Artifacts in Balthor

Someone in my playgroup recently mentioned to me that I have a couple of funky artifacts in my Balthor deck and that, frankly, they both sucked.

He was only half right.

My Balthor deck gets added to and subtracted from pretty often so any given section is never nailed down. I get to make hard choices (If I add a Lake of the Dead, how many basic Swamps should I be running for it to be a hit every time?) and easy choices (Is Soulless One still worth it?*)


One of the places where I do the most tinkering is the artifact section. As my deck is a top-down, flavour-driven Zombie deck (rather than a "best of Black" with some zombies thrown in) I get to make choices based on whether a Door of Destinies should really be present in a Zombie scene. Since posting my last defined list back in January** I've completely overhauled the Artifacts section.

Things like Sensei's Divining Top are, flavourfully, very easy cuts to make because Zombies just aren't known for their divining or the ability to spin a top for that matter. Gameplay-wise this is a huge cut that, along with Vampiric Tutor, as effected my deck's ability to be consistent. Following on theme, that's an acceptable thing to happen though: zombies aren't always a full-on hoard from turn 2 or 3. It also forces me to play the deck differently as I'm not always going to the same outs. If this means that I'm losing more than usual, that's fine too.

Of the original list, only 3 cards have survived the cuts up to now: Lightning Greaves, Expedition Map & Skullclamp. All the boosts, exile abilities and recurring tricks have been cut and boosts have been taken care of by the full compliment of 4 lords available to Mono-B.

In their place, I have added in a couple of artifacts to help load the graveyards. A couple allow me to live the dream of a huge turn 3-4 zombie army but the statistical changes of that are ridiculously low. Here's the combo:

If you play a Mesmeric Orb and follow up with a Basalt Monolith, you can mill your entire deck just by tapping and untapping the Monolith. If you're lucky enough to have a Songs of the Damned or a Crypt of Agadeem (and the mana to use it, of course) you have enough mana to loop your Balthor to raise the Zombie Army you've always dreamed of. Of course, later in the game this is still a valid play allowing for the need to work around graveyard hates as that would seriously crimp your style.

In the meantime Mesmeric Orb is a huge pain in the rear for a lot of decks, not everyone wants to mill for 4-6 every turn.

The other artifacts I've added are Sol Ring, Charmed Pendant (an extremely dubious mana accellerant), Oblivion Stone/Nev's Disk (some necessary protection), and a Memory Jar. The Jar allows for some silly end of turn armies that you wouldn't otherwise be able to accellerate into.

Despite these additions, even more space is needed for the Grimoire of the Dead so I'll have to go back into the tank for that.

Space must be found

So, to sum up: Yes, Charmed Pendant sucks.

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* Sadly, no. He's the muscle who's become just too vanilla. We now have cheaper and better options. Goodbye, Soulless One, you are now "Friendless One".

** Coat of Arms, Door of Destinies, Brittle Effigy, Expedition Map, Sensei's Divining Top, Nim Death-Mantle, Skullclamp, Lightning Greaves