"Modern Forays: The Undying Ones"

"Modern Forays: The Undying Ones"

by;

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.

In War when you fight your enemies and manage to kill them you expect them to be out of the fight for good. Seeing the same person rise up and fight you again causes a lot of emotions to be stirred up. Fear , Confusion and finally hopelessness because even if you hit them on the head they keep coming back for more. This deck for modern is The Undying Ones.

4 x Blood Crypt

4 x Bloodstained Mire

4 x Temple of Malice

4 x Swamps

4 x Mountains

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20 lands

4 X Bloodghast

4 x Blood Soaked Champion

4 x Gravecrawler

4 x Geralfs Messenger

4 x Tymaret, The Murder King

4 x Falkenrath Aristocrat

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24 Creatures

4 x Altar's Reap

4 x Tragic Slip

4 x Sign in Blood

4 x Damnation

2 x Heroes Downfall

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16 spells

Fighting with this deck is a frustrating prospect because the deck consists of creatures that were made to come back again and again from the graveyard one way of the other. Bloodghast comes back when you play a land , Gravecrawler could be played from your graveyard as long as you have a zombie(The deck has 12 zombies) , Geralfs Messenger has the Undying Mechanic meaning that he could come back one more time after he dies. And currently making waves in Standard is the Blood Soaked Champion which has the raid mechanic of the Mardu , as long as you attacked with a creature this turn you just need to pay 2 mana and he comes back unto the battlefield. Most of the time it is the Blood Soaked Champion himself who attacked and gets killed. He himself triggers the mechanic to enable his return. 

So now that we have a bunch of creatures who keep coming back for more what exactly do we do with them? We could attack with them(which the main goal) or we could use them as sacrificial offerings to Tymaret, The Murder King or to the awesome Falkenrath Aristocrat. Tymaret, The Murder King allows you to tell 2 damage to a target player when they have shored up their defenses and clogged the attacking lanes with enough creatures to stop you. And as long as you have mana and creatures to sacrifice to Tymaret, The Murder King your opponent could stonewall all day long and still die to the 2 damage that you keep flinging his or her way. And about the Falkenrath Aristocrat , I still have awful memories when it was still in Standard fighting with a deck that was controlled by Brian Basilonia. Short of exiling or bouncing back to an opponents hand the Falkenrath Aristocrat is simply terrible once it is on the battlefield and with no short of supply of creatures to sacrifice to it in this deck it is virtually unkillable. Heck Blood Soaked Champion also interacts with it because it is a human and it is able to get a +1/+1 counter every time he is sacrificed to her.

Since this is mostly a black deck there is no shortage of card draws and removal. Altar's Reap and Sign in Blood. Do the card drawing for you here. The former costs you a creature but you draw 2 cards and the latter , just 2 life points for 2 cards. Both are fair trades for the power that you will have in your hands. Tragic Slip and Heroes Downfall provide the spot removals here. Tragic Slip could potentially allow you to kill even a 13/13 creature and if ever you would encounter another playing using Falkenrath Aristocrat you could use it to kill it since you are giving it a -1/-1 or -13/-13. Damnation simply destroys everything in the battlefield. Probably except the indestructible Falkenrath Aristocrat that you have. You have no fear in using mass removal in this deck because all the creatures could come back unto the battlefield anyway. 

Opponents could be frustrated by the fact that they would run out of things to throw at your creatures but they have the ability to come back. To truly be undying. When opponents no longer have cards in their hands you would still have creatures swarming all over the battlefield to do your bidding. 

The durability of the creatures in this deck are just too awesome and the chance to have them all in this one deck is simply too much to pass up. Time to get the pieces. Just in time to give your opponents zombie like nightmares for this Halloween season.