Topic: [Opinions] Blue cancel and Morph

I made the following deck that revolves around cancelling, and creatures with the morph ability:
http://deckbox.org/sets/179937

My own thougts on it:
Maybe a bit too much islands,
Fathom seer's aren't that useful,
Not enough creatures.
What do you think?

(I'd rather not have to buy new cards, but go ahead and suggest anything from my inventory!)

Re: [Opinions] Blue cancel and Morph

A few thoughts.

First off, you're completely correct that you're sitting on too much land here.  For a 60-65 card deck you should realistically be sitting at 20-24 lands (you could go up to 26-28 but only if you're fully ready to be land-flooded).

Okay, so onto the other issues. 

I'm confused as per to why you've decided to make an entire deck centered around the morphing ability, but I can understand theme decks, so why not.  But I'm not seeing the win condition here.  Based on the cards you currently have in the deck, what is the typical strategy?  What do you do if the game gets drawn out say 10-15 turns and your creatures can't get through?  What would you do if you ran into a bunch of flyers?  I think you really need to sit down and think about how you would actually envision the deck winning on a regular basis and once you have an idea what the goal is, you should be able to find several other cards to pick up that will make a LOT more sense (I know you didn't want to buy more, but Deckbox is a great place to trade or even just find cards that would be helpful - and thankfully you can pick up most cards for the low-end prices via TGCPlayer if you decide to purchase them).

I'm guessing this is mostly for casual play, correct?

Re: [Opinions] Blue cancel and Morph

(Sorry for the late reply)
So I scrapped the previous deck, and decided to make the following blue/black deck.

http://deckbox.org/sets/181277
The bone splinters are mostly for a gravedigger combo with nekrataal and/or smolder initiate

I again think there's not enough creatures in here.

TyWooOneTime wrote:

I'm guessing this is mostly for casual play, correct?

I've never played in a tournament wink

Last edited by Mort_Kawasaki (2012-06-04 18:00:15)

Re: [Opinions] Blue cancel and Morph

Okay, so with the new deck I've taken a look and I really think you're too scattered.  Normally the best decks figure out 1-3 solid combos and then build around them.  When you have 25 distinct cards in a 60 card deck, that means you're not likely to see the same card very often (which is problematic if you need a particular pairing to win the game).  You've found some interesting cards that I wasn't aware of that could work wonders with some of the newer cards that have come out with AVR.

First off, you stated a fear that you have too few creatures.  I've seen some really good decks that can operate off of that many or fewer, it's just a question of how they're utilized and how you envision winning the game.  Given the current layout of your deck, I'm not seeing a clear win condition, just a lot of removal and countering to bother your opponent.  In a typical game, how do you envision winning?  The largest creature you have is a 4/4.  Beyond that the only real offensive weapon I'm seeing is Control Magic.  What if they counter Control Magic or otherwise deal with Ashling?  Then what?

So here are some suggestions.  I'll avoid any cards that are too pricey as you never want to drop $50 for a deck you hate to play. 

1) You can work Nekrataal via flickering (or briefly exiling and then returning to play).  So I would advise some Ghostly Flicker, Nephalia Smuggler, or perhaps best of all Deadeye Navigator or Conjurer's Closet.  In any of those cases you can flicker Nekrataal and when he returns to play his ability triggers again, meaning you're making them drop their creatures.  This would also require you to pick up another Nekrataal or two. 

2) Flickering will also work with Gravedigger and Parasitic Strix.  This means you could also drop down to one or two Gravedigger (as a four drop 2/2 isn't very good) and put the added Strixes in there.

3) Since the main thing going here is creature removal, Blood Artist would be good fun here.  So would Deathgreeter.  Then you're getting even more benefit out of their creatures dying.

4) You should work around Ashling, the Extinguisher as a central piece.  If you're really out to make them lose all of their defenses, you need her to do some work.  So you could pair her with Artful Dodge to slide on through their defenses for a hit (and causing them to drop their favorite creature).  You could also work with Wingcrafter to give Ashling flight to make it that much more threatening.

5) For the spells you have, you really don't need that much counter magic.  To the extent you have those in there, you should increase the number of spells up from one to two or three.  So, more specifically, I'd lose the Unsummon, Oppressive Will, Remove Soul, Mana Leak (I know that's MTG blasphemy) and Snakeform.  You could then add more Boomerang.  Sitting with four Counterspell and four Cancel should be sufficient to disrupt anyone's plans, further, unlike Mana Leak those two can't simply be paid for to negate.

7) Bone Splinters works as long as you're ready/willing to lose a creature too.  That's fine if you want to work with Raise Dead or Gravedigger.  If that's the case, I'd use something like Tragic Slip over the normal black removal spells, as it doesn't have the "nonblack" or "nonartifact" requirements those do.

Anyway, the resulting deck would look something like this:

http://deckbox.org/sets/182559

The best part, nothing I added is more than $0.50 with a TOTAL deck value of less than $20.

As always, these are just suggestions, but I'd wager you could get some pretty consistent play out of this and it would be frustrating as hell to play against wink.  Best of luck!

Re: [Opinions] Blue cancel and Morph

I changed it around a bit, could you look into that?
http://deckbox.org/sets/182573
(copyception!)

I also made a new deck, revolving around enchantments:
http://deckbox.org/sets/182878

Re: [Opinions] Blue cancel and Morph

The revised version of the creature removal deck looks solid.

For Enchant This, it looks good in general, but I can see where a few edits might be warranted. 

First, you only have 12 creatures, what happens if your creatures get blown up?  To that end, Asceticism would work wonders here.  It still generates +1/+1 for the Yavimaya Enchantress and +2/+2 for Ancestral Mask while ensuring that your creatures don't get blasted by simple removal spells.

Second, given that so many of your pumping enchantments are based on how many forests you have in play, you need some means by which to get forests out faster.  I'm thinking Rites of Flourishing as it will speed up the game, let you put two (or more if you have more than one out) lands down per turn and will just help speed the game up for you.

Third, I would recommend Verduran Enchantress as she will help you draw more cards.  Remember that victories can come from the degree to which you're able to keep cards coming into your hand while your opponents are sitting there top-decked.

Fourth, to speed things up a bit more, I'd suggest putting Bear Umbra into the mix.  The beauty there is that when a creature with it attacks, it untaps all your mana, meaning that you can play all you want on the front end, attack, and then dump more out after combat.  When paired with the Verduran Enchantress, that would work wonders.

Lastly, as with most mono-green decks, you need some sort of a way to make the kill when they have a sizable defense.  If you presume for a moment that Aura Gnarlid is countered or killed all four times, then what?  The other creatures are blockable without too much trouble unless you put Rancor on them.  To that end, why not throw Lure in?  It will help divert the enemy's blockers while your other creatures waltz their way in to make the kill.

So how can you include all these cards and still stay around 60 cards?  First, don't be afraid to step up to 65 cards if need be, as 24 land should be sufficient (given that nothing costs more than five to play).  Also, if you knock your counts down to three of each, you'll generate some room to add the new cards.

I hope that works out for you.  Again, most of what I've suggested is above $0.50 per card, so you should be able to swing them pretty easily.  (I think Asceticism is the only one worth more than that, and one or two of them would be sufficient).