Decks That Are Cool

I have been a naughty boy. It's been almost two weeks since my last post, because I got tired of putting links to every single card I mentioned. But now I've figured out a way to do it easily, so I'm back – for now. I'm going to California for a week starting tomorrow. Owned.

For now, then, I'm just going to talk about some decks I've made recently. I spent several hours trying to figure out how to post decklists without having to do the whole thing manually, but I failed. So you'll just get the usual – a description of the deck's general function and important cards. The format I'll use for the deck names will be "Color Type Name," where T2 is Standard, T1 is Extended, and T0 is Legacy. (I know 1.5 and 1 are usually used for Extended and Legacy, but I am too cool for decimals.)

BG T2 Deathling
This deck is fairly slow to get going, but the idea is to attach a Thornbite Staff to a dude with Changeling, then give your Changelings deathtouch with Wren's Run Packmaster, since they'll all be wolves. (Moonglove Changeling doesn't even need the Packmaster, though he has to activate his deathtouch.) Then your dude has, essentially, "2: Destroy target creature." And that should be enough for victory. Gilt-Leaf Palace and Murmuring Bosk are nice because you'll very often be able to play them untapped.

BR T0 Goblin Game
This is a completely ridiculous deck based on the combination of Goblin Game and Wound Reflection. If you can play Goblin Game while you have a Wound Reflection in play, you can often pick a number of objects that will guarantee your opponent's doom. As long as you have one more than half your opponent's life, you can pick a number two below your life total and your opponent will die no matter what number he picks. Example: you have 14 life and your opponent has 20. You hide 12 objects. If your opponent hides 12 or fewer objects, he'll lose at least half his life, and Wound Reflection will kill him. If he hides more than 12 objects, he'll lose that much life…which is more than half his life, and Wound Reflection will kill him. You, on the other hand, will only lose at most 13 life, leaving you with 1. Of course, this deck is weak against almost everything, but Goblin Game is hilarious enough that it totally doesn't matter. Most of my "T0" decks sacrifice effectiveness for hilarity, and I regret nothing. In order to get the massive amounts of mana necessary to play both of these spells, the deck is packed with mana spells, as well as the awesome combo of Cathodion + Burnt Offering. The lifelink guys help you keep your life at least half as high as your opponent's so that you can use the main combo. A barrel of lulz.

GU T0 Pool Party
Another ineffective deck, this one is based around the mana pool. Upwelling is the main force behind the deck, allowing you to build up mana over time. Doubling Cube makes a large mana reserve into a nigh inexhaustible one. Pygmy Hippo can steal your enemy's mana, preventing them from abusing your own Upwelling. There are a bunch of buyback spells to give you control of the board, which lets you get your weak creatures through to slowly wear your opponent down to death. I've played this deck a few times, but it has never even come close to working. I love it.

UR T0 Stroke of Mirror Harvest
Another inane combo deck. This one is named for Stroke of Genius, Mirror Sheen, and Early Harvest. Once you have 6 mana (from at least 3 blue and 2 green sources) with Mirror Sheen in play, play Early Harvest. Copy it with Mirror Sheen, then let the copy resolve. Your lands magically untap! Then copy Early Harvest again, and float the rest of your mana. Repeat until you have infinite mana, then play Stroke of Genius on your opponent. Mind Spring and Dimir Guildmage can help you get Stroke of Genius, and various Elves help you get the required 6 mana to start the combo. Not wonderfully interesting, but I thought it was cool.

GU T1 Proteus Staff
OH MAN. I love this one, even if it is rather clunky. The main combo is Proteus Staff + Squirrel Nest. Make a Squirrel, then staff it. Whatever creature you end up getting (the only ones in the deck are various Elemental Incarnations and Darksteel Colossus), it will be totally awesome. Impromptu Raid is great since it lets you get more dudes out, and when all your guys have 6 or more power and trample/fear/flying, haste is great. And when you have to sacrifice a dude, he just gets shuffled back in. Cream of the Crop can help provide fresh targets for Impromptu Raid. You can Polymorph your Darksteel Colossus to get another dude easily. A few draw/discard spells let you get rid of the usually unplayable dudes in your hand and replace them with useful stuff. Although sometimes there is conflict between Cream of the Crop and the shuffling of dudes into your library, it is usually not a problem, especially as you get more pieces.

GW T0 Saffi
Another goofy combo deck. The main combo has three parts: Saffi Eriksdotter, Altar of Dementia or Blasting Station, and Karmic Guide. Get one of each of these on the board. Then, sacrifice Saffi to the artifact targeting the Guide. Then sacrifice the Guide, who comes back into play, bringing Saffi with him. Repeat until pwning has occurred. There's also another combo recommended by Brendan, consisting of one of the aforementioned artifacts plus Eternal Witness and Aluren. With one Witness in play and one in your hand, sacrifice the one in play to the artifact. Play the other for free, return the dead one to your hand, repeat until pwning has occurred.

R T1 Chargehead
The theme is charge counters, not surprisingly. Not much to say about this…it was originally based around Ion Storm as the main win condition, but Darksteel Reactor and Chimeric Egg can also do things. Most of the rest of the stuff is for producing charge counters, moving them around, or using them to get the main kill cards. It's cool, though.

U T0 Cryptic Rape
The title "Cryptic Rape" is perhaps misleading, because it does nothing of the sort. This deck was based on a cool premise, but is extremely clunky. The idea is to get Cryptic Gateway and two Changelings. Then you can play various awesome dudes for free, because they'll all share creature types with your Changelings. Shapesharer is nice because he can double as a Clone of one of your big dudes. If you get Grozoth, you can immediately tutor a ton of awesome dudes (such as Bringers). I took Intruder Alarm out of this deck despite its power to allow you to dump an entire deck's worth of creatures into play in one turn. I don't remember quite why. I think it was a bad choice.

U T1 Erayo
If you thought Cryptic Rape was bad…you were right. But this one is worse. The goal is to get a flipped Erayo, Soratami Ascendant and an Arcane Laboratory in play. Then, the first and only spell your opponent can play each turn will be countered, effectively preventing him from playing spells altogether (albeit with some exceptions, such as Replicate). One problem with this deck is that you have to be able to play four spells in a turn, but there are a bunch of 0-mana spells for that purpose. Still, it can take a while to set up. Another problem is that you can't play the Laboratory before Erayo, or you'll never be able to flip Erayo. Another is that even when you get them both active, your opponent might still have an army of creatures or a dangerous assortment of artifacts and enchantments. Azorius Aethermage is intended to take care of pesky activated abilities, and Boomerang to remove the threat of creatures, but it's tenuous. Also, the Aethermages are themselves the win condition, so if you lose them, you have no way to actually win, unless your opponent happens to be drawing more cards. A massive pile of suck, but maybe it has potential to turn into something almost palatable.

U T2 Islandwalk
Finally, a deck that can almost be considered "good." And what's more, it's Standard-legal. This deck was inspired by Cold-Eyed Selkie, and evolved into an Islandwalk-fest. It's a blue deck, but it splashes the tiniest bit of white for Sygg, River Guide. Most of the creatures have Islandwalk, and there are a few ways to ensure that it is useful. It is quite lucky (or perhaps sneaky on the part of the designers) that Stonybrook Banneret and Merrow Harbinger both have Islandwalk, because they are extremely useful to any Merfolk deck. With mass unblockability and card draw, this deck actually seems to be pretty decent.

UB T1 Underworld Dreams
This was originally an Underworld Dreams deck, but soon became a Megrim deck as well. With a mere one of each of these in play, Wistful Thinking deals TEN damage, as well as its rather powerful regular effect. The rest is basically just stuff to make your opponent draw and discard, but Mind's Eye is a nice addition, since you can trigger it using your own spells that force opponents to draw. It's a bit slow and fragile, but neat.

UR T0 Dream Halls
I absolutely LOVE this one. Dream Halls is of course the main card, but I am very proud of my discovery that the Eidolons could make this deck amazing. Dream Halls is blue, but there aren't any other spells that require another color; I chose red at first because it is awesome, but then I realized that I could do whatever color or colors I wanted, so I made three more variations of this deck with each of the other colors and blue. Anyway, the idea is to get Dream Halls and ideally two Eidolons in hand. Then you can play another spell for free discarding one Eidolon. When you play another spell for free discarding the second Eidolon, the first one returns to your hand, since pretty much all the spells are multicolored (since that's the whole point of using Eidolons in the first place). With two Eidolons, you can play any of your expensive and powerful spells for free. I chose spells that help you draw more cards as well as doing something awesome, and I threw in Kaervek the Merciless because he is just so awesome. And if you don't have two Eidolons, you can often play a spell with your regular mana (which would just go to waste anyway) and get your one Eidolon back, or hopefully draw one. Unfortunately Dream Halls might be very useful to your opponent, which can be dangerous. But hopefully, it will be more useful to you, and tempting enough to your opponent that he will think twice about Disenchanting it.

WB T1 Teysa
And finally, another one I really like. The main combo is Teysa, Orzhov Scion and Painter's Servant, naming black. Then all your white creatures are black, and any of them that die will give you white (and black) spirits. If you have three or more, you can use Teysa's first ability indefinitely, wiping the board for free. Spectral Procession helps to accomplish this. But that's not all. There is also a Sliver theme, using Hivestone and Necrotic Sliver plus Basal Sliver to make you a pwning machine. With those guys plus Teysa, the Servant, and one spirit, you can destroy ANY permanent for free. Sacrifice the spirit-Sliver using Basal Sliver's ability to get two mana...and a new spirit-Sliver. Repeat until you have, say, 6 mana, then sacrifice your spirit-Sliver using Necrotic Sliver's ability to destroy a pair of permanents. Oh, and Blasting Station can also be used to go infinite. Lots of components, but they work together nicely. Ward Sliver is a great help too.

Well, that was certainly a lot of decks (thirteen! holy crap!) but I hope it makes up for my long silence. I welcome comments, criticisms, advice, or any other form of feedback to help me improve my decks. Please?

Seven Games of Chaos

Last night, I played some Magic (over Magic Workstation) with my internet friend mAc Chaos. He had only learned MWS recently, and so he only had a few decks, but we played a total of seven games. Allow me to tell you about them!

For the first game, I chose an all-Eventide white-black hybrid deck that I had created by simply throwing a bunch of white-black hybrid cards together and calling it a deck. He played a version of Astral Slide, a famous deck which I had heard of but never seen.

I started out with Nip Gwyllion, immediately enchanting it with Edge of the Divinity. Since his deck was a little slower, I got quite a bit of damage through before he managed to get rid of it. However, by that time I had the advantage of momentum, and my Nightsky Mimics and Voracious Hatchlings gobbled him up.

In the next game, I wasn't so lucky. Everything I played got burned away before it could deal significant damage, and even though my Gwyllion Hedge-Mages seemed to disturb him, Astral Slide took care of the tokens with ease, and Lightning Rift finished off everything else. So I died.

Then for the next game, I switched to a Lorwyn/Shadowmoor all-Enchantment deck I had, hoping that my Runed Halos and Declarations of Naught would permanently protect me from his Lightning Rifts and Exalted Angels. However, since all he had done with most of his cycling cards in the previous games was cycle them, I hadn't really paid attention to what they actually DID. So when he Wiped me Clean, there wasn't much I could do. And with Astral Slide, I couldn't even make Hoofprints of the Stag tokens without them dying instantly. So I died.

Then after a break, we switched decks. He played black Clerics, and I played a white Cleric combo deck based on Nomads en-Kor, Daru Spiritualist, and Worthy Cause (with plenty of backups), plus Test of Endurance to seal the deal. This is a cheap (in the sense of low mana cost, but also, arguably, in the sense of lame) combo I learned from a friend. Here's how it works: the Nomads can use their redirection ability targeting the Spiritualist. Even though the ability won't necessarily do anything, the Spiritualist's ability still triggers, and he gains +0/+2. Since the Nomads' ability costs 0, I can continue doing this until the Spiritualist's toughness is arbitrarily high. Then I use Worthy Cause to sacrifice the Spiritualist, gaining however much life I feel like. Then, of course, if I can play Test of Endurance and keep it there for a turn, I just win. And if not, then hopefully the fact that my deck is 90 cards will keep me alive long enough to deck the opponent, since most of my creatures are not especially strong.

Anyway, I started off with a couple of Children of Korlis to protect me until I could get the combo out. Mac had various awesome Clerics like Withered Wretch, Cabal Archon, and Dark Supplicant. However, I eventually got the combo off, and he scooped.

I didn't want to play that deck again since it's not really that fun, and it's much less exciting when the opponent knows exactly what you're up to. So I switched to an experimental blue-red-black deck I had recently made that was based on Underworld Dreams plus Wheel of Fortune-type effects. However, I never drew Underworld Dreams, so I just sat there while he broke my face. I don't plan on playing that deck much in the future.

Then I switched once more, to a mono-red Elemental deck that can have a very fast start and has some quite potent synergies. As I played, I even discovered an awesome two-card combo (sort of): Flamekin Harbinger and Nova Chaser. Just champion the Harbinger with the Chaser, then charge, and when he dies, the Harbinger comes back into play, allowing you to summon up another Chaser. I only had 2 Nova Chasers in my deck at the time, so I couldn't make quite as good use of this combo as I had wanted to, but I later put two more Chasers in for the future. The deck also has Incandescent Soulstoke, Rite of Flame, and Smokebraider to get it going very quickly. But the real point of the deck was to combine one of my all-time favorite cards, Grinning Ignus, with guys like Cinder Pyromancer (conveniently also an Elemental) and Balefire Liege. With either of these in play, you can pop the Ignus repeatedly to hurl damage at your opponent's head without even having to attack. In the first game, though, Nova Chaser did most of the work, with Cinder Pyromancer just cleaning up.

The next game (a rematch) didn't go quite so well in my favor, but I managed to abuse my deck's synergies as ruthlessly as possible. Even his dreaded Scion of Darkness died before it could do any real damage. This game lasted a while with a lot of trading back and forth, and we both got down to 1 life, but I managed to draw more dudes and finish him off.

So that's my report. I really enjoy playing a wide variety of decks, and I got to play 5 different decks that night, so it was quite fun. It was also useful to learn what worked and what didn't in various decks; the Underworld Dreams deck turned out to be pretty much useless (since the card advantage it gives the opponent often vastly offsets the damage they're dealt), and I discovered new synergies in other decks that I hadn't noticed before (the Nova Chaser/Flamekin Harbinger one in particular). I won't bother with posting decklists, since I described the basic function and important cards of each deck. (Also, I don't have Mac's decklists, and we both modified our decks afterward, so any decklists I posted wouldn't even be complete or accurate.) I'm excited to play more, and I've already thrown together some new decks. I'll also try to make some more hilarious decks; my Cleric combo and all-Enchantment decks were intended to be hilarious, but one was just rather straightforward and the other got completely destroyed. But I have plenty more up my sleeve; and for that reason, I'm off to the tailor to get these rips in my sleeve mended.

Knowledge

It's been almost a week since my last post. Before that, I was posting an article a day quite consistently. What's the deal? Where are the posts about Eventide's White-Black and Black-Green cards?

Well, I realized that I have nothing to say. All I can do in these Eventide posts is look at the cards and say "oh they're cool." I don't know anything about Standard. I don't know how well they'll do, and I don't immediately see interesting combos. I really just don't know.

Now, the Lorwyn articles were a little better. I did know something, because I backed it up with hard data. I made a few errors, sure, and I didn't know what the ultimate significance of my study was (again, a product of my lack of knowledge about the game), but I had information I wanted to share, and I succeeded. Those were good.

But this Eventide prediction stuff just isn't for me. I enjoy talking about cards, and even thinking about how they might interact, but you won't get much value out of it. Just the ramblings of a newbie. This thought occurred to me most profoundly when I was reading articles on MtG's very own website, some of which were, indeed, about Eventide cards and the impact of Eventide on Standard, etc. But when I mentally compared my own articles to theirs, I wasn't saying anything new. I was just saying that they were cool, whereas the professional writers of articles for Wizards' website said that they were cool AND were able to explain why.

Now, I want this blog to be about Magic. But I also want it to be about me. I want the articles to be about how I perceive the game, and about the aspects of it that I like, but there are limits to what this should mean. It's true that the Eventide articles expressed my own opinions, and for that reason, at least, they have some value. But my opinion was mixed with information, information which I was quite unqualified to analyze and interpret. So, although I would have continued the Eventide articles for the sake of expressing my own interests and talking about which cards I thought were cool, I'm not going to. I don't want my articles to be the musings of an amateur, passionate though I may be.

So that's why I haven't written anything for a while. When I thought, "hm, I should write a blog post," it was mixed with other thoughts, too: "but I don't really know what I'm talking about, which is unfair to my readers, few though they may be;" and "I don't really care that much about black-green, I'd just be half-heartedly finishing a cycle for the sake of closure." And those aren't good thoughts. So I'm not going to write those posts.

So now the question is: what next? Do I crank out more statistics? Do I talk only about cards I know? Do I just repeat the words of others? Or do I stop altogether?

Nope. If I have any more inspirations like the Lorwyn/Shadowmoor color/creature type study, I'll certainly pursue them, but I'm not going to go chasing after statistics about things I don't really care about. And I'm not going to stop altogether either. I've come this far; I'll think of something.

And I have! One thing I CAN write about with confidence and accuracy is my own experiences. As fun as it might be to spout predictions and evaluations, I have no experience with them, rendering them ultimately meaningless. But if I talk about things I have experienced, I can be sure to stay true to my purpose. So I'll talk about decks I've made (be they physical or online), and the decks I've played them against. And I can talk about the cards in them, and how they work in that deck, and if they don't, why not. I can talk about cool ideas for decks, or ones I've seen that I admired.

Now, this pushes the blog in another direction: decks. Before, I was talking about sets and cards; there is nary a mention of decks in my previous posts. So this will be a change. But even if I am terrible at deckbuilding, and my opponent is too, and we are both playing casually, I can still learn things about cards, and about deckbuilding, and I can pass on this knowledge. It may not be crucial knowledge, and it won't help aspiring Pro Tour players, but it will be fulfilling to me, and hopefully useful to casual players, new players, or just players who are looking for something new. So, for the next few articles, at least, I will probably be talking about decks. And that's all I have to say.