Modern Tooth Decay (Competitv)

by dknight27 on 27 November 2024

Main Deck (60 cards)

Sideboard (0 cards)

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Deck Description

Tooth Decay: zombies that die

At first glance, it's just a zombie build, but there's so much synergy at play over dying creatures and their mechanics that the zombie aspect is purely incidental.

Obviously Gravecrawler is the boss of this build, as he dies and resurrects himself, on top of being just a wicked 2/1 beater. But combine him with essentially any other aspect of the deck and the whole thing explodes.

The inspiration for the build was the wildly undervalued Ghoulish Procession, which does everything this deck wants and more. Firstly, it triggers when A creature dies, not just one of yours. Secondly, it spawns 2/2 beaters that aren't a big threat on their own, but overlayed with the rest of the build mean a reliable 2 damage a turn. Thirdly, since they die to decayed anyway, they are PERFECT fodder for all your 'die' mechanics, such as your 6 sac spells, Carrion Feeder, and Undead Augur. Fourthly, since the tokens are zombies, they trigger all your 'when a zombie does X' stuff, which is a good portion of the deck. They work perfectly with Gravecrawler, Champion of the Perished, Undead Augur, and Wayward Servant.

The other good thing about this build is that it can survive nukes and grave hate better than you'd expect. Obviously neither is preferable, but if push comes to shove, you still get tokens to recover from nukes, can sac off your stuff for card advantage, and can always Gravecrawler your way back into the game. Grave hate really only targets the Crawler in this build, as the deck can run perfectly fine without him, even if it goes into overdrive with him, which makes it a minor bummer.

For the same reasons as above, traditional spot removal does next to nothing in this build, and most control cards are either dead draws outright or only target a small number of cards in the build at best.

Against other fast critter decks, the zombies either go wider or over the top (in theory) of most other critter builds. They won't win head to head interactions, but they spawn and grow so quickly that you can (in theory) out race Boros energy, for example. And against decks that want to ramp into something big, this deck smiles and goes wide as can be then swims right around the big drop.

Or, at least that's the working theory.

Deck Tags

  • Modern
  • Zombie
  • Competitive
  • Weenie
  • Orzhov

Deck at a Glance

Social Stats

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This deck has been viewed 91 times.

Mana Curve

Mana Symbol Occurrence

404400

Deck Format


Modern

NOTE: Set by owner when deck was made.

Card Legality

  • Not Legal in Standard
  • Legal in Modern
  • Legal in Vintage
  • Legal in Legacy

Deck discussion for Modern Tooth Decay (Competitv)

Have you given any thoughts as to what could be placed in the sideboard and what match-ups would be your downfall? Something like Damping Sphere or Trinisphere would be wonders against Ruby Storm, and Void Mirror is an option for anything Tron.

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Posted 28 November 2024 at 05:34

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I've been toying around with some of it, nothing too concrete as of yet. I almost never play critter-heavy decks, so it's not as intuitive for me as it is normally.

I'm relatively positive of a good matchup against energy, amulet titan, and control, unclear about the combo decks (belcher, storm, grinding station), have no idea whatsoever with the new eldrazi nonsense, and probably have a problem against living end.

I'm a tremendous fan of Damping Sphere, one of the most interesting cards ever made in my book. It works against storm and land shenanigans, so you can side it in against tron, storm, eldrazi, and amulet titan. Plus, it slows everything down, so it inadvertently works against The One Ring and other such 'I can do more than you can' builds, all for 2 colorless mana. I can't really think of a reason not to side it, other than its slight interference with Gravecrawler in this build, but that's a more than acceptable loss. The only potential problem is that storm runs anti-artifact hate for this very reason, so I've been trying to find a way around it that they can't really do anything about. I'm a TREMENDOUS fan of the card High Noon (I've been trying to work multiple decks around it), and running it would shut down storm and living end completely, but wouldn't be much good against tron, eldrazi, or amulet titan, cause it hurts you as much as it hurts them. Still working on this dilemma.

Void Mirror is a hell of a counter to both tron and eldrazi and does nothing to this deck whatsoever, so that's a huge win. It also shuts down soft counters, which opponent might keep in to try to deal with your side options, so that's nice.

The real killer I've been looking at is running a full set of Pithing Needle, as it shuts down The One Ring, Psychic Frog, the grinding station build, and the charbelcher build, and everyone and their mother wants to run most of that to some degree. Needless to say, it's still very much a work in progress.

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Posted Friday at 20:03

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It's been a while since I saw one of your decks pop up on the main page.
Have you considered side-boarding cards like Rise of the Dread Marn, In Oketra's Name and Ghoulcaller's Chant?

They might be interesting ways to spruce the deck up should you go against more challenging opponents.

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Posted Friday at 18:12

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I've been tooling around with a few things here and there, lots of concepts swirling around, not too many have been flushed all the way out just yet.

I love cards like Rise of the Dread Marn as an answer to nukes, especially since its foretell cost is so damn cheap. In a format that ran more nukes, I would absolutely think about running it, but (to my knowledge), the only decks running any are Murktide and Jeskai, and only Jeskai has any mainboarded (in most cases). In addition, I've sort of set things up so that (hopefully) while a nuke would set the build back, it could still recover, as it has all the death mechanics that profit from my zombies dying, etc. So maybe, but we'll have to see.

I've never really messed around with cards like In Oketra's Name, as I almost never play critter builds, and am far too chicken to play tempo critter builds that are ok tossing material for a big attack turn, but I do see the merit of essentially doubling the damage I'm doing in a turn for a 2-drop surprise in game 2 or 3 against something that needs time to build. Let me ponder.

Ghoulcaller's Chant is a terrific card that puts you at a potential +2 with tempo, but it's vulnerable to grave hate, and this build will be targeted by sided grave hate and will have to side in grave hate, so I'd probably have to stay away from it. I do love the idea of Village Rites + Ghoulcaller's Chant in response to a lightning bolt though, that's just a devastating turnaround, and one I might toy with in a different build.

Thanks for the feedback.

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Posted Friday at 20:18

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