Okay, so I promised The Ferrett another article after I won the weekly contest for my last one... And here it is! I must say, the encouragement I received after my previous (and first) StarCity article really helped! This article will be part tourney report, part deck analysis on my build of the Graveborn Identity.

I guess I learned to love playing B/W decks, despite the fact that non-allied painlands aren't around anymore. It makes for a good challenge!

Anyways. After testing B/W Clerics back and forth in the pre-Legions Type 2 metagame, I got very excited (as did many others) on seeing that Withered Wretch would be with us post-Legions. I immediately knew I had to play it, no matter what. I just love upsetting old archetypes, especially my old nemesis, U/G madness. After some failed (and somewhat desperate) attempts to make a deck work with both Master Apothecary and the Wretch, I turned to the Power of the Muse.

Let me make some observations after spending a lot of time seeing all the threads scattered across the internet on how to win the Muse: There are tons of ways to make combos with a Graveborn Muse... But few qualify for competitive play. There is no need to"break" the Muse, it is good in and off itself. We saw B/R Muse decks with Words of War. We saw an attempt at a B/G muse deck. We saw monoblack builds. And of course, the one and only build (or I should say color combination?) that can be truly called the Graveborn Identity: Black and white.

After we went through our test results and weeded out the chaff, two versions were left standing: Black/white, and Monoblack. Both play like control decks hoping for a big finish. Both need some lifegain to offset the hurts of the Muse, being Corrupts in monoblack and Exalted Angels in the BW build.

Monoblack obviously has a much more stable mana base, but (as always) suffers from having no enchantment removal and sometimes being too slow. It does have access to better mass removal through Mutilates. Wrath of God was tried and tested in the Graveborn Identity, of course, but too often the mana base wouldn't support it well enough (along with the Angels).

I guess choosing between the two is a question of personal preference. I tried both and went with BW.

Testing showed me most matchups were favorable, except for R/G Beats, and game 1 against Astral Slide. (Games 2 and 3 versus Slide were much more even-footed.) Still, I expected lots of R/G (and Tog) at Regionals, so I tried to gear my sideboard for that. Not well enough, as it turned out.

My pre-tournament test results proved to be pretty accurate. By the way, before I go into the tournament report part, what most people (Americans?) call Regionals, we call qualifiers for our Nationals. (Maybe because Holland is too small to be considered more than one region.)

Here is the deck I used last Sunday at our"Regionals":

//NAME: Graveborn Identity
3 Festering Goblin
3 Cabal Therapy
3 Duress
3 Chainer's Edict
4 Smother
4 Withered Wretch
4 Rotlung Reanimator
2 Nantuko Shade
4 Graveborn Muse
2 Wrath of God
2 Bane of the Living
3 Exalted Angel
4 Tainted Field
2 Grand Coliseum
3 City of Brass
2 Unholy Grotto
13 Swamp

SB: 3 Reprisal
SB: 2 Gempalm Polluter
SB: 3 Engineered Plague
SB: 2 Ray of Revelation
SB: 3 Disenchant
SB: 2 Haunting Echoes

And here is a quick rundown of my rounds and matchups:

Round 1:
A fairly easy 2-0 win versus U/G madness.

Round 2:
An even easier win versus U/G madness. What made this especially sweet for me was that my opponent, who is one of the best U/G players I know, soundly beat my Clerics deck a few weeks earlier in another tournament - so this was sweet revenge. Also, after the 6^th round I spoke to him quickly and found out he was 5-1 at that point.... I didn't stay to hear the final tournament results, but it's quite likely he went 6-1 and qualified...

Oh well, at least I beat a top 8 person.

Round 3:
An odd sort of mirror match, versus a monoblack zombie deck. (There was no Scion of Darkness or other funny business though). Somehow I won game 1, if I remember correctly it was due to a timely Wrath of God followed by an Exalted Angel. After sideboarding, I felt even more confident... Then I lost games 2 and 3.

Let's just say that if you play with zombies you will NOT be happy when your opponent has four Shepherds of Rot and four Gempalm Polluters. But even barring that, in any clerics/zombies matchup it is a race to see who gets the first Rotlung Reanimator.

Tournament so far: 2-1 in matches.

Round 4:
This was against an Upheaval deck, one of my best matchups. What made it a bit harder was that he ran Zombie Infestation maindeck with Psychatogs in the side. I won game 1 with some luck, brought in half may sideboard (Polluters versus Zombie Infestation? Yummy!), lost to severe mana flooding, then won game 3 in six or seven turns with the help of some lucky topdecks.

Round 5 saw me facing my nightmare matchup: R/G Beats. Which I promptly lost 0-2, despite siding in eight ways to kill Compost and having mass creature removal to kill little stuff, after which an Edict could take out their Phantom Centaurs....

Too optimistic, eh? I did side out most of my Muses, but my opponent realized that ignoring my creatures and sending all burn to my head was the best way to go. I did draw an Angel but was dead before I hit six lands.

3-2 in matches so far; not quite what I hoped for.

Round 6:
This was versus Mono Black Control, a matchup I know well. A fairly easy win if you know what to use your hand disruption for. They only have three Corrupts and a Riptide Replicator for the win, and taking most of those helped a lot. Though as always, having some luck helped- namely, drawing an Edict fast enough to not die to Visara. Withered Wretch also did a good job in removing his Edicts, frustrating his Skeletal Scryings, and protecting my graveyard from Haunting Echoes.

4-2 - things are looking up ! Although a 5-2 result would almost certainly not mean top 8, my tiebreakers were very good, and I would be happy anyway if my deck went 5-2 on its first real outing.

Round 7....
I see the R/G player who beat me earlier sit at the table behind me, and he smiled to my opponent when he saw who I was paired with. Turns out the two are buddies and I faced the exact same R/G deck again...Which was another 0-2 loss.

For crying out loud, who can deal with two Composts and no less than three Blistering Firecats in seven turns?!

Final result: 4-3 in matches.

Conclusion: The deck could be viable, if I can find some secret sideboard tech versus R/G (which should also help versus Astral Slide, my second bad matchup). The bad news is that R/G is very popular these days. The good news is that Astral Slide seems to be almost extinct, and I didn't see a single Goblin Sligh deck anywhere all day.

Working hypothesis: Replace Engineered Plagues with Circle of Protection: Red in the sideboard.

• Adding white to the deck (mostly for enchantment removal) works. I did get to kill a few Composts, Compulsions, and even a Worship.
• Withered Wretch is great against soooo many decks.
• Reprisals are not quite bad enough to be cut; they did kill some Arrogant Wurms for me, and a pumped Wild Mongrel. (Roar Tokens never hit the table due to the Wretch). Though I also use Reprisals in case of opposing Exalted Angels. Or Nantuko Shades. Or Blistering Firecats.

• I never ever got to cast a Haunting Echoes. And I don't need them. You only side them in versus control decks, which are favorable matchups to begin with.
• The Engineered Plagues disappointed me; R/G Beats has too many diverse weenies. (Though my Festering Goblins like them. I refer to mine as Uncle Festers.)
• Gempalm Polluters didn't see that much action, but are sooo much fun when you do get to side them in (against control) and cast them, then recur them with the Unholy Grotto. You can even do that multiple times a turn, if you have the mana for it.
• Nantuko Shade is out. This deck already needs to use its mana almost all the time anyway. It was silly of me to replace my two Cabal Archons with these Shades due to last-minute jitters.

I will take my updated build to next Sunday's qualifier tournament, and let you know how it went! (If you read this far, that means you'd care to know how it went.)

Paul, a.k.a. Taipan on www.magic-league.com