Brainstorming Deck Ideas (Standard)

[KouriNick]

So here's my 2 cents on the whole multi-colored deck idea. I'm going to start by talking about mono-colored decks, then move one to 2 colors, 3 colors and so forth.

So, the major benefit to a mono-colored deck is the mana is perfect. There's Zero reason to be unable to cast a card because of color requirement, and beyond that, mono-color open the deck up to colorless lands with effects (Westvale Abbey, Ghost Quarter and so forth) because the impact on being able to cast spells is minimal. You're also able to run all the best spells in that color regardless of mana requirement (Archangel of Tithes comes to mind). The downside though, is you're stuck to just that color, and can't get the support from other colors that your color may be lacking.

Two colors fixes a lot of the problems with mono-color. You can now run the best cards from two different colors and have the colors synergize and pick up where one falls off. The mana base is easy enough in standard that it can pretty easily be done with no extra slots devoted to mana fixing. you could probably even get away with just running basics. Cards like Archangel of Tithes are still playable... but are less likely to be auto include than in a mono colored deck.

Three colors are where things start getting tricky. Decks generally have a few options: 
1. Run 2 colors and splash the 3rd
2. Try to balance three three colors equally
Going with option 1 is usually the easiest, and is pretty much what's being done in Standard with Bant Company. The deck is primarily Green and White, and splashes Blue for Reflector Mage and Maybe Spell Queller and Tamiyo. Going this route makes the mana pretty easy still, as you can just run essentially a Green/White deck, but instead of basics, run dual that splash the third color and maybe a single basic in the splash. In this way the deck doesn't even need any special fixing.
The real problem is trying to do option 2. If all the colors matter equally, it becomes significantly easier to have dead cards in hand. This is where slots devoted to fixing start becoming important. Fork in the Road / vessel of nascency become important to ensuring the other colors are represented.

Now the real meat of the discussion... 4 colors... By no means is it impossible to have a successful deck that's 4 colors. and as G.Moto pointed out, there's plenty of good fixing in this standard to ensure you can reliably have your 4 colors very quickly. But lets take a second to look at the pros and cons of doing so.
By running 4 colors you can dive deep into a single synergy (like the sacrifice cycle outlet discussed in this thread), which is undoubtedly powerful. It also means we don't have to accept "decent" cards, because we can get the absolute "best" option from any of our 4 colors.
Now though, what are we giving up by going 4 colors? The main thing that comes out is deck slots. As G.Moto pointed out, there's plenty of fixing in this standard, but if we're running a lot of fixing, that means we're cutting cards that could be helping us win, as opposed to just stopping us from getting mana screwed. Getting our mana base all sorted out, and then drawing multiple Fork in The Road is definitely less than ideal. Every piece of fixing that goes in, means a threat or a removal spell comes out.

Now, if we want to make this guys work, the smoothest way would have to be as a 2 color deck that splashes the other 2. Green is going to have to be one of the primary color since it's where all the fixing is. From there we can pick the other primary, for simplicity sake, lets go with white. That means we're splashing for blue and Black. If the only blue card is Ghostly Wings, and the only black cards are The Gitrog Monster and Galvony Unhallowed, then this shouldn't be too bad. But if we try to branch heavier into those secondary colors, that's where we'll find real problems.

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read this novel of a comment. I hope it helped show some of the ups and downs of a 4 color deck. Of course I don't want to stifle the creative juices flowing here, but be mindful of the ups and downs of running that many colors.

Good luck

[G. Moto]

  @KouriNick, thank you for that well stated and informative post. You have very solid points and I agree with you there on all of them. Also depending on the colors being splashed you can change the mode of the deck:

W/G- Splash Blue and Black and you get a burn/aggro type of deck. The W/G is good for human/spirit builds and the splashed colors will give you the edge in a fight. For example, playing humans that have life link such as faithbearer paladin and then splashing the red for stensia masquerade. That's a sweet combo any day of the week.

B/G- Splash White and Blue and you get a control. Since the bases of the deck would be Golgari you could make the gitrog monster the heavy hitter of the deck. This way the Blue can be used to protect it and the land sac will give you extra cards.

G/U- Splash White and Black and you get almost a mid-ranged and possibly life gain/drain style of play. G/U investigate combo with cards such as bloodbriar and angelic purge are good ways to get value out of your cards.

    Some of these are simply ideas but once you choose the cards that you want to go into it your deck will be running smoothly. Just find out how you want to primarily run this deck and everything else will fall into place.

[robort]

So lets see what we got? hmmm...
Unruly Mob/Thalia's Lieutenant with Hanweir Garrison, added with Ironclad Slayer/Ghostly WIngs. Drop in Sigarda's Aid to give instant speed on Ghostly Wings. Then bring in Hanweir Battlements for haste and if need be meld with Hanweir Garrison. Bring in Westvale Abbey clause for the tokens. Secure the Wastes for more Unruly Mob Shenanigans and to help Westvale Abbey. Zulaport Cutthroat(also a human) for a small life gain threat. Vampiric Rites for the draw aspect of the deck, also good sac fodder/combo for Unruly Mob.
Lol 4 colors is nuts, but boy it looks good on paper.

Now to quote myself and this time lets stick to the exercise/topic at hand. No adding these or those cards because we were allready talking about a 40 card deck without lands. Not adding gitrig to do this or bunch more cards. No green ramp or black recursion. Taking a discussion way off topic is never a good idea. Now lets say there is 4 of everything.

At First look it's definately aggro.
We have white
Thalia's Lieutenant
Unruly Mob
Ironclad Slayer
Sigarda's Aid
Secure the Wastes
Selfless Spirit
We have black
Vampiric Rites
Zulaport Cutthroat
We have blue
Ghostly Wings
We have red
Hanweir Garrison
We have 8 lands that can help us even though colorless.
Westvale Abbey
Hanweir Battlements

Since we were talking right about here. I'll reiterate my 2 questions. These cards alone without adding cards except lands.
Using Ghostly Wings would it matter what card you are discarding? Looking at your sideboard options skeri was an excellent idea
8 lands would supposively colorless, meaning 12 would have to churn 4 colors. What lands would one choose then and would you also cut back on the colorless?
Now I'll tell why for this type of deck you really don't want to use tapped lands. It's aggro and any type of restrictions are only slowing it down. As for lands that people tend to miss because they focus usually on the last 4 sets and not all 6. This particular deck is mainly white. Now we can cover the 4 colors with the reprint of shock lands from origins. We have life gain so using them won't be an issue. Caves of Koilos and Battlefield Forge also cover all our white. Shivan Reef helps with the blue and to many of this and Battlefield Forge is overkill for the red.

You need 20 lands to make it 60 and 8 are slotted so far with colorless

[G. Moto]

 @robort, looking at the list you made/typed out it looks like this deck is W/B with a splash of BLUE and RED. So why not have: Port town, choked estuary, stone quarry, forsaken sanctuary, and foreboding ruins for the dual lands? This way you'll always get either White or Black mana and the U/R are both splashed. Also because of the nature of some of these lands they will be entering untapped as long as you keep at least 1 basic in your hand.

   As far as the ghostly wings I would recommend cards that have madness. You could add alms of the vein so that as you're gaining life from your life link and other effects you can keep your opponent under pressure. Also if you're not running green ramp then you'll need a way to search through your deck quickly. So either self mill (which I wouldn't recommend for this deck), scry and tutoring (maybe with the BLUE), or you could simply focus on the vampiric rites and combo that off of the human tokens you can make with the hanweir garrison (which would fuel the unruly mob) or possibly gavony unhallowed which could be a good addition.

  For the blue you could add catalog or nagging thoughts can be good choices for working through your deck faster. Geist of the archives and contingency plan would also be good ideas as well for speeding through the deck. Just some thoughts to be considered, if this deck is DEFINITELY going to be (W/U/B/R) then adding some first strike, haste, life gain and counter magic as a back up may be the avenue the deck should flow in my opinion. How do you feel about this Skeri (and others reading as well)?

[skeri]

Sorry I didn't get on all weekend and had a lot of reading to catch up this morning. lol

I agree that running green is just going to make things more complicated and that does kind of suck because it has almost an exclusive hold on mana fixers.

I think I mentioned this before so I might be restating, but why wouldn't Holdout Settlement be a viable land option for this deck? It allows you to tap a creature, which in an aggro deck we should have plenty of, and produce any color we need. As an aggro player myself I know it's not entirely ideal to tap down creatures on the board when you are trying to swing wide with as many as possible, but if what we need is just one color to add to our colorless sources to put cards into play I think there is value in it. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but do the human tokens generated by Hanweir Garrison stay on the board or are they only out until the end of turn? If they stay out then you essentially have mana sources with Holdout Settlement.

As far as dual lands, if we are trying to win a quick aggro style game we don't really care if we get pinged a few life points from shock lands. But in a long game would we be hurting ourselves with them? If we are splashing for Red and Blue couldn't we play Prairie Stream to get our blue and Smoldering marsh for our red needs? As long as we have two basics out they don't come in tapped.

That's all I have time for now, but I'll think about it at work today. What do ya'll think?

[G. Moto]

  Well if we're not using green then having ways to cycle through your deck and get the cards you need will be a bit tougher. But creatures such as mad prophet and reckless scholar would help create a madness draw power to the deck. And also going back to the land, yes the creature tokens stay and yes it is a good option. Think of it this way, even if you play aggressively there will be times where attacking is not the best option. If you can play a card that gives you WHATEVER color you need for just tapping down your own token then by all means go for it. It'll be an investment worth having.

[robort]

Sorry guys I haven't wrote here in a bit but I'll do what I can. Gmoto you have good points and they are valid.

Port town, choked estuary, stone quarry, forsaken sanctuary, and foreboding ruins for the dual lands? Also because of the nature of some of these lands they will be entering untapped as long as you keep at least 1 basic in your hand.
Very good point and possibly could be done. 1 reason why I wouldn't is #1 it is aggro and the deck is an 2 drop avg. Missing any mana will slow it down when you don't have that specific basic land in hand. Per example it's round 4 and our turn. On our side of the board there is 3 lands on the board and we hold in our hand say zulaport cutthroat, unruly mob and stone quarry.
We have other cards in hand but no other lands and didn't draw a land. In the battlefield you have vampiric rites, thalia and hanweir garrison. Now we wouldn't be able to play both the zulaport cutthroat and unruly mob because stone quarry would come in tapped. That would be the risk of having those lands.

Lol remember that is just an example/exercise where you may have been able to play that stone quarry on turn 1. I'm just showing the risk of such cards

[robort]

 As far as the ghostly wings I would recommend cards that have madness. You could add alms of the vein so that as you're gaining life from your life link and other effects you can keep your opponent under pressure. Also if you're not running green ramp then you'll need a way to search through your deck quickly. So either self mill (which I wouldn't recommend for this deck), scry and tutoring (maybe with the BLUE), or you could simply focus on the vampiric rites and combo that off of the human tokens you can make with the hanweir garrison (which would fuel the unruly mob) or possibly gavony unhallowed which could be a good addition.


Again you are right but we allready have a 40 card deck excluding lands. So yes you could do a substitutions but what would be coming out?

[robort]

I think I mentioned this before so I might be restating, but why wouldn't Holdout Settlement be a viable land option for this deck? It allows you to tap a creature, which in an aggro deck we should have plenty of, and produce any color we need. As an aggro player myself I know it's not entirely ideal to tap down creatures on the board when you are trying to swing wide with as many as possible, but if what we need is just one color to add to our colorless sources to put cards into play I think there is value in it. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but do the human tokens generated by Hanweir Garrison stay on the board or are they only out until the end of turn? If they stay out then you essentially have mana sources with Holdout Settlement.

Yes the tokens stay on the board and holdout settlement is good. Hanweir Garrison is the star player especially with tokens. He works with unruly mob, westvale abbey, hanweir battlement, zulaport cutthroat, thalia and vampiric rites. I figure to relieve some of this pressure by secure the wastes. So holdout Settlement could be entirely possible. Since we agree about going wide, then could you agree these 3 cards wouldn't help us? Ironclad Slayer, Ghostly Wings and Sigarda's Aid?
I then be trying to use cards to help support/protect my star player.

Thanks guys because I have a new idea

[robort]

Now for these little combo ideas.

Turn 1 play Insolent Neonate
Turn 2 attack into a hopefully open board with Insolent Neonate and play this Otherworldly Outburst on Insolent Neonate making 2 damage
Sac Insolent Neonate and discard Fiery Temper making it 5 damage while you get a 3/2 eldrazi horror token from Insolent Neonate dying.
Otherworldly Outburst played on any of thier creatures that are going to die also gives you that token

Now for some fun. This is on your field. Insolent Neonate, Desperate Sentry, Zada, Hedron Grinder, and Archangel Avacyn while playing Otherworldly Outburst on Zada, Hedron Grinder. Sac Insolent Neonate which on your turn triggers Archangel Avacyn ability and flips to Avacyn, the Purifier thus killing all creatures leaving you with 3/2 eldrazi horror tokens along with Avacyn, the Purifier.

[robort]

I have another you could run around with thanks to a guy at work. Imprisoned in the moon then use crumble to dust.