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Deathblade Rites Of Reaping

If you’re looking for a deck to play at SCG Legacy Open: Nashville this weekend, BBD recommends the latest version of his Esper Deathblade deck. Check it out!

G/B/W Reanimator, we have a problem.

I have played G/B/W Reanimator in the last three big events I’ve played in. The deck is amazing. It is smooth. It is powerful. It is resilient. It is consistent. It has awesome tools to handle almost everything that can be thrown at it.

Almost everything.

If you exclude a certain unnamed deck, my record with G/B/W Reanimator is a whopping 11-0 in those events. I have not lost a single match to any other deck. I have been able to convincingly take down anything else thrown at me.

What if we include said deck-that-shall-not-be-named?

I am 1-7 in those events against…*shudders*…Jund. That’s miserable. Now, I don’t think the matchup is quite that bad (nor should my 11-0 be quite that good), but I think it’s time I stopped living in denial and embraced Shakira’s accountant’s famous words of wisdom: "My results don’t lie." His hips, on the other hand, told a number of shocking stories we later found were untrue.

Jund is a problem. I’m not sure exactly how to fix that problem. If you have any good ideas, please sound off in the comments because I’d love to hear them, especially if that tech is something that can be maindecked. Jund will be vanquished, mark my words!

But I’m not writing this article to again extol the virtues of G/B/W Reanimator. In fact, I’m not even interested in talking about Standard.

With the SCG Open Series in Nashville this weekend featuring Legacy for the first time in a while, I want to discuss my favorite Magic format and a deck that I think is well positioned against the field: Esper Deathblade.

The Rite Deck Choice?

Esper Deathblade pairs Deathrite Shaman and Dark Confidant together with the classic Stoneforge Mystic induced "Stoneblade" shell. Peanut Butter and jelly has nothing on this beautiful combination.

Deathblade has something that really separates it from a lot of the other Legacy decks: a name that is simultaneously awesome and terrible at the same time. Deathblade sounds like an anime, bad horror film and extremely over the top metal parody band all mashed into one tight, Legacy-legal package.

In fact, I have spent far more time than I’d like to admit coming up with album titles for Deathblade’s first musical production. So far the best I’ve come up with is Deathblade: Rites of Reaping. It hits on all cylinders—it’s a Magic card, it references the titular Deathrite Shaman, and it just sounds metal. Be sure to check out the third track: "Greatness at All Cost."

But even beyond a terrible and yet terribly hardcore name, I feel like Deathblade is an excellent choice for a Legacy tournament, and I’d love to share why.

But first, here is my most recent list from the SCG Invitational in Atlanta:


I was happy with this list—with one exception. Liliana of the Veil wasn’t very good. With how awesome Liliana was in Jund, I thought there was a chance she was going to be likewise good here, but in practice that wasn’t the case. Liliana doesn’t work well with a card like Brainstorm. Liliana wants you to empty your hand so that her +1 ability no longer becomes symmetrical, but Brainstorm pushes you toward keeping cards in your hand so you can dig for the right answer at the right time.

Moving forward, I feel like Liliana should be replaced either with Lingering Souls or Vendilion Clique depending on the expected metagame. If you are expecting a bunch of grindy matchups, against decks like BUG, Stoneblade, and Jund, then Lingering Souls is the ticket. If you are expecting a lot of combo matchups, like Sneak and Show and Storm, then Vendilion Clique is where you want to be. It’s purely a metagame call.

Why Not Just Play Stoneblade?

Esper Deathblade looks like a fairly typical Esper Stoneblade deck outside of Dark Confidant and Deathrite Shaman. Why play those over normal choices?

I feel like Deathrite Shaman is simply the best fair card in Legacy by a mile right now. It does everything you could want it to do in this format. It very reliably ramps you thanks to the prevalence of fetchlands, and hating on the graveyard impacts a large number of strategies. At one end of the spectrum, you have decks that rely on their graveyard like Storm with Past in Flames and Reanimator decks trying to get the win by raisin’ ‘Brand. [Editor’s Note: It took me a minute, but well done.] At the other end of the spectrum, you shut off Snapcaster Mages and reduce the effectiveness of cards like Knight of the Reliquary and Tarmogoyf from fair decks.

And then it can just gain you life or start shocking your opponent every turn if that’s needed too. In my quarterfinal match of the Invitational, where I barely squeaked out a win against Merfolk, Deathrite Shaman was the Swiss Army knife that held it all together. Let’s take a look at some of the things he did just in game 5 alone.

Two Deathrite Shamans cast Supreme Verdict off of only two lands when I was facing down lethal. Deathrite Shaman completely trumps cards like Daze and Wasteland, which are traditionally the cards that Merfolk uses to beat decks like Stoneblade.

The third copy started gaining me life off of the Tropical Island I had in play to begin to put the game out of reach for the fish. Because of the life gain from Deathrite Shaman and since I had effectively lowered my curve to ones and twos post-board, I felt safe playing a Dark Confidant even on a low life total since I knew Deathrite could keep me topped off.

Then my opponent drew another Wasteland for my Tropical Island. At that point, I was stuck with a Dark Confidant and Deathrite Shaman in play, no way to gain life, and was racing the clock my own Dark Confidant had put me on.

I guess it’s a pretty sweet thing that Deathrite Shaman can also deal a good bit of damage. Deathrite Shaman ended up dealing something like eight damage this game, which meant that when I activated Deathrite Shaman in my own upkeep, at one life in response to my Dark Confidant trigger, the Inquisition of Kozilek on top of my deck didn’t kill me since my opponent instead died to the activation.

He’s also a 1/2. I’m of a mixed opinion about this. For one, he completely invalidates everything Squire has stood for these past twenty years. On the flip side, he flips Goblin Lackey the bird on a routine basis, and I am not morally opposed to such displays. Goblin Lackey? More like Goblin Lackluster. [Editor’s Note: …]

Ever since I started jamming Deathrite Shaman, I haven’t wanted to go back to the things I was doing before that point. He’s just too good. I feel pretty strongly that every fair deck that is capable of casting this card should be doing so. Esper Stoneblade is certainly no exception since he’s easily castable off of a Scrubland[/author]“][author name="Scrubland"]Scrubland[/author] or Underground Sea.

Bob and Weave

Bob and Weave is a term that refers to a style of dodging punches in boxing as well as a style of dodging punches in Dark Confidant activations. You play Bob and hope your deck is weaved so that you hit land instead of that Batterskull your mother told you to watch out for when you were a kid.

Dark Confidant’s drawback is hardly one. I have not lost a single game of Legacy to a Dark Confidant activation with this deck or Jund. It’s been close a few times, but the beautiful thing about Dark Confidant is that he’s going to draw you into cards like Brainstorm that can make sure the top of your deck isn’t out to get you. Generally speaking, Bob just draws you a ton of cards, and you bury your opponent in that advantage long before you even get close to losing from his drawback. Cards like Deathrite Shaman, Batterskull, and Umezawa’s Jitte can all recoup the life you lose.

Playing with Dark Confidant in Legacy Jund really opened my eyes to how powerful this card is, and when Javier Arevalo suggested that we play him in this deck, it wasn’t a tough sell. I played two copies of Bob the first time I touched the deck.

I have played four copies every time since then. Seeing how powerful and effective Dark Confidant has been makes me wonder if he’s always been this good and we just didn’t realize it before or if Legacy has changed enough to make him better now than he was a year ago.

Dark Confidant also plays very well with Deathrite Shaman. People really underestimate how much damage Deathrite Shaman deals over the course of a game. In a deck like Stoneblade, where you have a lot of interaction and answers to the threats your opponent is deploying, shocking your opponent for two damage from time to time starts to add up. Suddenly, your opponent is at twelve life and you have a Dark Confidant, a Deathrite Shaman, and a Creeping Tar Pit and realize you can just kill your opponent in two turns. The incidental damage Dark Confidant and Deathrite Shaman deal while doing other important things is nothing to scoff at. Attacking for two is sometimes just good enough.

Dark Confidant is better than Stoneforge Mystic, and that’s a pretty impressive creature to top.

Ultimately, the main thing this deck offers that a typical Stoneblade deck cannot offer is a proactive game plan. Standard Stoneblade is forced to play the reactive game against pretty much every deck in the format and is very bad at switching to play the proactive game when needed, like against High Tide.

Like a typical control deck, Esper Stoneblade starts the game from behind and uses its powerful cards to come back and take over control of the game from that point.

Esper Deathblade, on the other hand, can start applying must-answer threats as soon as turn 1. While Stoneblade only has Stoneforge Mystic as an early threat, Deathblade offers Stoneforge Mystic, Dark Confidant, and Deathrite Shaman as creatures the opponent has to respect. Instead of starting out on the back foot, Deathblade can start out ahead and actually force the opponent to answer its threats instead of vice-versa.

I think this is best illustrated by the matches Shaheen Soorani and I played against Gerry Thompson in the Top 8 of the Invitational. While we both ended up falling victim to his Shardless BUG deck in the end, I was able to take a few games off of him. I attribute this 100% to the fact that I had a proactive game plan. Gerry was forced to answer my threats first and foremost and then focus on building his own game plan afterward. If he stumbled in finding an answer to one of my early threats, then I could just steal the game right there.

Shaheen, on the other hand, could only play the reactive game plan, and trying to play a reactive game against Shardless Agent into Ancestral Vision is a losing proposition.

Building and Playing Around Deathrite

Deathrite Shaman isn’t the kind of card you can just toss into a deck and call it a day.

His effect on the game is so powerful that there is no reason not to build your deck with maximizing his abilities in mind. In terms of Stoneblade, there are really only two areas where he affects deckbuilding considerations.

The first is the mana base. A typical Stoneblade deck is basically a U/W deck that splashes black for discard effects and the backside of Lingering Souls. Deathblade, on the other hand, is more of a U/B deck that splashes white for Stoneforge Mystic and Swords to Plowshares. Instead of playing the maximum number of Tundras and filling in the blanks elsewhere with Underground Sea and Scrubland[/author]“][author name="Scrubland"]Scrubland[/author], as a typical Stoneblade deck would do, it’s important to play just the bare minimum amount of Tundras and stick to a higher percentage of Underground Seas and Scrubland[/author]“][author name="Scrubland"]Scrublands[/author] instead.

Tundra doesn’t generally cast Deathrite Shaman. Underground Sea and Scrubland[/author]“][author name="Scrubland"]Scrubland[/author] do, and it’s important that you are able to play your Deathrite Shaman on turn 1.

Additionally, I think it is a mistake to play a fair deck with Deathrite Shaman and not include at least a few copies of Wasteland. The play of turn 1 Deathrite Shaman, turn 2 Wasteland their land and play a two-drop is so extremely powerful that there is no reason not to have access to that effect. Normally, I think Wasteland is the stains in a Stoneblade deck since your spells all cost more than your opponent’s, but this isn’t your grandfather’s Stoneblade deck. We’re not here to wine and dine. We’re all in on the waste em and baste em game plan. [Editor’s Note: At least we’re done with drain em and brain em!]

I also think it’s worth including a single Tropical Island for the times when you need to start gaining life with Deathrite Shaman or the times when you need to remove creatures from the graveyard to disrupt a combo deck like Reanimator, Tin Fins, or Cephalid Breakfast. Marsh Flats doesn’t fetch this Tropical Island, but the other eight fetchlands do.

The last consideration when playing Deathrite Shaman is to think about how you intend on interacting with the graveyard. Deathrite Shaman and Snapcaster Mage are diametrically opposed. One is a 1/2, and the other is a 2/1. One reuses cards in the graveyard, and the other throws them out. One puts down the toilet seat, and the other leaves it up. They simply don’t get along.

Before Deathrite Shaman started seeing Legacy play, I would have said that Snapcaster Mage was by far the best card in Legacy Stoneblade and that it wasn’t even close. Thoughtseize, Brainstorm, and Swords to Plowshares meant that Snapcaster was giving you more copies of your best card in every single matchup.

Deathrite Shaman kind of put a damper on that. An untapped opposing Deathrite Shaman can keep Snapcaster Mage from getting value, and every successful activation removes one potential target from the graveyard to make future Snapcaster Mages worse. Your own Deathrite Shamans can even hurt you by putting you in an awkward situation where you have to decide whether to remove a card to shock your opponent or keep the card in case you need it for Snapcaster Mage later.

As a result of this and the glut of good two-drops already, I’m not playing the full amount of Snapcaster Mages in the list. Three Snapcasters might even be too many. It’s certainly possible I should just be playing two, but I really love this card in every situation where Deathrite isn’t eating your lunch and have a hard time cutting another.

At any rate, don’t be afraid to side out Snapcaster Mage against cards like Deathrite Shaman and Nihil Spellbomb. The deck isn’t reliant on the power of Snapcaster Mage, and if you’re not getting value out of it against your opponent’s cards, then it’s not good enough to be in your deck.

Ignite the Stoneforge!

As surprising as it may seem for a deck named partially after this card, Stoneforge Mystic simply isn’t that good. I’m not saying that Stoneforge Mystic is bad—because it definitely isn’t—but Stoneforge Mystic is the worst two-drop in the deck. I’d rather play a Dark Confidant on turn 2 most of the time unless I’m trying to bait out removal, and Snapcaster Mage just generates more value than Stoneforge usually does.

Don’t be afraid to side out the Stoneforge package in matchups where it isn’t effective. When playing against decks like Sneak and Show, I tend to side out all six cards for more disruptive sideboard choices. Against Elves, I like to trim two Stoneforge Mystics and the Batterskull. I keep in two and the Umezawa’s Jitte so I effectively have three copies of Jitte since the card is so powerful against them.

Nothing is sacred. Sometimes, what was once the most powerful creature in Magic should warm the bench. Psychatog isn’t exactly making any waves these days. Stoneforge Mystic hasn’t quite gotten there yet, but I think we’re starting to move in that direction as creatures get more and more powerful.

That’s all I have on Esper Deathblade for now. I plan on playing it or some variation of it at SCG Legacy Open: Nashville this weekend, so I’m hoping it all pans out. Let me know if you have any questions about the deck. I’ve spent a lot of time working on it, but there is always room for improvement.

Before I close out, I want to mention one last thing.

Last weekend, in Charlotte at the SCG Open Series, something pretty awesome happened. Midway through the Standard portion, a 14-year-old kid named Ben Ragan came up to me and asked me to sign a card for him. I asked him how he was doing in the tournament, and he told me he was 5-1. He was completely beaming with excitement over how well he was doing, and I couldn’t help but feel excited for him as well. I genuinely wished him the best of luck and went on my way.

I talked to him after each round and saw that he kept winning! I couldn’t help but root for him to make Top 8. He seemed like an awesome guy, and it’s rare to see someone who has that much passion for Magic. When the last round rolled around, he was X-1 and just needed to draw in the last round to make it in. He was paired against Ali Aintrazi. If they drew they would both probably make it into Top 8, but there was a chance one of them could get knocked into 9th instead. They ended up playing it out and Ali won, but good guy Ali Aintrazi offered to draw anyway afterward.

As it turned out, Ali ended up finishing in 9th and Ben got 8th. Seeing that story was honestly quite an inspiration and nearly brought me to tears. It was really awesome to see both the raw enthusiasm and love for playing Magic that Ben had as well as the selfless and kind act that Ali displayed. These kinds of awesome stories and people are what keep Magic great.

Magic is more than just playing cards. It’s about the people you meet, the friends you make, and the experiences you have along the way just as much as it is about which 1/2 you decide to sleeve up that particular day. There’s a reason Magic Online will never quite be the same as paper magic. You miss out on so much.

Thanks for reading,

Brian Braun-Duin

@BraunDuinIt on Twitter

BBD on Magic Online

Name That Movie

Each week, I’d like to throw in a little section at the end of my articles called "Name That Movie." This sprung from a fun way to pass the time that Jason Bouchard taught Todd Anderson and me on a Magic trip. Since then, we like to bust it out and relive it from time to time.

The idea is simple. You provide a synopsis for a ridiculous movie idea, and then at the very end of the synopsis, you provide the movie title. There is just one rule. The movie title has to be a pun.

Here are a few examples of particularly cheesy/bad ones I’ve come up with in the past.

It’s a film about a lumberjack who gets both of his legs cut off by a giant saw in a freak lumberyard accident. In an effort to fight his growing depression and despondency, his best friend agrees to let him take the front seat on a cross-country road trip where many shenanigans take place. The movie is simply called: Sawed Off Shotgun.

It’s a movie about a money launderer who is being hunted down by a talented and determined FBI agent. The money launderer has to figure out a way to write one last check from one of his bank accounts to another offshore account without being detected before he can flee the country for good. The move is called: Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself.