jwolf0 said:
The Nightshade Assassins seem out of place GH.? You have no way to discard them for profit (madness) and black has lots of ways to kill things.? If you want to keep creature kill in, Tendrils of Corruption would work as well and gain life to boot.? Of course, if you still want the 2/1 body Nekrataal works too.?
The Nightshade Assassins are in because everyone and their mom where I live plays Stuffy Doll, and neither Nekrataal nor Tendrils can deal with it (it's indestructible, and damaging it will just kill me. And I'm NOT letting those Red decks play Shivan Meteor on it...).
I COULD use something like Riot Spikes to get rid of it (it's just0/1 after all), but that'd mean taking four creatures out. And the First Strike is nice along with Jitte.
The Debtor's Knell is a lategame card that can get me out of a pinch if the opponent has somehow locked my creatures down. By recurring more creatures than they can handle, I can break most stalemates.
I would LIKE to use Nether Traitor, but I don't own any in real life, and I only have a single Bad Moon (which I would have punted for the Jitte anyway)... so...
The Totems aren't there for just mana, they are there to deal with Wrath/Damnation. Most of the time, casting either when I have a Totem out is just asking for an ass-kicking, so they are a very potent means of discouraging such plays.
Of course, I could make this deck Standard-legal by ditching the non-Standard cards (the Kamigawa ones and the Wretches, which IIRC weren't timeshifted and are thus Onslaught block only). But that severely dumbs it down, and forces me to spend way too much on a casual deck...
(alternatively to the Assassins, I could use the Keening Banshees from Ravnica, who are 2/2 flyers that slap any creature for -2/-2 when they enter play, but I only have 2...)