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I know Necropotence is a broken card but I'm not sure how to make a deck that best uses it. Is the goal just to draw more cards? Do I just make a aggro black deck and throw in Necropotence?

I believe there are a couple of necropotence decks here on the forums already.

The main concept is to lay down a potence and draw into your deck to get key elements to aid you in winning the game. Nevinyrral's Disk is often in the deck to avoid situations where you end up with no life and no cards and no draw. Trix used donate to take advantage of it and then lock your opponent with it at the appropriate moment if an Illusions of Grandeur was not able to hit the tables. The point of necropotence is that it lets you burn through your deck and life to get where you need to be in the game. Becuase of that alot of life gain strategies are combined with it...Zuran Orb and Ivory Tower were some of the earlier methods. Drain Life, Consume Spirit, Corrupt etc are also good ways to restore you life once you start dipping into the danger zone. An aggro deck probably does not need Necropotence if it is any good and Necropotence might even get in the way of the monoblack pain deck if it comes down too quickly. There are probably dozens of good articles archived on the net about necropotence archtypes if you are curious. Try googling it.

I downloaded your 2 Necro decks. Thanks for the effort.

Here's a version of the kind of Necro deck I've played for years. It's limited by the card choices in Forge as opposed to access to the MTG library of cards, but it's still a good representation of the deck type; Card drawing with Necropotence, backed by discards directed at your opponent with 4 Hymn to Tourach & 4 Hypnotic Specter which has some pain added to those discards with a couple of Megrim.
Add some speed with 2 Blistering Firecat, targeted bonus damage with a couple of Flametongue Kavu and some direct burn damage.

If you find that you need to bump up your life totals, swap in a few Tendrils of Corruption and/or Soul Feast.

Some other niceties to explore, and of course, you can customize the deck by changing it to your liking.

Enjoy!

http://rapidshare.com/files/170828259/N ... .deck.html


BTW, here are a few links to some forum posts and articles about Necro deck types and playability. Again, alot of the cards are not in Forge now, but you can get a good idea about what kind of Necro decks were played back in the day.

http://www.casualplayers.org/article/ge ... icleid=348

http://www.pojo.com/magic/Featured%20Wr ... 50101.html

http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=31496.0

http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.ph ... &t=1018656

Necropotence has always been my favorite card. The key to playing it correctly is balancing your draws with your life totals, keeping in mind to think a few turns in advance by how you will play the cards in your hand so you can keep drawing a card or more on each turn without having to discard any above the 7 in your hand, as any discards are removed from the game.
In games where you get the necro "engine" really going, you can draw & play numerous cards on each turn. One major key is to keep your opponent from damaging you too much until you get the Necro out. This Necro deck I've posted does have games where you win without ever getting Necro out in play!

Allot of people think playing Necro decks are easy, but they are wrong. I'm not talking about the "Trix" or other of the really abusive forms of decks that were played in the last few years before the card was banned/restricted, but the classic Necro decks that were played in the "Black Summer" of 1996! Those decks took allot of skill to play properly and there were unbelievably great matches between 2 Necro decks as well as when the deck matched up with many other of the types in those days, (Sligh, Control, etc...).

There is allot more info on Necropotence and it's deck types out there, so do a search if you want to continue to learn about it after reading the links that I have posted here.

Bog Wraith wrote:Here's a version of the kind of Necro deck I've played for years. It's limited by the card choices in Forge as opposed to access to the MTG library of cards, but it's still a good representation of the deck type; Card drawing with Necropotence, backed by discards directed at your opponent with 4 Hymn to Tourach & 4 Hypnotic Specter which has some pain added to those discards with a couple of Megrim.
Add some speed with 2 Blistering Firecat, targeted bonus damage with a couple of Flametongue Kavu and some direct burn damage.

If you find that you need to bump up your life totals, swap in a few Tendrils of Corruption and/or Soul Feast.

Some other niceties to explore, and of course, you can customize the deck by changing it to your liking.

Enjoy!

http://rapidshare.com/files/170828259/N ... .deck.html

I am interested in your version of this deck. I clicked on your link and could not find a way to actually down your file. I'm not sure what it is that I'm missing?

Could you add your deck as an upload attachment? It is part of the web interface which you are using to read and reply to messages in this forum. Thank you.

Click on the link. When you get to the Rapidshare page, select the "Free User" button on the left side of the page under the speedometer. It will then take you to the page where the download button is for the file.
I just tried it and it is working!

Bog Wraith wrote:Click on the link. When you get to the Rapidshare page, select the "Free User" button on the left side of the page under the speedometer. It will then take you to the page where the download button is for the file.
I just tried it and it is working!

Thank you. I have never used RapidShare before and was confused.

I played the deck and had a lot of fun.

For those people who might be interested I will include the card list for his deck below and will also upload it as an attachment to this message.


60 Total Cards

12 Creatures
-------------
2x Blistering Firecat
2x Flametongue Kavu
4x Hypnotic Specter
1x Kokusho, the Evening Star
2x Nightmare
1x Visara the Dreadful

26 Spells
----------
2x Beacon of Destruction
2x Demonic Tutor
4x Hymn to Tourach
2x Lava Spike
4x Lightning Bolt
2x Megrim
1x Mox Jet
1x Mox Ruby
4x Necropotence
2x Nevinyrral's Disk
2x Zombify

1 Planeswalker
---------------
1x Liliana Vess

21 Land
--------
4x Badlands
4x Blood Crypt
6x Mountain
5x Swamp
2x Terramorphic Expanse

I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Try different strategies with the deck and customize it to your liking, and then try to build a Necro deck according to what you would like to play with, given the card pool available in Forge as of now. Try different colours of Mana as the complimentary part of your Necro deck!

One correction in your listing of my deck is that Liliana Vess is not a spell, but a Planeswalker.
This kind of card was obviously not available in the days of Necro decks, but I find it adds a nice twist to playing this deck type.

Bog Wraith wrote:One correction in your listing of my deck is that Liliana Vess is not a spell, but a Planeswalker.
This kind of card was obviously not available in the days of Necro decks, but I find it adds a nice twist to playing this deck type.

Actually I think all cards that are not lands count as spells until they resolve or are countered so I believe Planeswalkers count as spells while being played. (Though in the case of suspended cards the playing and resolution are delayed) Otherwise they would be uncounterable.

Obviously they are spells as they are cast!
That was not my point!

I was just pointing out that in his list of the cards in my deck, Liliana Vess should not be categorized under Spells, but in it's own heading of Planeswalker. Just as, for example, Hypnotic Specter is under the Creatures category.

I thought that my point was self explanatory!

Bog Wraith wrote:I was just pointing out that in his list of the cards in my deck, Liliana Vess should not be categorized under Spells, but in it's own heading of Planeswalker. Just as, for example, Hypnotic Specter is under the Creatures category.

Ahem, excuse me.

Forge's deck editor has a command for exporting decks. This command will (in recent versions) give you a deck and a card list.

It is just meant to be a quick and easy hack to make it easier for people to post and list their decks here and for us to build a sense of community. Everyone would like to see every bug squashed and version one improved.

Your request might be easy for Rares to include in a future update. Ultimately, Rares will have to decide for himself how he wishes to spend his time on this project.

I'm planing to get back to creating a few new decks as I have several themes in mind. The card list that the deck editor creates will help to make my job easier. And it is a text file, we can always edit this file to some degree.


A later edit of this message:

I went back and edited my original message and moved the planeswalker to its own category.

I simply stated that the Planeswalker was not a spell, but a card in it's own category.

I never blamed anyone. I wasn't requesting any new feature, which I have done for other wanted features in other threads. Nor was I describing it as a bug that needed fixing.

Again, I simply was pointing out that Liliana Vess is under a separate category of Planeswalker, and this comment was only meant for the listing. You agreed with this point by your editing of the deck list to include this category.

Oh, and as far as you put it that this thread is " for people to post and list their decks here and for us to build a sense of community", I couldn't agree with you more, and I think I proved that I champion the sense of community, by taking the time I took to post the deck, and then do a search on and include various links all about playing and building Necro decks which as you see, I did in my first posting above. I love to help other people with this great game of Magic when I can, so I was very eager to point folks in the direction that would help them learn about my favorite card/deck type ever.

It's the reason I'm a moderator here, to try and help when I can.

None of this was ever meant to be taken as criticism.

As I said, it all seemed self explanatory.

I'm sorry if I didn't convey that correctly!

Bog Wraith wrote:Oh, and as far as you put it that this thread is " for people to post and list their decks here and for us to build a sense of community", I couldn't agree with you more, and I think I proved that I champion the sense of community, by taking the time I took to post the deck, and then do a search on and include various links all about playing and building Necro decks which as you see, I did in my first posting above. I love to help other people with this great game of Magic when I can, so I was very eager to point folks in the direction that would help them learn about my favorite card/deck type ever.

I agree. You were just being nitpicky and that tends to grate on some people's nerves. (not mine as I am also nitpicky. ) I think I was disagreeing with you because even though creatures too are spells when cast they clearly represent a major catagory...and for all their game changingness Planeswalkers do not to me. I tend to think of them as spells because they are not creatures or lands. And just as I dont separate artifacts and enchantments usually in my own lists I dont separate planeswalkers. But all that said you are probably right.

Personally, even though I lived through the time when necro decks were developed originally and had a Necropox deck myself that was moderately successful, it is great to read about other people's experiences with it so thank you for posting your deck and your links.

Your welcome my friend.

Well I don't think it's being nitpicky to get the information correct, but I see your point. It is even more important to get the info out and clearly understood in a situation with the written word, such as the case with forum posts. It is easier to be clearly understood, at least in my experience, when talking to someone face to face on a point that you are trying to make. There is more room for ambiguity or miscommunication with the written word and in the emphasis or emotion one tries to convey which can very easily be misunderstood.

I too loved that time and miss playing Necro decks with all it's different variations.

It's great to be able to play it vs an AI opponent, though in the limited times I've played it vs the AI in Forge, the AI has yet to cast a Necropotence. Have you or anyone else had better luck and have faced the AI with a Necro in play? I'm very curious to hear about this!

Bog Wraith wrote:I simply stated that the Planeswalker was not a spell, but a card in it's own category.

None of this was ever meant to be taken as criticism.

I'm sorry if I didn't convey that correctly!

I did not mean to criticize anyone. I was attempting to explain that I did not create the card listing in question. I simply pasted in the card list that was created by Rares program when I exported the deck.

In the old days when I created real decks using real cards I had my own formula for for how much mana-creature-spell to place within a 60 card deck.

In those days I would count mana-elves as land sice I used them for mana. I would have counted a Terramorphic Expanse as a spell since it generates no mana.

I would like to say that I really enjoyed your deck. This was the first time for me to see Necropotence combined with red burn. It was fast. I had a few games where I never got around to casting Necropotence.

I also had a few games where I cast a Hypnotic Specter or two fairly quickly. It was fun watching the computer discard cards knowing that it was limited to drawing lands for the next several turns. If we had Dark Ritual implemented we could really disrupt the AI.