[ Last week I wrote about Geth Lord of the Vault as an EDH general (and if you're fans of Zombie Apocalypse don't forget to check out The Walking Dead this Sunday on AMC). This week we take a look at the other Evil Dead legend from Scars of Mirrodin Skithiryx the Blight Dragon.]

I lay there awake shivering from the damp cold the temperature nearly dipping into the 30s clutching the sleeping bag closer in a desperate attempt at accumulating some body heat. Then I hear something…

Sniffsniffsniffsniffsniff…HUFF

It sounds like it's maybe a couple feet from my face but the walls of the tent prevent me from seeing whatever it is… and hopefully also preventing it from knowing I'm there.

Sniffsniffsniffsniffsniff…HUFFHUFFHUFF

I'm suddenly hyperaware of just how thin the tent material is. I stare at it looking for a shadow or a dent or something.

WHUFFsniffsniff

I desperately try to connect with the instinctive primitive brain within the part that helped my distant ancestors avoid being dinner to faster and stronger predators. How far away was this huffing sniffing thing? How big was the damn thing? Was it a possum? Was it a bear? Was it a freaking werewolf?

It's 3 a.m. and I'm on a scout retreat with my son Aaron. He's tucked in his sleeping bag with our blanket draped over him warm and deeply asleep. Oblivious to the wild thing outside our tent sniffing and snuffling for a snack. I realize that my duty is to be his protector so if the thing outside comes for us I've got to do battle and save my son. In horror movies that usually means you're a dead man. Ah the responsibilities of parenthood.

The camp is dead quiet around us and of course my imagination is running wild. I wait for a claw to reach out and scrape the side of the tent…

And somehow despite the fear despite the chill despite the hard ground I fall back asleep again.

About an hour later my bladder wakes me up. I'm freaking cold again having squirmed loose the sleeping bag from around me. The uneven ground digs painfully through the thin fabric below me and I'm stiff sore with a terrible crick in my neck. I reach over to check on Aaron and he's still toasty warm snoring quietly. It's been thirty years since I'd been camping but my family used to go at least once a year for a good stretch of my youth. Aaron's never been camping before so I had been a little worried he might have a hard time sleeping or might get scared being out in the woods at night but once we settled into our sleeping bags he fell asleep and had barely budged since then. I certainly envied his apparent peaceful and comfortable slumber.

My bladder gives me its persistent emergency call but I quiet it down for just a moment to first listen listen… communing with my primitive brain forcing my ears to be my eyes…

No sound of the sniffing snuffling thing outside. No sounds of anything at all.

I climb out of my sleeping bag and immediately start to shiver teeth chattering. It's probably somewhere around 4 a.m. and freaking cold! I put on my shoes find the flashlight unzip the tent entrance and step into the damp frigid air as my body shivers and shakes. By moonlight and flashlight I scan the immediate area and don't see any signs of the sniffing snuffling thing or anything else alive or undead. I make my way to the port-o-potty feeling chill right down to my bones. I'm a big guy who loves cool weather and I can't remember ever being this cold.

Skithiryx knows—warm flesh is a weakness! You gotta love that creature type – Dragon Skeleton – so evocative of the draco-liches from Dungeons & Dragons. The flesh falls away replaced by magic and sheer malevolence.

As I was brainstorming ideas for my Skithiryx the Blight Dragon EDH deck one thought I had was to pay homage to the Skeleton tribe. Death Baron gave the Skeletons a lord (though granted he's shared with Zombies) so that might be kinda cool… but giving Skithiryx deathtouch didn't exactly feel synergistic with what you want to do with the big infect legend.

I also thought about making Skithiryx the only creature in my deck going balls-out Mono-Black Control nuking creatures left and right until the coast was clear and then casting hasty Skithiryx to begin the poison road to victory.

I still might give that a try but ultimately for my first take on a Skithiryx deck I wanted to go full-out poison cramming so many poisonous and infected creatures into the deck that when this column goes live Mark Rosewater will wake up in a cold sweat with an unquenchable thirst to play EDH. Here's what I've cooked up:

1 Skithiryx the Blight Dragon
1 Maze of Ith
1 Tainted Strike
1 Darkness
1 Vampiric Tutor
1 Sol Ring
1 Darksteel Axe
1 Vector Asp
1 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Dolmen Gate
1 Sun Droplet
1 Mind Stone
1 Contagion Clasp
1 Journeyer's Kite
1 Plague Stinger
1 Necropede
1 Ichorclaw Myr
1 Wall of Souls
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Livewire Lash
1 Nim Deathmantle
1 Surestrike Trident
1 Swamp Mosquito
1 Forcefield
1 Sword of Vengeance
1 Ichor Rats
1 Contagious Nim
1 Suq'Ata Assassin
1 Pit Scorpion
1 Phyrexian Arena
1 Crystal Ball
1 Loxodon Warhammer
1 Strata Scythe
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Sword of Light and Shadow
1 Sudden Spoiling
1 Darksteel Ingot
1 Coalition Relic
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Damnation
1 Mutilate
1 Guardian Beast
1 Crypt Cobra
1 Nightmare Lash
1 Grafted Exoskeleton
1 Hand of the Praetors
1 Corpse Cur
1 Blackcleave Goblin
1 Shield of Kaldra
1 Vedalken Orrery
1 No Mercy
1 Uncle Istvan
1 Filth
1 Syphon Mind
1 Thrashing Wumpus
1 Venser's Journal
1 Black Market
1 Predator Flagship
1 Contagion Engine
1 Dread
1 Urza's Blueprints
1 Exsanguinate
1 Mikokoro Center of the Sea
1 Winding Canyons
1 Mystifying Maze
1 Vesuva
1 Volrath's Stronghold
1 Shizo Death's Storehouse
1 Urborg Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Cabal Coffers
1 Crypt of Agadeem
1 Leechridden Swamp
28 Swamp

Equipment to Go Big

When it comes right down to it creatures with infect or those with poison are downright puny compared to most of the behemoths that cast long shadows across EDH tables. Even your biggest gun Skithiryx himself is just a 4/4. I feel the best way to address this problem is to “go big” with equipment and there are plenty of great pieces of equipment to choose from and in a mono-black deck you can't go much bigger than Strata Scythe and Nightmare Lash!

A Strong Defense as a Strong Offense

Of course playing your puny dudes and equipping takes time so I also wanted to play cards that would dissuade opponents from attacking me especially those who got nervous from the get-go about being poisoned to death. Wall of Souls Forcefield No Mercy and Dread are obvious Rattlesnake cards but I also thought the little-used Uncle Istvan would be good in that role—and ya gotta love the classic creature type text “Summon Uncle Istvan” from The Dark! Why bother sending your creature my way when he's just going to smack bellies with a crazy old axe-wielding hermit? Add Sun Droplet Maze of Ith and Mystifying Maze and you've got some decent incentives to wave away all but the most dedicated of aggressors.

What About All Those Tutors Mr. Smith?

I've always been a big advocate of running raw card drawing over “tutors” because resolving tutors tends to take up a lot of game time and pushes people towards making their deck more redundant and combo-rific. However I have two particular concerns with this sort of deck: one trying to kill the table with poison counters is going to be tough and slow going; and two people are going to be overly alarmed by the prospect of dying to poison. So I think some tutoring power might be necessary to both survive and have a shot at victory.

Thoughts on Individual Card Choices Combos Synergies

Tainted Strike

Such a great little card for multiplayer giving you the option of immediately killing someone when they're getting hit by someone else's creature that's got ten or more power or saving yourself or someone who's low on life points when they get hit by a creature with nine or less power.

Dolmen Gate

The Gate has always been an interesting card that would make it into EDH deck idea piles but always ended up getting cut. In this sort of deck it seems like a perfect complement to your small infect creatures—attack and if they're blocked they survive but shrink their blockers permanently but if they're not blocked they hand out poison counters.

Surestrike Trident

Super combo-rific for your infect dudes especially if they happen to have “gone big” with Strata Scythe and such without bothering with the Red Zone.

Sudden Spoiling

An all-around great card anyway it serves some very nice functions in this deck by taking away fliers from your opponent's defense (clearing the way for Skithiryx to swoop in) and also shrinking dudes to 0/2 and if they've got a couple -1/-1 counters on them they go bye-bye no matter how big they are. All wrapped up nice and tidy in a split second package.

Guardian Beast

He's pricey but I splurged on a well-played copy of this guy to go in my Sharuum equipment deck and since this deck has a fair number of equipment cards I figured why not make them all indestructible? Shield of Kaldra's got the Beast's back and the new-fangled Nim Deathmantle even combos nicely with Guardian Beast.

Grafted Exoskeleton

While the idea of inviting Uncle Istvan to the infect party is fun the obviously nutty combo here is with Thrashing Wumpus handing out poison and -1/-1 counters like mad. Hopefully you've got one of the Contagion cards out there so you can use proliferate to break the symmetry… or just go ahead and poison everybody to death! Just keep an eye out for the joker who's stocked up on Leeches from Homelands in anticipation of just these sorts of shenanigans.

So what do you think of my build? Did I miss anything obvious or not-so-obvious?

Cards That Didn't Make the Cut

Hatred Howl from Beyond Cackling Witch Ghoul's Feast

I initially had these in my stack but they got cut for the more robust and reusable equipment package.

Snake Cult Initiation

I love this card but got worried about it being such a nonbo with infect creatures—since you're not actually dealing damage to your opponent with the creature you don't trigger the poisonous ability do you?

Cloudstone Curio

I initially wanted to use this to combo with Hand of the Praetors but as I added more artifacts and lamented that it couldn't bounce my Clasps it got cut to make room.

For a More Competitive Spin

If I were to bring this to a competitive 4x4 EDH pod side event or have it for 1v1 gunslinging I'd make the following adjustments:

I would cut:

-1 Exsanguinate
-1 Urza's Blueprints
-1 Dread
-1 Contagion Engine
-1 Predator Flagship
-1 Black Market
-1 Venser's Journal
-1 Syphon Mind
-1 Shield of Kaldra
-1 Guardian Beast
-1 Sword of Vengeance
-1 Sun Droplet
-1 Tainted Strike

Most of these cards tend to be less effective or too slow for a faster-paced game.

I would add:

+1 Dark Ritual
+1 Cabal Ritual
+1 Mana Vault
+1 Hymn to Tourach
+1 Beseech the Queen
+1 Mind Twist
+1 Vampire Bite
+1 Howl From Beyond
+1 Hatred
+1 Doom Blade
+1 Eyeblight's Ending
+1 Rend Flesh
+1 Swamp

This should make the deck faster more aggressive and more explosive. How would you go about “tightening it up” for more competitive play?

Well I hope everyone has a great Hallowe'en weekend! Last weekend I had the kids and got to curl up on the sofa with them and watch a spooky movie. Well actually it was a “spooky-lite” movie on Nickelodeon called The Boy Who Cried Werewolf. At eight and ten my kids don't yet buy into the notion that it's fun to watch scary movies but this one was definitely a step in the right direction. There were some creepy atmospherics and the rather tame werewolf-change FX were a little bit frightening to the youngsters. As a grown-up I was amused that the lovely Brooke Shields played the hideous and stern Madam V with wolves that howled in the background whenever her name was said. I'm hoping that watching this with the kids helps me pitch watching Lord of the Rings with them sometime soon since Anna Marie has expressed fears that it would be too scary to watch. Anyone with youngsters got any feedback as to how old kids should be to watch Lord of the Rings?

And of course someday down the road I look forward to curling up on the sofa and watching something truly spooky with them like The Sixth Sense or the downright scary The Ring.

EDH Twitter Fans Giveaway

EDH fans if you follow me on Twitter I've got a special giveaway for you. Anyone who includes me on their “Follow Friday” list today or who retweets a link to my column today and includes my Twitter name ( @blairwitchgreen ) will be added to a list for a chance to win an EDH card modified by me along with a booster pack of Scars of Mirrodin.

The cards? In honor of two articles I wrote regarding cards I think should be banned in EDH I'll be giving away three copies of Time Stretch ( A Staff of Power In EDH ) and one copy of Seedborn Muse ( The Case Against Seedborn Muse ). I've signed and drawn a frownie face on them; hopefully the four winners will have some fun playing them! I'll alert the winners via Twitter on Sunday.

If you're in the area come on down to Richmond Comix for FNM; I'll have my Skithiryx EDH deck ready and just might have Skithiryx and Mimic Vat in my Standard deck…

Take care
Bennie

starcitygeezer AT gmail DOT com

Make sure to friend/follow me at:

http://twitter.com/blairwitchgreen
http://community.wizards.com/blairwitchgreen

New to EDH? Be sure to check out my EDH Primer part 1 part 2 and part 3.

My current EDH decks:

Geth Lord of the Vault (Zombie Apocalypse)
Skithiryx the Blight Dragon (Poison Apocalypse)