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By: Flippers_Giraffe, Simon Smith
Jan 04 2011 5:11am
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Christmas has come and gone and we are now off on our way through another year. Sadly for me I spent most, no all of the Christmas period in bed being ill. But as with all things I'm now getting better just in time to go back to work. I had a lot of things planned over the Christmas period and only was able to do one of them.

I was going to try entering my first Daily Event and I nearly did enter a Classic one on Christmas Day but there weren't enough players by a long shot so it didn't fire. Classic wasn't my first choice but I have a viable deck and the time was friendly for me. I was planning on entering a few other daily events throughout the week but illness rapidly took over.

I may look further into the daily events and try again when I get some more spare time. My aim is to have a competitive deck for each format so when I have the time I can join which ever event is scheduled for that day. 

So instead of playing in a daily event Christmas day I tested out the decks in this article instead which was lucky, otherwise this wouldn't have been much of an article.

I have had quite a few requests for the Rare Drafter article lately but there is an issue bringing you all the data. I did start the article with November's data but sadly there's too much of it and the article won't save. So until I find a way to bring you everything its going back on hold again.

The Coalition League season four starts on the 10th of January you can find more details here. This season will be old school based using Masters Edition 1, 2, 3 and 4 boosters. Also you will be able to use Mirage, Visions and Weatherlight as part of your card pool. I will be doing my generated packs again so if you want any drop me a message via the Wizards forum.

There was one event that I did make it to which was the combined BYOS / Tribal Apocalypse event, I still wasn't upto it really but the deck was already built and tested to some degree. bluedragon123 kindly hosted the event which gave me the option to play. I had been working on getting the cards for this deck over a very long time so I wasn't going to miss it even if I was feeling like one of the undead.

My tribe of choice was Angels and my block's are Invasion, Mirrodin and M11. I wanted something a bit special for this event which is the reason I chose the blocks at hand. Invasion gives me my control method with Orim's Chant and Mirrodin brings Isochron Scepter a combo I've been playing around with quite a bit in the last few articles I've written.   

Now let's have a look at the other cards from Invasion block I went with Voice of All for her protection ability's and Reya Dawnbringer for her recursion ability she is very expensive on the mana cost front which is why I went with a single copy. On the dark side from Apocalypse We have the mighty Desolation Angel which is our reason for including black in the deck. This young lady leaves her mark on the playing field and usually brings you the win as well if you play her correctly. Apocalypse also gives us our dual lands for the deck in the form of Caves of Koilos and lastly from the block we have a lone Star Compass.

The artifact plane of Mirrodin brings us two more angels Pristine Angel which is an old favourite, when she's untapped she has protection from artifacts and all colours. The other angel is Platinum Angel which will give our opponents a headache if they are not running removal of some sort. To help out the Angels as they are a bit high in the mana department I included three copies of Chrome Mox.

Now we move onto the base set which this time round is M11 which has a handful of useful options for BYOS deck builders. First it gives us our mass removal Day of Judgment. Then we have our last angel, who better than Baneslayer Angel herself to bring down the skies upon our foes. This was rounded out with a few one ofs Doom Blade for well killing creatures, it also has the opportunity to be melded to an Isochron Scepter and lastly Brittle Effigy to just remove any creature that gets in our way, you can't argue with the Effigy.

Day of Judgment Baneslayer Angel Brittle Effigy

Here's the full deck list, did it do well? well the answer is not so great it lost the first round to a zombie deck 1/2. I then Hit a BYE for the second round and defeated an illusion deck for the win in the third round netting me 5th place. The BYE didn't help but I don't think I would have been in a better position if I had won the match instead. Overall it was a good step back into BYOS as I've not been having much luck there lately. I am currently looking for ways to get into the season three championship but there are only 7 weeks left and I need to be amongst the top twenty players to get an invite and I don't have any points worth looking at at the moment due to two failure decks and no time. It's going to be a hard trek these next seven weeks, I'm going to need to pull out all the stops.

  Creatures   Artifacts
4  Baneslayer Angel 1  Brittle Effigy
4  Desolation Angel 3  Chrome Mox
3  Platinum Angel 3  Isochron Scepter
4  Pristine Angel 1  Star Compass
1  Reya Dawnbringer    
4  Voice of All   Lands
    4  Caves of Koilos
  Other Spells 12  Plains
4  Day of Judgment 7  Swamp
1  Doom Blade    
4  Orim's Chant    

Here's some screen shots of the deck in action.

In this game the Desolation Angel was caught out by Tendrils of Agony but I managed to pull off the round with Scepter/Chant stopping my opponent casting any further spells until I could pull out another angel. The match however I lost.

The Desolation Angel living up to her name, if she's not countered the game is yours as it was in this case, there's no coming back.

Our second deck this week is going to be based around as you might have guessed from the header an artist. I ran an article a few weeks ago with decks by Chippy and Kev Walker, this week I have for you none other than Rebecca Guay.

A lot of people don't like her artwork but I think its really good, you can spot one of her cards a mile away as she is a very unique artist which is one of the things that makes Magic stand out from other card games. Rebecca doesn't just do Magic card art far from it. She also has done DC comics, graphic novels, book covers and also illustrations as well.

In 2003 she published her first childrens book entitled "Goddesses: A World of Myth and Magic" was published by Barefoot Books and received critical praise. "Goddesses" was chosen as one of the "Top Books for children 7-12" by BookSense the year of its publication.

Her work was chosen as "Best in Show" at Gen Con in 2004, and she was elected "Best Artist" in 2005 by InQuest Magazine's "Fan Choice Awards".

She has been the Guest of Honor at various Magic tournaments including Paris, France, 1996 & 2000, Melbourne, Australia, 1998, Osaka, Japan, 2002, Valenica, Spain , 2007 and Gen Con US 2008.

Rebecca's website is www.rebeccaguay.com

I think her most popular card to date that she has illustrated is either Gaea's Blessing or Bitterblossom but Rebecca has illustrated over 150 cards for Magic so it's not easy to choose just one that stands out.

Onto the deck in hand. I'll be basing it around the colours of black and blue this gives us a nice spread and also Bitterblossom as our starting point. Bitterblossom also brings us into the Fae which is going to be our mini theme running through the deck. We have access to one of extended's best creature counter cards Spellstutter Sprite and also the not so good faerie Silkwing Scout. While on the faerie front we also have a small removal spell as well Peppersmoke which acts as a cantrip if you have fae in play.

Moving out of the land of the faeries we have another form of removal Dark Banishing and also the anti green card Perish. On the other side of the removal spectrum we have denial or counter as you may call it. We have a few tricks for our Fae Memory Lapse and Boomerang being among the top. There is also an outlet for discard as well in this deck its not going to win you many games but it could take away that potential Wrath of God. The card comes from Invasion and is called Seer's Vision it's an old card but still useful when you don't have many options to play with. 

Lastly are the remaining creatures in the deck we have our heavy hitter which is Sea Drake, I've always liked this card and it's great in decks that run Ancient Tomb or Mana Crypt. The other creature is a bit poor but there was a space to fill so it went to Vodalian Hypnotist as another form of discard. Not forgetting our Wall of Tears which is an excellent source at stopping aggro decks like Goblins. They just keep bouncing off until we are able to defend with Fae or bring down the Sea Drake's.

Here's what the deck looks like once it's all pulled together.

  Creatures   Lands
4  Sea Drake 13  Island
2  Silkwing Scout 10  Swamp
4  Spellstutter Sprite    
2  Vodalian Hypnotist    
4  Wall of Tears    
       
  Other Spells    
4  Bitterblossom    
3  Boomerang    
3  Dark Banishing    
4  Memory Lapse    
3  Peppersmoke    
1  Perish    
3  Seer's Vision    

The deck is quite fun to play if you like control, I have won a lot of matches where people just give up as they can't play a card on the table and when they do they are faced with the Wall of Tears and yes it does make your opponent cry when they can't get round this wall. Here are a few screen shots from a number of games I played with the deck.

 The Fae counter and disrupt everything to keep the opponents side of the table clear for the Sea Drake and friends to take the win.

 The lone Lightning Angel walks into our trap, I have enough control to take the win in a few turns.

That's all from me this week have fun in your games Flippers_Giraffe.       

5 Comments

Rebecca Guay is definitely in by Paul Leicht at Tue, 01/04/2011 - 05:48
Paul Leicht's picture

Rebecca Guay is definitely in the top 20 mtg artists I like. Maybe even the top 10. I built a RG deck for your artist classic format but deleted it along with the others. I am sorry you were ill over the holidays. :/ I totally missed out on the Tribal Apoc Byos crossover. Wanted to watch that.

Nice Guay deck by radman99 at Tue, 01/04/2011 - 12:42
radman99's picture

I got a chance to meet her at a WonderCon a few years ago and she signed a Bitterblossom for me. It's one of my prized possessions in my collection. Love her artwork!

The cards she did from Urza's by brandonQDSH at Tue, 01/04/2011 - 13:05
brandonQDSH's picture

The cards she did from Urza's Saga were pretty good. Abundance and some others were very memorable.

I've always loved Rebecca by Xaoslegend at Tue, 01/04/2011 - 18:43
Xaoslegend's picture
5

I've always loved Rebecca Guay stuff. Nice article.

X-

Not to be a downer.. by Lythand at Tue, 01/04/2011 - 19:43
Lythand's picture
5

Not to be a downer, I just don't like Rebecca Guay's work. Not saying what she does is bad, I am just not into her style. I like vibrant colors and detail. I have always been a Ron Spencer fan myself.

If your not sure of his work he has done Yawgmoth's Will, Bone Shredder, and Diabolic Edict to name a few.