General:
Zur the Enchanter
White Creatures:
Sunblast Angel
Sun Titan
Yosei, the Morning Star
Akroma, Angel of Wrath
Blue Creatures:
Mulldrifter
Body Double
Vesuvan Doppleganger
Keiga, the Tide Star
Consecrated Sphinx
Black Creatures:
Fleshbag Marauder
Dimir House Guard
Shriekmaw
Puppeteer Clique
Skithiryx, the Blight Dragon
Geth, Lord of the Vault
Grave Titan
Massacre Wurm
Multicolor Creatures:
Shadowmage Infiltrator
Angel of Despair
Robots:
Solemn Simulacrum
Duplicant
Zur-chantments:
Seal of Cleansing
Luminarch Ascension
Oblivion Ring
Ghostly Prison
Battle Mastery
Rhystic Study
Copy Enchantment
Archmage Ascension
Propaganda
Phyresis
Seal of Doom
Necromancy
Steel of the Godhead
Planeswalkers:
Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Venser, the Sojourner
Artifacts:
Sol Ring
Azorius Signet
Dimir Signet
Orzhov Signet
Coalition Relic
Obelisk of Esper
Mimic Vat
Skullclamp
Lightning Greaves
Sword of Fire and Ice
Sword of Light and Shadow
Other Spells:
Path to Exile
Swords to Plowshares
Wrath of God
Phyrexian Rebirth
Deep Analysis
Foresee
Bribery
Rite of Replication
Time Spiral
Demonic Tutor
Barter in Blood
Damnation
Profane Command
Black Sun's Zenith
Vindicate
Land:
36 assorted lands, including the holy trinity of Kor Haven, Volrath's Stronghold and Academy Ruins...
This is a Zur deck that is trying to subvert the stereotypical image that Zur decks usually have. Which is that they are unfair, dick-ish and unfun to play against. To that end I'm not running many of the ubiquitous staples of the archetype, namely Necropotence and anything to do with locking players out of the game (i.e. Stasis prisons, etc...).
I have also built the rest of the deck in the manner of a "Good Stuff" deck with lots of powerful tempting spells to provide alternatives to the rather linear strategy of "attack with Zur, get echantments".
Sometimes I might not even attack with Zur, if something in my hand is more relevant or powerful than any particular Enchantment I could fetch up... I also have to be careful with piling a bunch of Aura's onto Zur because spot-removal is very prevelant in my metagame.
In a 1v1 game, I can probably afford to go aggro as fast as possible, often going through my buff auras first to get an early lead on general damage, but in a multi-player game, it's going to be wiser to wait until late game, when everyone seems to be running out of steam before I try to piling on auras.
One thing I'm seriously considering for this deck is to add the Sovereigns of Lost Alara + Eldrazi Conscription. I realize that seems like a bit douche-baggy, but really it would be more like a mercy killing.. instead of dying a slow, painful death 1 point of General Damage at a time, it's more like a 1-shot kill (using Sovereigns to get Conscription, and Zur himself to get Battle Mastery) putting them to a swift and merciful end.
In the one game I played so far, I was able to effectively gain the upper hand and take control of the board, but once in control I had trouble putting the game away. It took forever to actually kill anyone, and that made it seem like the game was dragging out a bit too long for all of us. With a well-timed Conscription, I can end the game much quicker, which if it seems to my opponents like I'm assured to win anyway, that would be a mercy, would it not?
On the other hand, it's a powerful enough combo that it might even let me steal a win when I'm actually losing... while that seems like a great reason to do it to ME, my opponents might not feel the same way.
It's something I'll have to consider, but I'm going to play at least a couple more games before making any changes...
Showing posts with label not really that casual. Show all posts
Showing posts with label not really that casual. Show all posts
Monday, February 14, 2011
Sunday, August 8, 2010
From the Vault: Control
Decklist first, discussion after...
1 Morphling
1 Blinding Angel
4 Isochron Scepter
2 Mystical Tutor
2 Snap
3 Echoing Truth
3 Memory Lapse
4 Counterspell
3 Orim's Chant
3 Swords to Plowshares
1 Holy Day
3 Raise the Alarm
3 Wrath of God
1 City of Brass
2 Coastal Tower
3 Thalakos Lowland
2 Adarkar Wastes
5 Plains
9 Island
There are a lot of things I want to say about this deck...
I guess I'll start with the beginning. It was mid-Mirrodin block, and Darksteel was out, but not Fifth Dawn yet. My best friend Stephen had been away from the game for a couple years (he's the one who got me into it in the first place). I kept playing while he took an extended break, which included selling me his whole collection.
A few years later, I'd made some new friends, ironically not through Magic, but it turned out they played it! So we had fairly close-knit playgroup, as we all played Magic, but were friends outside of the game. Steven was part of the circle, too, and naturally got sucked back in.
I had enough cards at this point that I could build many decks at once, so he'd just ask me to build something in a certain color or something. He'd just play whatever I built for him, and that was fine for a while. Soon enough, though he wanted to actually build decks himself, and so he came over to peruse my ample collection.
He'd seen Isochron Scepter in action, but NONE of us new it's true power yet. And this is where I go on a tangent, so bear with me.
I had never heard the term "net deck" before. I didn't go online and look up ANYTHING on Magic. I read Inquest magazine, but every time they talked about tournament decks, I zoned out and flipped past it. I tell you this, so that you know: I'd never seen a single decklist from any other source with Isochron Scepter, except a really janky one that Inquest published as soon as the set was spoiled.
The one thing I DID know was that Orim's Chant was one of the absolute best possible spells to imprint on the Isochron Scepter. I had three of them, that I'd never used. I was aware that they were a high-dollar rare, because they were always in the case at Top Deck Games and usually had the highest price tag of anything in the case. So I knew they were good, and worth some dough, but I just didn't have any use for such a spell.
Then as Stephen sat in my floor, flipping binders, he decided he'd make a deck with Isochron Scepter in it. He expressed this desire to me, but didn't know what else he wanted in the deck. Oh, wait, except he'd also found my three copies of Treachery and wanted to use those too. He said he knew the two cards had little to do with one another but he asked if I could help him build a deck with both.
Well, I said that if he wanted to use the Scepter, he'd have to include white, as the best thing to pair with it was Orim's Chant. Okay, so between these three cards, we seemed to be firmly in W/B control territory. Which was something we both never really did. However, we'd both heard of control decks that played exactly ONE win condition: Morphling. That was also something we didn't really know much about. We knew such decks existed but had no clue how to build them OR play them.
So we set out to forge a new path for ourselves, and enter the uncharted realm of Control.
I pointed out to him a few more spells, but largely left it up to him to construct the deck, as getting him back in the saddle of deckbuilder was the whole point. I was just there as a helper in case he got stuck. In the end, after about an hour of thumbing through every blue or white card I owned, he'd built some 73 card monstrosity. But as I thumbed through the deck he proudly handed over, I realized that it wasn't a monstrosity, or at least not a bad deck.
It looked pretty solid, actually. It had a few issues, mainly the over-the-moon card count, but amazingly enough the main reason was that he'd gotten afraid of the whole 1-win-condition thing and threw in some extra creatures. Fine ones, such as Man-O-War, and some not-so-fine ones that I can't remember. I cut all the excess creatures, save one: Blinding Angel (Morphling was not an excess creature, it was the one that already belonged). Two creatures was still kinda scary for us, so I kept in the Raise the Alarms he'd thrown in. But it really felt right at this point. Cutting all the creatures, left nothing else but No Stick, Treachery, Bribery, and Wrath as the only non-imprintable spells. That seemed exciting to us.
I trimmed the fat from his deck, and I think I added the 3 Wrath of God but the rest of the deck was all Steven. He built it, I streamlined it down to 60, and we were off to the races!
God. The deck KILLED our poor, poor friends. At the time we thought it was great fun, being able to respond to virtually every single threat laid before us... It wasn't very fun for our opponents. It never lost a game.
Paul pretty much always played Elves. If Blinding Angel hit once, he was never going to attack again the rest of the game. Holy Day on the Stick was the same thing. Or, obviously, Chant. He could ONLY win by attacking, and had little artifact removal, which the ample countermagic was able to ward off.
Anne played... I don't remember what exactly, but I'm sure it had Blue, or Black, or both. I do remember a game against her where I got Memory Lapse on the Stick and she drew (and tried to cast) the same spell about 5 turns in a row. When I pointed out to her that she could break the cycle by NOT casting anything, she said "well, what's the point, then?!" and scooped up her deck.
Chad played a few different decks, but played against the deck piloted by Stephen maybe once, and piloted by me maybe once, and then refused to even shuffle up his deck if he knew we were playing this deck. I played it in a few 4 or 5 player free-for-all games. Counterspells should be terrible in multiplayer, but when you have near-infinite counter magic, it actually works like a charm. Bolstered by the Wraths and Bribery's it easily took down a whole table.
I think we had the deck together a month or more, but it only took about two nights of gaming before every single one of our friends learned to say "No" to the No-Stick. We literally could NOT get a game if we brought the deck out. Fortunately I had several decks built, so we still got our Magic fix, but the W/B deck was very clearly off limits.
Sad thing was, it was hands down the best deck either of us had ever built at that point. It's telling, I think, that THIS deck was banned from our table, but my Tolarian Academy deck stocked with Tinkers, Memnarch, Mycosinth Lattice and Karn was not. Oh they hated the Academy deck, to be sure. But they never expressly forbid me from playing it. I played it for months before they finally begged me to give it a rest. But the W/B No-Stick? I played 5 game at most with it ever, before it was officially blacklisted.
Steven played a few more games with it, as he was the lesser pilot, but only because he was just getting back into the game, and was still re-learning the ropes. But I honestly don't think even HE lost a game with it. Soon enough, even he couldn't play the deck.
Well, I guess that is the story of how I learned to play control decks, and Stephen built one of his masterpiece decks. And, between this and the Academy deck, I earned a reputation that I still haven't shaken to this day, despite not having cast an Isochron Scepter in over 5 years.
1 Morphling
1 Blinding Angel
4 Isochron Scepter
2 Mystical Tutor
2 Snap
3 Echoing Truth
3 Memory Lapse
4 Counterspell
3 Orim's Chant
3 Swords to Plowshares
1 Holy Day
3 Raise the Alarm
3 Wrath of God
1 City of Brass
2 Coastal Tower
3 Thalakos Lowland
2 Adarkar Wastes
5 Plains
9 Island
There are a lot of things I want to say about this deck...
I guess I'll start with the beginning. It was mid-Mirrodin block, and Darksteel was out, but not Fifth Dawn yet. My best friend Stephen had been away from the game for a couple years (he's the one who got me into it in the first place). I kept playing while he took an extended break, which included selling me his whole collection.
A few years later, I'd made some new friends, ironically not through Magic, but it turned out they played it! So we had fairly close-knit playgroup, as we all played Magic, but were friends outside of the game. Steven was part of the circle, too, and naturally got sucked back in.
I had enough cards at this point that I could build many decks at once, so he'd just ask me to build something in a certain color or something. He'd just play whatever I built for him, and that was fine for a while. Soon enough, though he wanted to actually build decks himself, and so he came over to peruse my ample collection.
He'd seen Isochron Scepter in action, but NONE of us new it's true power yet. And this is where I go on a tangent, so bear with me.
I had never heard the term "net deck" before. I didn't go online and look up ANYTHING on Magic. I read Inquest magazine, but every time they talked about tournament decks, I zoned out and flipped past it. I tell you this, so that you know: I'd never seen a single decklist from any other source with Isochron Scepter, except a really janky one that Inquest published as soon as the set was spoiled.
The one thing I DID know was that Orim's Chant was one of the absolute best possible spells to imprint on the Isochron Scepter. I had three of them, that I'd never used. I was aware that they were a high-dollar rare, because they were always in the case at Top Deck Games and usually had the highest price tag of anything in the case. So I knew they were good, and worth some dough, but I just didn't have any use for such a spell.
Then as Stephen sat in my floor, flipping binders, he decided he'd make a deck with Isochron Scepter in it. He expressed this desire to me, but didn't know what else he wanted in the deck. Oh, wait, except he'd also found my three copies of Treachery and wanted to use those too. He said he knew the two cards had little to do with one another but he asked if I could help him build a deck with both.
Well, I said that if he wanted to use the Scepter, he'd have to include white, as the best thing to pair with it was Orim's Chant. Okay, so between these three cards, we seemed to be firmly in W/B control territory. Which was something we both never really did. However, we'd both heard of control decks that played exactly ONE win condition: Morphling. That was also something we didn't really know much about. We knew such decks existed but had no clue how to build them OR play them.
So we set out to forge a new path for ourselves, and enter the uncharted realm of Control.
I pointed out to him a few more spells, but largely left it up to him to construct the deck, as getting him back in the saddle of deckbuilder was the whole point. I was just there as a helper in case he got stuck. In the end, after about an hour of thumbing through every blue or white card I owned, he'd built some 73 card monstrosity. But as I thumbed through the deck he proudly handed over, I realized that it wasn't a monstrosity, or at least not a bad deck.
It looked pretty solid, actually. It had a few issues, mainly the over-the-moon card count, but amazingly enough the main reason was that he'd gotten afraid of the whole 1-win-condition thing and threw in some extra creatures. Fine ones, such as Man-O-War, and some not-so-fine ones that I can't remember. I cut all the excess creatures, save one: Blinding Angel (Morphling was not an excess creature, it was the one that already belonged). Two creatures was still kinda scary for us, so I kept in the Raise the Alarms he'd thrown in. But it really felt right at this point. Cutting all the creatures, left nothing else but No Stick, Treachery, Bribery, and Wrath as the only non-imprintable spells. That seemed exciting to us.
I trimmed the fat from his deck, and I think I added the 3 Wrath of God but the rest of the deck was all Steven. He built it, I streamlined it down to 60, and we were off to the races!
God. The deck KILLED our poor, poor friends. At the time we thought it was great fun, being able to respond to virtually every single threat laid before us... It wasn't very fun for our opponents. It never lost a game.
Paul pretty much always played Elves. If Blinding Angel hit once, he was never going to attack again the rest of the game. Holy Day on the Stick was the same thing. Or, obviously, Chant. He could ONLY win by attacking, and had little artifact removal, which the ample countermagic was able to ward off.
Anne played... I don't remember what exactly, but I'm sure it had Blue, or Black, or both. I do remember a game against her where I got Memory Lapse on the Stick and she drew (and tried to cast) the same spell about 5 turns in a row. When I pointed out to her that she could break the cycle by NOT casting anything, she said "well, what's the point, then?!" and scooped up her deck.
Chad played a few different decks, but played against the deck piloted by Stephen maybe once, and piloted by me maybe once, and then refused to even shuffle up his deck if he knew we were playing this deck. I played it in a few 4 or 5 player free-for-all games. Counterspells should be terrible in multiplayer, but when you have near-infinite counter magic, it actually works like a charm. Bolstered by the Wraths and Bribery's it easily took down a whole table.
I think we had the deck together a month or more, but it only took about two nights of gaming before every single one of our friends learned to say "No" to the No-Stick. We literally could NOT get a game if we brought the deck out. Fortunately I had several decks built, so we still got our Magic fix, but the W/B deck was very clearly off limits.
Sad thing was, it was hands down the best deck either of us had ever built at that point. It's telling, I think, that THIS deck was banned from our table, but my Tolarian Academy deck stocked with Tinkers, Memnarch, Mycosinth Lattice and Karn was not. Oh they hated the Academy deck, to be sure. But they never expressly forbid me from playing it. I played it for months before they finally begged me to give it a rest. But the W/B No-Stick? I played 5 game at most with it ever, before it was officially blacklisted.
Steven played a few more games with it, as he was the lesser pilot, but only because he was just getting back into the game, and was still re-learning the ropes. But I honestly don't think even HE lost a game with it. Soon enough, even he couldn't play the deck.
Well, I guess that is the story of how I learned to play control decks, and Stephen built one of his masterpiece decks. And, between this and the Academy deck, I earned a reputation that I still haven't shaken to this day, despite not having cast an Isochron Scepter in over 5 years.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Before you Duress... Caress
Well, Friday some stuff went down that prevented me from getting up to Castle for FMN, so no tourney report this week... instead I'm continuing the Planeswalker deck series I started with the last post - the Garruk deck. Basically the idea is to take 4x each of the new M11 "signature spells" for each Planeswalker, add a few copies of the Planeswalker in question, and use that as a core to build a deck around.
My first one worked out pretty well. I got to play it this weekend, and it utterly stomped my poor friends into the ground! But not before one of my opponents commented that "you're playing a green deck that draws like a blue deck!" I'd say that's as ringing an endorsement of the decks success as I could give.
Spurred by the success of that deck, I decided to really pursue the idea of building a deck around all of the Planeswalkers and their signature spells. My next entry in this series is Liliana Vess. Decklist follows:
4 Rotting Rats
4 Liliana's Specter
2 Bloodchief Ascension
4 Liliana's Caress
3 Megrim
2 Liliana Vess
3 Duress
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Burning Inquiry
2 Terminate
2 Sign in Blood
4 Blightning
3 Dragonskull Summit
4 Akoum Refuge
3 Crumbling Necropolis
6 Mountain
6 Swamp
So I had been tossing some ideas around in my head for this deck already, when divine inspiration struck in the form of this decklist posted on the WotC site. I really liked what I saw here, as I already kinda knew Blightning was nuts with Liliana's Caress and Megrim. But the really amazing thing here is Blazing Inquiry. Of course I didn't want to just copy this deck card-for-card, and it didn't contain Liliana's Specter, so that was the first addition. The thing about Liliana's Specter is that it's great in multiplayer as it says "each opponent" rather than "target opponent". I then remembered one other similar creature recently printed: Rotting Rats. It hits me too, but that's usually no big deal. Unearth is particularly nice here, as with only 8 creatures getting a second use out of the Rats makes it seem like I'm running 12 creatures.
So I was already skewing things into a more multiplayer approach, and Blazing Inquiry already works fine there. Bloodcheif Ascension can be nutso in a multiplayer game, and it's very easy to get to 3 counters with this deck. So two of those made it in as well. I kept the Lightning Bolts for now, even though they are typically kinda bad in multiplayer formats. Here, though, they help get Bloodchief online, can trigger it later by killing a dude, or can finish off an opponent if I don't have quite enough discard to go all the way. Finally I squeezed in two Liliana Vess (it's HER deck after all!), and Viola! the deck is complete.
Originally I had a couple of Bloodhusk Ritualists and Hypnotic Specters, but they're both quite a bit worse in a 4-way game than in a duel. Also, the two terminates seemed necessary. I generally don't care too much about killing creatues, as it's best to just point everything at the opponents' life totals, but a Baneslayer Angel or something like it might ruin my day.
The deck is fairly straight forward to play. Ideally you want a Caress or Megrim in your opening 7 and naturally you want to save your discard until after you drop a Megrim or two. Don't be afraid to Duress early though, if your opponent is playing White or Green, as they may have enchantment removal. But definitely hold onto your Blightnings and Inquirys until you drop a Caress or Megrim. Then just try to kill your opponent before they kill you... it's actually quite a bit easier than it looks.
My first one worked out pretty well. I got to play it this weekend, and it utterly stomped my poor friends into the ground! But not before one of my opponents commented that "you're playing a green deck that draws like a blue deck!" I'd say that's as ringing an endorsement of the decks success as I could give.
Spurred by the success of that deck, I decided to really pursue the idea of building a deck around all of the Planeswalkers and their signature spells. My next entry in this series is Liliana Vess. Decklist follows:
4 Rotting Rats
4 Liliana's Specter
2 Bloodchief Ascension
4 Liliana's Caress
3 Megrim
2 Liliana Vess
3 Duress
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Burning Inquiry
2 Terminate
2 Sign in Blood
4 Blightning
3 Dragonskull Summit
4 Akoum Refuge
3 Crumbling Necropolis
6 Mountain
6 Swamp
So I had been tossing some ideas around in my head for this deck already, when divine inspiration struck in the form of this decklist posted on the WotC site. I really liked what I saw here, as I already kinda knew Blightning was nuts with Liliana's Caress and Megrim. But the really amazing thing here is Blazing Inquiry. Of course I didn't want to just copy this deck card-for-card, and it didn't contain Liliana's Specter, so that was the first addition. The thing about Liliana's Specter is that it's great in multiplayer as it says "each opponent" rather than "target opponent". I then remembered one other similar creature recently printed: Rotting Rats. It hits me too, but that's usually no big deal. Unearth is particularly nice here, as with only 8 creatures getting a second use out of the Rats makes it seem like I'm running 12 creatures.
So I was already skewing things into a more multiplayer approach, and Blazing Inquiry already works fine there. Bloodcheif Ascension can be nutso in a multiplayer game, and it's very easy to get to 3 counters with this deck. So two of those made it in as well. I kept the Lightning Bolts for now, even though they are typically kinda bad in multiplayer formats. Here, though, they help get Bloodchief online, can trigger it later by killing a dude, or can finish off an opponent if I don't have quite enough discard to go all the way. Finally I squeezed in two Liliana Vess (it's HER deck after all!), and Viola! the deck is complete.
Originally I had a couple of Bloodhusk Ritualists and Hypnotic Specters, but they're both quite a bit worse in a 4-way game than in a duel. Also, the two terminates seemed necessary. I generally don't care too much about killing creatues, as it's best to just point everything at the opponents' life totals, but a Baneslayer Angel or something like it might ruin my day.
The deck is fairly straight forward to play. Ideally you want a Caress or Megrim in your opening 7 and naturally you want to save your discard until after you drop a Megrim or two. Don't be afraid to Duress early though, if your opponent is playing White or Green, as they may have enchantment removal. But definitely hold onto your Blightnings and Inquirys until you drop a Caress or Megrim. Then just try to kill your opponent before they kill you... it's actually quite a bit easier than it looks.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)