When I saw MaRo's preview card for the white epic spell, it was just taunting at me "Break me Chaos, make me Tier 1...". So, the Ideal inspired me to break this card, like I usually try to do.
The result is this decklist:
12 Forest
2 Plains
4 Tranquil Grove
4 Tendo Ice Bridge
1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Joiner Adept
4 Eternal Witness
1 Honden of Life's Web
1 Honden of Cleansing Fire
1 Honden of Night's Reach
1 Honden of Infinite Rage
1 Meishin, The Mind Cage
1 Ivory Mask
3 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Sylvan Scrying
4 Kodama's Reach
4 Enduring Ideal
This looks like a Tooth deck in disguise, but it utilizes the amazing tutoring power of Enduring Ideal, which allows you to create a lock that is very hard to break.
Card explainations:
The land base looks pretty good to me; since it doesn't fall apart to a Kiki-Titan attack. Boseiju is there so I can cast the Ideal through vs. MUC.
BoP: Acceleration and mana fixing. What more could you ask for?
STE: Provides acceleration, chump blocking, shuffling for top, and the ability to deprive your opponent of Jitte counters too.
Adept: Primarily for the mana fixing; needed when you have to hardcast enchantments when in your hand and helps you get the white to Ideal.
Witness: Hey, it's mainly green-based, so let's run a full playset.
Green Honden: A win condition vs. control when Meishin isn't in play.
White Honden: Propels your life into nearly unreachable totals; also good when you want to board in Weirding.
Black Honden: Very good vs. control, and is absoultely sick when other Hondens are in play as well.
Red Honden: Another kill condition; used when Meishin is on the board.
Meishin: I tutor out this thing about 85% of the time when I first use Ideal. It completly stops aggro decks in their tracks, and if they have no way to deal with it; you win at your own leisure with red honden.
Ivory Mask: Stops burn to the face, Extraction, Bribery, etc.
Top: With all the shuffling effects, getting an Ideal can be quite easy.
Scrying: Provides shuffling, but it's mainly used to get Boseiju or even an Ice Bridge if you're color screwed.
Reach: Shuffling, plus the insane acceleration it provides.
Ideal: The backbone of the deck; not running this is like not running TnN in a Tooth build.
Don't try to dismiss this deck yet; try to discuss with me, and I'll post some more stuff later.
I'm about 99.99% sure that this was the card that MaRo said that would be insanely bad.
Though I do enjoy breaking bad cards, I'm not even going to play this waste of cardboard; as in IMO, it's in the same caliber as Sorrow's Path, Carnival of Souls, and Pale Moon.
You might want to find some room in the deck to play 3-4 Kiku, Night's Flower, or maybe sideboard.
Kiku seems to me a tech card since it will nuke 90% of the creatures in the block and tear many aggro decks to shreds. Perhaps give it a try to see how it works and stuff.
footsteps doesnt grant haste. unless you plan on playing with some other cards that grant haste, footsteps blows
I can find some immediate uses for footsteps. Aside from getting another Kokusho activation, you can reanimate Kuro temporarily to wipe the board of a bunch of creatures, reanimate Kagemaro and sweep the board, reanimate Iname as One to permanently reanimate one of your creatures...
Plus, it's arcane, so you can splice a Vengenance when you really need it.
I'll contribute as much as I can the deck, as I really enjoy reanimator-style decks.
My decklist, when SoK comes out.
19 Swamp
4 Miren, the Moaning Well
3 Kagemaro, First to Suffer
2 Kokusho, the Evening Star
2 Kuro, Pitlord
2 Iname as One
4 Slumbering Tora
4 Goryo's Vengance
4 Sickening Shoal
4 Footsteps of the Goryo
4 Horobi's Whisper
4 Pain's Reward
4 free slots maindeck, just wondering what to put in. More on that later.
Card choices:
Miren: IMO, a thousand times better than the Bone-Reader. A land will stay MUCH longer on the table than a fragile 1/1 that only activates at sorcery speed. With this awesome land, you can keep reanimating creatures and gain craploads of life, making it for aggro decks nearly impossible to win.
Kagemaro: If Miren doesn't single-handedly keep you alive vs. aggro, this beast will really keep them from winning. Repetive Mutilates, over and over, will most likely insure the win vs. the aggro matchups.
Kokusho: His purpose in the deck is pretty self-explainitory.
Kuro: He just got even better with the introduction of Miren.
Iname as One: His purposes are two-fold: pitching to Tora for a huge monster, and his second ability to permanently reanimate on of your beasts.
Sickening Shoal: Very good removal; the fact that it's arcane makes even better when I need some fodder to splice Vengance on.
Footsteps: Secondary reanimation, best used when reanimating Iname back and then something like Kuro or Kokusho.
Whisper: Quick, cheap removal that can act as splice fodder. I like better than Rend Flesh due to being more spirits than non-black creatures in the block and that it can splice in case of an emergency.
Pain's Reward: Drawing four cards for three is something I really love in this deck. The life loss when bidding doesn't seem to be that big of a deal when I'm running Kokusho and Miren.
Like I said, I have 4 empty slots, and I am still debating on what to put in. I'm thinking about the Spear to free up SB space, but there seem to be other ideas as well... any other thoughts would be great.
IMO the thing that can most impact Block constructed are teh Epic cards. The Black one is very very bad
Why is the Black epic really bad? The ability to extract 6+ cards from your opponent's deck OF YOUR CHOICE, EVERY TURN is realllly good. Not to mention that you could have the Black Maro out, wipe the board, and mill out your opponent.
This can be quite good in RDW/Ponza. You really only need to set it off for
2-3 on turn four to cause quite a decent bit of damage to the board, especially if you laid something down like a Slith or Zo-zu.
Man... I just got home and I see this topic just quickly inflate to about 14 pages. If this is real, I'm sure this will bring many people back into the game. Especially since Mirrodin is rotating out, taking out nearly all the powerful cards from standard.
Brainstorm... though one of my favorite cards, I'm sure Wizards will probably want this to leave in extended. It's used in conjunction with fetch lands to turn it virtually into an Ancestral Recall. And it also protects the good cards from Duress and Therapy, which about 90% of the Extended decks run, making their disruption not that effective.
And then there is Diamond, Duress Rancor, Cap, Hippie, 10 painlands, and Verdant Force as well which has been brought up in other threads. Now we just need to reprint Counterspell, Eternal Witness, and Jackal Pup as well.
Also, why do this in 9th? I would probably have expected this in 8th because of Magic's 10th anniversary, and printing all these staple-tourney cards makes this supspicious. But I can see the whole Power 9 thing as well embedded into it.
12 Instances? Okay, that's 6 very simple "Vanguard" esque enchantments (Much like Form of the Dragon ).
[Just making these up to display what I'm talking about]:
Channel Terashi 1WW
Enchantment
When Channel Terashi comes into play, destroy target tapped creature.
Pay X life: Destroy target tapped creature with converted mana cost X or less.
Channel the Unspeakable 1UU
Enchantment
When Channel Unspeakable comes into play, draw a card.
Pay X life: Draw a card, where X is the number of cards in your hand.
Channel Yukora 1BB
Enchantment
When Channel Yukora comes into play, target player sacrifices a creature.
Pay X life: Target player sacrifices a creature. X is equal to the number of creatures your opponent controls.
Channel ? 1RR
Enchantment
When Channel ? comes into play, return target sorcery card in your graveyard to your hand.
Pay X life: Return target sorcery card in your graveryard to your hand. X is equal to the sorcery's converted mana cost.
Channel Kodama 1GG
Enchantment
When Channel Kodama comes into play, put a 3/3 green spirit token into play.
Pay X life: Put a 3/3 green spirit token into play
Channel Genju WUBRG
Enchantment
When Channel Genju comes into play, do something zany.
Pay X life: Do something zany.
These cards show how the "morals/non-spirits" (planeswalkers are non-spirits, afterall) are crossing over to the Spirit side.
[I know Kodama and Terashi aren't in the orb, they were just the first Legendary Spirits that came to mind...]
Whoa, those Channels are waaaaay too good. Let's look at each one:
White one: This one is pretty fair since it needs a lot of tapping effects like Kitsune Diviner and Icy Manipulator.
Blue one: Too broken in aggro decks, where you simply unload your hand, pay "X" life (which would be zero), and draw extra cards each turn.
Black one: This definately is not fair, especially when you get to kill a creature the moment it comes into play. Add that with removal and your opponent will almost never have another creature on the board. Too good for 1BB.
Red one: This one goes straight into red aggro using stuff like Lava Spike, Volcanic Hammer, and other sorcery speed burn. This would be a problem espcially with Lava Spike, since you can simply burn out your opponent by constantly returning it back to your hand for one life and one mana a piece. Plus it provides constant splicing fodder, namely Glacial Ray, making this card broken.
Green one: This is the worst of them all. You do realize that I can pay X life, even if X is zero, to generate infinite tokens. Nope, this won't see print.
To the people who asked about my file... it's not really too special. All I did was go into Microsoft Works and make it to where I can type in stuff like name of card, mana cost, type, effects, and P/T. Whenever I need a different card to proxie up, I just input its information into the places where it should go.
To sum up, I make proxies on the computer that are around the size of a Magic card, but it is just white paper and black text. Not like I went into Photoshop and actually reconstructed a certain card.
Like Beta-Male said, that is NOT A PROXY! That is called making a fake card. If you are caught making counterfeit cards and selling them, you will get in trouble for breaking copyright laws and other federal laws. Fake cards are quite easy to detect even if the fakes can pass the bend and fake tests.
A proxy is nowhere near a real card. There are a couple of ways to make one, but my personal favorite is using my computer to print out nice, neat proxies. I have a special file on my comp that allows me to quickly and easily print out proxies. For different cards, I just subsitute where the name, cost, type, effects, etc. go. I used to use sharpie-crappy lands, but computer proxies are reusable and much easier to read. Not to mention I hate that smell sharpies give off...
I kinda like this deck, because the Tallowisps fetch up answers to aggro and other things, and the Baku just pisses off many people.
Here is my first shot at the deck:
22 Plains
1 Ejiano Castle
3 Kami of False Hope
4 Tallowisp
4 Kami of Ancient Law
4 Waxmane Baku
3 Hikari, Twilight Guardian
4 Long-Forgotten Gohei
4 Blessed Breath
4 Otherworldly Journey
3 Terashi's Grasp
4 Cage of Hands
SB:
4 Hundred-Talon Strike
4 Terashi's Verdict
1 Terashi's Grasp
2 Ward of Piety
4 Samurai of the Pale Curtain
I did not run the Jitte because in my testing, it usually just dies when another one is slapped onto the table, and that is quite frequent in block. Instead, I run Terashi's Grasp which kills the Jitte, in addition to Slumbering Tora, Konda's Banner, Orochi Hatchery, Genjus, Hondens, and some other random nuts and bolts. It's arcane so it benefits from spiritcraft, and you gain a bit of life in the process too, though it's usually minor.
I am probably trying to find a bit more enchantments for Tallowisip to tutor up (he is just awesome), but I don't know what to cut for them.
Hikari is one of my favorite cards in the deck. He pwns Snake Sway by discouraging them to combo out, he can do fun combat tricks like Slide used to do, PLUS he flies and is a good clock for the opposing player.
When I compare cards, I look at them from a game theory point of view. I don't take expansion symbols, rarity, or any of that into account. I look at the functionality of the cards (ie what it says on the card).
Both elves are the exact same at what they do. The only thing different are their names (which is irrelevant because Meddling Mage can equally block either one from being played).
Tyler Durden, saying Ashcoat Bears is strictly better than Grizzly Bears is just plain incorrect. Maybe you won't come across a crazy Mindslaver situation over the course of a game, but the fact of the matter is, that situation is possible in a game of Magic and it exists. This throws the 100% better in every single situation out of the window, and it completely invalidates the argument that Ashcoat is strictly better than Grizzly.
Mindslaver makes sure that "strictly better" doesn't exist in Magic. It still boggles my mind how people haven't grasped onto that concept yet.
BTW, Murganda Petroglyphs makes it so Grizzly Bears is better than Ashcoat Bears.
The result is this decklist:
12 Forest
2 Plains
4 Tranquil Grove
4 Tendo Ice Bridge
1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Sakura-Tribe Elder
4 Joiner Adept
4 Eternal Witness
1 Honden of Life's Web
1 Honden of Cleansing Fire
1 Honden of Night's Reach
1 Honden of Infinite Rage
1 Meishin, The Mind Cage
1 Ivory Mask
3 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Sylvan Scrying
4 Kodama's Reach
4 Enduring Ideal
Sideboard
4 Naturalize
3 Choke
3 Plow Under
4 Ghostly Prison
1 Zur's Weirding
This looks like a Tooth deck in disguise, but it utilizes the amazing tutoring power of Enduring Ideal, which allows you to create a lock that is very hard to break.
Card explainations:
The land base looks pretty good to me; since it doesn't fall apart to a Kiki-Titan attack. Boseiju is there so I can cast the Ideal through vs. MUC.
BoP: Acceleration and mana fixing. What more could you ask for?
STE: Provides acceleration, chump blocking, shuffling for top, and the ability to deprive your opponent of Jitte counters too.
Adept: Primarily for the mana fixing; needed when you have to hardcast enchantments when in your hand and helps you get the white to Ideal.
Witness: Hey, it's mainly green-based, so let's run a full playset.
Green Honden: A win condition vs. control when Meishin isn't in play.
White Honden: Propels your life into nearly unreachable totals; also good when you want to board in Weirding.
Black Honden: Very good vs. control, and is absoultely sick when other Hondens are in play as well.
Red Honden: Another kill condition; used when Meishin is on the board.
Meishin: I tutor out this thing about 85% of the time when I first use Ideal. It completly stops aggro decks in their tracks, and if they have no way to deal with it; you win at your own leisure with red honden.
Ivory Mask: Stops burn to the face, Extraction, Bribery, etc.
Top: With all the shuffling effects, getting an Ideal can be quite easy.
Scrying: Provides shuffling, but it's mainly used to get Boseiju or even an Ice Bridge if you're color screwed.
Reach: Shuffling, plus the insane acceleration it provides.
Ideal: The backbone of the deck; not running this is like not running TnN in a Tooth build.
Don't try to dismiss this deck yet; try to discuss with me, and I'll post some more stuff later.
S_C
Though I do enjoy breaking bad cards, I'm not even going to play this waste of cardboard; as in IMO, it's in the same caliber as Sorrow's Path, Carnival of Souls, and Pale Moon.
Kiku seems to me a tech card since it will nuke 90% of the creatures in the block and tear many aggro decks to shreds. Perhaps give it a try to see how it works and stuff.
At regionals, I would be like a boy scout: Be Prepared.
S_C
I can find some immediate uses for footsteps. Aside from getting another Kokusho activation, you can reanimate Kuro temporarily to wipe the board of a bunch of creatures, reanimate Kagemaro and sweep the board, reanimate Iname as One to permanently reanimate one of your creatures...
Plus, it's arcane, so you can splice a Vengenance when you really need it.
I'll contribute as much as I can the deck, as I really enjoy reanimator-style decks.
My decklist, when SoK comes out.
19 Swamp
4 Miren, the Moaning Well
3 Kagemaro, First to Suffer
2 Kokusho, the Evening Star
2 Kuro, Pitlord
2 Iname as One
4 Slumbering Tora
4 Goryo's Vengance
4 Sickening Shoal
4 Footsteps of the Goryo
4 Horobi's Whisper
4 Pain's Reward
SB:
4 Psychic Spear
4 Nezumi Graverobber
3 Nezumi Shortfang
4 Crainial Extraction
4 free slots maindeck, just wondering what to put in. More on that later.
Card choices:
Miren: IMO, a thousand times better than the Bone-Reader. A land will stay MUCH longer on the table than a fragile 1/1 that only activates at sorcery speed. With this awesome land, you can keep reanimating creatures and gain craploads of life, making it for aggro decks nearly impossible to win.
Kagemaro: If Miren doesn't single-handedly keep you alive vs. aggro, this beast will really keep them from winning. Repetive Mutilates, over and over, will most likely insure the win vs. the aggro matchups.
Kokusho: His purpose in the deck is pretty self-explainitory.
Kuro: He just got even better with the introduction of Miren.
Iname as One: His purposes are two-fold: pitching to Tora for a huge monster, and his second ability to permanently reanimate on of your beasts.
Sickening Shoal: Very good removal; the fact that it's arcane makes even better when I need some fodder to splice Vengance on.
Footsteps: Secondary reanimation, best used when reanimating Iname back and then something like Kuro or Kokusho.
Whisper: Quick, cheap removal that can act as splice fodder. I like better than Rend Flesh due to being more spirits than non-black creatures in the block and that it can splice in case of an emergency.
Pain's Reward: Drawing four cards for three is something I really love in this deck. The life loss when bidding doesn't seem to be that big of a deal when I'm running Kokusho and Miren.
Like I said, I have 4 empty slots, and I am still debating on what to put in. I'm thinking about the Spear to free up SB space, but there seem to be other ideas as well... any other thoughts would be great.
Why is the Black epic really bad? The ability to extract 6+ cards from your opponent's deck OF YOUR CHOICE, EVERY TURN is realllly good. Not to mention that you could have the Black Maro out, wipe the board, and mill out your opponent.
2-3 on turn four to cause quite a decent bit of damage to the board, especially if you laid something down like a Slith or Zo-zu.
Brainstorm... though one of my favorite cards, I'm sure Wizards will probably want this to leave in extended. It's used in conjunction with fetch lands to turn it virtually into an Ancestral Recall. And it also protects the good cards from Duress and Therapy, which about 90% of the Extended decks run, making their disruption not that effective.
And then there is Diamond, Duress Rancor, Cap, Hippie, 10 painlands, and Verdant Force as well which has been brought up in other threads. Now we just need to reprint Counterspell, Eternal Witness, and Jackal Pup as well.
Also, why do this in 9th? I would probably have expected this in 8th because of Magic's 10th anniversary, and printing all these staple-tourney cards makes this supspicious. But I can see the whole Power 9 thing as well embedded into it.
Whoa, those Channels are waaaaay too good. Let's look at each one:
White one: This one is pretty fair since it needs a lot of tapping effects like Kitsune Diviner and Icy Manipulator.
Blue one: Too broken in aggro decks, where you simply unload your hand, pay "X" life (which would be zero), and draw extra cards each turn.
Black one: This definately is not fair, especially when you get to kill a creature the moment it comes into play. Add that with removal and your opponent will almost never have another creature on the board. Too good for 1BB.
Red one: This one goes straight into red aggro using stuff like Lava Spike, Volcanic Hammer, and other sorcery speed burn. This would be a problem espcially with Lava Spike, since you can simply burn out your opponent by constantly returning it back to your hand for one life and one mana a piece. Plus it provides constant splicing fodder, namely Glacial Ray, making this card broken.
Green one: This is the worst of them all. You do realize that I can pay X life, even if X is zero, to generate infinite tokens. Nope, this won't see print.
To sum up, I make proxies on the computer that are around the size of a Magic card, but it is just white paper and black text. Not like I went into Photoshop and actually reconstructed a certain card.
Like Beta-Male said, that is NOT A PROXY! That is called making a fake card. If you are caught making counterfeit cards and selling them, you will get in trouble for breaking copyright laws and other federal laws. Fake cards are quite easy to detect even if the fakes can pass the bend and fake tests.
A proxy is nowhere near a real card. There are a couple of ways to make one, but my personal favorite is using my computer to print out nice, neat proxies. I have a special file on my comp that allows me to quickly and easily print out proxies. For different cards, I just subsitute where the name, cost, type, effects, etc. go. I used to use sharpie-crappy lands, but computer proxies are reusable and much easier to read. Not to mention I hate that smell sharpies give off...
Grip of Chaos, then fade into black blackground with white letters that says "Chaos"
Order/Chaos (Use ONLY the Chaos picture), then fade into same background and letters but instead the word, "Pandemonium"
Planar Chaos (Same stuff, except use "Turmoil")
Confusion in the Ranks (Use "Furor")
Twist Allegiance (Use "Tumult")
If it's too big, cut the Twist Allegiance part.
Thank you very much!
S_C
Here is my first shot at the deck:
22 Plains
1 Ejiano Castle
3 Kami of False Hope
4 Tallowisp
4 Kami of Ancient Law
4 Waxmane Baku
3 Hikari, Twilight Guardian
4 Long-Forgotten Gohei
4 Blessed Breath
4 Otherworldly Journey
3 Terashi's Grasp
4 Cage of Hands
SB:
4 Hundred-Talon Strike
4 Terashi's Verdict
1 Terashi's Grasp
2 Ward of Piety
4 Samurai of the Pale Curtain
I did not run the Jitte because in my testing, it usually just dies when another one is slapped onto the table, and that is quite frequent in block. Instead, I run Terashi's Grasp which kills the Jitte, in addition to Slumbering Tora, Konda's Banner, Orochi Hatchery, Genjus, Hondens, and some other random nuts and bolts. It's arcane so it benefits from spiritcraft, and you gain a bit of life in the process too, though it's usually minor.
I am probably trying to find a bit more enchantments for Tallowisip to tutor up (he is just awesome), but I don't know what to cut for them.
Hikari is one of my favorite cards in the deck. He pwns Snake Sway by discouraging them to combo out, he can do fun combat tricks like Slide used to do, PLUS he flies and is a good clock for the opposing player.
Comments are always welcome.