Draven, the Glorious Executioner4RB
Legendary Creature - Human Assassin
Whenever an equipment becomes unattached from ~, put X +1/+1 counters on ~, where X is that equipment's equip cost.
Remove a +1/+1 counter from ~: Put a -1/-1 counter on target creature. Draven made the executions the carnival's premiere event.
1/1
Think Thrice2U
Instant (UNC)
Draw a card.
Flashback 3U
Recall -- You drew three or more cards this turn. (As this spell resolves, exile it. At the beginning of the next end step, if its recall condition was met, return it to your hand. Otherwise, put it into your graveyard.)
Mending Slaughter1
Instant (UNC)
Regenerate target creature you control.
Recall -- A creature died this turn. (When you cast this spell, exile it as it resolves. At the beginning of the next end step, if its Recall condition was met, return it to your hand. Otherwise, put it into your graveyard.)
It's not like you're talking about Olivia, NIv Mizzet, or Ætherling. All you're doing is attacking and blocking with these things, while making your sweepers worse.
Bolded for truth. The only creature that should cost significant amounts of mana in this deck is AEtherling, as it unkillably wins the game even if you sweep and regardless of blockers/opponent's removal/etc. You resolve it, survive a few turns, and win. Hey, you can even use it to block whatever stuff gets thrown back at you as it has psuedo-vigilance.
WARNING: This ended up being a very long post, so I stuck it behind spoilers for viewing purposes + convenience to others reading the thread. I'd appreciate anyone willing to take the time to help out with my inquiry. Thanks in advance.
Alrighty, I've been going back and forth and back and forth on deck iterations, "theorycrafting," all sorts of junk and not jumped into the proper full on testing level 'cause I'm somewhat scared or afraid of the investment*. Which is odd, 'cause to be honest, I don't have a budget (I'm slowly piecing together a Voice of Resurgence playset, for example)... but I digress?
* I am not spending any money on Innistrad Block or Magic 2013 cards. I am only focused on Return To Ravnica Block, Magic 2014, and going forward on. *
So I want to build a deck to take to these weekly Sunday Type II / Standard tournaments. I guess they are FNM equivalent*, but I haven't been to one yet -- very relevant to the dilemma, 'cause I don't know the metagame, but that's not my actual issue. For the most part, I just wanna play and have fun and win... having fun is most important, but winning is a big enough deal to me to "wanna try harder" (note: 'placing' in Top 8 is acceptable to me, even if I bottom out there).
* The last tournament of every month, top prize is a booster box. Not sure if this is common / usual. *
Anyway, so I have been going back and forth on coming up with my own decklists, or seeing random ideas of decklists on the forums, and I've basically come down to (or commonly messed around with) -SEVEN- different decks. As noted before, I have not even considered snagging any cards before Return To Ravnica Block -- (not posting in the Competitive section, I believe) -- and would rather not do so.
That all said... these are the ideas / lists I've been messing around with:
> I feel like I'm really wanting a Control deck, but I'm not sure if I'm confusing that with White + Blue being my favorite color combinations or not, it's weird?
> Whenever I come up with a deck idea / list / anything, I try to make sure there are "at least three" roads to victory. (Example 1: combat damage, noncombat damage, decking / milling. Example 2: AEtherling unblockable, Jace, Memory Adept 0 mill ability, Assemble the Legion overwhelming / overruning somehow?)
> I intimidate myself, mostly, but everyone / everything always indicates that the current state of Standard is just way too fast for most decks. While I'd love to "prove this wrong," I'm afraid of investing in a deck that can't stay alive for the first six turns. (Losing on the 7th turn is okay, though... in a weird way...)
> My favorite / "best" deck ever was around Invasion Block (... yeah), a U/G/b deck with lots of bounce, control, and answers to stuffs. Above all, it had "draw power." I feel uncomfortable with a deck that is purely luck of the draw gaming, where I have no way of controlling what I get next and or how fast I get it.
> My favorite Ravnica guild is Azorius. Runner-up is Boros. Honorable mention to Orzhov.
"IN CONCLUSION"
I'm not looking to build the cheapest deck ever, as I mentioned, there isn't really a budget. Just "criteria," so to speak. But with that in mind, I have maybe half of the cards (or more) for just about each one of the above decks. Maybe not playsets, but at least 1-ofs or 2-ofs. That said, this means once I pick a direction, the rest are all becoming trade fodder to funnel into the main idea I go with.
So, any tips, help, advice, suggestions, etc. would be greatly appreciated!! The deck ideas are 'kinda sorta maybe' listed in order from ones I like or favor the most to the least, but then again, I haven't dived head first into any of them yet, still, so I'm not 100% confident in any single one yet (or have 100% faith in it accomplishing all I want it to)... just... not the cost of investment holding me back with worries, but the time or effort of the investment itself.
Either way, that's all I've got to say. Thanks in advance!
Play Esper. Three roads to victory (AEtherling, Drownyard, Jace MA out the board), your favorite guilds, great matchups against everything but Jund, almost all RTR block cards. Try building my sigged list.
Fixing in standard might be great, but seems like many thinks it can support running Liliana, Aetherling, Dissipate and Supreme Verdict in one deck
Liliana is worse than Far // Away in control decks, and fixing in Standard *is* good enough to run my sigged list. Note the lack of BB cards.
Let's actually consider this mathematically. Assume a deck playing 24 land that tap for colored mana. (My Esper does this.) If we're in two-color U/B, our manabase might be
4 Watery Grave
4 Drowned Catacomb
8 Swamp
8 Island
In this deck, we have 16 land that could tap for blue and 16 land that could tap for black.
In this deck, we also have 16 land that could tap for each of our three colors! (eight of our shocks and eight of our checks!) The only downsides are:
1) Possible life cost on some of our land.
2) Less vulnerability to Ghost Quarter, the only Strip Mine effect in Standard.
both of which are waaaay less important than casting better cards.
[font='Georgia'][color='DarkGoldenrod'] Ertai's Staff 1U
Legendary Artifact - Equipment
Equip to Wizard 5U
Equipped creature has vigilance, ":symtap:: Counter target spell.", and "Players can't cast spells during your upkeep step or your draw step".
This basically rewards blue for doing the 5 things that it is most likely to do by allowing it to be even more disruptive.
But restrictions!
1) You gotta put it on a Wizard. This limits your options.
2) You gotta not have it get killed when its tapped.
3) You're spending eight mana on this thing. Of course it's gonna make you win. That's kind of what six/seven/eight mana cards do.
One obvious benefit of the PW's in this deck is their cmc is much lower than those finishers. Lili comes down turn 3 and Jace and Sorin come down turn 4. Jus saying. Still messing with it though.
Oh, btw Lili has been awesome, another form of removal and usually I am usually pitching land late game or high cmc junk early (not needed Terminus etc). I like her cmc a lot too. Turn 3 is pretty vital in this meta, and she makes an impact immediately.
Far//Away >> Liliana. Pretty much any spot removal in the format is better because if you cast her early she's going to get killed on the backswing (so maybe she's a Tribute to Hunger) and if you cast her late you're discarding cards that actually matter (everything in our deck is cantrips)
If I cannot recite from memory the Oracle text of a card, I read it and/or ask to get Oracle text on it if the card is old enough that the Oracle text couldn't be reasonably derived from the text printed on the card. I used to think that I knew what everything did... and then I started reading cards.
Ertai's Staff1U
Legendary Artifact -- Equipment
Equip to Wizard 5U(5U: Attach this to target Wizard creature you control. Activate this ability as a sorcery.)
Equipped creature has "T: Counter target spell."
Whenever a spell you control counters a spell, a permanent is returned to its owner's hand, an island comes into play, you gain control of a permanent you don't own, or you draw a card except the first card you draw during each of your draw steps, you may untap equipped creature.
Look at my sigged list and play a few matches with it. The deck is so much better than UB control. There's a great Esper thread as well as a slightly less great Grixis thread where we discuss playing blue control.
My Peasant cube. It's a little over half foiled/Beta/full-art.
As for deck, no deck I currently play competitively has foils in it, except my UW Tron which has a foil Mindslaver because I can't find a regular and a Prerelease Emrakul, the Aeons Torn because it was $5 cheaper (although both are going to be replaced as soon as I can find a nonfoil of each). Playing competitively, I prefer to play with the oldest art of the card in nonfoil (so Modern Masters Path to Exiles are acceptable but Modern Masters Aether Vials aren't); I prefer to avoid any "Your foils are warped!" type stupidity when I play at Comp REL. Casually, I love foils.
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Augur of Bolas
2 Talrand, Sky Summoner
4 Essence Scatter
4 Syncopate
4 Cyclonic Rift
4 Unsummon
4 Divination
4 Dissipate
4 Fog Bank
4 Tidebinder Mage
4 Pithing Needle
3 Jace, Architect of Thought
Not on the same card.
Fixed otherwise.
Legendary Creature - Human Assassin
Whenever an equipment becomes unattached from ~, put X +1/+1 counters on ~, where X is that equipment's equip cost.
Remove a +1/+1 counter from ~: Put a -1/-1 counter on target creature.
Draven made the executions the carnival's premiere event.
1/1
IIW: More LoL cards.
Instant (UNC)
Draw a card.
Flashback 3U
Recall -- You drew three or more cards this turn. (As this spell resolves, exile it. At the beginning of the next end step, if its recall condition was met, return it to your hand. Otherwise, put it into your graveyard.)
Instant (UNC)
Regenerate target creature you control.
Recall -- A creature died this turn. (When you cast this spell, exile it as it resolves. At the beginning of the next end step, if its Recall condition was met, return it to your hand. Otherwise, put it into your graveyard.)
IIW: Another spell with Recall.
Bolded for truth. The only creature that should cost significant amounts of mana in this deck is AEtherling, as it unkillably wins the game even if you sweep and regardless of blockers/opponent's removal/etc. You resolve it, survive a few turns, and win. Hey, you can even use it to block whatever stuff gets thrown back at you as it has psuedo-vigilance.
Play Esper. Three roads to victory (AEtherling, Drownyard, Jace MA out the board), your favorite guilds, great matchups against everything but Jund, almost all RTR block cards. Try building my sigged list.
Liliana is worse than Far // Away in control decks, and fixing in Standard *is* good enough to run my sigged list. Note the lack of BB cards.
Let's actually consider this mathematically. Assume a deck playing 24 land that tap for colored mana. (My Esper does this.) If we're in two-color U/B, our manabase might be
4 Watery Grave
4 Drowned Catacomb
8 Swamp
8 Island
In this deck, we have 16 land that could tap for blue and 16 land that could tap for black.
Let's look at an example Esper manabase:
4 Watery Grave
4 Hallowed Fountain
4 Godless Shrine
4 Glacial Fortress
4 Drowned Catacomb
4 Isolated Chapel
In this deck, we also have 16 land that could tap for each of our three colors! (eight of our shocks and eight of our checks!) The only downsides are:
1) Possible life cost on some of our land.
2) Less vulnerability to Ghost Quarter, the only Strip Mine effect in Standard.
both of which are waaaay less important than casting better cards.
But restrictions!
1) You gotta put it on a Wizard. This limits your options.
2) You gotta not have it get killed when its tapped.
3) You're spending eight mana on this thing. Of course it's gonna make you win. That's kind of what six/seven/eight mana cards do.
Still, I see your point. Nerfed it a bit.
Far//Away >> Liliana. Pretty much any spot removal in the format is better because if you cast her early she's going to get killed on the backswing (so maybe she's a Tribute to Hunger) and if you cast her late you're discarding cards that actually matter (everything in our deck is cantrips)
I think that's too many finishers, unless some are in the board.
Legendary Artifact -- Equipment
Equip to Wizard 5U (5U: Attach this to target Wizard creature you control. Activate this ability as a sorcery.)
Equipped creature has "T: Counter target spell."
Whenever a spell you control counters a spell, a permanent is returned to its owner's hand, an island comes into play, you gain control of a permanent you don't own, or you draw a card except the first card you draw during each of your draw steps, you may untap equipped creature.
IIW: A card that taps or untaps.
As for deck, no deck I currently play competitively has foils in it, except my UW Tron which has a foil Mindslaver because I can't find a regular and a Prerelease Emrakul, the Aeons Torn because it was $5 cheaper (although both are going to be replaced as soon as I can find a nonfoil of each). Playing competitively, I prefer to play with the oldest art of the card in nonfoil (so Modern Masters Path to Exiles are acceptable but Modern Masters Aether Vials aren't); I prefer to avoid any "Your foils are warped!" type stupidity when I play at Comp REL. Casually, I love foils.