Cipher Rogues (Modern)

The strategy behind this deck is to field creatures with unblockable or flying and buff them with Cipher effects to cause continual issues for your opponents. This deck is card-draw heavy to keep you drawing into the ciphers you need and replacements for your (weak) unblockables when your opponent inevitably decides to burn them.

The Jace's POhantasms are your back line. Field them against flying threats as this deck is weak on flyers and try to get your opponent to spend cards or block your early stealers to get his grave past 10 cards. This will give you a solid air defense. Failing that, Cipher in a Call of the Nightwing to generate your own flying army.

Use Cloak and Dagger and Drake's Umbra to buff your creatures and protect your best hitters while equipping Rogues Gloves on an unblockable or a flyer will give you access to that much needed card draw even when your stealer of secrets aren't getting through.

Main threat here is the deathcult rogues. Not strong at 2/2 so equip them and Umbra them up to protect them while they waltz in and strike for the Cipher effect of your choice.

Creeping Tar pits and Rogues passage allow you to fill out your back line in a pinch and allow for more ways to get your stealer of secrets through for card draw. Shadow slice, Undercity plague and the Ghastlord are all there as primary winning strategies whereas Unmake the graves and Midnight recovery allows you to recover your needed unblockables after they inevitably die to opponent hate cards.

I put this little lot together by accident when trying to put together a Dimir deck from a few bits I had lying around. This deck can easily be changed up into a mill strategy by the addition of a Jace or two, and swapping out the main draw Ciphers for mill ciphers instead.

Problems for this deck include tramplers, masses of flyers (if you don't get to a Call of the Nightwing fast enough) enchantments or artifact based decks as there's little in here for direct burn, artifact hate or enchantment removal being a Blue/Black. Rely on Cancel to kill threats before they begin and add more Ghastlords and Undercity plagues if your local meta is enchantment or artifact heavy.

Against aggro decks with stronger creatures or mass flyers simply cipher up with shadow slice and sideboard in the Voidwalks to remove blockers and all-out-attack to race the life total. Against weenie decks play a waiting game, eliminate a few to fill the graveyard and rely on the phantasm's to do their thing to defend you while you swing in with the unblockables. Save the Cancels for combo deck pieces and get your Undercity Plague out as soon as you can.

I hope you like it, feel free to comment and suggest improvements.