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Heya!

I just came back from a great weekend in Moscow - you can read all about it here. I can assure you that at least 75% of Osyp's tales are true this time, as opposed to "some" of his other reports. Champs 2005 are coming up, and even though I'm not playing the format before Worlds (there are no State Championships in the Netherlands), I looked into one of the guilds and the options that Ravnica offers.

Here's an overview of what playable cards each set offers to the colors:

Looking at these cards, there are basically two options to build a G/B deck. You can either build a beatdown deck, with lots of turn 1 accelerators and good, cheap creatures or a control deck with lots of land-search-acceleration, Plague Boilers and big creatures. Because this week is all about the Guilds, and any control deck that includes Green and Black is probably better when it includes a Gifts Ungiven engine, I will only discuss the beatdown variant.

One-drop: Birds of Paradise, Elves of the Deep Shadow, Llanowar Elves
The new Standard format offers us a total of 12 one-mana accelerators, more than ever before. You probably want to play around 8-10 of these to make sure that you can play creatures like Hypnotic Specter or Iwamori of the Open Fist a turn earlier, doubling their impact on the game. When they start to get useless, you can use them to carry a Jitte. This is a key reason why I feel that both of the Elves are better than Birds of Paradise.

Two-drop: Dark Confidant, Dimir Guildmage, Hand of Cruelty, Nezumi Graverobber, Nezumi Shortfang
The two-slot is a lot less exciting, as the Guildmage and Hand of Cruelty are both not very easy to cast on turn two. Nezumi Graverobber and Shortfang aren't good enough to run main deck, but they're both very good options for the sideboard. Then there is Dark Confidant. It may seem like a very risky card, but if you build your deck appropriately, it's not too risky at all. You can have a low average casting cost, Sensei's Divining Top or a Jitte to regain some of the lost points of life. It doesn't matter all too much that there aren't as many good two-drops as there are one-drops, because all three of the possible one-drops allow you to skip this drop.

Three-drop: Carven Caryatid, Ogre Marauder, Isao, Enlightened Bushi, Hypnotic Specter
This is probably the most important casting cost in your deck, as these will often be your first "real" spell after a one-drop. This slot also has a bunch of good men, with Hypnotic Specter being the best. Imagine the impact this guy can have on a game when you play it on turn 2 (which is not very uncommon if you're playing 8-10 one-mana-accelerators). The downside however is that it's not very good against White Weenie, as they can easily play out their hand or just block it with Leonin Skyhunter.

Both Carven Caryatid and Isao are more viable for the sideboard. The defender is obviously a lot better when you're playing the control deck (against White Weenie), but it slows you down a lot against decks you don't block against too often. Isao is still a reasonable beater, and if a lot of people decide to pick up control decks, it might be good enough to be in the main. I've always liked Ogre Marauder, as it's hardly blockable and very good with Jitte, but it's not very good against a Jitte.

Four-slot: Stampeding Serow, Yukora, the Prisoner, Iwamori of the Open Fist, Nekrataal, Hunted Wumpus
This is where the really big guys come in. Stampeding Serow is very good all of the sudden because of the reprinting of both Birds of Paradise and Elves of the Deep Shadow, and the printing of Carven Caryatid also helps a lot. Yukora is too risky in this deck as most of your creatures die as well when he departs, and Hunted Wumpus is also very risky; Iwamori is clearly a lot better. Nekrataal is a nice addition, especially against White Weenie, but it may not be fast enough to belong in the main deck; it depends on the other options there are for removal spells.

Five-slot and over: Kagemaro, First to Suffer, Arashi, the Sky Asunder, Kodama of the North Tree, Kokusho the Evening Star, Ink-Eyes Servant of Oni
Kagemaro isn't half as good in this deck as it is in Gifts, because you're not the control player and you usually don't have a lot of cards left when you play him. Whether or not Arashi or Kodama are worth playing depends entirely on what decks turn out to be good; it's too tough to call right now. Kokusho is just too slow for a deck like this one, but Ink-Eyes is a good late-game card that can make a big impact against any deck, it's only good later on though.

Looking at these options, the creature base would look something like:

4 Elves of the Deep Shadow
4 Llanowar Elves
2 Birds of Paradise
3 Dark Confidant
4 Hypnotic Specter
4 Ogre Marauder
3 Iwamori of the Open Fist
4 Stampeding Serow

The other spells
Black offers approximately infinite removal spells, I'll make you a list:

Last Gasp, Plague Boiler, Putrefy, Kiku's Shadow, Eradicate, Sickening Shoal, Hideous Laughter, Rend Flesh, Exile into Darkness

What you want in an unknown field are removal spells that are very versatile, as you don't know what creatures will be played yet. Mass removal spells aren't very good in the deck as you have a lot of creatures yourself, so I would go for 4 Putrefy and maybe some Sickening Shoals or Last Gasps.

Some of the creatures produce card advantage by themselves, like Dark Confidant or Hypnotic Specter, but you need a little more than that. Umezawa's Jitte is the perfect card to make your smaller creatures useful throughout the entire game; I think it's an automatic four-of. Genju of the Cedars can provide you with some card advantage, but it's just too easy to deal with. Execute and Slay are both fine options for the sideboard.

Back to the decklist:

4 Elves of the Deep Shadow
4 Llanowar Elves
2 Birds of Paradise
3 Dark Confidant
4 Hypnotic Specter
4 Ogre Marauder
3 Iwamori of the Open Fist
4 Stampeding Serow
4 Umezawa's Jitte
4 Putrefy
2 Last Gasp

The lands
Llanowar Wastes and Overgrown Tomb are both great and should never be runas less than a four-of. The deck requires Green on turn 1, double Black on turn 2 and double Green on turn 3. Then there are lands like Svogthos, Restless Tomb and Miren, the Moaning Well; lands which produce colorless mana and have some ability. As I mentioned before, the deck needs lots of colored mana, so there is just no space for the colorless lands. A total of 22 lands should be enough, as you have ten one-mana-accelerators and Dark Confidant to draw into some more lands.

4 Elves of the Deep Shadow
4 Llanowar Elves
2 Birds of Paradise
3 Dark Confidant
4 Hypnotic Specter
4 Ogre Marauder
3 Iwamori of the Open Fist
4 Stampeding Serow
4 Umezawa's Jitte
4 Putrefy
2 Last Gasp
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Llanowar Wastes
8 Forest
4 Swamp
1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers
1 Shizo, Death's Storehouse

Some testing showed that this deck has to be both a beatdown deck and a control deck at the same time, in different matchups. This is why I think that the Dark Confidants weren't good enough to be in the main. You just never want to cast it against White Weenie as they can simply race you out with a bunch of fliers. Maybe if you have Jitte active this gets better, but things should be looking good for you then anyway.

Ogre Marauder wasn't the best creature, but it's definitely needed, since you need to have enough good three-drops to go with your one-drop accelerators. I'll swap the count for Birds of Paradise and Elves of Deep Shadow, because the Jitte-argument is not enough to make them better. You usually have enough creatures in play that can carry Jitte anyway, and you almost never gain any damage advantage with it because you'll tap it for mana about three times in a game.

One problem with the deck is that it runs out of gas too easily because you're playing a total of 32 mana sources, and other than the Confidants, you have no ways to draw cards. Svogthos produces only colorless mana, which the mana base just doesn't allow, and a card like Moonlit Bargain is just too slow and painful to make up for the effect. A card that is a viable option to fix the fairly weak late game is Ink-Eyes; sometimes it's just amazing. You don't want too many of these though, as you really don't want to draw two of them, especially early on.

G/B Aggro Featured by Julien Nuijten on 2005-10-02 (Standard) As written about in http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/10579.html Print this deck!
Maindeck: Creatures 4 Birds of Paradise 2 Elves of Deep Shadow 4 Hypnotic Specter 4 Llanowar Elves 4 Ogre Marauder 4 Stampeding Serow Instants 3 Last Gasp 4 Putrefy Legendary Artifacts 4 Umezawa's Jitte	Legendary Creatures 2 Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni 3 Iwamori of the Open Fist Basic Lands 8 Forest 4 Swamp Lands 4 Llanowar Wastes 4 Overgrown Tomb Legendary Lands 1 Okina, Temple to the Grandfathers 1 Shizo, Death's Storehouse	Stats: Average mana: 1.67 Average creature mana cost: 2.74 Average creature power: 2.63 Average creature toughness: 2.26 Deck Composition: Creatures: 36.67% Basic Lands: 20.00% Lands: 13.33% Legendary Artifacts: 6.67% Legendary Creatures: 8.33% Legendary Lands: 3.33% Instants: 11.67%
Download this deck in Apprentice format!		Download this deck in Magic Online Text format!

Another approach to the deck is building it like a Block Constructed Godo-deck. By this I mean a semi-aggressive deck with lots of mana acceleration (Sakura-Tribe Elder and Farseek rather than creatures that stay in play) and big creatures. You could play a Blue splash for Meloku as well, since it's really good against White Weenie. Sensei's Divining Top could help you out with drawing spells rather than lands later on, but as I said earlier, there is no reason not to play a Gifts-engine in a deck like that, and Rogier Maaten and I will discuss that deck in some weeks.

As for now, I don't think the deck is good enough yet because it runs out of gas too easily, even if you're playing only 22 lands. The three-drops aren't too impressive either - only Hypnotic Specter is really good but you're missing another really good creature like Troll Ascetic in Extended B/G decks. This does not necessarily mean that this deck should be dismissed for Champs. You can try it out and maybe try some other cards in the deck, and when the second expansion of Ravnica comes out and there are a couple more good cards, it might be really good.

That's it for now, I hope that this article showed you some more options and helps you preparing for your Champs event.

-Julien