Mana Echoes - Well to be honest I still haven't had experience with this card in an actual game yet, but from goldfishing/testing it seems to do pretty well. It only provides colorless mana, but the mana can still be used to cast colorless spells or fuel an x spell/infinite combo engine.
Slate of Ancestry - red needs all the card draw it needs. Krenko is good at making lots of tokens. These seem to go hand in hand.
Goblin Assasin - Another card that I need more experience with, but it has performed well in testing. This guy is great creature control against non-token decks.
Warp World - If you're looking for fun, look no further than warp world. Best used when you've got a bunch of tokens out and nothing to do with them, though it can also be useful to disrupt the board state. This card's just plain fun.
The leyline should be taken out because the hate is too specific to warrant including in your maindeck. It's completely useless against decks that don't gain life or use prevent damage effects. Even against life-gain decks it's not that good as a 1 of in your deck because it's unlikely that it'll be in your opening hand, and by the time you do draw your 1 copy of the card, your opponent has likely gained a good amount of life. It would be better in my opinion to drop this card for anything else that could make your deck a little more consistent.
Of course, if your playgroup's meta is 90% lifegain decks, then that's an entirely different story. Otherwise, it's not worth playing in your deck in my opinion.
Here's another way to look at it. Would you rather have a card in your deck that is only useful 10% of the time against a specific deck type? Or would you rather have a card that is always useful when you draw it (whether it be a kill spell, ramp, or another creature)?
I too was wondering the same thing. Regardless, I think you are running too many pacifism effects, so you could probably cut down on a few. I also think it would be more fun/consistent to focus the deck entirely on mill. Seraph of Dawn feels really out of place here, as does Ethereal Armor, since it only works towards the deck's goal of milling if you enchant it on crosstown.
I think you should make the deck more controlling. Have some walls and counterspells to back you up and let you survive, and throw some cards in here that allow for self-repeating mill. Cards like Doorkeeper seem like a good fit in a pauper mill deck. You could pair it with other walls like Drift of Phantasms, which can let you tutor up something else late game, or Mnemonic Wall which can let you re-uses Tome Scour or Mind Sculpt. One-Eyed Scarecrow could be nice sideboard tech against birds.
Yay Aurochs, my favorite casual theme deck! I could go on and on about Aurochs, but I'll post a few simple suggestions to help fine-tune your deck.
There are alot of cards in your deck that either don't make alot of sense, or have better alternatives in my opinion. I would Look into dropping the following cards from your deck
-1 Spark Elemental
-1 Kird Ape
-1 Elder of Laurels
-1 Orcish Lumberjack
-2 Wild Cantor
-1 Leyline of Punishment
You could replace these with cards that help make your deck more consistent by focusing on the Aurochs. Monk suggested alot of good cards, but here are a few other sugestions:
Stonebrow, Krosan Hero - Gives a mini overrun to all of your Aurochs each turn. Seems pretty good to me.
Doubling CHant - I think this card could be decent in an Aurochs deck. The problem is it isn't that good until you already have a sizable army, but maybe you could include it as a 1 of or try it out and see how it works for you.
Pack Hunt - I've seen many other Aurochs decks run this card. I don't run it in my deck so I don't really know how it is, but it seems good.
Wild Pair - This is another card that I've seen in some Aurochs decks, and that I run personally as well. I am a big fan of it because you can tutor for any creature you need, and you can build a creature base around it pretty easily. Aurochs Herd plays especially nice with this card since it always feeds you another Aurochs to play.
Dolmen Gate - I used to have this in my deck but took it out because I started finding it unnecessary with the pump I was getting from Stonebrow. This card can still be good in an Aurochs deck though because Aurochs are quite fragile in combat with their low toughness. It has bonus syngergy with Rimehorn Aurochs, which essentially becomes repeatable creature removal.
Wall of Roots, Overgrown Battlements - Aurochs can take a while to get going. These walls can serve as a great means to help you get going faster while simultaneously protecting yourself.
Edit: didnt see redwoods post. Disregard this post unless it turns out to be invalid.
- Voting out the 4 cultivate, the mana acceleration/fixing isn't really needed or appropriate in this deck. That's 3 votes so they're out.
- Voting out 2 everflowing chalice for reasons said above. This deck doesns't look like it is too mana heavy, abusing the counters is a nice idea and mana accel is always nice, but I don't really see this deck wanting to focus all of its
time and effort on building up this card. At best it will probably have a few charge counters on it. One thing's for certain however, this deck doesns't need 4 of them.
- Adding 1 Lux Cannon. It's cheap, it can charge itself and is abusable with pretty much everything here. A good deck should always have an answer to problem permanents. We can probably bump this up to 2 or 3 when we figure out the budget.
Wow, great GMAD choice, I've always wanted to do something with this card and there are many ways to go with this deck. In addition to the obvious Terravore I'm going to suggest we throw in a single copy of Worm Harvest. It's re-usable and cares about the number of lands in our graveyard, I can see it getting out of hand fast in this deck and works as a great alt win condition. It's also discardable to Rites of Spring. Only throwing in 1 copy for now since it's useless to have multiple copies in the graveyard, but if we decide we want to put more emphasis in the "lands in graveyard" theme then we can look into bumping the count up for consistency.
This is a fun looking deck, but it looks to be quite dependant on a few cards, mainly Haakon and Prismatic Omen. Prismatic Omen is great for the deck, but it seems you might have some trouble without it otherwise, especially with all of the colorless lands you are running. I realize you're running a tutor package with knight of the reliquary but are all of those colorless lands really necessary for the deck to function? Personally, I would ditch the Last stands and a couple of the Prismatic Omens and focus on making my manabase more independent of Prismatic Omen in order to function. You could still keep a few utility lands to tutor up with KoTR. Maybe Desolate Lighthouse, so you have a tutorable discard outlet incase you end up drawing Haakon.
Here's a few other small tips/things that I noticed:
I agree with Mooncrow on Life from the Loam over Crucible, especially since dredge can help get Haakon into the graveyard faster.
I would also consider changing your knight numbers around a bit. For example, Dragonsoul Knight and Paragon of the Amesha are underwhelming in the early game in my opinion. They're only good if you activate their abilities, but they are a huge mana sink and are just asking to be removed/destroyed, which can really hurt your tempo. I would consider cutting these guys to 2 or 1 of each for the late game once you've got Haakon out.
Brawn doesn't make much sense to me since you don't have alot of big beefy guys. I would personally rather run Wonder to give all of my knights evasion
Knight of Exemplar should be at least a two of. If you can get both of the knights on the battlefield, then they can give each other indestructibility. Seems pretty good to me.
Cut out Phyrexian Crusader, it doesn't really make sense in this deck as others have pointed out.
Finally, consider packing in more removal. Yes, Nameless Inversion and Crib Swap are recurrable with Haakon, but what if you don't have Haakon? Furthermore, I'm not seeing any way to tutor up these spells in your deck. With only 1 copy of each in your deck I don't see you getting the opportunity to play with these cards often. Consider bumping up their count.
This deck needs a LOT more ramp for what it's trying to do. I have always been a fan of Joraga Treespeaker as it gives you 2 extra mana on it's own. That's 5 mana by turn 3 assuming you played a land every turn. With 1 more accelerator down you can easily be plopping down fatties as early as turn 4. You can also look into cheating creatures into play. Someone already mentioned Elvish Piper and you have a lurking predators in the deck already. Quicksilver Amulet is another consideration. It's activated ability costs more, but it's much less fragile than the piper. Wild Pair is always a fun card to build around and can help plop extra creatures down onto the battlefield.
I would consider dropping the Oracle of Mul Daya and Predator Ooze. The oracle is not going to be reliable as you want her to be for mana accel. As for the predator, it doesn't make much sense in this deck. What role is it playing? It only gets bigger if it attacks, but do you really want to be attacking in the early game and just leave yourself wide open? These slots could probably be dedicated to something else. Either more ramp or something better to help protect yourself. Cards like Overgrown Battlements and Wall of Roots could be great here as they fill both roles nicely (they both ramp AND protect you)
They are a unique set of lands that probably wont see reprint for a while and don't have much more room to drop in price.(I don't see them getting cheaper than their painland equivalents). In my opinion, if you can acquire playsets for cheap on ebay then there's no reason not to as they can pretty much only go up from here.
I'm surprised no one's mentioned Basilisk Collar yet, the card's nuts with pingers. The collar plays especially well with these cards:
Gelectrode: This guys a BEAST since he has built in ability to untap himself. Very abusble in the right deck.
Goblin Sharpshooter: Another (expensive) beast of the old days. With Basilisk Collar, he can wipe out the entire board.
Your deck looks like it wants to be a combo deck, but I can't help get the feeling that without any proper card draw/filtering, you have some games where you just don't get what you need, or draw all pingers with nothing to interact with them. Personally if I were building this deck I would take it into more of a control/combo build. Ponders and Preordains would be the order of the day to help me find my combo pieces. I would probably have a few extra utility counter/burn spells in my deck to fend off my opponents and keep them in check while I get my board position setup. Gelectrode and Basilisk Collar would fit very well in this deck, and you could probably even fit a few of the other cards from your list into this build like Cunning Sparkmage, Slumber Titan and Niv Mizzet.
There are probably other ways you could go. For example, since you're already running a fair number of golbins you could focus more on goblins and make it a goblin combo deck. Goblin Matron is an excellent goblin tutor, and I'm sure you could easily set up some infinite combos with Krenko, Mob Boss, Goblin Fireslinger and/or Goblin sharpshooter.For example, Thornbite Staff and any sacrifice outlet (which there are plenty of options for sac outlets in goblins) allows you to untap any of the creatures I mentioned above.
These are just some ideas, I'm sure there are plenty of other ways you can go. Best of luck with the deck!
It's a cool deck idea, but I really think it's too inconsistent in it's current state to pull off what you're trying to do. What happens when you don't have a Treasure Hunt in your opening hand? It seems too dependent on Treasure Hunt, your game plan is basically Treasure Hunt] or bust. The problem of course is that any additional non-land cards you add actually hurt your chances of drawing into Worm Harvest.
If you're looking to take the deck in a different suggestion, I would suggest putting it in a dredge shell. You'll still be able to easily get Worm Harvest and a bunch of lands in your graveyard with the benefit of having other non-land cards in your deck that can help protect you like Stinkweed Imp. Darkmor Salvage could be a 1 of in the deck also so you always have a land to discard to play Worm Harvest. You could even run a couple of Creakwood Lieges with Dread Return, just sac some worm tokens and now you've got your worm lord out on the battlefield! I'm sure there are plenty of other ideas/interesting combos to play around with in dredge.
If you're still intent on trying to abuse Treasure Hunt, then I would suggest you look into more utility lands. You should at least be running a playset of Halimar Depths so you can dig for your Treasure Hunt in the early game.
PLEASE NOTE: I would like to keep this legacy legal (no skullclamp, colored artifact lands, etc)
Puresteel Paladin is a card that's always interested me, so I though I'd try and make a deck with it. I've always imagined playing puresteel with a bunch of cheap 0-1 drop equipments to just draw through my deck and generate card advantage. , so I figured fitting the deck into an affinity shell would work best. Here's what I've got right now:
Deck Summary:
The basic idea is to plop down efficient beaters and swing in with equipment ASAP. Turn 1 Kor Duelist into Turn 2 Bonesplitter is pretty wicked. The idea behind puresteel is to help you draw into more weenie equipment to just stack on a beater or two.
Deck Analysis:
From initial testing the deck has worked pretty well, though I have found ornithopter to be a little underwhelming in the starting draw, especially in multiples. The exception to this is if I also have a cranial plating in my opening hand, but that's usually not the case. I'm thinking of replacing the thopter with something else but I'm not sure what at the moment. I'm currently tweaking and adjusting the creature to equipment ratio in my deck as sometimes I find I draw too many weenie creatures with no equipment, or sometimes I draw all equipment with no creatures to equip to. I think Ideally I would like to find more starter creatures like the duelist so that even with 1 piece of equipment I can start putting out some serious damage.
I posted this because I'd like suggestions and I'm curious to see what kinds of builds others have done with puresteel. For example, Another way I thought of taking the deck was focusing more on the card draw/cycling through your entire deck aspect by making the deck a little more midrange and throwing in a playset of Vedalken Archmage and/or Riddlesmith. Currently Thoughcast fills my secondary card draw slot, but I'm wondering if it might just be better to shift the deck into a mid-range deck and throw in the archmage instead.
Thoughts? Suggestions? Anything is appreciated here!
Hey guys, I've had what appears to be an Italian FBB Stasis in my collection for a while now, but I know next to nothing about FBB cards in general and was hoping someone could confirm that the card is indeed FBB italian, as well as provide an estimated quote on what I could expect for fair value for this.
Warning: large scans:
Front:
Back:
On ebay I see a few listings for what appears to be the version I have for $4. So given the condition, would $2-3 be a fair asking price? Or am I looking at a totally different version of a card here? Any insight is appreciated!
There are some solid common creatures and the azorius justiciar seems pretty good, but I think I'd have to go with Deathrite Shaman. I don't see the first ability being all too useful, but there are always going to be creatures, instants and sorceries to exile. The nice thing is that you can exile from any graveyard,so it disrupts any graveyard shenanigans your opponent might be playing with. -2 life on your opponent seems like a good way to get there and having the option to gain life is icing on the cake. Add to the fact that it's a 1 drop (and hybrid) and I'd say this is a pretty solid first pick.
Another option you might consider, shipping from the US, is Fedex.
I just got a rate quote from them and I can send a 1lb box from Southern California to Saskatoon Saskatchewan with tracking for $17. Probably a lot faster than registered mail.
Having recently used FedEx, I would warn you to double, triple check that quote and absolutely make sure that's what they're gonna charge you when you ship your package out. I got a quote from FedEx to ship a bubble mailer package from Chicago IL to somewhere in Canada with tracking/DC (forget where exactly, but not too far from the border) for about $20. I bring in the package the next day and the total comes out $40! The nightmare didn't end there, as they hit me with some continental/border crossing fee a good month after shipment (which begs the question, what did I pay them $40 for in the first place?). In the end I ended up paying more on shipping for the package than the actual value of the package's contents. I may have just been unlucky, but I don't intend to take my chance with FedEx ever again. If you are planning on using FedEx, then be sure to take care when filling out any forms and make sure their quote is accurate or else you might be in for a surprise when it's time to pay.
Gauntlet of Might - amazing card for mono-red, though expensive. Gauntlet of Power and Caged Sun are good budget alternatives however.
Mana Echoes - Well to be honest I still haven't had experience with this card in an actual game yet, but from goldfishing/testing it seems to do pretty well. It only provides colorless mana, but the mana can still be used to cast colorless spells or fuel an x spell/infinite combo engine.
Slate of Ancestry - red needs all the card draw it needs. Krenko is good at making lots of tokens. These seem to go hand in hand.
Goblin Assasin - Another card that I need more experience with, but it has performed well in testing. This guy is great creature control against non-token decks.
Warp World - If you're looking for fun, look no further than warp world. Best used when you've got a bunch of tokens out and nothing to do with them, though it can also be useful to disrupt the board state. This card's just plain fun.
Of course, if your playgroup's meta is 90% lifegain decks, then that's an entirely different story. Otherwise, it's not worth playing in your deck in my opinion.
Here's another way to look at it. Would you rather have a card in your deck that is only useful 10% of the time against a specific deck type? Or would you rather have a card that is always useful when you draw it (whether it be a kill spell, ramp, or another creature)?
I think you should make the deck more controlling. Have some walls and counterspells to back you up and let you survive, and throw some cards in here that allow for self-repeating mill. Cards like Doorkeeper seem like a good fit in a pauper mill deck. You could pair it with other walls like Drift of Phantasms, which can let you tutor up something else late game, or Mnemonic Wall which can let you re-uses Tome Scour or Mind Sculpt. One-Eyed Scarecrow could be nice sideboard tech against birds.
There aren't too many other reliable options for mill in blue, but Merfolk Mesmerist and Vedalken Entrancer are repeatable and can help you get there. Broken Ambitions is a good counterspell, the extra mill 4 is icing on the cake, but can be useful.
There are alot of cards in your deck that either don't make alot of sense, or have better alternatives in my opinion. I would Look into dropping the following cards from your deck
-1 Spark Elemental
-1 Kird Ape
-1 Elder of Laurels
-1 Orcish Lumberjack
-2 Wild Cantor
-1 Leyline of Punishment
You could replace these with cards that help make your deck more consistent by focusing on the Aurochs. Monk suggested alot of good cards, but here are a few other sugestions:
Stonebrow, Krosan Hero - Gives a mini overrun to all of your Aurochs each turn. Seems pretty good to me.
Doubling CHant - I think this card could be decent in an Aurochs deck. The problem is it isn't that good until you already have a sizable army, but maybe you could include it as a 1 of or try it out and see how it works for you.
Pack Hunt - I've seen many other Aurochs decks run this card. I don't run it in my deck so I don't really know how it is, but it seems good.
Wild Pair - This is another card that I've seen in some Aurochs decks, and that I run personally as well. I am a big fan of it because you can tutor for any creature you need, and you can build a creature base around it pretty easily. Aurochs Herd plays especially nice with this card since it always feeds you another Aurochs to play.
Dolmen Gate - I used to have this in my deck but took it out because I started finding it unnecessary with the pump I was getting from Stonebrow. This card can still be good in an Aurochs deck though because Aurochs are quite fragile in combat with their low toughness. It has bonus syngergy with Rimehorn Aurochs, which essentially becomes repeatable creature removal.
Wall of Roots, Overgrown Battlements - Aurochs can take a while to get going. These walls can serve as a great means to help you get going faster while simultaneously protecting yourself.
- Voting out 2 everflowing chalice for reasons said above. This deck doesns't look like it is too mana heavy, abusing the counters is a nice idea and mana accel is always nice, but I don't really see this deck wanting to focus all of its
time and effort on building up this card. At best it will probably have a few charge counters on it. One thing's for certain however, this deck doesns't need 4 of them.
- Adding 1 Lux Cannon. It's cheap, it can charge itself and is abusable with pretty much everything here. A good deck should always have an answer to problem permanents. We can probably bump this up to 2 or 3 when we figure out the budget.
4 Vital Splicer ($0.17 ea)
4 Coretapper ($0.93 ea)
2 Wall of Junk ($0.26 ea)
2 Tangle Golem ($0.13 ea)
Artifacts: 24
1 Lux Cannon ($1.04 ea)
4 Titan Forge ($0.38 ea)
4 Energy Chamber ($1.42 ea)
4 Voltaic Key ($0.52 ea)
2 Unwinding Clock ($0.84 ea)
4 Golem Foundry ($0.10 ea)
2 Clock of Omens ($0.18 ea)
4 Everflowing Chalice ($1.16 ea) (2 @ -2)
4 Volt Charge ($0.21 ea)
4 Druid's Deliverance ($0.12 ea)
Lands: 24
24 Tolarian Academy (Priceless)
4 Nantuko Cultivator
4 Rites of Spring
1 Worm Harvest
24 The Hive
Here's a few other small tips/things that I noticed:
I would consider dropping the Oracle of Mul Daya and Predator Ooze. The oracle is not going to be reliable as you want her to be for mana accel. As for the predator, it doesn't make much sense in this deck. What role is it playing? It only gets bigger if it attacks, but do you really want to be attacking in the early game and just leave yourself wide open? These slots could probably be dedicated to something else. Either more ramp or something better to help protect yourself. Cards like Overgrown Battlements and Wall of Roots could be great here as they fill both roles nicely (they both ramp AND protect you)
Gelectrode: This guys a BEAST since he has built in ability to untap himself. Very abusble in the right deck.
Goblin Sharpshooter: Another (expensive) beast of the old days. With Basilisk Collar, he can wipe out the entire board.
Your deck looks like it wants to be a combo deck, but I can't help get the feeling that without any proper card draw/filtering, you have some games where you just don't get what you need, or draw all pingers with nothing to interact with them. Personally if I were building this deck I would take it into more of a control/combo build. Ponders and Preordains would be the order of the day to help me find my combo pieces. I would probably have a few extra utility counter/burn spells in my deck to fend off my opponents and keep them in check while I get my board position setup. Gelectrode and Basilisk Collar would fit very well in this deck, and you could probably even fit a few of the other cards from your list into this build like Cunning Sparkmage, Slumber Titan and Niv Mizzet.
There are probably other ways you could go. For example, since you're already running a fair number of golbins you could focus more on goblins and make it a goblin combo deck. Goblin Matron is an excellent goblin tutor, and I'm sure you could easily set up some infinite combos with Krenko, Mob Boss, Goblin Fireslinger and/or Goblin sharpshooter.For example, Thornbite Staff and any sacrifice outlet (which there are plenty of options for sac outlets in goblins) allows you to untap any of the creatures I mentioned above.
These are just some ideas, I'm sure there are plenty of other ways you can go. Best of luck with the deck!
If you're looking to take the deck in a different suggestion, I would suggest putting it in a dredge shell. You'll still be able to easily get Worm Harvest and a bunch of lands in your graveyard with the benefit of having other non-land cards in your deck that can help protect you like Stinkweed Imp. Darkmor Salvage could be a 1 of in the deck also so you always have a land to discard to play Worm Harvest. You could even run a couple of Creakwood Lieges with Dread Return, just sac some worm tokens and now you've got your worm lord out on the battlefield! I'm sure there are plenty of other ideas/interesting combos to play around with in dredge.
If you're still intent on trying to abuse Treasure Hunt, then I would suggest you look into more utility lands. You should at least be running a playset of Halimar Depths so you can dig for your Treasure Hunt in the early game.
Best of luck with the deck!
Puresteel Paladin is a card that's always interested me, so I though I'd try and make a deck with it. I've always imagined playing puresteel with a bunch of cheap 0-1 drop equipments to just draw through my deck and generate card advantage. , so I figured fitting the deck into an affinity shell would work best. Here's what I've got right now:
4x Ornithopter
4x Kor Duelist
4x Vault Skirge
4x Puresteel Paladin
//Equipment (20)
2x Flayer Husk
4x Bonesplitter
4x Trusty Machete
2x Golem-skin Guantlet
4x Paradise Mantle
4x Cranial Plating
2x Mox Opal
3x Dispatch
4x Thoughtcast
//Lands (15)
4x Glimmervoid
4x Seachrome Coast
3x Adarkar Wastes
4x Darksteel Citadel
Deck Summary:
The basic idea is to plop down efficient beaters and swing in with equipment ASAP. Turn 1 Kor Duelist into Turn 2 Bonesplitter is pretty wicked. The idea behind puresteel is to help you draw into more weenie equipment to just stack on a beater or two.
Deck Analysis:
From initial testing the deck has worked pretty well, though I have found ornithopter to be a little underwhelming in the starting draw, especially in multiples. The exception to this is if I also have a cranial plating in my opening hand, but that's usually not the case. I'm thinking of replacing the thopter with something else but I'm not sure what at the moment. I'm currently tweaking and adjusting the creature to equipment ratio in my deck as sometimes I find I draw too many weenie creatures with no equipment, or sometimes I draw all equipment with no creatures to equip to. I think Ideally I would like to find more starter creatures like the duelist so that even with 1 piece of equipment I can start putting out some serious damage.
I posted this because I'd like suggestions and I'm curious to see what kinds of builds others have done with puresteel. For example, Another way I thought of taking the deck was focusing more on the card draw/cycling through your entire deck aspect by making the deck a little more midrange and throwing in a playset of Vedalken Archmage and/or Riddlesmith. Currently Thoughcast fills my secondary card draw slot, but I'm wondering if it might just be better to shift the deck into a mid-range deck and throw in the archmage instead.
Thoughts? Suggestions? Anything is appreciated here!
Warning: large scans:
Front:
Back:
On ebay I see a few listings for what appears to be the version I have for $4. So given the condition, would $2-3 be a fair asking price? Or am I looking at a totally different version of a card here? Any insight is appreciated!
Just my 2 cents
Having recently used FedEx, I would warn you to double, triple check that quote and absolutely make sure that's what they're gonna charge you when you ship your package out. I got a quote from FedEx to ship a bubble mailer package from Chicago IL to somewhere in Canada with tracking/DC (forget where exactly, but not too far from the border) for about $20. I bring in the package the next day and the total comes out $40! The nightmare didn't end there, as they hit me with some continental/border crossing fee a good month after shipment (which begs the question, what did I pay them $40 for in the first place?). In the end I ended up paying more on shipping for the package than the actual value of the package's contents. I may have just been unlucky, but I don't intend to take my chance with FedEx ever again. If you are planning on using FedEx, then be sure to take care when filling out any forms and make sure their quote is accurate or else you might be in for a surprise when it's time to pay.