I'm getting back into Magic after 17 years or so and feel like I stepped out of a
time machine. I decided to update my old creature stealing deck and make it a little leaner and faster. Honestly, I expect it to be pretty bad because I haven't been following the game and there's just way too much to know about and prepare against to even know where to start. So I'm taking the ramp/card draw/creature stealing idea as far as I can take it.
Here's my deck:
https://deckstats.net/decks/34002/230805-grand-theft-magic/enI suppose this deck falls into the "serious fun" category. The idea is to use cards like
Exploration,
Birds of Paradise, and Kiora's Followers to ramp into card draw:
Exploration,
Courser of Kruphix,
Archivist, and
Kiora's Follower. Usually by turn 3-5 I'm drawing 2-4 cards per turn, and can use
Threads of Disloyalty,
Mimeofacture, and
Control Magic to gradually even up the board state, and hold on long enough to cast
Eternal Dominion.
If the card draw is delayed I have a couple Walls of Frost and Coursers of Kruphix to use as blockers, and
Threads of Disloyalty for early game creature stealing. The idea with the
Wall of Frost is to force my opponent to have to play more creatures, bigger creatures, or creatures with good abilities to be a threat, as its fairly hard to kill and can keep two creatures at bay (sort of) with its "blocked creature does not untap." This buys time (along with the Courser's life gain ability) and forces my opponent to play a bigger threat, hopefully sparing me the situation where I steal my opponent's only creature because it's dealing me damage, and next turn s/he plays an even bigger creature while I'm out of spells.
The 3 copies of
Bramblecrush are there as overall 1-for-1 removal, for anything that's not a creature and might be a problem.
I split the mana straight down the middle because its critically important to play early mana birds or an early
exploration. Normally this deck runs 25 lands and 4 Explorations, but I added the 4 Kiora's Followers as mana dorks/
Archivist boosters/blocker-creator, and removed 3 lands and one
Exploration.
I understand that the 2 Eternal Dominions are deadweight in this deck. Believe it or not, its not uncommon to be able to play one by turn 7-8, and its a fun spell to play. But I understand in a more competitive deck it might be replaced with 2 copies of
Bribery, or
Volition Reins, or whatever. It's hard to say because it depends on what I am playing with.
So, this is my best attempt at a fast, lean, and fun creature stealing deck. I expect it to lose to burn decks. Beyond that, I would hope it does fairly well in informal multiplayer games, and maybe pick off a game or two from a metagame calibrated creature deck. There's not much I can do if a player wins on the second turn with a Sphincter Twin combo, but it would be nice to hear people's ideas on how to calibrate this deck to the metagame without losing the main idea of the deck. Obviously, if this deck was truly viable somebody would be playing something like it already, so I already know that's its inherently flawed. I'd just like people's input on what those specific flaws are so I can make a decision if I want to lose with my own ideas or win with somebody else's. I'm comfortable doing both, and may choose to have two versions of this deck depending on the environment I'm playing in.
Thanks for looking everyone. If there's any questions or anything I can do to be more clear about presenting the deck I'm happy to help.