Author Topic: M:tG Deck Tips?  (Read 53511 times)

Offline Nytemare3701

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #100 on: March 28, 2013, 03:16:26 PM »
Working on a few Commander decks (I almost exclusively play commander nowadays, since it's more of a creative exercise than a competitive event), and I need some input.

Deck 1
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Deck 2
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Offline Concerned Ninja Citizen

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #101 on: March 28, 2013, 08:30:52 PM »
Actually your statement is very helpful to me for deck building as for the longest time (mainly because I started after dual lands) i've avoided fancy lands like the plague they are, but it sounds like at least in the scars expansion they are both easy to get and interesting. So it sounds like I should make an effort to replace my basic lands with as many double/triple use lands as possible?

When you say "double/triple use lands" do you mean lands that produce multiple colors or lands with effects besides producing mana?

Either way, yes you should get good lands at any opportunity you have. A good mana base makes a huge difference to a deck's effectiveness. Also, getting lands that do something other than produce mana is an excellent idea as well. If you can put an effect on a land that you would use on a spell, you've essentially added a card slot to your deck and increased the odds of having something relevant at any given time.

Also the mythic rares, I mentioned them earlier as well, and in essence its WotC making sure that the 4 or 5 more powerful cards they are print are immediately noticed by giving them a different "color" of rarity. It was always the case that you would buy a lot of booster packs and not care about 3/4 of the rares in them but there were four or five or six of those things that you really liked seeing come out. Wizards just made it official.

Around when mythics came out someone did the math and determined that mythics at their current distribution do lead to fewer copies per card in circulation than the prior system which can and does drive up prices, esp in expansions (vs core sets) since they see a shorter print run. Jace is a good example of this in action. If you compare his prices to cards like Jitte or Tarmogoyf which were similarly dominant, he was (and still is) orders of magnitude more expensive.

Also, there are crap mythics as much as crap rares and not every chase card is mythic. In fact, one of the primary justifications for mythics when they were first released was that they would specifically not be "chase cards" but rather big splashy effects that were cool and iconic but not 4 ofs in competitive decks. This promise (which was couched in ambiguous language but was absolutely a big part of why there was relatively little backlash over the introduction of mythics) was kept for exactly one block before they went ahead and started printing mythic chase rares.

Working on a few Commander decks (I almost exclusively play commander nowadays, since it's more of a creative exercise than a competitive event), and I need some input.

Yeah, I play commander (though I usually call it EDH) when I play at all (which isn't often these days but that's a function of money as much as anything else. D&D using the SRD and homebrew is lots cheaper than MTG.) I've always prefered multiplayer and commander is a multiplayer format with a wide support base. If I do run into people who play non commander multiplayer, a couple of my decks work well enough if you shuffle the commander in and/or leave it out.

Deck 1
(click to show/hide)

Are you only using artifact counter creatures? If so, unless you're tied to that plan for thematic reasons, there's quite a few other counter producing/counter using cards you might want to look at.

Forgotten Ancient seems like an auto include in this deck. Generate counters when anyone plays a spell, then move them around as you like. 

Fertilid is decent, if pricy, mana ramp by itself but in a deck that does counter farming it can turn into a mana explosion that vomits all your land onto the field.

Spike Weaver is an older card that uses counters and can effectively prevent you from losing to combat damage ever if you have a way to put counters on it/ recur it.

Persist is Undying in reverse and can open up some new combo options. Cauldron of Souls could be fun with creatures that come into play with counters. Since plus and minus counters cancel each other out, you can use CoS every turn on the same creature and it'll keep coming back, just with one fewer counter than normal (this is potentially decent with things like fertilid.) 

Not sure how much, if any, of that is news to you but that's what came to mind looking at that deck sketch. Was there something specific you were looking for imput on?

Deck 2
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This seems fun. I've tried allies a bit in casual but never seen them in commander. Will probably be a difficult deck to make work but ever so amusing when it does. The Mirrorweave trick looks fun, though Turntimber Ranger or Hagra Diabolist might be better targets than the Warlord.

Are you using Changelings at all? A few of them (Taurean Mauler, Mirror Entity, Chameleon Colossus) are decent cards in their own right and they'll trigger your allies.

Patriarch's Bidding will help a bit with opponent's wraths. Twilight's Call is similar but helps your opponents more. Still might be worth it.

Cauldron of Souls is an alternative form of wrath protection and reusable due to the counter interaction I mentioned above. Because of the way the allies' abilities work you'll lose anything with 1 toughness but you'll still get its ETB trigger and its ability will trigger off all the others.

Riptide Replicator is a second copy of Volrath's Lab.
« Last Edit: March 28, 2013, 09:36:26 PM by Concerned Ninja Citizen »

Offline Nytemare3701

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #102 on: March 29, 2013, 04:08:40 PM »
Quote
If I do run into people who play non commander multiplayer, a couple of my decks work well enough if you shuffle the commander in and/or leave it out.
My Omnath deck is just a green ramp deck without omnath :-P

Quote
Are you only using artifact counter creatures? If so, unless you're tied to that plan for thematic reasons, there's quite a few other counter producing/counter using cards you might want to look at.
Nah, it just started with a way to abuse Modular creatures, and went from there. The only thing I want to try to keep is creatures who are entirely supported by the counters, so I can undying/persist spam with ooze flux.

Forgotten Ancient is in.

Fertilid was missed, adding it.

Spike Weaver is gold. Good find!

Cauldron of Souls is in the maybeboard, but will make an acceptable duplicate for Mikaeus in the ooze flux engine.
Quote
Not sure how much, if any, of that is news to you but that's what came to mind looking at that deck sketch. Was there something specific you were looking for imput on?
I'm really just looking for lesser known cards that really impact a proliferate-style deck, as well as ways to increase the reliability of the deck.

Quote
This seems fun. I've tried allies a bit in casual but never seen them in commander. Will probably be a difficult deck to make work but ever so amusing when it does.
Right now the deck is exceedingly vulnerable, which I hope to correct by smoothing out the land base and adding some utility.

Changelings are in, and since ally triggers are so valuable on their own, I'm using even the weaker changelings. (the blue one that looks like a ditto is surprisingly good, as it makes Karona an ally.)

Patriarch's Bidding & Twilight's Call seem like great additions. Right now the deck is vulnerable to wraths, and I get far more value out of my ETB triggers than most decks ever will.

Cauldron of Souls should work here too. :-D

Riptide Replicator is indeed a second copy of Volrath's Lab.



Very good advice all around. My competitive deckbuilding and my EDH deckbuilding are entirely seperate creatures. With competitive decks, I'm generally looking at a smallish card pool, and I have a similarly small card pool to consider in opposing decks. With EDh, the tempo and speed of decks is much different, and I have to be aware of a huge amount of possible cards. When I build a competitive deck, I can put together the "right" land base for my color combination, and already be at 20/60 cards, competitive decks then use 4-ofs, which trades deck space and utility for reliability. With an edh deck, it's all singletons, and the mana requirements are entirely different. 40 lands, minus 1 for every 2 mana rocks, minimum 35 lands. That leaves 65 singletons to work with, and certain mechanics pop up in the strangest places.

How do you feel about the Phantom creatures? I personally love them. They block their toughness in damage, then only lose 1 counter.

Offline Concerned Ninja Citizen

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #103 on: April 01, 2013, 08:59:26 AM »
Glad at least some of that was on point. The "messing with counters" deck is one I've been thinking about building in various itterations for a long while. Never actually put it together yet but I know the components pretty well by now.

My issue with the phantom creatures is that none of them do much of anything with their counters besides having them and losing them instead of taking damage. My experience is that that's not always enough, esp in multiplayer where every card has to go that much further.

Still, some of them are pretty good deals. Nishoba is a good Reviellark target, for example. Phantom Centaur is a good midrange beater with 5 power for 4 CMC, pro B and the phantom ability (which makes it resistant to damage based removal.)

I'd be interested to see full lists of your commander decks if it's not too much trouble. Don't worry about linking to cards, I can search the ones I don't know without much effort.

On a similar note, here's an EDH build I had going a while back. Needs some updating and advice on things to cut would be nice.

(click to show/hide)

Offline Nytemare3701

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #104 on: April 01, 2013, 07:32:02 PM »
*red deck snip*

Radiate. it applies Overload to any single target instant or sorcery. I can't count the amount of games I've won a game off of Radiate+Seismic Spike

Destroy All Lands, add (2*X)R to your mana pool where X is the total number of lands targeted. If you can't give yourself a winning boardstate in mono red off of 40+ mana, while everyone else is without lands, you never had a chance to begin with.

Also, I'd cut Furnace of Rath. Squee isn't suited to commander damage normally, so the benefit is reduced for you, and it's a HUGE liability, since you can't remove it effectively. You REALLY don't want a Uril deck to only need to do 11 damage to kill you, or worse, a Gisela only needing 6.

Other than that, I would suggest finding an engine to help support the phoenix recursion you have going on.

--

As for my Phantoms, they work as alternate arcbounds for the Mikael+Ooze Flux combo. They are also great for blocking any non-trample creatures.
« Last Edit: April 01, 2013, 07:34:17 PM by Nytemare3701 »

Offline sirpercival

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #105 on: April 01, 2013, 07:47:51 PM »
Did you guys see the new rules for magic?
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Offline Sohala

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #106 on: April 01, 2013, 08:50:17 PM »
Come again?
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Offline sirpercival

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #107 on: April 01, 2013, 09:31:51 PM »
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Offline brujon

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #108 on: April 01, 2013, 10:05:08 PM »
Man... It's one of those April Fools that's so well orchestrated, that you don't know if it's telling a lie, or if it's telling the truth, or if it's a combination of both.

Many of the stuff he says makes sense from a commercial standpoint, but it just seems that it's something that would aggravate the existing MtG community to an EXTREME degree, and for a game that's 20+ years in the making... Such a radical change is not in the best interests of the company. Then again, there's stuff like the "Spinal Tap" rule, that simply doesn't make a sliver of sense and is quite frankly, just silly. Also, keeping the word complexity up to 5th grade comprehension level? Now that's just god tier levels of trolling.

It's a good april's fool. It's well written, it leaves you wondering if there isn't some truth in what's there, especially the bit about keeping common's simple, and leaving the more complicated abilities to the rare and uncommon cards. It makes sense, not only from a new player's stand point, but also to prevent that everyone has access to the most powerful and gamechanging cards, which are what drives the sales and tournaments.

Here's me hoping that it's mostly lies, and not the other way around. I like commons with depth and complexity, since that's what you get 90% of the time, and that's what you start off with in every new edition, before you amass a significant amount of the really good cards.
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Offline Concerned Ninja Citizen

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #109 on: April 02, 2013, 08:26:31 AM »
As pointed out in the forum discussion for the article, at the very least the "no instants at common" part is bullshit. That would destroy limited play and Magic R&D puts a lot of effort into designing for limited. Probably more than any other single concern.

Offline brujon

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #110 on: April 02, 2013, 11:19:50 AM »
If any of this "Make commons & uncommons simpler cards" part is true, then it probably will only apply to Core sets. M13, M14 and so on, so forth... I remember back in the days of 5th and 6th edition, around when i started playing, the core sets were what everyone started with. Didn't have too many complicated cards, the starter decks for them were nice and simple, but taught you well, but it still had useful cards that were useful in main decks. I think throughout all this time, they kept mostly true to that philosophy.
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Offline dipolartech

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #111 on: April 02, 2013, 02:21:03 PM »
I found this on mtgsalvation and I'm wondering what you guys think of it.

(click to show/hide)


Its supposed to be built as a super inexpensive deck, but its made me really interested in goblin electromancer and guttersnipe. Its a really direct deck use instants and sorceries to draw cards (which triggers guttersnipe) and then cast the new cards to trigger more guttersnipe and then use the flashback to trigger more guttersnipe. Any ideas on how to protect the guttersnipe from death and dismemberment?

I also don't understand the point to the evolving wilds....

« Last Edit: April 02, 2013, 02:23:10 PM by dipolartech »

Offline Elevevated Beat

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #112 on: April 02, 2013, 08:43:55 PM »
The counter in that deck will be your primary protection for guttersnipe. The burn and delver put pressure on your opponent even if they manage to get rid of guttersnipe.

I'm guessing evolving wilds will be there for mana fixing and deck thinning. I don't think it's necessary for mana fixing alone. Which is why I probably wouldn't put the guildgate in there myself. And having the land come into play tapped with such a low cost deck can be pretty punishing.

Edit: Removed erroneous punctuation.
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Offline dipolartech

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #113 on: April 02, 2013, 10:45:11 PM »
I just saw a different version with Arcane Melee, further reducing burn cards and flashback.

Does anybody here know the ruling on how Goblin Electromancer and Arcane Melee interact with the Fireball style spares?
« Last Edit: April 02, 2013, 11:00:37 PM by dipolartech »

Offline Concerned Ninja Citizen

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #114 on: April 02, 2013, 11:15:16 PM »
8 multicolored sources is a good number in a bicolored deck with that kind of curve. You need to field both R and U quickly and consistently and you won't do that with fewer. This deck has a reasonably tight curve but it won't play like curve aggro. All the drawing gives it lots more late game reach and makes the taplands less of an issue.

I like the deck. For a budget build it has a coherent and interesting gameplan and seems like it would be enjoyable to run.

More counters is the easiest way to protect guttersnipe. Izzet Charm seems like the obvious go to since it also draws and burns if you need that. Probably over the Divinations, 1 Desperate Ravings and 1 Searing Spear.

I wouldn't go with the Arcane Melee version. This is a fast and fairly tightly curved deck. Melee doesn't show up until turn 5 at the earliest. Turn 6 if you want to play Melee and do something else. You shouldn't have time to play it.
« Last Edit: April 02, 2013, 11:21:00 PM by Concerned Ninja Citizen »

Offline dipolartech

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #115 on: April 03, 2013, 10:33:31 AM »
Do you think there's anything wrong with the idea that unless you have a card draw deck like this one you will only see about 12-13 cards of a deck before the game is over? I mean that if I don't pull extra cards per turn everybody assumes that after five card draws the game should have been over?

Offline brujon

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #116 on: April 03, 2013, 12:58:05 PM »
That's not far from the truth. Unless you're playing with or against a control deck, most matches end around the 5th or 6th turn, which means around the 12th or 13th card you saw from your deck. This is in competitive play, ofc. That's the sweet spot most decks attempt to achieve a win.  1st, 2nd or 3rd turn wins are not generally possible without heavy mana acceleration, which isn't available in Standard or Modern most of the time, being more common in legacy play, a way more competitive environment.

Control decks are also fading out, because it's not "fun" to get locked down the entire match while the opponent slowly drains your vitality points. This is by design. We're getting less cards aimed at control, and more cards aimed at combo, tempo and aggro decks. Back in the day you had Winter Orb, Stasis, Smokestack, and many other cards that aided you in locking your opponent down.

I can't remember all the countless matches where i was testing out variations on the Stax deck and the opponent ragequit after not being able to do anything. Stasis was also a fun one to cause ragequits as well. These prison decks, an extreme kind of control deck, aren't fun to play against at all.
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Offline Elevevated Beat

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #117 on: April 03, 2013, 08:55:49 PM »
Land destruction. Another one of those decks. Maybe not as frustrating as having all your shit countered, though.

I remember one tournament I played mono green land destruction (Vintage, of course) vsing a Legacy/Vintage faerie aggro/counter deck. Slamming of doors and throwing of decks were had after we went 2 games where he played one spell.

Strip Mine and Sol Ring are OP.
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Offline Concerned Ninja Citizen

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #118 on: April 03, 2013, 09:14:37 PM »
Do you think there's anything wrong with the idea that unless you have a card draw deck like this one you will only see about 12-13 cards of a deck before the game is over? I mean that if I don't pull extra cards per turn everybody assumes that after five card draws the game should have been over?

What do you mean "wrong with the idea"? Do I think that idea is accurate? In competitive play, yes it's a good general rule. It's not universally true but it is true often enough that it is worth keeping in mind when building a deck.

What it basically means is, unless you're packing lots of deck manipulation your deck needs to be a consistent, redundant whole. You can't rely on a given card or series of cards showing up in a given game because they mostly won't.

Control deck wise, most matches still end around turn 5-8 or so, they just "end" in the sense that the control deck has achieved board control. It may not have actually won yet but the game is effectively over all the same.


Offline brujon

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Re: M:tG Deck Tips?
« Reply #119 on: April 03, 2013, 10:00:02 PM »
Yes, you're right. Board control is established one way or the other at turns 5~8. Either you win, or you're in a position where you can't lose.

@Elevevated Beast, land destruction as a mechanic is always tough on any deck. Strip Mine & Wasteland give you that ability at T1, but they by themselves aren't really really OP, because in the end you're delaying your own mana curve in order to deny that mana curve to your opponent. It was unbalanced in the environment it was played in, where mana acceleration was something really easy to come by, and T1 big plays were rampant. On the subject of OP Lands, i think the crown goes to Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale. It cripples creature based decks, and unless they're packing land destruction, they're stuck with it in play forever. 40 Lands was a deck i played for quite some time when i started to play online. It's a really cool deck.
"All the pride and pleasure of the world, mirrored in the dull consciousness of a fool, are poor indeed compared with the imagination of Cervantes writing his Don Quixote in a miserable prison" - Schopenhauer, Aphorisms: The Wisdom of Life