Standard is composed of the last 2 blocks and the last 1 to 2 core sets. Every time a new block comes out, the oldest block and core set rotate and are no longer legal. Mutilate is a card that is not in standard. If they are not playing by standard limitations, there is no reason for you to necessarily have to either, opening up all sorts of possibilities. They are effectively getting a card pool that is more than ten times what yours is to pick from.
Well... Hmmm idk I guess it would be good to build something different then an aggro deck so I can continue to learn how to play new deck styles. As for what kind exactly I'm not to picky whatever you suggest that you think will be effective.
Is there anything I can build that will be good around the 50 dollar mark?
Also would it be a good idea if I wait til the new 2015 cards release next week?
If budget is a concern for Modern, i beleive the cheapest 1 is a combo deck. Strange usually the combo decks are the costliest.
Zombie Hunt is the name
basically it revolves around 3 cards: Treasure Hunt, Zombie Infestation, Reliquary Tower.
it can be made more efficient with Serum visions but thats really expensive.
Basically treasure hunt and Zombie infestation are dirt cheap, and reliquary tower is like $2-3 a piece, the rest is basic islands. So like 4 copies of these basic components are all u would need. Basic strategy: draw cards till u get to a land card then discard all that to infestation for a zombie army.
Like all combos sometimes it just fizzles and sometimes it is spectacular. hand disruption is the main hurdle. Make sure u mulligan till u get the Reliquary Tower.
Also there is a red burn version which uses a burn spell instead of the infestation. Unfortunately the combo is too fine tuned to maximize discard and the only thing customizable is including man lands, the most expensive of which also cost a bunch of $.
But for <$15 excluding basics it is a good good combo deck. Due to how much customization and interaction (literally non budget-wise) i advise against this deck. I would recommend some kind of dual colored control deck.
My bad i meant serum powder not Serum Visions, but it still is not worth cluttering this combo deck. Also it is about $1, so not expensive at all.
For the sake of it being multiplayer, I do not suggest combo. People won't like a one trick pony deck.
I would try playing something like tron, mono blue tron. The trick is just figuring out which win cons to use but google it. If you see urza's mine, urza's tower, urza's power core, and expedition map, you're in about the right place.
I'd give a long speel on it but this is the standard forum so let's stay on topic.
Hey Nev thanks for all the help by the way. In working on making my modern multiplayer deck now.
But back to my 1v1 aggro decks I made.
I made your white, red, and black decks you suggested and I have 2 questions.
My favorite is easily the white deck. Is there anything you suggest that I do to upgrade it at all? Anything that would make it even better?
Second I liked the red deck quite a bit and the black one less. Is there anything I can do with these two decks to make a new deck with a different style other then aggro? Or even just change the black one if the red and black don't go together well.
Wanting to try something different then aggro I guess maybe two colors so I can continue learning... Even though all my friends hate playing these decks. All 3 of them pretty much win every time.
Black can be shifted halfway into devotion which is more multiplayer suitable. The red... not so much. Those cards are prettymuch aggro cards or staples and I don't think burn would be very popular.
Are you looking for an equally powerful and efficient thing to play or are you looking to choose something a bit more lax to balance out with your friends?
Hmmm something a bit slower would be interesting. I tend to win after about turn 3-4. All of there decks seem to get really powerful after about turn 6-7 though and then they win. So I dont know if there is a happy medium haha.
I like the red deck too so I dont really need to take it apart. I could upgrade it more down the road as well if there are cards that fit even better into it.
Could I use the black cards in any type of dual colored deck? Do they work well with any other colors? What cards would I use out of the black deck and need to get to shift it into a devotion deck?
As an aggro deck do you think the white and red decks are pretty perfect or are there things I could change in them to make them even better? They seem pretty ultimate to me already but figured I should ask anyways.
As far as standard budget goes, I think that the white and red decks are pretty fine where they are. They're not that bad outside of budget standard either, all things considered. For an idea of black devotion, google it or just look up the card grey merchant of asphodel. It may not be the whole deck but think of it like a midrange/board control type deck with that. Speaking of which, let me explain the different kinds of decks.
Aggro is what you're playing.
Midrange is the idea of playing creatures that will outclass your opponent and combining it with a goodstuff type support package.
Control is the idea to bring the game down to a molasses pace and then gain card advantage over your opponent, proceeding to then use one of a couple to a few single cards in your deck that you can ride to victory at your leisure as the game is under your domination.
Naturally, control and midrange are usually more expensive than aggro for a very simple reason. The longer a game goes, the more that expensive cards have time to exert themselves. They can be done on budget, just comparatively much weaker than their final, nonbudget forms. For example, in the red and white aggro decks, you can prettymuch swap some lands for mutavaults and call those decks complete, decks made to their best, not hindered by budget. Whereas with midrange and control, you have many more things to potentially add. Fancy lands is one since a lot of midrange and control are 2 colored or more. Another is whatever expensive, goodstuf card that's the best creature of its class. Then there's whate er planeswalker that's good for it.
Two other types of decks are tempo and combo. They are a bit less prevalent in standard but you can certainly use mostly standard cards and your friends play modern so you can just splice what you need. Combo is self explanatory. Tempo is the deck of efficiency. You play the most cheap and efficient creatures along with a cheap disruption package to keep your opponent off balance long enough to win. I personally love tempo but it is not a good type of deck for multiplayer. You can only really keep one person off balance. To try to do more than one is near impossible. A quick and dirty example of cheap tempo would be a UR (blue and red) deck starring delver of secrets, young pyromancer, grim lavamancer, some burns, bounce, cheap counters, and cheap draw filtering spells. There's a lot of things you can do but the most important thing for budget imo is to decide what you want to do. The people who spend the most aren't just the ones who make these really expensive decks but also those who have a bazillion things they want to do and just make dozens of cheap decks.
That tempo deck sounds really fun. Can that be built on a budget or is it more pricey? Is it standard? Would the games last a bit longer with a tempo deck compared to the aggro decks? Have a deck list for that one?
I wouldn't suggest trying to do tempo with just standard. The necessary elements of a tempo deck are good creatures that can win the game all on their own if left unchecked. Then the following elements must be present.
A means to control your opponent's creatures
A means to protect your creatures
A means to dig to the things that you want. Tempo generally does not run all that many creatures. Instead it will run just the best of the best as far as things that can just win the game by themselves given time.
The best and the cheapest creatures. Delver of secrets comes down fast and hits for hard, evasive damage, making it ideal. Things like this or nimble mongoose from the threshold decks (you're going to make it into a 3/3 shroud for 1) are examples of the efficiency type creatures. The other kind is value. Young pyromancer and grim lavamancer are good examples of this. They will do so much more than the average 2 drop given time to do so. Some more expensive examples of tempo creatures would be snapcaster mage for value on a body, vendillion clique for evasive tech, and tarmogoyf for efficient beatdown that falls under mongoose territory. Now you'll notice that I haven't named a single card from standard yet beyond pyromancer. This is the problem with trying to do tempo in standard right now. The cheap efficiency just isn't there. There are great one drops but one ones that will singularly carry a game to victory.
Each color has things that it tends to bring to the tempo table.
Red, removal, reach, and some great tempo creatures.
Blue, counters, a great creature or two, and bounce.
Black, hand hate, kill spells, and the occasional creature.
Green... creatures
White. Interestingly enough, removal and very little on the creature front beyond a certain blue and white ghost of doom.
Tempo decks as a generality have a curve similar to and sometimes lower than aggro decks. This means that one drops and one drop disruption are key. Let's look at what standard has for us. Red has... some 2 powered one drops which is ok but not very good either. Their cmc 1 disruption is shock. Its certainly not lightning bolt. Blue has... judge's familiar? Nope. For disruption, it has vapor snare. That can take a cheapo upgrade to vapor snag. Black actually has one if their best one drop disruptions in standard. Buuuuuut that's thougghtseize and that isn't cheap. The other two have little in the tempo department so I'll digress. With the way standard is, tempo will barely feel like tempo. I highly suggest doing chePo blue red modern tempo if you want to try it. I'll pm you an example decklist later.
Ok cool thanks I haven't done anything with blue cards yet so that might be fun. I know you said midrange doesn't fit into super budget decks but if you were doing a standard mid budget midrange deck what would you choose for that.
Oh and thanks for that lesson on types of decks that actually helped me understand a lot.
Would a mono black devotion deck be considered a combo deck? Nykthos/gray merchant combo kinda thing?
Nykthos doesn't affect your devotion to black. Gray merchant is like a fat drain spell on a body. Black devotion is sort of like slow midrange board control.
Ugh idk would 60-100 be mid budget? I know some decks cost multiple hundreds.... So maybe thats still low budget. I am not completely sure how much I am willing to spend yet but that seems doable or something to start picking up as I see them. But the last ones you made all cost about 20 and they are amazing
Budget is relative to the person. 60 to 100 bucks is easy. I will likely just give you ideas that cost half that and list the cards that will improve them if you wish to spend more. So midrange...
If you wanted to push to the upper limits of the budget, there's rg monsters since Domri Rade is now down to about 11 bucks from 25.
Come to think of it, it isn't truly midrange but bg dredge is another deck that works at that happy medium speed.
Then there's bw midrange which has a number of its cards ready to plummet in price due do rotation which you don't care about since your friends play modern.
I forgot that there are more cards coming out soon. When does that happen? Is it worth building another standard deck right now since that is about to happen? And half that budget would be awesome with extra cards I could use to upgrade. Then I could play that style of deck and see how I like it before dropping more money into it.
Now to find a commander for group play that fits my horde of guys style of play lol... Aggro is really to much fun
Depends on if you plan to follow standard rotation or not. Ktk comes out in September/October and the rtr block plus m14 will rotate when it does. If yoy are looking to play standard tournaments, you have to follow this but if your group of friends that you play with don't, you can opt to ignore it.
Commander is played with 40 life so aggro comes in 2 flavors. The first is voltron where you have a cheap commander that you make really big and finish them off with general damage. The second is more creature swarm like you're doing now. If I had to give a suggestion for one that's fun, cheap, and a little bit off the norm, it would be Jor Kadeen, the prevailer. Then there's the mainstream Edric, spymaster of trest.
You will honestly have an easier time making a standard midrange deck now... as long as it isn't rotation-proof. If you plan for the deck to survive rotation, waiting for ktk to be spoiled would be best but remember that that time of year is when the card pool is at its smallest.
Animar can be very strong. However, Animar is also pretty expensive as an individual card. If I remember right, it is in that 20 dollar range. It can also get pricy. Budget is doable but it wouldn't be in the cheapest clas of commander decks by any stretch.
Hey there guys!! Mombo hope you don't mind, but i just learned so much reading though this whole thread!! wanted to make sure i did not miss a thing! Nev, thanks so much for all the information. I was wondering if your thoughts might change as far as the Mono Black Devotion, now that M15 has dropped.(I'm just a noob too, been following this thread for a few days now. Cheers guys
ive so far purchased
Clash Pack
Intro 2015; Hit the Ground Running, Will of the Masses, Infernal Intervetion
Deck builders toolkit 2015
Hoping to be able to make something viable at my local FNM that I'm worried i would get laughed out of at this point with the decks i have
As a matter of budgeteering, I would suggest never buying intro packs. Deckbuilxer toolkits aren't great but not as bad for value as intro packs. The clash pack is pretty decent for value. Just make sure that yoy actually want what you're getting. I cannot stress enough that getting singles is almost alwaya the best way to go. Figure out what you want to do, then make it happen.
Mono black devotion is a solid deck. However, you may be looking heavily at rotation, meaning that there are some big assets you'll be skipping on.
Underworld connections
pack rat
desecration demon
nightveil specter
and so forth. Nightveil specter has a fine replacement in herald of torment. The others... not so much. The lossof underworld connections is pretty hurtful, by far the deck's best draw outlet. You won't be affording thoughtseize and mutavault, maybe some hero's downfall but other than that, you're fine. Black devotion usually works off of an efficient, devotion providing creature package, just enough draw, and a bunch of disruption. When in doubt, what do we do? Add more disruption, of course.
4 gray merchant of asphodel
2 whip of erebos. Whip is good but is even more essential to get some devotion down because you don't have connections to do it.
4 returned phalanx, my speed bump of choice.
4 herald of torment. A card that sits there, lays pressure, and is generally good.
4 squelching leeches. Mono black, no mutavaults. No desecration demon on the cheap. Heck, why not? Tbh, I just want to see people use it but it isn't that bad, a 4/4 for 4 at minimum and usually going to grow larger.
2 abhorrent overlord. I usually wouldn't suggest this... but why not? It isn't all that bad, tbh, if you have nykthos and are on budget.
4 read the bones, our sustitute draw.
That makes 24 cards. We should probably play 24ish lands which are swamps and nykthos. That leaves 12 slots for removal and you have your cheapy black devotion shell.
I think I wi wait til rotation and then build a new standard deck. But just for kicks what is your suggestions for a midrange standard deck right now that isn't rotation proof? It might be fun to make anyways and I could possibly use some of the cards in a commander deck down the road.
As for Animar. I was thinking I might be able to utilize some of the cards from my current red and green decks to help offset the cost of just him. I just think his card sounds like one that would work with my play style.
Bw midrange that's missing thoughtseize or gr monsters would be the place to begin. Try googling them for examples of lists. Depends on what kind of midrange you want.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Is there anything I can build that will be good around the 50 dollar mark?
Also would it be a good idea if I wait til the new 2015 cards release next week?
Zombie Hunt is the name
basically it revolves around 3 cards: Treasure Hunt, Zombie Infestation, Reliquary Tower.
it can be made more efficient with Serum visions but thats really expensive.
Basically treasure hunt and Zombie infestation are dirt cheap, and reliquary tower is like $2-3 a piece, the rest is basic islands. So like 4 copies of these basic components are all u would need. Basic strategy: draw cards till u get to a land card then discard all that to infestation for a zombie army.
Like all combos sometimes it just fizzles and sometimes it is spectacular. hand disruption is the main hurdle. Make sure u mulligan till u get the Reliquary Tower.
Also there is a red burn version which uses a burn spell instead of the infestation. Unfortunately the combo is too fine tuned to maximize discard and the only thing customizable is including man lands, the most expensive of which also cost a bunch of $.
But for <$15 excluding basics it is a good good combo deck. Due to how much customization and interaction (literally non budget-wise) i advise against this deck. I would recommend some kind of dual colored control deck.
My bad i meant serum powder not Serum Visions, but it still is not worth cluttering this combo deck. Also it is about $1, so not expensive at all.
You could also try ur hand at an aggro UR blitz using such creatures like nivmagus elemental, blistercoil Weird, and really cheap spells to pump and provide utility like ground rift, distortion strike, grapeshot, mutagenic growth. It really is a sort of combo deck, and can be quite tricky to pull off.
My Decks:
All my Decks are budget
EDH:GRWHazezon TamarGRW, RKazuul, Tyrant of the CliffsR, BMikaeus, the UnhallowedB, UTalrand, Sky SummonerU, GRXenagos, God of RevelsGR, BGPharika, God of AfflictionBG
Standard:BMono Black Control(devotion)B- retired
Casual:UWHeroicUW, UGWall tribalUG, BPhylactery LichB
Modern:UBAbyssal PersecutorUB, WKnight TribalW
I would try playing something like tron, mono blue tron. The trick is just figuring out which win cons to use but google it. If you see urza's mine, urza's tower, urza's power core, and expedition map, you're in about the right place.
I'd give a long speel on it but this is the standard forum so let's stay on topic.
But back to my 1v1 aggro decks I made.
I made your white, red, and black decks you suggested and I have 2 questions.
My favorite is easily the white deck. Is there anything you suggest that I do to upgrade it at all? Anything that would make it even better?
Second I liked the red deck quite a bit and the black one less. Is there anything I can do with these two decks to make a new deck with a different style other then aggro? Or even just change the black one if the red and black don't go together well.
Wanting to try something different then aggro I guess maybe two colors so I can continue learning... Even though all my friends hate playing these decks. All 3 of them pretty much win every time.
Are you looking for an equally powerful and efficient thing to play or are you looking to choose something a bit more lax to balance out with your friends?
I like the red deck too so I dont really need to take it apart. I could upgrade it more down the road as well if there are cards that fit even better into it.
Could I use the black cards in any type of dual colored deck? Do they work well with any other colors? What cards would I use out of the black deck and need to get to shift it into a devotion deck?
As an aggro deck do you think the white and red decks are pretty perfect or are there things I could change in them to make them even better? They seem pretty ultimate to me already but figured I should ask anyways.
Aggro is what you're playing.
Midrange is the idea of playing creatures that will outclass your opponent and combining it with a goodstuff type support package.
Control is the idea to bring the game down to a molasses pace and then gain card advantage over your opponent, proceeding to then use one of a couple to a few single cards in your deck that you can ride to victory at your leisure as the game is under your domination.
Naturally, control and midrange are usually more expensive than aggro for a very simple reason. The longer a game goes, the more that expensive cards have time to exert themselves. They can be done on budget, just comparatively much weaker than their final, nonbudget forms. For example, in the red and white aggro decks, you can prettymuch swap some lands for mutavaults and call those decks complete, decks made to their best, not hindered by budget. Whereas with midrange and control, you have many more things to potentially add. Fancy lands is one since a lot of midrange and control are 2 colored or more. Another is whatever expensive, goodstuf card that's the best creature of its class. Then there's whate er planeswalker that's good for it.
Two other types of decks are tempo and combo. They are a bit less prevalent in standard but you can certainly use mostly standard cards and your friends play modern so you can just splice what you need. Combo is self explanatory. Tempo is the deck of efficiency. You play the most cheap and efficient creatures along with a cheap disruption package to keep your opponent off balance long enough to win. I personally love tempo but it is not a good type of deck for multiplayer. You can only really keep one person off balance. To try to do more than one is near impossible. A quick and dirty example of cheap tempo would be a UR (blue and red) deck starring delver of secrets, young pyromancer, grim lavamancer, some burns, bounce, cheap counters, and cheap draw filtering spells. There's a lot of things you can do but the most important thing for budget imo is to decide what you want to do. The people who spend the most aren't just the ones who make these really expensive decks but also those who have a bazillion things they want to do and just make dozens of cheap decks.
A means to control your opponent's creatures
A means to protect your creatures
A means to dig to the things that you want. Tempo generally does not run all that many creatures. Instead it will run just the best of the best as far as things that can just win the game by themselves given time.
The best and the cheapest creatures. Delver of secrets comes down fast and hits for hard, evasive damage, making it ideal. Things like this or nimble mongoose from the threshold decks (you're going to make it into a 3/3 shroud for 1) are examples of the efficiency type creatures. The other kind is value. Young pyromancer and grim lavamancer are good examples of this. They will do so much more than the average 2 drop given time to do so. Some more expensive examples of tempo creatures would be snapcaster mage for value on a body, vendillion clique for evasive tech, and tarmogoyf for efficient beatdown that falls under mongoose territory. Now you'll notice that I haven't named a single card from standard yet beyond pyromancer. This is the problem with trying to do tempo in standard right now. The cheap efficiency just isn't there. There are great one drops but one ones that will singularly carry a game to victory.
Each color has things that it tends to bring to the tempo table.
Red, removal, reach, and some great tempo creatures.
Blue, counters, a great creature or two, and bounce.
Black, hand hate, kill spells, and the occasional creature.
Green... creatures
White. Interestingly enough, removal and very little on the creature front beyond a certain blue and white ghost of doom.
Tempo decks as a generality have a curve similar to and sometimes lower than aggro decks. This means that one drops and one drop disruption are key. Let's look at what standard has for us. Red has... some 2 powered one drops which is ok but not very good either. Their cmc 1 disruption is shock. Its certainly not lightning bolt. Blue has... judge's familiar? Nope. For disruption, it has vapor snare. That can take a cheapo upgrade to vapor snag. Black actually has one if their best one drop disruptions in standard. Buuuuuut that's thougghtseize and that isn't cheap. The other two have little in the tempo department so I'll digress. With the way standard is, tempo will barely feel like tempo. I highly suggest doing chePo blue red modern tempo if you want to try it. I'll pm you an example decklist later.
Oh and thanks for that lesson on types of decks that actually helped me understand a lot.
Would a mono black devotion deck be considered a combo deck? Nykthos/gray merchant combo kinda thing?
Define mid budget.
If you wanted to push to the upper limits of the budget, there's rg monsters since Domri Rade is now down to about 11 bucks from 25.
Come to think of it, it isn't truly midrange but bg dredge is another deck that works at that happy medium speed.
Then there's bw midrange which has a number of its cards ready to plummet in price due do rotation which you don't care about since your friends play modern.
Now to find a commander for group play that fits my horde of guys style of play lol... Aggro is really to much fun
Commander is played with 40 life so aggro comes in 2 flavors. The first is voltron where you have a cheap commander that you make really big and finish them off with general damage. The second is more creature swarm like you're doing now. If I had to give a suggestion for one that's fun, cheap, and a little bit off the norm, it would be Jor Kadeen, the prevailer. Then there's the mainstream Edric, spymaster of trest.
What were the ideas you had for current midrange decks that were on a budget and cards to upgrade them with?
Also what do you think of Animar, Soul of Elements while im at it haha. Wrong forum sorry I just appreciate your opinions.
Animar can be very strong. However, Animar is also pretty expensive as an individual card. If I remember right, it is in that 20 dollar range. It can also get pricy. Budget is doable but it wouldn't be in the cheapest clas of commander decks by any stretch.
ive so far purchased
Clash Pack
Intro 2015; Hit the Ground Running, Will of the Masses, Infernal Intervetion
Deck builders toolkit 2015
Hoping to be able to make something viable at my local FNM that I'm worried i would get laughed out of at this point with the decks i have
Mono black devotion is a solid deck. However, you may be looking heavily at rotation, meaning that there are some big assets you'll be skipping on.
Underworld connections
pack rat
desecration demon
nightveil specter
and so forth. Nightveil specter has a fine replacement in herald of torment. The others... not so much. The lossof underworld connections is pretty hurtful, by far the deck's best draw outlet. You won't be affording thoughtseize and mutavault, maybe some hero's downfall but other than that, you're fine. Black devotion usually works off of an efficient, devotion providing creature package, just enough draw, and a bunch of disruption. When in doubt, what do we do? Add more disruption, of course.
4 gray merchant of asphodel
2 whip of erebos. Whip is good but is even more essential to get some devotion down because you don't have connections to do it.
4 returned phalanx, my speed bump of choice.
4 herald of torment. A card that sits there, lays pressure, and is generally good.
4 squelching leeches. Mono black, no mutavaults. No desecration demon on the cheap. Heck, why not? Tbh, I just want to see people use it but it isn't that bad, a 4/4 for 4 at minimum and usually going to grow larger.
2 abhorrent overlord. I usually wouldn't suggest this... but why not? It isn't all that bad, tbh, if you have nykthos and are on budget.
4 read the bones, our sustitute draw.
That makes 24 cards. We should probably play 24ish lands which are swamps and nykthos. That leaves 12 slots for removal and you have your cheapy black devotion shell.
As for Animar. I was thinking I might be able to utilize some of the cards from my current red and green decks to help offset the cost of just him. I just think his card sounds like one that would work with my play style.