MTG Salvation

A lot of the decks I'm seeing on this forum are Blue/White, Blue/Black, even Black/White. In the space of a couple months, two of the more popular decks, Wolf Run and Vamps, are hardly ever mentioned any more. I guess I find it kind of hard to understand the fast paced change that is apparently associated with decks.

In any case, I wanted to know - what's wrong with a Red/White deck? What are the major complications arising from playing one? Are they just not feasible to play? I never see them mentioned on here.

Other enemy color decks seem to be doing okay - Blue/Green Gravefed and Black/White (Tokens?) seem to be holding their own, especially the latter with the recoloring of Sorin. So what's the deal with Red/White?

Is it possible to build GW Humans without Werewolves? I really hate flip cards - I mean it, they are the most fiddly, annoying cards out there aside from those nigh-unplayable EDH rares you get in packs.

Quote from MUSKA

She is too slow in general, but it is her second ability would be her real finisher used with brimstone or grenade, with the third being waaay too slow to really be of any reasonable use in such a fast deck.

I actually played my deck against someone running Frites and I would have been able, with Chandra's 3rd ability and a couple of Shocks, to take down any Norn's he had on the field, and probably his Vorinclex too.

Unfortunately, I ran out of burn when I had him at 1 health and was like FFFFFFFFFFFFFF.

I prefer a suicide goblin build - Grenade is so good, so good, and Brimstone Volley a nice card as well.
I wouldn't bother playing Flings at all in a deck like this unless I had Traitorous Blood/Act of Treason to back it up with - if I wanted to do piddling one damage pings, I'd run Geistflames instead of saccing my creatures. Besides, Fling and Traitorous Blood are more suited (to my mind) for Red/Black Vamps than for Goblins.

My deck runs 2 Chandra, the Firebrand, and while her first two abilities aren't much to speak of, her last one is a real firecracker - 6 damage apiece to up to 6 individual targets. If your opponent is running tokens or some Titans, this ability can be a real help.

I'm trying to put together a Zombie-Mill variant - I can see common cards to use in a deck like this are Diregraf Ghoul, Grimgrin, Corpse Born, Dream Twist, and Black cards that generate zombie tokens. There are plenty of zombie-token generator cards out there, but I find it hard to understand why you'd want to waste your time just pumping out tokens when you should be milling? Surely that's the point of the deck - not aggro, but forcing your opponent/yourself to mill cards for some benefit? I can see that the tokens help act as blockers against threats to your main players, but I'd prefer making my opponent mill ridiculous amounts of cards every turn instead of stalling them with 2/2's.

I've never put together a mill deck before (I started playing Magic just in time to see Tezz go up to about 25 bucks a piece, which crushed my dreams of ever playing Blue/Black Mill), and I'm still pretty new to the game, so please educate me.

Also - I just got a Havengul Lich and I'm hoping I can somehow work it into the deck I'm wanting to build. Or is it impossible, given that I would already have Grimgrin in the deck? Is there a way I can work them both in? Havengul would allow me to bring cheap zombies back to feed to Grimgrin. Maybe I should have an element of self-mill in my deck? I don't really know where I want to go with my deck, aside from as far from aggro as possible.

Thus far, my deck consists of:


I'm hoping to get some Gravecrawlers to stick in here, as they'd be an excellent card to start off with. I don't really want to have to bring in Skaabs that require me to exile creatures from my graveyard - I'd rather be able to bring them back than put them beyond my reach and lose the Skaabs to a Doom Blade or what have you. I could also go with Trepanation Blade to equip to Grimgrin later on, which I could stick to some cheap black creature, like Tormented Soul. I'd like to keep the deck as much zombie based as possible, including humans and spirits only when necessary.

Any suggestions would be well recieved. This is my first time building a deck online, so I'm hoping to get some good information.

EDIT: Just realized I necro'd this thread. Sorry, didn't look at the time stamp.

There's a thread on several Goblin-based deck builds in the forums.

I know that Doomed Traveler is useful, since you essentially trade it for a flier when it dies, but I've always felt uneasy putting it in a non-token based deck.

Bonds of Faith is an excellent card - something that can be what you want it to be whenever you need it most.

Manabarbs actually might be a good idea to slow down blue decks with lots of interrupts. Thanks.

A friend of mine said I need to add Steel Hellkites to my Goblin deck, as well as Kuldotha Rebirth and Darksteel Relic.

While I can kind of see why he said that, I think that this deck isn't really supposed to play out past your fourth or fifth turn - it's supposed to be suicide red, pretty much. Sticking in expensive cards like the Hellkite kind of go against the grain, don't they?

Just out of curiosity, what role do the Arsonists play in your deck? I mean, the Memnites, yes, I can see that, but why not just go whole hog with artifact creatures, or at least more creatures that get a metalcraft bonus?

My infect deck revolves around cheap artifact creatures with infect, such as Plague Myr, Ichorclaw Myr, Phyrexian Digester, and similar, and then once I get a poison counter on them, I just start sacrificing my creatures with Throne of Geth while also putting the hurt on them with Decimator Web. Pretty easy deck to build.

Spirits are going to be cheaper to play than Mono White Humans, although for all intents and purposes if you're playing White in Standard you're going to have to play humans of some sort.

For example, my Mono White Humans deck (non-budget) includes things like Angelic Overseer and Mikaeus, the Lunarch in addition to a slew of human cards like Elder Cathar. This is an incredibly impractical deck to run when you can pump out tokens with things like Mausoleum Guard and Midnight Haunting.

Token generating decks tend to be fast and quite difficult to counter properly - if you can't head them off early there's little save for board wipes that can save you. I learned that to my dismay when I went up against a Mono White Spirit deck that my friend played - a lot of the cards she played were ones I had in my deck - Day of Judgment, Honor of the Pure, Oblivion Rings, and also some Fiend Hunters, which are an amazing second exile option, welcome in any white or blue/white control deck.

If you do decide to run spirits, you could go Blue/White - Blue has Spirits like Mirror-mad Phantasm, Mindshrieker, and Sturmgeist.

Quote from Narvuntien

runechanter's pike.... attach to Spikeshot eldar...crush opponent

Why equip it to that when you can equip it to Goblin Gaveleer instead?

Edit: Oh, I see. Still, I suppose the Gaveleer is a good choice if you can't find the Elders.

Black/Red can either be aggro or it can also be control, since a lot of creatures that people are playing don't have a lot of toughness. It's up to you whether you want to keep blowing up your opponent's creatures or just deal damage to them outright and try to burn them before they kill you.

If you want to keep the black, I'd maybe think about making this a control deck instead of an aggro deck.