Author Topic: M:tG Deck Tips?  (Read 53509 times)

Offline Sinfire Titan

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #20 on: July 10, 2012, 01:52:29 AM »
too bad mill is in fact not a Deck...

Was there really a need for that? Yeah, Mill hasn't been competitive in Standard/Extended/Modern for years, but Amechra's deck is more casual than anything (and casual mill is a popular archtype, as both Mind Funeral's and Glimpse the Unthinkable's price tags can attest to). And Legacy/Vintage mill does exist (Painter's Stone combo can get turn 1/2 kills, after all).
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Offline littha

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #21 on: July 10, 2012, 02:48:55 AM »
While I was actually playing that artifact deck I quite often won by opponents running out of cards... One card at a time. It involved platinum angel and whisper silk cloak :D

Offline Pencil

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #22 on: July 10, 2012, 06:45:59 AM »
too bad mill is in fact not a Deck...

Was there really a need for that? Yeah, Mill hasn't been competitive in Standard/Extended/Modern for years, but Amechra's deck is more casual than anything (and casual mill is a popular archtype, as both Mind Funeral's and Glimpse the Unthinkable's price tags can attest to). And Legacy/Vintage mill does exist (Painter's Stone combo can get turn 1/2 kills, after all).

Just wanted to say, lol... No front intended.Just wanted to mention that it can be quite demotivating to play mill and get dreamcrushed by a good deck.

btw Painter Stone is foremost a combo and not a mill deck.(and a bad one at that, not even close to tes(variant does not matter) or hightide).
If you would call painterstone a mill deck then helm of obedience would be aswell...Or even hightide at that.
Mill is not defined by that it wins by the opponent not being able to draw a card.
« Last Edit: July 10, 2012, 06:50:46 AM by Pencil »
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Offline JohnnyMayHymn

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #23 on: July 10, 2012, 09:21:20 AM »
^ so.. what is a "good deck"?
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Offline Pencil

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #24 on: July 10, 2012, 10:06:41 AM »
Hmm what do you want?A definition or an example?

Per definition a good deck is defined by winning often (pretty lame and circular yeah).But I can`t think of any other way to describe it.
Good is normally relative to the meta of the tournament/environment.(so to say when you know that Deck A will be played by 90% of the field, and Deck B got a 70% win percentage against Deck A then Deck B would be a good deck for that tournament/environment.)

But even though I said that being a good deck is relative in magic rather than objective most of the decks played in a tournament will have an overwhelming win percentage vs mill.I hope you get what I am trying to say.If not please let me know so I can rephrase myself.

For an examples just look some winning decks up at starcitygames I guess.You can summarize all the Decks into 3 very broad categorize.

Aggro, Control and Combo.

Aggro will generally try to kill the opponent with their animals and use their spells to kill the animals of the opponent or to burn.Here you can separate into fast aggro and mid range aggro(very general and inexact.Examples: Goyfsligh,Zoo,Boros)

Control will generally try to stall the game and eventually win someway later.Here you can separate into "Draw-go" and "Tap out" control.Draw-go will mostly play instants,counter your stuff and draw cards in your end of turn.Thats why "draw go" because their turn will most likely look like that.They will draw a card and say go.Tap our is more proactive in that it tries to just flood the board with better stuff than you.(Examples:Mono-U control,Esperblade,ubg loam control,solar flare)

Combo will just try to play unfair and win through some combos(duh).Here you can separate into fastcombo which just ignores the opponent mostly (belcher,dredge) and slow combo which tries a more solid approach.(high tide,the epic storm)

And finally there are obv the hybrids between the 3 MAIN archetypes like aggro-control,combo-control and aggro-combo.

Just to give you an overview what generally is perceived as a good deck(though they must not necessary be a good choice)

Maybe that was too much now,if so I am sorry.
« Last Edit: July 10, 2012, 10:11:01 AM by Pencil »
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Offline Sinfire Titan

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #25 on: July 10, 2012, 12:54:45 PM »
As of late, we're seeing less of the three main archtypes in Standard and a large number of the combinations. Mono-Blue Control has died out in favor of U/B Control, which is hyper-aggressive after turn 5, and U/R Delver, which is closer to an aggro deck than anything. Red Deck Wins is still around, but now it likes it when the game drags on (Shrine of Burning Rage). Frites is less a combo deck than a reanimator/combo/control deck. Hell, even Kessig isn't pure aggro. The last real aggro decks in standard are Tempered Steel, Humans, and Zombies, and those have mixed results at tournaments (not that they can't win, they just like to swing back and forth). There isn't a pure combo deck in Standard at all, at least none that I've seen.


Standard is fucked up.
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Offline dipolartech

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #26 on: July 10, 2012, 02:31:34 PM »
Ummm... Channel + Fireball.....? God I feel old....

Offline sirpercival

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #27 on: July 10, 2012, 02:40:14 PM »
Ummm... Channel + Fireball.....? God I feel old....

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Offline dipolartech

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #28 on: July 10, 2012, 02:44:40 PM »
Well technically by the time I was really playing, Channel + Fireball wasn't in Type 2 but in Type 1 and custom rule tourneys. And I never had the money to keep up with a tourney scene anyway... best I could do was take tips from Inquest magazine (before it went all hipster and sucky and called itself Inquest Gamer) and try to crush the four other people that I knew that played in small town. Heh, Anybody remember the cumulative upkeep card from Weatherlight called Furnace something? I think I managed to kill myself with it once...

Offline sirpercival

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #29 on: July 10, 2012, 02:49:49 PM »
Well technically by the time I was really playing, Channel + Fireball wasn't in Type 2 but in Type 1 and custom rule tourneys. And I never had the money to keep up with a tourney scene anyway... best I could do was take tips from Inquest magazine (before it went all hipster and sucky and called itself Inquest Gamer) and try to crush the four other people that I knew that played in small town. Heh, Anybody remember the cumulative upkeep card from Weatherlight called Furnace something? I think I managed to kill myself with it once...

Ah, weatherlight.

I started playing around Revised... took a hiatus around the time the changed the card format/visuals, and then picked it up again for the Mirrodin block.  Then stopped, mostly for good.  I never played much in tournaments, just around the house with my dad & brothers.  We did set up some awesome Emperor & 5-Color games... and 2-headed Giant was the usual game.
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Offline Amechra

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #30 on: July 11, 2012, 12:26:39 AM »
I refuse to play non-Draft tournament games, because I am the poors, so I can't afford nice cards.  :( Draft means everyone is on an equal level anyways, so...

And I'm pretty aware that Mill is not too effective once you can counter it; however, against the decks that people near me play (namely, the one guy who plays consistently runs a zombie token deck (he's hit over a million Zombies once, with that one Black/Blue Zombie that makles killing a zombie damage you to prevent being destroyed. I won by playing a single Suture Priest; let's just say that he took 500,000 damage the next round...) and an aggro self-mill deck (it is pretty much made up of cards that get stronger based off the creature's in his graveyard, and he's working on getting that one card that gives graveyards hexproof)), I have only lost once, and that was because of severe mana drought on my part.

So it works for my purposes; I actually made one guy stop playing when I played a game of Two-headed Giant (2x Jace's Erasure+Double drawing+targeting only one person's 60 card deck while my partner guarded us= fun times).
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Offline Pencil

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #31 on: July 11, 2012, 05:49:30 AM »
As of late, we're seeing less of the three main archtypes in Standard and a large number of the combinations. Mono-Blue Control has died out in favor of U/B Control, which is hyper-aggressive after turn 5, and U/R Delver, which is closer to an aggro deck than anything. Red Deck Wins is still around, but now it likes it when the game drags on (Shrine of Burning Rage). Frites is less a combo deck than a reanimator/combo/control deck. Hell, even Kessig isn't pure aggro. The last real aggro decks in standard are Tempered Steel, Humans, and Zombies, and those have mixed results at tournaments (not that they can't win, they just like to swing back and forth). There isn't a pure combo deck in Standard at all, at least none that I've seen.


Standard is fucked up.

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Offline johnboy069

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #32 on: July 11, 2012, 02:58:22 PM »
Ummm... Channel + Fireball.....? God I feel old....

Lol!  You're where I'm at.

+1. I remember Stasis and Kismet lol. Last year was the 1st time I ever did draft. It was the M12 prerelease one week and New Phyrexia the next time. I felt lost lol.
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Offline dipolartech

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #33 on: July 11, 2012, 03:06:13 PM »
My first purchase of M:tG was the last deck box of Ice Age the store had. I probably have the snow-casted lands in my collection somewhere from that starter deck.

Offline Amechra

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #34 on: August 04, 2012, 11:02:18 PM »
I am currently drooling.

Why?

I just found out about Consecrated Sphinx.

Curse of Echoes+Jace's Erasure+Anything that makes you draw cards+Consecrated Sphinx is... fun, to say the least.

Let's say that Atmydc is Jace's Ingenuity (Draw 3 cards). Apply Curse of Echoes to yourself.

Play Jace's Ingenuity; you draw 3, your opponent gets milled for 3.
Then they get a copy of it; they draw 3 cards, you draw 6, they get milled for 6.

Add a second Curse of Echoes to yourself, and another Jace's Erasure... hell, another copy of Consecrated Sphinx, and that example goes from 9 cards drawn/milled to 54/27 cards milled/drawn; if that's too much of a stretch for you, drop a Consecrated Sphinx and it's 30/15, and that second Curse of Echoes to just get 18/9.

Which is not shabby at all, especially if you have a way to shuffle all that back into your library.

Hmm... a question, tangentially related to the above: Does Cackling Counterpart duplicate any Level counters on a creature? Or would you have to level up that Willbender or Halimar Wavewatch again?
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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #35 on: August 05, 2012, 12:44:22 AM »
Just popping into the thread to remind everyone of that first game you played against a smartass with a Stasis deck.
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Offline sirpercival

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #36 on: August 05, 2012, 06:41:44 AM »
Just popping into the thread to remind everyone of that first game you played against a smartass with a Stasis deck.

That was my dad...
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Offline Sinfire Titan

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #37 on: August 05, 2012, 01:10:12 PM »
Hmm... a question, tangentially related to the above: Does Cackling Counterpart duplicate any Level counters on a creature? Or would you have to level up that Willbender or Halimar Wavewatch again?

No. Clone effects do not copy counters.
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Offline Amechra

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #38 on: August 05, 2012, 06:50:06 PM »
Good to know; I needed to know if I could clone something crazy up...

But having 10 Fire Servants multiplying Sorcery damage by x1024 is still totally legal, right (or would it just be x11)? Just like having a pair of Suture Priests cause 2 damage whenever another player puts a creature into play?
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Offline Pencil

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #39 on: August 05, 2012, 07:02:57 PM »
Good to know; I needed to know if I could clone something crazy up...

But having 10 Fire Servants multiplying Sorcery damage by x1024 is still totally legal, right (or would it just be x11)? Just like having a pair of Suture Priests cause 2 damage whenever another player puts a creature into play?

The multiplying is cumulative yes.The thing about copying a card is that you copy the card (duh) not tokens on it since they are not part of the card.
By leveling you put counter on the creature.
« Last Edit: August 05, 2012, 07:04:35 PM by Pencil »
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