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By: Flippers_Giraffe, Simon Smith
Sep 23 2015 12:00pm
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I'm back for another fun filled article, there are quite a lot of things happening at the moment in the World of MTGO.

The new leagues are now up and running there not really what was expected but I suppose Wizards are on the right track. I have been interested in dropping in and having a go. Maybe by the time the next article comes out I will have dipped my toe in. I still have lots of player points, just need to find a deck I'm happy with and see what happens.

There are quite a few interesting cards coming out of the spoilers now for Battle for Zendikar. We have a nice rare land Lumbering Falls it’s like a Treetop Village but with hexproof. Kiora, Master of Depths is looking pretty interesting as well, her +1 lets you untap a land and creature, her -2 lets you look at the top four cards and put a creature and/or a land into your hand, the rest go into the graveyard. Her ultimate is quite funny when you play a creature it fights another creature if you wish and you then get to put three 8/8 octopus's into play. Zada will be great in decks running spells like Giant Growth. Finally we have Drana's Emissary who's a very interesting young vampire.

      

 

 

Our first deck of the article this week is based in standard, as you will have noticed I've updated my image for standard above to a card that's actually still in the format. For our deck we will be building around a new mythic card from Origins Demonic Pact, Liliana was such a bad girl! So what does our pact with the demon give us? At the beginning of our upkeep we have a choice of four gifts from our demonic friend which can only be chosen once. The first Demonic Pact deals 4 damage to target player or creature and we gain 4 life which isn't bad. The second makes our opponent discard two cards which is usually quite useful when in the mid game. The third we get to draw two cards which again is very useful. Then the fourth is we lose the game which is one you really want to be avoiding.

To avoid losing we need some way to destroy or remove the enchantment from play. The first card is a creature Enlightened Ascetic which destroys an enchantment if you wish when it comes into play. As I'm going white/black we are lacking all of greens enchantment removal, our second option is going to be Banishing Light which will be super multi-tasking in this deck more than normal.

Now we need some creatures to take the fight to the enemy. I went with some creatures that have a nasty bite or in other words deathtouch. The first is Typhoid Rats our one drop. Then we go up to Hand of Silumgar which gives us a lot of breathing room, not many players will attack into them. Then we have Brutal Hordechief, I still can't make out where his head is in the art on the card. He is really good though most players won't want to block our deathtouch creatures and when they attack when Brutal Hordechief is in play they do an extra point of damage. He also has an ability that forces your opponents creatures to block but I've not had a need to use it yet in game.

Then we move up to the third tier of creatures in the deck our first being Erebos's Titan who is a 5/5 for four mana he's not the easiest to cast as three of those are black mana. He is worth it though, if your opponent has no creatures in play he gains indestructible. If he dies he can be brought back from your graveyard by discarding a card if your opponent removes a creature from there graveyard say for example with an animate or delve spell. Our next card is a bit situational Gilt-Leaf Winnower, when she enters player she can destroy a non elf creature whose power and toughness aren't equal. She also has menace ability so can only be blocked by two creatures which I've been finding more useful. 

We've already touched on some of our removal spells but the deck is pretty loaded down in them. As well as Banishing Light we are also running Hero's Downfall which is another way to deal with planeswalkers. Then we have another creature removal spell, one of my favourites in standard Murderous Cut. Then we wrap up with a table clearer End Hostilities for when things get a little out of control. 

Demonic Pact isn't a game winning card by itself but it is really useful for taking control of the game, I find it usually helps put me into a winning position when I play it and I haven't died to it yet either.... Here's the finished deck, I tried to use as few Theros cards as possible so the deck is ready for the new standard.

    Creatures     Artifacts 
Brutal Hordechief 2 Abzan Banner
Enlightened Ascetic    
4 Erebos's Titan   Lands
2 Gilt-Leaf Winnower 3 Evolving Wilds
Hand of Silumgar 6 Plains
Typhoid Rats 3 Scoured Barrens
    11 Swamp
  Spells     
Banishing Light    
Demonic Pact    
End Hostilities    
2 Hero's Downfall    
3 Murderous Cut    
       
       

 

Now we venture into the Modern format for the next deck of the article. The card that I wanted to build around for this deck was the one which inspired me to build a deck around Cynthia Sheppard's card art. The card is Bloodcrazed Neonate I really liked the way she grows when she connects with your opponents throat, so decided to build an entire deck around this mechanic. 

Not having been around when the Innistrad set was released I was quite happy to find a bunch of red vampires that shared the same mechanic from the set. Our one drop is Stromkirk Noble. We already have our two drop, our three drop goes to Markov Blademaster, I really like this card she is a bit of a delicate flower starting out as a 1/1 but due to double strike she will be gaining two +1/+1 counters a turn. Our four drop is Heirs of Stromkirk who have intimidate, I've not seen many red creatures to face up to our vampiric army so far.

While searching through other cards to give our vampires a boost I came across Curse of Stalked Prey which was the perfect answer. It's an enchant player card, whenever you deal damage to that player each creature that dealt damage gets a +1/+1 counter. This means our vampires will be getting two +1/+1 counters, four in the case of Markov Blademaster. To bolster them even further I'm also running two copies of Adaptive Automaton which acts as a general creature booster of your choice.

Our vampires have a few human friends to help them out as well. The first is Monastery Swiftspear to get in quickly in the early game. Our second is at the decks other end of the mana scale Rubblebelt Raiders, I'm quite surprised I've not seen any one playing this card before. It's a 3/3 that gets a +1/+1 counter for every creature that attacks in the same turn including itself. I've seen this card grow really large in some of my games making the Eldrazi look small in comparison. Our last human is a bad ass woman with a hot temper and a crackling whip, which could mean no other than Jaya Ballard, Task Mage how could you have forgotten this young lass I wonder. For one red you can discard a card to destroy a blue permanent. For a colours and one red she can discard a card to deal three damage to a creature or player and lastly for 7 you can discard a card to deal 6 damage to all players and creatures. I think she was the test card for the planeswalkers.

Now we move on to the final cards that complete the deck. On the direct damage front we have Lightning Bolt and Exquisite Firecraft, I was only running Lightning Bolt to start with but keep running across creatures with toughness four so added in a few copies of Exquisite Firecraft which solved the problem. For card draw we have Magmatic Insight which I usually cast after I've played my third land as we don't have many spells that require four mana. We also have an interesting land card in this deck Rogue's Passage, it's not the best card in most decks as it costs four mana to activate but in this deck it makes up for that without an issue. Just being able to make one of our creatures unblockable could be the end of your opponent.

The deck plays quite fast but you really have to keep the pressure on, there's no second chance with this deck if you sit back and look at the view you will be out numbered on the creature front and that means trouble. You really need to strike while the iron is hot and your Blood Lust will be rewarded.

    Creatures    Lands
Adaptive Automaton  1 Encroaching Wastes
4 Bloodcrazed Neonate 21  Mountain
2 Heirs of Stromkirk 1 Rogue's Passage
Jaya Ballard, Task Mage     
Markov Blademaster    
Monastery Swiftspear    
Rubblebelt Raiders     
Stromkirk Noble     
       
  Spells    
Curse of Stalked Prey    
2 Exquisite Firecraft    
4 Lightning Bolt    
4 Magmatic Insight    
       
       

 

Now we move into Vintage for our final deck of the article and an unusual deck for me as it has no creatures. The card I wanted to build round is from Origins, Pyromancer's Goggles. It's quite an expensive artifact to cast but it can be quite explosive in the right hands. It taps to add a red mana to our mana pool, if we use it to cast an instant or Sorcery we can copy the spell and choose a new target if we want too. I also like the story text at the bottom. ""I hope to meet Jaya Ballard someday. I think we'd get along."—Chandra Nalaar" Now that would be a fun set with these two ladies side by side.

You might be wondering which cards I'm going to be using with Pyromancer's Goggles to heat things up, well I went with the instant death card, it had to be done. Urza's Rage when its kicked deals a whopping ten damage that can't be countered, when you cast it with Pyromancer's Goggles that turns into 20 points of un-counterable damage. It really is a kick to the face of course you will need 12 mana to cast it, I'll show you how we get there later. Before that I want to show you our alternative win condition. The card comes from the Magic 2013 core set Worldfire which removes everything in play, graveyards and hands, oh and puts both players on one life. Now how can that help us win you may well ask, well before you cast it you play either of the following spells Rift Bolt via suspend or Staggershock so our opponent will be dead in your next turn, there's no way around it even if they draw Force of Will they won't have another card to discard. I wish I could see the looks on players faces when this combo goes off.

   

Now we have our win conditions we need to be able to ramp up our mana quite quickly as they aren't cheap to cast. Looking at the land front we go all the way back to Antiquities for the brothers war which see's Mishra's Workshop and the Urza's lands, Urza's Mine, Urza's Power Plant and Urza's Tower . I really enjoy using cards from the older set's especially ones like Mishra's Workshop which I never had the chance to pick up when I was collecting. To show you a comparison on how lucky we are as online players the paper version currently on www.capefeargames.com is $799.95 while we have it for $3.56, I don't think I'd ever go back to paper.

To help us find the right lands to trigger maximum Urza power we have Expedition Map which I expect you saw coming. We also have for further mana acceleration Mox Ruby and a playset of Fire Diamonds to help bring in some additional red mana, along with the very useful Gilded Lotus. Sol Ring as it would be silly not too and a lone Mana Prism.

Removal alongside our red spells comes in the form of a mana accelerator as well Unstable Obelisk it's kind of like the artifact version of Oblivion Ring. I'm also running Ratchet Bomb as this deck doesn't stand up well to weenie decks. That leaves us with our card draw in the form of Urza's Blueprints, the echo cost is a bit of a pain but we usually have enough mana to support it. Oh and for the nosey people out there I'm running a lone copy of Glasses of Urza so I can look at my opponents hand whenever I want to.  

Let's not forget our Planeswalker now, she is a bit of a hot head Chandra Ablaze. She is very useful but very situational, you will find that you cast her but don't use her until a few turns later. Her first ability is really good if there's a creature that our direct damage spells find too large. Her second ability is why I'm using her, she can force both players to discard their hand and draw three new cards. I usually have no cards in hand when I use this and my opponents usually have more than four on average so it's quite useful as a form of discard. Her ultimate is just plain crazy I haven't had the joys of using it yet though as the draw mechanic usually gives me a game winning card first.   

I did say I wasn't using any creatures, well that's not entirely true I'm running three copies of Mishra's Factory, they make great defenders and they also come in super handy after you've played Worldfire if you are lucky enough to draw one. I'm using the snow version as it's my favourite of the bunch.

I've had so much fun playing this deck in the just for fun room over the last few weeks. It's a race to go bang before your opponent works out what's going on and then it's too late. You can save your Counterspells but they won't be helping you against Urza's Rage. The amount of Vintage games has started to pick up on the weekends now which is nice to see, on average it's only been taking about 5 minutes for a game to fire.

  Planeswalkers    Artifacts 
Chandra Ablaze  4 Expedition Map
    Fire Diamond
  Spells 2 Gilded Lotus
Rift Bolt 1 Glasses of Urza
Staggershock 1 Mana Prism
Worldfire  1 Mox Ruby
Urza's Rage  3 Pyromancer's Goggles
    2 Ratchet Bomb
    Sol Ring 
    Unstable Obelisk
    2 Urza's Blueprints
       
      Lands
    Mishra's Factory
    Mishra's Workshop
    Mountain
    Urza's Mine
    Urza's Power Plant
    Urza's Tower

That's all from me for now, I expect my next article will be out around about the start of next month or when Battle for Zendikar is released.

I'm off to build some new decks, catch you all online.

Flip