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The Magic Chest 13: Black Market
Two deck ideas present themselves immediately when looking at this card: a deck with reusable creatures and a deck with token creatures. The deck based on token creatures looks the most interesting to me, but I'll first give a quick outline for the other deck. For the reusable creature deck, I'm thinking of the concept of Dancing Gnomes (Bottle Gnomes with Corpse Dance to reuse them again and again, putting a counter on Black Market each time, allowing you to dance your gnomes more often per turn). Corpse Dance by itself isn't enough, though. Disturbed Burial, the buyback Raise Dead is more expensive to use, but works better with creatures that can't sacrifice themselves. A single Living Death would be a nasty surprise as well. For creatures, I'd use Bottle Gnomes, Bone Shredder, Ticking Gnomes, Thrull Surgeon and Nekrataal. That should be enough to keep creature decks in check long enough for you to cast a Black Market and get some counters on it. From then on, keep your life up and start pinging your opponent down one life at a time with the Ticking Gnomes. You could just pay the echo and attack with it, but pinging them down is much more satisfying. Add a few lands like High Market as well, in case you have to Corpse Dance a Nekrataal or Bone Shredder and don't want see them get removed from game because you can't sacrifice them. Now for the deck based on token creatures. Let's look at some cards. Black Market: They're useful in multiples, so use four. City of Shadows: A land that is a bit like Black Market. You have to remove a creature from the game to put a counter on it, but that's ok if you're using token creatures anyway. Plus, it gives colorless mana instead of black mana, which isn't ideal. I'd play with one, just for the heck of it. Breeding Pit: A great way to get sacrificial token creatures. The upkeep of two black shouldn't be too big a problem, but be careful not to cast Breeding Pit too early. You may end up with not enough mana to cast a Black Market. Lab Rats: I have a special fondness for these little guys. The buyback is expensive, but the Black Markets should make up for that. It's very tempting to add two Memory Crystals to the deck just for the chance of getting the buyback down to zero. At that point, every counter on Black Markets will turn into a rat token and every rat token will add a new counter to the Market. That'd get ugly fast, but I'll do without the Crystals. Attrition: Sacrifice your tokens to destroy your opponent's creatures and get double the counters on your Markets. Fodder Cannon: Attrition doesn't work against black creatures, so these are vital in the sideboard. I'd put one in the main deck as well. If you don't have four Attritions, Fodder Cannons will do in a pinch. Mind Slash: Just like Attrition, using this with token creatures is pure card advantage. Keeping your opponent's hand empty should be easy with one of these and a Breeding Pit in play. Three are enough in the main deck, a fourth can go in the sideboard against control decks. High Market: To give the deck the potential to gain a bit of life in an emergency. Because it's a land, it doesn't take up a spell slot, making it a good card even if you won't need it very often. Death Pit Offering: Add one just because it's a pretty spiffy kill card. 3/3 Lab Rats and 2/3 thrull tokens are not to be messed with. If you want to change the focus of the deck a bit, you could take out a few of the control cards and go with four of these. It's such an easy change that I'll put three more in the sideboard, so the deck can be changed at will. Arcane Denial: With so many enchantments in the deck, you really need to have a chance of dealing with Tranquility. Arcane Denial is the best splashable counterspell I can think of. In a pinch, you can counter one of your own useless spells with it to draw three cards. Impulse: Vampiric Tutors might be a better choice to get what you need, but Impulse works well enough for me. Stroke of Genius: With the amount of mana you could generate, it's tempting to add this as a kill card, but it'd be overkill and it doesn't fit the theme. Same for Drain Life. Peat Bog: The extra mana generation is necessary to be able to cast the Black Markets. Later on, they'll generate plenty of mana, so losing the land won't hurt too much. Spawning Pool: It's always good to have a few mana sinks handy in case the Black Market gets out of control and your Lab Rats got countered. Duress: There is some room left in the main deck, but there's nothing the deck desperately needs. Dark Rituals could provide some extra speed, more counterspells could be useful, you could even add a few tutors or some more card searching, but I picked Duress because it gives a good one drop, can get rid of annoying things like Aura of Silence before they hit the board and they usually stall your opponent long enough to build up a mana base. Chill: A good anti-burn card is vital. Chill is a good staller and Mind Slash should empty their hand before they have enough mana to start casting again. Perish: A staple anti-green card. And so, the deck becomes:
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