Puschkin

The pump and burn spells win you the game but if your base consists of almost free but good weenies instead of free-but-useless-on-their-own-Kobolds, then the former has the edge. Therefore I am pretty sure that original Zoo or Granville's Explosion deck will be better than anything Kobold related.

If you are okay with it I might try my hand on a Johan-weenie version without (most of) the kobolds.

Thespian Stage?

Do you actually need Bad Moon? What is it worth that a shade that can be pumped to 10/10 is 11/11 with Moon?

I think this lacks a bit in diversity because all those shades don't trample, don't fly and generally don't do anything besides being fat if you spend all your mana. I know it's a shade deck but that's why I would not use Bad Moons as support. Some suggestions:
- Whip of Erebos
- Triumph of Cruelty
- Herald of Torment

Okay, I just couldn't force myself to butcher that poor Kobold deck, it would have broken my heart. To make up for it, I gave ALL your other decks a review. Enjoy!

* Are you sure you really want Ifh-Biff in this? And not Serendib Efreet? The Revised version has the wrong picture and therefore these two are often confused, that's why I am asking. The Serendib Efreet would also be good news for your mana base.

* I know this is probably a kind of theme deck, but Mind Bomb is really bad if you don't combo with it and Psychic Purge is a sideboard card against discard decks - at best. If pinging is what you want, you missed out Pirate Ship and Rod of Ruin. Those are also bad cards even by 1994 standards but still better than unassisted Mind Bombs and main deck Psychic Purges. The Ship can block and might even attack, the Rod could kill creatures and both are reusable.

* Samite Healers and Amulet of Kroog are also hilariously bad! At best, they prevent one damage per turn. If there happens to be no damage, they do nothing. Living Artifact is bad, too, but at least it can store up and grant you life back over many turns. But any card that gains you one life per turn is as good as Healer/Kroog or better (in turns where you don't get damage). And any card that gives you more than one life per turn is better no matter what.
So, I would ditch those Healers that die anyway as soon as you sneeze at them as well as those Amulets, then crank the Living Artifacts to 4 and fill up with quality life gainers like Ivory Tower.


You'll still get overrun with creatures, though. Maybe some of those open slots should be dedicated to Wraths or stuff like that. Do you have Moat? That woul come in handily.

* I don't think the Su-Chi/Sacrifice combo should be in here. Remember, you play with mana burn. And the only sink for it is Earthquake, which will kill you mostly likely as well ...
... 4 open slots for now.

* City of Shadows has to go as well. In case you didn't notice: It actually removes the creature you sacrificed from the game (exiles)! That's bad synergy with those Nether Shadows and Animate Deads! Replace it with Strip Mine, a card that is strangely absent in all your decks.

* Ball Lightning doesn't really belong in this deck. The deck looks more aggressive than it actually is. Trust me on this one and kick them out. +4 more open slots.

And now we will fill those open slots with goodies! I'll just make suggestions and let you decide:
* BLOOD LUST is a must in this deck imho. You can deal more damage or take down an opposing creature AND assure that yours goes to the grave! All of that for just two mana.

* HELL'S CARETAKER is calling and asks why he isn't invited to this party! He seems perfect for this except for the fact that you won't survive any Earthquakes. However, as I see it, if you have an active Caretaker going, you probably don't need to cast Earthquake anymore. Once the opponent was able to kill the Caretaker, you can still blast away.

* FALLEN ANGEL however doesn't care about Earthquakes! She should be an natural inclusion to this deck!

* DIAMOND VALLEY might help you staying alive while also providing you with a sacrifice outlet. You might actually survive the next Earthquake with this :)

Hm, this is all over the place ... and yet you are putting all your eggs into one basket^^

I don't think this will play out well. I applaud anybody that wields the Su-Chi/Sacrifice combo, however, this deck needs so many things to go their way and has even more things that might go wrong.

For starters, I checked the rules for your oldschool toruney and it explicitly says you are playing with mana burn rules. This is where Su-Chi might bite you. Nether Shadow with just 18 creatures is probably never going to come back. What are the Clergies doing here? There is better sacrifce material out there. Circle of Protection Black as a reassurance Lordy doesn't eat you alive? I would habe expected Spirit Link instead. Pestilence? It shredders all your other creatures you need as sacrifce material ... and goes away if nothing is left. Greed? Without any life gain? Preacher is a lovely card but that double-white limits it's use here.

* First thing to go are those Pestilences! And I would replace them with DRAIN LIFE! This way you have:
- a second path to victory
- another sink for the Sacrifice-Su-Chi combo
- life gain for Greed
- still spot removal since it can be used on creatures.

* The Clergies are terrible. There are two great replacements in the one mana bracket:
- ABU JAFAR (if you are still worried about opponent's creature assaults, this is your friend)
- INITIATES OF THE EBON HAND (helps converting colorless mana into black mana for Greed and those Drain Lifes I just added)

* Cop: Black ... yeah, I'd rather have SPIRIT LINK. Also, your format allows Fallen Empires. This is the first Lord of the PIT deck I see that doesn't use Breeding PIT.

* Nether Shadow ... well, as I said, I don't think one of them will ever come back, at least not when it still matters. Did you know that there is something similar to Sacrifice in Antiquities, just with legs? He is called PRIEST OF YAWGM*TH. That's what should be in this slot to make the deck more consistent. Ok, it only works on artifacts, but as long as it works on Su-Chi, we are set, right? In either way that's still better than Nether Shadow's ability which will most likely never trigger.

* Preacher. I really like him. And if this was for casual and/or multiplayer I would fully support them. But since you are aiming for a tournament ... in the three mana bracket I would probably run ONULET instead, espcially if you made the change above and run Priests of Yawgie. YOTIAN SOLDIER might also be an option in that case. He doesn't care for all those white and black knights and most other weenies.
If you didn't go for Priests, you might as well run good old HYPNOTIC SPECTERs here in this slot. Those guys can win games all by themselves, especially if you have Dark Rituals (and you have).

FINETUNING:
Wrath of God might still be a good idea and your Animate Dead idea was also spot on (especially if you also include that Wrath). If you have the Breeding Pits, you might consider Soul Exchange instead of Animate Dead. To make room you could go down to 2 Disenchantes, ditch that random Land Tax and go down to 3 Sacrifice if you run Priests.

* I also recommend Sphere of Grace. It nullifies Pestilence damage like Halo does but might also help against other things if your opponent happens to play black. And although the cmc is a bit higher, I think it's still better because it costs no double-white.

* Check the updated text of Simulacrum. It's now lifegain plus damage. Its NOT redirection and it does NOT happen "retroactively". This means you actually have to eat and survive (!) the damage first. Since I see no lifegain, this might become problematic. It's also bad synergy with Pariah.
Of course, it still has great potential with Stuffy Doll, but you probably need some lifegain in oder to make full use if Simulacrum. Also, Stuffy Doll already combos with Pestilence and Pariah. Do you really need 4 Simulacrum on top? Are you sure this is a Pestilence deck and not a Stuffy deck? ;)

* After replacing Halo with Sphere you might also consider replacing those White Shield Crusaders with other proto black dudes that cost onely one white mana. A mix of one of the following:
- Obsidian Acolyte (proto black for everybody!)
- Knight of Glory (Exalted is always nice)
- Duskrider Peregrine (suspended on turn 2 you can time him nicely with the arrival of Pestilence)

* If you do the first and third change, you'll have less pressure on your land mix. You could afford to replace Caves of Koilos with regular Swamps, which also stabilizes those Tainted Fields and Chapels. Or you might be able to rework that land mix altogether until Cabal Coffers are viable. A Pestilence deck should have Coffers, right?

Aw, that is cruel! Don't make me do that to you and your deck ...
Kobolds ... unfortunately, there is no good way to play Kobolds. The hard truth is, whatever deck you come up with, you'd still be better off if you replaced those Kobolds with other bure more useful small creatures. Especially in a 3-colour deck like this with Johann!
See, you might be able to drop some zero-cc-Kobolds turn one but they have power zero, so what is it worth? Nothing. So you add stuff to beef them up, but those buffers could as well buff something better. And as soon as the first board swipe comes, all your advantage is gone.

The best Kobold deck I've seen was a straigth mono red one with 4 Howling Mines, 4 Gauntlet of Might and 4 Alpha Orcish Oriflammes. Why Alpha? Because those have a casting cost of just 1R. The true cc is 3R but some people didn't know and the others let him go because it was a freaking Kobold deck and everybody wanted him to stay. So, basically, the best this ever got was a deck that was cheating. And the few games it actually won was because of Fireballs (that were huge because of the Mana Flare part of the Gauntlet) ...

So, no. This ain't work. I applaud the Johan Twist, but you'd still be better off running staples like Kird Ape instead of those Kobolds. BUt I don't dare to butcher this deck. It's not my style to tell someone to take out all his key cards. But Kobolds don't give me anything to work with. The only thing going for them is costing zero mana, which opens the possibility of some combo shenanigans. But even then Ornithopter is better than Kobolds.

I am very worried about all those double-blue mana costs alongside your main goal to win via Gaea's Liege (triple-green!)! Apprentice Wizard speeds up but only colorless. So, if you have two blue and Wizard, chances are you don't also have three green for Liege. There more minor bad synergies here, for examlpe Gaea's Touch, which allows you to put one BASIC FOREST in play per turn, but you run only 8.

So, I would recommend to ditch everything with dual blue except those Lifetaps and reduce the blue part to a splash. I would replace Counterspell with POWER SINK, you'll get lots of life via your Lifetaps. I would run 4 WILD GROWTH instead of those Wizards and Phantasmal Terrains. I was suprised to see no Wild Growth anyway. This is the first oldschool deck with Verduran Enchantress that I have seen that runs no Wild Growths ...
Mana Drain could become FLASH COUNTER, which stops prominent removal spells like Swords to Plowshares.
There is no replacement for Boomerangs, but maybe you can afford to run DESERT TWISTERs instead. The deck should run faster now and I would also go up to 4 BoPs (dropping one Ifh-Biff). BoPs help with second turn Enchantresses which are crucial to sustain you.

-4 Counterspell
+4 Powersink
-1 Mana Drain
+1 Flash Counter
-2 Apprentice Wizard
-3 Phantasmal Terrain
+4 Wild Growth
- 2 Boomerang
+2 Desert Twister
-1 Ifh-Biff
+2 Birds of Paradise
-4 Island
+4 Forest

This looks a lot more streamlined and consistent.

Now some finetuning:
What's that Regeneration for? To keep Ifh-Biff alive? Regeneration is a really bad card, even for 1994 standards. And I am not sure if you really need *four* Lifetaps. Here are some suggestions (it's a pity you don't play with sideboards):

- MAGICAL HACK. Can be used on Lifetap in a hurry, for example against red players that removed your Liege. But can ALSO be used on the Liege to turn opponent's lands into something different than Forests. Because, see, what if you opponent also plays green and isn't impressed with your land fiddling?

- STASIS. Think about it. This is a card that buys you lots of time to draw into the cards and lands you need without allowing anything to happen. And you DO have the option to slap an Instill Energy on a Bird and therefore pay for the upkeep as long as you want. It's also a great way to seal a game - if you have Instill Energy on a Liege and are in the lead, plop down a Stasis and finish him off!

- CYCLOPEAN TOMB. Another way to mess with lands. Could make up for the loss of Phantasmal Terrain. Might be too slow, I don't know, haven't this format in decades (literally^^).

- UNTAMED WILDS. They accelerate. They help finding the second blue mana. THEY SHUFFLE THE DECK! You run 3 Sylvan Libraries but have no shuffle effect, this bothers me^^. I know you probably plan to pay those extra life here and there from the life you get off those Lifetaps, however, if you are gaining enough life to be able to do that, you have probably already won.

- FELDON'S CANE. A single one might be needed for longer games against control decks. Also shuffles as a nice side effect for your Sylvans.



Please note, although I did a lot of changes, it doesn't mean your deck sucked. I really enjoyed reviewing this and the decision to nix beautiful cards like Apprentice Wizards and to replace it with mundane Wild Growths made my heart bleed. But you asked for advice and I am pretty sure my version will yield better results. Looking foreward to check your seond deck! :)

Will have a look this weekend. Oldschool FTW!

It creates centaur tokens. I need beasts for the Baloth.
It's a potent card, though! That will become a staple in a lot of my decks from now on I think.

I decided to make red the splash colour since I need red mana for those Contested Cliffs anyway :P I added Brass's Bounty as a setup for a big play. It virtually doubles my mana for a big Hurricane next turn but also gives me access to lots of ARTIFACTS. If I have ten lands out along Fangren Mauler and play a Bounty, then that's up to 50 life I can give me at any time! Second addition is an Overmaster that helps me punch through my key spells like Brass's Bounty, Ezuri's Predation or that Hurricane.

But I haven't taken anything out yet ... so, I still need suggestions on what to cut.
Of course I could afford to play with slightly more than 60 cards. It's 62 currently. If I don't cut anything I would have to add another land, probably a Strip Mine.

Ah ok, and its a replacement effect of drawing a card.
It doesn't work with Solitari Confinement, though. But it would be a good, consistent and safe way to drw lots of cards compared to Illusions/Delusions. Then again, I can donate those.
I guess I'll work a single Worship in so I have more choices when tutoring. Thx for the suggestion

As explained above with Necropotence, that doesn't work. With Lich out I have 0 life and therefore can't pay life anymore.

Wait a moment ... 31 of January? Why didn't get a notification? I just stumbled over this by accident!

If I had Domri CHaosbringer, he would be in! I am waiting for him to leave standard/get reprinted so that the price drops.

Clan Defiance and Overmaster will be the cards I use if I can't come up with something else.

Caryatid is and option, but I won't play them in addition to th Weirding Woods and Evolution Charms, so decisions have to be made here. Wait a sec - I JUST realize that I also run Contested Cliffs, which I never mentioned before. It needs red mana to activate. lol! ... so the splash colour needs to be red anyway. Which is a good thing, that way I don't have to consider Blood Sanguine, which would shift this deck into the realm of combo.

You made an old fart like me happy by suggesting Ifh-Biff Efreet! I happen to own one and would have included him anyway. I didn't include him in the list on purpose because it would drive the deck price up and unless something changed here at MTGVault since I left, the crowd here is MUCH more likely to comment on decks that don't have expensive cards ...

Wrath of God:
I am actually not afraid of it. It borrows me time, too. A Wrath will typically gain me lots of life, so I can lean back during the recovery stage. An early Wrath is actually good, it gets me rid of all of opponents weenies and utility that I don't have. A midgame Wrath looks like loos for me but it actually only is if I can't gain life in that moment. And Wraths after that ... well, with these over the top creatures from the last third of sets you actually WANT a swipe here and there ... ;)
It's also about multiplayer psychology. This deck will hopefully be lablelled "that beast token deck". If a Wrath kills a bunch of beasts that looked threatening and maybe even lethal if draw an Overrun, then they feel like that Wrath saved their ass and silenced me. They don't need to know that the actual goal was the lifegaining which is a setup for the Hurricanes.

EDIT:
It feels to good to talk about deck like that again, thank you The Wretched.

Actually the rules of your group state that your deck needs to be legal in Vintage OR Legacy OR Modern OR Standard OR Commander. Most of the time we default to Vintage because it has the biggest card pool but sometimes you want to play a card that is restricted 4 times and you switch to Legacy. It also allows guests to join with whatever they have. It's quite beautiful but your are right: What was basically the norm for casual 15 years ago is now insular, I understand your concerns, but at the same time I refuse to acknowledge that things have changed that much and that our style to play is now unique and obscure. Because ultimately it reminds me of my age.

But ... we are not broke, I could add a Mox Emerald if I wanted :) Gaea's Cradle is just a card I missed - I have all other Urza legendary lands. Besides, ANY suggestion is welcome, even if I ultimately don't make use of it, because it gets my brain thinking in ways I didn't before.
But yes, excuse accepted :)