Source: Inquest #30 (Oct 1997), p.37; author: Jeff Hannes

"Black Weenie has always been a strong tournament deck.  In the early days, Bad Moon was the key card, then it was Necropotence, and now it's Weatherlight's Buried Alive.  The basic premise is the same - overrun your opponent with a horde of cheap creatures.  However, Buried Alive puts a new twist on this old concept.

CONCEPT
Two key cards make the Buried Alive strategy work: Ashen Ghoul and Nether Shadow.  Both can be put directly into play if there are three or more creatures above them in the graveyard, and both are unaffected by summoning sickness.

The Buried Alive strategy is so effective because it defies the creature-elimination strategy of most opposing decks.  Unless your opponent offs your creatures with Swords to Plowshares or Dissipates, your Shadows and Ghouls are going to come back.  Mass-kill spells like Wrath of God or even your own Nevinyrral's Disk hardly slow the deck down.

BASICS
Every Buried Alive deck starts with Buried Alive, but you don't need four of 'em; three usually works.  However, you will want to go with from two to four Nether Shadows and four Ashen Ghouls.  Any less and you're short-changing the strategy.  From there on the deck is fairly flexable.

You'll want plenty more weenies, somewhere upwards of 20 creatures total.  Good candidates include Black Knight, Knight of Stromgald, Erg Raiders, Fallen Askari and utility cards like Nekrataal and Krovikan Horror.  A couple of decks also utilize Necratogs, although these guys are only good for a late-game surge, since removing creatures from your graveyard takes away your recursion.

Contagion is probably the best creautre removal spell available, since it works well against a variety of decks (including other Buried Alive decks), but Drain Life and Dark Banishing can also be useful.  For enchantments and artifacts, a Nevinyrral's Disk or two never hurts.

Other cards to consider adding include Bad Moon, Choking Sands, Necropotence and discard cards like Stupor and Coercion.  The Buried Alive decks that include Necropotence tend to have no more than two in the deck,

Another option is to use painlands and / or Undiscovered Paradises to add a second colour.  Red can supply direct-damage, blue offers counter-magic in the form of Arcane Denials and white lets you use Disenchants instead of Disks.

You won't need four Dark Rituals.  The deck is very fast on its own, and unless you draw the Rituals early, they become fairly worthless later.

WEAKNESSES
The biggest weakness this deck has is against cards that take creatures out of the graveyard or prevent them from getting there.  Most notably, Phyrexian Furnace is becoming a popular sideboard card.  AEther Flash also poses problems to the deck, as it can completely shut down the Ghoul / Shadow recursion.  Fortunately, two Bad Moons nullify the Flash (and make your opponent die that much quicker).

AGAINST THE FIELD
Counter / Post:  Lots of weenies that come back from the grave is usually too much for a Counter / Post deck and, since Counter / Post already has four Wraths in the main deck, there's not much left to pull from the sideboard.

Maro-geddon: Before sideboarding, 'Geddon has the upper hand.  The Whirling Dervishes are often too much.  After sideboarding, it's a race to see which shows up first - the CoP: Black or the Gloom.  If it's the latter, Buried Alive will usually come out on top.

Sligh: Unless you get a quick start with an early Buried Alive, the Sligh deck is too fast.  The Sligh player has enough burn to blow your creatures away while pounding on you with their own creatures and your sideboard usually won't offer much help."