Kinda looks like Hamlet...

[CanadianBrad]

I'm posting this up for a couple reasons.

1) In the spirit of me joining the CPA, I'm going to build a new deck, which will also serve to learn about green(I've never played green before, or even looked hard at the cards).
2) Turgy sent me a pro explanation of how to link to Gatherer card descriptions, so I'd like to test that out, to see if I'm capable of understanding such things(here's hoping, right?).
3) He's just so friggin' cool.

Deathrite Shaman

This seems like a solid buy for one split mana. Being a 1/2 one-drop, you can hit with it right out of the gate against most creature decks, and can withstand blocking by a 1/1. But the real gems are the abilities. In addition to the life-gain, and the straight non-combat damage to opponents, the abilities look like they'd have solid applications in mill decks, for that stuff that you really want all-the-way gone. For my money, I'll throw him in with Liliana of the Veil, because her ultimate just seems like a natural progression.

Not sure what green offers for mill-deck opportunities yet(as this will be an undertaking of mine in the near future), but if you're going up against someone who likes resurrection spells, it's got some solid uses, and I could see this fitting in quite nicely with a red-green aggro deck that makes use of land destruction spells.

 

[Shabbaman]

There's always Mesmeric Orb and Mindcrank for mill if you're running green. Throw in Bloodchief Ascension and you've got half a deck. Deathrite Shaman is a great card (and pricey), but I'd say it's more a support card than a card to build your deck around.

 

[Oversoul]

Yeah, I concur with the support card thing. It's a very strong support card. One unfortunate limitation is that it can only hit instants, sorceries, creatures, and lands. That still lets exile most of the cards you'd be worried about opponents recurring with graveyard-based decks and it's most of the cards you'd want to clear from your own graveyard too, but still, it's a bit problematic in some situations. Slight antagonistic effect with Tarmogoyf, but possibly not bad enough that you wouldn't use them in the same deck. And you'd want to use them in the same deck because they're both ideal creatures for a black/green aggro-control deck. That's where I'd expect to see Deathrite Shaman. Works well with dredge, and I can see it being used in a more controlling deck with dredge cards (Life from the Loam, perhaps). It could hold opponents back from achieving threshold (the condition) for several turns, although not indefinitely. Great way to make use of spent fetchlands and the like for a bit of a tempo advantage. A good creature to use with Shardless Agent. The advantage of Deathrite Shaman is more that it's cheap and can do so many different things than that it does any one thing particularly well. Jack of all trades, master of none.