Here is my variation. Its my first serious deck to take to FNM and hopefully tournaments down the road. I would appreciate any and all criticism as well as help constructing an effective sideboard to match it.
This is my first attempt at building a standard competitive deck. Sadly I do not have the benefit of testing decks at stuff such as FNM atleast not on regular occasions. Im hoping that once Ive built a good deck to take a trip out to my nearest FNM to test it out and then hopefully go from there. My ultimate goal is to have something good to play at Gencon. I know there is expansions between now and then but Id like to have my base set of cards to work with and then add/subtract as I need to.
This deck has come a long way from where it was. It started out as a Mono Red deck however the appeal to play the red black spell Dreadbore made it so I had to add a touch of black.
The idea of the deck is simple. A good offense is the best defense. My hard hitter is Falkenrath Aristocrat, a flying 4/1 with the ability to sac another creature to become indestructible. My other main finisher in the deck is Devil's Play allowing me to tap my mana for the finishing blow. My only defenders in the deck is Pillar of Flame, Mizzium Mortars, and Thunderbolt.
The thing I could use the most help on is any tweaking to my advantage you see in this deck and a from the ground up sideboard to match it. Any and all suggestions will be taken seriously. Please be sure to give me examples as to why the cards you choose you believe will work better in the main deck and when helping with sideboard construction what cards work well to put in against what decks and what cards in my main deck should be up for being replaced for the sideboard cards.
I wanted to make a deck around Bringers, Maelstrom Angel, and using the Door to Nothingness and this is what Ive come up with so far. The main traits of the deck is most of the cards are unique in the deck with the notable exeptions being Nicol Bolas, Maelstrom Angel, Door to Nothingness, and 2 copies of one of the best low cost spells from each other. This deck really is about stalling till you get all 5 colors out which I have the shards of alara land cards to help.
I could really use some good ideas to improve this deck though such as good search your deck cards to help speed up some of the process. The things that I would like to keep consistent is the unique chaos quality of the deck (as in most cards will be in there by themselves). This will create a color pallete on the board that I really want to shoot for (this deck is almost 100% for casual play but I dont want it to suck 100% of the time).
This deck is almost pre alpha so please bring your best ideas forward. Im hoping to keep it down to around 70 cards to help boost the possibility of drawing the end gamer ( door to nothingness) when its time to finish off what should be a unique play session.
The first deck that Ive ever seriously worked on. It works against most of the casual people Ive been playing against however Im interested to see how well it will work at Friday Night Magic locations, and events in general. You guys let me know what you think!
Goblin Guide is a great opener when it comes up and always a good drop at any point.
Goblin Chieftan is an unbelievably nice drop in conjunction with the other goblins and gives an incredible edge to Krenko. Imagine dropping Chieftan on turn three, having goblin guide coming out on turn one or two and dropping krenko on turn 4. Krenko would immediately tap and produce 3 2/2 goblin tokens with haste onto the board. Not to mention if you get to drop more than one then the +1/+1 counters stack.
2x Ring of Valkas gives 6 slots of assignable haste to Krenko (4 from Chieftan, and 2 from Ring of Valkas). If Krenko cant drop till turn 5 and I dont have Chieftan out on the board yet then as long as Ive laid Ring of Valkas in turns 2 through 4 then I can use 4 mana to drop krenko and 1 mana to assign Ring of Valkas allowing him to tap and start producing goblin babies. The +1/+1 upkeep helps assure nothing will knock it off the board if it becomes a true creature on creature battle to the death.
The phoenix's are line backers made to drop/attack/waste players resources if no spells have come out. They can be retrieved for burning the player with one of the many burn spells when necessary.
The Koth cards are kind of a two folded card. When Koth drops and Krenko drops behind him, Koth is the line backer for Krenko to produce a goblin army. When Krenko drops first he is the line backer for Koth to stall until Koth gets out his emblem at which point its tap mana until you win. Koth also has a desperation move as soon as turn 5 of -2 loyalty counters to to make my mana pool go from as much as 5 mana to as much of 10 mana allowing me to lay my entire hand in whatever succession works the best for me.
Guttersnipe is a wicked combo goblin allowing my spells to do direct damage to the player which brings us to the spells.
SPELLS
Lightning Bolt /Searing Blaze = no need for explanation. Combo with guttersnipe for extra damage and use to return Chandra's Phoenix.
4 Reverberate - seriously this card is underrated. Ive reverberated my opponents mana draw cards, countered counterspells so my characters can stay on the board, copied murder spells and sent their own creatures to the grave, and of course copied my own spells for double damage. Ive never been sad to see it in my hand.
For instance, they play a planeswalker with 4 and +1 it to 5. I have 3 mana open, a lightning bolt and a reverberate and a guttersnipe on the board. Tap 1, lighting bolt the planeswalker, tap 2 reverberate the lightning bolt and destroy the planeswalker. All the while guttersnipe does 2 for the lightning bolt to the opponent and then 2 more for the reverberate.
Traitorous blood is so much fun when it pops which if they've survived till later on in the match you gain control of their best blocker and send it in to the field against them for the finish off with your own characters. Reverberate means it will never have to go alone.
Mizzium Mortars Ive used though Im not 100% sold on it. I have it because of its overload cost. If it gets late on in the match I could overload it and then reverberate the overload paying 8 mana for 8 damage against all of their creatures and none of my own, usually enough to finish off even the stoutest of resistance. It will be one of the two slots that would be first given up for something from a side board which Im focusing on.
I havent done much with lands yet though I see a lot of people using arid and teetering to thin out their deck of land which seems to be incredibly smart. Your thoughts and explanation on that would be most appreciated.
General thoughts, awesome combos ive missed, and replacement card suggestions that keeps my current deck's synergy or helps improve it would be most appreciated! Let me know what you think!
I recently started working at an after school care program for elementary through high school and discovered that there was a lot of the kids and staff there that enjoyed playing magic the gathering. After a couple weeks working there I bought a core 13 fat pack, seperate boosters, a few intro packs, Ravnica fat pack, and a few hundred card lots on ebay to get me started. Back around 94 and 95 I played magic in after middle school at friends houses but it was during the time when magic was on the radar and totally "demonic" so the school called my parents and my mother who had bought my cards for me threw them away in the end so I had been leery to take it up once again.
Ive built a few decks, gotten spanked horribly, and have learned a ton over the past month and a half of playing and have been trying to take it to the next level. Ive been designing a few decks on deck.tk recently and have started turning the tides at my work place with a goblin/phoenix burn modern/extended play deck and am working on a WUBRG deck to purchase later on for fun and play.
My main hope is to get in shape for Gencon 2013 and bring a couple decks to play in modern, extended, and perhaps standard tournaments there though I still have a ton to learn as I have a decade and a half of catchup to do.
I look forward to building decks and receiving honest and productive criticism and meeting some of you at Gencon 2013 and hopefully some of you beforehand when Im able to start going out to a few "local" comic shops (I put it in quotes as NOTHING is local to me). I live about 40 minutes west on I64 of Louisville KY if anyone is in the area. Im often in Corydon IN and would love to meet up if anyone is around after work to play, learn, and eventually trade! Eventually Ill be looking into making a Friday Night Magic at my work location if I can get a comic book shop to help me out (pipe dream so far though my work place is on board).
Just point me in the direction to start posting decks and what tools to use to show people what Ive been working on! Hope to be around for a long while and make up for lost time!
2 Hellrider
3 Hound of Griselbrand
4 Rakdos Shred-Freak
4 Stromkirk Noble
2 Thundermaw Hellkite
4 Searing Spear
1 Devil's Play
2 Mizzium Mortars
4 Pillar of Flame
This is my first attempt at building a standard competitive deck. Sadly I do not have the benefit of testing decks at stuff such as FNM atleast not on regular occasions. Im hoping that once Ive built a good deck to take a trip out to my nearest FNM to test it out and then hopefully go from there. My ultimate goal is to have something good to play at Gencon. I know there is expansions between now and then but Id like to have my base set of cards to work with and then add/subtract as I need to.
Here is my current revision of this deck:
4 Ash Zealot
3 Blood Artist
4 Falkenrath Aristocrat
4 Rakdos Cackler
SPELLS
3 Devil's Play
4 Disentomb
4 Dreadbore
2 Mizzium Mortars
4 Pillar of Flame
3 Faithless Looting
3 Thunderbolt
4 Blood Crypt
4 Dragonskull Summit
7 Mountain
7 Swamp
This deck has come a long way from where it was. It started out as a Mono Red deck however the appeal to play the red black spell Dreadbore made it so I had to add a touch of black.
Rakdos Cackler was the most recent change to the deck bumping out Vexing Devil. Faithless Looting was substituted for Wild Guess.
The idea of the deck is simple. A good offense is the best defense. My hard hitter is Falkenrath Aristocrat, a flying 4/1 with the ability to sac another creature to become indestructible. My other main finisher in the deck is Devil's Play allowing me to tap my mana for the finishing blow. My only defenders in the deck is Pillar of Flame, Mizzium Mortars, and Thunderbolt.
The thing I could use the most help on is any tweaking to my advantage you see in this deck and a from the ground up sideboard to match it. Any and all suggestions will be taken seriously. Please be sure to give me examples as to why the cards you choose you believe will work better in the main deck and when helping with sideboard construction what cards work well to put in against what decks and what cards in my main deck should be up for being replaced for the sideboard cards.
Thanks to everyone that helps!!
4 Crumbling Necropolis
4 Jungle Shrine
4 Savage Lands
4 Seaside Citadel
1 Plains
1 Island
1 Swamp
1 Mountain
1 Forest
3 Mana Cylix
4 Door to Nothingness
1 Legacy Weapon
1 Etched Monstrosity
2 Mana Leak
2 Lightning Bolt
2 Fog
2 Disentomb
2 Erase
1 Cruel Ultimatum
1 Abrupt Decay
1 Detention Sphere
1 Dramatic Rescue
1 Dreadbore
1 Supreme Verdict
1 Bringer of the Black Dawn
1 Bringer of the Blue Dawn
1 Bringer of the Green Dawn
1 Bringer of the Red Dawn
1 Bringer of the White Dawn
4 Maelstrom Archangel
2 Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker
1 Child of Alara
1 Bloodbraid Elf
1 Fusion Elemental
1 Watchwolf
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Elvish Piper
1 Knotvine Mystic
1 Giltspire Avenger
I wanted to make a deck around Bringers, Maelstrom Angel, and using the Door to Nothingness and this is what Ive come up with so far. The main traits of the deck is most of the cards are unique in the deck with the notable exeptions being Nicol Bolas, Maelstrom Angel, Door to Nothingness, and 2 copies of one of the best low cost spells from each other. This deck really is about stalling till you get all 5 colors out which I have the shards of alara land cards to help.
I could really use some good ideas to improve this deck though such as good search your deck cards to help speed up some of the process. The things that I would like to keep consistent is the unique chaos quality of the deck (as in most cards will be in there by themselves). This will create a color pallete on the board that I really want to shoot for (this deck is almost 100% for casual play but I dont want it to suck 100% of the time).
This deck is almost pre alpha so please bring your best ideas forward. Im hoping to keep it down to around 70 cards to help boost the possibility of drawing the end gamer ( door to nothingness) when its time to finish off what should be a unique play session.
3 Goblin Guide
4 Goblin Chieftain
3 Guttersnipe
3 Krenko, Mob Boss
4 Chandra's Phoenix
3 Koth of the Hammer
3 Searing Blaze
4 Reverberate
2 Mizzium Mortars
1 Traitorous Blood
2 Ring of Valkas
My thoughts:
CREATURES/ARTIFACTS/PLANESWALKERS:
Goblin Guide is a great opener when it comes up and always a good drop at any point.
Goblin Chieftan is an unbelievably nice drop in conjunction with the other goblins and gives an incredible edge to Krenko. Imagine dropping Chieftan on turn three, having goblin guide coming out on turn one or two and dropping krenko on turn 4. Krenko would immediately tap and produce 3 2/2 goblin tokens with haste onto the board. Not to mention if you get to drop more than one then the +1/+1 counters stack.
2x Ring of Valkas gives 6 slots of assignable haste to Krenko (4 from Chieftan, and 2 from Ring of Valkas). If Krenko cant drop till turn 5 and I dont have Chieftan out on the board yet then as long as Ive laid Ring of Valkas in turns 2 through 4 then I can use 4 mana to drop krenko and 1 mana to assign Ring of Valkas allowing him to tap and start producing goblin babies. The +1/+1 upkeep helps assure nothing will knock it off the board if it becomes a true creature on creature battle to the death.
The phoenix's are line backers made to drop/attack/waste players resources if no spells have come out. They can be retrieved for burning the player with one of the many burn spells when necessary.
The Koth cards are kind of a two folded card. When Koth drops and Krenko drops behind him, Koth is the line backer for Krenko to produce a goblin army. When Krenko drops first he is the line backer for Koth to stall until Koth gets out his emblem at which point its tap mana until you win. Koth also has a desperation move as soon as turn 5 of -2 loyalty counters to to make my mana pool go from as much as 5 mana to as much of 10 mana allowing me to lay my entire hand in whatever succession works the best for me.
Guttersnipe is a wicked combo goblin allowing my spells to do direct damage to the player which brings us to the spells.
SPELLS
Lightning Bolt /Searing Blaze = no need for explanation. Combo with guttersnipe for extra damage and use to return Chandra's Phoenix.
4 Reverberate - seriously this card is underrated. Ive reverberated my opponents mana draw cards, countered counterspells so my characters can stay on the board, copied murder spells and sent their own creatures to the grave, and of course copied my own spells for double damage. Ive never been sad to see it in my hand.
For instance, they play a planeswalker with 4 and +1 it to 5. I have 3 mana open, a lightning bolt and a reverberate and a guttersnipe on the board. Tap 1, lighting bolt the planeswalker, tap 2 reverberate the lightning bolt and destroy the planeswalker. All the while guttersnipe does 2 for the lightning bolt to the opponent and then 2 more for the reverberate.
Traitorous blood is so much fun when it pops which if they've survived till later on in the match you gain control of their best blocker and send it in to the field against them for the finish off with your own characters. Reverberate means it will never have to go alone.
Mizzium Mortars Ive used though Im not 100% sold on it. I have it because of its overload cost. If it gets late on in the match I could overload it and then reverberate the overload paying 8 mana for 8 damage against all of their creatures and none of my own, usually enough to finish off even the stoutest of resistance. It will be one of the two slots that would be first given up for something from a side board which Im focusing on.
I havent done much with lands yet though I see a lot of people using arid and teetering to thin out their deck of land which seems to be incredibly smart. Your thoughts and explanation on that would be most appreciated.
General thoughts, awesome combos ive missed, and replacement card suggestions that keeps my current deck's synergy or helps improve it would be most appreciated! Let me know what you think!
I recently started working at an after school care program for elementary through high school and discovered that there was a lot of the kids and staff there that enjoyed playing magic the gathering. After a couple weeks working there I bought a core 13 fat pack, seperate boosters, a few intro packs, Ravnica fat pack, and a few hundred card lots on ebay to get me started. Back around 94 and 95 I played magic in after middle school at friends houses but it was during the time when magic was on the radar and totally "demonic" so the school called my parents and my mother who had bought my cards for me threw them away in the end so I had been leery to take it up once again.
Ive built a few decks, gotten spanked horribly, and have learned a ton over the past month and a half of playing and have been trying to take it to the next level. Ive been designing a few decks on deck.tk recently and have started turning the tides at my work place with a goblin/phoenix burn modern/extended play deck and am working on a WUBRG deck to purchase later on for fun and play.
My main hope is to get in shape for Gencon 2013 and bring a couple decks to play in modern, extended, and perhaps standard tournaments there though I still have a ton to learn as I have a decade and a half of catchup to do.
I look forward to building decks and receiving honest and productive criticism and meeting some of you at Gencon 2013 and hopefully some of you beforehand when Im able to start going out to a few "local" comic shops (I put it in quotes as NOTHING is local to me). I live about 40 minutes west on I64 of Louisville KY if anyone is in the area. Im often in Corydon IN and would love to meet up if anyone is around after work to play, learn, and eventually trade! Eventually Ill be looking into making a Friday Night Magic at my work location if I can get a comic book shop to help me out (pipe dream so far though my work place is on board).
Just point me in the direction to start posting decks and what tools to use to show people what Ive been working on! Hope to be around for a long while and make up for lost time!