1

(15 replies, posted in Decks and Deckbuilding)

TyWooOneTime wrote:

Nevermind the fact that if you have a bunch of tokens out, the opponent could actually just win the game by wiping the board...

If you have that many, why would you spend the mana to drop it? The reason I recommended card draw is because I expect the tokens to get constantly sacked. You will either have too many tokens or (more likely) no other option.

2

(7 replies, posted in Decks and Deckbuilding)

What's there to say?

OK, maybe I can try. The big question is what is this deck's natural enemy, and aside from the obvious "protection from black" it doesn't really have one except maybe itself. The transition from mid-game to end-game is possible, but it's tricky. The Alms Beast and Blood Baron in particular contradict each other: the Alms Beast's forced lifelink to the opponent prevents the Blood Baron's +6/+6 from occurring.

This is not quite negative synergy because one is an early game and the other is a late-game finisher, but to push yourself over the edge you probably need your Devour Flesh, and the chances of drawing it are not terribly great.

I'd playtest or sideboard a Diabolic Tutor. You will probably be able to play through end-game if you're aware of it, but against some decks you might need the extra help.

3

(15 replies, posted in Decks and Deckbuilding)

I see some hand problems with this deck, too. Instants and sorceries just don't stick on the battlefield like permanents, and red just does not draw cards well, and you will need at least some. As you're already in black, you've got some options. Dark Prophecy is great because it would synergize with the Young Pyro tokens (opponent can't take out your permanents without giving you cards) but with a BBB casting cost and only five swamps in the deck it's almost impossible to cast it right now. You would basically need a full playset of Rakdos Guildgates or a similar manafix.

Alternatively you could play Toil / Trouble, which has the added utility of fuse, should you ever want it. Or Underworld Connections, even if it's a bit slow and almost as bad with the mana cost.

elpablo wrote:

4 Domri's is pretty standard for a RG aggro deck.  And i'm pretty sure he wants to stay standard/ for rotation.

Just because other people are doing it doesn't mean it's a good idea. In this case, yes, having four means there's a 40% chance of having Domri in your starting hand or drawing him in the first three turns, but there's also a 13% chance of two or more, which is basically like losing a card in the hand.

Compare this with having only two. 28% chance, with 2% of both in the same ten card stretch. Basically, it's a trade of 10% chance of drawing Domri for a 10% chance for having one more card in your first three turns. Considering you can only expect to draw Domri 40% of the time even with four in the deck (meaning you can't count on him to win, even in ideal circumstances), that there's still a fair chance of drawing him, and that this is an aggro deck, so one card more over three turns is probably huge, I'd say this is a really, really good trade-off.

FOUR planeswalkers? Of the same type? That's like, $75 of card you can't play at any given time. Especially considering Rade is primarily a support planeswalker.

Personally, I don't ever put more than one planeswalker of a certain type in any given deck, although for a particularly badass one I can see grounds for a pair.

Think of it this way: as is you have SIX pair combinations of cards you cannot possibly cast. If you replaced half your Domri Rade's with Garruk Relentless (for example: it'd transform into a black card) there would only be two card combinations you couldn't cast: the pairs. The other four pair combinations would actually wind up with some fair card synergy, as after Garruk takes damage he's spouting deathtouch wolf tokens which Rade's -2 power can force onto particular permanents. Decent removal, especially because it's not using any of your cards or mana.

The difference goes up even more if you assume you draw three or four of the cards. With three planeswalker cards you're guaranteed to be able to play two of them, as opposed to one right now. With four you're guaranteed to be able to play half of them, as opposed to a quarter of them right now.

gumgodMTG wrote:
Egann wrote:

Hmm. I'm pretty sure a Quietus Spike and a Basilisk Collar will work just dandy. After some thought, though, I don't think Curiosity or Ophidian Eye are that good, at least not in EDH.

The problem is how many cards I'd have to draw. On a 1v1 Magic game, you only need to draw a third of your library to eliminate an opponent, but with EDH you have multiple opponents with 40 life. It'll take half the deck to take a player out. If you've got three opponents or the combo doesn't come together almost instantly I won't have enough cards in my library and I'd just overextend my deck casting it.

It's a good sideboard idea for 1v1, but probably not a mainboard. And EDH doesn't have sideboards.

If you're looking to take out multiple opponents this way you just need a way to to discard an Eldrazi that shuffles your graveyard in response to one of the triggers (Frantic Search will do it). Mind Over Matter will also auto win with your general.  Unfortunately the Eldrazi are not very budget friendly when they only serve the purpose of reshuffling.

That's why the Elixir of Immortality and Feldon's Cane are in there. I'm pretty sure I'll throw in a psychic spiral, too.  Never use an expensive card when a cheap one will do the same thing. The problem is putting cars IN the graveyard. When the only options are a seven card hand and ALL TEH CARDS, it can actually be kinda hard getting them in there.

VampireArmy wrote:

i once ran a niv deck that completely pissed EVERYBODY off! lol  Venser's journal is amazing here as would Charisma, Freed from the Real, and Mind Unbound

I confess, I made this deck because I wanted to see two things: that Hypersonic Dragon pulling all sorts of insta-sorcery shenanigans, and Tamiyo, the Moon Sage giving me her emblem.

Which of the Niv's would you recommend?

I've never heavily used enchantments, so I might be way off base, but when I look at the creatures I see some...lackluster abilities. Imposing Soverign? I get that on a two mana creature any abilities past that 2/2 is basically a freebie, but that one in particular doesn't do much. Not unless your opponent's deck is entirely built around hastes, anyway.

I'm tempted to say that some exalt creatures will really change the chemistry of this deck, particularly in the low mana cost slots. Basically, I'm thinking if your creature abilities are freebies, an exalt will sop up more removal than other abilities, hopefully allowing the enchants to deploy as planned. Realistically, I expect your opponent will pick one concept and you'd be stuck working with the other.

Hmm. I'm pretty sure a Quietus Spike and a Basilisk Collar will work just dandy. After some thought, though, I don't think Curiosity or Ophidian Eye are that good, at least not in EDH.

The problem is how many cards I'd have to draw. On a 1v1 Magic game, you only need to draw a third of your library to eliminate an opponent, but with EDH you have multiple opponents with 40 life. It'll take half the deck to take a player out. If you've got three opponents or the combo doesn't come together almost instantly I won't have enough cards in my library and I'd just overextend my deck casting it.

It's a good sideboard idea for 1v1, but probably not a mainboard. And EDH doesn't have sideboards.

So I need some advice on my EDH deck. This is in no uncertain terms a Depths of Power premade deck that I did some fixing on. I added concepts like transmute and overload to give the deck some variety.

I wanted this deck to be reasonably high skill to operate because I get bored playing low-concept aggro decks. I wanted this deck to be about knowing where the important cards are and having ways to get them. This isn't really intended to win so much as give much more refined (and expensive) decks a bad day for as long as possible.

Problem is this deck is VERY slow on the deploy. I know that most EDH decks have a 4-5 turn launch period, but this deck's card synergy takes four or five additional turns to really go anywhere. By turn 10 it's usually fully deployed, but that's a long time twiddling my thumbs to defend myself.

Advice would be appreciated. http://deckbox.org/sets/482399?s=n&o=a

10

(18 replies, posted in Decks and Deckbuilding)

I'll start with the mana, because it's pretty obviously the core of the deck.

Four colors is rough no matter what you do, but I'd throw a set of Darksteel Ingots in just for generic mana-fixing. Considering all your important gates enter tapped, I'd say you should replace at least some of those gates with Vivid lands, too. Say Vivid Grove. They enter tapped, too, but they can give you any color mana twice. Obviously, it trades late-game functionality for mana when you need it, but you will have the mana you need when you need it.

Other things? I really don't see much card-synergy in this deck aside from a few gate sorceries, and certainly not that warrants the trouble of FOUR colors. Right now you have all four colors in both the deck and the side-board. I know what I'd do: sideboard one color at any given time.

As green and white appear to be this deck's primary colors, roll with that. Set up two sideboards: one black and multicolored, one red and multicolored, and any one game you play one of those colors sits out. You'll still be running three colors, so there's plenty of space for gates, you can fit some basic lands in to give your deck an early mana boost, and the whole deck will just deploy more smoothly if it just has to worry about three colors.

11

(5 replies, posted in Decks and Deckbuilding)

You may as well drop the red cards and replace them with any sort of generic white or black cards. With only five red cards in the deck it's basically dead weight on your mana base, and it forces you to have a lot of shock lands. The only card I'd really miss is Wear // Tear, as Boros Reckoner can stay and even use his ability in a pure WB deck.

Special lands are nice, but in this deck how do they really help? I say drop the red, keep the Orzhov Guildgates, and replace everything else with basic lands. Especially considering your Planeswalker's major redeeming attribute (beyond a fast-recharge meatshield) is a board reset that will wipe all lands. His abilities alone justify keeping your mana base simple: you want to be able to trip major abilities like that without necessarily killing yourself, and a bunch of shock lands that are iffy to deploy in a pinch with a reduced hand? That will probably do it.

I'd say replace the cards you remove like this with artifacts, but that's just me.

I haven't played that much MTG, either--I just built my first deck a few days ago--but on the whole, I'd say this is a fair deck. Nothing special, and the card selection doesn't showcase the concept like it could, but you can fix those problems later.

12

(12 replies, posted in Decks and Deckbuilding)

Huh. I was not aware of that combination. Point taken. Are you sure that an elixir wouldn't turn the graveyard into a replacement library?


That combo changes things. I expect it's vulnerable to control decks: The chances that this will coalesce in the first few turns is reasonable, but small, but if your opponent has cards like Unsummon, Broken Dam, or worse, a "creature doesn't untap" instant, sorcery, or planeswalker, you're deck won't deploy right.

Let's assume you get the cards to cast a Phyrexian: the earliest your deck can deploy it is in turn 3, so a good player would wait until you attack with it before unsummoning it. It's now turn 5, you may be able to play two of your beasties for a total of three, but at this point the opponent can deploy something like Tamiyo, the Moon Sage.

Long story short: beware control decks.

13

(12 replies, posted in Decks and Deckbuilding)

That land combo is nice, but it will seldom deploy effectively. There's about a 5% chance you'll get the cards to produce 4 mana from 3 lands in turn 3, which means you are practically assured deploying on the same mana curve as everyone else. Still, 5% chance of a better mana curve is nothing to be sneezed at when many two or three color decks may stall for a turn.

I think the creatures are the major problem. The zero mana creatures are nice...but you don't have any turn one instants or sorceries, so if you don't draw a land on the first turn and can play a mana creature, you should mulligan. I don't see a reason for having them when your deck would operate just as well with a mana creature.

I'd recommend replacing them with arcbound creatures, like Arcbound Worker or Arcbound Stinger. The nice thing about arcbound creatures is that you don't really need a bomb. You can put one in there to keep the mana curve smooth, but so long as one is always on the field their +1/+1 counters pass from one to another until you can turn a grunt into a bomb.

Also that Leveler has got to go. You exile your library to summon it, so the next turn you'll not be able to draw a card on your draw phase and lose automatically. It won't have even recovered from summoning sickness. I can see the card working with some decks if it's combined with something like an Elixir of Immortality: if you know that the stuff left in your library is useless for the rest of the game, summoning Leveler and using the Elixir in one turn will drastically trim down your library while putting a great monster in play.

But in this deck it's just suicide. I don't even see how you can use it without killing yourself.

Hi, my first post here.

I'm in the process of building a Hypersonic Dragon deck as a bit of a challenge, but I'm having problems because there are just not that many examples to go by. It struck me as a nice card which should be quite useful, but I've seen all of two decks using it.

As an added challenge, this deck is probably going to have to multitask as the base of a Commander deck. Obviously the Hypersonic Dragon will have to be a severable part of the deck's concept if it's buried in the depths of a Commander deck.

Right now I'm thinking this will be a blue-red card advantage deck. By combining a Reliquary Tower and a Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind and some draw card sorceries like Divination. Other cards I'm thinking of including are things like the Elixir of Immortality so I don't have to worry about running out of cards.

Now, I think the hypersonic dragon will fit in as a way for the draw card sorceries to not compete with my instants for mana. I can end my turn with a fair bit of mana unused and if I don't need to cast an instant before the last end-phase before my turn, I can spend that mana all on card-drawing sorceries just before all my lands untap.

Comments and criticisms?