MTG Salvation

I still can't figure out how format decks right on here. Sorry.
This is a deck I have added to and changed since the beginning of time, it is meant to accidentally be strong but not too strong or consistent.
Also I attempt to represent new sets every time they come out. To add new cards I usually take down the number of older cards from 4 copies.. I don't like going outside of blue, and only want to splash one other color if necessary.
So, it has got above 60 cards, and I was wondering if the community could help reign it in a little. It's supposed to be fun but also have the ability to be a dick.. sometimes.

Bonus points to giving me a way to shut down my friends deck running 4 copies of all moxes, 4 copies of black lotus, 4 time walks, 4 ancestral recalls, channel, and fireball without spending money on chalice of the void or force of will, not the goal.. but definitely a plus.. we don't usually let him play that anyways.

A better formatting of your list would definitely help us help you. If you leave an empty line between cards to form blocks, the software will put the blocks next to each other, saving space and the need to scroll up and down. You can also add headlines for those blocks (any text that isn't preceded by a number will be shown as plain text). I find a seperation into three blocks most useful, dividing the cards into "Lands", "Creatures", and "Others". Furthermore, ordering the cards in each category by converted mana cost will help visualize the mana curve.

[*deck=Example]
Lands (24)
24 Swamp

Creatures (24)
8 Rat Colony
12 Relentless Rats
4 Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni

Others (12)
4 Doom Blade
4 Unmake
4 Damnation
[*/deck]

without the *s becomes

Thank you, I fixed it

Didn't yet take a closer look at your deck, but have some ideas on how to better deal with that $$$ ChannelFireball deck:

1) You could run 4 copies of Gemstone Caverns, which lets you have a land in play even if your opponent goes first and pulls the combo on his first turn. You can then use any of the many much less expensive 1CMC blue counterspells to stop the Fireball, like Envelop, Flusterstorm, Outwit, etc. He may still have his own counterspell to answer that, though.

2) If you manage to have more life than he does, the life fueled Fireball might not be big enough. Again, you could try to do this with lands, like Radiant Fountain, but of course, that's not an answer to a turn 1 combo. Not sure, if there is a "free" spell to gain life in your deck's colors.


I don't see any point in running just a single set of the Urzatron. After all, so long as you can assemble all three pieces at least once, all other pieces of unfinished sets on the field will also produce more mana. So you either want to run all 12 pieces (or close to that), or none, since assembling that single set is almost impossible with what you have in the deck and doesn't yield that much additional mana.

Yea, it used to run 4 of each at one point and splashed green to help get them into play much like legit tron, but as that became a real deck I slowly cut them down to 1... But I think it's time to let them go lol.

And that's an awesome idea. Unfortunately Gemstone has went up in price and I can't find my playset

All of the cards I play in this deck were bought for less than $10 including black lotus and the moxes (different times)

Bazaar of Wondershates copies of cards. So does Scalpelexis for that matter.
March of the Machines puts an end to 0 cost artifacts. Also you can go back to the basics with Spell Blast, Power Sink, and Force Spike to take them out with smaller doses.
Blue Elemental Blast for the Fireball control.
Pact of Negation, Foil, and Daze are more free counters.
Since your friend is running four copies and I don't think that is legal in anything other than causal and freeform, run Meddling Kids and call "mana". This disables all the moxen, the lotus, channel, and Force of Will (Kids says "nonland" so lands are still fine).
Stunning Reversal is off color and comes out June 8th, but it saves you from the Fireball. Angel's Grace is also off color but is a lot easier to pull off. Aegis of Honor has to be activated but it stays out there for when you need it.
Arcane Laboratory with an Isochron Scepter and Counterspell shuts down most combos.
If you really want to fight fire with fire with his causal deck, just get 60 copies of Chancellor of the Dross. The deck never loses.

There are many options, but I'd love to see your friend's face when you pull a Meddling Kids on him calling "mana". Sorry, I only went for bonus points.

I think, the best way to start is to just radically reduce the number of cards in the deck. Since you are roughly at 80 cards, culling every 4-of into a 3-of and cutting some lands will get us close to 60 without actually impacting how the deck plays overall. If anything, all those 1-ofs and 2-ofs will become more significant due to better chances of drawing them.

So

-1 Powerstone Shard
-1 Voltaic Key
-1 Metalwork Colossus
-1 Voltaic Servant
-1 Essence Depleter
-1 Mindbreak Trap
-1 Rite of Replication
-1 Urza's Tower
-1 Urza's Power Plant
-1 Urza's Mine
-3 Island
-1 Terramorphic Expanse
-1 Evolving Wilds
-1 Swamp

leaves us at this deck of 62 cards with pretty much the same or even slightly better performance:



Now obviously, there are no full playsets anymore. But with this culled list as a starting point, if you want a playset, don't just add the missing copy back in, instead make the hard decision of taking out some other card.

Another big step for me would be to cut black and go back to mono-U. You can then lose those common fetches to add more utility lands or Islands. Black is only in there for Essence Depleter, and while that card can make good use of large amounts of colorless mana, the rest of the deck pulls you into big artifact creatures, massive cloning, and several other things already. There are just too many different things you want the deck to do. Instead of cramming all of them into a single deck, make two decks, that each can focus more on their own themes, if you want to explore them all.

Untapping and using the Time Vault for an endless series of turns could be a focus of the deck, but only if you add more tutors for it besides that Tinker. Muddle the Mixture seems like a good fit for that, since it doubles as a counterspell and can fetch other things as well.