Check out my previous articles here: Splinterfright Stompy Part 1 and Splinterfright Stompy Part 2
Welcome back to The Jank Bank. No, this isn’t some crooked lending institution. It’s a Magic: the Gathering column dedicated to the creation of budget decks on MTGO.
I was originally going to write about another Modern deck this week, but I am a bit tired of that particular deck so I decided to make something new. Necrotic Ooze is a card that I have wanted to build around for a long time. Today I have a spicy Ooze brew for you – Legacy style!
The game is full of creatures with awesome activated abilities that Necrotic Ooze can use. However, it’s the interaction between Necrotic Ooze, Triskelion, and Phyrexian Devourer that interests me most. It is pretty much gg if the Ooze is ever on the battlefield while the other two are in the graveyard.
Killing your opponent with this combo requires a mixture of Triskelion‘s and Phyrexian Devourer’s abilities. First, give Necrotic Ooze a bunch of +1/+1 counters via Phyrexian Devourer (don’t worry – the Ooze won’t die when its power is 7 or greater). Then use Triskelion’s ability to remove those counters to ping your opponent to death (I think I got carpal tunnel from doing this on MTGO). Note that it is difficult for your opponent to disrupt the combo once it has begun; you can just respond to whatever they do by adding and removing more counters with the Ooze.
So how do we get both Triskelion and Phyrexian Devourer into the graveyard for Necrotic Ooze to use? Easy, Buried Alive of course! This gets all three of our combo pieces into our graveyard. From there, a simple reanimation spell on Necrotic Ooze gets the party started.
We are already planning on using our graveyard, so why not throw a few more goodies into the mix? I really want to abuse the Necrotic Ooze mechanic, so you can be sure that there will be some other creatures with sweet abilities in our deck. You see, Necrotic Ooze is a virtual reanimation spell in itself. Once it is on the battlefield, it is almost like the creatures in our graveyard are actually in play too.
What all can Necrotic Ooze do for us you ask? Well I have already explained that he can outright kill our opponent. He kills creatures too, Ancestral Recalls us, and can be a helpful discard outlet. He even does a decent Marit Lage impersonation.
What we have here is a list that somewhat resembles other reanimator decks:
| Creatures (15) 4 Necrotic Ooze 3 Arcanis the Omnipotent 3 Visara the Dreadful 1 Triskelion 1 Phyrexian Devourer 3 Putrid Imp Spells (29) 4 Buried Alive 4 Reanimate 4 Exhume 3 Cabal Therapy 4 Gitaxian Probe 4 Dark Ritual 4 Lotus Petal 2 Chrome Mox Lands (16) 16 Swamp |
I have broken the deck down into several “card categories” down below. Notice that some cards fall into multiple categories. I made the deck very redundant to make up for our lack of card selection spells, such as Brainstorm and Ponder.
Combo pieces: Necrotic Ooze, Phyrexian Devourer, and Triskelion.
Reanimation Targets: Arcanis the Omnipotent, Visara the Dreadful, and Necrotic Ooze.
Discard Outlets: Putrid Imp and Cabal Therapy. You can also discard a reanimation target if you end your turn with 8 or more cards in hand.
Reanimation Spells: Reanimate, Exhume, and Necrotic Ooze.
Card draw: Gitaxian Probe, and Arcanis the Omnipotent.
Protection: Gitaxian Probe and Cabal Therapy (with more likely available in the Sideboard)
Mana Acceleration: Dark Ritual, Chrome Mox, Lotus Petal. I want to mention that Chrome Mox and Lotus Petal are the most expensive cards in the deck. You can actually reduce the price of the deck by around 2/3 if you decline to play them (I was fortunate enough to borrow them). Just keep in mind the main appeal of this deck is its ability to win quickly, and those fancy mana rocks really do help with the cause.
There are many different paths we can take to getting our combo online. Allow me to share some of these strategies with you. This will probably look like some goldfishing trip in Magical Christmas Land, but I am just trying to illustrate some key interactions with this deck. Obviously you’re not going combo off with your opening seven every time. Fortunately, most of these interactions work just as well later in the game.
Here is an example hand that can yield a turn one win. Simply play swamp into Dark Ritual to cast Buried Alive, binning Necrotic Ooze, Phyrexian Devourer, and Triskelion. Then play Lotus Petal and Reanimate targeting Necrotic Ooze. From there it is just a matter of pinging your opponent to death.
It is kind of a bummer to have one of our combo pieces in hand, but it can be easily fixed with Buried Alive. Simply search up Necrotic Ooze, Putrid Imp, and Triskelion, then Exhume the Ooze. The ability of Putrid Imp lets us discard Phyrexian Devourer to bring the combo online.
We can begin with Gitaxian Probe in hopes of drawing some mana acceleration, then lead with Putrid Imp. On turn 2, discard Necrotic Ooze and then Reanimate him. Now we can discard Phyrexian Devourer at anytime (mid-combat etc) and use his ability to grow the Ooze to immense proportions. Although this isn’t an instant win combo, swinging with an early 20+ power creature seems decent.
The line here clearly begins with swamp into Dark Ritual, but that should be followed by a blind Cabal Therapy (likely naming a removal or counter spell). Next we play Putrid Imp and discard Arcanis the Omnipotent. At this time, we can sacrifice Putrid Imp to flashback Cabal Therapy if needed. We have one mana left to Reanimate Arcanis the Omnipotent. It usually only takes one or two activations of Arcanis to find the combo pieces needed for a win.
This hand shows why I chose Visara the Dreadful for this deck; we can hard cast her via Dark Ritual! Six mana is definitely not out of reach for this deck, although getting there first turn is kind of a long shot…
Our game plan begins here by casting Necrotic Ooze on turn two (with Dark Ritual). On turn three, we cast Cabal Therapy targeting ourselves to discard Arcanis the Omnipotent. We can then activate Necrotic Ooze to draw three cards. Although we could Therapy ourselves on turn one, this would give our opponent free information about our plan. Besides, turn three is the soonest we can activate Necrotic Ooze.
While this hand is lacking a proper discard outlet, if we are on the draw then we can discard Arcanis the Omnipotent at the end of our first turn. On our next turn, we can play a swamp and Lotus Petal, giving us enough mana to Exhume the legendary wizard. I would mulligan this hand on the play because doing nothing for the first 2 turns seems really bad.
So Reanimating Triskelion or Phyrexian Devourer is kind of awkward, but sometimes it is the only play we have. Triskelion is the better of the two, seeing as how he can ping off an annoying creature or two. He can even shoot himself if he is needed in the graveyard for our combo. Phyrexian Devourer is probably the worst creature I have ever played in Legacy, but that doesn’t mean he is entirely useless. It actually isn’t too risky trying to grow him 4/4 or 5/5 (flipping Arcanis or Visara does kill him though).
I don’t think I need to show any hands that are obvious mulligans. Sometimes you’ll mulligan into oblivion with this deck. It makes sense, we are relying on a two or three card combo but we’re lacking the card selection spells that would help us put it all together. Furthermore, any interaction from our opponent be it removal, discard, counters, or graveyard hate can spell disaster for our otherwise great hand. It can be pretty abysmal trying to top deck your way back into a game with this deck.
So why should you bother playing this deck? Because it is powerful, fun, and most importantly it is CHEAP! This list I presented today costs between 40 and 50 tix on MTGO, but the deck can be built for way less. Cutting Chrome Mox and Lotus Petal brings the cost down to 15 or 20 tix. You can also replace Reanimate and Cabal Therapy with Dance of the Dead and Sickening Dreams. This would bring the cost down to around 8 tix. So what does 8 Ticket Reanimator look like?
| Creatures (20) 4 Necrotic Ooze 3 Arcanis, the Omnipotent 3 Visera, the Dreadful 1 Triskelion 1 Phyrexian Devourer 4 Street Wraith 4 Putrid Imp Spells (20) 4 Buried Alive 4 Dance of the Dead 4 Exhume 4 Dark Ritual 2 Cabal Ritual 2 Sickening Dreams Lands (20) 16 Swamp 4 Ebon Stronghold |
Okay, that is the 8 ticket version of this deck, now how about one that is a little more spicy? This is what I would do if I had a little more money to put into this deck:
| Creatures (14) 4 Necrotic Ooze 4 Griselbrand 1 Iona, Shield of Emeria 1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite 1 Phyrexian Devourer 3 Putrid Imp Spells (29) 4 Entomb 4 Buried Alive 4 Reanimate 4 Exhume 3 Cabal Therapy 4 Dark Ritual 4 Lotus Petal 2 Chrome Mox Land (16) 16 Swamp |
How is this list different than mine? Well it has Entomb and Griselbrand for starters, and Iona, Shield of Emeria and Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite give us some additional utility (unfortunately they don’t combo with Necrotic Ooze). This deck would definitely be more consistent than mine (mostly because of Entomb) but what could we do with a color splash or two? Check this list out:
| Creatures (8) 2 Griselbrand 3 Necrotic Ooze 1 Phyrexian Devourer 1 Putrid Imp 1 Triskelion Spells (37) 1 Chrome Mox 4 Lotus Petal 4 Dark Ritual 4 Brainstorm 2 Gitaxian Probe 2 Ponder 3 Buried Alive 4 Entomb 3 Exhume 1 Reanimate 4 Shallow Grave 3 Cabal Therapy 2 Thoughtseize Lands (15) 2 Bayou 3 Underground Sea 1 Island 2 Swamp 4 Polluted Delta 3 Verdant Catacombs | Sideboard (15) 4 Abrupt Decay 1 Exhume 4 Ground Seal 3 Inquisition of Kozilek 1 Necrotic Ooze 2 Surgical Extraction |
The additional card selection (Ponder/Brainstorm) lets you replace the redundant creatures and mana sources with more meaningful spells. I pulled this list off of The Source, from a thread called “Oozing.” It is an active thread with lots of people excited about this deck. I encourage you to check it out.
http://www.mtgthesource.com/forums/showthread.php?25614-Oozing
Well we have made it through another installment of The Jank Bank. I will be back again soon with yet another janky MODO deck to show off to everyone. Feel free to follow me on Twitter _@Alexkiracofe for notice when my articles are published. Thanks for reading and good luck with your brews!