Born of the Gods Event Deck

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Happy Thursday MTG peeps,

Born of the Gods, the newest Magic: the Gathering set will be officially released tomorrow during Friday Night Magic events taking place world wide.  Some local gaming stores like OMG! Games here in Barrie, like many other stores will be open at midnight for players who want to get their paws on singles and sealed product.  We'll be there at the stroke of midnight to pick up a Born of the Gods Fat Pack, a few booster packs and perhaps a few singles so we can get some of the new cards in our decklist for FNM.

One sealed product you cannot purchase just yet is the Born of the Gods Event deck. An event deck is a tournament-level deck that contains more competitive cards than their intro deck counterparts. Event decks contain 10 rares and multiple playsets of cards, where intro decks contain two rares, more 1’s and 2-ofs, and two sealed booster packs.  The new BNG Event Deck releases February 28, 2014.  For a MRSP $25, here’s what you get -

• 1 60-card deck
• 1 15-card sideboard
• 1 Spindown life counter
• 1 strategy insert
• 1 card box

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Over on the mothersite today, we were furnished with the decklist.  Here's the 4.1.1. from WotC -

The "Underworld Herald" deck combines aggressive swarms of creatures with devastating spells that destroy your opponent’s forces. Enchantment creatures and powerful devotion creatures give you a solid backup plan if your initial offensive can’t finish things off.

This deck features a mix of aggressive mechanics. Unleash lets you choose to have your creature enter the battlefield with a +1/+1 counter at the cost of not being able to block. Bestow lets you cast some of your creatures as Auras that turn into creatures if the target they are enchanting is removed. This gives you resilience against opponents who can kill your creatures. Abilities that count your devotion to black get more powerful based on the number of black mana symbols among the mana costs of permanents you control, including hybrid mana symbols like the one on Rakdos Cackler—perfect for a deck with only black cards.

24 lands : 24  Swamp

26 creatures : 1  Agent of the Fates, 1  Blood Scrivener, 1  Crypt Ghast, 1  Desecration Demon, 1  Erebos's Emissary, 1  Herald of Torment, 3  Mogis's Marauder, 1  Pack Rat, 4  Rakdos Cackler, 4  Rakdos Shred-Freak, 3  Spiteful Returned, 3  Tormented Hero, 2  Xathrid Necromancer

10 other spells : 2  Bile Blight, 3  Doom Blade, 1  Fated Return, 1  Gift of Orzhova, 1  Hero's Downfall, 2  Ultimate Price

15 sideboard cards : 3  Cremate, 2  Dark Betrayal, 4  Duress, 2  Gift of Orzhova, 2  Pharika's Cure, 2  Staff of the Death Magus
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What do we think?  We can't say we really care for this list.  So many odd 'one of's' wuch as Blood Scrivener, Crypt Ghast, Agent of the Fates, etc. to feed into a focused strategy.  The appearance of Staff of the Death Magus is simply weird.

Having said that, we do think that one could simply use this list as a foundation and pick up singles from MTG Mint Card to make it rock.   We also do think that the list does deliver very good value.  There is approximately $60 or so bucks after tallying up the singles and not matter what you may think of this mono-black list, you'll be getting solid cards which can be ripped into another decklist you have or as mentioned modify the existing list to make it competitive in your local meta-game.

Drop by the WotC  sample hand generator here to get a feel for it.

 

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