and hello to you all! This is a quick announcement to let you all know that I'm a new mod here in artwork I hope that we'll all be able to get along, work hard and produce some awesome stuff!
If you need to contact me, you can do so via PM or through my helpdesk!
Hello! I'm the new moderator here in artwork, and one of my goals is to really help the contests get up and running I think that having very fixed dates is a good start, ideally starting on the first of the month, and ending on the last day (28/29/30/31 or whatever). Secondly, I believe that having a poll for the next months topic/topics would be great. After all, people can vote for their favoured subject, and are already thinking of ideas for it. This should help us all want to paint and enter for it! Thirdly, how would you guys feel about having Contest announcements in the main artwork forum? I may have to talk to my higher-ups about it, but it might help raise awareness and drive traffic towards the contests.
Thank you all so much for your thoughts and suggestions. Keep commenting, and we'll soon be able to get these contests up and running again!
Pack 1 pick 2: The Demonic Rising looks crazy good. I've seen it end games by itself, and it helps keep Black to yourself if you force following your first 2 (bombish) picks. I'm not sure if this is correct, but it's what i would have done.
I made a RUG miracle controlly-midrangey thing. I think it's different enough from the RUG control decks (whos thread hasn't been posted on for months) to warrant it's own thread.
This is a deck I've been thinking of for the past few weeks. I did a quick search for other miracle decks, but I don't think any of the others really go along the same lines as this one.
The basic premise is to play a midrange controlling strategy using miracles, which you can put on the top of your library and reuse via reclaim and noxious revival. We can be accelerated through rampant growth, which also lets us find our colours, allowing us to hardcast miracles if necessary.
Time for a breakdown!
MIRACLES!
Thunderous Wrath: He's the reason I thought of this deck. Cast it once, reclaim it, cast it, noxious revival it, cast it again, snapcaster noxious revival, cast it again. It's a whole lot of damage from one little card.
Bonfire of the damned: Again, this is a pretty awesome miracle! It's fine when hardcast for X=1 or 2, but whenever it is a miracle, it really gets out of hand. We are able to cast this for R, then, at our leisure, put it back on top, ready to be miracled with reclaim or Revival. It's good without that interaction, but it's phenomenal with it.
Reforge the soul: It has potential as a 1-2 of I believe. It dumps excess miracles/lands from our hand, and allows us to draw a fresh new grip! Other than that, it doesn't really affect the board too much. Aggro draws into new threats against us, and control draws into more counterspells/whatever.
Devestation Tide: I really like this card. Slows down aggro, gets rid of tokens, stops planeswalkers building up, and allows us to abuse ETB effects if we include the likes of mycosynth wellspring or ichor wellspring. Allows us to rebounce our own snapcaster mage too!
Vanishment: Pretty good spot removal for us! We can put dudes/enchantments/planeswalkers/anything but lands away and tie up our opponents mana when they have to recast them.
Temporal Mastery: I don't really like this here, but it may have potential. We could discard it to looting effects, then put it on top to ensure a timewalk when we want/need it, but it exiles itself after Oh well!
Blessings of Nature: I don't plan on playing many creatures, so I don't think it's super useful here. Judge it for yourselfs
Snapcaster Mage: He seems really good here. Rebuys reclaims/noxious revivals and other miracle cards. Can flashback rampant growth to help with ramp, pillar of flame to kill some dudes or manaleak to control our opponent!
Delver of Secrets: With the number of Instants and Sorceries we'll be running, he could be a shoe-in. He's proven himself in everything else so far!
Viridian Emissary: Chumps/trades with aggro creatures and accelerates us further. Double green hurts though.
Merfolk Looter: Discards extra miracles, lets us draw on our opponents turn. This guy is boss.
Civilised Scholar: Also loots, and can transform into a beater. I'm undecided about him though.
Huntmaster of the fells: I've seen other RUG decks use this with great success, but I am undecided. Stalls, gains life, adds bodies and turns into a threat. I feel like it pulls away from the miracle aspect of the deck though...
Inferno Titan: He's a pretty big, pretty awesome finisher. I like him better in this strategy than Primeval titan.
Frost Titan: Slightly more resilient beater than Inferno titan, but I feel like he has a slightly worse board presence.
Wurmcoil Engine: Very high presence finisher. Resilient too! We can even reclaim him to keep up the flow of wurms if we want
SPELLS!
Mana leak: Standard counterspell. I'm not sure if it'll make the cut with Cavern of souls in standard.
Dissipate: Hard counter with more difficult mana, and the same problem (Darn Cavern!)!
Pillar of flame: Normal burn spell, that deals with undying guys handily. Sorcery speed kind of hurt though.
Gut shot: Value-burn! Pretty good against Delver, mana dorks or T1 Champion of the parish. Great Utility.
Vapor Snag: A mainstay of tempo decks. I'm not sure if it has a home here though.
Slagstorm: We need to stay alive, right? Sweeps against aggro, or can go to the face/planeswalkers.
Ponder: This is amazing here. Lets us stack miracles and find answers.
Desperate Raving: Instant speed draw,letting us activate miracles on our opponents turn, with a random discard. It could be good, but I'm not sure yet! ARTIFACTS!
Chandra, the firebrand: Her doubling ability could be cool with all the Miracles we have, but we'd have to hardcast them to actually use it. Her +1 is okay for keeping the board clean I guess?
Garruk Relentless: Offers a constant stream of 2/2 tokens, and can fight a creature for us. His flip side makes deathtouch wolves, and can search for a finishing creature.
There is virtually no good reason to stay at 23 forests.
Copperline gorge and razorverge thicket both come in untapped turn 1 for your mana dorks, give you more options in the board (like ancient grudge...) and do not detract from the rest of the deck.
Even Rootbound Crag/any other part G Coreset or Innistrad dual land will more often than not come into play untapped, as you'll rarely see them without any forests.
I also believe that kessig wolf run is too good to pass up in a deck like this. Even just giving your guys trample can push this over the edge.
Alternatively, you could try 19 forests +4 inkmoth nexus is a formidable plan b with the number of equips you're running.
One card which I find invaluable in my own traditional UB Tezz deck is Inkmoth nexus. That card is the nuts with tezz's -1. I can understand the apprehension with a 3 colour awkward mana deck, but I just thought I comment It seems that this deck is very tight on space... Otherwise I'd advocate Birds of paradise to help smooth things out.
I love the look of this deck, but I'm terrified by the mana base lol
She got paired against UB control, then UW control, followed by UR delver in the finals She didn't lose a game all day. Only 8 people turned up, and my own Tezzeret deck went 1-1-1.
There were 6 control decks, RDW and a Black White tokeny aggro thing.
I opened what I felt was a Highly underwhelming pool. I havn't played a prerelease since Guildpact, but I've been drafting and playing constructed consistently since Shards of Alara. Here is my poolL
Sooo, please tell me what I did wrong, and how I could improve. I went 2-3 in the event finishing juuuust outside of prizes (which annoyed me). There were 30 people at the prerelease.
You could try looking at the NOCTAL (Necrotic Ooze Combo ie: Necrotic Ooze Can Toss A Loss) Thread. I don't understand the name either. It's found here.
Also, for further note, Blue is normally denoted as U, and Black as B, as your B/B thread title was a little confusing.
I think the Hood is a good SB card. If your opponent is not in your colors, then you get to cheaply make creatures unblockable. Considering how many DKA cards have "when creature does damage to an opponent" effects (slap it on that old werewolf chick!), I can see it doing a lot of good things.
I cringed a little whenever the adjective "Old" was coupled with the noun "Chick".
On topic: I'm quite excited for tragic slip, although I doubt it will be as insane as many of us are making it out to be. In my mind it will depend on you or your opponent chump-blocking to have any real use.
The Devil looks interesting, but it really wanted to have a "may" in there.
OK I've decided that the Heartess Summoning build doesn't work very well, and I'm planning a more streamlined version like some of you guys have been posting with Paladium Myrs and Myr Superions.
I have 14 slots open for spells... so what spells should be used in a mono blue build?
In my opinion, Ponder, mana leakVapor snag and dismember are the best options. I would run Dissipate in the 75 somewhere as well. If you meant spells in general (artifact/enchantment/planeswalker) rather than spells (instant/sorcery), I have no idea...
If you need to contact me, you can do so via PM or through my helpdesk!
All the best everyone, and stay creative!
Mobo
Thank you all so much for your thoughts and suggestions. Keep commenting, and we'll soon be able to get these contests up and running again!
I made a RUG miracle controlly-midrangey thing. I think it's different enough from the RUG control decks (whos thread hasn't been posted on for months) to warrant it's own thread.
The basic premise is to play a midrange controlling strategy using miracles, which you can put on the top of your library and reuse via reclaim and noxious revival. We can be accelerated through rampant growth, which also lets us find our colours, allowing us to hardcast miracles if necessary.
Time for a breakdown!
MIRACLES!
Thunderous Wrath: He's the reason I thought of this deck. Cast it once, reclaim it, cast it, noxious revival it, cast it again, snapcaster noxious revival, cast it again. It's a whole lot of damage from one little card.
Bonfire of the damned: Again, this is a pretty awesome miracle! It's fine when hardcast for X=1 or 2, but whenever it is a miracle, it really gets out of hand. We are able to cast this for R, then, at our leisure, put it back on top, ready to be miracled with reclaim or Revival. It's good without that interaction, but it's phenomenal with it.
Reforge the soul: It has potential as a 1-2 of I believe. It dumps excess miracles/lands from our hand, and allows us to draw a fresh new grip! Other than that, it doesn't really affect the board too much. Aggro draws into new threats against us, and control draws into more counterspells/whatever.
Devestation Tide: I really like this card. Slows down aggro, gets rid of tokens, stops planeswalkers building up, and allows us to abuse ETB effects if we include the likes of mycosynth wellspring or ichor wellspring. Allows us to rebounce our own snapcaster mage too!
Vanishment: Pretty good spot removal for us! We can put dudes/enchantments/planeswalkers/anything but lands away and tie up our opponents mana when they have to recast them.
Temporal Mastery: I don't really like this here, but it may have potential. We could discard it to looting effects, then put it on top to ensure a timewalk when we want/need it, but it exiles itself after Oh well!
Blessings of Nature: I don't plan on playing many creatures, so I don't think it's super useful here. Judge it for yourselfs
Revenge of the hunted: Same as above.
CREATURES!
Snapcaster Mage: He seems really good here. Rebuys reclaims/noxious revivals and other miracle cards. Can flashback rampant growth to help with ramp, pillar of flame to kill some dudes or manaleak to control our opponent!
Delver of Secrets: With the number of Instants and Sorceries we'll be running, he could be a shoe-in. He's proven himself in everything else so far!
Birds of Paradise: Fixes and ramps our mana. Seems good.
Viridian Emissary: Chumps/trades with aggro creatures and accelerates us further. Double green hurts though.
Merfolk Looter: Discards extra miracles, lets us draw on our opponents turn. This guy is boss.
Civilised Scholar: Also loots, and can transform into a beater. I'm undecided about him though.
Huntmaster of the fells: I've seen other RUG decks use this with great success, but I am undecided. Stalls, gains life, adds bodies and turns into a threat. I feel like it pulls away from the miracle aspect of the deck though...
Inferno Titan: He's a pretty big, pretty awesome finisher. I like him better in this strategy than Primeval titan.
Frost Titan: Slightly more resilient beater than Inferno titan, but I feel like he has a slightly worse board presence.
Wurmcoil Engine: Very high presence finisher. Resilient too! We can even reclaim him to keep up the flow of wurms if we want
SPELLS!
Mana leak: Standard counterspell. I'm not sure if it'll make the cut with Cavern of souls in standard.
Dissipate: Hard counter with more difficult mana, and the same problem (Darn Cavern!)!
Pillar of flame: Normal burn spell, that deals with undying guys handily. Sorcery speed kind of hurt though.
Gut shot: Value-burn! Pretty good against Delver, mana dorks or T1 Champion of the parish. Great Utility.
Vapor Snag: A mainstay of tempo decks. I'm not sure if it has a home here though.
Slagstorm: We need to stay alive, right? Sweeps against aggro, or can go to the face/planeswalkers.
Ponder: This is amazing here. Lets us stack miracles and find answers.
Desperate Raving: Instant speed draw,letting us activate miracles on our opponents turn, with a random discard. It could be good, but I'm not sure yet!
ARTIFACTS!
Mycosynth Wellspring: Lets us find lands, but otherwise is kind of durdly.
Ichor Wellspring: Cycles, then cycles again if we have a way to sacrifice it.
Sphere of the Suns: Ramp and fixing, but I'm not sure how much the 3 charge counter thing hurts us.
Vessel of Endless Rest: Fixes/accelerates mana, can retuck cards in our graveyard, or hate on those in an opponents.
Batterskull: Good resilient stabiliser/finisher.
PLANESWALKERS!
Chandra, the firebrand: Her doubling ability could be cool with all the Miracles we have, but we'd have to hardcast them to actually use it. Her +1 is okay for keeping the board clean I guess?
Garruk Relentless: Offers a constant stream of 2/2 tokens, and can fight a creature for us. His flip side makes deathtouch wolves, and can search for a finishing creature.
Garruk, Primal hunter: He could be pretty awesome, but the GGG cost really hurts.
Tamiyo, the Moon Sage: She could be pretty cool, possibly coming down as early as turn three and disrupting our opponent significantly.
LANDS!
Mountain: You'll probably need some of these.
Island: These will help a lot! And they come into play untapped!
Forest: Allows for broken plays like T1 forest-> Birds of Paradise!
Hinterland Harbour: Helps a tonne with consistency
Sulfur Falls: You like being able to play your spells, right?
Rootbound Crag: Yup, having all your colours is important.
Copperline Gorge: Maybe not as important as the others, but still pretty good. Possibly better.
Desolate Lighthouse: I don't think this deck could work without this. It's super great!
Ghost Quarter: Because Wolf Run Ramp is a thing.
Phyrexia's core: If you're playing with wellsprings, you'll want a couple of these.
So, yeah. That took a while for me. Let's brew a decklist!
4x Sulfur Falls
2x Hinterland Harbour
2x Rootbound Crag
2x Desolate Lighthouse
5x Forest
4x Mountain
5x Island
4x Birds of Paradise
3x Merfolk looter
3x Snapcaster Mage
2x Inferno Titan
1x Frost Titan
3x Thunderous Wrath
2x Bonfire of the Damned
1x Reforge the Soul
2x Devestation tide
1x Vanishment
1x Reclaim
2x Rampant Growth
4x Ponder
3x Slagstorm
Hope you enjoy! Please comment/critique. I havn't done any testing, I just had the idea and wanted to share!
There is virtually no good reason to stay at 23 forests.
Copperline gorge and razorverge thicket both come in untapped turn 1 for your mana dorks, give you more options in the board (like ancient grudge...) and do not detract from the rest of the deck.
Even Rootbound Crag/any other part G Coreset or Innistrad dual land will more often than not come into play untapped, as you'll rarely see them without any forests.
I also believe that kessig wolf run is too good to pass up in a deck like this. Even just giving your guys trample can push this over the edge.
Alternatively, you could try 19 forests +4 inkmoth nexus is a formidable plan b with the number of equips you're running.
4x Rootbound Crag
16x Mountain
4x Stromkirk Noble
2x Goblin Fireslinger
3x Furnace Scamp
1x Spikeshot Elder
4x Stormblood Berserker
3x Chandra's Phoenix
1x Hellrider
4x Gut Shot
4x Shrine of Burning Rage
3x Arc Trail
4x Volt Charge
1x Brimstone Volley
3x Koth of the Hammer
3x Perilous Myr
1x Arc Trail
4x Ancient Grudge
2x Sword of War and Peace
2x Traitorous Blood
2x Mana Barbs
1x Hero of Oxid Ridge
The way I'm rebuilding it is as follows:
16x Mountain
4x Rootbound Crag
2x Kessig Wolf Run
Creature-19
4x Stromkirk Noble
3x Goblin Fireslinger
2x Grim Lavamancer
4x Stormblood Berserker
4x Chandra's Phoenix
2x Hellrider
3x Gut Shot
2x Galvanic Blast
2x Faithless Looting
2x Arc Trail
4x Shrine of Burning Rage
4x Volt Charge
2x Koth of the Hammer
4x Ancient Grudge
2x Sword of War and Peace
2x Traitorous Blood
1x Koth of the Hammer
1x Hero of Oxid Ridge
3x Slagstorm
1x Spikeshot Elder
1x Mana Barbs
I love the look of this deck, but I'm terrified by the mana base lol
She got paired against UB control, then UW control, followed by UR delver in the finals She didn't lose a game all day. Only 8 people turned up, and my own Tezzeret deck went 1-1-1.
There were 6 control decks, RDW and a Black White tokeny aggro thing.
1x Elder of Laurels
1x Grafdiggers Cage
1x Gavony township
1x Grim Backwoods
1x Increasing Devotion
1x Divine Reckoning
1x Silverchase Fox
1x Nibilis of the Urn
1x Spare from Evil
1x Loyal Cathar
1x Midnight Gaurd
1x Rally the Peasents
1x Elder Cathar
1x Elgaud Inquisitor
1x Curse of Exhaustion
1x Divine Reckoning
1x Thraben Purebloods
1x Increasing Devotion
1x Sensory Deprivation
1x Screeching Skaab
1x Chant of the Skifsang
2x Chill of Foreboding
1x Hysterical Blindness
1x Civilized Scholar
1x Selhoff Occultist
1x Stormbound Geist
1x Mystic Retrieval
1x Makeshift Mauler
1x Bone to Ash
1x Tragic Slip
1x Disciple of Griselbrand
1x Manor Skeleton
1x Black Cat
1x Highborn ghoul
1x Falkenrath Torturer
1x Chosen of Markov
1x Wakedancer
1x Ghoulraiser
1x Gravepurge
1x Curse of Oblivion
1x Rotting Fensnake
1x Morkrut Banshee
1x Death's Caress
1x Infernal plunge
1x Torch fiend
1x Ashmouth hound
1x Bloodcrazed neonate
1x Ancient Grudge
1x talons of falkenrath
1x Traitorous blood
1x Crossway Vampire
1x Scorch the Fields
1x Scourge of Geier Reach
1x Blood Feud
1x Young Wolf
1x Wreath of Geists
1x Mayor of Avabruck
1x Somberwald Dryad
1x Dawntreader Elk
1x Darkthicket Wolf
1x Elder of Laurels
1x Wild hunger
1x kessig Recluse
1x Somberwald Spider
1x Grizzled Outcasts
1x Hollowhenge Beast
1x Grafdiggers cage
1x Graveyard Shovel
1x Cobbled Wings
1x Sharpened pitchfork
1x Executioners hood
1x Heavy Mattock
1x Chalice of life
1x Diregraf Captain
1x Shimmering grotto
1x Evolving wilds
1x Haunted fengraf
1x Ghost Quarter
1x Gavony Township
1x Grim backwoods
Finally, the deck I built is thus:
1x Evolving Wilds
1x Shimmering Grotto
1x Grim Backwoods
1x Gavony township
2x Swamp
5x Forests
6x Plains
Creatures
1x Avacyn's Pilgrim
1x Young Wolf
1x Doomed Traveler
1x Silverchase fox
1x Nibilis of the Urn
1x Loyal cathar
1x Mayor of Avabruck
1x Dawntreader Elk
1x Darkthicket Wolf
1x Midnight gaurd
1x Elder Cathar
1x Elder of Laurels
1x Kessig recluse
1x Elgauld Inquisitor
1x Somberwald Spider
1x Grizzled Outcasts
1x Tragic Slip
1x Deadly Allure
1x Blazing torch
1x Sharpened Pitchfork
1x Wild Hunger
1x Divine Reckoning
1x Increasing Devotion
Sooo, please tell me what I did wrong, and how I could improve. I went 2-3 in the event finishing juuuust outside of prizes (which annoyed me). There were 30 people at the prerelease.
Thanks for any help you can offer!
Also, for further note, Blue is normally denoted as U, and Black as B, as your B/B thread title was a little confusing.
I cringed a little whenever the adjective "Old" was coupled with the noun "Chick".
On topic: I'm quite excited for tragic slip, although I doubt it will be as insane as many of us are making it out to be. In my mind it will depend on you or your opponent chump-blocking to have any real use.
The Devil looks interesting, but it really wanted to have a "may" in there.
How about Tainted Strike?
In my opinion, Ponder, mana leak Vapor snag and dismember are the best options. I would run Dissipate in the 75 somewhere as well. If you meant spells in general (artifact/enchantment/planeswalker) rather than spells (instant/sorcery), I have no idea...