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1

Deck Comments / Re: Jund CoCo - Comments

« em: Fevereiro 28, 2016, 01:13:04 am »

So, first and foremost, a Collected Company deck is a deck which demands a high creature density. The spell is only effective if you are putting two creatures into play off of every resolved casting of the card. Ideally you will hit the maximum value each time, which is to say two creatures with CMC of three. Your current deck has only seventeen creatures in it, two of which cannot even be hit via Collected Company. As such, only a fourth of the cards in your deck can be hit by Collected Company. As such, you will rarely hit two creatures, and it will not be terribly uncommon for you to miss hitting even one.

The ideal composition for a Collected Company deck is going to be approximately twenty two to twenty four lands, twenty five to thirty creatures, and two to six removal spells, as well as your four Collected Company cards. With half of your deck being composed of creature cards, you have a very high chance of turning over two or three creatures with every casting of Collected Company, and as such the chance to leverage your advantage to the maximum.

The main problem is the deck's composition; it packs a lot of cards which are superfluous. Tormenting Voice, Nissa, Voice of Zendikar, and Read the Bones are by far the most substantial offenders. Remove these cards in favor of creatures with a CMC of three. Matter Reshaper, Deathmist Raptor, Sylvan Advocate, Den Protector, and Nissa, Vastwood Seer, are all excellent choices in your colors. By dropping those eight cards, you increase threat density from seventeen creatures, to twenty five creatures, which is enough to satisfy most Collected Company castings.

This still leaves you six removal spells in Grasp of Darkness and Murderous Cut. If you feel the need for additional removal spells however, consider creatures with Enter the Battlefield triggers. Merciless Executioner and Fleshbag Marauder force your opponent to sacrifice a creature upon them coming into play. This allows you to cast a removal spell, albiet an targeted one, off a Collected Company.

Then we have Kalitas. While this card is magnificent, I'm not sure it fits well into your deck. First and foremost, you can't hit him off of Collected Company. Second, he doesn't have a substantial effect on the battlefield upon being cast. Third, he has no form of evasion. While he is a very powerful card in attrition and midrange match ups, as well as positively back breaking against Rally decks, his effectiveness in a Collected Company deck is very debatable. Consider replacing him with smaller creatures you can hit off Collected Company.

Lastly is your color choices. Jund is not ideal for a Collected Company deck right now. There are very few red cards of which are high impact outside of aggressive games. Decks like Atarka Red and U/R Prowess have the good red creatures right now, while the creatures in the one to three drop range are sadly minimal. The best colors for Collected Company are Abzan and Bant, with each of these colors packing very powerful cards. Creatures like Anafenza the Foremost and Reflector Mage are ideal cards to hit off a Collected Company; Anafenza is extremely powerful, and Reflector Mage is an extra powerful Unsummon attached to an appropriately sized body.

I hope this advice is useful to you, and helps you to improve your deck. Good luck!

2

Deck Reviews / Re: [Standard] BW standard control

« em: Fevereiro 22, 2016, 10:23:13 am »

While I see nothing fundamentally wrong with your list, I will nonetheless pick at it hatefully in an effort to improve it! First though, the current list you've provided is more of a mid range deck than a control deck. If your intention is to be more controlling, then taking out some of your creatures and replacing them with removal is a good plan.

The Good:

Duress mainboard is an often underestimated destabilizer. The ability to take away a critical card from your opponent can make or break the game. Often times just seeing their hand provides a massive advantage. Silkwrap in quantities of 2 is a fine addition; it eats Jace, Mantis Rider, Anafenza, Hangarback Walker and plenty of other nuisances. Ob Nixilis is a bad ass card, and I love it in any deck that can support it. He's card advantage and protection for himself and you; his ultimate is rarely a factor, and even when I'm able to use it, I rarely do. I love his +1 and -3 too much! Stasis Snare is one of the best removal spells in the format right now. Its almost as good as Murder, and in most matches it effectively is Murder. Dromoka's Command makes this card less efficient, but you only have to see that card in the Abzan match up, and even then they have only four at most. I'd honestly up the quantity of Snare to four.

Secure the Wastes is arguably the best card in your deck. I love it so much. I'd run it main deck and I'd run three or four of them. They chump block like pros, and can act as a win condition later on. Infinite Obliteration is a quality card. Eat their Siege Rhino, Ulamog, Jace, Nantuko Husk or whatever else is killing you. Ultimate Price and Immolating Glare are solid specialized removal spells. I personally prefer Surge of Righteousness over Glare, but either one works.

Lastly, your mana base is contains the full four copies of the best land in standard, Shambling Vent. You go.

The Ugly:

Drana, Ayli, Erebos Titan and Sidisi are all iffy creatures. None of them have synergy with each other. Drana wants to swarm with lots of cheap critters. Ayli likes to play more defensively. Sidisi likes to eat creatures or herself to tutor up cards. I'm not sure what Erebos' Titan is doing. All I know is that while none of these cards are bad, none of them are amazing in this list. Sidisi is passable as a tutor effect that is sometimes also a big fatty, but usually I'd skip her entirely.

Ruinous Path is a very sketchy card. I've lost games because I needed to remove a threat on my opponents turn, and then cast a second spell on my own. RP prevents that from happening. The Awaken on it is rarely relevant, though when it is, its very useful. Transgress the Mind should be good if Duress is right? I personally hate Transgress. Costing 2 mana compared to 1 makes this card painful to cast, as it interrupts your curve. Worse, it only hits cards with CMC 3 or higher. Against mid range decks its fine, but the potential to have a pair of these in my opening hand versus U/R prowess or Atarka Red terrifies me. I'd relegate it to sideboard.

The Bad:

Ondu Rising is a draft card. Please take it out of your deck and never play it again. If you insist on life gain effects, use Sorin or Seeker of the Way. Better yet, go Mardu, and use Soul Fire Grandmaster.

A playset of Languish and a threesome of Flaying Tendrils is half your sideboard relegated to sweeper effects. Two Languish and a Tendrils should do you fine if you insist on running sweeper effects.

You aren't running scoured barrens or caves of koilos. Please run four of each, or at least four caves.

Changes:

First and foremost, specialize the deck if you want a control focus. There are two ways to go with this in a W/B deck. The first is a dedicated win condition, which is typically a giant creature. Tragically, there are no good creatures in W/B that fit the role of control finisher right now. This leaves the second option; Planeswalkers. Fortunately, W/B have access to three of the best walkers in Standard. Ob Nixilis, Gideon, and Sorin. I'd go with two, four and three respectively, for a total of nine walkers.

Of these walkers, only Gideon actually punches for a reasonable amount. Sorin is there for the lifegain effect mostly, and could be dropped down to a two, or even one of if you like. Mostly he's there for consistencies sake with your best card, Secure the Wastes. The goal of W/B control as far as I'm concerned is to hold the board, keep it clean, and then when my opponent has nothing on the field, cast an end of turn Secure for a lot, follow it up with a Gideon or Sorin, and then swing for a crap ton of damage. Gideon's -4 and Sorin's +1 both double the damage output of your token swarm, making a Secure for five or six go from dangerous, to nearly lethal in a single swing.

Another amazing card for this type of deck is the Monastery Mentor. Because a control deck likes to play tons of non-creature spells, its typically easy enough to get him to pump out a few tokens. Even if he doesn't, the threat of him staying in play will typically cause your opponent to spend resources killing him, rather than advancing their board.

If I was to play B/W control, I'd use a list similar to this one here. It has powerful threats in Gideon, Mentor and Secure, plenty of removal, a smattering of hand disruption, specialized answers for matches where its relevant, and is overall a solid seventy five.

3

General Magic / Re: Newbie Help Please

« em: Fevereiro 09, 2016, 04:58:08 am »

The first tip I want to give you is to play something fun. Go through your cards, every single one, and look at them. Find a few that sound or look awesome. For standard, this is most likely going to be a big creature, though it could be anything. Pick a few of these cards. This will be the foundation of your deck, the card or cards you build around.

With this decided, acknowledge their colors, or lack there of. Maybe its a colorless creature like Desolation Twin. Maybe its a white enchantment like Starfield of Nyx. Or a very aggressive red critter like Reckless Bushwacker. Whatever card you choose to build around, our goal is now to make that card work more efficiently. For most cases, this is going to involve casting this card, either at the earliest possible time, or in a way that sets you up to then win the game.

So, as an example deck, lets say you choose Desolation Twin as your build around card. This creature is a 10/10 for ten mana, AND when he enters the battlefield, you put a 10/10 token into play. 10 is a very, very big number in Magic, both in casting cost, and his power and toughness. Because he costs so much mana, you probably won't be casting it very often; assuming you play a land every single turn for ten turns, you still can't put this powerful creature on the table until your tenth turn. As such, you'll turn to ramping spells and abilities.

Ramp is a term to describe acceleration in Magic, and almost exclusively is used to refer to mana. To build around Desolation Twin, you'd want to choose creatures that generate mana, such as Beastcaller Savant, Hedron Crawler, and Warden of Geometries, as well as spells that allow you to put lands into play, cards like Explosive Vegetation and Nissa's Pilgrimage. Each of these cards will allow you to generate mana more quickly than an opponent playing a different style deck. Using these supporting cards, you can deploy your Desolation Twin far earlier; around turn seven or eight with a perfect draw.

However, there's a catch. While throwing every ramp spell imaginable into your deck seems like the fastest and most ideal way to deploy this deck, doing so will put you in an extremely disadvantaged position, because you'd only have four pay off cards. You need additional cards, spells and creatures that will protect you, and weaken or attack your opponents and their creatures.

By adding cards that kill creatures, commonly called removal or answers in Magic slang, one can protect their own life total from enemy creatures, and ensure they have more time to set up their own victory condition. The hypothetical deck idea we're discussing here however has a problem with this. Green as colors go has the weakest removal spells in the entire color pie. As such, we'll be adding a second color.

As mentioned by other uses, the five colors have their own unique strengths and weaknesses. Green is famous for its mana ramp capabilities, its giant and usually undercosted creatures, its mana producing creatures, its weakness against flying creatures, its lack of removal, and specialty at destroying enchantments and artifacts. By supplementing one color with another, you overlap the strengths of each color, and hide some of the weaknesses.

Red: cheap removal, cheap hasty creatures, a focus on aggression and hostility, extremely strong versus artifacts but helpless against enchantments, weak versus big creatures, and vulnerable to running out of resources. Red is the go to color for a player who wants their opponents life total at zero by turn four. It is a common splash choice to access cheap removal spells, though it typically has a poor game plan against creatures with high toughness.

Blue: counter spells, bounce spells, tap spells, card draw spells, blue is excellent at stalling the game and forcing its opponent to play by its rules. It is vulnerable to enchantments and artifacts. Its is typically also vulnerable to enemy creatures, as its removal is second weakest only to green. Blue is a color that is paired with others more than any other, and often plays a defensive game, up until it locks down the situation.

Black: powerful removal spells at varying cost, hand disruption, strong graveyard interaction capabilities, a "power at any cost" mentality and a complete disregard for its own life total. Black is very weak against enchantments and artifacts, but is extremely powerful against creatures. Black decks are capable of attacking aggressively, defending their position, or picking apart their opponent until they can move in for the kill. Black is capability of working alongside any other color, and supplementing its weakness with its powerful removal spells.

White: a synergistic color capable of gaining life, attacking enchantments and sometimes artifacts, it has a healthy variety of creatures, ranging from small weenies as seen in red, to bigger creatures found in green. White is notorious for deploying undercosted cheap creatures, and also for its powerful board wipe effects. White also has relevant removal, though all of it typically with some kind of limitation or weakness. White's biggest weakness is it often runs out of cards in hand as it deploys it cheap creatures, and is then at the mercy of top decking.

Back to the deck construction, mixing your colors with any of the other four is acceptable and capable of being effective. I personally prefer either blue or black. Blue in particular grants counterspells, and black offers potent removal. Either is acceptable. So lets say you add in some black cards for removal; Ultimate Price, Ruinous Path, Grasp of Darkness, etc etc all shore up a weakness of your primary color, green, and enable you to actually protect yourself while you wait for your Desolation Twin to be cast.

As for the card quantity, a good rule of thumb is 24, 24, and 12, which is to say 24 lands, 24 creatures and 12 spells. This is by no means a hard and fast rule, but rather a guideline to start building with. In the case of this deck, its far more likely to be more mixed. Because the deck contains mana ramping spells, additional lands are beneficial. Your creatures are focused on producing mana, so having too many of these is not advisable. Lastly, the deck will basically demand additional spells greater in quantity than 12, as you have so many you need to cast.

Tl, dr; find a card you like. Build a deck around it using cards you think will support it.

I hope this helps you! Welcome to Magic!

4

Deck Comments / Re: aggro for caroline - Comments

« em: Fevereiro 02, 2016, 12:11:15 am »

Trade out Brute Strength for Titan's Strength. The only advantage Brute Strength gives is trample, but it costs twice as much as Titan's Strength. In addition, Titan's Strength allows deck manipulation via its Scry 1 effect.

Valor in Akros is a terrible card. If you insist on a pump spell, choose Trumpet Blast. Realistically though, use Thunderbreak Regent, Pia and Kiran Nalaar, Archangel of Tithes, Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, Mardu Woe-Reaper, Dragon Hunter, Anafenza, Kin-Tree Spirit or Kytheon, Hero of Akros. Any one of these cards is going to be more useful to you than a four mana enchantment, which only provides a pump to a your team when you cast a creature.

If you insist on using Valor, then consider running cards which put multiple creatures into play simultaneously, such as Dragon Fodder and Hordeling Outburst. This will give you two triggers off Valor, though it won't make the spell that much better.

You're running 4 Looming Spires and 4 Sandstone Bridge. Cut six of them. Replace four with Battlefield Forge, and two with Evolving Wilds. While the Spires and Bridges give you some value out of later game land flooding, they also seriously stunt your field's development early game. In an aggressively focused deck like this, you want your lands to come out untapped unless they provide substantial benefit. Needle Spires provides massive benefit; its a 2/1 with double strike that dodges sorcery speed removal, and gives you a means to put pressure on your foe when you're otherwise top decking. Spires and Bridges are only useful if you already have creatures in play, so using them on turn one is always harmful, and on turn two is often harmful given how few one drops your deck has.

That's my two cents. Otherwise, the deck looks like it should be able to do some good work in more casual. Good luck!

5

Deck Comments / Re: R/B Eldrazi aggro - Comments

« em: Janeiro 18, 2016, 11:14:42 pm »

Run Sea-Gate Wreckage instead of Haven of the Spirit Dragon. Haven has no targets in your deck, so you get no advantage out of its ability to provide any colored mana, nor do you have any Dragons or Ugins to rebuy. Sea-Gate Wreckage provides the same colorless mana as Haven, but also packs a nifty card draw ability for if you run out of cards in hand.

Consider a copy or four of Blighted Fen. This deck is aggro focused, and as such will likely end up with too many lands every so often. Fen provides colorless mana when you need it, and an Edict effect when you've gotten enough mana.

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Deck Comments / Re: BRU Devoid - Comments

« em: Outubro 20, 2015, 09:09:02 am »

Consider Hangarback Walker instead of Endless one; the value it generates and its synergy with Vile Aggregate is substantial.

You might want Complete Disregard over Touch of the Void. It generally kills the same creatures, only at instant speed. It doesn't hit players admittedly, but instant speed is usually worth that trade off. Besides, one runs removal to kill creatures, not players.

I prefer Salvage Drone as the one drop in a devoid deck. Drawing a card off its death is very nice.

Not having four Ruination Guides in this deck is a sin. I'd have four of them main decked at all times. Its too good to not use.

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Deck Comments / Re: $10 Rat Control - Comments

« em: Outubro 14, 2015, 11:55:48 pm »

...How does it work with only 5 lands, all of which come into play tapped?

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Deck Comments / Re: W/G Bolster - Comments

« em: Agosto 28, 2015, 06:56:54 am »

Consider Mardu Woe-Reaper in place of Dragon Hunter. I personally like the Hunter as Thunderbreak Regent and Kolaghan, Storms Fury, are incredibly popular cards, and Hunter stops them cold... Pity he can't handle Stormbreath or Dragonlord Atarka, but two out of four isn't bad for a one drop.

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Deck Comments / Re: Red/Green Dragons - Comments

« em: Agosto 20, 2015, 03:56:52 am »

I'm going to assume that this is a first or second draft of this deck, as it is extremely lacking in focus. Try to shrink it down to focus on one thing, with a second as back up. To assist with this, I'd advise looking up a Standard format legal G/R Dragons deck, and then replacing some of those cards with Modern cards.

If I was to run a Modern legal G/R Dragons deck right now, It'd look like this.

4x Birds of Paradise
4x Lightning Bolt
3x Rattleclaw Mystic
3x Stormblood Berserker
4x Draconic Roar
3x Domri Rade
4x Fanatic of Xenagos
4x Boggart Ram-Gang
4x Thunderbreak Regent
4x Thundermaw Hellkite
4x wooded foothills
4x stomping ground
4x rootbound crag
6x mountain
5x forest

This deck basically took what I liked best about my G/R Dragons standard deck, went a little lighter on recursion and value, and got more aggressive. As before, your deck is all over the place with both Atarkas, various enchantments, creatures which get bigger if you have more lands, random mana ramp etc. Try to focus your efforts on a singular area for your deck.

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Deck Comments / Re: $10 Heroic Deck to Beat EVERYONE - Comments

« em: Agosto 20, 2015, 03:30:20 am »

You might want to include more spells to give "protection from ___" to your creatures. It makes them unblockable if used during an attack, and protects them from the copious amounts of removal thrown around in Modern. It'd be an awful shame to lose a 6/6 creature you've spent 4 spells and 3 turns buffing to a Path to Exile, Abrupt Decay or Terminate.

You might also consider splashing another color, though Blue or Red are most friendly to Heroic. Blue gives you access to Ordeal of Thassa, Battlewise Hoplite, and Aqueous Form, all of which are very strong for Heroic decks. Blue also gives you draw spells and deck manipulation, though I'm not sure how important such spells will be in a Modern Heroic deck. Red gives you access to Brute Force, Titan's Strength, Assault Strobe, and Temur Battle Rage, which enables massive hostility. Red also gives you Lightning Bolt and other burn spells which can be used to polish off those last few points of life an opponent might be sitting on.

Lastly, consider dropping all of the three drops you've chosen. The Priest in particular is a very weak choice for a heroic deck, and Fabled Hero, while potentially powerful, is too easy to kill for too substantial a mana investment. Not playing your beater until turn 3 is way too slow for a modern aggro deck. Dauntless Onslaught is passable, but generally going to only be hitting one of your creatures, since its unlikely you'll actually have more than one on the board.

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Deck Comments / Re: G/R Dragons - Comments

« em: Agosto 09, 2015, 11:25:26 pm »

The Boon Satyr into Yasova combo has happened all of twice, though the look on your opponents face when you steal their Atarka, World Render, is just priceless. It's somewhere between "Son of a..." and "Mother of God."

My play testing is frequently yielding a need to change the deck. My local meta has changed substantially, and I've been forced to alter the deck as well. It's current set up was brought about due to U/B control and G/R devotion making a massive appearance. Raptors and Den Protector give my deck the staying power it demands to hold up to such threats. Mana Confluence versus Rugged Highlands has proven to be an almost unnoticeable change in most circumstances, though now and then it does matter. Triumph is too slow for competitive play. Resolving it on turn 2 to scoop up a Regent, and then dropping said Regent on turn 3 is decent, but only if I have no 3 drops to play, in which case I probably kept the hand to cast something else on turn 2. As for Sarkhan Unbroken, can I assume you meant Sarkhan the Dragonspeaker, as Sarkhan Unbroken is a G/U/R walker, and cannot be played reliably in this deck.

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Deck Comments / Re: G/R Dragons - Comments

« em: Maio 19, 2015, 09:35:49 pm »

Advice on improving the deck is welcome, though please do not suggest Sylvan Caryatid, Courser of Kruphix or Goblin Rabblemaster. I've play tested these cards, and I dislike them all for this deck.

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Deck Comments / Re: MonoRed AggroDash Token Deck By Poliwhirl - Comments

« em: Maio 17, 2015, 10:20:12 pm »

2 more Roast's in Sideboard; you'll want them if you end up playing Abzan or G/R or any deck with decent sized bodies on the board.

Drop Impact Tremors Mainboard and run 4 more mountains. The only reason to go below 18 lands is if everything in your deck is a 1 drop with maybe 8 two drops. You have 13 guys above 2 CMC, which is essentially begging to get mana screwed. 21 lands will give you more consistent land drops. If you want to go with 17 lands, then drop all the cards with CMC above 3 aside from maybe Hordeling Outburst.

Consider a splash of green for Atarka's Command. That spell is insane for the type of deck you have here.

You should run Zurgo Bellstriker and Monastery Swiftspear. They're the best one drops in red right now.