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Topics - hotrodscott

Pages: [1] 2
1
Deck Reviews / [Pioneer] Whackers
« on: November 15, 2019, 06:09:10 am »
Whackers

Tried to morph a modern 8 whack shell to Pioneer.    Soooo much fun!!     Usually over by T4.  Torbran on top of a bunch of goblins is just broken! hahaha     

It's not quite as explosive as 8-whack, but unlike 8 whack, this one seems to hang in there if the game goes longer.  Chainwhirler after Torbran is cool!  I had one where they gummed up the board and I had a legion loyalist and Torbran out on T4, played a Rabblemaster and surged in a Bushwacker on T5 to hit for a lethal 16 through a blocker! Hahaha

2
Deck Reviews / [Standard] Murder of Ravens (Aristocrats)
« on: October 19, 2019, 05:54:34 am »
Murder of Ravens (Aristocrats)

So much fun!   You basically don't ever plan to attack, you just wall up with a bunch of creatures that deliver value when something dies and then drain the opponent out by sacking them at the right times.  With just a couple of extra cards out, you can get 3-4 damage on the opponent's turn every time with the cauldron familiar combo and draw lots of cards.  A bunch of the creatures have deathtouch, so the opponent is afraid to attack, and once you get Revenge of Ravens out, go-wide strategies like Field of the Dead zombies don't work, because they can't attack you without dying.     

This deck is good at jamming up the board until you can get a Revenge of Ravens out.

Strategy tips:

Once you have a Witch's oven and Cauldron familiar out (or Ayara, First of Locthwain) wait until their end step to sack and replay the cat or sack a Dreadhorde Invasion zombie, that way, you have them untapped most the time to be able to respond to the opponent.  If they attack with something that's going to hurt, block with a creature and then sack it and replay it (cat)  or get a food token.   If you have a food token, you can play a cat later at instant speed as a surprise blocker or a point or two or three of burn damage with Ayara, First of Locthwain or Corpse Knight out. 

Cruel Celebrant is a removal magnet, so if you have an Oven or Araya out, try to keep them untapped to be able to sack as much as you can while their removal is on the stack, that way, you can get all of the death triggers (even the one from her dying.) So often times, You gain 2-3 life, they take 2-3 damage and you get a food token. (Then you can add insult to injury by replaying a familiar for more damage etc.)

A fun trick is if they're swinging in with a flyer is to sac an Orzhov Enforcer to spawn the flying token on their attack step.  Between the death triggers on the enforcer and the ETB trigger on the token and then the death triggers on the token, it can often be a 6 point life swing and you get a card in the process when they thought they had an easy attack. :D   

You basically only attack if they have an empty board on turn 2 after you played a 1 drop, or if you have an Order of Midnight (it can't block, so you just swing and maybe sack it if they have a blocker that would kill it.) On Alter Fate, you generally want to return a Cruel Celebrant or Ayara, First of Locthwain.

Dreadhorde Invasion might seem weird here, but if you have Ayara out, you get an ETB drain on every turn and you can sack it on every turn for a card (and probably a Cruel Celebrant/Corpse Knight trigger.)

Board wipes are common, so if you're getting wiped, you'll want to sack as much as you can ahead of time for value. Don't worry about sacking a cauldron familiar, go for things that don't have death triggers (you'll get them anyway)  If you do it right, you should have a couple of creatures right back on the board and a few cards, so you can generally rebuild pretty fast and they take a lot of damage from all of the triggers, so it's painful for them to do!   

What's next:

Right now, I'm splitting Murderous Rider and Mortify for removal as one is great for planeswalkers (and has a good lifegain blocker) while the other takes out Cavalcade of Calamity (or other annoying enchantments) or Torbran, Thane of Red Fell.  As the meta gels, I might go one over the other.   I really enjoy the sack fodder Dreadhorde Invasion provides, but if it comes down to it, that's what I'm pulling and adding another Midnight Reaper for card draw and more Murderous Riders.

Have fun with it!!   


3
Deck Reviews / [Standard] bw lifegain
« on: September 12, 2019, 05:26:05 am »
bw lifegain

just starting to playtest this one a bit for post rotation.  super fun so far!

4
Deck Reviews / [Modern] Calamity RDW
« on: September 04, 2019, 05:52:40 am »
Calamity RDW

Still a work in progress, but tons of fun!  Very consistent and very fast!  Tons of hasty one drops (mostly goblins), things that generate hasty one drops and burn to trigger Cavalcade of Calamity damage and Goblin Grenade to seal the deal.

Each calamity trigger or burn damage sets off Chandra's Spitfire triggers, so that can get huge in a hurry!   (If you play it on curve on turn 3, attack on turn 4 and have 3 other 1 drops attacking as well, Spitfire is 13/3 flyer and you get 4 Calamity triggers, plus the 3 for the 1 drops, so a total of 20!

Legion loyalist is a powerhouse here, making stuff unblockable by tokens and giving your army first strike.

When I mocked up the deck, I had Grim Lavamancer in instead of the Goblin Rabblemaster (Didn't have GL on MTGO) but I've liked Rabblemaster when I've hit it in playtesting, so I'm posting it as-is for now.  If basically 6 of that type of card are too many (it has 4 Legion Warboss) I might go back to the Lavamancers or go more burn.  If you did go down to a 1-drop here, you can cut a land or two from the deck.  CMC here is artificially high since you'd never hard cast Rift Bolt.

Monastery Swiftspear is one of my favorite cards, but prowess triggers often make her 2 power, so she doesn't trigger Calamity when attacking, so I might drop her for a hasty goblin 1-drop to have the same guaranteed 2 damage per-swing, and give me more goblins to sacrifice to Goblin Grenade. (that hasn't been a problem yet as there are 16 main deck, plus a lot of goblin tokens being generated.)   

I threw in Rift Bolt, because I had them and they rock, but Skewer the Critics might be a better choice here for same-turn activity vs. a suspended Rift Bolt.

20 is a lot of land for this deck. I'll tweak it a bit and find the sweet spot.  I tried a Ramunap Ruins, but there are so many red one drops, it could cause you early game inconsistency.

Sideboard:  2 Damping Sphere for Tron, 3 Tormod's Crypt for graveyard shenanigans,  2 Goblin Chainwhirler for tokens/Humans, 3 Dragon's Claw (seeing a lot of Burn in the meta)  3 Smash to Smithereens (for Chalice of the void, etc.) and a couple of Tibalts to stop life gain or have another way to make tokens if they have a lot of sweepers.

5
Deck Reviews / [Pauper] burning bush (rdw)
« on: September 26, 2018, 05:24:55 am »
burning bush (rdw)

Play lots of 1 mana, 2-power (or free) creatures and bushwhack them in.   Ghitu Lavarunner is the new addition.  Lots of fun!!  This deck is very competitive and fun/easy to play.     

Might be able to get away with even fewer lands as the avg. cmc here is skewed by a couple of spells you'd almost always use their alternative casting cost on and not play them for their mana cost.   

6
Deck Reviews / [Standard] Izzet Wizard Blitz
« on: September 22, 2018, 05:48:30 am »
Izzet Wizard Blitz

Trying to resurrect an old archetype in the new Standard with prowess creatures and lots of cheap spells.  Luckily, all creatures except Fire Urchin are wizards, so we can take advantage of the wizard synergy there as well. (Discounted casting cost on some of our instants and they get pumped by Adeliz, the Cinder Wind.)  Cast a creature or two and then cast a hasty Adeliz and an instant or two and she acts a bit like a bushwhacker effect to surprise your opponent.   

I want to try out maximum altitude because of the ability to jump-start it again later.   Crash through seems kind of weak because most creatures already are flyers or have trample. I have it main deck now for the card draw and prowess trigger.  Depending on how the meta shapes up, this may become dive down or maybe a mix of dive down and straight card draw spells. 

Thoughts?  I'm excited to play it!

7
Deck Reviews / [Pauper] goblin tokens ftw
« on: August 18, 2018, 09:39:07 am »
goblin tokens ftw

Only about 10 matches in with this one, so still tuning, but lots of fun so far! Wanted to get it up here and get some feedback.

Strategy: Go wide with goblins, then use spells that benefit from their numbers to generate tons of mana and then hit them with direct damage via goblin war strike (I play MTGO, so no Goblin Grenade :-/... definitely make room for that if you play paper) or make a huge foundry street denizen and reckless bushwack them all in.   This is similar to an old one I made a couple of years ago, but now has artifacts to trigger kuldotha rebirth as a much more efficient token generator than say, hordeling outburst. Goblin instigator is also a nice add (having one of the bodies being non-token has proven great against snap or unsummon over something like dragon fodder since you can replay it when it gets bounced to your hand.) 

I was running 4 more colorless artifact lands to sac to kuldotha rebirth, but it made the manabase a bit inconsistent. Had some cycling lands in there too, same deal.  16 lands seems ok with the spring leaf drum and rituals, but I have gotten mana screwed a couple of games. I added a couple of basic mountains back in over artifact lands and went with the bone saw as a zero cost artifact instead to sac to kuldotha rebirth. There are some neat plays there.  Several times now, I've gotten 3 tokens out on T1. Mountain + bone saw, sac it to kuldotha rebirth. Etc.   I've had some crazy plays like T1: mountain + spring leaf, T2: mountain, foundry street denizen,  tap him to spring leaf to generate mana, sacing the drum to kuldotha rebirth to get 3 tokens on the board, then playing a brightstone ritual to get out an instigator and pay to kick a bushwhacker and swing for like 12 on T2!  After hitting delver like 4 matches in a row, may switch to ornithopter over bone saw to clog up the skies. Saving the life from fairies chipping away might be better than the point or two you might deal with an equipped bone saw before you sac it.

I love/hate faithless looting.  It's helped me dig for missing pieces, but has also time locked me out of turns when I used its flashback. (flashback is the only reason I chose it over other ones that provide card advantage... might swap it out.)

I had played with impact tremors in decks previously, but it didn't click for me. It's been a huge workhorse for me in this deck! Made room for all 4. It's absurd with multiples out!

Rites of initiation is a huge suprise! They will block your pumped denizen and leave the tokens unchecked. If they're bushwhacked, it only takes 2 cards to make them all 4 power!  It's like fireblast in that you're putting your eggs in one basket there, so I'm not sure I'd run a lot of them, but I will find room for at least another 1-2 main or sideboard.

I've hit the new reanimator deck and token decks a lot lately, that's why my sideboard looks the way it does. Will add in pyroblast soon.

It's tons of fun!! :D  Let me know what you think!

8
Deck Reviews / [Standard] Mono G Beatdown Ramp
« on: June 27, 2017, 06:47:22 am »
Mono G Beatdown Ramp

Build a ramp base, using greenbelt rampager bouncing back to your hand to build energy and beef up narnam renegade to clog up the board with deathtouch, then use the bunch of 2-3 drop ramps to quickly get to hexproof beaters and aetherwind basker and bristling hydra to make use of the leftover energy.

9
Deck Reviews / [Pauper] Delver alchemist burn
« on: February 21, 2017, 01:33:24 am »
Delver alchemist burn

Play a few creatures that get value from casting instants and sorceries (permanently, as opposed to prowess triggers that last until the end of turn)  and then burn them out - to the face or by tapping/untapping thermo-alchemists, all while beating them down with delver.

I've only played a few matches with it... might need more raw card draw vs. filtering, but it seems like it's pretty decent so far.  CMC is so low that 19 lands seems ok.  If I need to curve it up to 2 drops for more control, I'll consider Goblin Electromancer to get cost down, but so far, so good. 

10
Deck Reviews / [Modern] Temur Battle Infect
« on: January 09, 2017, 01:34:04 am »
Temur Battle Infect

Not a new concept, but I have the cards and love temur battle rage and use it whenever I can.   I played a pauper version of this and had fun, but aether hub and blossoming defense made me want to try it in modern. Trying to keep it a little budget.  Trying out the Aether Hubs instead of taplands/pain-lands/fetches to keep it cheap.   2 energy should be enough for an infect deck. We'll see.  Manamorphose is good for filtering and card draw. May pull it for vines of vastwood, we'll see.   Running temur battle rage over assault strobe for the instant speed to try and bait folks into not blocking.   Might roll some in, we'll see how it plays!

11
Deck Reviews / [Frontier] Budget W/R Equipment Allies
« on: December 23, 2016, 06:16:21 am »
Budget W/R Equipment Allies

Basically this deck with a few tweaks to use Kaladesh cards and Emeria instead of the expensive Gideons:  http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/suit-up-boros-equipment/    I've been playing it in Modern on MTGO and it's winning a bunch of games!  To make it more budget, you could trim the Abbeys or run taplands, but this runs pretty well. I'll fill in the sideboard once the meta starts to gel.   Suggestions are welcome! I'm not too familiar with EM or Kaladesh, so I might have missed some obvious winners. 

12
Deck Reviews / [Frontier] Izzet Blitz
« on: December 22, 2016, 05:39:14 am »
Izzet Blitz

One of my favorite archetypes. I want to start trying it out in Frontier.  Very first pass, gonna do some ratio tweaking and tweak the mana base.  Comments welcome!

13
Deck Reviews / [Frontier] Mono Black Aristocrats
« on: December 21, 2016, 07:44:57 pm »
Mono Black Aristocrats

work in progress.   Threw in Drana because I had them, may pull it out and go Kalitas if it seems hard to finish and his token generation and sacking fits the theme.  Thoughts?   Scrapheap scrounger's recursion and awesome value might earn it a spot.

14
Deck Reviews / [Modern] pack rat madness
« on: June 07, 2016, 04:53:35 am »
pack rat madness

Lots of discard for hand disruption and madness cards to make it valuable for us as well.  Super gratifying to discard Alms of the Vein as part of the cloning cost for Pack Rat! :D    Still tuning, but it either wins through massive packrats or emptying their hands and grinding them down.  May look at some card draw. Thoughts?

15
Deck Reviews / [Pauper] temur battle infect
« on: June 01, 2016, 06:21:33 am »
temur battle infect

Splash red for double strike.    Not sure if it's any better than my super fast mono g infect, but it's fun to play with. :D

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