Magic: The Gathering

[KrauserKrauser]

Land:
15 Swamp
4 Vault of Whispers

Creatures"
4 Nim Lashers
3 of each, Undead Warcheif and Dread Specter.
2 of each, Zombie Master, Nim Grotesque, Helldozer, and Gempalm Polluter
1 Dread, Soulless one, and Kozilek, Butcher of Truth

Magic:
4 Tendrils of Corruption
4 Vampiric Link
3 Dark Banishment

Equipment:
2 gauntlet of Power
2 Whispersilk Cloak
3 Bonesaw
4 Loxodon Warhammer

Well, since we are working with MWS and hence have an unlimited budget and cardpool, you need to determine what format we are talking about. From the looks of the cards you are naming, it looks to be casual Legacy, heavy on the casual.

First off, 60 cards is what you want to use as your maximum number of cards. Some pros will argue that in some rare cases 61 or 62 cards can be ok, but statistically you want to keep your deck sizes to 60. I've actually played and done well in tournaments with a 300 card deck, but that was a specially designed deck.

From the cards you listed, you look to be going for a Zombie/Artifact deck with a preference to beating face. My suggestion would be to drop the artifact theme, and the Nim, and go full hog on the Zombies. Zombies can be tons of fun when properly constructed and the majority of the cards are pretty cheap to pick up.

Here is a breakdown of the relevant Zombies by casting cost:
1 drops
Carrion Feeder
Festering Goblin

2 drops
Boneknitter
Cabal Interrogator
Plaguebearer
Shepherd of Rot
Skinthinner (Really a 3 drop due to the Morph, but listed according to casting cost)
Withered Wretch

3 drops
Cemetery Reaper
Death Baron
Fleshbag Marauder
Lord of the Undead
Nantuko Husk
Rotlung Reanimator
Undead Gladiator
Zombie Master
Zombie Trailblazer

4 drops
Ashen Ghoul
Grave Defiler
Graveborn Muse
Gravedigger
Khorlash, Heir to Blackblade
Soulless One
Undead Warchief
Vengful Dead

5 drops
Corpse Harvester
Noxious Ghoul

6 drops
Gempalm Polluter (He really is a cycler for BB that can really put a hurting on your opponent, but I'm sorting him by his casting cost)
Gravespawn Sovereign
Grixis Slavedriver
Helldozer
Twisted Abomination (Really a Swampcycler for 2, but listed according to casting cost)

7 drops
Phage the Untouchable

As far as support cards go, you can't go wrong with the following:

Call to the Grave
Cruel Revival
Deathmark Prelate
Debtor's Knell
Infernal Caretaker
Living Death
Oversold Cemetery
Patriarch's Bidding
Quest for the Gravelord
Rise from the Grave
Tombstone Stairwell
Twilight's Call
Unholy Grotto
Zombie Infestation

For mono black support, you had some good ideas with Gauntlet of Power and Tendrils of Corruption, here are some other really great cards for Mono Black:

Cabal Coffers
Leechridden Swamp
Mind Sludge
Mutilate
Nightmare Lash
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

There are tons more options for Zombies if you want to venture into another color along with black, but it does get more complicated as well.

If you've never run into the format, Elder Dragon Highlander is a ton of fun to play and the deck I posted wouldn't be that expensive to pick up and play. With the amount of recursion you would have, you might be able to grind alot of wins with the deck.

[Commander Xillian]

Hmm...

Yeah no, my Nim work for me, and the strategy I get the most enjoyment out of is stalling until I can, as you said "Beat face". I'm not getting rid of Loxodon Warhammer, the life link plus trample PLUS +3/+0 is not something to scoff at, goign so far as to make two Nim Grotesques a 15/7 creature with two Vault of whispers, the gauntlet AND a loxodon warhammer on each. Also slapped on a bone saw, but even with out said saw, my enemy was having to burn all his awe strikes to keep from being K-O'd instantly by me, which more or less made me impervious to that. Also, I HAD a Blacksteel foundry, which I might put back in.

Thanks for the zombie listing though, I'll be sure to add those in. If I have space. And as for the card number, I'm well aware, but I get lucky when I'm no more than 5 cards higher than standard 60. I enjoy building my decks with a flexible number of cards, plus those extra five can help me from decking out.

[Dark Hellion]

Xillian, I am going to give you some grumpy T1 veteran advice. I have played magic for 13 years which makes me a rookie compared to half my team, but in this time I have learned quite a few things. These are somewhat sarcastic but contain many golden nuggets of truthiness.

1) Creature suck. They are the second worst card type in the game after Auras. Why, you ask? Many reasons. Primarily, they are too easy to destroy or circumvent. Anything that destroys permanents gets them. Anything that destroys creatures specifically (of which there are a lot) kills them. They can die to damage. Even other creatures can kill them, and creatures suck. Even auras can stop them (like pacifism, guard duty, etc.) and auras are even worse than creatures. Learn to stop viewing creatures as your game winner and properly hate them. They are at best recurring sorceries that can deal damage if the opponent doesn't have creatures/planeswalkers. Unfortunately, creatures are one of the best ways to win the game. Put these two ideas together and you see why most decks run the creatures they do. All of their creatures are designed to end the game as best possible so that the deck doesn't actually have to have creatures on the board.

For an example, lets look at some of the best creatures in magic history. Serra Angel, ends games quickly and stops opponents dudes from killing you. Phyrexian Negator, kills opponent really quickly. Dark confidant, draws cards. Tarmogoyf, ends games really, really quickly. The primary thing is that you play creatures because you have to, not because you want to. Make sure every dude in your deck has a very good reason for being there. Because otherwise he is just a creature, and creatures suck.

2)Combat sucks. You don't actually want to have to engage in combat. You want the attack phase to be you turning dudes sideways and the opponent losing life. Now, sure Loxadon Warhammer is a very good card and many aggro decks want at least one or two, but really you want to put it on a dude and swing twice and have the opponent concede. You don't want to actually have to use cute combat tricks. While it is nice to have them, and some decks do really well with them, combat in general is far less efficient that using other means to shut down the opponents dudes and swing for victory.

3) 60 cards. At least 24 land until you learn curves. Don't argue. Seriously. Enough math has been done on this to build a moonbase. I used to be a 75 card decker too. But once you play a few different 60 card decks with a proper mana bases the reasons will hit you like a ton of bricks. It works.

4) Build and play to win. It is more sporting. Again, this sounds contradictory and at first may be off-putting to the casual gamer but believe me. I have probably lost over 10,000 games of magic. I know I have lost over a hundred games of magic in one day before. After the first thousand or so loses you stop caring about it very much. I have never felt bad about losing a game if my opponent played well with a well built deck. Even if it was a casual setting and bullshitting around. Even when I have been handed an awful deck to play. The loses that you start to hate are to people playing deck.dec or playing like a total idiot. When you lose because your deck shit out against some random pile or he drew the absolute fucking nuts is when you get upset. When the opponent misplays every play and yet always has the right cards. Because in those situations you didn't lose to the opponent or to his deck. You lost to blind fucking fate and fate alone.

5) Listen to more experienced players, but don't trust them completely. Don't be afraid to netdeck a few decks from a PTQ or GP and get some experience, but after a couple dozen games make your own tweaks. This is one of the best ways to learn deckbuilding. You start with a deck that is proven to work and you play it until you get a feel for why it works. Then you try to improve it for your meta or play style. Play style is important. I am far better with Ichorid or the Rock than I am with Iggy-pop or solidarity. I actually kinda suck with Solidarity even though I am ok at playing control decks like Oath. Its part of my play style. You say you like zombies? Are you good with them? Do you feel like you generally make the right plays? If not, maybe you don't actually like the zombies but the color combo or the decks tempo or the overall strategy.

Honestly, for a jaded old player like me seeing a new player is always a mix of pride and frustration. Its great to see guys like you getting things we understood years ago and pulling out combinations we haven't thought of. Its frustrating to see the same mistakes that us and all our friends made repeated. But as a veteran of Old Magic its kinda my duty to help you youngsters grow until you can face down your first Turn 1 Darksteel Colossus and not flinch. If you need any help you can always PM me. I can probably even play some games on MWS and teach you a few things.

[TheFeniX]

I played a whole hell of a lot from about 6th grade to 10th.

Recently picked it up again with 3 other friends. Nothing competitive, just playing for fun. My favorites right now are my artifact decks which are pretty good for casual play, but my buddy Chris vastly overestimates them in head-up tournament play. Besides, that shits just not fun for me.

While I will sit down and make a deck based around a single idea, I more prefer to just throw something together and find out how it plays. Then add some cards in and keep playing it. Once it gets bloated, cut it down to 60 cards and repeat the process.

[Samuel]

Creature suck. They are the second worst card type in the game after Auras. Why, you ask? Many reasons.

Out of curiosity, when did you start playing? When I first learnt of the game it was at the "minimize creatures as much as possible" phase, with the prefered decks being red direct damage.

[Commander Xillian]

I never said I wasn't listening to your advice, people.

I recently culled my nim (Despite not wanting to... They were just too much for too little, with a flimsy late game guarantee that they would be beastly. I also ditched a lot of other cards, namely because of whatshisface's list of zombies that looked useful. Still trying to find non-rares that are anything interesting enough for me to play. As it stands, only one or two common cards, other than lands, that I use.

While I understand your sentiment there, Hellion, I'm going to go ahead and try my own direction. Don't think I'm ignoring you, I read everything and did not take it personally. Thank you very much for the advice. It's just I'm a bit... Unaccepting, of older players thoughts, namely due to the crowd I played with earlier. Sure, got a free gravedigger. And a few nice other zombies. But it cost me all my pokemon cards, half my Yugi collection, and to top it off a bag of jelly beans.

And I was about nine, ten years old. So yes, I don't think that most anyone telling me what is the best, is the best, unless I play it and work with it myself. I played a few hands with the Zombie Empire deck, against a friend's slivers, and I won due to late-game strategy, and maybe a little bit of rules lawyer against a guy who also miss understood the rules.

[KrauserKrauser]

Hellion's advice was mostly of the competitive nature, creatures are tons of fun in casual and built properly can be effective in all formats.

I don't know what your budget is, but I can give you a bunch of different places to pickup some of the cheaper cards.

Some of the cards I listed you can pick up for $0.25 a piece or less at the right places.

One great thing you can pick up is the Planechase deck with the Zombie theme. Some of the best Zombie themed cards are included and can be picked up for around $15 from some of the online retailers or even at your FLGS.

The Garruk vs. Lillana duel deck is also a pretty good starter as it contains bunches of good cards and if you don't want to play with the Green Cards you can always trade them off.

[Norade]

My decks tend to be casual in nature, because while I could go online and get all the best cards and go for crazy deck theory, I have more fun being in the middle of my groups power curve.

[Commander Xillian]

I went online, and lemme tell you, this thing is going to be reserved for just building and archiving my deck lists, so as to keep my cards orginized. I am NOT playing online with anyone I don't know from now on.

[Norade]

Oh, what happened?

[KrauserKrauser]

Yeah, you can run into some real chucklefucks on MWS.

My advice would be to play on Magic Online. For $20-30 you can surprisingly good collection of good cards dealing with the right bots.

Added bonus is that you can report chucklefucks and get them banned along with the game itself forcing you play the game better as it makes you follow the rules.

[Commander Xillian]

Well..

Turn one, we put down stuff. I'm gonna say this right now, and by force of habit I never draw first round, even if I go second. Idunno, I just don't. He throws a hissy fit, which I can sorta understand, but really, it's not a game breaking thing right there. So, I just go ahead and draw to make him happy. Two rounds later, I've placed my Zombie master. he then goes and drops this land which lets him put cards back in his hand, and puts down this.. Soemthing jellyfish. Sends my Master back into my hand. He then tells me to discard (I'll admit I didn't know about this rule). It's not that he told me to, it's the fact that when I asked him he outright said "do it noob" like I was an unintelegent moron. Fine, I says, I have another one of this card in my hand, and a Soulless one in here too.

Two rounds later, and three or four discards after that, I'm dead from Jellyfish spam.

Yeah... It's just a bit too competitive. Really not my kind of online game it is. I mean, legit strategy, but just unsporting as hell. And, four rounds in I think, and I'm dead.

Also, if told to sacrifice a creature, can you sacrifice from your hand?

Just wanna get across, yes, I am a newb. I've very little experience with this game and I really just want a deck that works once in a blue moon, but is also really interesting and acts interesting.

[Agent Sorchus]

No you cannot sacrifice creatures from your hand. If he was telling you to he was abusing your trust. Fuck him.

[Commander Xillian]

Okay, good to know. Just checking.

[KrauserKrauser]

Yeah, definitely Magic Online is something you should look into. You would completely avoid shit like that and while it's not free, alot of things are much much cheaper than their real life counterparts.

It would also help out with learning what you can and cannot do and avoid any of the other bad habits you mentioned.

[Commander Xillian]

In any case, I've revamped my deck. Would you all be so kind as to review it, and let me know if it's partially feasable?

[KrauserKrauser]

I would love to. I have a good idea of what you are going for and would be happy to give some advice.

[Dark Hellion]

Yah, there are a lot of shitters on MWS. Unfortunately a lot of people to play Magic aren't good at reading the mood of the game in person, let alone over the internet. This coupled with the fact that most people on MWS do not have as strong of a grasp on the rules as they think they do makes for numerous bad experiences. You learn to shrug it off.

I'd also be happy to review your deck. While my views on theory are a bit harsh, I am an old lover of fun casual decks and am much more lenient on them.

Otherwise, it is only time until you come to the dark side of Magic. You will learn to hate all the cards in your deck and be happy when those shitters go to the bin. Your hate will make you powerful. Give in to your anger, my young apprentice.

[Commander Xillian]

Okay, as before:

Vault of Whispers, 4
Swamp, 17
Dread, 1
Dread Specter, 4
Cemetery Reaper, 2
Undead Warchief, 2
Zombie master, 2
Skinthinner, 4
Soulless One, 1
Helldozer, 1
Death Baron, 1
Kozilek, Butcher of Truth, 1
Gauntlet of Power, 2
Loxodon Warhammer, 4
Vile Requiem, 1
Vampiric link, 3
Tendrils of Corruption, 4
Dark Banishing, 4
Soul Burn, 2

All in all, I felt it worked well the few games I played. It's just I was out-classed and out gunned.

[Agent Sorchus]

There are just a few cards that I feel real bad about.

Helldozer, overcosted with a power that does not help you by the time you get him out. Slot in an other Soulless One in his place.

Butcher of truth, too slow and doesn't really benefit from most of the other cards in the deck. Replace with Zombie Brute. The brute can be played earlier and has both trample and the ability to get far larger thanks to all the global bonuses.

Soul Burn, costs allot and doesn't do enough for how often you will get one. Replace with Diabolic Tutor asap. Tutor will get you out of a lot of binds for the same cost as dealing one stinking damage to your opponent.

Since you have both Lox Warhammer and Vampiric link I think you can make some more room for other cards. If you cut both by one you can open up an additional slot for a pair of cards. I am slightly mean and think that Thought Prison is an excellent card for this situation.

Last I would Change out at least 2 of the Dread Specters for one or two drop Zombies, to help protect in the first turns and to soak up those global bonuses for being zombie for cheap.

[Commander Xillian]

Hmm.. Okay. I think I'll drop the helldozer, one Soul burn (It's saved my rear a number of times, so I'll leave just one in.) and drop a Vamp link. Main reason I got the vamp links is because it's a quick, easy soul link. Really only reason.

Okay, thanks for the pointers. And I suppose I'll drop the Eldrazi, but I'm not sure I would if I had one on hand at the moment. Be sleeping with that thing under my pillow.

Also, why do Diabolic when I could do Demonic? Half the cost, same effect.

[Dark Hellion]

Ok, some quick advice from me.

1) Replace the Dark Banishings with Doom Blade. The ability to kill artifact dudes isn't worth the extra mana. You can probably find someone who will give you doom blades so there is no price issue.

2)Replace Soul Burn with Corrupt. Soul Burn and similar cards are very mana innefficient for what they do. Corrupt does the same thing better. Again, they cost nothing.

3) I would cut two Loxodon Warhammers for some more cheap dudes. Graveborn Muse is a very powerful zombie that costs $1 a piece and will make your deck much faster and more resilient. Plus it is a bigger target for creature destruction, allowing your attackers to beat face more often.

4) Think about upgrading Kozilek into Emrakul, kicker of asses. Emrakul ends games. He time walks, is practically unkillable, hits harder than anything in the game and is awesome looking to boot. $8 is not much to spend for a game ender like him. Especially cause he is nice and shiny.

5) Vile requiem kinda blows. If you have to kill a whole bunch of dudes you don't want to have to wait multiple turns to do it. If you use it to kill 1 dude it is just bad.

6) Cut dread specter. He isn't a zombie, he costs too much, and his ability isn't that good. That frees up 4 slots for MORE ZOMBIES!

7)Why vault of whispers? I don't see what having that card does and it makes your land easier to kill. Plus it has anti-synergy with tendrils of corruption.

8 ) Vampiric link. Refer back to Auras suck. Loxodon warhammer does everything this does better and you already have too many warhammers. This is just really superfluous and is a "Win More" card.

Here's what I would do as a revised version that attempts to keep the same spirit and cost consideration but should perform with much more power. This entire deck should be able to be gotten for less than $20.

Lands:
24 Swamp

Dudes: 22
4 Skinthinner
4 Graveborn Muse
4 Death Baron
4 Undead Warchief
4 Cemetery Reaper
1 Kozilek/Emrakul (Aka 1x big mother fucker)
1 Dread

Artifacts/Equipment: 4
2 Loxodon Warhammer
2 Gauntlet of Power

Spells: 10
4 Tendrils of Corruption
4 Doom Blade
2 Corrupt

Gameplan: Play zombies. Eat brains.

If you ever want to play someone over MWS who won't be a dick, PM me. I am willing to go through a lot of step by step stuff to help you play and deckbuild better if you want. I actually like teaching people to play better.

Quick aside to Sorchus since his post came in while I was typing.

Butcher of truth, too slow and doesn't really benefit from most of the other cards in the deck. Replace with Zombie Brute. The brute can be played earlier and has both trample and the ability to get far larger thanks to all the global bonuses.

I actually think the Kozilek is Ok in this slot. The deck feels like it really needs a "Big Motherfucker" slot and you don't get any bigger or more incestuous than the Eldrazi. Gauntlet of power makes it a viable late game play and the Feldon's Cane effect is situationally useful. All in all it is one of the funky card choices that I actually am fine with. I think it does what it needs to do.

[Commander Xillian]

Thanks for the advice, I decided to toss in some more cards, ditch the links, and add in some new stuff as well. Also, reason for the Requim, is so that I can have it sitting there, ready to bust when I need it. Plus, I will need a slew of dead in my opponents graveyard, so that I can exile them and get my own 2/2 zombie tokens via Cemetery Reaper.

[Agent Sorchus]

Hellion: While the deck does seem to need a big mother fucker to take names, I thought that that role was being played out by Soulless One. Soulless One benefits from all the Zombie Lords and Warchiefs in the deck, while really getting behind the shambling masses that a zombie deck thrives on.

And I can't believe that I missed the Dread Spectre not being a zombie. Needs to go. Both Hellion and I agree that the deck needs more to it's masses of bodies. Needs more Zombie.

[Commander Xillian]

Zombies: Like Men at Arms, Cowbell, and bullets, you need more of them. Period.