Simic Shuffleupagus

Last night I played a UG Shuffleupagus build.  I really have a hard time deciding which colors in WUBG to run.  (Even Red has some cards similar to Cranial Extraction: Slaughter Games and Thought Hemorrhage.)  I was in the process of building WUB, but then I decided that I would probably be wanting more creatures, so I switched over to UG at the last moment.

Here's the list I ran:

Main deck:
4 Psychogenic Probe
4 Psychic Surgery  (These were actually pretty useful!)
4 Cosi's Trickster
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Serum Visions
4 Loaming Shaman
4 Riftsweeper  (I only whiffed on these, like, once!)
4 Lantern of Insight
2 Bribery
2 Blessed Reincarnation
4 Ghost Quarter
2 Breeding Pool
10 Forest
4 Island

Sideboard:
4 Deglamer
4 Unravel the Aether
3 Memory's Journey
2 Remand
2 Bribery


It didn't go so hot.  0-3-1, with only two total game wins.  Yikes.  Here's how it played out.

Round 1, I lost to Cody's Splinter Twin.  In the first game I mulled to five to get a land, then had no gas and lost quickly.  For the second game, I sided in all of my Deglamers and Unravel the Aethers, which was fun.  (Keranos doesn't look so indestructible when he gets shuffled back in.)  Although I didn't fall to a splinter twin combo, I couldn't keep up with the little beats and lost.

In the second round, I played against Evan's WUR deck.  (I don't know what it's called.  Sphinx's Revelation and other good stuff, I guess.)  This was a real battle!  Two control decks: time was called during game 1.  I had two Psychic Surgery out early on, and did get close to winning.  At one point, he was down to 2 life.  Later he had only three cards in his library at another, but he bounced back with Elixir of Immortality.  (Thankfully, it's a shuffle effect!)  He was finally able to transform a Delver of Secrets and win that way on the third turn after time, but he did have 16 cards in exile.  This was a really intense game and my favorite of the night.

I played against Katie's Cats Zoo-type deck in round 3.  I fared way better against this than I expected I would!  I held off her creatures in game 1 and got a Psychogenic Probe out for shuffling damage.  She went for the 5-life land (fetch for an untapped shock land with 2 shuffle damage) at one point, and I squeaked through a win off of Riftsweepers and Cosi's Tricksters.  She sided in Ancient Grudges for game 2 and beat me pretty soundly.  Game 3 went to time, with no one winning.  Hooray, I pulled off a draw round! :-P

In round 4, I played against Mike's BG deck full of big dudes.  I took game 1 by Psychic Surgerying away all his lands, but lost games 2 and 3 to big Phyrexian Obliterators and Wurmcoil Engines.

Lessons Learned:

I thought this would do better than it did.  It was certainly fun resolving Blessed Reincarnation, and Psychic Surgery really carried itself!  Two shuffles and slowing down an attacker is great!  In the end, I do think that White would be more fun than Green, and I might rather go for Black than Blue.  Yeah, maybe go Orzhov next time.  I really do want to find the best Shuffleupagus build! :) 

Updated Zombie Horde Deck List

Last winter, a talented Magic friend of mine sat down with me to beef up my Zombie Horde deck.  I've been asked for the list, so I figured I'd just provide all the details right here.

Rules:

* Survivors have 40 life total.  I don't care how many people are actually playing.

* The zombie deck gets 25 cards/player.  My list goes to 100 cards; for more players, I am considering adding more zombie tokens.

* The players get some free turns based on the challenge level they pick.  (Players don't draw their first turn.)

Challenge level:
Novice: Players get 4 turns before the first zombie turn
Normal: 3 turns
Challenge: 2 turns
Professional: 1 turn
Legendary: Zombies go first.

Everything else follows the rules originally laid out.

Without any further ado, here's the list:

59 Zombie tokens
8 Zombie Giant tokens
1 Gloomdrifter
1 Unbreathing Horde
1 Forgotten Wastes
2 Delirium Skeins
1 Army of the Damned
1 Twilight's Call
2 Bad Moon
1 Plague Wind
2 Nested Ghoul
1 Death Baron
1 Grave Titan
1 Vulturous Zombie
1 Noxious Ghoul
1 Undead Warchief
1 Living Death
1 Endless Ranks of the Dead
1 Zombie Apocalypse
1 Call to the Grave
2 Vengeful Dead
1 Grave Pact
4 Cackling Fiend
2 Soulless One
2 Syphon Flesh
1 Infectious Horror
(100 cards)