House of Many Dead Men - 1st place OCTGN & WI Peace Keeper

aka: "Every day I'm shufflin'"

Took this fun list to win the OCTGN Peace Keeper league, and a modified version of this to win the Madison Peace Keeper event. Turns out it is not well suited for a timed 55 minute physical-play environment, as all my wins in the Madison event were at time, but it is particularly well suited to OCTGN where shuffling is instant, and you get full points even for a win at time (just the way the challengeboards.net site is set up).

And shuffle you will - oooh the shuffles! With House of Many Faiths, plus Ezekiah Grimme, plus the card cycle of Asakichi Cooke plus Randall you will be shuffling your deck at least 2 times per day, sometimes more.

This home is fantastically suited for a Dead Mans Hand structure. Yes, that means you need aces in your deck, and miracles will fail some of the time. But as long as you don't need to depend on miracles always being successful (none are particularly crucial in this deck), then you have an engine to get exactly what you need when you need it.

The first half of the game you will consistently put your OoT deeds and miracles back into the deck, and the 2nd half once many of your non-DMH cards on are the table, you'll be putting exactly the pieces of your DMH back into the deck that you need. It is incredible how powerful this is, albeit at the price of it being overall a slow process.

In one league game against Doomdog I got 8 DMH's, and he also got 5 - total of 13 DMH's in one game! In my first of three games of the OCTGN finals against Russell I got 6 DMH's, which took me to a long-fought victory, the 2nd game I only got 1 DMH and not coincidentally lost that game (I think I was getting into shootouts too early, instead of waiting until more non-DMH cards were on the able - plus Russell did very well with positioning, aggression, and consistent legal 4ofK's).

The 3rd game of the finals was very interesting, as Russell did all sorts of jobs that ended up acing not only my dudes, but my miracles and my DMH structure-cards. A combination of kidnappins, Election Day Slaughter, Sight Beyond Sight, and Burn 'Em Out really decimated me early, and there were a few turns in a row where I was about to concede. Especially when his Burn em Out got my Steven Wiles, it was a particularly huge blow. Normally this deck has Wiles on the board nearly every turn. With 4 Hired Guns, 4 Wiles, and the home ability to get them if you need them, he's essentially a 1-2 upkeep, ever-present dude, and a very important shooter for the deck. I didn't give up only because my last hope of T'ou Chi Chow is also huge for the deck, and he did end up coming out eventually and helping pave the way for some DMH's (not too many, maybe 3 or so over many various shootout rounds) and ultimately victory.

What would I change?

There's a lot of ways this deck can go. The intial version was more of a quasi-slide, with a bunch more deeds filling the non-DMH values. Rumors is good for that build. But I do like this version the most, and about the only change I'd make is to put in 2 more This'll Hurt in the Mornin' in place of the Reserves. Money is almost never a problem with so many OoT deeds - at the end of game 3 I was at 80+ ghost rock (partially because I wasn't able to play Wiles).

Otherwise if you are a fast shuffler and want to take this to a 55-minute event, I would tighten up the draw structure just a bit so you can fight earlier.

Otherwise for casual play, this deck can easily survive against just about anything for a solid 40 minutes or so as you play OoT deeds and miracles - influence from Wiles, plus the home, plus Amazing Grace, plus eventually the influence of Xui Yin Chen and T'ou Chi Chow mean you can rack up a ton of influence very quickly. Lost to the Plague is there almost exclusively for Allie Hensman, which is about the only way this deck can be consistently beaten otherwise. Then at that point you can have enough cards on the table to almost be gauranteed a DMH in every single round of shootouts. You just need to pay attention to whats in the discard and your hand, and use the home to put the most needed pieces in. Pretty hard to beat a legal rank 11 every round!

I do like the balance of the home in that you cannot depend on your miracles if you go with the DMH structure, otherwise if you could consistently cast things like Get Behind Me, Satan! and Shield of Faith then it would be over powered. I like how this deck plays out in that the miracles are mostly fuel for the home, and are a nice little bonus when they do go off. As a quick side mention, I did almost lose game 3 of the OCTGN finals because a Censure failed, which lead to a casualty on my side and Wiles getting aced from my hand - so it is of course a risk to play aces with miracles. But at least a vast majority of the time they should not be depended upon.

Overall, though, I would relegate this deck to more casual games with more time to build up, and more time to eventually enjoy the consistent, unrelenting DMH's!