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Author Topic: Can’t Decide Colors  (Read 1490 times)

elmmonkey

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Can’t Decide Colors
« on: December 05, 2019, 01:48:39 pm »
Hello everyone. So I’ve been starting to brew a new deck, but I just can’t figure out what colors it should be. I was leaning toward Temur, but Jeskai sounded good as well. Then I found my Field of the Dead, and I was thinking I could go four or five color Field zombies. I’m a casual player with a tiny collection. What would you think would be the best and/or easiest colors to brew? I’m open to playing any strategy.

WWolfe

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Re: Can’t Decide Colors
« Reply #1 on: December 05, 2019, 02:10:25 pm »
What format?
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WizardSpartan

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Re: Can’t Decide Colors
« Reply #2 on: December 05, 2019, 02:28:16 pm »
I may be a bit biased, but mono green is a pretty strong color by itself. As a result of it being a single color, the mana base is easy and cheap. Without knowing the format, just a casual ramp deck with early drops such as Llanowar Elves, Elvish Mystic, etc. and bigger drops such as Steel Leaf Champion, Gigantosaurus, Carnage Tyrant, Ghalta, Primal Hunger, you can overwhelm your opponent with abnormally large creatures much earlier than they should be out. (If you really want to mess around, Aspect of Hydra pairs well with the large amount of green mana symbols on some of those cards)
Mono black zombies is also good, with a lot of options from throughout Magic's history. Take a look at this (https://edhrec.com/tribes/zombies) page for some ideas. Examples that are good (and not too expensive) include:
Lord of the Accursed
Diregraf Colossus
Death Baron
Undead Augur
Cemetery Reaper
Plague Belcher
Liliana's Mastery
Give us some more specifics like format, what type of deck you like to play, and how much your budget is, and we can give some better suggestions.

elmmonkey

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Re: Can’t Decide Colors
« Reply #3 on: December 05, 2019, 03:01:15 pm »
What format?

I usually play casually, with no ban list or anything except intuition.

CleanBelwas

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Re: Can’t Decide Colors
« Reply #4 on: December 05, 2019, 03:13:54 pm »
Hey man.

It kind of depends what you want to do.

You say that you've started to brew a new deck, which suggests you already have a few cards in mind that you want to include? Is this correct? If so, what are the cards?

Generally, the fewer colours you include in a deck, the cheaper and easier it will be to build. Multicolour mana bases tend to start increasing in price or they tend to be slow and inconsistent. That is of course a general rule and not always the case, depending on the deck, but if you are saying that your card pool is currently quite limited then it stands to reason that this might be the case for you at this point in time.

As well as this, it would hugely depend on what archetypes and (to a lesser extent) formats you like to play. One caveat to my previous statement would be that EDH tends to be a much slower format, so you can get away with slower manabases with more colours that take more time to set up, especially in a casual meta.

Being open to playing any strategy is great. Good to keep your options open and experiment with new things. Are there any strategies / archetypes you have experience with that you've enjoyed? Or any that you have either already tried and don't fancy playing more of or that just don't appeal to you in general?

When I first got into magic, I tried pretty much everything I could think of that appealed to me both in terms of archetypes and colours. Blue/Red spell slinging, White/Green tokens, Mono Red aggro, Blue/White control, Green/Black graveyard, 5 colour nonsense. It's good to experiment to find out what kind of things you like and what you are not so keen on.

Through all of this experimentation, I discovered that black was my colour. I now play mono black in all formats (though not exclusively, I still like to dabble in other things too), so if that kind of thing interests you I have many recommendations.

In general though, if you could give us a bit more insight into what kinds of things you like and what cards you have access to / want to build around, there is a great community of users on this site that will be more than happy to give you some ideas.

Whatever you decide, I hope you end up playing the magic you like. Good luck man.

elmmonkey

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Re: Can’t Decide Colors
« Reply #5 on: December 05, 2019, 04:39:24 pm »
I don't really think I have any cards in mind, I just want to play another fun color combo. I really like aggro and midrange types of strategies, but I don't like control or stax as much. A good game of Magic for me would be a nice long game where everyone involved got to do everything their decks wanted to do.

WizardSpartan

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Re: Can’t Decide Colors
« Reply #6 on: December 05, 2019, 05:32:53 pm »
Tell me what appeals to you the most:
Mono Green: Like I described, it aims to ramp into big creatures ahead of curve.

Mono Red: Pure speed. It is fast, aggressive, and aims to burn your opponent's face directly.

Mono Black: I am not as experienced with this type of style. It can be aggro or more control focused.

Mono Blue: Tempo based. Disrupt your opponent's gameplan while getting in for bits of damage with small, evasive creatures.

Mono White: An aggressive type of deck that uses larger amounts of small creatures to get through to your opponent.


Green Black (Golgari): Graveyard themed stuff. Izoni, Thousand Eyed is a good face card for it. You get creatures into the grave and get value out of them, either by getting them back into your hand or by playing cards that benefit off of having cards in your graveyard.

Green Blue (Simic): Reactive deck. Nightpack Ambusher is a good face card for this. A lot of what you are playing is instant speed and in response to your opponent. Counterspells, removal, and creatures with flash make up your deck.

Green Red (Gruul): It is very similar to mono green, except now a lot of your big creatures have haste. Zhur-Taa Goblin is a good face card, although a little small.

Green White (Selesnya): Hordes upon hordes of token creatures that you pump up. Trostani Discordant is a good face card. You spent your first few turns making lots of token creatures, then you play cards that pump all of your creatures into dangerous threats.

Blue Black (Dimir): Very much a control deck, focused on countering your opponent's spells and destroying whatever manages to make it to the board. It plays for the long game and deploys 1 or 2 game winning cards to close out the game once you have exhausted your opponent. One example would be The Scarab God, "stealing" all your opponent's dead creatures to use against them.

Blue White (Azorius): Similar to blue black, except that you use board wipes a lot more, focusing less on preventing your opponent from playing all their stuff and focusing more on getting lots of value out of one board wipe. 1 card that is commonly used to win the game is Teferi, Hero of Dominaria.

Blue Red (Izzet): A spellslinger playstyle. Cards such as Niv-Mizzet, Parun or Young Pyromancer benefit off of playing lots of cheap cantrip spells (spells usually 1 to 2 mana that draw a card like Opt). Not many creatures, but the few an Izzet deck has generate a lot of value. Turns are very combo-esque, playing lots of cheap spells and drawing lots of cards.

Red Black (Rakdos): Very aggro like mono red, but you also have some removal and discard spells and are a little slower and more heavy hitting.

Red White (Boros): Aggro like mono red, but you have more, smaller creatures that quickly melt your opponent. Heroic Reinforcements gives a good idea of what a Boros deck wants to do.

Black White (Orzhov): You extract value from death. Use cards like Viscera Seer to sacrifice creatures like Hunted Witness for value. Cards like Blood Artist drain your opponent every time a creature dies. Teysa Karlov is a good face card for this guild, as she doubles up on anything that triggers from creatures dying.

Overall, based on your descriptions, Dimir and Azorius are out (as they are control decks). Decks that like long games are Orzhov and Golgari, as they get to set up an engine and do all kinds of fun stuff. Most of the dual colors that contain red are aggro of some sort, with the second color changing exactly what they want to do.
« Last Edit: December 05, 2019, 05:35:19 pm by GolgariFTW »

EternallyBright

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Re: Can’t Decide Colors
« Reply #7 on: December 05, 2019, 06:30:16 pm »
From what my experience is, here is how the colors tend to work. (Take it with a grain of salt, I've only been playing for a couple months ^^')

Green: Mana and power increases. A lot of stuff taps for mana and there are a lot of spells to use that use +1/+1 counters. I have a green elf deck that powers them all up real well especially with Joraga Warcaller. If you enjoy big creatures and trample Aggressive Mammoth is one of my favorite greens.

White: Buff, lifegain, some destroy stuff. It doesnt use +1s as much, has more small creatures. Spells are cool, they have stuff like Planar Cleansing and lots of stuff to give Hexproof. I have less experience with White, no one else in my casual group plays it and I just finished building a white/green lifegain deck but that's how my experience has been.

Blue: Listen if you want to cancel what your opponents are doing play blue. Counterspells are the name of the game and lots of flying creatures. They're really annoying to play against without also having blue in your deck to counter the counters. If you want to frustrate and derail your opponents play blue.

Black: A couple people in my group play black. It seems to be health drain/lifegain, really? Lots of "your opponent loses life you gain that life". But I mean, it's a vampire deck so that may just be a vampire thing. I've seen some black food token decks which are interesting.

Red: No one in my group plays red, but it seems like faster, less tanky green? There's more stuff to attack direct ( Shock, Bolt ). Not LOT of creatures but a good amount.

Sorry if this isn't super helpful! I figured I'd give my 2 cents though XD

CleanBelwas

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Re: Can’t Decide Colors
« Reply #8 on: December 05, 2019, 09:42:49 pm »
Hey EternallyBright,

Not bad at all. That seems like a pretty decent basic summation, especially from someone relatively new to the game.

I'm sure it goes without saying, but there are of course times where multiple colours can do things, it's just that one colour does it better than others.

If I may extend upon your descriptions slightly, I'd add the following:

Green - This is most certainly the colour of big mana, but it can achieve this in a variety of ways. It can make use of a lot of mana dorks (such as Llanowar Elves and Elvish Mystic), ramp spells (such as Rampant Growth and Cultivate) and extra land drops (such as Azusa, Lost but Seeking and Oracle of Mul Daya). All of this is with the aim to be ahead of the curve. You hope to have access to 3 mana on turn two, 5 on turn 3 etc. so that you can drop your big dumb fatties like Craterhoof Behemoth as early as possible.

White - Again, your depiction of white is pretty spot on. It tends to play many small creatures with a view of dropping some Lord or Anthem effects (Benalish Marshal, Glorious Anthem) to turn many small creatures into many big creatures and overwhelm your opponent. It also tends to be the colour of exile effects, both permanent and temporary (Path to Exile and Fiend Hunter are good examples respectively) as well as mass removal, be that creatures (Wrath of God), enchantments (Cleansing Meditation) or even lands (Armageddon). Life gain can also be a prevalent theme here too if that's your thing.

The next three colours are where I personally feel there is a little more explanation to be given. While you were right about everything you said, there are other areas of the colours identities that are worth mentioning.

Blue - This is obviously the colour of counter magic (counterspell is the classic example), but it is much more than that too. Blue tends to be the colour that cares about tempo. It uses it's mana efficiently and looks to disrupt it's opponent while it builds towards it's own game plan. Often this will take the form of counter magic but it can also include much more. Unsummon is a good example of a blue card that cares about tempo. It doesn't get rid of anything permanently, but it messes with the opponents plan and sets them back at least a turn for just 1 blue mana at instant speed. Unsummoning a big green trampling beast could buy blue enough time to draw into it's win conditions.

Black - My personal favourite colour in MTG. While it does have it's fair share of drain and gain, you are right in saying that that tends to be more prevalent in vampire tribal strategies (though not exclusively for sure). Black is generally the colour that turns whatever it can into resources and advantage. It is very good at killing creatures (both opponents and it's own), and is also very good at turning it's own creatures dying into advantage (see Blood Artist, Pitiless Plunderer, Midnight Reaper, Harvester of Souls). It also has it's fair share of mass creature removal (Damnation for example), but cares much less about it's own creatures dying as it can gain advantage from this as described previously, or get those creatures back very easily (Raise Dead, Zombify, Reanimate). But it's not just creatures it looks to use. It will also use it's life total as a resource. Bolas's Citadel is a perfect example of how black will use it's life total to give itself the upper hand. It also has the sickest art, but that's just my personal preference.

Red - You are absolutely right that red is the colour of direct damage, though I would say that how it gets there is surprisingly nuanced. Mono red aggro decks are often seen as the simplest, cheapest kind of deck, but piloting them is more skilled than you might think at first. There are a lot of decisions to be made when piloting a mono red aggressive type of deck, and there are a lot of strategies that can achieve this. The two biggest are Burn and Red Deck Wins (RDW). Burn tends to try and put a lot of damage on the player immediately using things like Lightning Bolt and just attacking the opponents life total. Red Deck Wins tends to lean in towards playing many cheap and hasty creatures to overwhelm the opponent as quickly as possible, and use it's spells to clear the path for it's creatures. It tends to be more robust than the simpler burn, though often slightly slower as a result and a lot trickier to pilot. For example, a common decision for a RDW deck to make is whether or not a Lightning Bolt is best suited to go straight for the face or to clear a blocker. 3 damage to the face is nice, but clearing that blocker could result in more damage getting through over the course of the game. But generally, it does tend to be balls to the wall, how fast can I kill you kind of stuff. Also, there's Dragons, and who doesn't like Dragons?


And of course there are cards within each of these colours that do nothing like this. Blue has big dumb stompy creatures and black has small hasty aggressive creatures and Green can get rid of stuff.

And then furthermore you can mix these colours together and get the kind of things as described by GolgariFTW. Or you can mix them together and do things that are nothing like what has been described by GolgariFTW (but his descriptions are great for what the colours do best. Good luck building a graveyard deck in Izzet).

You can do what you want in this game, and that's what makes it so damn good.

elmmonkey

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Re: Can’t Decide Colors
« Reply #9 on: December 05, 2019, 11:43:31 pm »
So based on this, I think I like blue/red and green/blue. What strategy would a combination of those colors do?

Red_Wyrm

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Re: Can’t Decide Colors
« Reply #10 on: December 06, 2019, 12:38:30 am »
If you want blue, green, go with a biovisionary and clone effects.

Edit: I don't remember typing this whatsoever, but it does sound like me.
« Last Edit: December 06, 2019, 04:16:52 am by Red_Wyrm »
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Also, I always spell your name correctly, Red_Wurm.  :)

Please, it is Red

CleanBelwas

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Re: Can’t Decide Colors
« Reply #11 on: December 06, 2019, 10:38:29 am »
So we've narrowed down some colours. That's great. You've chosen some colour pairs that offer a fair amount of flexibility too, which is nice.

Let's start with Red/Blue (Izzet).

Traditionally this is the colour pairing for spell slingers. The general idea behind these sorts of decks is to use cheap cantrips (spells that have an effect and then let you draw a card, therefore replacing itself, such as Opt) to cast spells and gain incremental advantage from cards that care about spells being cast. Some good examples of these kinds of cards are Young Pyromancer, Guttersnipe, Crackling Drake, Arclight Phoenix and Adeliz, the Cinder Wind. As you can see from that very small selection, there are many ways to gain extra advantage from your spells. Creating Tokens, Incidental Damage, Pumping evasive creatures. Some Izzet decks to look into could be Izzet Wizards (or Izzy-Wizzies as I like to call it) and Izzet Phoenix.


Blue/Green (Simic) is for me slightly less linear. There are many ways this colour pair can be built together.

In the recent sets that cared specifically about two colour pairings (Guilds of Ravnica and Ravnica Allegiance), Simic was given the role of +1/+1 counters. It also has a rich history of this kind of game plan too so there is a lot of support for this kind of strategy both old and new.

It can also be a good colour combination for tempo decks. Early blue plays slow down your opponent to see you into the late game where you cast your big green fatties. Blue also has it's fair share of big fatties too. Some really cool sea monster themed stuff that I'm personally a huge fan of.

And as Red_Wrym says, there is also the potential for some tricksy stuff that can be a lot of fun with clone effects and the like.


If any of these ideas seem fun to you, let us know and we'll do what we can with some suggestions.

elmmonkey

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Re: Can’t Decide Colors
« Reply #12 on: December 06, 2019, 01:47:43 pm »
I think the Izzet one looks cool. I like the spellslingers idea.

WizardSpartan

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Re: Can’t Decide Colors
« Reply #13 on: December 06, 2019, 08:05:06 pm »
Hey EternallyBright,

Not bad at all. That seems like a pretty decent basic summation, especially from someone relatively new to the game.

Aw ya didn't comment on my summary of the colors (and we even agreed on a lot of things). I even summarized the guilds in addition to the mono colors.  :'(

To be more particular about Izzet type decks, there is a subtype of deck called storm, where you use cards like Aetherflux Reservoir and Grapeshot to win the game. Basically, your deck is filled to the brim with cheap (1 mana) spells that draw a card. String a bunch of them together in one explosive turn and end with a Grapeshot for example to smack your opponent in the face for lethal damage. Just now that, while this type of deck is very fun when it is "storming" off, it is not very straightforward.
Disclaimer: I don't personally play storm style decks, so I don't have personal knowledge with the archetype. I would post a link to a primer, but most are probably a bit more competitive/expensive/complicated than you are looking for.

CleanBelwas

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Re: Can’t Decide Colors
« Reply #14 on: December 07, 2019, 12:26:28 am »
Hey EternallyBright,

Not bad at all. That seems like a pretty decent basic summation, especially from someone relatively new to the game.

Aw ya didn't comment on my summary of the colors (and we even agreed on a lot of things). I even summarized the guilds in addition to the mono colors.  :'(

Yea man, but that's because we all know you know your stuff anyway. You're feedback is always good. EternallyBright said they were new to the game and were worried that their input wasn't useful so I wanted to give them some positive feedback so they weren't discouraged from giving input in the future.

As for a spell slinging deck, a good start would be to get your hands on some cantrip spells and some of the incremental advantage cards I mentioned previously. Shove them in a deck and see what sticks. With this kind of plan you are generally looking for card draw so you don't run out of gas and you are looking to run pretty low to the ground. Most of the cards in your deck will have a cmc of 1 or 2 with a few 3 and 4 drops for some mid/late game impact. There are a plethora of options for cards to include and strategies so it will really come down to your personal preference. Maybe it'll be some control / tempo shell that counters everything early game then uses some beefy crackling drakes to close out the game. Maybe it'll be Lightning Bolts to the face with Guttersnipes out for max damage. Maybe it'll be something completely different that you discover yourself. Whatever it is, I hope you have fun with it man. Good luck.