I started with the Selesnaya deck, played through until the end of Innistrad, then threw together Token themed deck, followed by a u/w control deck which was very shakey...then I made a Boros control deck, with the 3 sweepers and then settled on a izzet deck.
Will need much more testing to put together a competitive list thread, but g/w, g/b and u/r seem really strong to me.
Quicken + Anger of the gods was really sweet in the few competitive games I played.
After my friend played through and informed me whatever guild you picked you were essentially stuck with until you made it through Innistrad, and given my first two picks had an extremely tough time beating theinitial Gruul deck (Simic and Izzet respectively), I essentially tried out all of them before settling on Golgari, as it had some decently powerful creatures, some speed, some removal, and a decent end game with Siege Wurm and Spider Spawning.
Rakdos is also pretty strong with lots of high-power/low-toughness creatures but the removal to protect them, Orzhov is loaded with removal, Selesnya has a good mix of size and speed and Gruul has plenty of power and pump.
I personally found most of the blue variants to geerally be the worst, at least amongst the starters. There's some evasion, but they lack the size and rely too much on bounce tricks. Azorius and Dimir are perfectly workable though.
I completed it all with the izzet deck at first. But most games you really need a one drop turn one. Unlocked 2 Cloudfin raptor and whenever you got one of those on turn one you pretty much won. After a while unlocking stuff I made a deck of my own with all blue creatures (preferably with evasion) and whatever burn I could find as end game I got 1 Stormbreath Dragon.Flyers overall seems to be pretty OP.
Games I lost were pretty much when I had a slow hand and my opponent had a removal spell every turn for like 5-6 turns (yes it happened). Whats with the UI btw? Sometimes it just does an all out attack (that's not lethal) and just die on the swingback.:s
The most consistently powerful deck I have is GW Token generation. The core deck runs 4 of all the following: Raise the Alarm, Selesnya Evangel, Triplicate Spirits, and Elvish Pioneer (really necessary to get the jump on your opponent via ramp, but not so much that you want to give one whole turn away and 4x deck slots to play Cultivate).
Nutdraw is something like: Forest, Plains, Plains, Raise the Alarm, Triplicate Spirits, Elvish Pioneer, and Beastmaster Ascension T1 - Forest, Pioneer, Plains T2 - Plains, Raise the Alarm T3 -Triplicate Spirits (w convoke) T4 - Beastmaster Ascension. Attack and win. This is only six creatures, which is one shy of activating it, but typically, you draw some other creature in the three first turns that you can play with spare mana. That would be 7x 6/6 creatures swinging in on turn 4, three of which are flying. It's awesome.
Of course, perfect doesn't always happen, but why I like the deck is because it's very resilient to removal. Anger of the Gods is the one and only card non-premium players have to worry about, and there are only two, total. Every other removal is one for one or sacrifice effects, or on the off-chance that your opponent lives for a really long time, Planar Cleansing. It will put your opponent (computer or human) on their heels very quickly.
To compliment the game plan, I play 2x Mentor of the Meek and 3x Banisher Priest, also. Mentor's not as a good as I want him to be, because early, I have to slow down to activate him, sometimes holding back a Raise the Alarm a turn which isn't really what this deck wants to do, but he's good if the game goes long. Banisher Priest, on the other hand, is the perfect curve ... by turn 3, your opponent is usually dropping a serious hindrance, and she allows you keep attacking. Later, she can answer a Lorthos or some other monstrosity.
I've been messing around with some other decks, including a Mono Green Stompy that is very similar to the Eldrazi Green in 2014 DOTP. Except, this time I use Pyxis of Pandemonium as a whacky finisher, blowing it up on their end step around turn 10+. Typically my permanents are all huge beaters that gain me a substantial amount of live and outclass theirs, which I then attack all-in with and force lots of horrible blocks, nullifying their advantage.
Lastly, I really wanted Mill to work, but it's dependant entirely on Hedron Crab, of which there are only three that you can unlock (maximum) - LAME. Doorkeeper is a really terrible card, so I don't even play that. I do run Pyxis in this deck, however, as exiling one of their cards every turn for free is not laughable. Over the course of a regular game, you can expect at least five or so cards exiled ... and if, IF you go long, blowing it up with Crabs on the board will most likely win the game, because you'll have about 4 or 5 lands come into play.
My most successful Mill to date is UG. There is a infinite Fog loop available if you have 10 mana, so I also run 4x Cultivate (good for crabs, too).
Fog in graveyard. Archaeomancer. Retrieve and recast. Mercurial Pretender on Archaeomancer. Retrieve Fog. On opponent's turn - Fog, return Pretender to hand, and repeat. This will win the game against computer opponents quite frequently. I sat there against crazy Garruk, and he literally just drew himself to death, in addition to an occasional Tome Scour.
Please post some more lists, folks. Any successes that you've had?
I started with Orzhov, I've always enjoyed how Black & White interact. I haven't played paper MtG since the days of 5th edition, so my freeform deckbuilding skills are VERY rusty. I bought the "Complete Edition" on Steam, so once I got through Innistrad I had access to all the non-Premium cards(and a few Premium from a couple of free bonus Boosters I qualified for). I've built a B/W deck based around life-gain and cards that benefit from life-gain:
I had been using Resolute Angel so if my life total got too low, I could bring it right back to 20, and possibly deliver a big hit via Sanguine Bond at the same time, but I found that if I was getting down that low, my biggest problem was usually a board with too many threats on it. So I swapped them out for Planar Cleansing and that seems to be doing better. I need to find a substitute for Assassinate, though. A big dude with Vigilance can still be a real problem for me. God I miss Pacifism & Doom Blade The Palisade Giants have saved my skin more than once, but after they die absorbing that really big strike, if I don't have an answer then I'm in trouble. I may try to find something else to replace them with, I dunno.
I have no idea how well this deck would do in a truly competitive environment, but I don't really care. I just play for fun, and so far I'm having fun with this concept, so I'm going to keep tweaking it. I want to play around with a Golgari deck too, especially after the AI Spider-Spawning'd the CRAP out of me in a match.
I started black white, and it's been okay with Resolute angel helping me out quite a bit when I pulled her in a booster pack. I made a black green after that based around nemesis of mortals, but it tends to win via pump spells more than anything, if it wins. I just put together a green white token deck and hopefully it'll work out. I still need more cards.
I also pulled a Kozilek in a premium booster pack, but I've yet to fit him into a deck yet. Not enough cards to make a control deck and no ramp spells yet.
I started black white, and it's been okay with Resolute angel helping me out quite a bit when I pulled her in a booster pack. I made a black green after that based around nemesis of mortals, but it tends to win via pump spells more than anything, if it wins. I just put together a green white token deck and hopefully it'll work out. I still need more cards.
I also pulled a Kozilek in a premium booster pack, but I've yet to fit him into a deck yet. Not enough cards to make a control deck and no ramp spells yet.
Yeah, if I learned one thing from Duels 2014, playing with Eldrazi and no mana acceleration is an exercise in futility. Though I suppose you could try using them in a reanimation deck(Dimir or Golgari I imagine, but my guess would be Dimir, better card control).
My starter was red/green. YOLO. in the end I was very satisfied with my choice. When would there have been another time I could enjoy Advocate of the Beast?
I used R/G with Advocate and beasts all the way to Garruk. Only afterwards when getting all the explore nodes did I really begin to use various decks. Also, ironically I think I might put my R/G deck to rest or revamp it so it doesn't even use Advocate. It feels like the end of an era. ;_;
and I still don't have premium.
p.s. this thread made me realize something.. I wish there was a way to start the game over without deleting your progress. Just for the sake of challenge, to mock reset your cardpool and see if you can beat Garruk using a different starter.
Just wanted to add that the most fun I've had is with the Angelic Accord deck. Lots of removal, the life-lands, rhox faithmender, elixer, covenant of blood, lone missonary and sanguine bond. Very hard to deal with. Kills aggro dead.
also the mono blue and mono green decks are very good, as well as the goblin deck, u/r control and junk reanimator
these are my calls for the best decks before expansion
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Will need much more testing to put together a competitive list thread, but g/w, g/b and u/r seem really strong to me.
Quicken + Anger of the gods was really sweet in the few competitive games I played.
Rakdos is also pretty strong with lots of high-power/low-toughness creatures but the removal to protect them, Orzhov is loaded with removal, Selesnya has a good mix of size and speed and Gruul has plenty of power and pump.
I personally found most of the blue variants to geerally be the worst, at least amongst the starters. There's some evasion, but they lack the size and rely too much on bounce tricks. Azorius and Dimir are perfectly workable though.
Games I lost were pretty much when I had a slow hand and my opponent had a removal spell every turn for like 5-6 turns (yes it happened). Whats with the UI btw? Sometimes it just does an all out attack (that's not lethal) and just die on the swingback.:s
The killers are; 2x Beastmaster Ascension, 2x Phantom General, 3x Seraph of the Masses, 2x Scion of the Wild and 1x Chorus of Might.
Nutdraw is something like: Forest, Plains, Plains, Raise the Alarm, Triplicate Spirits, Elvish Pioneer, and Beastmaster Ascension
T1 - Forest, Pioneer, Plains
T2 - Plains, Raise the Alarm
T3 - Triplicate Spirits (w convoke)
T4 - Beastmaster Ascension. Attack and win. This is only six creatures, which is one shy of activating it, but typically, you draw some other creature in the three first turns that you can play with spare mana. That would be 7x 6/6 creatures swinging in on turn 4, three of which are flying. It's awesome.
Of course, perfect doesn't always happen, but why I like the deck is because it's very resilient to removal. Anger of the Gods is the one and only card non-premium players have to worry about, and there are only two, total. Every other removal is one for one or sacrifice effects, or on the off-chance that your opponent lives for a really long time, Planar Cleansing. It will put your opponent (computer or human) on their heels very quickly.
To compliment the game plan, I play 2x Mentor of the Meek and 3x Banisher Priest, also. Mentor's not as a good as I want him to be, because early, I have to slow down to activate him, sometimes holding back a Raise the Alarm a turn which isn't really what this deck wants to do, but he's good if the game goes long. Banisher Priest, on the other hand, is the perfect curve ... by turn 3, your opponent is usually dropping a serious hindrance, and she allows you keep attacking. Later, she can answer a Lorthos or some other monstrosity.
I've been messing around with some other decks, including a Mono Green Stompy that is very similar to the Eldrazi Green in 2014 DOTP. Except, this time I use Pyxis of Pandemonium as a whacky finisher, blowing it up on their end step around turn 10+. Typically my permanents are all huge beaters that gain me a substantial amount of live and outclass theirs, which I then attack all-in with and force lots of horrible blocks, nullifying their advantage.
Lastly, I really wanted Mill to work, but it's dependant entirely on Hedron Crab, of which there are only three that you can unlock (maximum) - LAME. Doorkeeper is a really terrible card, so I don't even play that. I do run Pyxis in this deck, however, as exiling one of their cards every turn for free is not laughable. Over the course of a regular game, you can expect at least five or so cards exiled ... and if, IF you go long, blowing it up with Crabs on the board will most likely win the game, because you'll have about 4 or 5 lands come into play.
My most successful Mill to date is UG. There is a infinite Fog loop available if you have 10 mana, so I also run 4x Cultivate (good for crabs, too).
Fog in graveyard. Archaeomancer. Retrieve and recast. Mercurial Pretender on Archaeomancer. Retrieve Fog. On opponent's turn - Fog, return Pretender to hand, and repeat. This will win the game against computer opponents quite frequently. I sat there against crazy Garruk, and he literally just drew himself to death, in addition to an occasional Tome Scour.
Please post some more lists, folks. Any successes that you've had?
3x Ajani's Pridemate
3x Lone Missionary
3x Nimbus Wings
2x Mentor Of The Meek
2x Banisher Priest
2x Rhox Faithmender
2x Palisade Giant
2x Planar Cleansing
2x Cruel Sadist
3x Tribute To Hunger
4x Assassinate
2x Indulgent Tormentor
2x Sanguine Blood
2x Vizkopa Guildmage
2x Elixir Of Immortality
9x Plains
7x Swamp
4x Orzhov Guildgate
4x Radiant Fountain
I had been using Resolute Angel so if my life total got too low, I could bring it right back to 20, and possibly deliver a big hit via Sanguine Bond at the same time, but I found that if I was getting down that low, my biggest problem was usually a board with too many threats on it. So I swapped them out for Planar Cleansing and that seems to be doing better. I need to find a substitute for Assassinate, though. A big dude with Vigilance can still be a real problem for me. God I miss Pacifism & Doom Blade The Palisade Giants have saved my skin more than once, but after they die absorbing that really big strike, if I don't have an answer then I'm in trouble. I may try to find something else to replace them with, I dunno.
I have no idea how well this deck would do in a truly competitive environment, but I don't really care. I just play for fun, and so far I'm having fun with this concept, so I'm going to keep tweaking it. I want to play around with a Golgari deck too, especially after the AI Spider-Spawning'd the CRAP out of me in a match.
I also pulled a Kozilek in a premium booster pack, but I've yet to fit him into a deck yet. Not enough cards to make a control deck and no ramp spells yet.
Yeah, if I learned one thing from Duels 2014, playing with Eldrazi and no mana acceleration is an exercise in futility. Though I suppose you could try using them in a reanimation deck(Dimir or Golgari I imagine, but my guess would be Dimir, better card control).
I used R/G with Advocate and beasts all the way to Garruk. Only afterwards when getting all the explore nodes did I really begin to use various decks. Also, ironically I think I might put my R/G deck to rest or revamp it so it doesn't even use Advocate. It feels like the end of an era. ;_;
and I still don't have premium.
p.s. this thread made me realize something.. I wish there was a way to start the game over without deleting your progress. Just for the sake of challenge, to mock reset your cardpool and see if you can beat Garruk using a different starter.
also the mono blue and mono green decks are very good, as well as the goblin deck, u/r control and junk reanimator
these are my calls for the best decks before expansion