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The Necordeck

[This article is historic, being written originally shortly before the black summer of 1996.]

Currently ruling the type 2 arena is a deck type called
The Necropotence Deck or just Necrodeck.
This is an essay about the forces behind these decks, the weaknesses
that go with them and a try to find a way and consistently beat them.

First it will be neccessary to take a look on a typical Necrodeck, as
it's been posted in numerous tourney reports.

The Core
(Cards that tend to go into all better Necropotence decks, no matter
what else is in there)

17 Swamp (up to 4 may be substituted with Ebon Stronholds.)
4 Strip Mine
4 Mishra's Factory
4 Dark Ritual
4 Hymns to Tourach
4 Hypnotic Specters
4 Order of the Ebon Hand/Knights of Stormgald
4 Nevinyrral's Disk
3 Necropotence
2 Drain Life
2 Demonic Consultation
1 Ivory Tower
1 Zuran Orb

This leaves room for 6 miscellaneous cards in a sixty card deck. Often
seen among these are: Icequakes, Dancing Scimitars, Sengir Vampires,
Ishans Shades, Dance of the Dead/Animate Dead, Icy Manipulator,
Weakness, more Pump-Knights, Drain Lifes, Consultations or the fourth
Necropotence.
Some decks use 4 underground rivers instead of swamps and utilize
Recall.
Sideboards commonly include: Serrated Arrows, Gloom, Royal assasin, 
Coumbajj Witches, Meekstone, Racks, Dark Banishing, 4th Necropotence 
or other of the miscellaneous cards above.

Many of these decks are used by the best players around and therefore
follow the PT1 construction rules, which is the reason behind some of
the more exotic cards like Coumbajj Witches one would not normally
expect to see in a tourney deck.
[Chronicles is worst for this type of deck, Fallen Empires has the Order
and the Hymn, Homelands at least the Arrows and the Shade].

Now let us have a look at the reasons that make the Necrodeck so damn
hard to beat:

The main strength of the Necrodeck is its manyfold card advantage.
Of the core cards 15 are able to achieve card advantage directly:
The Hymns (sorcery), The Specters (creature), The Disks (artifact) and
of course the Necropotence (enchantment).
Nearly all the other cards can do it indirectly like Ivory Tower vs. burn
(although the burn tends to go for the critters), Protection from White
creatures vs. StP, toughness 4 or greater creatures vs. Bolts, Strip
Mine by denying the neccessary mana ressources to cast spells in the
first place, consultation by replacing itself with a advantagous card,
drain life by fueling Necropotence and destroying life/critter.
The only disadvantagous cards are the Dark Rituals which allow for speed
(and can become advantagous in a drain life) and, if you want, the
lands and the Zuran Orb.
Note also that many of the optional and Sideboard cards exploit this
card advantage principle even further: Serreated Arrows vs. Weenies etc.

The combination between direct random hand destruction and disks/prot.
white creatures works even more devastating then each alone. As you
combat the Necrodeck, your hand will probably empty while you try to
defend yourself or to mount an offense and through the hymn. When the
disk finally hits the table and destroys the rest of your ressources.
To hope for the luck of the draw to deliver the neccessary
disenchant/detonate/whatever is a pitiful endeavour indeed.
The same can be said for Hypnotic/StP or Sengir/second Bolt.

The second strength of the Necrodeck is that it is monocoloured with
overall cheap casting cost spells. This, together with the consultations,
means there is little chance for manascrew. It also means that the
multiple cards drawn by necropotence can to be cast right away, thus
allowing the necroplayer to draw another slew of cards.

Some people have deemed the Necrodeck to be vulnerable to direct damage.
This is a misperception. A dd player has to kill the creatures or he will
die faster than he can blast his opponent into oblivion. But if he does
so, at some point both hands will be quite empty. Then a Necropotence
drops, followed by another horde of creatures, that will kill him.

The Necrodeck, as different as it may look, has been said to be the
type two equivalent of "The Deck". Like this infamous type 1 deck, the
necrodeck is not concerned to protect it's life total, as long as a
single life point remains. Instead, it takes a fair amount of punishment
to establish total card advantage, depleting the opponents hand to zero
and destroying all permanents (save land), while filling the own hand
up to 7. It then proceeds to kill the hapless opponent at leisure.

Now let us have a look at the weaknesses of the Necrodeck.

The most obvious weakness is that it depends heavily on artifacts for
defense, since the monocolour of the deck is black.
[There are some B/u or B/r Versions, but these tend to be less reliable].
This means it has the inherent weaknesses of black: no way
to do away with artifacts, enchantments or big black/prot. black
creatures (at least not a good one). A single whirling derwish could
ruin it's day. Therefore, the Necrodeck has to resort to the help of
artifacts and does this heavily, via arrows, scimitars, icys and, most
important, the disks.
The disks are probably as important an element of the deck as the
Necropotence itself and it often is this card (along with Hymn, Dark
Ritual, Necropotence) that is consulted for.
Since the disk is the only real defense the deck can field against a
great many threats, killing these severely weakens it. The problem here
is that it is impracticable to load up on artifact defense, as having
2 detonates and a shatter in hand will do you little good when facing
an Ishans Shade that's about to kill you.
On the other hand, taking only a sensible amount of artifact defense often
means not having it if you need to, because of the many more cards the
Necrodeck draws and the hand destruction.

The second weakness is the damage the deck deals to itself: a well timed
storm seeker or two might shut down it's drawing abilities. Here, like
with the artifact defense, you will lose to the card advantage of the
Necrodeck: too many seekers will mean there is no need to potence since
the critters kill anyways, not too many means you'll probably never draw
it in time.

The third and most severe weakness is a weakness every deck has: mana
dependancy. Having no access to mana means not being able to make use
of the possible card advantage. And, like any type 2  deck the
Necrodecks speed in laying down land is a mere one per turn.
Of course the Necrodeck could put down a Necro and overdraw itself, but
losing life to change the contents of your hand is not nearly as nasty as
doing it to refill your hand, and may not be a viable strategy at all.
This may be one of the reasons why Ernhamgeddon decks (WG decks utilizing
Ernham Djinn and Armageddon along with some other cards that tend to
hurt Necrodecks like Land Tax, Sylvan Lib, Derwish) have done best
against Necro so far.

Ways to beat Necropotence.

In beating Necropotence one has to exploit the weaknesses (albeit few)
of these decks to the maximum. Common ways to do this have been:

- using lots of enchantments and artifacts that hurt Necrodecks
  Land Tax (against Hand denial/Land destruction)
  Karma (to deal huge amounts of unblockable damage)
  CoP: Black (not too usefull imho, since it gives the Necrodeck time to
    get the disk)
  Sylvan Library (Hide that Disenchant/Crumble/Offering from the Hymn)
  Stormbind (deal lots of damage and fry all the knights)
  Control Magic (get your own card advantage)
  Reclamation (in combination with 'Geddon deny ability to attack)
  Winterorb (shut down card advantage via manafreeze)
  Howling Mine (make the Necropotence useless)
  Black Vise (Nullify the Tower or make his hand hurt)
  Serrated Arrows (take out those orders)


- using Land destruction to deny the mana

- use cheap blockers like Elvish Archers or Spectral Bears to survive
  until the Triskelion, Ernham, Serra whatever

- Use prot. black creatures (mostly in 12-knight white weenies w/ Tax and
  Armageddon or the ever-popular Whirling Derwishes)

In my opinion it is paramount to seek a _fast_ way to do away with the
Necrodeck. Giving it any time will allow it to exploit its card advantage
and kill. This, too, can be compared to the type 1 arena, where fast
weenies or fastdamage decks are some of the better ways to cope with
"The Deck" (like the Chang Deck for you SoM readers, or like any standard
white weeny which can cause a lot of trouble).

Therefore slower, lock-building decks have not been successful. Even a
R/g/artifact deck with Black Vise, lots of Bolts, Shatters, Icys,
Winterorbs, Howling Mines, Stormbind and Earthquake, which looks like it
should be the nightmare of a Necrodeck will lose if the Disk can be
played and fired before total mana deprivation has set in. Which means
most of the time.
The same goes for these U/W type 2 "The Deck" clones, which just can't
keep up to the card advantage with their slower tomes/sceptres (and which
have the additional problem of using StP).

Below I will try and outline a deck that wins most of the time against
the standard Necropotence deck mentioned above (which used 1 Serrated
Arrows, 1 Ishans Shade, 1 Swamp, 1 Icy and 2 Pumpknights as miscellaneous
cards.)
Still I believe it is not a deck that ranges in the same strategic and
tourney-viable class as the Necrodeck, and it also can be sideboarded
against rather efficiently. After sideboarding in 4 Coumbajj Witches
and out 4 Orders/Knights, the Necrodeck stands at least an even chance.


Core cards:
13 Forests
4 Strip Mine
4 Mishra's Factory
8 Mana Elves
4 Whirling Derwish
4 Ernham Djinn
4 Thermokarst
4 Scavenger Folk
4 Giant Growth

Second-string cards:
4 Wooly Spiders
2 Natures Lore
2 Force of Nature
1 Stormseeker
1 Black Vise
1 Forgotten Lore

Sideboard and other possibilities:
Icys, Serrated Arrows, Crumble, Tranquility, Sylvan, Zorb, Hurricane,
Stunted Growth, Spectral Bears, Elvish Archers

This deck builds its own card advantage by having only 13 Forests (made
posssible by the vast amount of mana Elves) as non business cards.
Due to the Elves it is pretty immune to the Necrodecks Strip Mine itself.
I produces a second turn whirling derwish and/or land destruction
reliably, and it also allows for very fast attack.
Usually, enough land can be destroyed to kill a Necrodeck before a disk
can make it to the table, and if so, Scavenger Folk are non-hymnable
crumbles in that they can be stored on the table before that, and they
deal damage, too. Drain life or Serrated Arrows on the Scavengers usually
means that the Disk will be 1 turn late, which equals too late.

I choose Wooly Spiders as second string cards, as they provide air
defense vs. Hypnos and Vampires and are a bit big for black knights and
early orders. They also help vs. Pyroclasm or Serras (when facing other
decks). FoN can (like all creatures exept Ernhams and Woolies) not be
animated with good success and may hit the table around turn 3 sometimes.
(It's also great vs. control magic). Forgotten lore can easily recycle
early Strip Mines. Natures lore is superior to Wild growth in that it
can't be stripped 2 to one.

2 sample games (play/draw rule)

Green Deck (GD) goes first.
2 Forest, Elf, Strip, Natures Lore, Spider. Play forest, elf
Necrodeck (N).
2 Swamp, Mishra, Order, Hypno, DR, Disk. Draw Necro; Play Swamp
(wanted to save DR for early Disk)

GD draw Thermokarst; play strip, thermokarst swamp
N draw ivory tower; play mishra, tower

GD draw Thermokarst; play forest, natures lore(forest), forest, 'karst
N(22 life) draw hymn; play swamp, dark ritual, necropotence, necro for
swamp, consultation, another necro (19 life)

GD draw spider; play spider, strip the swamp, attack with elf (N 18 life)
N (21 life) necro for necro hymn, swamp, discard 2 necro, hymn (N18 life)

GD draw forest; play forest, spider; attack elf, spider (N 15)
N (18 life) play swamp, consult (for swamp): 2 swamp, strip, mishra,
disk, icy, knight of stormgald go out of game. necro for dark ritual (N17)

GD draws sc. folk; plays sc. folk; attacks (2 spiders,elf) (N 12)
N (15) plays swamp, DR Disk, necro for strip, mishra, consult (N12)

GD draws derwish; plays derwish, sacs folk/disk, attack (N 7)
N(10) plays Mishra, dr hypno, necro for swamp, order, drain life (N7)

GD draws giant growth; attack w/ 2 spiders derwish elf; hypno blocks elf
mishra blocks derwish, giant growth on spider (N 0)

Necrodeck could've posssibly won this one when not necroing down to 7
again.


N goes first: 2 swamp, disk, stripmine, knight, necro, drain life;
plays swamp
GD forest, stormseeker, 3 elves, spider, giant growth; draws stripmine
plays forest, elf

N draws disk; plays stripmine, strips forest
GD draws thermokarst; plays stripmine, elf, strips swamp

N draws hypno; plays swamp
GD draw stripmine; play stripmine, thermokarst swamp

N draws Hymn; -
GD draws spider; plays spider

N draws swamp; play swamp
GD draws forest; play forest, strip swamp, play spider; attack with
other spider (N18)

N draws swamp; play swamp
GD draws giant growth; all attack, giant growth (N 10)

N draws necro; discards necro
GD draw mishra; play mishra; spiders attack (N6)

N draws knight of stormgald; during draw phase stormseeker (N -2)


P.S.: Two words: Dry Spell.

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