Arkas

Looks pretty fun. Nuke everything. Tap *boom*. I put Lux Cannons in my Golem deck, but that's because I'm proliffing like a boss.

Does this run quickly enough to start blowing stuff up by turn 4 or 5ish? I like the idea alot.

If you REALLY want their spell when you counter it, you need Guile. He's not type 2 though, so if you're going for standard, that's kind of a problem. The biggest problem I see is that, as it stands right now, the deck will run too slow to handle most decks that are built to run very quickly. Blue black is kind of at a low point in Magic right now. The blue black stuff I see and build that's type 2 is more of a fun deck than anything else. It just won't run quickly enough to handle most things. Platinum Angel will save you, but you'll burn alot of counters trying to save it, and you won't have much to protect both yourself and it when the red and black starts flying everywhere. I guess I just don't think you're going to have enough counters and mana early on to be able to stop most speedy opponents.

You looking for cheap mana cost black creatures? Offensive wise, I suggest Pulse Tracker and Vampire Nighthawk. Nighthawk is versatile as both offense and defense, but 2/3 flying lifelink deathtouch is nice to swing w/. Defensive wise, if you're not concerned about trample too much, definitely Reassembling Skeletons. You can pull him out of your grave instant speed whenever you like for his casting cost (1 black 1 colorless) into play tapped. I consider him better than Drudge. You don't have to have the mana open to save him. Throw him in front of something, let him die, pick him back up next time it's conviently to leave the mana open and do it your opponent's turn. Lots of fun. One thing I noticed is the Whispersilk Cloaks. Great card, but as of right this moment, 0 of my decks really need it. I end up using that kinda stuff on Oracle of Mul Daya and other mana acceleration creatures because it's not the end of the world if something that doesn't generate mana is targeted, I'll just play more stuff and continue beating fac, maybe swinging for like 2 unblockable shroud because I'm not going to block w/ a mana generating creature.

One final thing, and this is just my opinion specifically about Sarkhan the Mad and how I see him played: If you don't have a way to exile Sarkhan and bring him back (blink, like w/ Venser or Argent Sphinx's ability), it's not worth trying to proliferate him up if you're not running blue (Steady Progress, cards like that) or focusing on prolif (I will eventually put up my golem deck. It's based on proliffing charge counters like a boss and spitting out 3/3 and 9/9 golems, swinging and w/ Precursor Golem on the field, targetting 1 golem w/ a Giant Growth or Mirran Mettle and buffing every single golem. And did I mention proliferating? Lux Cannons for great justice). What I would instead do is use Sarkhan's neg abilities however the situation dictates, so 2 or 3 turns of using him, then use his 0 ability and he hits himself in the face, you draw a card out of it, and you can get ready to play another Sarkhan and make some more dragon tokens so people are beating face w/ 5/5 flyers and not annihlating w/ 10/10 or 15/15 Eldrazi gods.