Here what I built which is very similar to yours:
Creatures 26
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Elvish Piper
4 Rooting Kavu
4 Spiritmonger
3 Thorn Elemental
3 Penumbra Wurm
Spells 10
4 Pernicious Deed
2 Phyrexian Altar
4 Verdant Succession
Land 24
4 Llanowar Wastes
4 Swamps
16 Forest
Things I discovered:
You can't build a competitive deck that relies heavily on Elvish Piper. Might as well be called Elvish Target. If he was active he won, simple as that. I think if he is going to be played successfully in standard its going to be in a new type of Fires deck so you can use him immediately.
If I got to 7 mana quickly, the deck purred along. If I didn't get to 7 mana and had no active Piper I was seriously hurting.
Pernicious Deed is a freaking necessity, its got tremendous synergy with the VS and it hoses a lot of the current power cards in Type 2 right now, but no one plays B/G. I played this deck probably about 20-30 times against archetype decks and it never once lost if I managed to successfully blow up a Deed. Its simply an amazing card. The key is not getting it countered.
Phyrexian Altar/Rooting Kavu is nasty, but the Altar is
near worthless w/o the Succession. Not bad, but not great.
Really big creatures with some form of evasion are good.
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You've got a lot of cool elements in your deck (hope you don't mind if I borrow a few
), combining the 2 I'm going to try something like this:
Creatures 25
4 Diligent Farmhands/Llanowar Elves
4 Birds of Paradise
2 Ebony Treefolk/Phyrexian Rager ???? More bigguns maybe?
4 Rooting Kavu
4 Spiritmonger
2 Thorn Elemental (or 4 of one of this or the Wurm)
2 Penumbra Wurm
3 Fallen Angel (be wary the double-black though)
Spells 11
1 Lure (Monger tech, its pretty funny actually. It either wipes out the majority of their blockers or allows you to attack for a ton of damage)
3 Pernicious Deed
3 Diabolic Intent (Damn do I love this little gem when combined Ody. cards!)
4 Verdant Succession
Land 24
4 Llanowar Wastes
2 Cities of Brass
6 Swamps
12 Forest
The creature base needs cleaning, but I think that's about it.
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Hey
Gizmo, was your Sky/Succession deck competitive? Either way I'd love to see that decklist. But don't your oppnents go crazy too using that combo?
