Zedd's M:tG decks - The Johnny is strong with this one!

[Zeddicuus]

Well, due to renovations of my newly acquired house, I didn't get a chance to finish that Vizzerdrix deck yet.

However, I have managed to find a random assortment of cards that have effects based on CMC from your Library or in Play, or effects based on Power or Toughness.

I could put in Fling or Reckless Abandon I suppose, but I already made a deck like that so I don't want them in this one.

I'll sort through that if I get time this weekend and post what I've picked out.

In the meantime, take a gander at the deck above! That's about all I have right now for new stuff.

[Zeddicuus]

OK! I finished it! Here is the Vizzerdrix/Trained Orgg deck I was talking about earlier.

Please note this deck is pretty much a stitastic Casual deck that was built because I had the cards. So if anyone is going to post saying "LOLZ Teh deck suxors", save your finger energy.

Of course, constructive criticism, comments and suggestions are always appreciated.


I didn't end up using my Spawnbrokers, much to my chagrin. I do believe the deck turned out alright and is, in fact, decently fun to play providing your opponent isn't using anything ridiculously overpowered. I haven't had much of a chance to test it yet besides three games and it won all three.

Lands: 21

1x Crumbling Necropolis
2x Crosis Catacoms
9x Mountain
9x Island

Creatures: 20

4x Vizzerdrix ( 7 CMC)
2x Trained Orgg ( 7 CMC) (Still trying to find out where my third one went)
3x Aetherplasm (4 CMC)
3x Grinning Ignus (3 CMC)
2x Shaleskin Bruiser ( 7 CMC)
2x Macetail Hystrodon ( 7 CMC)
2x Riptide Shapeshifter (5 CMC)
1x Goblin Machinist (5 CMC)
1x Riptide Mangler (2 CMC)

Artifacts: 6

4x Izzet Signet (2 CMC)
2x Blight Sickle (2 CMC)

Enchantments: 4

2x Knollspine Invocation (3 CMC)
2x Dragon Wings (2 CMC)

Instants/ Sorceries: 9

2x Riddle of Lightning (5 CMC)
2x Torrent of Fire (5 CMC)
2x Jilt (2 CMC)
2x Erratic Explosion (3 CMC)
1x Soulblast (6 CMC)

Total Deck Size: 60

Well now. The deck might look a bit odd. It has a lot of high casting spells (Spell Cost => 5 CMC) which should take forever to get going. Fortunately that isn't always the case. The Izzet Signets and the Grinning Ignus have a huge help to this deck (Thanks Lia for reminding me of the Ignus! I might have missed it otherwise). Typically I can get the higher cost spells going off about turn 4 or so instead of the turn 6-7 otherwise needed.

Anyways!

Creatures like Aetherplasm and Riptide Shapeshifter help get the high CMC Creatures out decently fast considering the meta in my area likes to attack frequently. Quick spells to play for potential high damage is stuff like Erratic Explosion and Riddle of Lightning. Torrent of Fire and Soulblast really shine once I start dropping those huge costs Beasts.

Why Beasts?

One reason was that Vizzerdrix and Trained Orgg are both Beasts. Works good with the Shaleskin as he gets bigger when more beasts attack. Particularly good when I can Soulblast after the attack if enough creatures are around to make the attempt worthwhile. Risky, but hey it's a game so you gotta take risks, right?

Was going to toss in Aether Charge at one point as well, but not quite enough Beasts to make it feasible.

Knollspine is for when you get those high CMC goodies and the opponent has too many creatures out to make an attack work. Use the enchantment and hit them anyways.

I probably should put 4 Jilt in there, but I went with only 2 for now to see if they're worth the slots. So far they've proven decently valuable, but with only 3 games under its belt it's hard to say yet.

The deck caught the opponent off guard for the first game. This is not my normal playing style so it really confused him at first and he was unsure as to what to do.

When he saw Vizzerdrix enter play, he laughed at me. He laughed pretty damn hard. He had some Creature that was out that was quite a bit bigger so he wasn't worried.

Jilted his creature, attacked with the Vizzerdrix then used Torrent of Fire.

He wasn't laughing after that, hahaha.

Oh, and I know, I know! Needs Fire and Ice, but alas I gave mine to a friend that lost his collection and had to start from scratch! He moved and the box with all his cards was lost in the move! I figured I'd be nice and give him some stuff to try to help him rebuild.

So, there it is. There's the Vizzerdrix/Orgg deck I came up with so far. I'm still watching my other cards for something that might work good.

Again, comments and suggestions much appreciated!

*EDIT* Yowzers! I currently have 12 decks! Bloody insane! I swear I'll have to go on a rampage and strip down a bunch of them to free up a load of stuff for new decks!

Anyone else carry around more decks than is sane? I saw one guy that used to go around with 30, which was nuts.

[epiclevelwarrior]

For Beasts, Bloodstoke Howler and Thunder of Hooves are possible plays.

The howler might fit in the Hystrodon's slots. It doesn't cost quite as much but it unmorphs for a nice beast boost. Also serves as an early creature for mana screw/ similar purposes.

Thunder of Hooves is an overcosted Pyroclasm or inflexible Earthquake depending on how you look at it. Still your creatures are unlike to die to it and it's very flavourful.

You probably don't have them but Coalition Relic would seem to serve your purposes better than Izzet Signet. Showing up on turn 3 doesn't seem like a problem and the 2 mana the relic can produce every other turn looks like it would be appreciated.

For the life of me I can't figure out why Blight Sickle is in there. Do you really care that much about wither and +1/+0?

On decks: I currently have 14 assembled and in my card bag. Of those 2 are old standard decks (Rav/TS/CS/9th) that I just haven't bothered to take apart and one is a 60 artifact deck thrown together out of my random commons that I may or may not upgrade with Cranial Platings, Mycosynth Golems, Arcbound Crushers and such nonsense one day.

The other 11 are casual and or multiplayer decks of various stripes.

I have a sort of plan to eventually be able to field a deck of every color and two color combination (and depending on when you ask me possibly every 3 color combination and a 5 color deck and a colorless deck. I don't ever expect to get to nephilim colors but it could happen) but thus far I'm not quite briefcase level.

The main reason I want to have quite so many decks is that I tend to provide decks for at least 2 players per game in my current meta and often more. The other guys do build their own decks but many of them are in early stages and most only have one or two so there's usually at least one game per session where its 3 or 4 of my decks at the same table.

[Zeddicuus]

epiclevelwarrior

You probably don't have them but Coalition Relic would seem to serve your purposes better than Izzet Signet. Showing up on turn 3 doesn't seem like a problem and the 2 mana the relic can produce every other turn looks like it would be appreciated.

For the life of me I can't figure out why Blight Sickle is in there. Do you really care that much about wither and +1/+0?

The Blight Sickle originally ended up in the deck when I was considering how the deck would do in Multiplayer. I figured I could equip it and use it to make my opponent's critters smaller, which might keeep them away from me so I can get things rolling.

I haven't tested the deck in multiplayer but hope to sometime soon to see if they're worthwhile. If not, I can always replace them. I have Thunder of Hooves. That or Dragon Breath might be interesting, though Thunder of Hooves or Aether Charge is more to the flavour of the deck.

I want to get Coalition Relic to replace the Signets in most of my decks. I haven't gone to a larger city center yet that sells singles though. But I will get some, oh yes. The Relic works way better than the Signets.

on the deck topic: I've been finding myself having to lend out decks as well lately. Some of the players either forget to grab their cards (Try to figure that one out. I'm having a hard time of it) or they find the new deck they brought isn't holding up. It's always interesting to see what another person does with your deck. I sometimes see interesting, unforeseen combos lending decks out.

Typically there are only 5 of the 12 decks I have I use a lot, 5 I use a decent amount of the time, and 2 I rarely use. The one deck is too cheesy for play, and only works well in duels.

[epiclevelwarrior]

My decks tend to get tiered play as well.

Of the two old standard decks one of them (scryb n' force) sucks in multiplayer and I mainly break out for the occasional duel and the other (pickles) gets played a little in multiplayer but has an unfortunate tendency to turn the game to suck when the brine elemental lock goes up.

Then there's the goblin deck that tends to dominate 3 player games (consecutive kills from 20 life on turn 4 and 5) and die horribly in larger games.

[Zeddicuus]

Agh, early morning shifts suck. Finally I can get back to this!

Personally I dislike tiering my decks like that. There are some I love playing. A lot. But the other players...they don't like playing against them. Due to politics, I'm forced to cut back on play of certain decks or scrap them outright.

I'm told I don't play nice some days. I thought that was how you were supposed to play? Hell, I'm not even using landkill or counterspells!


Random tangeant here:

This isn't a decklist, but it's my thread and I'll post it anyways. But here's the quiz:

VS.

Considering the talk of Tri-coloured lands in the Card of the Day topic:

Which of these would you consider better and why? The Pro of these lands is the fact they make three different colours. The con is the slight loss of momentum.

On the Lair side, you return a land to your hand. The cool thing is you can tap that land for the mana before you do it, then use the Lair. That's still 4 mana on turn 4. The downside is the next turn you have to play that land again, leaving you with 4 mana available on turn 5.

On the Tapland side, it just comes into play without returning anything. That is pretty cool as you might just draw a land next turn. However, it still leaves you with only 3 mana on turn 4. IF you draw that land next turn though, you have 5 mana on turn 5.

So, one gives the Mana now and leaves you high and dry next turn. One leaves you high and dry this turn and gives you the mana next turn.

To be honest I like both a lot, but I find myself leaning towards the Lairs. I want the mana and I want it NOW. I'm not always patient, and typically most of my decks can run on later loss of tempo without much in bad results. So I go with the Lairs.

What about other folk? Which do you prefer and why?

[epiclevelwarrior]

I'd prefer to play my decks equally as well but some of them either don't lend themselves to multiplayer at all or, like you said, tend to upset the rest of the table.

On Lairs vs 3 color taps I vastly prefer the taps.

Lairs can easily end you up with unplayable hands (4 Savage Land is actually a decently playable hand in a slower deck while 4 Daarigaz's will always be a mulligan) or early game discards. I'd pretty much only play them in a 3 color deck that really needed 3 color fixing and already had a 4 count of the relevant tap.

They also fill the slots I'd rather put Rav Karoos in. Those are risky like the lairs but at least they offer an extra effective mana for your trouble.

I was really surprised the first time I saw a 3 color tapland as they're strictly better than 2 color allied taps which have seen plenty of casual play and some tournement play in metas with high color discipline for years.

I run taps in 2 color decks when I need enemy pair fixing. I wouldn't dream of doing that with Lairs (mostly because Rav Karoos are just better but that says something itself).

Of course the real winner for 3 color multi land is Murmuring Bosk. The basic type opens so many fixing options it's well worth the pain on the other two colors.

[LiaThistle]

I prefer the tap, because if I open with that land in hand, then I'm going to play it the first turn I don't need the mana from it - which, in mulitplayer, is often the first turn. As Epic said, you can't play a lair then. In a duel, it depends on the opening hand - if I have no one cost cards, I'll gladly play a tapland then. If I have some two cost cards but no three cost, it hits turn three. It just depends on how the hand plays.

But I don't tend to use bounce lands of any kind, because a tap tempo can be adjusted or ignored - a bounce tempo often can't.

[epiclevelwarrior]

Bounce tempo loss often isn't that hard to ignore using karoos. You just have to use the same amount of mana two turns in a row. You can't ignore it entirely as you often can taps but minimising it is doable.

My problem with bounce lands is that when it doesn't work out the worst that will happen with a tap land is you miss a drop. With a bounce you can end up with 8 cards in hand and lose tangible advantage.

I find the karoos are often worth the risk because you gain an effective mana in the late game and that matters in multiplayer. They also have fun synergy with the various W mana fixing cards that require you to have fewer lands in play than an opponent.

[Zeddicuus]

The points you two brought up for the Taplands are ones I've come up with myself about them. It's why I find it hard to choose which I'd put in if I had more taplands. I've never had four Lairs in my hand at once, but yes that would definitely suck. I never thought of that happening so that definitely makes me reconsider how good taplands can be.

Karoos are indeed good in multiplayer because of the slower game, but they're not so hot in duels. Lately I've been trying to tune some of my new decks to be more viable as duel decks as well because I play them at work on my breaks sometimes hahaha.

Thanks for the comments you two, much appreciated. Too bad more people didn't get in on it. But hey, the ones responding here have good reasoning to back them up which is awesome.

[LiaThistle]

epiclevelwarrior

I find the karoos are often worth the risk because you gain an effective mana in the late game and that matters in multiplayer. They also have fun synergy with the various W mana fixing cards that require you to have fewer lands in play than an opponent.

If I am running a deck that uses cards like that, then I try to make sure my deck can run off of fewer lands. Something like my recent Legacy pet project:

Too Much Cool Stuff

Artifacts - 8
1 Crucible of Worlds
2 Cursed Scroll
1 Meekstone
1 Pithing Needle
2 Sensei's Divining Top
1 Trip Noose

Artifact Creatures - 2
2 Phyrexian Ironfoot

Enchantments - 6
2 Counterbalance
2 Porphyry Nodes
2 Trade Routes

Instants - 24
3 Brainstorm
4 Daze
1 Echoing Truth
3 Enlightened Tutor
4 Force of Will
2 Predict
3 Swords to Plowshares
4 Tithe

Basic Lands - 5
3 Snowy Island
2 Snowy Plains

Lands - 15
2 Academy Ruins
3 Flooded Strand
3 Hallowed Fountain
1 Kjeldoran Outpost
4 Tundra
2 Wasteland

SB:
4 Abeyance
1 Blue Elemental Blast
2 Hydroblast
1 Porphyry Nodes
3 Sacred Ground
4 Wheel of Sun and Moon

This deck wins more often than it looks like it should. The name emerged from Jack Dullahan and I agreeing that the deck looked like it was trying to do "too much cool stuff."

As can be seen, there's a lot of resource manipulation - Dazes and Trade Routes, as well as the Outpost, can drop my land count to lower than my opponent. The Forces and the Dazes are also "free" spells, largely ignoring my available mana. Most other spells only cost 1-2, so I can keep around 80% of my opening hands and be perfectly fine. As such, Tithes are almost always a 2 land advantage, and the Trade Routes can turn those into two new cards. In fact, the deck usually runs on only two mana until around turns 5-6.

[Zeddicuus]

No deck to post, just something weird.

I bought a Conflux Fatpack today. Out of the eight packs, I got 5 different rares, while the remaining rares are duplicates of three of them.

What are the odds of getting 2 mythics in a fatpack? how about the fact those mythics are duplicates. And they're Progenitus? sweatdrop

How the Hell am I going to cast these things with such a high CMC? I'll have to build a deck that uses five colours to find out now. Should prove interesting. Or find ways to cheat them in. I have a good amount of that which isn't revival.

The other duplicates were Gwafa and Soul's Majesty. I also got a Sceptre of Dominance and Rakka Mar. Rakka Mar I can see a few uses for in several decks so she'll be cool. Sceptre of Dominance will also be handy I'm sure. Sou's Majesty go in my Big Fatty Deck. Gwafa...I'll have to think on Gwafa.

I got quite a few commons/uncommons that caught my eye, including one Path to Exile, one Exploding Borders, two Ruptured Spires and a few others.

It should be fairly easy to make a five coloured deck. Progenitus and Cromat will be best friends.

Overall, I'm happy with my purchase. This is the first stuff I bought of Conflux. I've been saving money and the store kept selling out before I could get there after work. Damn late shifts.

Too bad I couldn't have gotten two Maelstrom Angels though. That'd have rocked.

[Zeddicuus]

Alright, I figured out the odds of getting two progenitus in a single fatpack. The odds are real-frickin'-slim is what they are.

Anyways, since I ended up with this mana sucking monstrosity twice over, I figured I might as well use him.

So, I've been trying to figure out various means to get him into play for cheaper. Because I'm a cheap b*****d.

I'm making the deck multicoloured so I can handle all kinds of ways. So far I have in a pile of cardboard by my desk:

3x Dragon Arch
1x Quicksilver Amulet
1x Elvish Piper
1x Dream Hall
3x aetherplasm
2x Mirari's Wake (Help with mana woes for this guy)
1x Brilliant Ultimatum (rather sketchy if this would work)
1x Windbrisk Heights(need a way to cheat him to the top 3 cards for this)


I'm thinking moar land fetch would be handy to get the colours. I've also been checking out a means to make this an all multicoloured deck to make the dragon arches more useful. But I'll worry about that later.

Any other means I can have to cheat this guy in? I don't want to focus the deck just around him. I have other creatures/spells to throw in of course, including all 10 Invasion/Planar Chaos Legendary Dragons, Cromat, and a slew of other spells like Death Grasp to toss in to make things go whee.

I'm just not sure where I want to start yet, so I figured I'd see how many ways to cheat Progenitus into existence and see what I have that works around that.

Any ideas from anyone?

[LiaThistle]

If you're trying to cheat him into play, there's always Sneak Attack and Show and Tell. And, don't forget Dramatic Entrance.

[Zeddicuus]

oooh Show and Tell is a neat one! I like that one.

Dramatic Entrance I forgot all about. I think a couple friends have those up for trade I can score of them reasonably well, heheh. Hell, I think I have one I forgot all about :sweat

Sneak Attack I think I'll avoid though, as there's a player here who netdecked Sneak Attack from somewhere online and bought all the cards to go in the deck listed that he found. That and it won't work too well in Multiplayer, but would be good for duels that's for sure.

I'm still digging through to see what kind of weird combos I can figure out to pull the same stunts. I haven't found much yet, but I'll keep checking it out. Too bad his CMC 10 is all coloured mana, I have An Urza's Filter that would have worked...oh well.

Thanks for the suggestions Lia! I'll be sure to post a deck list when I get something more concrete going.