The Magic Chest 7: Bubbling Muck

Although I've rarely seen Bubbling Muck used in serious play, I'm still convinced it has potential. Let's compare it to High Tide for a moment. The only two differences are that Bubbling Muck is a sorcery, which doesn't make that much difference and that High Tide is blue and works on Islands instead of Swamps.

High Tide was made good by the "free" spells blue got in the Urza block. Under a High Tide, they weren't just free, they doubled your mana. Obviously, black doesn't have a replacement for those spells, so we can forget about rebuilding the High Tide deck.

Comparing High Tide and Bubbling Muck didn't really get us very far, so let's compare Bubbling Muck to Dark Ritual. Suppose you play a Swamp each turn. On turn 1, Dark Ritual gives you a maximum of 3 mana, whereas Bubbling Muck is a waste of a card.

Let's put this in a table:

Turn 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
==============================================
With Dark Ritual 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
With Bubbling Muck 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16

So, on turn 4, they are equally useful, but after that, Bubbling Muck becomes superior. It's too bad that turn 4 is often also the turn you stop playing land every turn, because you've run out. From this, I'd say that a deck that wants to make good use of Bubbling Muck needs to be a late game deck. Any spells that cost 6 or less are easier to cast with Dark Ritual, so we need some very expensive spells as well, preferably x-spells. Because we're making a late game deck, we need plenty of control and disruption. Land destruction is a good staller, as is hand destruction. Our land should also be Swamp heavy, preferably all-Swamp.

Let's look at some cards:

Dark Ritual: Eight mana boosters is probably a bit too much and I don't think the deck will want an explosive first turn, so put these aside.

Drain Life: The only good black x-spell and finisher, so this one is pretty obvious. This card is so good, I want to add a few Soul Burns as well, because they're virtually identical.

Nakaya Shade: This is the 1/1 for 1B that gets +1/+1 for B, unless an opponent pays 2. It's another card to use your mana on. The drawback is tiny, because it costs more to prevent the pumping than to pump it up. Add a Bubbling Much to the equation and you can have a huge creature on the board.

Black Knight: A quick threat that also makes a very good blocker. Black Knight is just one of the possibilities. A Skittering Skirge would work, even though it's a bit more aggressive, as would a pump knight or several other creatures.

Duress: Some hand disruption. Hymn to Tourachs would be nice to add as well, but probably a bit too cheesy.

Crypt Rats: A bit of creature control is necessary in any deck. It can be used as a finisher as well, if you're higher in life, which you'll probably be because of your drains.

Diabolic Edict: To get rid of anything that survives your Crypt Rats.

Befoul: Targeted creature removal for when you need it, or a way to stall your opponent.

Snuff Out: Some extra targeted removal might be important as well in some cases, so put a few of these in the sideboard.

Rain of Filth: One of these can act as a fifth Bubbling Muck, allowing you to sacrifice your tapped lands for B. Since you never want more than one of these in hand, don't put in more than one.

Rain of Tears: More stalling. Sometimes land destruction will just win you the game if your opponent is light on mana and you have a quick clock out.

Necropotence: An obvious choice for this deck, but as it is so powerful (and restricted), I'd rather not put it in. It's more fun to have a rare-free deck anyway.

Vampiric Tutor: I don't think this deck needs tutors that badly.

Massacre: A pretty good hoser against white weenie and still useful against other weenie decks as well. A sideboard card.

Gloom: In tournaments this is a very good card against white decks, but in fun play, you expect to get more land down, which lessens the effect of Gloom. And as soon as your opponent has enough mana to get a Disenchant through, it's downhill from there all the way.

Ashen Ghoul: The deck is vulnerable to heavy counterspell decks. Ashen Ghouls can be brought back from the graveyard, so countering them is of little use. Still, just the Ashen Ghouls wouldn't be much use, because there have to be 3 creatures on top of them to bring them back and adding Nether Shadows would mean adding rares. Adding Buried Alive is an option, but I don't think it'll work very well.

Stupor: Discard works pretty well against counterspells, especially discard with card advantage built into it.

Choking Sands: It's a good idea to be able to side in some extra land destruction against decks that are vulnerable to it. Black weenie decks aren't, so the drawback of not working on Swamps is negligible.

And so the deck becomes:

Stuck in the Muck
4x Bubbling Muck
1x Rain of Filth
4x Drain Life
2x Soul Burn
4x Nakaya Shade

2x Black Knight
4x Duress
4x Crypt Rats
4x Diabolic Edict
4x Befoul
4x Rain of Tears

23x Swamp

Sideboard:
3x Snuff Out
4x Massacre
4x Stupor
4x Choking Sands

Have fun!