Grixis Agadeem Deck

I used this Grixis Crypt of Agadeem deck during the Magical Christmas Tournament 2009 here in Davao City. The deck basically finished bad with a 2-3 record but one thing that I noticed is that the deck had several bright spots as I won in 4/5 game 1s of each round. This may note that either decks have a lot of dead cards when facing this deck OR I just need a good sideboard to finish better.



Crypt Combo Decklist:
Creatures(30)
4 Extractor Demon
4 Sedraxis Specter
4 Viscera Dragger
4 Architects of Will
4 Monstrous Carabid
2 Fatestitcher
4 Hedron Crab
4 rotting rats

Spells(6)
3 Tomescour
3 Grim Discovery

Lands(24)
4 Crypt of Agadeem
4 Crumbling Necropolis
4 Drowned Catacomb
2 Scalding Tarn
2 Marsh Flats
3 Terramorphic Expanse
2 Island
2 Swamp
1 Mountain

Sideboard:
3 Pithing Needle
1 Kederekt Leviathan
1 Banefire
4 Spell pierce
4 Negate
2 Deathmark

Round 1 vs Naya Aggro (L 1-2) : 0-1
Notes: G1 won because of hard-casted Extractor Demons (unsual win condition). G2 and G3 mulled to 4 and just got beat down by his creatures. In the 3 games, not 1 hedron crab nor crypt of agadeem came into play! I guess this was just bad luck or bad shuffling.

Round 2 vs UG Control (W 2-1) : 1-1
Notes: Sided in banefire and for all the risk and minimum chance of drawing banefire, I drew the card in crucial times. The crypt was not shy in this round.

Round 3 vs MonoW Soldiers (L 1-2) : 1-2
Notes: It's difficult to race with the tokens generated by conqueror's pledge. The lack of removal spells in the deck made it hard to keep up especially when there are no hedron crabs to fuel your graveyard early in the game. Toolittle basic lands in mainboard resulting to non-fetching of lands with PTE.

Round 4 vs USA Control (W 2-0) : 2-2
Notes: Good sideboarding made his luminarch ascension useless in the board. Players usually think that you use the hedron crabs and tomescour to fuel your graveyard with unearth creatures. But instead I experimented of milling the opponent and hard-casting creatures to use up his removals and counters. Rotting rats is really powerful against control decks.

Round 5 vs GW Aggro (L 0-2) : 2-3
Notes: The late setup nature of the deck made it difficult to take care of early game exalted attackers. The usual answer is to race with the opponent by unearthing your biggies early instead of waiting for one big strike.

Overall notes: The deck was really really fun to use and I think there is a big potential for the deck. A good fix in the lands will accommodate more basic lands for the fetches and for PTEs. Only 3 cards in the sideboard were used. Most of the sideboard cards were not meant for the metagame of the city.