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Deckbox Forum » Posts by TyWooOneTime
I believe they are changing the format name, soon. Going forward, it will be called "$tandard"
I definitely would believe that... sadly 70% of that is in lands too. People don't understand why I'm so into digging around for off-the-wall deck ideas. They might not work, but I'm not out a fortune to play someone else's net-deck. Sadly I'm pretty much alone in that regard.
Well first off, it's not an aggro build by any stretch of the imagination (as aggro decks are aimed to be MUCH faster than what you're looking at here - your first creature(s) can't even hit the board until turn three when you would cast Midnight Haunting).
That aside, I would move a few items from the sideboard into the mainboard and vice-versa. For instance, Rootborn Defenses is a great card, but it doesn't really fit what you're looking to do here unless you need to protect against board wipes. I would move it to your sideboard and but both the Avacyn's Pilgrims and the other Farseeks into the mainboard. I would also reduce Collective Blessing to a one or two of, if not completely drop it. If you were sitting on an army of tokens, then I could see where it would give you the killing blow. But given the current build, you're going to be pumping what, 3-4 creatures?
Since you're aiming for mid-range, I would suggest potentially tossing in Ranger's Path or even Seek the Horizon to try and help you get to the mana you need to cast Angel of Serenity/Thragtusk faster. Sure Thragtusk can help you regain the life you lost in the first few turns, but it's easy enough to deal with. Perhaps Centaur Healer could help fill the void and cover your rear until you get to the mid-game, where you would be free to dominate. (Specifically, I'm thinking about how Geist of Saint Traft has you hurting pretty long before you're going to hit a tusk.)
As much as I hate telling someone to add $80 worth of cards to a deck, you really need at least one or two Cavern of Souls to stop a pesky Syncopate or Essence Scatter from messing you up.
Lastly, given the usage of white, I would advise 3x Nevermore in the sideboard. It's easy enough to move in after you get a sense of what your opponent is doing after the first game and it can completely hamstring an opposing deck. Just think about how much it would suck if someone cast it against you and named Thragtusk or Angel of Serenity...
I just conferred with a Level 1 Judge and he said that, sadly, the cards must remain revealed until the ability resolves... so no blind picking 
Slaughter Games is disgustingly good. I'm likely running my adjusted Rakdos Aggro deck at my next standard constructed FNM simply to be able to use 4x of them to totally neuter the few net-deckers. Even the U/W/R decks that just won the TGC Maxpoint Championship would be easy to deal with given the Games... take out Geist of Saint Traft and Thundermaw Hellkite and you're just a few Resto Angels away from victory. Sure, they can stall, but at that point their deck has no teeth.
If you're going Grixis Control for Slaughter Games, I would advise you looking at my Win, Lose... or Draw? deck (http://deckbox.org/sets/218318). The idea is to exile all their critical cards, including unsummoning everything to get it with the Shimian Specter. It's not full on Grixis yet, but once Gatecrash hits, I think I'll likely take it in that direction.
So I just saw an article online that reminded me of how deathtouch doesn't require the damage dealt to be from combat to result in the creature dying, so I might've had something of an epiphany... Izzet-style direct damage paired with Nightshade Peddler to keep the opponent's creatures out of the way while having some fun.
Yes, that makes my topic line a terrible pun, shame on me.
Here's just a wild stab at the idea:
http://deckbox.org/sets/273449
Basically, I want to ensure that the opposing side of the board is clear while continuing to build my board presence. Nightshade Peddler is the real catalyst toward wiping out their creatures, although he is in no way required to clear out their stuff.
Think about the following with deathtouch added:
Ash Zealot - a creature with both deathtouch and first strike is a pretty daunting pair to begin with as it's automatically capable of dealing with just about any threat on the board. Add in the haste and graveyard/flashback hate, and you can sign me up all day.
Arms Dealer - another little fella who appears to have gotten lost along the way. On his own, you can pay two and sack him to drop anything short of a Thundermaw Hellkite. Bond him with the Peddler and now he's a potentially multi-use two cost removal spell - nevermind when you have Krenko running to make him like a gatling gun.
Daybreak Ranger - doesn't it seem like forever ago that we were looking at countless werewolves? Yet, a 2/2 that can bond and take out any flyers sounds nice. Even when he transforms, then he's a 4/4 that, when bonded, can still bring home the bacon by fighting smaller critters or even take one for the team to drop a big threat.
Izzet Staticaster - this little fella is single-handedly the anti-token card of the set. Bond him with the Peddler and I'm just going to laugh at all those decks that are running 4x of all their creatures. And with flash and haste too... talk about a nice combat trick... dupe them into thinking it's clear, then, wait... wait... aww... he's here, bonded, and a LOT of things are dying.
Rummaging Goblin - man, all these cards seem forgotten in RTR-land. He's here to serve four purposes: 1) offer another goblin for the Arms Dealer; 2) offer another goblin for Krenko to build with; 3) deathtouch paired chump blocker; and 4) CARD ADVANTAGE! I cannot stress enough how nice it is to drop that unnecessary land draw for something more useful - pair multiples with Elixir of Immortality and you're getting a nice life-gain while also allowing you to drop your bombs into the graveyard early game to search out those pesky lands because you know you'll get them back later.
Silklash Spider - a 2/7 with reach that can do damage to flyers is nice enough, but when bonded, that's a 2/7 with deathtouch and reach who you can use to drop ALL the flyers for three mana. Sure, it could cost you Niv-Mizzet, but could you ask for a better board wipe against flyers?
Niv-Mizzet, Dracogenius - not only is he a one card win-con, he can bond to wipe out multiple targets in one turn. Nevermind the drawing if you decide to actually target your opponent.
The remaining spells are pretty self-explanatory for their reasoning...
A few questions/concerns:
1) Nightshade Peddler boosts everything here like described above, but he is a 1/1 creature, which, let's be honest, once the cat is out of the bag will become a target. Do I need to generate some added protection for him? If so, what?
2) I'm torn here as I REALLY want to include black for the benefits you would reap from Blood Artist, Slaughter Games, and a few other pieces. But I REALLY don't want to delve into four colors as I don't have a full set of all the shocks. I could see where four Blood Crypts, and four Overgrown Tombs would make that possible. But is it worth it? Would it make sense to dump the blue? That would cost me the major Izzet pieces but open the flexibility for some other shenanigans - but then I'm also venturing closer to my MOMMM! He's Touching Me! deck (http://deckbox.org/sets/213966).
3) I have three win-cons at current: 1) Krenko provides enough tokens to simply overwhelm the opponent; 2) Niv does his mighty face smashing; 3) I simply cobble enough damage together from the assorted creatures I have throughout the deck... obviously these aren't the best or clearest in the world - have I focused too much on the board state? What would be some options?
- as a side note, black and Blood Artist would provide another win-con, but would cost me one as Niv would be dropped. Although with black I could build in Bolas... but I tried that last week in my That Was Weird deck (http://deckbox.org/sets/257597) and I had my ass handed to me repeatedly.
4) I know Gatecrash is a ways off, but I can see where this deck would be able to build in Borborgymos and possibly some other Gruul pieces rather easily - i.e. Domri would fit well here given his fighting mechanic and the deathtouch bonds. Is this worth pursuing now or have I just jumped the gun?
I definitely feel you with regard to both the Cagebreakers and Mentor. Cagebreakers just seem like a natural option given that you're dropping humans via Grisly Salvage and Mulch (in addition to not having a huge attachment to them when they're on the board). They could also give you another target for your rites. I could also see where Mentor helps ensure you pull your Unburial Rites and an angel, but in retrospect, Faithless Looting will help get you there really well too.
My biggest fear for you is that the opponent is running a lot of board wipes and counters, as was the case at my LGS this past week, at which point they can counter the rites and keep wiping the board until you would have to hard-cast the angel (assuming they don't counter her too). Or, in an even worse scenario, someone sides in Slaughter Games or Nevermore and then you're totally screwed.
I'm finding more and more that unless it's almost guaranteed to win the game, you need to have more than one win-con. To some extent I'm amazed to see Slaughter Games not getting more play as it can easily hamstring most standard decks these days.
Oh definitely. If you can flip them and require them to sort them into two piles blind, that could be epic.
I would double-check with a judge before going that route. Although I can say that I just learned from the rulings on him that your opponent can actually make one of the two piles have zero cards... interesting.
Three really quick thoughts...
1) Kessig Cagebreakers would work wonders here. You're already trying to feed into the graveyard, so why not make use of their wolf-creating abilities?
2) I'd suggest throwing Cloudshift in as well, as it's a lot easier to just flicker the angel as opposed to having it die and reanimating it multiple times (or you could easily flicker Kessig Malcontents for some easy damage).
3) Mentor of the Meek could be really useful here to help with card advantage as you only have two creatures that wouldn't trigger his ability.
Just some friendly food for thought.
Looking to pick up some Harbors, not overly hung up on how many...
Looking to pick up some Harbors, not overly hung up on how many...
Once you've filled cards into your wishlist and tradelist, at the bottom of your profile page there will be a list of people whose tradelists overlap with your wishlist and vice versa. However, my understanding is that at current it only will search within "groups," the largest of which being Reddit MTG Traders. So my suggestion would be to go join that group and then it will populate at the bottom of the page for you.
The alternative is to look up the cards you want individually via the card database and find people who have it listed in their tradelist. You can then open a new window to that person's profile page and it will show your trading overlap with them a the bottom of their profile page. This is the slower route, but can find more specific wants, but joining the group is the faster way to really get some trades going.
Lastly, you can always post to the "Trading Post" forum with some of your notable haves and wants.
Good luck and happy trading!
Bump! Jace is still here...
Well, the new version of the site that Sebi has up for demo viewing addresses many of these concerns by making edition of the cards much more prominent in the searches and whatnot.
You can view the alpha version of the site here:
http://alpha.deckbox.org (the password is let me see)
At the start I'll note that I'll do my able best to keep it budget friendly.
I'm seeing one glaring issue here and that's with Jace's Phantasm. I get that it's a one-drop 1/1 flyer with the potential for getting a LOT bigger, but you should probably build in at least a little bit more of a mechanism for getting to those 10 cards in the graveyard than Mindshrieker. Trepanation Blade is one option as each attack could rip 3-5 cards off and you're at 10 faster than you think. Thought Scour is a definite highlight here as it can help give you card advantage while also causing them to drop cards. Mind Sculpt doesn't really fit your strategy as cleanly, but can be a nasty thorn in someone's side AND would get the Phantasm's to that point much faster.
Alternately, you could simply slide out both the Phantasm and Mindshrieker for some other low cost flyers - I'm thinking War Falcon (which works with your Lyev Skyknights), Aven Squire for the early game exalted bonus, Arctic Aven (as lifelink is HUGE against the flood of aggro right now), or even Drogskol Captain who would have an even larger benefit by pumping your spirit tokens and giving them hexproof. (Note that none of those options top 60 cents per card!).
Beyond that, unless you're running the Captains, this deck has one giant weakness - which it actually has one of ironically - Detention Sphere. Despite all the fun spirits you can pump out with Midnight Haunting and Lingering Souls they could all be cleared out by a single detention sphere. For things like Electrickery and Mizzium Mortars I would consider running Rootborn Defenses in the maindeck as it can prove to be one hell of a combat trick that also produces more spirit tokens for you.
Beyond that, I can see where, without added pumping for him, Geist of Saint Traft really wouldn't be as effective as you like. Jace does a lot more for this build giving you both some protection and some card advantage.
In either event, you're likely looking at $3-$5 and this could potentially be something fun and perhaps even competitive.
On a side note, if you wanted another fun budget-friendly play, splash a bit of green to put in Bower Passage, which, for two will make all your creatures completely unblockable.
We can expand the trade beyond those as well if you like as I see you're looking for Supreme Verdict...
I'll leave it up to you to start a trade if you like.
I'll openly admit I'm confused for the more recent cards, but as imsully2 pointed out, several of the ones you've identified in the later list were printed as commons in one set, uncommons in another. He noted Rancor, which is in your latter list.
My suggestion would be to search by rarity, by set. This might make things more tedious, but then you'll know exactly what the commons from each set are as opposed to encountering this problem.
If you're looking for pauper cards, I'm not sure on this front, but I believe you're allowed to use uncommons as long as they were printed as a common at some point in time.
Title is pretty self-explanatory. Jace is at $31 and HH is at $9, so 3 makes $27... so I'm thinking another $5 card makes the difference...
Any takers?
I have two for a mono-green aggro build but I picked them up both for less than $3... I guess it just takes the right amount of digging around to find a taker.
I think the trading opportunities features are the largest area this site could expand and improve upon.
If there was a way to make them searchable with numerous filters in the same fashion as the card database, that would rule. Some search features that I think would rock include:
1) Last online (as HikingStick points out)
2) Feedback rating - if you want to avoid people with zero (or very low) feedback
3) Local vs Mail trading - how many times have you found someone that has the cards you're looking for, but they're set to local only? I have plenty of times.
4) Some sort of value and quantity sorting - I'd love to be able to search for people who have a certain number of a particular card or a total value from your tradelist (making it easier to unload bigger things if you're looking to trade down)
5) More ability to identify overlap between tradelist and wishlist - for instance, being able to search for people looking for a particular card that have items in your wishlist.
These are just ideas and we're all just dying to see what Sebi has in store for us with the forthcoming update, but all of these would be awesome.
Oh I cleared them out the instant they said they were 12$
NICE!
The Golgari Event Deck was MSRP for I think closer to $20 and have gone like hotcakes because everyone recognizes that there are more than $70 worth of cards in there. To that end if you scored some for $12, you just made out like a bandit my friend. I'd even recommend going back and getting more as the Thragtusk alone is worth more than the price you paid and you should be able to move them without any trouble.
Posting an update... Still looking for Innistrad Duals and RTR Shocks.
Specifically looking for:
4x Sulfur Falls
3x Hinterland Harbor
1x Steam Vents
2x Temple Garden
2x Overgrown Tomb
Here's my tradelist:
http://deckbox.org/sets/129548
I'm mostly looking to trade standard for standard but might consider moving a legacy piece here or there if the offer is right.
-The budget-friendly and perhaps better option for flickering things a lot is Conjurer's Closet (it runs about 50 cents). It might cost one more to play than Roaring Primadox but it's seldom that you'll see a player running artifact hate in their mainboard, meaning it would be completely safe for game one of almost every match, beyond that, you really only have to worry about the hate they'd side in, which, to be honest, would mean you're only worrying about 2-4 cards out of 60 to stop your flickering.
The real benefits to the Closet over Primadox come in two forms: first, it's an optional effect as it is worded that you "may" flicker a target - note that the Primadox is a must effect, meaning you might end up being forced to return a creature to your hand when you don't want to (or in some cases, returning the primadox itself to your hand because they take out your other creatures); second, the closet will return the creature to play without costing you a single mana on the back-end, giving you greater flexibility than the primadox.
Trust me when I say that Primadox is quite misleading and isn't all that good. I had thought he was a bigtime beast myself when M13 first came out, but to be honest, people know how he works and how to work around him. 9 out of 10 times, they'll use their removal on your other creatures just so that you have to keep casting the primadox - making it nearly impossible to really get the deck moving as that's handicapping yourself four mana per turn for a 4/4 that will never get to attack. That said, if the ETB triggers are really what your deck is all about, then I would keep the Primadoxes in the deck, BUT, definitely go pick up some Conjurer's Closets to help.
So I think you've pretty well nailed down the fact that you need more multiples of the smaller cards to really make these decks go - namely the commons/uncommons that you have 2-4 of to ensure consistency when you play.
For the B/G, you clearly have a few good cards that have some value (Gravecrawler, Liliana of the Dark Realms, etc), but to be honest, getting a B/G zombie deck to work properly and be competitive outside of the kitchen table is an expensive proposition. To that end, I would actually advise going with the R/W setup and using those two cards from the B/G deck as trade pieces to secure a few more pieces for the R/W deck.
Now for the R/W deck, again, the first real problem for you is consistency and the second is direction. You should have a clear direction that leads up to your primary and secondary win conditions. Thus, you need to ask yourself, how do you envision yourself winning the majority of your games with this deck? Are you going to overrun them? How about aggro like crazy? What are your counter strategies? How do you deal with a Geist of Saint Traft or Thragtusk? Or perhaps the better question, can you deal with them?
Given the cards you have, you actually appear to have a variety of win-cons, but none of them is really focused in on very clearly - and many of them can be achieved with only a few things being switched around. For instance, Hellrider and Fling can prove to be hilarious/devastating pieces, but only when utilized properly. What were you planning on using Fling on?
Personally, I would invest a bit more on another Dual Casting or two and then toss in Cathars' Crusade and Thatcher Revolt. Make the Crusade the absolute top of your mana curve and then try to secure a few Intangible Virtues. Then you're going to run crazy R/W token aggro. The idea here is that you can drop tokens from Krenko's Command, Krenko, Thatcher Revolt, Gather the Townsfolk, Midnight Haunting and the like. Intangible Virtue (and to a lesser degree Phantom General) pumps the tokens. You have a variety to avoid Detention Sphere and even in the case where you get bogged down, the Crusade will pump them all to be huge - or in another type of pinch, Hellrider lets you attack for fatal damage without ever even hitting them. Then I would focus much more on removal (Oblivion Ring, Pacifism, Searing Spear, Pillar of Flame, Mizzium Mortars, Annihilating Fire, etc all come to mind). You can even include a variety of white combat tricks like Rootborn Defenses and even some other fun ones like Trumpet Blast and Dynacharge that could be copied with dual casting to offer huge bonuses on otherwise insignificant attacks.
Lastly, I would suggest going R/W simply because you have more time before that pairing becomes the standard fare (Feb 1 is the official release date for Gatecrash and Boros). Thus, you might still be able to swing some of the Duals and whatnot for more workable value.
Anyway, mull all this whatnot I've said above over, but keep in mind that you could likely turn this into a pretty competitive deck for somewhere in the $20 range, or just a few well placed trades.
Good luck!
Deckbox Forum » Posts by TyWooOneTime