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By: urzishra14, rob chesley
Sep 09 2007 8:50pm
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Hello,

My name is Robert Chesley, I've been playing Magic for a while, a long while. This article is not meant for people looking for mistakes in drafts, I'm not looking to get better in drafts. I'm not here to clutter up the website with the over written about topics, I'm not trying to "go infinite" I'm not trying to be the "best Spike" and I'm certainly not here to tell people how to play sealed decks, standard decks, extended decks, or drafts. There are at least four or five other writers that do it better than me. What I will be writing about is how to build fun, inexpensive decks. I'm not the best deck builder; I'm not going to show you how to win all your games. But I will show you how to build decks that will be high on themes, high on fun, and definitely high on the WTF factor.

Anyways, one of the reasons I decided to start writing articles is because there has to be more to MTGO writing then random Draft Caps from players trying to go infinite (Editor's Note:  To my knowledge, there is not a single Draft Recap on here from a player that is currently trying to go infinite.) or the amazing PDC coverage that I see on this site. Anyways, here is a deck list that if you take to the next casual classic game they will be mostly perplexed. This is now updated for Masters Edition (yeah, I know not out till Monday) and Tenth. The concept of the deck came from the so-called "Steel Necro" decks of old. When Mirrodin came out it was updated and when that came up I updated the list to what you see below.

Steel Necro Update

19x Swamp
4x Stalking Stones

2x Extraplanar Lens
4x Oblivion Stone

2x Dark Ritual
4x Barter in Blood
2x Blackmail
4x Consume Spirit
4x Drain Life
4x Promise of Power
4x Wrench Mind
4x Grid Monitor
4x Terror

Extraplanar Lens

 

As you can tell, it seems more like a random stack of cool black spells then a deck list. But actually it’s pretty fun to play. The goal is to control the board with stuff like Barter in Blood and Terror, then kill the opponent with the eight Drain Life effects. If you made a count yes, I play with sixty one cards in my decks. I do this out of superstition mostly because I believe that the one extra card can only help me not hurt me. So, looking over the Master's Edition and Tenth it gave me many ideas into making my deck a more finely tuned control powerhouse.

 

The first obvious choice is to take out the Wrench Mind and switch them for Hymn to Torach. I used Wretch Mind because they are (were) the best choice to make the opponent discard 2 cards. Now with Hymn we can go with the original two card discard. So remove four copies of Wretch Mind and add four copies of Hymn to Torach.

The next order of business is to take out the Blackmail for Duress. If you can't afford or don't have the Duress, Blackmail is still a fine choice for a discard as it does what I usually use it for, when I have them down to three or less cards its just as good or better, as Blackmail hits lands in addition to other cards. Duress is usually used as a first turn play or used in conjunction like Swamp to Dark Ritual to Duress to Hymn to Torach which is now possible online. So we got two less Blackmail and one less Drain Life to add three Duress

The whole point of the deck is to drop a Grid Monitor to swing for the win, and Tenth Edition brought back Steel Golem, I like this version of the creature a lot better. For one its costs one less and has a cooler picture. So straight across that brings us a more efficient creature with the same effect. In perhaps the easiest move I axed four Grid Monitor and welcomed four Steel Golem.

As we're bringing the costs down I decided that maybe eight versions of Drain Life might be a little excessive. We took out one of each so we can add another Dark Ritual. One of the problems with the deck I had was there wasn't enough creature lands or ways to get around it with Master's we now have Mishra's Factory. It is an efficient beats and definitely makes the deck hum even better with a Steel Golem out. One of the things I did not like about the deck was that the Extraplanar Lens was like a big fat two for one target. So I decided to take those out to make room for the Mishra's Factories. Those along with two swamps so we end up with hello factory workers. Hello four Mishra's Factory.

The Master's Edition deck metamorphosis is almost complete. The only other glaring hole is the Oblivion Stones which will be removed for Nevinyrral's Disk. The disk is the best reset button available so that makes sense in this deck.

This deck isn't meant to be played as the best available deck, its not. It might win a few games in the casual room; I’m not going to waste my time giving what are called “game summaries” as I find those to be a very bad indicator of how a deck performs in a casual environment. I mean it could run particularly well for me because of the types of players and competition. The deck is meant to be played as very defensive and strike like a puma when you got enough to drain their Life away. Always wait until you can entwine the Promise of Power. This is a deck I take to play on a casual night as it’s a very reactive style deck and it’s quite potent even in its "lesser" stage.

Thanks for reading bring on the onslaught of comments. My next article will be talking about how much fun it is to put as many quality cards in your deck as you own and see how that fares. I will be putting up some summaries from some of the Free for All which I'll be building for. Enjoy MED release on Monday.

EDIT: Oops I almost forgot the most important part of the article, the final deck list here it is.

Terror

Final Build Steel Necro

16x Swamp
4x Stalking Stones
4x Mishra's Factory

3x Dark Ritual
4x Barter in Blood
3x Duress
3x Consume Spirit
3x Drain Life
4x Promise of Power
4x Hymn to Torach

4x Steel Golem
4x Terror
4x Nevinyrral's Disk

9 Comments

Negativity by JXClaytor at Mon, 09/10/2007 - 14:41
JXClaytor's picture

As it was written, and I am sure you were taking aim at me, I found absolutly nothing wrong with it.  I feel that if you are taking good natured ribs at some one and not trying to destroy their credibility you should be fine. 

I will admit I laughed when I read and edited your article, just at that part, because I can see where you are coming from. 

Extraplanar Lens replacement by Felorin (Unregistered) 70.122.21.186 (not verified) at Mon, 09/10/2007 - 04:05
Felorin (Unregistered) 70.122.21.186's picture

If you want to power up some really big Drain Life spells, you could replace the Extraplanar Lenses with Gauntlet of Power.  Manaboost without risking a two for one!

by runeliger at Mon, 09/10/2007 - 07:36
runeliger's picture

That was actually surprisingly a really good read.

 Props to you :)

by urzishra (Unregistered) 74.214.249.213 (not verified) at Mon, 09/10/2007 - 10:08
urzishra (Unregistered) 74.214.249.213's picture

yeah.. the negativity was out of seeing so many of the same kinds of articles on the site, not really meant at specific people.. i kind of wrote it out of flustration.. and i should have spent more time editing it rather then being "brash and rebellious" ... anyways... i'll get a picture when i can find my cam ... thanks for the feedback the next one will be longer and feature more decks.

picture by mtgotraders at Sun, 09/09/2007 - 20:51
mtgotraders's picture

I love the casual fun article Rob.  Please post a picture for your avatar when you get a chance.

by dragonmage65 at Sun, 09/09/2007 - 22:31
dragonmage65's picture

An enjoyable read, though it's a little bit on the short side. Always nice to see some casual stuff, good work!

:) by JXClaytor (Unregistered) 216.221.201.167 (not verified) at Sun, 09/09/2007 - 23:37
JXClaytor (Unregistered) 216.221.201.167's picture

Good times, I enjoyed the article I thought it was a bit short, but full of quality.  Nice debut. 

by Anonymous (Unregistered) 70.189.80.222 (not verified) at Sun, 09/09/2007 - 23:49
Anonymous (Unregistered) 70.189.80.222's picture

Interesting deck but the negativity torwards other writers on this site bugged me.

seoooo by seooseoo at Wed, 02/22/2023 - 07:31
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5

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