UPDATES
4/30/11 Host of improvements. I put Tezzeret's Gambit in, Contaminated Ground, Grim Affliction, and Island. One thing to note - I will not put Mindcrank in the main deck. I believe that
Archive Trap
is better and not so manifest.
2/13/11
Pulse Tracker
over
Vampire Lacerator
.
12/27/10 Killed the Jace's Erasure and put it 2x
Memoricide
. Name Memoricide to take away your opponent's taking away your win condition.
A bit of history first.
A month ago, I was searching for mill decks that would be Standard-legal and fun to play (virtually nonexistant) when I stumbled upon this article: Ascension Pending. You can read the article here:http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/ftl/60I discovered a new card that would shorten the amount of time needed to mill your opponent's deck considerably. Instead of milling 60 cards, you would only have to mill 10. The magic? Bloodchief Ascension.
However, even the base deck in the article works (and it works very well), it's not standard legal. In addition, I would have loved to take advantage of the new Proliferate cards. In that end, when I could not find any decks which incorporated these two comboish themes, I have decided to make my own.
Let's start with the lands. We're going with the "Murder Mill" default, 7 Islands and 9 Swamps. We are going to add a potent weapon that can help add counters to our Ascension too - Creeping Tar Pit. Finally, let's add 4 Terramorphic Expanses to keep our wallet tight - this isn't the Boros that's sweeping the nation.
Onto the creatures! We are going to add our Vampire friends to keep in theme with the Bloodchief theme.
Vampire Lacerator
is a very strong way to keep our Ascension flowing for only 1 mana. The Hexmage serves as our assassin, killing planeswalkers and proliferate strategies with ease. And the Nighthawk is one of the most efficient creatures ever printed - 1BB for a 2/3 body and flying, deathtouch, and lifelink - with the lifelink, it's practically a mini-BA! Finally, we are going to add some Thrummingbirds - they will get the Ascension up to 3 quickly and effectively.
Onto the others! First of all, we want instants. Archive Trap will be our fancy finisher of choice, sweeping our opponent's life total before they tutor their final land and cast Emrakul. Hideous End does 2 for the price of 1 - destroys a potential threat and adding a counter to our Ascension. Trapmaker's Snare allows us to tutor for that Archive Trap. Finally, a smattering of Negates allows us to take care of that little Naturalize or Slice in Twain that wandered a little too close to the Bloodchief. 2 Steady Progresses allow us to use our Proliferate as a route of victory.
For our enchantments, the BA is our primary win condition here, so it is a 4-of.
Finally, the artifacts! Necrogen Censer helps us gather up 2 charge counters. The Grindclock presents a alternate win condition to the Archive Traps.
But wait! We're not done! We need our sideboard to complete our deck. Hedron Crab will steal 6 life and give you 6 life every time you play a land - pretty broken. Contagion Clasps are our versatile weapon - -1/-1 counters are deadly, and these allow you to ham it up. An Inexorable Tide helps with the proliferate strategy and lets us manipulate all our counters we have here. Jace's Erasure lets us siphon life, little by little. And finally, 3 Jace's Ingenuity take a page from our U/B control buddies and allow us to find more options.
