The Git Gud Series is meant as a tool for both the author and reader to help improve in drafts. We go through the deck and also provide a video highlight of the picks to help understand the strengths and weaknesses of a deck. While the author is by no means a pro player, we do want to improve ourselves every day so feedback is much appreciated. Today we have a Black/Green deck from M19 which performed 4-2 in Competetive MTGA Drafts. A solid deck overall going 4-0 before meeting its demise at the top with 2 losses in a row against decks that clearly had better cards.

 I will go over the deck and talk about the cards, overall this deck has a couple of problems that stop it from going the full mile. Too much mediocre creatures over 3 CMC and no real bomb worthy cards. I ended up with far too few removal spells too but still managed to get far with our deck. This series is not just about posting the best decks that I make but also analyzing the weaker ones and how to improve on them. Green Black is an archetype where you want to win in the long run by outvaluing the opponent.

Our first pick went to the Common Lich's Caress over Vine Mare which is a great creature, especially with black as an opponent but the issue is the double green cost and that it only has toughness at 3 which means it often trades with another creature. Caress leaves us more open and is also an unconditional removal.

An early pick in pack 1 and the first blue card added. Good card as creatures targeted by spells usually means they are dead anyway, except for those times the opponents return it to your hand and it slips into the graveyard instead. It is by no means a Frost Walker, that dies as soon as you blow on it. It also gives us the ability to punch through a board stale with whatever we want and won us some rounds this session by giving our bigger creatures the ability to be unblockable.

Not an overperformer in this deck as it really shines when you get a lifelink payoff card, but a 2/2 with evasion is still good. It does get eaten  by the many Giant Spider in the format and stopped by Pegasus Courser.

Our removal package and not a big one at that either. You just have to work with that you get handed, rabid bite is by far a weaker removal spell than Caress as it is conditional and require a creature with enough power to kill off your target. In our deck Rabid Bite often do a maximum of 4 damage while Lich's Caress is our premium removal that can take care of everything making it super important to save for the opponent's bomb.

Yes its stats are low but it feels really good to play each time as it replaces itself in your hand, provides you with a little dude that might be able to chip off some damage but also can trade in with one of the many 1 toughness creatures in RW decks, an archetype which is really popular in this format. 

Lets us talk about these two. I consider them as cards I would like to replace with more solid cards Child of Night the vampire who does not fly is a weak card that dies to Skyscanner is a really lackluster card and has no business in this deck I would rather take a 2/2 without stats. Thornhide Wolves is also a card I would not mind replacing, I still find it okay as it can be really annoying to get rid of. But it does fail the vanilla test.

Now, this is a funny blowout combo! But it only works when the opponent is on blocking duty or when the board is stale. With deathtouch, you are able to assign 1 damage on each blocker since the rule says you have to assign lethal damage to the first blocker before you can assign damage to the next, in our case 1 equals lethal. This makes it possible to kill up to five creatures no matter their how much toughness they have. While the combo is good, the Basilisk is not really a good card on its own, it only blocks and when it has to attack it just trades with their worst creature.

This card is soo annoying for the opponent when it works, taking away enchantments or equipment and sometimes also disables their removal spell like Luminous Bonds. Weak stats but a great pick.

The anti-flyer package. Spiders are solid and deal with a lot of annoying air creatures and the Archer is a high pick, I got it quite late in the draft too when I had already decided to go hard on green and black. This package of big butted creatures fit well with the GB plan of going long and outvaluing the opponent. Stalling the board and getting ready to blow them out with Declare Dominance to show them who's the boss.

Courser is just a solid 3 drop that holds off all of those pesky aggro decks, not much else to say about this, while Rhox has this great ability to replace itself by delivering delicious pizza value. He does not have the biggest but and it is not always great to trade off with a 2 power creature but even then you still got a pizza for free.

Yeah, while I like one or maybe two of this guy, three is a bit much and I would rather have something else. An average dude that snuck into the deck taking the spot of some bombs the bots stole from me. Oh well, he has to be blocked by two creatures and packs a punch.

Hello top-curve good cards, I wish you had more friends. The highly reprinted dinosaur still delivers by trampling through and is a great threat, while really good to curve into in a ramp deck that we, unfortunately, are not, he is still awesome to drop on the board turn 6. His little bro the Baloth is also great as he packs a punch and at the same time is able to block on the defense after he has slapped the opponent across the face. Good stats but not a fan of picking this early over non-double-costed cards.

Our bomb card, that needs another bomb to function. Too bad we do not have any bombs to resurrect, but we can just take the opponents bomb. Oh we forgot, we are light on removal so killing their bomb is a bit hard. The second problem is that if the opponent runs an aggro deck with only crappy creatures we do not have many targets. While a really good card that you definitely want in a black deck, it does not always do what you want it to. Having this in hand together with removal and being able to kill their nasty bomb just feels like cheating though.

Nuts & Bolts Spike spends his energy looking within. He tries to understand his own internal flaws and works to improve them.

I run Team Aether and stream MTG Arena on Twitch.tv/andreliverod, playing both Standard and limited. Stop by and say hello!
Not interested in live streams? Here is my Youtube channel: Youtube.com/c/andreliverod