MTG Salvation

@Budget: Mostly low. I tend to sell anything worth money as soon as people ask for it, so I'm out of duals etc. but still have odd ball cards that I can trade into things worth less than 50.

I could probably reacquire Jittes.

So the last couple posts are geared more for bolstering Rider than closing things out with haste and burn. That shifted me to thinking on a color swap to UW? Slower build based on holding advantage.

Cerodons and Skynights out, Sai of the Shinobi into Bonesplitters.
Knight of Meadowgrain - Because, yes. Quite good.
Azorius Herald - Transforms a T2 Rider, gets in there with Mutagenic Growth, and is terrifying with Wargear.
I like Glory Bound Initiate, but might take me a while to find those since I tend to run with a crowd that slowly acquires new cards.
Vault Skirge should probably be pulled from this build...

Swap burn for counters.
Absorb - Slower than Counter, but aids a transformation.
Mana Leak - Figured I'd go easy on the manabase here since Knight and Absorb are working opposite ends of the spectrum.

The Magic Ruling forum is the place to ask about how specific cards interact with each other or the rules of the game. It is also a great resource to search if you want to see what other people have asked regarding a certain card.

Casual is a pretty good place to discuss any random deck idea. You can also check out the Casual Primers if you want to see some builds of common deck types.

I could bump the Swiftblades for another couple 1 CMC lifelinkers, the Swiftblades aren't really in tune with either the transform or haste half of the deck.

I'm still on the fence over Bonesplitter. It would add another avenue for a turn 2 transformation, but I don't know that I can go all in on a plan of Lone Rider with just 4 copies, no tutoring, and too little fast mana to reliably support the 3CMC transform routes. Bonesplitter does play nicely with the haste half of my creature base, but Sais also let me keep up burn mana...

Apostle's Blessing and Steelshaper's Gift are sort of acting as filler. Without a toolbox to choose from, might be better to run that third Wargear over Gift. Blessing could become more critters, removal slots 9-10, or stay as a partial counterspell.

So Lone Rider finally brought me around to the notion of flip cards.

I latched onto Mutagenic Growth for it. Flavorwise, I like that Growth starts a mutation that makes the Lone Rider continue to mutate into a horror. Mechanically, I like that I pay life to generate a big ol' lifelink critter.

Deck could go any number of directions from there, I first opted for RW since I still had some Helices floating around. Here's draft one. Kinda messing around with the lands to figure out which ETB tapped effects I want. Peaks and Crossroads help flip a Rider, but I think haste guys means Peaks over Roads? My CMC tops out at 3, should I drop a couple more basics for cycling lands?

Any suggestions? I'm only holding Rider and Growth as sacred.

If you would like to write a Casual Primer, Please do!

You should first contact the Casual moderators via PM. Primers are a community resource, and we require a review before they are posted. Don't worry, the review process is largely informal, geared towards ensuring a quality guide (and limiting duplicate work if someone else is already working on that Primer).

Once the review is complete, you'll be given the go ahead to post your new Primer.

Here is a tutorial on writing Primers.


Completed Primers
- Deck Building in General

- 10 Land Stompy
- Affinity
- Angels
- Blue Control (Draw Go/MUC)
- BUG Artiface (with Chief Engineer)
- Caw Blade
- Clerics
- Discard
- Dragons
- Elves
- Goblins
- Kiln Fiend Aggro
- Madness
- Merfolk
- Pestilence
- Ramp (Mono Green)
- Reanimator
- Slivers
- Soldiers
- Suicide Black
- Tron (or 12 post)
- Vampires
- White Weenie
- Zombies

Quote from NezumiNinja1 »

I was wondering what this sub-forums criteria was for a primer. As try as I may I am not finding much uniformity or many guidelines.

When we revamped the Pauper Primer section, it seems we neglected to put the same resources in the general primers.

This existing tutorial thread in Casual Primers is now pinned, and I will be putting together a post similar to the one for Pauper.

Been thinking on it. I don't know if we need a separate sub for tribal decks.

Anybody else have thoughts on it?

Everybody, this thread is for discussing how to go about building a land destruction deck. This thread is not for discussing whether land destruction is Casual or not.

Please keep future posts on topic.

+3 Myriad Landscape - Fetches out basics and gets a land in the yard for Delirium. I don't know if it is better to run this vs Terramorphic or fetches? Right now I'm leaning towards the 2 for 1 fetch rather than raw speed, but I'd be willing to vote it back out if folk think we need a quicker hit for the 'yard.

-4 Flames of the Blood Hand: I like the card, but I'd rather run an artifact, enchantment, or Tarfire to diversify card types.

1 for 1 casual land destruction cards usually work best if you can keep casting costs low in the deck as a whole. A mid-game Avalanche Riders can be your finisher if you've an opponent without lands. Definitely run the Riders, the ability to crack land and start hitting the life total is huge.

Things I would remove:
Most things 6CMC or more.
Westvale Abbey - Huge mana investment and it slows down your consistency in access to RR or BB in the early game.
Vampire Nighthawk - In this deck, Nighthawk fights too hard with LD for casting cost. Small evasive critters are good, but I would put a priority on hitting the table over life gain. You shouldn't need more than 20 if your opponent can cast anything big. Maybe run Dauthi Horror?

Things worth considering:
Pillage is better than Molten Rain. Opponents can run Signets or Borderposts, flexibility to hit those without diminishing the concentration of your LD is more important than a one-shot of 2 damage tacked onto your game plan.

Boom // Bust - If you keep mana costs are low, you can afford to lose a couple lands here and there. If you switch your ETB tapped lands for Evolving Wilds, you can target the Wilds then sac it to find a land. Same trick works on Strip Mine if you get one.

Wild Cantor or Blood Pet over the Typhoid Rats - Either can poke in for a little early damage, Cantor also offers the possibility of second turn LD.

+2 Firecat Blitz as a card that prefers being filtered away for a later finish. Only adding a couple because it doesn't look like we'll have the big mana needed for a good hardcast.

I don't know why that would be too long of something to post here in Casual, but I don't think you'd get the best type of response to that.

A couple thousand cards can produce an absurd number of decks, and no one here can narrow in on your interests for you. Instead, I suggest looking through your cards and choosing some that you like or a theme that you find, then make a thread asking on how to improve that.

From there you can either trade to get the cards people suggest, find cards that fill similar roles in your collection, or figure out an entirely new approach.

Definitely give us something a little more narrow to start with.

Quote from baldersmashed »

My fog deck that wins with Sphinx-bone Wand. My friends always groan.

I built one of these after our GMaD! Stuck with 0 creatures, then just added lots of ramp and Constant Mists to burn 'em out fast. Not much slower than a good burn deck on average. Kinda funny, I'm pretty sure I was against Emerald Medallions in the GMaD, but ended up adding a couple in over the years.

Edit: While they're no longer in my current rotation. I was also inspired by this site to build mono-red and mono-black decks in which every card other than basic lands had a monosyllabic name. I think those merit mention here.

In this type of build, I definitely agree with adding Repercussion. Perhaps in the Mana Barbs/Burning Sands slots? Those seem like a lot of mana investment right around when you'll hit that point of needing to directly burn out the table that has temporarily teamed up against you.

Soul's Attendant and Suture Priest both have 'may' abilities, netting value for paying attention to triggers rather than just blindly passing priority.

Rhystic Study lets you gleefully ask people if they pay the tax or let you draw.

Similarly to these notions you can look for other cards that read 'Whenever a player does X...'