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Deck Reviews / Need Help: Assassin Deck (modern)

« on: December 28, 2015, 05:53:55 pm »

I'm looking for some help in building an Assassin deck. I've had a lot of great input from G.Moto on this subject, but just wanted to throw this out there for some additional insights. I'm somewhat new to Magic, and still working on grasping some of the general mechanics of the game. My challenge is this: I'm playing in a circle that has some high-speed decks. In playing over 100 games now, we have never gone past turn 6 before the game ends. I'm facing some creature stealing/life draining/spot controlling 100% black vampires, two colorless Artifact decks with Karn Liberated, Emrakul The Aeons Torn, and Blightsteel Colossus (which they can have on the battlefield by turn 3), white Soldiers with First/Double strike and protection from (insert color of your choice), and red Goblins that grow out of control. Also, the usual mono red aggro decks and blue mill decks. All of these decks are built with 60 cards, 4x of each card to maximize chances of win combo draws.

As I'm still learning my way around the game, I only have one deck that really holds up against any of these (all-black aggro Zombies). I want to try to build an "Assassin" deck, but I'm finding that many of them have rather minimal damage output, and can't take much damage. I've looked at many of the Assassin decks posted on DeckStats, and just haven't found anything that keeps pace with a turn 3 mid-game. Many of their abilities tend to be one-time use, and they are vulnerable to spot control. So, I started looking at "Assassins" from an Assassins Creed game perspective; The "Assassins" are a mix of true assassins, thieves, mercenaries, and other rogues. I started looking at a Dimir build, using things like Xathrid Slyblade and Invisible Stalker to help reduce the susceptibility to spot control, but the damage output was still too low to take down these fast paced decks in a timely manner. So then I tried looking at a means of mass control by adding a Hand hate/Mill aspect to the deck through spells like Despise, Distress, Memory Sluice and Glimpse the Unthinkable, in conjunction with spells such as Surgical Extraction, Extripate, Haunting Echoes, and Reap Intellect to exile all instances of the the most threatening creatures and spells, with hopes that the low damage output Assassins/Rogues can slip by with the big threats out of the way.

I am looking for any advice to help speed them up, or slow down the opponent to maybe make a game drag out to turn 7, lol. But seriously, here is kinda my base list that I'm trying to work around. I would like to note that I'm opposed to sacrificing my own creatures, as their decks tend to have a lot of "protection from" spells that end up with me sac'ing something for no return, and end up being down a blocker when they are about to steamroll me with something big in P/T, or just high volume of smaller critters. Also, having seen the effectiveness of their 4x each card 60 card builds, I've been trying to stick to that archetype as close as possible, however I am not opposed to altering the build model if the deck performance sees major gains.

The general idea is to try to quickly get big threats into the graveyard by means of discard or mill, exile all instances of those spells, and attack with some hexproof/unblockable creatures.

Mill
Glimpse the Unthinkable
Memory Sluice

Discard
Despise
Distress

Exile
Surgical Extraction
Extirpate
Haunting Echoes
Reap Intellect

Creatures
Invisible Stalker
Xathrid Slyblade

Other Spells
Distortion Strike
Aqueous Form


Thanks in advance!