Topics

1

Deck Reviews / [Standard] Artifact Zombies feat. Bloodcrazed Paladin

« on: October 23, 2018, 08:01:07 pm »

Artifact Zombies feat. Bloodcrazed Paladin

I used to play zombies before GRN and have been saddened of their demise. Have been thinking hard what would make them work in the new environment. Maybe there is a Golgari shell for them, but it's too expensive of an investment for me. This deck has no essential cards from GRN that would not have had a better replacement earlier. I also thinned the zombie shell a bit moving away from Death Baron in favour of Phylactery Lich. However, thin artifact removal and the disappearance of Abrade makes this work.

This deck aims to make the most synergy of made-up zombies with Liliana and artifacts.

Win conditions:
1/ Phyrexian Scriptures then one or two Bloodcrazed Paladin (note it gets a counter for every creature that died)
2/ One of nine 1 drop artifacts in play. Phylactery Lich then Phyrexian Scriptures.
3/ Infinite combo with Arcane Adoptation + Liliana, Untouched by Death + Chamber Sentry. CS can be in hand or graveyard. Either Sai, Master Thopterist Bloodcrazed Paladin in hand or graveyard.
4/ Artifacts in play then Phyrexian Scriptures
5/ Draw cards and gain life with a flipped Arguel's Bloodfast, especially good on a massive Paladin held by an enchantment

The deck has 9 cheap artifacts and should generate plenty of artifacts as treasures or fliers. Liliana also allows to cast artifacts from the graveyard if they are missing and this is the sole reason for Sparring Construct. The artifacts can be used in three ways: 1/ Phylactery counter storage, 2/ Mana source, 3/ Sai activation or 4/ Card draw.

Should have good matchups against strategies relying on destroy, graveyard or go wide creatures. A bit slow to start, but not terrible with 9 one drops. Might benefit from some lifegain, maybe Ajani's Welcome from white. Trouble with enhancements and exile. Thus sideboard heavily against white with one off-color Cleansing Nova.

Plenty of threaths to counter and several angles of attack.

2

Deck Reviews / [Standard] Boardwipe/Lifegain (Teshar/Forerunner of the Empire)

« on: October 19, 2018, 07:46:10 pm »

Boardwipe/Lifegain (Teshar/Forerunner of the Empire)

Win conditions:
1/ Teshar in play and Chamber Sentry in hand and graveyard let's us benefit from infinite ETB triggers
2/ A protected Forerunner of the Empire and a protected Raptor Hatchling wipe the board leaving us with at least five creatures

General idea is to just play the cards until you have enough mana. Then pull of a combo for infinite life (with Azor's Gateway and Dawn of Hope we get to convert that to infinite 1/1s) or to wipe the board with Frontrunner of the Empire. Teshar is incidental in this setup, but helps with the lifegain and in assembling combo pieces from graveyard.

3

Deck Reviews / [Standard] Goblin Pirates in an Experimental Frenzy

« on: October 05, 2018, 10:00:52 pm »

Goblin Pirates in an Experimental Frenzy

This is no poop deck (the deck that is the highest and farthest back in pirate speak).

This swashbuckling goblin pirate crew works on its own. With Lightning-Rig Crew, each Goblin Pirate played results in 1 damage. We have 18 of these salty rum-drinking sailors on the ship.

What makes it work is the new Experimental Frenzy from GRN. This should allow us to play 2-3 goblins per turn after we've exhausted cards in hand.

A goblin infinite combo deck posted by wh1tech33ze got me to include Squee, the Immortal. With goblin spells costing one less with Goblin Warchief and Skirk prospector allowing to sacrifice for R you can cast squee for R. Squee is very versatile as it can be in graveyard or exile. With a RS-K and either another RS-K or Desecrated Tomb, we should be able to generate either infinite mana or infinite bats.

I'd like this to be all red, but there is some land in sight with Path of Discovery, which allows to explore trough the deck.

The maybeboard is a collection of cards I considered during the build. The sideboard is essentially a version shifting out the Squee combo pieces and just focusing on casting Pirate's. Will need to decide, which way to go after playtesting in real life.

Optimal playstate 1:
- Lightning-Rig Crew in play. Cast three Goblin Pirates. Cause 4 damage per turn.
- With Experimental Frenzy, repeat next turn.

Optimal playstate 2:
- Squee in hand, exile or graveyard.
- 4 Mountains
- 2x RS-K, Goblin warchief and Skirk Prospector on the battlefield
- Pay 1R for Squee (2), sacrifice get R. Repeat twice. Lands are now tapped.
- Release RRRRRR from RS-Ks cast 3x Squee for RR each. RRR remains from sacrifices. Repeat.
- Go for the kill with either Banefire or Dark Dweller-Oracle (get enough goblins to kill with a haste attack)

Optimal playstate 3:
- Experimental Frenzy and Path of Discovery on the battlefield
- Play a goblin, explore, remove if land. If next one is land play it, then hopefully a couple of goblins.

4

Deck Reviews / [Standard] Boros - Star of Extinction

« on: October 02, 2018, 08:30:09 am »

Boros - Star of Extinction

Star of Extinction is the big payoff with Truefire Captain dealing 20 damage to target player.

Tajic can prevent non-combat damage to other creatures. With Defeaning Clarion he might die himself, but at least he saves everyone else.

Erratic Cyclops provides defense and can be used in attack with instants and sorceries. Response/Resurgence is quite useful for pumping the Erratic Cyclops. Works well with Chance for Glory as you can attack two times with indestructable creatures and once more for the desperate win.

Would maybe need 2-3 defensive red/white creatures with 1/2, 2/2 or 1/3. Flying a plus.

5

Deck Reviews / [Standard] Rinse/Repeat Your Deck with Enhanced Surveillance

« on: September 30, 2018, 04:02:46 pm »

Would be keen to know if there are any U/G/artifacts in standard that could improve the deck further?

Rinse/Repeat Your Deck with Enhanced Surveillance

This decks uses cheap blue spells with surveil for self-mill as well as Drowned Secrets. It uses Enhanced Surveillance to improve surveil and to return the whole graveyard back to the deck.

This works on itself, but the result is an empty hand.

We use two green creatures to solve this. When World Shaper dies it let's us return all the lands from the graveyard to the battlefield. We won't be drawing too many lands after this. If we have Tatyova, Benthic Druid on the board as well we get our life and cards in hand fixed.

The deck wins by eventually milling out the opponent.

I am not sure if multiple copies of Enhanced Surveillance let's you stack the Surveil boost, but by being able to order only the top 3-4 cards should be enough for what this deck wants to do.

Started making an Izzet version of this deck with Experimental Frenzy, but ended up with a U/G version due to Tatyova, Benthic Druid allowing to be in only two colors. There might be a more creature heavy version of this in G/B/U with Izoni and Vraska.

6

Deck Reviews / [Limited] Sealed - GRN Prerelease deck and thoughts on the guilds.

« on: September 30, 2018, 07:27:51 am »

After some Arena play and a local pre-release sealed I really like Dimir.

Seems to me so far that Golgari could be good if there was a way to get your undergrowth cards later in the game (back into hand or library). Boros seems to lack good removal this time or then players just prefer combat tricks. Izzet seems a bit unimpressive as it's easy to remove the prowess fliers (usually not that many of them). Selesnya has some good go wide tricks, so might be important to sideboard or use counterspells against the colors X or convoke spells.


Sealed - GRN Prerelease

Played this limited Dimir deck at a GRN pre-release. 2 ties, 2 wins and one loss.

Used only 2 rares and 5 uncommons, but despite this the Dimir surveil mehanic itself, the surveil combos and good removal worked well.

Wished I was a bit luckier with the boosters as I hardly got any strong cards for Dimir and the deck generally lacked one large finisher.

Included some of the sideboard cards as well in B/U.

7

Deck Reviews / [Standard] Self-mill / Mill (U/W) Naru-Meha/Drowned Secrets

« on: September 20, 2018, 11:56:01 pm »

Self-mill / Mill (U/W) Naru-Meha/Drowned Secrets

This U/W deck uses Drowned Secrets (1U) from GRN for self-mill while building into an ultimate kill with a one turn wipe of the opponents library. Alternative win conditions are infinite counters on Daring Archaelogist or bringing back a library full of creatures with Teshar, Ancestor's Apostle.

The deck needs to get to a situation where you are able to cast Release to the Wind (2U) and Naru-Meha (2UU), not necessarily, but ordinarily on the same turn.

The general sequence with Naru Meha is that you first cast Release to the Wind (targeting any nonland permanent on the board). As Naru Meha has flash, you cast Naru Meha targeting the Release to the Wind on the stack. This copies the spell and you choose Naru Meha as the target, which exiles Naru Meha. You may now cast Naru Meha for free and at instant speed due to flash, copying Release to the Wind and repeating the cycle as many times as you'd wish. 

With Diamond Mare included I think it's pretty resilient to any damage deck.

An optimal start would be:
1. Any land
2. Island + Diamond Mare
3. Island + Naban + Mox Amber + Drowned Secrets
4. Any land
Opponents turn. Hornswoggle or Spell Pierce giving one treasure (or cast Naru Meha and then 2x RttWs next turn)
5. Any land + Release to the Wind + Naru Meha

Opponent is out of cards and you have infinite life.

The tricky matches would most likely be to a Teferi/Nexus of Faith deck, but in these situations we could just mill the opponent and sideboard the Sorcerous Spyglasses.

Are there too many win more cards in here? Would a mono-blue version with Diamond Mares work better?

8

Deck Reviews / [Standard] GRN: Turn 5 Win: Mill or Kill

« on: September 19, 2018, 01:29:23 am »

GRN: Turn 5 win on cards or life

1. Mountain
2. Island + Electrostatic Field (1R) or Drowned Secrets (1U)
3. Island + Powestone Chard (3)
4. Island + Powestone Chard (3)
5. With seven mana at our disposal
- Release to the Wind (2U targeting anything) - opponent can even counter this without affecting the combo
- Naru Meha (2UU targeting Release to the Wind)

Opponent is out of cards or out of life.

Alternatives for getting to a Turn 5 kill, would be casting Naru Meha on Turn 4. Then cast 2 Release to the Wind maybe with the help of a Vodalian Arcanist. This would allow getting rid of the Powerstone Shard's for instants.

The nice thing is that the combo pieces are cheap and work on their own. The drawback is that the combo in one way or another needs 6-7 mana to work. 

9

Deck Reviews / [Standard] First Striking Rat Colony

« on: September 15, 2018, 01:08:40 am »

First Striking Rat Colony

Trying to find a deck for my first grader to play at a tournament I tried to think around Rat Colony.

A pure black deck would be simple, but red allows a couple of combo's that work well. Usually the issues with a rat deck are that the opponent starts saving blockers or the deck runs out of steam in terms of card draw. Warlord's Fury gives all your rats first strike and let's you draw a card enabling you to keep going.

There is an additional combo for the mid-game. Secret Salvage let's you refill your hand up to twenty or so rats. With Reliquary Tower in play you'll actually get to keep them. Then you can either play rats or cast Lost Legacy on yourself to draw most of your remaining deck and possibly cast a game ending Fateful Showdown.

I tried to build the deck around the green cards of Dubious Challenge (creatures onto battleground) and Heroic Intervention (giving permanents indestructable and hexproof) at first, but I think it will need something more devious for Dubious Challenge than Rat Colony. This might not happen before the next standard rotation.

The sideboard is a collection of cards I considered for the build.

Any advice or suggestions welcome.

10

Deck Reviews / [Limited] WU TezzeretWide + Banefire

« on: August 23, 2018, 09:19:53 pm »

Limited: WU TezzeretWide + Banefire

Played this with 2 wins 3 losses in a M19 quick draft on Arena. Had blue mana trouble in two of the games (Tezzeret and Surge Mare with UU). Skilled Animator worked really well as did Departed Deckhand and Militia Bugler.

Despite good starts, I think the deck suffered in terms of attacking power. Many of the creatures only have power 1.

I put the deck up as I had a hard time deciding between what should be in the deck and which of the good white/blue cards in the sideboard to leave out. Any advice is welcome.

General strategy is a white base with creatures that can benefit from going wide with Angel of the Dawn and Instants.
Quality small blue creatures and Tezzeret to create card draw and fliers.
Removal only in the form of Explosive Apparatus, Take Vengeance and Banefire. I took in Dwindle instead of a third Angel of the Dawn.

11

Deck Reviews / [Standard] Zombies with Unexpected Win Conditions

« on: August 04, 2018, 07:16:33 pm »

Trying this today at the local magic shop. Suggestions to improve on basic thesis welcome.

Sideboard has been built in essence to change into a standard fast zombie deck if I manage to miraculously win with the infinite combo too noticably.

Zombies with Unexpected Win Conditions

Four win conditions:
1/ Fast zombie damage
2/ Infinite combo with Arcane Adoptation + Liliana, Untouched by Death + Walking Ballista and one of the artifacts (Bontu's Monument, Desecreated Tomb or Metallic Mimic). WB and MM can be in hand or graveyard.
3/ Same as above, but instead of an artifact uses Plague Belcher
3/ Liliana's Contract + Arcane Adoptation (name Demon instead of Zombie) + 4 different creatures

Started playing Magic in 1994 and recently gotten back into it as my son is super interested.