MTG Salvation

Quote from Xyx »

Why is Jenara worth running 4?
Why angel tribal?

There are many other 4-mana angels (all white) that I would sooner play, such as Linvala, Keeper of Silence, Gisela, the Broken Blade, Shalai, Voice of Plenty, Kaalia of the Vast, Archangel of Tithes, Angel of Jubilation, Angel of Finality...

I agree there are lots of mono-white angels that are better. I felt the hankering to do a rainbow angel build. I could just as easily run an Orzhov angel tribal and dump angels to the ‘yard and Exhume/Living Death to whole shebang while blasting the opponents’ yards, but then it wouldn’t be rainbow angels, lol.

Jenara is a self-pumping angel for 3 mana that I can pump when I have mana spare. That’s the reason for 4. The other idea I had was something like this.



This was actually closer to what I originally had in mind. My concern is mana coming online fast enough to avoid early alpha strikes, and the fact this is pretty much ffa and only ffa due to the blow-everybody-else-up nature of Sunblast Angel. In here, Stoic Angel and Maelstrom Angel have more synergy.

I wanted to use my playsets of Cavern of Souls and Maelstrom Archangels in a 5-color angels deck. Although I went through four other deck designs that used Angel of Despair and Sunblast Angel in control themes, I’ve centered on lower curve angels for 1v1, team, star, and Emperor’s games in a more aggro approach. By putting out small angels and buffing from there, the hope is to get a front out, tap opponents and keep them tapped for attacks using Stoic Angel while giving angels vigilence and buffing from Ajani. Simple, straightforward.

I own the lands already, but everything else is negotiable. If you have some ideas that can correspond with the aim here, especially card-for-card swap suggestions, please let me know. Cheers.

I would only add if you don’t use one-sided artifact hate as suggested above is don’t play artifacts you can’t afford to lose for the greater good. Sometimes you just gotta nuke it all. I agree with switching to one-sided destruction, though, it’s having your cake and eating it too.

Quote from DirkGently »

Quote from arrogantAxolotl »

It's possible my local meta is anomalous. Without any actual data, there's no way to know for certain. I'm just pulling from my own experiences and from what I know about human psychology. As such, I'm lead to believe that your situation is the atypical one here, not mine. Regardless, you're very fortunate to live in a place where players will consider how their deck construction affects the quality of their gameplay.

I think by far the prevalence in players is to follow the unofficial "rules" of commander - no mld, no combo (or at least no fast combo), no stax. After that, people build what they like and don't consider the play experience because they aren't at that level. They're just trying to make X work, not determine if X leads to fun games. Over iterations they may have revelations about what creates good games, but mostly people don't think that hard. People want rules, not critical examination.

I’m curious if all your decks would pass your own analysis? Do you consider those same things on every deck you make? I don’t mean that as a call-you-out kind of thing at all, as you are definitely a pretty fair-minded poster on the site. I’m just asking are there decks you’ve made listed here where you said “aww, the heck with it”. Philosophically, though, what is the higher law here? Build something one likes to play or build something everyone else likes you to play? I doubt most people are nihilistic misanthropes here, but tastes do vary and people rightly build what they want to play, or else what’s the point?

Quote from Boondocksnt5 »

Blend your welcome to post if you want, I'm interested to see what you made.

The Karlov deck is good for 1v1, 1v2, Emperor position (homeruled where everyone retains their creatures when they march), and team games. The extort & lifegain powers up Karlov for beatings and exiling, but also to enable the Blood Barons and Chalices of Death.



The Hypnotoad deck can play as both Emperor and wing deck, 1v1, 1v2, 2-HG, Star, and even 4 person FFA, making it very flexible for small groups. Omnibian, Plaxcaster Frogling, Spore Frog, Turn to Frog, Polymorphist’s Jest, and Beast Within mercilessly mess with combat status quo and make it almost impossible to guess how I’m going to disrupt opponent plans. Add Mystic Snake to Eternal Witness and Species Gorger recycling, and I can often maintain a full grip of control cards the entire game as I tighten the noose on opponents. Untargetable indestructibles? No problem.



The Boros deck is used for 1v1, 1v2, 2-HG, star games, and wing decks in Emperor format. Cast creatures, swing sideways for battalion mechanics and drop Lightning Helix effects to wildly swing life totals. Indestructible, battalion, buffed critters suck.

In each of the decks, I’ve used non-Ravnica cards to ensure I can handle most card types defensively for overall balance. None of them are especially competitive outside of my group, but are just the right level for my group.

Getting in a little late on this, but I like focus on Ravnica guilds. I’ve built several very fun decks lately focusing on Simic shenanigans, Boros aggression, and Orzhov drain. The decks aren’t completely block loyal, but are still pretty dedicated with a lot of dual-colored creatures, spells, and guild mechanics.

I found that building around a playset of Karlov gave me a focus for using my extort for more than just grindy drain, and add a life/death bend to it with Chalice of Life//Death. He’s a very fun legend to focus on, but Obzedat is also pretty fun.

The Simic deck isn’t built around a legend, but more the feel of shifty Simic battle tactics focused on Simic Combine creatures (mostly frogs) with a lot of transmogrify effects such as Turn to Frog, Beast Within, and so on. Basically, I throw combat into chaos and players can’t ever bank on landing a solid hit, which I then exploit to my advantage.

The Boros was built to maximize white/red creatures to generate insane boosts to p/t and Lightning Helix effects due to Balefire Liege. Extremely aggressive creature base that is more often than not indestructible with as many Helix effects as I can pack, and I can kill two players long before I run out of steam.

All of them do use some cards from other sets that still fit the guild themes. If you stick to strictly guild block cards, you’ll be a little more restricted. I can post the decks here if you wish to look, otherwise I’ll save the space. Good luck!

Well, testing the petals was a horrible idea, too inconsistent. But proxies cost me nothing to find that out...woot. The cool thing is, in exploring that bad deck idea, I hit upon an idea that abuses both the demigods and Bloodghasts to maximize devotion for powered up Gary kills. So, Gary is definitely wincon 1.

Adding two Buried Alives gives me two avenues of graveyard hijinks depending on what’s in my hand. If a demigod is in hand, might as well go for broke and try a 4 demigod swing for a kill. It sets up a possible 22+ devotion move in the following turn with Gary for game. Or, swinging all four Bloodghasts into play gives lots of aggro steam for post-sweeper and Yahenni action, and raises devotion for Gary to 10+.

Either way, I’ll be abusing what makes both playsets fun to play with a definite direction to work for, which for a casual group like mine is enough. And it’s not like “devotion kills” isn’t a great pun for a cult theme. I’ll take Marit Lage when I can get her, but there is lots more to do that fits a cult theme. I finally like this list, but I can play with a couple of slots. If you have any suggestions to enhancing this theme, let me know.



Edit: So after many hands of gold fishing, testing is going well. There are enough synergies complimenting each other that my two hard tutors are searching for all kinds of cards and play is not linear. Sometimes it’s for Buried Alive, but just as often it’s Necropotence, Yawg’s Will or a Gray Merchant. The hand curve scales well with plenty of mana from only lands, allowing me to horde my Dark Rituals until it’s advantageous to drop an explosive series of plays. The mass sweepers and Marauders give removal options throughout the game but allow me to recover board position quickly. I think it’s ready to test against my friends.

As I’m looking at the deck, I like the idea of maybe not having 4x Gary in two decks. Two means of a 2nd turn kill, rare as they would be, but that would be fun to drop. I only have to pick up some petals, so I can test this 1v1 idea out, but what do you think?

Rakdos aggro could use Demigod of Revenge and Dark Ritual. Some put in Buried Alive so that they can fill the graveyard with Demigod on turn 2-3, then Dark Rit and cast the fourth Demigod for the win. Is a 5cmc hasted evasive beater too slow for your concept?

Whew! Vigorous debate going on. Myself, I just added both Exsanguinate and Torment of Hailfire in my non-cEDH Sliver Queen deck. As a go-wide deck, if I don’t get a token bomb, I actually need a couple game bombs that fuel off of Gaea’s Cradle. Game’s gotta end at some point, and if I have twenty critters out, I should be able to end it. It’s not easy to get that many creatures out and keep ‘em.

I only have 5 edh, but about 18 sixty format decks, so most of the value of my collection is in decks. I’ve sold a lot of the value of my spare rare cards to a friend, but I do have good playsets of uncommon and commons that rotate in and out of decks and help keep costs down. Whatever cards I buy, I always fill out with owned cards even if there are “strictly better” options.

I use a box that has empty decksleeve boxes holding cards by type, but other than lands I have mixed them substantially from constant rotation. I need to put some organization to them, but it’s a project for another day since I can find a card within 10 minutes of searching anyway.

Creeping Renaissance
All Suns’ Dawn

Every card in my collection was in a deck at some point. While I keep cards I used to play with for future use, I only buy cards as singles that I will use. I do not buy cards for prospecting, nor packs of cards. I have more cards in decks than extra cards in my depot. That’s how I keep my collection lean. Also, if it’s in my depot I don’t have any problem trading or selling them. I hold onto decks, not cards.

I read somehwere recently the opinion (maybe from Mark Rosewater?) talking about card drawing as a key to winning. It came up as a question on the relative strengths of the three in my thoughts as I redesigned a deck that focuses more on both card advantage through sweepers and repetition via a number of means.

The strength of repetition is that key strategy pieces can be cycled through to generate potency for the mana spent. Example: Recurring Nightmare to cycle Massacre Wurms to wipe out hordes of creatures and life in a non-infinite case. The most extreme example is storm and infinite mana combos.

The strength of card advantage like sweeper cards such as Damnation speaks for itself, especially in MP. The efficiency in mana is pretty much unparalleled.

The strength of card draw is that you can draw multiple types of the above card advantage and repetition cards, and also more mana resources, with the most extreme combo I can think of is Laboratory Maniac hijinks.

I am curious if there’s been much debate on which category is better than the other more often. While I naturally believe a combination of all three should be the most effective for an MP deck, I often have notions that are not in tune with prevailing Magic strategy theory. In any case, I’ve noticed that when I post decks, most people recommend card draw and always gloss over how much of the other two categories I pack in my lists. Part of that is because I like grindy decks, but does it really matter? It seems to me card draw is pretty much as situation dependent as the other two and therefore not strictly hetter. What do you all think?

I was goldfishing and realized that while I did not often find myself lacking on cards between the tutors and Necropotence, I did find myself with too many Yahennis and the associated sweepers. So, the following applies:

Out:
2 Yahenni’s Expertise
2 Yahenni, Undying Partisan

In:
2 Nevinyrral’s Disk (screams Cults and horror in the original art, but also handles artifacts, enchantments, and big monsters in a game perspective).
2 Grim Discovery (wanted more recursion of a clear game closing threat in Marit Lage that often = kill it or die).