Suicide Black In Extended Alex Shvartsman The Extended qualifier season will be ending soon. You've got your established metagame, you've got deck lists from premier tournaments world wide and you've got two dozen articles explaining how to play those decks. Yet people ask "What should I play at the next PTQ?" as often as they did early in the season. To be perfectly honest, my answer to that question is Trix. NecroDonate beats the decks that are designed to crush it about half the time, and demolishes most other strategies. I am sure some players will disagree with my opinion, citing Pandeburst, PT Junk, Oath or some other strategy as the top pick for the format - nor are they necessarily wrong. However, if they held another Masters tournament in an Extended format tomorrow, I'd play Trix. But, to rip off Paul Barclay's quote, had I crash-landed in the Andes I'd be forced to do stuff almost as distasteful. Any deck that does not play Force of Will in this format has to have at least some chance of winning on turn 3. One of the major factors in choosing a deck for an upcoming tournament is that you actually enjoy playing that deck and feel confident in your ability to win with it. Having played Trix a couple of times, I knew I could win with the deck, but I just did not have any fun playing it at all. I needed an alternative for Grand Prix: Buenos Aires, a deck I would feel comfortable with. This alternative was a Suicide Black deck designed by the OMS brothers. They played it in Grand Prix: Phoenix, Dan OMS finishing 10th with it and Steve making Top 32. I did not have the cards with me to put the deck together. Fortunately, Dan OMS had almost everything needed to build an extra copy of the deck and I spent most of the first three rounds (thank God for byes!) locating the few missing cards. This is the deck Dan and I both played in Buenos Aires: Alex Shvartsman Suicide Black Main Deck Sideboard 4 Demonic Consultation 4 Unmask 4 Duress 4 Sarcomancy 4 Carnophage 4 Dauthi Horror 4 Dauthi Slayer 4 Phyrexian Negator 3 Hatred 1 Kaervek's Spite 3 Lake of the Dead 4 Wasteland 17 Swamps 4 Cursed Scroll 3 Forsaken Wastes 3 Spinning Darkness 3 Perish 2 Snuff Out To some extent, this is a combo deck. Any deck that does not play Force of Will in this format has to have at least some chance of winning on turn 3. This deck's turn three win can look approximately like this: Turn 1: Swamp, Duress Turn 2: Swamp, shadow creature Turn 3: Consult for Lake of the Dead or Hatred, play Lake, cast Hatred for 18, attack. This is not going to happen a lot. Not even half the time. But it happens often enough to steal wins from under other deck's noses the way they occasionally can steal them from you. The deck is relatively easy to play. You disrupt your opponent with discard spells, cast your guys and try to reduce his life total to zero. Perhaps the most important play is to whether Duress or cast a creature on your first turn. I find that in most matchups it is better to drop a creature or two first, because it is absolutely necessary to apply pressure to combo and control decks in order to win. Demonic Consultation is a true MVP of the deck. It is not nearly as dangerous to use it here as opposed to a Trix deck - you won't lose your combo parts and you don't usually need more than a few cards in your library. I've cast three Consultations in the same game without much trouble. Consultation also allows you to play relatively land-light. Never hesitate to consult for a Swamp (or, often, a Wasteland) when necessary. Here is how to play some of the common matchups: Trix and Pandeburst Combo is one of the two matchups where your Hatred combo is extremely important. Despite all the discard spells and fast creatures, a combo deck is usually resilient enough to find a way to "go off" before you kill it - not to mention the help it might get from its Firestorms! There aren't a lot of cards you can board out. Usually I end up taking out one or two Negators - because they are too slow in this matchup! That's right, while other decks sideboard Negators in to crush their opponents with an unexpected burst of speed, in this matchup a creature that costs three mana is just a bit too much! Dan came up with an idea of sideboarding Forsaken Wastes - it does not stop Trix from going off, but it does stop them from gaining 20 life, therefore giving you an extra turn to try and kill an opponent. I do not think it worked out all that great - I recommend sideboarding a Winter Orb in its place. It costs less mana and is more effective in the matchup. With recent success of Pandeburst, I would also strongly consider Planar Void. Chance to win matchup: 50% Oath and TurboLand The Enemy The other matchup where you want your combo. It is your one chance to win if Oath hits the table. Oath of Druids is The Enemy in these matchups. You must stop it if you can - use Unmask and Duress very early and aggressively to try and make sure you can beat them down before they find another Oath or Enlightened Tutor. Wasteland is great help here as it often buys a turn when you need it most. A good sideboard choice is to bring in 3 Cursed Scroll, replacing Kaervek's Spite and some Negators. It offers an alternative win condition in case you were unable to stop an Oath or to pull of a Hatred after Oath resolves. An Oath deck will often board out its artifact removal and might find it difficult to deal with Cursed Scroll. Chance to win matchup: 60% Sligh This is a nightmare matchup. You end up sideboarding about 10 cards and there are still cards in the deck you wish you could take out. The trick here is to try and get them to waste their direct damage spells on your early creatures and then drop Negator and hope for the best. If they do not draw too much direct damage, you might be able to win by sacrificing any permanents other than Negator itself. An active Cursed Scroll on the other side of the table makes this strategy far less effective though. Your sideboard should be something like: -3 Hatred -3 Lake of the Dead -1 Kaervek's Spite -1 Phyrexian Negator -1 Sarcomancy +4 Cursed Scroll +3 Spinning Darkness +2 Snuff Out, but it is still an uphill battle. Chance to win matchup: 15% Slivers, Stompy Disruption is important against these decks as you eliminate Force of Will, Swords to Plowshares or Cursed Scroll. The threat of Phyrexian Negator attacking holds Slivers, Elves and other critters back while your shadow creatures come in for the kill. The sideboard trick in this matchup, or in any matchup where there is a potential damage race, is to sideboard out your Hatred cards. Although the potential to win the game right away is very attractive in virtually any game, consistency is more important. Your typical sideboard here might be: -3 Hatred -3 Lake of the Dead -2 Sarcomancy +3 Cursed Scroll +2 Spinning Darkness +2 Snuff Out Chance to win matchup: 65-70% Survival Any Survival based deck will rely on Spike Weaver as its Silver Bullet against you. Fortunately, you've got plenty of answers. It is nice to be able to stop their Survival of the Fittest from being cast when possible. However, it is not crucial, as they are unlikely to have any creature they can get that would totally annihilate you. Sideboard varies based on the version of the deck you are facing. Most commonly, I bring in 2 Spinning Darkness, 2 Snuff Out and 3 Perish. Out go the 1 casting cost creatures without shadow. They do deal a bit of damage early on, but will normally get shut down by Walls quickly enough. Against versions with a reasonable amount of countermagic, I keep the 1 casting cost guys and take out the Hatred combo. An important thing to remember is that you must hang on to a way to kill Spike Weaver if at all possible - do not waste your Perish or Snuff Out early, unless absolutely necessary. Even an active Tradewind will not always warrant a Snuff Out, provided you do not plan to Hate an opponent out. Chance to win matchup: 70-75% Suicide Black is a very aggressive deck that will certainly not bore you and give you plenty of time for lunch in between rounds. There are plenty of different ways to build the deck. Masayuki Higashino, a pro player from Japan, recently made the Top 8 in GP Singapore with the following version: Higashino, Masayuki 2nd Necro Storm Main Deck Sideboard 4 Unholy Strength 4 Dauthi Slayer 2 Dauthi Horror 4 Carnophage 4 Sarcomancy 4 Black Knight 4 Duress 4 Demonic Consultation 3 Necropotence 4 Unmask 3 Firestorm 1 Kaervek's Spite 1 Undiscovered Paradise 4 Wasteland 4 Badlands 10 Swamp 2 Addle 2 Bad Moon 3 Price of Progress 1 Firestorm 4 Pyroblast 3 Engineered Plague Tune the deck to fit your metagame. For example, if you expect few combo decks but plenty of Slivers and Survival, you might want to keep the Hatred combo in the sideboard and choose to maindeck some creature removal instead. Of course, if you expect lots of Sligh you might want to think about playing that Trix deck again. In either case, good luck in your remaining PTQs!