Type II circa 1996: The Black Sea

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
From Deep Magic by Charles Wolfe and George Baxter, 1996, pp 143-144.

Changes to the Banned/Restricted Lists have been made since then.

"The Black Sea is an example of one of the more powerful decks in Type II, with its driving goal to establish card count superiority and maintain it. The deck is extremely versatile and effective. Once an opponent begins to suffer from the hand destruction and the Sea has the ability to counter, the deck enjoys a virtual lock. Once the Black Sea has acquired enough mana to use both consistent hand destruction cards (Hypnotic Specter or Disrupting Scepter) and a Time Elemental, all of an opponent's permanents can be eliminated once his hand is emptied. The Time Elemental simply forces an opponent to pick up his permanents while the Hypnotic Specter or Disrupting Scepter forces him to discard them.

Once the Black Sea has established card count superiority the Counterspells act kind of like Time Walks. Once an opponent has lost his hand he can only play one card per turn, and if it is not a land it can be countered. When this state is reached the Sea has already won; there is virtually no comeback.

The Sea has one other devastating element to it. It is fast with large creatures. With a Mana Vault, Dark Ritual, and a Swamp, a Vampire can be played on the first turn. Once a Vampire is out an opponent rarely worries about countering hand destruction. He typically becomes interested in eliminating the Vampire.

The Racks are of course to complement the hand destruction. Once one is in play an opponent is forced to either take damage or hold cards until he has at least three. If you emptied an oppoent's hand that give you another three turns to draw even more hand destruction.

The Black Sea has relatively few weaknesses. The only decks the Sea would have trouble with are the fast creature decks, a struggle for the first match but winable after sideboarding. Another annoyance for the Sea is a fast land destruction deck. This can be overcome by adding a few more Islands so a Counterspell can come online quicker. Finally, another counterspell deck could prove to be troublesome early on. To overcome these the Black Sea simply adds the Strip Mines and Mana Shorts to take an opponent counter ability offline so hand destruction can be cast."

The Black Sea

Creatures

3 Hypnotic Specters
4 Sengir Vampires
2 Mahamoti Djinns
1 Time Elemental

Spells

4 Counterspells
3 Power Sinks
3 Racks
4 Hymns to Tourach
2 Spell Blasts
2 Disrupting Scepters
4 Dark Rituals
1 Glasses of Urza
3 Mana Vaults
1 Mind Twist

Land

13 Islands
10 Swamps

Sideboard

3 Strip Mines - counterspell decks
2 Mana Shorts
3 Drudge Skeletons - small creature decks
2 Prodigal Sorcerors
3 Unsummons - large fast creature decks
2 Islands - land destruction decks
 
Z

Zadok001

Guest
Wow, someone played with Glasses of Urza... :) In rebuilding this for a more modern Type 1, I'd drop Spell Blasts, the Vampires, one Mana Vault, and the Glasses in favor of 4 Force of Wills and 4 Duresses, both of which seem have notable synergistic workings with other aspects of the deck.
 
R

r00tg04t

Guest
Land:
4 Underground Sea
9 Swamp
9 Island

Artifact:
2 Mana Vault
1 Disrupting Scepter
3 The Rack

Blue:
4 Force of Will
3 Undermine
4 Counterspell
1 Time Elemental
1 Mahamoti Djinn

Black:
1 Mind Twist
4 Dark Ritual
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
3 Sengir Vampire
3 Hypnotic Specter

All and all the orginal was a nice version.. lol for casual play this deck is fine (noticable banned restricted cards) but you already mentioned that anyways above is my remake like zadok said, the duress is amazing, and force of will should be played in almost ever extended/t1 deck that has blue and counters i added undermine instead of powersink, while powersink can be a littl effective on 2nd turn provided you go first, i'd much rather pay 3 and counter it completly and have them loose 3 life the card just fits, i also cut land back from 24 to 23 or so to make extra room for Force of Will, also i replaced a few islands/swamps with the dual land variant Underground Sea and i cut back on the 'fat moti' (i love him ;) )
 
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