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

[Zeddicuus]

I'll have to check out what I can buy/trade for. With such a creature heavy deck that is tribal though, more Urza's Incubators would make fine substitutes but the mana acceleration would be more practical. Thran Dynamo might be a good one too.

I've done a search but I can only see a Worn Powerstone that matches the 3 cost for 2 colourless mana. Am I missing any I'm not aware of? Coalition Relic can do it, but only once every 2 turns, which would be enough when combined with the Incubators. Definitely going to get those relics, they're a good mana accelerator for most decks.

While I'd like to keep the Unhinged lands in, doing so could hinder the deck which isn't fun. I could easily put in four Godless Shrines once I buy some in place of some Swamps to ease the coloured mana problem. I just like how snazzy the deck looks in the Unhinged basics. I also like people's reactions when they see that as you don't see those lands that often. It seems to throw most people off guard for some reason which gives me a slight advantage.

I'm considering replacing the remaining Swamps with the Arcane Sancum. I've used other taplands such such as the Elfhame Palace in the exact manner you described in higher cost G/W deck and it does work decently.

I'll definitely make the changes listed that I can do now though. So those will be:

-2 Serra Advocates
+1 Pristine Angel
+1 Platinum Angel
-4 Dark Rituals
+4 Orzhov Signets
-2 Unmakes
+2 Oblivion Ring

Will end up buying the mana accelerators and the lands talked about the next time I go to the card shop. The closest is 300km away so it'll be a couple months yet before I need to go that way.

How do those changes sound in total? It looks to me like it could do quite a bit of help for removal and efficiency and mana stability, while only causing a very minor potential slowdown in the deck, which is a fair trade-off.

[epiclevelwarrior]

Yeah, worn powerstone produces colorless. It's accel but not fixing.

Incubator would be pretty much strictly better than WPS but I figured it was too expensive to suggest.

Relic is every other turn (or +1 every turn) but that should be enough.

Those changes look like a solid plan to me. Definitely keep an eye on the signets vs rituals and make sure you like the way things work.

The other thing I might take an interest in is whether you need more removal.

That's a pretty ugly drive to a card shop. Pretty impressive to keep a meta going with little local support.

[Zeddicuus]

No doubt it's an ugly drive, heheh. Most of us just buy boosters and work from there. Most of the players rarely trade which is a pain, so you really have to be quite capable in deck building and creativity to be able to build something that works.

I'm one of two that end up going to a shop occasionally, but I don't drive that far just to go to one of course. I have family in that city so I try to hit the shop if I get a chance to trade any chase rares I got from the boosters that I don't like aka Tezzeret and Sliver Queen as the latest examples.

I don't think Incubators go for that much where I go. They play pretty much only Standard, so anything rotated out tends to go down a decent amount. I can probably score the Coalition Relics easily as well, and they'd suit the deck well enough even with just the +2 mana every other turn. That's about all I'd need.

As for removal, I've been debating that. I only have a couple things in there to handle that. I could just remove the advocated to put in 2 more Oblivion Rings instead to increase removal without affecting the deck that much. So far extra removal hasn't been that necessary though so I will try it with the list of changes I made first and see how it goes.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm hoping to try the changes out this weekend with the group and see how much of a difference they make. have any more that could prove beneficial? I find this stuff helpful for planning for future decks to help see things I may have overlooked previously.

[Zeddicuus]

Alright, this has nothing to do with any current decks I have posted and/or constructed, nor past decks.

This is just because I finally got around to checking out the visual spoiler for Conflux and, instead of spamming that thread with a pointless picture that got me pumped, I'm spamming it here.

Because it's my thread and I can do that with no repercussions whatsoever. Muahahaha.



Damn that is some nice artwork. I want this Angel for my collection if only for that reason alone. I never plan to make a five colour Angel deck. But if I was making a Rainbow deck I'd sure as Hell throw at least one in there.

Gives me an idea. I do have some Dragon Arches, some Quick Silver Amulets...I have the Planar Chaos and Invasion Legendary Dragons...hmm...Signets...

But that art is just awesome in my opinion. I'll have to get one to add to my Angel portfolio.

Another thing. I'm hoping to win a bid on ebay in the next couple days for an Angel card. Nothing spectacular, but my wife said I should spoil myself and buy a card I normally wouldn't buy for my Angel collection. So I bid on a mint condition foiled Legions Akroma, Angel of Wrath. If I'm lucky, I should know by Sunday if I won or not.

I'd sooner use a site like Card Shark, but the current sellers of foil Akroma won't send to Canada. Sucks to be me in that category today apparently.

Anyways, I'll probably post over the weekend with another older deck I believe could use tweaking that does play nice. I just want to make it play better, heheh.

I'll probably post another one of those "I made this because I was bored" decks later as well. Probably over the weekend.

But yeah, that is some awesome art going into Conflux!

[Zeddicuus]

I'm so awesome I'm going to triple post!

Anyways, here's another deck that is a proven favourite of mine. It's designed for Multiplayer Casual Free-For-All and seems to do rather well.

Yeah, I know I have a bad habit of only putting 20 lands in my decks. I really should up those to about 22-24 but being in Multiplayer only you have a couple extra turns to get the ball rolling. I also tend to play more mana acceleration if convenient. So far it works. Also, some people in my playgroup get a bit bitchy if your decks play too good against theirs. Damn politics.

Deck Title: Sacrolings

Land: 20

2x Golgari Rotfarm (Plan to replace them with Overgrown Tombs)
1x Tainted Wood
7x Swamp
10x Forest

Creatures: 24

2x Savra, Queen of the Golgari
2x Verdeloth the Ancient (Yes, someone is silly enough to actually use this mana hog)
2x Nemata, Grove Guardian
1x Rhys the Redeemed
1x Patron of the Orochi (Iwant to replace with Seedborn Muse)
1x Balthor the Defiled
3x Birds of Paradise
3x Fallen Angel
2x Golgari Guildmage
2x Golgari Rotwurm
2x Nullmage Shepherd
1x Genesis
1x Dowsing Shaman
1x Painter's Servant

Artifacts: 4

1x Slate of Ancestry
1x Skullclamp
1x Phyrexian Altar
1x Ashnod's Altar

Enchantments: 9

2x Phyrexian Arena
2x Earthcraft
1x Yawgmoth's Bargain
1x Malevolent Awakening
1x Heartbeat of Spring
1x Gravepact
1x Pernicious Deed

Instants: 3

3x Putrefy

Total Deck Size: 60

This is a deck I really enjoy playing a lot as there is just so much it can do in a multiplayer game. It keeps me continually entertained and thinking with all the options available.

On its most basic level, it's designed to generate tokens and sac them to do a variety of things. I can gain life, cause opponents to sacrifice creatures, draw cards, drain opponents of life, or generate mana through this creature sacrificing.

Beyond that, the deck can have crazily pumped flying creatures to hit hard with, can swarm the opponent with weenies, can put creatures cards back to my hand fairly easily.

There's even a controlled infinite loop in here, if I feel like being a cheesy b*****d to pull a cheap win, and it didn't take any extra card slots to put in here. Yay me!

This deck can do a lot more though. I find the cards all blend very well together and I rarely have no way out of most situations I commonly see in my playgroup.

Like my Angel deck, all suggestions and comments are heavily scrutinized and considered to the fullest extent not to just how it can improve over one card, but how it can affect all the other cards in the deck.

Comments, suggestions, criticism etc are all highly valued and appreciated of course. Currently I'm kind of stumped on what I could do to make it more efficient (with the exception of Moar Dual Lands). This is a deck that, like my Angel deck, I know I will most likely never dismantle, only tweak and alter somewhat as time goes by. I just find it too fun to take apart completely.

But again, any suggestions or comments are very much appreciated.

[epiclevelwarrior]

I've already said most of what I think about this deck but a few more random things (I still deeply admire your ability to build a spontaneous and interesting deck. I am completely incappable of that kind of deck building):

I wouldn't drop the Rot-Farms even if/when you do get Tombs. RFs are a good way to offset your low land count since you get an extra effective mana out of them.

I've become somthing of an apologist for the SoA taps but Savage Lands is a G/B tap land. Not OT but still maybe worth some slots even if you don't increase the land count.

On the rest: Painter's Servant seems an odd choice. The only advantage I can see off hand is in turning everything green for your patron and I wouldn't be inclined to do that since you would then untap everyone's creatures. If you want to do that Awakening (4 mana enchantment w/ Seedborn effect for everyone) would work rather better.

Actually, there's also the Balthor and turning everything black trick but that seems to have similar issues.

[LiaThistle]

I thought it was in there so Savra could sac b/g critters instead of the traditionally green saprolings.

[epiclevelwarrior]

I thought I'd missed somthing. I wondered about savra too. I'm still not completely solid on it but alright.

Perhaps more servants or some darkest hour and some Creakwood Liege.

Then if you're reliably turning everything black maybe Compost or Elephant Grass or Nantuko Blightcutter or Nature's Wrath or Pygmy Kavu.

[Zeddicuus]

Well, the compliment on my deck building was utterly unexpected. redface

Here I thought my decks were not all that well received here due to their Casual tendencies. Heh. Learn new things everyday we do. It's good to know people find them interesting to read about.

The Savage Lands are a great idea. I don't have any in yet as I haven't managed to get a hold of any, but they're something else I've been considering as well. The only problem I have with them and Overgrown Tomb is it can potentially make Earthcraft less effective. But I bet they're cheap so it'll be good to get a few anyways.

And Painter's Servant seems like an odd choice, I know. I was hesitant to put it in for it relies solely on Savra to be in play to make it truly effective. It's kind of nice for Balthor, and so far it hasn't backfired on me yet doing that. Probably will soon though, only a matter of time. I never even considered it for the Patron as most of my creatures are Green anyways so there was no need to worry about it in such a fashion. Some days I'm shallow minded.

Creakwood Liege is a grand idea. I somehow missed seeing that in the cardlists for Eventide. Silly me. They're decently priced too and only cost 4CMC. Very nice.

As for Compost, Elephant Grass, etc. etc. I really don't want to come to rely on any specific card in this deck too much. Such conditional cards pretty much rely on Painter Servant to be truly effective. I can't really explain why, call it an odd method of deckbuilding I guess. It looks like that would work very well, but it would hamper down the fun the other players could have if they can't easily play cards or attack. Bogs down a game way too much and it gets boring to me.

As I said, I'd have to boil that part down to personal preference/odd deckbuilding or playstyle I suppose.

There was also that new guy, mycoloth that I think would do well in this deck, providing Verdeloth and Nemata have done their jobs properly. Cost is reasonable at 5CMC too. The only issue is the Devour. Of course, since those creatures are Sac'd, Savra's ability comes into play and could make an interesting combination should Painter Servant still be out...

[epiclevelwarrior]

Zeddicus

Well, the compliment on my deck building was utterly unexpected.

Here I thought my decks were not all that well received here due to their Casual tendencies. Heh. Learn new things everyday we do. It's good to know people find them interesting to read about.

I'm pretty much a casual player as far as constructed goes and I've never been good at the "lots of single cards centered around a theme that hang together while providing a diverse play experience" thing. I tend to focus my decks obsessively. Even when I try to do somthing fun and interesting I end up with a deck that does one fun and interesting thing (at least it was interesting before I got my hands on it) in an overly reliable a**l retentive manner.

So, yeah, I like to see people's casual decks tuned for fun and interesting games.

Zeddicus

As for Compost, Elephant Grass, etc. etc. I really don't want to come to rely on any specific card in this deck too much. Such conditional cards pretty much rely on Painter Servant to be truly effective. I can't really explain why, call it an odd method of deckbuilding I guess. It looks like that would work very well, but it would hamper down the fun the other players could have if they can't easily play cards or attack. Bogs down a game way too much and it gets boring to me.

I can understand that. Also many of those cards are fairly useless without the everything is black effects. However, Elephant Grass in particular has two things to recomend it. First, it works as a propaganda on all creatures so even if you don't pull a servant it's a decent card. More importantly for your purposes it only prevents creatures from attacking you. So in multiplayer it doesn't turn off anyone's deck. It just makes sure they attack someone you want dead.

Also, I suggested Darkest Hour as a potential addition to PS. It will work for everything save Balthor and if it can't attack or block t's also harder to remove.

Mycoloth has never been one of my favourite cards. It basically has a giant "kill me and gain card advantage!" sign on it for the first turn after you play it. In your deck, though, the sacrifice synergy might be enough to push it over the edge.

I'd be inclined not to ditch your whole board to it, though. Just ditch 3 or 4 saps. That's enough to give you a strong number of tokens every turn but few enough in comparison to the rest of your board (hopefully) that all your little green eggs are not in one basket.

[LiaThistle]

Painter's Servant just has a lot that can be done. Reap, for example, is a rather nasty way to generate stupid card drawing while a PS is in play. Lifeforce is another nasty little trick that makes people go "buuuuuh?" Both, however, have a horrid reliance on the PS, making them horrible additions to what is a tight theme.

[Zeddicuus]

Replacing Painter Servant with Darkest Hour would work pretty good, but my Saprolings would no longer be green so I could not take advantage of Savra's abilities. It's a good alternative to consider though, that's for sure.

As to deckbuilding, I tend to put as many copies of a card into the deck as suit the strategy. Sometimes I find having four copies causes constrictions for me. I like a diverse running deck that has two or more main strategies to it that can intertwine, I find it makes the deck harder to slow down for the majority of players here. The only problem is I don't always have a lot of multiple copies of some cards.

Creativity helps ensure a deck that has only singles or doubles can still coherently run by being sure the deck does not rely on a single specific card. I've seen too many decks fail utterly because Player A could not get a hold of Card B. Without that Card B his deck just doesn't work at all.

I strive to make sure my decks don't fall into that choke hold. I tend to use a lot of synergy in my deck design, ensuring the majority of cards can blend with the other cards in any kind of way I need to keep myself in the game.

The deck I call Sacroling is one of my prize decks for that reason. In its design it basically sums up all of my philosophies and opinions on just how I play the game and build any and all my decks.

In all the decks I list, none of them have cards that absolutely MUST be played in order for me to win. It just helps (More or less depending on the situation) should I get that card to play.

The cards you two listed that would work awesome with a Painter Servant would make a mean, weird deck in itself though. It would be funny to see how the playgroup here responds to something like that.

I might have to try to get a hold of more Servants, hahaha.

Anyways, Sorry it took me so long to get back in here. I've been sick and working late nights for the last couple days which doesn't help keeping up around here.

Tomorrow I should have another deck to post up.

[Zeddicuus]

Alright, here's that deck I promised nearly a week ago.

Better late than never, no?

Aaaaaanyways, there's a bit of a story behind this reason this deck exists.

I was out with a couple friends playing Magic and one of them started commenting on my deck building, or a lack thereof in his opinion. He stated the only reason I win is because the decks I was using had a lot of rare cards. He never outright said it, but hinted at the fact that my strategies didn't matter since I had so many rare cards in a deck.

You have to admit, having an Angel deck that is playable does have a lot of gold coloured icons on those cards. Majority of Angels are Rare, so this was inevitable. But I digress.

I tried to convince these players that it's not the cards' rarity that matters, but how they're used. I pointed out how some of my other decks used commons or uncommons as a Win Condition but they didn't believe me. They were still in the firm belief that the decks were winning because a couple of them had a high Rare count.

So, it came down to a simple statement. They told me I couldn't build a deck that could win with a low Rare count. Finding this statement irritating, I told them to give me a set of limits on a deck and I'll build one that will trounce whatever they're currently running.

The limitations came up as this: I must use all colours except Blue in the deck, and can only have a maximum of two rares in the deck. There were no other limitations on anything I could do otherwise.

This is the deck I developed that made them eat their words.

Deck Title: Plague of Life

Lands: 18
1x Terramorphic Expanse
2x Mountain
2x Plains
3x Swamp
10x Forest

Creatures: 18

2x Essence Warden
3x Nantuko Husk
4x Fairhaven Elf
3x Civic Wayfinder
3x Netherborn Phalanx
3x Conclave Phalanx

Sorceries/Instants: 24

2x Plague of Vermin
4x Dirge of Dread
3x Primal Growth
4x Rite of Consumption
4x Reckless Abandon
3x Fling
2x Congregate
2x Heroes' Reunion

Deck Size: 60

Basic Strategies are thus:

-Land Fetch at a rapid pace with the creatures, then use stuff like Primal Growth to sac them to fetch even more lands to build up a large mana pool.

-Use Plague of Vermin and spend a crap load of Life Points to get a lot of tokens. You have several means to regain that life including: Having an Essence Warden in play when PoV resolves, using a Congregate or Conclave Phalanx after, or using Heroes' Reunion.

- If the opponent is foolish and spends a good amount of life to try to get more rats, they'll be doing you a favour if you have Essence Warden out or plan to play Congregate or Netherborn Phalanx. If they don't spend Life Points to make Rat tokens, they risk getting swarmed by tokens, or having a huge Nantuko Husk thrown at them. Or both. No one seems to like getting a bug slapped across their mouth.

-If you have to, you can use the Dirge of Dread to give your creatures Fear for some early hits if you need them, or use it with the Rat Tokens as a finisher.

You have a decent means of keeping your life total up, and several ways to attempt to keep your opponent's life total lower until you either get a PoV to go off or you can find a means to combo up with a Husk and Fling/Consumption. Worse case scenario you can always Reckless Abandon your stuff and deal a decent amount of damage that way as well.

The deck in total has 2 Rares, and I made sure they were craptastic Johnny cards just to rub it in more on the players that figured you need a lot of rares to win consistently. This deck held up against them pretty good, though admittedly they have returned to the game only within the last 4 months so they don't have a lot of high powered cards of any kind. They built some pretty decent decks with what they have, but they can't seem to cope with this deck easily. Maybe it's just the sheer stupidity of the deck that has them confused.

Card suggestions would be interesting, but I will not replace anything in this deck as it was built purely on a whim and to prove a point,so I will not seriously keep this deck for too long. Comments and opinions are always loved though.

I do find it satisfying to have used such awful rares to make this deck work. It really opened their eyes when they saw that a good Casual deck could indeed be built with such a low number of rares and a good amount of odd thinking.

[epiclevelwarrior]

I'm impressed that you managed to build a viable deck out of those components. It certainly disproves the "card quality is more important than deckbuilding" arguement.

I'd have gone with something much more boring. Probably a midrange rockish build looking somthing like this:

Orzhov Basilica x1
Boros Garrison x1
Rakdos Carnarium x1
Gemstone Mine x3
Vivid Grove x3
Forest x8
Swamp x2
Mountain x2
Plains x2
(23 Land)

Sakura Tribe Elder x4
Kitchen Finks x4
Flametongue Kavu x3
Wickerbough Elder x3
Dune-Brood Nephilim x2
(16 Creatures)

Oblivion Ring x3

Night's Whisper x3
Kodama's Reach x3
Harmonize x3

Putrefy x3
Jund Charm x3
Naya Charm x3
(21 Other Spell)

Interestingly (and by design) the rares are pretty definitely the least playable spells in the deck. The rest is solid utility of one sort or another.

[Zeddicuus]

Well, I've always said around my area there is no such thing as a bad card, just some cards are harder to abuse than others. I think this deck I posted proved that point to those players at least. Though I admit I do have to take a Dirge of Dread and a Rite of Consumption out for something else. I draw them far too often than I need to. not sure what to put in though. I think I have a couple Flame Tongues kicking around...They'd be a good idea...

That's a neat deck you have there, ELW. Looks like a good amount of that could stand around on its own and not rely on a specific card. Night's Whisper is an interesting card, I've never seen that one before. Might have to get a few of those.

Though with the rares being so hard to play, why have those specific ones in there? I can see how you have a chance of knocking off the opponent's creatures with Jund Charm but you'd also wipe out your own tokens/creatures.

Have you tried that deck out? How did it do?