MTG Salvation

So OP, say you and 2-3 of your best MtG friends jump in a car and drive a few hrs on a Friday night. Check into hotel, hit up the hotel bar\lobby where dozens of other players are hanging out, talking magic, got some edh matches going in the corner, everyone's having a good time. Crash, get up and crank out some rounds... do good its a great feeling at a big event, not so good ok time to do some trading, side drafts, get signatures, alters, scour vendor tables, etc. Party up some more sat night, invite some new friends up to the room with some sixers. Head back home Sunday feeling like you had an awesome weekend... yeah why would anyone do that? Much rather just do the same old stuff you do every weekend instead.

Hey its Vegas, its always worth the airfare heh.

Booked for week, Thurs-Thurs. I always hit up WSOP for some action every summer I can so this is perfect combo. Got VIP also, standing in insane lines to find your seat every round is the sux.

Oh yeah, I can see a country with a giant Gundam statue and arcades and pachinko parlors everywhere really ostracizes nerds....

Man that is a shady move. To give you one pack for his screwup and not offer anything else??? All he has to do is say he'll cover you 3 lousy packs come release or something. So glad all the stores in my area have really good owners and the stores do really good business because they don't pull bs like this.

Played at 2 game days with my build, got 2nd then won next. Thankfully guy I just could not beat didn't show at 2nd. He was running the fastest UG agro I've ever seen and never could get ahead of it. Even against really fast mono R or RG I've stabilized at 1-4 life quite a few times.

Most of your changes look pretty good Elesh. I still like to have access to an Angel of Serenity, it has won me to many games. I think 3 Obz is pushing your luck. He's really great against control match ups but only ok to good against agro. I went with 2 main and 1 side.

Not sure about the Sever or Orzhov Charm. Haven't had much need of either. Haven't tried Liliana yet. If I add the Lingering she definitely becomes playable so may try it.

My friend and I combined collections a few years ago and ever since we've had at least one if not 2 play sets of every card in standard. For all rare lands its automatic 2 play sets. For heavily played rares like Resto Angel, Snapcaster, etc we typically have 2 sets. I learned long ago not to sell my cards after rotation also. We loose a lot of value, but we don't get stuck trying to find cards we sold either.

Thankfully we both win a good bit which helps quite a bit. We usually each buy a box and a fat pack of a new release. Then one or both of us play pre-release and release events heavily then we draft 2-3's times a week for the first month after release. At that point with some trading we have all the cards we need.

Yea finding other ppl to play against is the best thing you can do. Never let any kind of fear of playing an inferior deck against even experienced players playing tuned tournament decks. Ask your opponents for tips on what cards they would add to your deck and what plays they would focus on. I try and help new players as much as absolutely possible especially at FNM's with triggers and rules even if it helps them win. Hopefully you don't run into any trolls, but most magic players just want to make more friends and have fun playing.

Next is read the forums here, standard deck construction. You will find some good ideas. My fav thing is coming up with a unique idea and make it into a competitive deck.

Quote from NoHeavenNoHell

Tweaked some more: -1 Smiter, +1 Nighthawk. -1 Ultimate Price, +1 Abrupt Decay.

Had a good finish last night with your list. Replaced one Obz main with a Angel of Serenity, -1 Obv Ring +1 Unburial. +1 Garruk. Didn't play the Shaman's. Would have gone undefeated but kept a bad hand gm1 match 1 and got run over then gm3 got burnt out by a bloodrush gruul deck. Made top 8 and split top 4 though.

Quote from DPDickens

... why? I play a bulk of creatures, and his burn spells were a major hindrance to me. So, I don't really see what the downside is, unless I'm missing some ruling regarding Thalia.

She's legendary.

Quote from DPDickens

Thalia, Guardian of Thraben was brilliant against his deck--he kept trying to burn things, and i kept reminding him that it cost more mana than he had. I didn't have any opportunity to put two on the board at once, but I had a little fantasy about when I was playing, and that Christmasland dream warmed the very cockles of my heart.

Good thing you didn't, don't think that would work out to well for you.

Might try this tonight. Same concept different implementation. Relying more on good creatures to get the job done.



Gyre Sage into Smiter or Geist. Rancor and Wolfir are my only Biomancer pumps, but once either is on I can use Resto Angel to go to town especially with Gyre sage blinking out and back in to get a ton of counters making it easy to gain some serious advantage with Prime Speaker or Sphinx. Clone is one of those nice surprise cards I can do quite a bit with but may have to get cut.

Went undefeated last night running pretty much this list. Took Thalia's out of main, probably taking her out of side or just having a 1 of. Never been happy with her. Put in 2 Gather the Townsfolk and 1 Sigarda, Host of Herons.

Massive swings turn 3-6 every match just ran over them before they had anything going. One match I had to really fight through was Izzet Staticaster. Township won me gm3 against multilpes of him on board.

True I actually do like appetites in the main. Pretty sure I can run this with 23 lands without much issue.

Ended up 1-2. Beat mill control without much trouble. Then GW Agro got me dropping smiters for free and I never drew a single multilate. One at any point would have won me games. Last was a Naya control and would have had him gm3 but 3 thragtusks and resto angel on one just gave him to much life, he swung for lethal when shrieking would have finished him off his next upkeep.

Pack Rats were champs all night. Only one game did I get the underworld connections and it would have won me many more. Night Hawks were also excellent. Think this will be my next build.

Thanks for the feedbacks. I do plan to play test it tonight in a pretty competitive 20-25 man standard. Will see how it does.

I may drop the Night Terrors for Night Hawks as I would like some life gain for the underworld connections. I would like to stay away from as much early\mid game creature dmg as possible though especially since I will be board wiping often with the mutilates. I've played similar decks before and it doesn't take long to empty an opponents hand especially the more cards they play a turn. Once they are empty you don't want to be drawing mind rots, etc. Rats though are always a good draw especially since you want to hold any pack rats until they are pretty much empty and have a good bit of mana out then go to town on them in one turn.