The Hellcows Revisited

So, I have been using my Minotaurs deck for a few weeks now, playing it, testing it and trying to make steady improvements to it. It has played in games against my workmate, it has played in games at Nebula Custom Gaming, and it has played in games against my brother too. In all of these games the deck has held it's own, winning around 50% of the games it has played (perhaps even a little more). Why have I gone ahead and said all of that? Because I want to write about the deck list! So here is the decklist as it stands for my newly christened Hellcow's Hammers:

LANDS

• 4 x Rakdos Guildgate
• 11 x Mountain
• 7 x Swamp

CREATURES

• 2 x Gnarled Scarhide
• 2 x Ragemonger
• 4 x Kragma Warcaller
• 2 x Felhide Petrifier
• 3 x Deathbellow Raider
• 3 x Oracle of Bones
• 3 x Ragebood Shaman.

OTHER SPELLS

• 2 x Searing Blood
• 2 x Magma Spray
• 2 x Sinister  Possession
• 2 x Doom Blade
• 3 x Stab Wound
• 2 x Flurry of Horns
• 2 x Shock
• 2 x Fall of the Hammer
• 2 x Lightning Strike

SIDEBOARD

• 1 x Flurry of Horns
• 2 x Felhide Brawler
• 2 x Lightning Strike
• 2 x Drown in Sorrow
• 2 x Minotaur Skullcleaver
• 2 x Duress
• 2 x Pharika's Cure
• 2 x Dark Betrayal

So, there are three things that are immediately obviously different about this deck list from the original:

1) There is now a side board. The original was a 60 card Intro Pack deck, and so did not include a sideboard.

2) There has been significant concentration of cards. The numbers of certain cards have been upped considerably, whilst some that were only present as singles before have been removed.

3) The non creature spell suite has been altered considerably. Several of the previous Instant and Sorcery spells were very expensive for their effect, and some were down right bad cards (I'm looking at you Lightning Diadem).

The creature cards have undergone considerable revision whilst I have been playing the deck. One thing that quickly became apparent was that single cards (like the Fanatic of Mogis, Rageblood Shaman, and others) were not coming out often enough to make them reliable. My choice was either to acquire more copies of said card or cut them out altogether and replace them copies of other minotaurs. In the case of the Rageblood Shaman and the Felhide Petrifier, I upped their counts to 3 and 2 respectively, whilst removing the Fanatic of Mogis, and the Warchanter of Mogis altogether. I found both of these creatures to be somewhat expensive and their tricks too situational for my style of play.

Warchanter of Mogis: one of the cards removed from the deck altogether, as I found it too expensive and it's ability too situational to be useful.

A major change in the creatures was the decision to remove all of the non minotaur creatures altogether. This meant that the foil rare from Voracious Rage, Spawn of Thraxes, has been cut as it was very expensive. Whilst Spawn did give the deck some flying and it made a splash when it came onto the board, it had no real synergy with the minotaurs and so he was cut. Along with the unfortunate dragon, Insatiable Harpy and Pharika's Chosen were also removed: the harpy due to her being a single card that was replaced by minotaur duplicates, and Pharika's Chosen was directly replaced by Gnarled Scarhide in the one drop slot.

The non creature cards underwent a major overhaul whilst play testing. Flurry of Horns and Magma Jet stay as they were (although one more copy of Flurry was added to the sideboard), and Searing Blood was increased from 1 to 2 to make it more viable. However the remainder of the spell suite was removed for various reasons: like the aforementioned Lightning Diadem is just a bad card, over-costed, and weak. Other cards such as Rollick of Abandon or Pinnacle of Rage were just expensive for what they did, and were also only singles, so their utility was limited.

Poor old Lightning Diadem, just plain bad as a card.

There are still some areas for improvement I feel. I want to increase the number of Ragemongers as they really are a very handy card, both for reducing summoning costs and also acting as removal bait. The Boros Reckoner would be an obvious (but expensive) card to add to the deck. The fact it is a minotaur counts heavily in it's favour, but the fact it rotates out of Standard in October counts against it (since it is a £6 card, so £24 for a playset). The spell suite has a number of areas I think I could improve, with possibly getting rid of Sinister Possession and replacing it with something more deadly, such as  2 more Doom Blades. However, I do feel like this deck is nearing completion and is probably 95% of the way toward where I want it to be. Well, at least until Standard updates in October!