T2: Draw Kalonian Hydra (oh yes), play Blood Crypt , pay 2 life, tap Elvish Mystic and play Dreg Mangler swing for 3. (17,16)

Your T2: Draw another Dragonskull Summit (not cool), play it, leave mana untapped for Doom Blade usage (assuming a non-black threat appears) (17,16)

My T3: Draw Zhur-Taa Druid , play Zhur-Taa Druid , Stomping Ground pay 2 life, tap Elvish Mystic play Lotleth Troll . Attack with Dreg Mangler for 3. (14,14). (I'm assuming you wouldn't have blasted a simple druid so Doomblade remains uncast)

Your T3: Draw Exava, Rakdos Blood Witch , play Rootbound Crag and Hellhole Flailer , (assuming not unleashed due to my board presence). (14,14)

My T4: Draw Dreg Mangler , tap my mana dorks pinging you for 1, play Kalonian Hydra . attack with Lotleth Troll and Dreg Mangler . You will block the mangler with the flailer and take 2, both creatures will die. (11,14)

Your T4: Draw Ghor-Clan Rampager , play Stomping Ground , Doomblade the hydra. (11,14)

My T5: Draw Savageborn Hydra , I'm going to ping your for 1 again. and drop the hydra down as a 3/3, tapping out. I will then swing with Lotleth Troll for another 2. (8,14)

Your T5: Draw Doomblade (lucky), we'll keep that in hand for now as a nasty surprise. play Dragonskull Summit and end. (8,14)

My T6: Draw Doomblade (not so lucky), i'll use four mana and ping for 1, to pump up the hydra to a 5/5. I swing in for game, but my assault is doomed as is my hydra Lotleth Troll deals 2 damage. (5,14)

Your T6: Draw Woodland Cemetery (mana flood!). Play Exava, Rakdos Blood Witch , Woodland Cemetery swing with unleashed chick, ill take it, but Ghor-Clan Rampager doubles it. (5,6)

My T7: Draw Varolz, the Scar-Striped , play Dreg Mangler discard, Scavenging Ooze and Varolz, the Scar-Striped swing for lethal plus 2.

Victor: Lust For Power

I'm going to side in some cards, and if you want to handle round 2 be my guest.

Based on the cards i saw during the playtest, and not whats listed up there (only fair way to do it), i have chosen to sideboard out Doomblade and Abrupt Decay (black creatures in your deck, and not many low cmc creatures) and place in Putrefy and Slaughter Games in there place. If i can remove Exava, Rakdos Blood Witch from the deck, i won't get any more nasty surprises or so I hope.

Yep, that's right just side in cards that you think will improve your decks chances. (i've already done this) then we could do another playtest or two.

Ok. And I sure hope it'll be two. You played the deck right, I just got flooded. From my experience, this deck awards greedy 2 land hands. Probably because it runs 24 lands and 4 rampers. You were also able to have solid land in hand, and never draw another, so there was just too many threats. But those are the breaks. I'll get to the playtest tonight, I'm on vacation and doing all of this on my phone, so I'll need to get to the hotel to keep track of everything.

have you played this in fnm?

Nah, not yet. I believe I'm going to buy the remaining parts I don't have in order to play August 16th. But it depends on my work schedule if I'll make it to that one, or the 15th instead, since my store has tourneys on both days.

how about Jarad instead of hellhole flailer? just a thought. +1 from me.

Eh, I don't know. He's a little harder to cast, and once I have six mana available, I can bloodrush Ghor-Clan Rampager onto the Flailer, then sacrifice him to deal 16 total damage (with no blocks). That's always an amazing way to finish them, losing to a card that never sees constructed play. And besides the Rampager, I don't really want creatures in my graveyard. And the ones that are will get eaten by Scavenging Ooze eventually. Thanks for taking interest though!

Oh yeah, Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord has that sac ability too. Well, I have to give it more thought.

Pros:

Jarad is hard to get rid of.

I can use the sac ability more than once

Cons:

He's more expensive, and has a more restrictive cost to boot

He doesn't get haste in the late game with Exava.

I dunno, the strategy of this deck isn't really about throwing everything away, but that was definitely a better suggestion than I originally gave you credit for. Thanks again

I'm in the mix of making either a B/W/G, B/U/G, or B/R/G. I know I'm going with black and green but I'm having an incredibly hard time choosing the third color. What made you go this route over white or simic? Sorry for the question rather than suggestion I'm just curious as to what will work best

Well, it really just depends on what you want to do.

Right now most junk builds (BWG) are built around lifegain. At least, those that are supposed to be post rotation. The ones in current standard are either Junk Rites which does abuse lifegain, but only as a means of survival. It wins with big creatures that are difficult to remove because they'll just bring them back with Unburial Rites . Also, there's Junk Aristocrats, which uses Cartel Aristocrat and Varolz, the Scar-Striped as beaters, and protects them by sacrificing tokens and benefits from Blood Artist . So if you're looking to go with white and post rotation, stuff like Archangel of Thune and other lifegain things (extort is great, as are plenty of green cards like Scavenging Ooze ), you'll be able to build a solid deck. But that's just what seems strong. White typically focuses on lifegain, exiling creatures, and strength in numbers, so if you wanted to use white you would see if those attributes are what you want to incorporate.

As for BUG, I haven't seen any builds that look extremely powerful. Not that it can't be done, but Esper (WUB) does the job better. Part of that is because of the interactions between colors. Blue is a control color, where you decide if what the opponent plays resolves/stays. Card draw is also big with blue. Black works nicely with that, as it too has great removal, as well as card draw (if you're willing to pay life for it). Green isn't much about control at all. Green like fat creatures and playing them quickly. White does a little better job of maintaining control than green, and those colors have good enough win conditions (AEtherling , Obzedat, Ghost Council , etc) that green isn't required for its big creatures.

As for Jund (BRG), I chose it because Kalonian Hydra and Exava, Rakdos Blood Witch work well together. But Jund has some of the best removal, since Red focuses on burn, whether its dealing direct damage to the player or their creatures. So between Black and Red, I can deal with whatever threats the opponent plays, and swing in with big creatures. Current Jund builds use heavy removal, along with great, advantage generating creatures like Olivia Voldaren and Thragtusk . Mine has a little less removal and more creatures, but its because those creatures are rotating out and these all have decent synergy.

So there you have it. And if you could +1 as a token of appreciation, that would be swell

Have you considered using Ogre Battledriver instead of Exava, Rakdos Blood Witch ?

theres a build I've found that is a lot of fun to play that is R/U/G Show Me Your Boobs It has weak points, but at the same time it can be very hard to handle.

I actually did consider Ogre Battledriver , but for some reason I just didn't like him. A big part is that he himself doesn't have haste. Or first strike. I could add a couple on for consistency's sake, but this deck doesn't count on bitch slapping the person with a Hydra anymore. While its always a fun possibility, the should hopefully be enough threats that they waste their spot removal on earlier cards. Either that, or they save an Essence Scatter or whatever for only the hydra (I've done that in limited :P ), but the rest of the creatures go to town. However, if I find myself needing haste more consistently, I'll look to the Battledriver.

And I'll check out your list now

I had +1'd earlier just for got to say.. Any thoughts on using Witchstalker ?

+1 Flows really nice and the cards mesh well together.

Got all the card except 3x Lifebane Zombie . Gonna test it saturday against some friends with good decks. Any idea's for a good replacement for Lifebane Zombie . I might put Desecration Demon back in, like you had before. I also have Jarad, Golgari Lich Lord as an option. Any thoughts on this?

@Sir_Muffins - Ok cool, thanks. As for Witchstalker , I really thought about using him, but his second ability is just too difficult to trigger. While casting instants at sorcery speed is annoying, the only time you HAVE to cast on the opponents turn is with counterspells. As far as I can tell, there are few decks running counters heavily. Sure, most control builds have a couple Dissipate or future builds have Syncopate , but if they really need to counter something, it'll be the Witchstalker . I mean, a 3/3 with hexproof for 3 mana certainly isn't bad, it just doesn't do much more than swing. And with only 3 toughness, there's lots of stuff that are willing to trade just to get him off the field. It certainly isn't bad, if you want him in one of your builds as a meta call, by all means go ahead. I just don't think that he does enough for this deck.

@WovenNebula- Thanks! That was the goal :D

@Devix - The Desecration Demon is totally solid, the only reason I took him out is because Lifebane Zombie is beast and hits all decks except Grixis and any combination of only those colors. Also, I had trouble in play testing with the demon since he is a really unreliable blocker. You find yourself up against Garruk Relentless  ^Flip or some other token generator and he's dead in the water. But against control, he requires an immediate answer, so he's good in that matchup. Jarad is pretty cool in multiplayer, so if you're gonna do that, throw him in. Otherwise, he's most useful as a finisher (chuck a hydra and win), but other than that, he's just a body, since you don't want to hurt your board state unless you can win. So I think you'll probably do fine with the demon. If you have a 3rd Scavenging Ooze , I would use it and only 2 demons. As far as the sideboard goes, I wouldn't use the one I have posted, since this one isn't tailored to the current meta (Crats, Rites, anything with Snapcaster Mage )

i see your point with excluding Witchstalker .. Why not use Bioshift for the possibility of a killing blow from Hellhole Flailer ? it only would bump his abilities overall cost by 1 green mana.. and also have you used Corpsejack Menace or Lotleth Troll , i can see were the troll wouldnt fit in but Corpsejack Menace just seems too good to pass up in a counter combo deck. I did end up building a jund version of the Exava Hydra combo thank you for all of the earlier advice

No problem. Thanks for having an interest. As far as Bioshift , its extremely situational, and outside of that combo, its almost always a dead card. And while I do like Corpsejack Menace , he's mostly one of those "win more" cards. Like, if I successfully resolve my Hydra, I've basically already won. Sure, Corpsejack makes me win one turn faster, but on his own he's merely a Rumbling Baloth , and that doesn't really require much of an answer.

given the speed of this deck i guess my other hopes for Bioshift were empty too, aside form the Hellhole Flailer combo it would have been to boost Lifebane Zombie and Elvish Mystic . Please let me know how this works out at FNM!

How did FNM go?

Didn't end up happening. Work :/ maybe next week hopefully?

I also missed FNM this week, i hate when that happens.