Please give me advice or let me know what you think of my expensive magic the gathering deck I just built. All advice would be deeply appreciated! I think its awesome, let me know what you think in detail and how it could be better?
X20 Islands (foil)
X4 Master Of The Pearl Trident
X4 Merfolk Of The Pearl Trident
x4 Talrand Sky Summoner
X4 Jace Memory Adept (Planeswalker)
X4 Tamiyo The Moon Sage (1 is foil ) (Planeswalker)
X4 Snapcaster Mage
X4 Mind Sculpt
X4 Essence Scatter
X4 Temporal Mastery
X4 Delver Of Secrets
This deck cost me alot of money so i hope its good? Please dont just say its great, or its horrible, please give me lots of advice what i can and cant do to make it better. I have alot of money tied up in these cards so this deck must be decent?
Also can someone explain in detail how delver of secret works. Please be very detailed Im very confused.
Honestly, it's pretty not good. There's no synergy whatsoever. A good deck, strangely enough, will not be crafted by taking a bunch of expensive cards and putting them in the same list.
Delver and Snapcaster (and Talrand) both want you to play cheap instants and sorceries, and you have conditional counterspells, mill cards, and overpriced Time Warps as all your instants. As a result, decks that play those cards also want to play cards like Ponder, Mana Leak, Vapor Snag, Gitaxian Probe, and the like. Snapcaster likes getting to flash them back for cheap card advantage, Delver likes to see them so he turns into The Fly, and Talrand gets to find his Drake friends. Since you have all these, Runechanter's Pike gets better as well, as it's a very large pump, and then with Inkmoth Nexus, it can lead to one shot kills.
Next, you have major problems with your mana base. You're not going to be reliably casting Jace and/or Tamiyo on only 20 lands, especially without card selection and cantripping. Plus, they're not helping your game plan of sticking a threat or two, protecting them with countermagic and a bit of removal, a bit of disruption, and a little card advantage. That synergistic strategy, and not the price of the cards in the deck, is what makes a deck good.
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Went to a new shop from a friend's recommendation, DQ'ed for willful violation of CR 100.6b.
This deck is not a delver deck cut that first. you only run 12 triggers for it when you need closer to 25 :/ replace it with negate maybe? i dunno this deck seems kinda loose.
Saw this thread the other day and basically it hasn't changed much. You're still trying to do too much all in one deck, I'd either focus on lots of sorceries/instants for delver/Talrand, focus on mill with Jace, focus on merfolk, or focus on control with Tamiyo. However, with the cards you have, you could cheaply build all 3 decks. Some people even proxy cards for casual so they don't have to switch the cards from deck to deck every game, and run the same cards in their other decks.
But basically, for Delver: at the beginning of your draw step you look at the top card of your library. If it says "Instant" or "Sorcery," you reveal it to flip delver into the Insectile Abomination form on the opposite side of the card. If going for delver you need Index and Ponder to set up the top card of your library so when you draw next turn, you can flip the delver. Also, you're running too many permanents and not enough instants or sorceries, so Talrand, Snapcaster, and Delver are literally doing you no good at all.
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Magic player 1995-2006(ish), 2011-Present
Standard: GWSelesnya Aggro, GWBVoice of Servitude, R Stuffy Reckoning, UWBUnblockable Auras, UGDefenders of the Combo
Extended: G Cheat-a-Colossus Elves,BRU Infinite Heartless,R Infect, R 'Helldrazi' (Hellions/Eldrazi Tokens)
Legacy: R Goblinstorm, UR Artifacts, R Artifacts, BURWG Land Deck, etc.
Commander: BRWUGSliver Overlord, BR Tsabo Tavoc
This works better than the version you had with the augurs in it. It wasn't doing much for the deck. On that note the mindsculpts really aren't doing too much either and the temporal mastery might be better off as a 2 of. You won't want to see that card in your opening hand. The next step would be to replace the excess with instants and sorceries that help you control the board as well as smooth out the curve to cleanly get to the five mana stuff.
Also: Deck tags are a tool that can be used to help everyone else better understand the decks that you post.
Vex
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1. Good Decks Play With Good Cards
2. Good Decks Have Good Plans
3. Good Decks Have Good Mana Bases
4. Good Decks Respect Their Opponents
5. Good Decks Have 75 Cards
6. Sometimes Even Good Decks Are Bad Choices
7. Sometimes Your 'Good Deck' Isn't
Appart from having 8 merfolk of the pearl trident and you wasting alot of card space on several poor 4 offs. (like tamyio, just because its a walker doesnt mean it wins games).
Your honestly running a deck thats about 50% useless Guano.
Throw in black for good measure and skip the merfolk theme with 4 useless 1/1.
Your goal should either be to play evasive flying creatures while countering the opponents play,
forcing him to run low on options.
Or your goal could be to beatdown relentlessly but then you might be into te wrong color.
Or you could throw down Augurs, while playing counterspells and removal while getting out late game bombs.
Sorry about the guano comment but two wrongs, dont make one right.
Or in this case 8 pws dont make one good deck
Appart from having 8 merfolk of the pearl trident and you wasting alot of card space on several poor 4 offs. (like tamyio, just because its a walker doesnt mean it wins ames).
Your honestly running a deck thats about 50% useless Guano.
Throw in black for good measure and skip the merfolk theme with 8 useless 1/1.
Your goal should either be to play evasive flying creatures while countering the opponents play, forcing him to run low on options.
Or your goal could be to beatdown relentlessly but then you might be into te wrong color.
Sorry about the guano comment but two wrongs, dont make one right.
Or in this case 8 pws dont make one good deck
He doesn't have 8 Merfolk of the Pearl Trident, he has 4 of those and 4 Master of the Pearl Trident. Other than that I agree about the walkers not necessarily winning games. You have to build around the walker, and get the right support cards to make them work better. For instance, with Jace, people are either running Turbofog, or straight blue mill. With Tamiyo, they're running control or miracles (like the Pro Tour AVR winner's deck). And actually, Jace and Tamiyo do have synergy somewhat, because Tamiyo can lock down somewhat while dwindling down their libraries. And the Tamiyo emblem + Thought Scour could have some fun plays, but you'd only want to run 2 of each planeswalker anyways.
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Magic player 1995-2006(ish), 2011-Present
Standard: GWSelesnya Aggro, GWBVoice of Servitude, R Stuffy Reckoning, UWBUnblockable Auras, UGDefenders of the Combo
Extended: G Cheat-a-Colossus Elves,BRU Infinite Heartless,R Infect, R 'Helldrazi' (Hellions/Eldrazi Tokens)
Legacy: R Goblinstorm, UR Artifacts, R Artifacts, BURWG Land Deck, etc.
Commander: BRWUGSliver Overlord, BR Tsabo Tavoc
Please give me advice or let me know what you think of my expensive magic the gathering deck I just built. All advice would be deeply appreciated! I think its awesome, let me know what you think in detail and how it could be better?
X20 Islands (foil)
X4 Master Of The Pearl Trident
X4 Merfolk Of The Pearl Trident
x4 Talrand Sky Summoner
X4 Jace Memory Adept (Planeswalker)
X4 Tamiyo The Moon Sage (1 is foil ) (Planeswalker)
X4 Snapcaster Mage
X4 Mind Sculpt
X4 Essence Scatter
X4 Temporal Mastery
X4 Delver Of Secrets
This deck cost me alot of money so i hope its good? Please dont just say its great, or its horrible, please give me lots of advice what i can and cant do to make it better. I have alot of money tied up in these cards so this deck must be decent?
Also can someone explain in detail how delver of secret works. Please be very detailed Im very confused.
First of all the way Delver of Secrets works. When he's unflipped (when he's a 1/1) and is on the board, during your upkeep step you can look at the top card of your library. If it's an instant or sorcery and you reveal it (show it to your opponents) you can flip Delver to his back side which is a 3/2 flier. After the upkeep step you then draw the card you revealed.
Now, the deck isn't very good, I'm going to assume here that you're trying to make a mono blue delver deck (because you included it and because I don't think you're trying to go control/midrange with only 20 land). Talrand, Snapcaster Mage, and Delver of Secrets, all want high numbers of instants and sorceries in the deck in order to function. For Delver to function properly you want to be running between 20 and 25 instant/sorcery cards. In standard right now they're lots of cantrip cards in blue (cards which draw you a card for using them), those are the ones you want in your deck because it lets you cycle through the deck quickly. Gitaxian Probe, Ponder, and Thought Scour are the core cards and Think Twice sees some play as well. In addition to those above 3 cards (12 of your instants/sorceries) you'll want to play some defense such as Mana Leak and Vapor Snag. If you put 4 of each of the 5 cards I've mentioned so far into a list you'll have 20 instants/sorceries to work off of. That's enough for Delver to function.
Next comes Snapcaster Mage, the main cards you'll target with him are Mana Leak and Vapor Snag, occasionally you'll want to target Gitaxian Probe or Ponder. Depending on the list you may have other instant/sorcery cards worth flashing back as well such as Unsummon, Negate, Day of Judgment, Sign in Blood, and so on. You also usually want to Thought Scour yourself if you're running Snapcaster because that's more cards for him to work off of. It fuels a Runechanter's Pike also should you choose to run it (great in decks with lots of spells).
After this comes Talrand. In a deck which is running 12 cantrips plus the dig ability of Ponder it becomes extremely likely that when running 4 of a card you'll see two of it and three regularly isn't out of the question. Talrand however is legendary, any extra copies of him are dead in your hand until the one on the board gets killed. This is bad, you instead want cards you can play (and maybe even protect him from being killed in the first place). You also want lots of cheap cantrip effects with Talrand because a card like Ponder which is already one of the best cards in the format becomes backbreaking when you not only get the advantage but gain a 2/2 body for a single mana.
Now comes the planeswalkers. They have the same issue Talrand does because the planeswalker rule is similar to the legendary rule (the rule is slightly more restrictive on planeswalkers since it's one of the type rather than one of the card). You don't want to be running 4 of each. Even decks that are based on lots of incremental advantage off of planeswalkers such as superfriends don't run 4 of each. They instead run between 1 and 3 of each planeswalker with the average being 2. About the only time you'll see a deck run 4 of a planeswalker is if it's a deck that has no additional forms of card draw and wants to maximize the chances of seeing the planeswalker such as WRR or B/W Tokens, and even then it's usually a 3 of rather than a 4 of.
Last is Temporal Mastery. Temporal Mastery goes from arguable as a 2 of to absolutely terrible in a deck running several cantrips. If you're drawing two cards per turn on average (which isn't that unusual in a well built Delver deck), only half the time you reveal Temporal Mastery will it be usable for it's miracle cost (actually a little more than half due to ponder). As a non miracle it's absolutely horrible. There's some decks that can run in, but this deck isn't one of them.
If I were going to make a mono blue delver deck this is what I would go with, though I feel like I should mention I wouldn't make a mono blue delver in the first place, adding an extra color (typically white for Delver) makes it stronger.
I don't think I would put any planeswalkers in the deck. Jace doesn't really do anything that the deck wants and Tamiyo's abilities aren't suited to the deck. Both options are also quite a bit slower than this deck wants to be. You don't want to spend 5 mana to draw a card or two when your deck is perfectly capable of drawing cards for less mana.
Spells 23
4 Vapor Snag
4 Mana Leak
3 Twisted Image
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Thought Scour
but I really want to play with my tamiyo, the moon sage, would it ruin the deck if i throw 2 of her in? Please let me know if it would totally ruin the deck...thanks
I'd say test it, and go from there. I'd maybe take out 1-2 Mana Leak for Dissipates if you're going to add Tamiyo, just because of the endless counterspells with the emblem and possible mill out of your opponent with Thought Scour. You could also run Laboratory Maniac with the Thought Scour and deck yourself for the win (with the emblem of course).
Also, with any decks with planeswalkers you want to run 22-24 lands. You want to make sure you get the 5 lands you need every game to get Tamiyo out. I'd say cut 1 Twisted Image and see if you get enough mana. If not, I'd say cut the other 2 and go from there.
With any deck, testing makes all the difference, and maybe you will figure out something else you could get that can complement your play style better. As the old adage says, practice makes perfect.
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Magic player 1995-2006(ish), 2011-Present
Standard: GWSelesnya Aggro, GWBVoice of Servitude, R Stuffy Reckoning, UWBUnblockable Auras, UGDefenders of the Combo
Extended: G Cheat-a-Colossus Elves,BRU Infinite Heartless,R Infect, R 'Helldrazi' (Hellions/Eldrazi Tokens)
Legacy: R Goblinstorm, UR Artifacts, R Artifacts, BURWG Land Deck, etc.
Commander: BRWUGSliver Overlord, BR Tsabo Tavoc
X20 Islands (foil)
X4 Master Of The Pearl Trident
X4 Merfolk Of The Pearl Trident
x4 Talrand Sky Summoner
X4 Jace Memory Adept (Planeswalker)
X4 Tamiyo The Moon Sage (1 is foil ) (Planeswalker)
X4 Snapcaster Mage
X4 Mind Sculpt
X4 Essence Scatter
X4 Temporal Mastery
X4 Delver Of Secrets
This deck cost me alot of money so i hope its good? Please dont just say its great, or its horrible, please give me lots of advice what i can and cant do to make it better. I have alot of money tied up in these cards so this deck must be decent?
Also can someone explain in detail how delver of secret works. Please be very detailed Im very confused.
Delver and Snapcaster (and Talrand) both want you to play cheap instants and sorceries, and you have conditional counterspells, mill cards, and overpriced Time Warps as all your instants. As a result, decks that play those cards also want to play cards like Ponder, Mana Leak, Vapor Snag, Gitaxian Probe, and the like. Snapcaster likes getting to flash them back for cheap card advantage, Delver likes to see them so he turns into The Fly, and Talrand gets to find his Drake friends. Since you have all these, Runechanter's Pike gets better as well, as it's a very large pump, and then with Inkmoth Nexus, it can lead to one shot kills.
Next, you have major problems with your mana base. You're not going to be reliably casting Jace and/or Tamiyo on only 20 lands, especially without card selection and cantripping. Plus, they're not helping your game plan of sticking a threat or two, protecting them with countermagic and a bit of removal, a bit of disruption, and a little card advantage. That synergistic strategy, and not the price of the cards in the deck, is what makes a deck good.
Went to a new shop from a friend's recommendation, DQ'ed for willful violation of CR 100.6b.
Have played duals? I have PucaPoints for them!
(Credit to DarkNightCavalier)
$tandard: Too poor.
Modern:
- GW Birthing Pod(?)
Legacy:
- UWR Delver
4 Master Of The Pearl Trident
4 Merfolk Of The Pearl Trident
4 Talrand Sky Summoner
4 Jace Memory Adept (Planeswalker)
4 Tamiyo The Moon Sage (1 is foil ) (Planeswalker)
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Mind Sculpt
4 Essence Scatter
4 Temporal Mastery
4 Delver Of Secrets
use deck tags please.
This deck is not a delver deck cut that first. you only run 12 triggers for it when you need closer to 25 :/ replace it with negate maybe? i dunno this deck seems kinda loose.
But basically, for Delver: at the beginning of your draw step you look at the top card of your library. If it says "Instant" or "Sorcery," you reveal it to flip delver into the Insectile Abomination form on the opposite side of the card. If going for delver you need Index and Ponder to set up the top card of your library so when you draw next turn, you can flip the delver. Also, you're running too many permanents and not enough instants or sorceries, so Talrand, Snapcaster, and Delver are literally doing you no good at all.
Standard: GW Selesnya Aggro, GWB Voice of Servitude, R Stuffy Reckoning, UWB Unblockable Auras, UG Defenders of the Combo
Extended: G Cheat-a-Colossus Elves,BRU Infinite Heartless,R Infect, R 'Helldrazi' (Hellions/Eldrazi Tokens)
Legacy: R Goblinstorm, UR Artifacts, R Artifacts, BURWG Land Deck, etc.
Commander: BRWUGSliver Overlord, BR Tsabo Tavoc
Working on putting my decks here for testplaying: http://tappedout.net/users/drunk231/
Also: Deck tags are a tool that can be used to help everyone else better understand the decks that you post.
Vex
2. Good Decks Have Good Plans
3. Good Decks Have Good Mana Bases
4. Good Decks Respect Their Opponents
5. Good Decks Have 75 Cards
6. Sometimes Even Good Decks Are Bad Choices
7. Sometimes Your 'Good Deck' Isn't
~Metamorph
Your honestly running a deck thats about 50% useless Guano.
Throw in black for good measure and skip the merfolk theme with 4 useless 1/1.
Your goal should either be to play evasive flying creatures while countering the opponents play,
forcing him to run low on options.
Or your goal could be to beatdown relentlessly but then you might be into te wrong color.
Or you could throw down Augurs, while playing counterspells and removal while getting out late game bombs.
Sorry about the guano comment but two wrongs, dont make one right.
Or in this case 8 pws dont make one good deck
He doesn't have 8 Merfolk of the Pearl Trident, he has 4 of those and 4 Master of the Pearl Trident. Other than that I agree about the walkers not necessarily winning games. You have to build around the walker, and get the right support cards to make them work better. For instance, with Jace, people are either running Turbofog, or straight blue mill. With Tamiyo, they're running control or miracles (like the Pro Tour AVR winner's deck). And actually, Jace and Tamiyo do have synergy somewhat, because Tamiyo can lock down somewhat while dwindling down their libraries. And the Tamiyo emblem + Thought Scour could have some fun plays, but you'd only want to run 2 of each planeswalker anyways.
Standard: GW Selesnya Aggro, GWB Voice of Servitude, R Stuffy Reckoning, UWB Unblockable Auras, UG Defenders of the Combo
Extended: G Cheat-a-Colossus Elves,BRU Infinite Heartless,R Infect, R 'Helldrazi' (Hellions/Eldrazi Tokens)
Legacy: R Goblinstorm, UR Artifacts, R Artifacts, BURWG Land Deck, etc.
Commander: BRWUGSliver Overlord, BR Tsabo Tavoc
Working on putting my decks here for testplaying: http://tappedout.net/users/drunk231/
First of all the way Delver of Secrets works. When he's unflipped (when he's a 1/1) and is on the board, during your upkeep step you can look at the top card of your library. If it's an instant or sorcery and you reveal it (show it to your opponents) you can flip Delver to his back side which is a 3/2 flier. After the upkeep step you then draw the card you revealed.
Now, the deck isn't very good, I'm going to assume here that you're trying to make a mono blue delver deck (because you included it and because I don't think you're trying to go control/midrange with only 20 land). Talrand, Snapcaster Mage, and Delver of Secrets, all want high numbers of instants and sorceries in the deck in order to function. For Delver to function properly you want to be running between 20 and 25 instant/sorcery cards. In standard right now they're lots of cantrip cards in blue (cards which draw you a card for using them), those are the ones you want in your deck because it lets you cycle through the deck quickly. Gitaxian Probe, Ponder, and Thought Scour are the core cards and Think Twice sees some play as well. In addition to those above 3 cards (12 of your instants/sorceries) you'll want to play some defense such as Mana Leak and Vapor Snag. If you put 4 of each of the 5 cards I've mentioned so far into a list you'll have 20 instants/sorceries to work off of. That's enough for Delver to function.
Next comes Snapcaster Mage, the main cards you'll target with him are Mana Leak and Vapor Snag, occasionally you'll want to target Gitaxian Probe or Ponder. Depending on the list you may have other instant/sorcery cards worth flashing back as well such as Unsummon, Negate, Day of Judgment, Sign in Blood, and so on. You also usually want to Thought Scour yourself if you're running Snapcaster because that's more cards for him to work off of. It fuels a Runechanter's Pike also should you choose to run it (great in decks with lots of spells).
After this comes Talrand. In a deck which is running 12 cantrips plus the dig ability of Ponder it becomes extremely likely that when running 4 of a card you'll see two of it and three regularly isn't out of the question. Talrand however is legendary, any extra copies of him are dead in your hand until the one on the board gets killed. This is bad, you instead want cards you can play (and maybe even protect him from being killed in the first place). You also want lots of cheap cantrip effects with Talrand because a card like Ponder which is already one of the best cards in the format becomes backbreaking when you not only get the advantage but gain a 2/2 body for a single mana.
Now comes the planeswalkers. They have the same issue Talrand does because the planeswalker rule is similar to the legendary rule (the rule is slightly more restrictive on planeswalkers since it's one of the type rather than one of the card). You don't want to be running 4 of each. Even decks that are based on lots of incremental advantage off of planeswalkers such as superfriends don't run 4 of each. They instead run between 1 and 3 of each planeswalker with the average being 2. About the only time you'll see a deck run 4 of a planeswalker is if it's a deck that has no additional forms of card draw and wants to maximize the chances of seeing the planeswalker such as WRR or B/W Tokens, and even then it's usually a 3 of rather than a 4 of.
Last is Temporal Mastery. Temporal Mastery goes from arguable as a 2 of to absolutely terrible in a deck running several cantrips. If you're drawing two cards per turn on average (which isn't that unusual in a well built Delver deck), only half the time you reveal Temporal Mastery will it be usable for it's miracle cost (actually a little more than half due to ponder). As a non miracle it's absolutely horrible. There's some decks that can run in, but this deck isn't one of them.
If I were going to make a mono blue delver deck this is what I would go with, though I feel like I should mention I wouldn't make a mono blue delver in the first place, adding an extra color (typically white for Delver) makes it stronger.
20 Island
Creatures 14
4 Snapcaster Mage
3 Talrand, Sky Summoner
4 Delver of Secrets
3 Invisible Stalker
3 Runechanter's Pike
Spells 23
4 Vapor Snag
4 Mana Leak
3 Twisted Image
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Thought Scour
I don't think I would put any planeswalkers in the deck. Jace doesn't really do anything that the deck wants and Tamiyo's abilities aren't suited to the deck. Both options are also quite a bit slower than this deck wants to be. You don't want to spend 5 mana to draw a card or two when your deck is perfectly capable of drawing cards for less mana.
True that, entierly my bad.
20 Island
Creatures 14
4 Snapcaster Mage
3 Talrand, Sky Summoner
4 Delver of Secrets
3 Invisible Stalker
Artifacts 3
3 Runechanter's Pike
Spells 23
4 Vapor Snag
4 Mana Leak
3 Twisted Image
4 Ponder
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Thought Scour
but I really want to play with my tamiyo, the moon sage, would it ruin the deck if i throw 2 of her in? Please let me know if it would totally ruin the deck...thanks
Also, with any decks with planeswalkers you want to run 22-24 lands. You want to make sure you get the 5 lands you need every game to get Tamiyo out. I'd say cut 1 Twisted Image and see if you get enough mana. If not, I'd say cut the other 2 and go from there.
With any deck, testing makes all the difference, and maybe you will figure out something else you could get that can complement your play style better. As the old adage says, practice makes perfect.
Standard: GW Selesnya Aggro, GWB Voice of Servitude, R Stuffy Reckoning, UWB Unblockable Auras, UG Defenders of the Combo
Extended: G Cheat-a-Colossus Elves,BRU Infinite Heartless,R Infect, R 'Helldrazi' (Hellions/Eldrazi Tokens)
Legacy: R Goblinstorm, UR Artifacts, R Artifacts, BURWG Land Deck, etc.
Commander: BRWUGSliver Overlord, BR Tsabo Tavoc
Working on putting my decks here for testplaying: http://tappedout.net/users/drunk231/