XBM:
In terms of Land, I don't think suicide black should ever run on anything less or more than 18 swamps. You really can't waste the mana on a cycling swamp just to draw one card if you don't need it, especially when you're already running Sign in Blood.
Kevin Nash:
I would seriously just drop the land to 18 swamps and add a set of Dark Rituals, you'll guarantee some very explosive opening hands (turn 1 Slayer and Lacerator??) hard to beat.
and I agree you need some bonesplitters. If you remove your scattered creature removal spells, and just add Geth's Verdict, I think you'll be able to handle most board situations. You're going for speed here, so the hope is that they won't be able to ramp out creatures to keep up. the Dark Rituals will keep your creatures flooding the field 2 or 3 at a time.
"GG Allin" in my sig is a sewerside black deck, though not pauper. Though most suicide cards tend to be common anyway. Flesh Reaver is the real standout.
Has anyone actually read the book Next Level Magic? I was on SCG and saw it for sale. It says it's a guide to mastering magic hahah.... Anyone actually read this?
Sorry if this doesn't count fit in the rules forum, but I'm looking at Muraganda Petroglyphs, and I understand that if a creature gains an ability (such as Leap or Shadow Rift, the card will loose Petroglyph's bonus, but what about equipment like Grafted Wargear and Bonesplitter? Is the rule of thumb as long as no text could be added to the ability box?
Yeah, it seemed pretty obvious, those I guess the red hand could throw some people off. I was actually more confused by your question because I was trying to see what you were seeing and just couldn't.
Actually I'm a huge fan of throwing Aven Mimeomancer into a ping deck - Tim or Zuran Spellcaster, they'll control the creature flow leaving your mana open for cheaper counters like negate to ward off any other type of spell.
Thanks for the reply, frankly I agree with you completely. I got into playing casual because it gave me a chance to reuse my cards from the 90's without having to have a perfect legacy selection. I think I've gotten lost in all the new cards and how the game has changed in the past 13 years and I should really try to maintain focus on why I loved the game as a kid - big creatures doing crazy things with spells and artifacts - our games used to take hours because we never played with complete sets of anything (we were slaves to the booster pack) and would find ourselves in stalemates as we built up our mana base just for one card we never managed to draw.
I remember my friend Zachary was the only one of us who ever managed to make a cool deck that seemed "adult" because he was able to figure out that he could keep discarding Squee for his Masticore every turn, that alone seemed like a big deal to us. In fact, when i started playing Magic again last year, the first thing I did was buy a set of Masticore, Squee, and Royal Assassin - simply because the later was the card I had always wanted but could never find - and tried to build a very bad 80 card deck around them.
The problem is, now that i'm older and have a better grasp of the game, I'm beginning to become more influenced by competitive decks that I can finally understand more maturely. That's caused me to go out and try to catch up with 13 years of competitive Magic staples and throw together decks that probably aren't very fun to play against any more, while staying under the guise of "casual" just so I don't find myself playing against thousand dollar legacy and standard decks.
I don't want to be confined to modern, since there's such a big pool to select from pre-8th edition. I'm just going to have to be more aware of who I'm going to be playing against and whether or not my deck will allow for a fun time. Thanks for making me rethink everything, I'm going to try to really tone back my deck construction for now on, and maybe make a list of personally banned cards, just to get the creative juices flowing.
Also, I had no idea ponder and preordain were banned. I usually do try to adhere to a banned list when making decks, but I usually check with the legacy list because I figured that would be the most comprehensive, i.e. cover cards furthest back. Goes to show I don't do my homework well enough. Now I've got to rethink some of my other decks that have ponders in them.
thanks for the response, for serious.
(And in regards to guttersnipe - like Delver - if he's in a deck with the right spells to trigger him, then he's always gold, turning every 1 mana instant into a shock [turns vapor snag and geth's verdict into a bolt)
So my problem is this: Brundlefly is just too useful a card, and I find myself throwing him into every deck I make. I'm sure it's just a phase I'm going through, I just jumped back into Magic a year ago and have been catching up as fast as possible, but with the play style I'm comfortable with, Chef Goldblum just seems to fit in any blue deck.
Now I consider myself a timmy at heart, with johnny aspirations, so I find it hard to pass up a card like delver that simply offers too much. It's brute force on a blue card, which frankly I think goes against blue.
Then there's Brute Force itself. At first I thought it was just a neat color shifted card, but then I realized that it, much like Delver, it just warps the color scheme way too much. When the two cards are placed together, I have a virtual suicide-black deck in izzet colors, which, frankly should never be the case.
So I've decided this will be my last deck before I retire delver and try to adhere to the color pie more truthfully. It's your typical izzet deck, with brute, aggro strength, that works it's way up to dropping a Firemind/curiosity combo for the kill.
I would look up ABU cards, then see which ones have been reprinted the most, then follow that trail on gatherer and see what sorts of decks they get put into, and what sorts of cards have improved upon them (Functional reprints, power-creepers, etc).
In terms of Land, I don't think suicide black should ever run on anything less or more than 18 swamps. You really can't waste the mana on a cycling swamp just to draw one card if you don't need it, especially when you're already running Sign in Blood.
Kevin Nash:
I would seriously just drop the land to 18 swamps and add a set of Dark Rituals, you'll guarantee some very explosive opening hands (turn 1 Slayer and Lacerator??) hard to beat.
and I agree you need some bonesplitters. If you remove your scattered creature removal spells, and just add Geth's Verdict, I think you'll be able to handle most board situations. You're going for speed here, so the hope is that they won't be able to ramp out creatures to keep up. the Dark Rituals will keep your creatures flooding the field 2 or 3 at a time.
"GG Allin" in my sig is a sewerside black deck, though not pauper. Though most suicide cards tend to be common anyway. Flesh Reaver is the real standout.
five bucks says MTGNoob is actually Patrick Chapin
I know this guy was banned, for very good reasons, but this was really funny.
I remember my friend Zachary was the only one of us who ever managed to make a cool deck that seemed "adult" because he was able to figure out that he could keep discarding Squee for his Masticore every turn, that alone seemed like a big deal to us. In fact, when i started playing Magic again last year, the first thing I did was buy a set of Masticore, Squee, and Royal Assassin - simply because the later was the card I had always wanted but could never find - and tried to build a very bad 80 card deck around them.
The problem is, now that i'm older and have a better grasp of the game, I'm beginning to become more influenced by competitive decks that I can finally understand more maturely. That's caused me to go out and try to catch up with 13 years of competitive Magic staples and throw together decks that probably aren't very fun to play against any more, while staying under the guise of "casual" just so I don't find myself playing against thousand dollar legacy and standard decks.
I don't want to be confined to modern, since there's such a big pool to select from pre-8th edition. I'm just going to have to be more aware of who I'm going to be playing against and whether or not my deck will allow for a fun time. Thanks for making me rethink everything, I'm going to try to really tone back my deck construction for now on, and maybe make a list of personally banned cards, just to get the creative juices flowing.
Also, I had no idea ponder and preordain were banned. I usually do try to adhere to a banned list when making decks, but I usually check with the legacy list because I figured that would be the most comprehensive, i.e. cover cards furthest back. Goes to show I don't do my homework well enough. Now I've got to rethink some of my other decks that have ponders in them.
thanks for the response, for serious.
(And in regards to guttersnipe - like Delver - if he's in a deck with the right spells to trigger him, then he's always gold, turning every 1 mana instant into a shock [turns vapor snag and geth's verdict into a bolt)
and exhaustion seems to depict an aged Morphling
Now I consider myself a timmy at heart, with johnny aspirations, so I find it hard to pass up a card like delver that simply offers too much. It's brute force on a blue card, which frankly I think goes against blue.
Then there's Brute Force itself. At first I thought it was just a neat color shifted card, but then I realized that it, much like Delver, it just warps the color scheme way too much. When the two cards are placed together, I have a virtual suicide-black deck in izzet colors, which, frankly should never be the case.
So I've decided this will be my last deck before I retire delver and try to adhere to the color pie more truthfully. It's your typical izzet deck, with brute, aggro strength, that works it's way up to dropping a Firemind/curiosity combo for the kill.
4 Kiln Fiend
2 Guttersnipe
2 Niv-Mizzet, the Firemind
4 Curiosity
4 Vapor Snag
4 Brute Force
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Ponder
2 Preordain
2 Shadow Rift
2 Vivid Creek
2 Vivid Crag
6 Mountain
6 Island
Then you must love playing on cockatrice, I, on the other hand, like paper magic because I like well rendered art.
I know people have different opinions about this, but I've always though the tiny dude in Phyrexian Dreadnought is just firing a handgun.
Delver of Secrets
Brainstorm
Ponder
Preordain
Kird Ape
Loam Lion
Vampire Nighthawk
Hypnotic Specter
Necropotence
I would look up ABU cards, then see which ones have been reprinted the most, then follow that trail on gatherer and see what sorts of decks they get put into, and what sorts of cards have improved upon them (Functional reprints, power-creepers, etc).