MTG Salvation

This thread is for the discussion of my latest article, MTGCast #131: Drafts are back!. We would be grateful if you would let us know what you think, but please keep your comments on topic.

It isn't working. I might just have to download the mp3. Edit: Yay! It's fixed. Elf ball doesn't only use predator dragon to kill. Grapeshot is also used. Although that can be answered by gilded light.


Here is a deck list for cephalid constable:

Not working for me either, thank god its not just me.

Hi everyone,

It looks like a mistake was made somewhere in the uploading to Libsyn. I'll let Tom know, and hopefully he can fix this as soon as possible.

Sorry about the inconvenience!

Hey everyone,

I am not sure what I did, but it does seem to be working right now for me with the flash player and the direct download.

I think Libsyn was having some issues for a period of time, let me if problems continue.

This episode was plagued with gremlins from the beginning, so I am not surprised. :^)

Cheers,
Tom

Here's a pretty simple Standard budget casual deck I threw together with Cephalid Constable.

Monoblue control, basically trying to gain card advantage while removing threats and chipping away at your opponent's life total.

Whispersilk Cloak pushes damage and damage tricks (such as Augury Adept and the Constable) through. Puresight Merrow helps you get the cards you need, as well as being a bear.

Sage of Fables and Augury Adept gain card advantage, and Sigil Tracer can really wreck someone's day if they forget about it. (They play Cruel Ultimatum, you Negate and Tracer it.)

if i were to build a cephalid deck, i would run it with force spike, disrupt, and the ever so great zephid's embrace. once you start bouncing the land, you should be able to stop almost anything with the spikes, and disrupt. run unsummons, to stop their flying blockers,

are talking about bulking buying the 'Black Tie' sleeves or ones with the mtgcast logo on them? because if the Black Tie ones are not going to be that expensive than I would get a set.

or how about some DFL sleeves

Great show guys. Haven't been able to listen to the last couple of shows due to my computer dying,and have really missed listening to the show.

Anyway,here is my idea for a Casual deck with Cephalid Constable.


Lands

18xIslands
4xTolaria West
2xUrborg,Tomb of Yawgmoth

Creatures

4xCephalid Constable

Artifacts

3xLoxodon Warhammer
4xTalisman of Dominance
4xMind Stone

Spells

4xDamnation
4xCounterspell
4xLeaden Fists
4xAuramancer's Guise
3xCryptic Command
4xForce Spike



Sideboard

4xLeyline of the Void
4xChalice of the Void
4xWhispersilk Cloak
3xOblivion Stone

There is also 24k value. States this year was 24k value.

Nice podcast. Have fun at worlds. I wish I could go.


Make the Cephalid unblockable and then play games with the Simic Guildmage.

Hey guys, great show, as usual. I've been listening for a couple weeks now, and it's definitly the best mtg podcast out there. Hopefully I'll see you guys at worlds. Okay, so here's an extended Cephalid Constable deck I've been working on. It uses Weird Harvest and Drift of Phantasms transmute ability to search for it, Whispersilk Cloak, Writ of Passage, and Crafty Pathmage to make it unblockable, and several cards to power it up. I especially like Diviner's Wand (since the constable is a wizard) and Banshee's Blade, which causes the constable to grow in power every time it hits. Here you go:

4 Cephalid Constable
4 Diviner’s Wand
4 Whispersilk Cloak
4 Drift of Phantasms
4 Writ of Passage
4 Weird Harvest
4 Crafty Pathmage
3 Might of Oaks
3 Might of Old Krosa
2 Banshee’s Blade

4 Breeding Pool
4 Flooded Grove
4 Yavimaya Coast
4 Reflecting Pool
3 Pendelhaven
3 Riptide Laboratory
2 Gemstone Mine

4 Cursecatcher
4 Cephalid Constable
4 Sower of Temptation
4 Stonybrook Banneret
2 Vedillion Clique
4 Silvergill Adept

4 Sage's Dousing
3 Diviner's Wand
4 Cryptic Command
2 Remove Soul

4 Mutavault
20 island

Mono U Wizards... Constable attaches itself to Diviner's Wand when it hits play.

Posting this before in becomes passe to chuck Cephalid Constable and Cold-Eyed Selkie in the same deck >_> Will comment on the cast a bit later!

This is a standard deck that's pretty straightforward, apart from the 4 filter lands all the rares are budget-ish. The goal is to get Epic Proportions on one of your Finkel-type guys at which point you should win the game! If money was no object I'd put in Cryptic Command for more unblocked attacking goodness, Garruk Wildspeaker for tramply attacking goodness, and Elspeth, Knight Errant for her second ability - 4/4 flying Constables every turn sounds awesome!

• 4x Stonybrook Banneret
  
• 4x Cephalid Constable
  
• 4x Cold-Eyed Selkie
  
• 4x Augury Adept
  
• 4x Hunting Triad
  
• 4x Epic Proportions
  
• 4x Whispersilk Cloak
  
• 4x Sage's Dousing
  
• 4x Inundate
  
• 11x Island
  
• 9x Forest
  
• 4x Flooded Grove
  

Bounce and discard. Fun stuff. Not sure if the card count's exactly right, but I just built this out of nowhere.

Good show guys!

4 Warped Devotion
4 Cephalid Constable

52 Other cards

LOL. Great show guys, keep it up.

Lands
4 Adarkar Wastes
4 Brushland
3 Forest
2 Island
2 Plains
2 Reflecting Pool
2 Treetop Village
4 Yavimaya Coast
Creatures
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Cephalid Constable
4 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Rafiq of the Many
4 Rhox War Monk
4 Shorecrasher Mimic
1 Chameleon Colossus
Spells
4 Bant Charm
4 Tower Above

S/B
3 Negate
3 Wilt-leaf liege
3 wrath of god
3 Cloudthresher
3 gutteral Response

Simple bant with constable...attempts to end games fast

Hello and good cast. Good luck with Worlds, I hope that you make an awesome cast afterwards.

Since I did not have time for the standard Ward of Bones-deck, I think that Cephalid Constable deck should definately use this card also.



Needs a bit of testing, but having Ward of Bones out and only Constables a creatures should make for some interesting situations. the Rule of Law could be Ponder, Gift of Gargantuan, Telling Time or some similar card selection tool, but I like the possibility of soft-locking your opponent into only bad choices. (Ethersworn Canonist would be also great, but for the Ward. I tried to play as few creatures as possible.)

The Hindering Light should propably be Cryptic Command or even some mix of the two. Still Hindering Light allows you to protect your Constables from elimination several turns earlier, so I went for the more unorthodox choice.

Also for the PW sub-theme, Tezzeret seem a bit loose from the rest of the deck, but it was the only artifact tutor that I could think on the short notice. Still having an Constable with Elspeth out should mean some hilariously bad times for your opponent and Garruk's ultimate ability and acceleration will also help.

Take care and watch out for 7/7 trampling Constables bouncing all your hard earned cards from play to your hand.

i tried to figure something that would work, but there is nothing i could think of making... anyways, i think it was as good as it normally is, i personally wish i could remember where to get ahoy tho

There are a few major problems that arise by having a draft PTQ, it seems. First off, PTQ's should not have player caps. From what I understand from the Draft Challenges, they set the limit to 128 people so there are just 7 rounds (2 drafts). A draft in which you have 4 rounds can be just icky, especially for figuring out points for record. You can go 3-1 and 'win your draft,' yet this may not be good enough for a top 8 berth.

As an extreme example, say there are over 128 people; it would have to be an 8 round event. Sure, you could do 2-4 round drafts, but if you 'win your draft pod' twice with 3-1 records, there's a chance that you may not even t8. With the Day 2 of Grand Prix PTQ's, a 9th round is also likely. A 5 round draft and a 4 round draft are too much of a strain on 8 person pods, so a 3rd draft would have to be implemented, adding to the costs of running a tournament, along with the already long time commitments (limited events are already 1.5 or so hours longer than constructed events just for sealed pooling and 1 draft).

I rambled on for a lot longer than I wanted to or should have, but I pretty much think that it's sealed first just because it's the best we can do given the parameters that we've got.

As for Worlds, I definitely am excited, as I am a Worlds noob too. I will definitely find time to swing by to find you guys and say hello, even if it's just for a few minutes while I'm in between rounds of the events I'm watching over.

I know Tom loves tribal format, so I made an Cephalid Tribal Deck. Cephalid with a tribe with few playables, I mean as a team. They had to adopt one little guy named Painter's Servant. Painter's Servant plus Llawan, Cephalid Empress is a sweet creature lock. In the other hand, Cephalid Constable plus many bounce spells control early game.

Dominance of the Cephalid Empire

4 Minamo Sightbender
4 Writ of Passage

4 Somnophore
4 Augury Adept
4 Cephalid Constable
4 Cold-Eyed Selkie

4 Cunning
4 Unstable Mutation
4 Wings of Velis Vel

24 Island

/////////

The idea of this deck is simple: Play creatures, make unblockable, pump. Hopefully, you'll get cephalic constable, either Writ or Sightbender, and a pumper, and your opponent will never recover. The rest of the deck helps when this doesn't happen. Remember to make the creature unblockable before pumping it, though.

This is the deck I have running on MTGO account, so the lands ain't 100% but the ratio is good. It uses exalt to pump Cephalid and Selkie along with Velis Vel to add in evasion (just use before you recieve exalt buffs). Whispersilk loves exalt, but Elspeth doesn't. Anjani is another good planeswalker but Elspeth is more synergetic with the exalt. Bant Charm is great removal, and often a useful counterspell, O-Ring for everything else. What I like about this deck is that it doesn't need Cephalid Constable to win, but you win quickly when you do (turn 4 concedes).

4 Akrasan Squire
4 Sigiled Paladin
4 Cephalid Constable
4 Cold-Eyed Selkie
3 Rhox War Monk
2 Rafiq of the Many

4 Bant Charm
4 Oblivion Ring
3 Wings of Velis Vel

2 Whispersilk Cloak

2 Elspeth, Knight-Errant

3 Island
5 Plains
2 Treetop Village
2 Mystic Gate
2 Wooded Bastion
2 Flooded Grove
2 Yavimaya Coast
2 Adarkar Wastes
4 Seaside Citadel

I had an unbeatable deck on MTGO that ran the Constable for my main Wincon., to Update it with the TapLands however.. would make it even more deadly. So.. Lemme rebuild it.

The Deck Looks like...


The Point of the deck was to drop a Zur first, and then enchant it with whatever, and attack, pulling out a Auramancy to make him untargetable and potent, then pull out Auratog And or Constable depending if you want go Aggro or a Version of Control that's more along the lines of Deprivation. If you take the Aggro route, enchant your Auratog with a bunch of little crap, Unstable Mutation, Temporal isolation or use Zur to Enchant them for you and then when you had enough enchantments on the Tog, Eat them all after he's gotten through for unblockable (thanks to Temporal Isolation)

If you Choose to go the Deprivation Route, pretty much the same concept, forcing a large amount of Aura's onto the Cephalid until he's big and bad, then swing and once he gets through with the Isolation Eat it with the Tog, to trigger his ability. then return everything they control to their hand, usually.. they just then Concede...

It was very Very deadly in it's day before the rotation and such before Lorwyn and such it was almost unbeatable, i used Robe of Mirrors to give my Cephalid & Zur Shroud and made them a house. now a days with the Huge Tribal nature of the current Meta. it has Zero testing. and i don't play Extended.