Oh yes I'm back again, the MTGO bug is easy to catch and once it has its hold on you it's hard to shake off. It's a slightly larger gap than I would have liked since I last wrote an article, well it's over a year, scary really how quickly time goes. I've been manly into wargaming but by accident the other day I clicked on the MTGOTraders link on my browser and saw an article from Whiffy Penguin. It had the power nine in it, and well I had to read it as I wasn't aware of Vintage Masters and I haven't stopped playing since. I must admit I only own one piece of the nine at present but hope to pick up some more when funds permit. Due to having to buy a new pc so I could continue playing it's left me a bit short, my poor XP machine couldn't upgrade to service pack 3. So I now have a super sexy new machine so all is good. I have quite a wide selection of decks for this article so let's delve into Flippers Corner and see what we can find to entertain you with for this article.
One thing I will say about Modern is that it seems a lot faster than last time I was playing or it could be that I'm getting slower with age, hmm I suppose it could be both. The first deck of today's article is based on a card that I found interesting enough to build a deck round. It's a bit of a challenge to pull off when playing it but it does hit like a train when it's in full momentum.
The card I decided to build the deck round is Deadbridge Chant. Yes it's a rather expensive card to cast which is where the challenge lies of keeping yourself alive long enough to cast it and benefit from the result. Let's have a look at the card in question.
When the card enters play you put the top ten cards into your graveyard and then at the beginning of your upkeep a random card is selected from your graveyard, if it’s a creature it goes into play and any other type of card is put into your hand. The idea will be to drop off some big creatures that we can bring back with Deadbridge Chant. I wanted to use some cards that could actually be cast by the deck as well so the first is a big green stomper Skarrg Goliath and the second which is a vampire Necropolis Regent, both of these are game winners if your opponent can’t deal with them within a few turns. I also added a creature you can't cast easily in the deck which is Teysa, Envoy of Ghosts, I like to break my own rules. Teysa is a very powerful blocker with protection from creatures and offers a good offensive against weenie rush decks as the opponent will run out of creatures quickly when she's around.
Next we need some form of mana ramp to cast Deadbridge Chant or the large creatures without, I spent a long time looking for solutions for mana ramp and ended up with the following two that ended up staying in the deck. One is from my last article Scorned Villager and the second is Birds of Paradise an old favourite. I did try using Golgari Keyrune but found I was always casting it a turn late so went back to the Scorned Villager card, a lot of people seem to treat the card very hostilely but with good reason.
We do need a few creatures to start beating down early as well. I chose Dryad Militant yea she is an unusual choice she will stop some of our own instant and sorcery cards going to the graveyard as well as our opponents, this gives us a benefit as we would rather be drawing creatures into play via Deadbridge Chant. It also stops people from playing cards from their graveyards. My next choice is the Lotleth Troll which makes a great blocker due to its regenerating capabilities and it can also be permanently boosted by discarding creature cards to your graveyard which is an added bonus for us. At one point I was also running a Deathrite Shaman but found he died quite quickly in the games he came out to play so he was kicked out.
Spells spells spells...a deck is no fun without spells. So we need a spot of removal which is nicely filled by an old favourite Putrefy. Then we have a card which has such an excellent name and also helps us to put cards into our graveyard Drown in Filth, I think that card should win awards just for its name. Then we have an old staple Maelstrom Pulse and lastly we have Gaze of Granite, maybe not the best removal card but it works really well against all the token decks I've been seeing.
There's also one other card that has a very similar ability to Deadbridge Chant which I included as well in the deck which is Grimoire of the Dead in four turns while discarding cards you can have your entire graveyard back on the playing field. I'm managed it quite a few times and with the size of the creatures we are putting into the graveyard you're looking at a stomping force.
Over all the deck ends up looking like this.
Now we move onto the second deck of the article again based in the Modern format. This time round I went for a totally different approach and colour as you may have guessed. It's truly amazing how many people don't like to play bounce control decks. I had quite a few people quit on me for a number of reasons while I was testing it out.
So let's strip her down and see how she really can be that annoying to your opponents. The bounce cards are as follows. The first card your most likely to see is Faerie Impostor she's a nice early drop but you have to return a creature to your hand which is perfect for our deck, next up we have Deputy of Acquittals and then Lyev Skyknight which is where they start to question what type of deck your running. I usually use the Deputy at the end of my opponents turn to return the Lyev Skyknight to my hand to cast again next turn.
Of course there are spells than can help with our bouncing as well, I'm running Dramatic Rescue which can be cast on both our creatures and also our opponents as well which is a nice little bonus. Also I found Restore the Peace to be rather handy as well. So now we are quite happy with the bouncing aspect of the deck let's move on to something just as annoying.
Tapping yeah it's not up there amongst the most annoying thing like counters but it's annoying to say the least. So having a look through potentially available spells in our colours I ended up running Blind Obedience it also has a rather nice extort ability which is really useful when you keep re-casting your own spells. Then moving along we have Blustersquall which is quite useful for one mana but its overload mechanic is really quite satisfying when you're ready to go in for the kill. We then come to the last of our tapping cards Lavinia of the Tenth our bold lady with her scroll at the ready, when she comes into play she taps all of your opponent's permanent's with a mana cost of four or less.
Oh speaking of counters it's usually a good idea to include some of those in this sort of deck as well, you never know when you will just need to say NO, I'm in control of this game and I'm having none of that. Our first counter is a one drop bird, strange but true Judge's Familiar. I find this little owl very useful all the time, it's a 1/1 flyer and a counter for one mana. Next we have the standard boring Cancel which you will all have seen many times and then we finish off the counters with Render Silent which is very appropriate for this deck, you know I said NO well I really meant it...
I do like to have a big creature in most of my decks as well, when all else fails send in the Sphinx in this case Isperia, Supreme Judge, she has quite a nice size body and a nice card draw ability as well so she has quite a lot going for her in my opinion.
The final deck looks like this
Now we move on to what will be the last deck of the article, I did plan on more but three takes up a lot of space. I've got three more decks ready for another article so hopefully I'll bring you those within the same year this time...
Oh how I love vintage just the thought of playing in an environment with all the card possibilities that ever existed really gets me excited, there's so many ideas and combinations available it really does boggle the mind.
The card I'm going to build around for this deck is actually quite a recent card, one I found while browsing www.mtgotraders.com looking for something to spark off an idea. The card is Erebos, God of the Dead, as a normal card you pay two mana and two life for a card which isn't bad as it can be done multiple times per turn but if you have enough devotion to black you get a 5/7 invincible god as well. So looking at this card the deck needs to do well off drawing multiple cards which to be honest any deck does, but we also need a way of dealing with the loss of life and enough black to keep our devotion up so we are noticed by the gods.
First things first let's look at our devotion to black, we need some permanent's which have a lot of black in them. My first card that I included was Vampire Nighthawk a super useful card in all formats which also has the benefit of having lifelink as well. Then an unusual card for our two mana drop Highborn Ghoul I know he's a strange choice but he's two black and his Intimidate has come in handy quite a number of times while playing. The next card is even weirder but man is she hot Phylactery Lich a 5/5 invincible creature for three black mana, who's going to say no to her I mean really. She has a little draw back but this is Vintage there's always loads of artifacts about to keep her in play. My Favourite is a turn one Dark Ritual from a Vault of Whispers yep that's a 5/5 Invincible hag on turn one ready to start slapping you silly. I'll come to the other artifacts in a second.
So now we have our devotion to black worked out its time to look at gaining some life to counter act the life loss. I've no idea how I found the next card but I'm glad I did she has come in use more times than I can imagine, another lady this time a bit younger than the Lich Vizkopa Guildmage, she can give creatures lifelink but also if they have lifelink she can make life very uncomfortable for your opponent. Just one Vampire Nighthawk means they are losing four life a turn. The next card is only a one off in the deck as she cost me an arm and a leg a popular lady from the Standard format Archangel of Thune but man is she worth every penny, so many times I've won with her and Vizkopa Guildmage in play its quite unreal. Last but not least is, well I seem to have a thing for lady's it seems. This time it's Elspeth Tirel who is our planeswalker of choice. She can help with the life gain and creature control which in turn leans to more life gain and she finishes off quite nicely with her epic ability, although I've only had to rely on that once.
Next we are going to look at removal I'm only running a few staples for this deck which most of you will be familiar with. Day of Judgment is our table clearer. Then we have are direct creature removal in the form of Grasp of Darkness I always prefer this to take out invincible creatures, Stuffy Doll always comes to mind. Finally we have Mortify as well which rounds it out quite nicely.
Now we move on to the artifacts and mana acceleration, first is a staple for any black deck the classic Dark Ritual, I don't think that one needs any explaining. Then we have Charcoal Diamond this is my poor man 's mox I will end up replacing two of them with a Mox Pearl and Jet at some point. Then a few odd artifacts to help out our Lich we have a Prowler's Helm and a Forcefield they have both come in handy when they've turned up so I've no reason to replace them yet. Nearly forgot there is a mox in the deck but not a power nine one but it's a mox none the less Mox Diamond.
I know you must be thinking but why is this deck Vintage well it's all in the lands, well just Strip Mine in this case and then we have Scrubland, Karakas and the not so Vintage Godless Shrine. I have noticed for some reason the Vintage Masters cards aren't on Gatherer. "hmm interesting that is I find" says the Yoda in me.
The final deck looks like this
That's all for today the next article as I say should be soon after this one and then I need to acquire cards to build the other decks I have planned. So it might be a while after that depends how well this and the next article are taken by you guys and girls so don't be shy I like to read your comments.
Thanks for reading
Flip
5 Comments
Welcome back flips! Any plans to visit the Apocalypse? Anyway your deck lists could use a little more formating but otherwise nice article. :)
Cheers Paul it feels good to be back.
I don't think I'll be visiting Apocalypse any time soon though its just too much of a time sink for me to play in an event. I'm also put off by all the different formats and rules etc, just too much to read through and with only a small collection at the moment its an additional point of entry that I don't have much time for unless I was doing a tribal article.
It's good to see it still going strong though.
Not sure what you mean by the deck list formatting issues, looks fine on my pc with Chrome. What browser/device are you using to view Pure as my deck lists are just a few tables put together.
I think this is the formatting tool that most of the people on here use, it's a little fancier than what you are doing, but similar.
http://jamuraa.com/pure/deck_new.php
Yeah I used to use that but don't like all the grey.
It's essentially the same html that I use but with a header block for the deck name. I have more control in my version so I can add extra sections.
I'll have a play and see if I can make it more pretty for when I do my next article (not the one I submitted today).
Why not add Deck Titles and Subtitles? Make it look special. You don't need rounded corners or code based gradients like I have in mine but a little something to set the list apart from the article other than a single pixel border is all I would like to see. The white background is a little glaring with all those blue links.
As for Jam's code you can alter that however you like with a little css magic (Take a look at Blippy's articles for an idea of what I mean.)