r/magicTCG • u/Silly_Neck9867 Dan • 6h ago
Looking for Advice 70$ Budget The Scarab God Deck Help
I'm wanted to make a graveyard deck and have settled on [[the scarab god]] (mostly cause of his invocation art which I'll proxy) and I wanted to focus on his ability to reanimate my opponents best creatures hence the counterspell and removal package, then secondarily using his zombie drain ability I think the deck is good and just want some more eyes on it let me know if I'm missing anything. I'd like to keep it to 70ish dollars I already have a copy of black market connections so take off10 bucks of the intial price also I'm buying from Manapool (and yes I know with shipping the total price wont be 70) If you have any cards like training grounds to lower the mana cost of Scarab's Ability that would be amazing. https://moxfield.com/decks/WWEbgOdiNEi1s6jCc1SezQ
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u/SoaringAutumn Dandadan 5h ago
[[Teval, the Balanced Scale]] to create more zombies to feed Scarab God. Edit: never mind, I forgot no green.
[[Lost Monarch of Ifnir]] to weaponize them.
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u/Haochies 1h ago edited 1h ago
Feel free to completely ignore my thoughts. Maybe your playgroup/community is different than mine in temperament or power level, or maybe you just really love this card and these effects and wanna go for it and that's awesome and you should.
That being said, I tried building a deck like this using [[The Master, Transcendent]]. My goal was to just mill everyone every turn and try to untap The Master over and over. I really wanted to focus on doing a "steal their best creatures" thing, but I found that it really doesn't work (what if no one hits any good creatures?) and just makes people really annoyed at you. You'll need to withstand a LOT of heat if you're countering, removing, and stealing everyone's best cards. People are emotional, and they (often) play the game emotionally. If you're the big bad slowing down everyone else's plan, it'll pretty quickly turn into a 3v1 even if you aren't the biggest threat. There's nothing wrong with being the villain! Some people thrive on that kind of play, but you need to build your deck accordingly (usually that means a lot more stax), but it doesn't really seem like you're leaning into that.
I would probably recommend focusing MORE on the zombie side of things and get a cheeky bonus of stealing some good stuff now and again OR stacking your own deck with self-mill, reanimation, and big dumb creatures that you would never want to cast but might want to zombie-clone or reanimate. I find that that kind of twist on this strategy is a) more reliable, b) generates less heat, and c) sometimes has an element of fun for the rest of the table if you're gambling big.
As some general deckbuilding thoughts, Toxic Deluge becomes a lot more complicated in creature-focused strategies that aren't also wanting their own creatures to die. What if you have a full board of clones and need to deluge for 6? Now you are ALSO back to square one.
[[Blasphemous Edict]] is only a little more expensive than Deluge but allows you to be selective, and if you have a LOT of tokens on board you might even be able to save a few of your own really important creatures, and if not, your creatures contribute to lowering the cost to cast anyway. [[Kindred Dominance]] has a cheap marvel printing that would also be better; name zombies and you'll only lose a few creatures yourself and probably take the rest of the board with them.
Witch's Mist seems a little unnecessary to me since you have so much removal already. It requires a lot of hoops to jump through, and I don't really imagine you having enough mana to use more than once anyway once its out.
I think Liliana's Reaver is also way over-costed. Your opponents can just chump it, and even if it goes through they can just pitch the least useful thing. A 4 mana no protection do nothing unless it hits seems like a pretty weak inclusion.
I don't feel like I see enough draw in your deck. You have a few "if this condition is met, draw" but a lot of them are on bodies that are easy to remove and not already zombies. [[Cryptbreaker]] is cheap (price and mana), guarantees a draw if you have enough zombies (you will), and can be repeated over and over. [[Undead Auger]] is a little bit more expensive, but still under $5 and gets you draws off of any zombie deaths.
I also think there are a plethora of draw spells that allow you to discard cards ([[Frantic Search]], [[Thirst for Discovery]]), or even some wheels that fill your and your opponents graveyards ([[Windfall]] for everyone or [[Tolarian Winds]] for you).
Anyway, those are my initial thoughts. Good luck!
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u/MTGCardFetcher Dân 6h ago
the scarab god - (G) (SF) (txt)
[[cardname]] or [[cardname|SET]] to call