Hiya.
First and foremost: I know it's hard, very very hard, but you have to cut down to 60 cards. Period. Don't and your deck doesn't run. Sorry but 82 cards, that's almost Highlander! And no, your deck doesn't come back to live if it was stabbed - because in MtG, we behead decks if we win against them
So, now, how to lose weight and get your deck in shape.
1) Go down to 20 lands. Period. I play aggro-decks (not on deckstats.net) where 16 lands are more than enough mana. So, you Sir go down to 20 lands, my suggestion is this line-up: 4x
Watery Grave, 12x
Swamp, 4x
Drowned Catacomb OR, and this IS the better choice, 4x
Polluted Delta. You could substitute the Deltas for
Terramorphic Expanse (or something similar) with the drawback that you then need to play basic Islands. Either way, you need in color: 6-8 blue, rest black. 6 blue is minimum requirement for safety, if you feel lucky go with 4 and this is why
Polluted Delta. It gets you your
Watery Grave or your
Swamp or your
Island for the price of 1 life AND the advantage of shuffling your library! Never ever underestimate shuffling. Personally, I don't like lands like
Sunken Ruins (they do what your deck should be capable of doing itself, I mean, you don't use crutches when your legs are healthy, right?) or
Darkslick Shores (great on turn 1 and 2, afterwards they slow you down).
2) Planeswalkers. Sorry, but I don't see the artifact
Mirror Gallery in your deck and even if... I don't think that this applies to Planeswalkers too, so DON'T play 2 planeswalkers EACH 4 times! You can't even play that many! And if your opponent slaughters them, then don't bring out a new one, do something to protect them, meaning:
disrupt your enemy. Now, I clearly see why you play Lilianas 2x4 times: One Liliana tutors you lands, the other tutors you cards. No need for both if you cut down to 60 cards. The reason you need 2x4 Lilianas is the overgrown size of your deck. Sorry, but that's the core problem here. My suggestion to planeswalkers: 2x2 of both Lilianas, meaning 2
Liliana Vess and 2
Liliana of the Dark Realms. I myself wouldn't play both of them, because the Realms-Liliana is, sorry, not helpful in a good deck because a good black deck should be able to do the same things better. The 5-mana-Liliana can be good for tutor effects, but I played her long and she really is not good except for one thing:
taunt your opponent's creatures to attack her! Everyone fears her last ability, but then again... It's not that good. I recommend this planeswalker:
Sorin Markov. Ok, wasn't in Innistrad, but 8 Lilianas? Do I schmell there a fetisch? ;DDD
3)
Rooftop Storm. Yes, tempting, but useful? Hell no, it costs 6 mana! Sorry, but until you can actually afford that, you should have won or you should have your opponent in a dead-lock or there is a problem which more and more zombies can't fix. I suggest: cut that card completely OR use 4x
Dark Ritual /
Cabal Ritual. With only 1
Dark Ritual you could play
Rooftop Storm on turn 4 (provided you got 1 land each turn), with 2
Dark Ritual Rooftop Storm can be played on turn 2.
4) Color choices: Blue, ok, not bad, but actually... You play so few blue cards that it's an option to cut that card completely OR add more blue cards. I'd suggest: if blue, then add cantrips / counterspells, not many, but something to protect your deck and
disrupt the enemy. This way you don't need 2x4 Lilianas because with them you either pay 4 or 5 mana for just 1 card. With 2 or 3 manas, even with 1 mana or with 2 life (
Gitaxian Probe) you are able to draw 1+ cards - even on your opponent's turn with an added advantage. But this is entirely your choice and you mast make it. Personally, I don't quite see the advantage of blue splash for your deck as it is now (we'll come to that in a minute).
5)
Grave Pact. Or Deck Mechanics. Although
Grave Pact is a wonderful card, it must be played in the right deck. If it's used in the wrong deck, it's worse than a
dead card because it consumes 4 mana and with 4 mana you can summon 76.9% of your whole deck. Yes, in MtG we go for mathematics because at the end of the day it's just math. Everywhere. So, if you want to use
Grave Pact (although it's not in Innistrad!), don't play
Cemetery Recruitment.
Gravepurge does the job better for just 1 mana. Again, smaller deck means higher chance of drawing
Gravepurge.
So, to sum that up, I present 2 styles for your deck, one mono-black zombie and one UB-Zombies.
Mono-Black
Grave PactLands (20): 16
Swamp, 4
Terramorphic Expanse (or another search land, or
Ghost Quarter or whatever you want; the advantage of search lands are, that you can
accelerate your deck by playing 2 cards in 1 turn for 0 and that you can reshuffle your library - it's not forbidden to regroup cards that way if you see that manas are clustering together).
Planeswalkers (for free): 2
Liliana Vess OR 2
Sorin Markov.
Enchantments (
: 4
Oversold Cemetery, 4
Grave Pact.
Artifacts (4):
Altar of Dementia (2nd win option)
Creatures (20): 3
Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder, other useful zombies but if possible nothing that comes into play tapped or that has no abilities (which is why I'd go out of Innistrad a little bit).
Sorceries / Instants (
: Whatever you feel is needed. In mono-black there are tons of good spells for disruption. I suggest here 4x
Dark Ritual (or
Cabal Ritual if you want to go for the Threshold-Bonus; oh, threshold btw works wonders with a sacrifice deck) and 4x
Sign in Blood (another win option, let your opponent die by paying life). If you want to use tutors, there are
Vampiric Tutor (expensive),
Demonic Tutor (also),
Shred Memory (transmute),
Diabolic Tutor (actually very bad),
Rhystic Tutor (also bad) and
Diabolic Intent (which interacts with
Grave Pact, yay). If you absolutely know what you are doing, try
Doomsday as a tutor
SUMMARY AND DISTRIBUTION: 62 cards, of which are 2 Planeswalkers, 20 lands, 20 creatures, 20 non-creature-spells. So, according to maths, this should give you a median starting hand of 1-3 lands / creatures / 1-3 non-creature spells each. It should also let you draw "almost" 1 land every third turn and 1 non-creature spell for each drawn creature-spell.
FURTHER CUTS: Depening on what you want to play, use more creatures and maybe less enchantments or do it the opposite way round. Experiment. With a good sideboard, you can have both
UB-Zombies
Grave PactLands (20): 12
Swamp, 4
Watery Grave (must), 4
Drowned Catacomb -OR- 9
Swamp, 3
Island, 4
Watery Grave, 4
Polluted Delta (advanced tactic: the 3 islands are used to save your booty if someone comes with
Wasteland +
Crucible of Worlds or similar "destroy non-basic land").
Planeswalkers (for free): 2
Liliana Vess OR 2
Sorin Markov OR 2
Jace, the Mind Sculptor OR 2
Jace, Unraveler of Secrets (IF you want to play a combination of 2, let's say 2x2 Liliana and Jace Unraveler, then DO NOT count them for free).
Sorcery / Instant (13-16): 4
Dark Ritual (must), 4 Cantrip (something blue to draw cards), 2 Tutors (or more cantrips), 3-6 protection spells (
Counterspell,
Boomerang just something to bounce and counter).
Enchantments (4-8): 2-4
Grave Pact, 2-4
Rooftop Storm (with all your cantrips and tutors you should be able to find them quickly, if not: Both cards don't win you the game, so no reason to play them each four times while you're playing cantrips and tutors, right?)
Creatures (Rest to sum up to 60 cards+planeswalkers): 4
Diregraf Captain (2nd win option due to life loss), 2(-3)
Grimgrin, Corpse-Born (he has 2 disadvantages: first he kills your board, secondly he can be killed, so your enemy let's you sweep your board for him for almost free - further, if aggro / sacrifice doesn't win your game, Grimgrin is a
dead card), zombies and maybe other useful UB-creatures.
SUMMARY AND DISTRIBUTION: 62 cards, of which are 2 Planeswalkers, 20 lands, 40 rest.
IDEA: You don't play a control-deck because of
Grave Pact, meaning you absolutely want to play 4
Dark Ritual for your Rooftop Storms to
overrun your enemy, which is why you play cantrips and tutors quite excessively (for blue, there are cards like
Gifts Ungiven,
Fact or Fiction,
Merchant Scroll,
Gush,
Personal Tutor, Mystic Tutor, yes, tutors tutor tutors
). All the while you sacrifice creatures to sweep your opponent's board via
Grave Pact and if aggro fails, there is
Diregraf Captain, but you don't play this style to boost Grimgrin or to fool around with
Grave Pact.
Grave Pact clears a path for your army and Grimgrin is a maybe finisher - just that, nothing else.
FOR BOTH DECKS: If you want to use
Grave Pact, you definitely need more sacrifice-possibilities (
Altar of Dementia anyone?) and "enough" sacrifice-targets (you heard of
Endrek Sahr, Master Breeder?), whereupon "enough" is different for each game. I think
Gravecrawler and
Diregraf Colossus are very good for that.
So, that's it for now. Feel free to pm me if you've got more questions.
Cheers.
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