What Has Everyone Else Been Playing Lately?

[MFletch]

Canyon Minotaurs strictly worse Rubblebelt Maaka. If you like cats.
Also maaka is reasonable in modern and legacy, where 3 damage for 1 mana is ok.
Then in standard it gives monored different lines of play.

Vanilla creatures, or vanilla creatures with downside, need to be really cheap to be worth while.

Also I feel slivers will make quite a good standard deck when they come around. Purely based on the power of double strike.

[Zero]

Vanilla creatures are generally pretty bad unless they've got p/t higher than their mana cost. But even then, cards like Loxodon Smiter and Deadbridge Goliath offer more than just fat bodies.

[IGfanatic]

I was able to get my hands on some better commons like 2 electrickery'd (deal 1 damage to target creature for 1 red or pay 2 to deal 1 damage to all enemy creatures) and 4 Krenko's command (2 1/1 goblins for 2). Also have more creatures with haste (like 4 arc runners).

Current combo's are...
Sac a goblin token with a red spell to get 3 more mana, play arc runner and another boost spell to give it +1/+1 and double strike. Total mana cost to pull it off, min 3. This does 12 damage with haste.
Zap a goblin and use brimstone volley (i think) to deal 5 damage for 4 mana. If my opponent has a small creature I'll zap that instead with a lightning burst.

Goblin Tunneler allows a single creature with power 2 or less to be unblockable. I have this one goblin that's a 2/1 with first strike and must attack each turn. Or this other one thay is a 1/1 but can sac itself if it dealt damage to an opponent to deal three more. Goblin tunneler ensures it gets there.

That's all I can remember off the top of my head. This deck has a hard time against token spam in the long run and if my opponent has fogs then my hard hitting arc runners with buffs are useless from game 2 and onwards.

[Genevaman]

My mono-black modern Zombie deck recently trounced a legacy GW Elf ramp deck 3-0 the other day. I don't consider it to be particularly competitive (the priciest card in the deck is Death Baron after all) but it still hasn't been beaten in two out of three despite matching up against UB Affinity, UW control and Jund a few times now. I'd say that gives it some bragging rights all things considered.

[Zero]

I totally know what I'm doing come M14. The new Garruk + Angel of Serenity + maybe Domri Rade if I want to run red, or just go black and feed the Lotleth Troll a billion tokens.

On this, some help would be appreciated. Naya or Junk? Or 4 colour? Pretty sure midrange is where this deck's at, Planeswalkers, mana dorks and fatties considered. Naya gives us Domri Rade, burn, and that 4/4 with Trample and Bloodrush that I can't think of off the top of my head, though I can totally picture the art. Black gives us the almighty Lotleth Troll, which in itself is a card that hurts control and aggro pretty equally, and is a major threat late game for a 2 mana creature. We also get all the nice removal in Abrupt Decay, Putrefy and Doom Blade.

I'm thinking about mostly Junk with a splash of red for Domri though. 2 drops will probably consist of Lotleth Troll and Voice of Resurgence once it drops in price. Probably run some Varolz too for value out of discarded creatures.

EDIT: Ghore-Clan Rampager. That's the guy.

DOUBLE-EDIT: Misread Garruk, you can only play Green creatures with his -3. HOWEVER, Worldspine Wurm, HERE I COME!

[MFletch]

I guess zombies works like legacy werewolves and merfolk, where you bring enough power to the board with a little bit of hate bears as legacy decks tend not to be ready for full blown creature battles.

The new garruk can only cheat green creatures into play. So it does not combo well with angel of serenity. If there was some form of heart of darkness or omniscience card printed then angel would combo well with garruk.
You could possibly try all the ramp creatures to go large amount of mana for garruk with large number of creatures for garruk to hit. This would also work well maybe Ruric Thar.
My guess is that garruk will live in a world of perfect mana, so everybody will just bring deadbridge chant in their side board as the green 6 mana card draw engine instead of garruk.
If you consider unburial rites decks, where they can cheat any creature into play, they choose only creatures they can be reasonably hard cast and 7/8 mana creatures need to take over the game. If you were cheating large green creatures you just need more powerful targets then are currently printed in standard.

You'll want to concentrate on angel of serenity and voices if building midrange, I fear midrange decks may struggle without the safety net of thragtusk.

[Zero]

I've been playing with Deadbridge Chant in a deck dedicated to it, and it's a pretty solid card, but I don't know how good it would be in a deck just for the sake of drawing more cards. I've been playing it with Deathrite Shamans and Varolz to thin out the graveyard for the random stuff, but it's more of a fun deck than anything. Still, I think it could possibly get to Rites proportions when Scavenging Ooze comes out if one could learn to play it and work out the right configuration of digging/Scavenging/viable targets and threats/removal needed for the deck to work.

[MFletch]

Currently deadbridge chant is only being used like staff of nin, as a one of in sideboards for midrange/control match ups where they just want a little extra card draw to pull through the late game.
The comparison is getting a random card from a graveyard is a similar level to a random card from your library.
Deadbridge chant for extra card draw but never mainboard as you die to aggro decks.

[Zero]

In a dedicated deck, I've got to disagree. Deathrite Shaman comes with plenty of built-in life gain and against aggro, you play like a control deck with creatures in the early game, happily trading 1-for-1 and using spot-removal on proper threats, or just blocking with Lotleth Troll or Desecration Demon. Because once Deadbridge Chant hits, I potentially get all those cards back, or at least the ones I need. So all the trading is fruitless for the aggro deck.

I also splash blue and run Forbidden Alchemy and Supreme Verdict.

[Bone2pick]

Typed up a long post about some test games yesterday and then when to preview and somehow lost everything.

Oh well. The quick update: My zombies are no longer bug as they dropped Duskmantle Seer for a splash of red for Aristocrat. It's a better deck now.