How do you consistently cast the chromo with that few fixers? Gild helps a little, but what about some darksteel ingots?
Ingots would be good for the more midrange version, as ramp. But this version does not have problems with mana fixing.
You may be underestimating the effect of having 6 scrylands in the deck. They allow you to tune your land draws to match what you need. You may not be able to cast the Chromanticore on turn 5 every game -- if that's important to you, the mana base can be fiddled with. I could certainly add more shocklands.
Also, what do you mean by 'powerful recusion element'? All I see is 3 x River Trawlers. Am I missing something?
Gift of Immortality. Put it on a Baleful Eidolon or High Priest, give it flying with a bestowed Herald, and you'll have an infinite blocker guaranteed to gain you card advantage. Put it on a River Trawler and you'll be recurring 2 creatures per turn for W.
Cut the Riders from the side, you will never cast them with only 23 lands.
The Riders are only for the control matchup -- slow decks with more planeswalkers than creatures. You'll get to seven mana in that match. But I'm not sure they're best...I'm thinking maybe Sin Collector might be a better option.
C.O.E.D.s -- Chromatic/Orzhov Enchantment deck. Yes, that acryonym might be stretched a bit. But the creatures in this deck enjoy jumping on each other, so it fits pretty well.
The Coeds is a BW deck with splashes of other colors that almost exclusively contains enchantment creatures. It is an aggro deck that concentrates on cheap Bestow creatures, with a powerful recursion element to add gas in the midgame.
I think there are a lot of ways this deck could be built, but here's a list featuring the best enchantment creature in standard, the Chromanticore.
Notes:
From testing, I've decided that six temples is the right number. In this deck I've spread them evenly around the colors, with 2 GW temples because the BG temple isn't out yet. You also do not want more than 2 Transguild Promenade. Between the land base and the mana fixing from Gild, the colors in this deck work out just about perfectly.
There are a lot of synergies in this deck. Gift of Immortality can be back-breaking on a High Priest or a Baleful Eidolon, or it can become a massive card recursion engine on Odunos River Trawler. The lifegain creatures (Hopeful and Chromanticore) more than compensate for Herald of Torment. There are multiple ways to combine First/Double Strike and Deathtouch. And so on. There are a lot of 3-ofs in the above decklist because I'm not sure which two-card synergies to focus on.
The aggression of this deck starts slow but builds quickly as you assemble a voltron creature. If the creature is killed all the bestowed creatures come into play and you begin assembling again. This isn't the kind of deck that hits early on and keeps up with constant pressure. It builds up then ends the game suddenly with hard hits on turn 6 or 7. I'm tempted to take it more midrange with cards like Silent Sentinel, Treasury Thrull, and Arbiter of the Ideal. But I worry that could hurt the currently strong match against aggro.
I'm not sure about the sideboard. Ashen Rider helps against control, Illness in the Ranks stops Elspeth and Master of Waves, Hero's Downfall comes in against plainswalkers, and Blood Baron is a near auto-win against Monoblack (but he can't take a bestowed creature, so I'm not liking him much.) Drown in Sorrow could help against aggro, but between High Priest and Baleful you shouldn't need that help. I'd appreciate other sideboard suggestions.
This same deck concept could be used in a three-color deck. I think the main deck needs to stay BWx, but you could lose the Chromanticores, add enchantment creatures from blue, green or red, and change the mana base to accomodate it. Obviously Green gives you big creatures but their bestow costs can be high. Blue brings in extra card draw and unblockability (Flitterstep Eidolon), as well as a lot of control options. Red gives us more cheap bestow creatures and Mogis, who might be the god that best fits the deck.
Any thoughts and suggestions? I'd especially appreciate help with the sideboard.
Went 3-1, losing only to a faster W/U heroic deck. He used anything and everything to activate his heroic creatures, including otherwise worthless cards like Ephara's Radiance. Don't know what his final record was but he had great luck against me.
With the introduction of BNG, Sealed feels a lot better than in Theros. There is more creature removal and more enchantment removal, but the voltrons can get even crazier than before.
Not only did wizards confirm the gods could be in the seed packs, they are the only mythics which can be in the seed packs. If we assume that the odds of getting a mythic in the seed pac are equal to the odds of getting a mythic in a normal pack, than about 5 percent of red prerelease players will get a xenagod to pair with their promo dragon in their seed pack alone.
I don't think that last sentence is true. For Theros, there were 8 possible rares in the seeded packs and they appeared at about that frequency -- 1/8th of the time, or about 12.5%. Even the gods.
I tested this myself. My store sold their unused prerelease seeded packs, and I bought 10 red and 10 black. I got 2 Erebos and 2 Purphoros; a 20% frequency, which is within the margin of error of 12.5% considering the small sample size.
As a Johnny I like this set a lot better than THS. A winning combo deck still looks unlikely, but combo received a lot of support here, and there are a ton of synergies that can be used in non-combo focused decks.
I'll also note that the set contains 3 sweepers (4 if you count Scouring Sands). That's sure to shake up Standard. Once all the aggro decks have been tamed a bit, other deck types will rise up to take their place. That's a good thing.
Is Theros an enchantment block? Obviously yes. There are just too many enchantments, and too many mechanics that interact with enchantments, to deny that.
Is it well-designed? So far...no. They're using enchantments (and most of the new mechanics) in lazy, uninspired ways.
However, I have learned not to form an opinion about a block as a whole until the last set in it comes out. Avacyn Restored completely re-defined Innistrad block, for example. If they are going to wow us with crazy enchantments, they'll do it in the third set of the block.
Nyxborn Rollicker has my vote for sleeper common of the set. Every heroic deck has been waiting for a 2 CMC bestow creature. This guy is a 2nd or 3rd pick in limited and might help a red/white heroic deck break into Standard tournaments.
I had a winning mill deck for EDH. Altar of Dementia and Tombstone Stairwell is an incredible combination. Savra, Queen of the Golgari was my general. But that was before it became an official (read: competitive) format.
Sounds like this was before the Eldrazi, which would have been a perfectly reasonable environment to play mill EDH, but with the Eldrazi, it would be very, very difficult because it's just so easy to slip one of those creatures in your deck and be on your way. The ways to get around the Eldrazi in that case would be very difficult and inconsistent.
Not at all. Gaea's Blessing existed long before the Eldrazi did. The Altar of Dementia deck partially milled itself first, to fuel the Tombstone Stairwell. If you discover that one of your opponents can't be milled out, you kill them with Stairwell tokens. Note also that Stairwell activates every turn, so the deck scaled to any number of opponents. (But stairwell wasn't necessary because of Llurgoyf creatures.)
What killed the deck was the competitive Commander format. EDH decks are too fast now for a slow combo deck to just durdle until it can tutor all its combo pieces. A Phenax-based EDH deck wouldn't have to durdle, though; it could play any creatures and then bring out its commander for a win.
Not to mention Ashiok, which effectively does what Phenax does, for much-needed redundancy. WoTC is enabling a mono-blue or mostly-blue control deck where the main 'kill' is bouncing creatures to the top of the library then milling them away. You only need one small creature plus Phenax to turn this into a strategy.
Is it a good strategy? No. But WoTC likes making alternate strategies, and with the other mono-blue goodies in Theros block, I am convinced this what they intend by printing these mill cards. They don't want mill to be a legitimate threat, they want it to support a control archetype.
I'll be proven right if we get a reprint of Gaea's Blessing or something similar that makes mill completely unviable as a win condition but leaves it as a support strategy for control. I predict it will either be in this set or the next. They won't wait until next block.
She's built for block, and nearly OP there. She stops heroic voltron creatures. She can nullify one monster or god. She's also one of the few forms of ramp in block.
Not top tier in standard right now, but very strong in block and might be a powerhouse after Ravnica rotates.
any thoughts of adding many more artifacts in and throw 1 or 2 hellkite tyrant?
I wanted to make a Hellkite Tyrant deck. Artifact mana ramps up into Darksteel Forge, or use Obzedat's Aid to reanimate the forge early. Hammer of Purphoros turns land into artifacts that you can populate. It might work in a casual game...but I can't see such a deck surviving in Standard. All the existing artifact creatures are too frail and too expensive to stop an aggro rush.
Hey Everyone.
I'm a first time poster, long time player. So I have a question about using older cards. I was looking through my 2014 and Theros cards and was building a new deck for my Saturday morning magic get together. I noticed I had a lot of reprinted cards. For instance, I have like 9 Pacifism cards. Some from the 2013 core and some from the 2014 set. My question is, if I were to use older cards that are legal in the current standard, would anyone care or would that be frowned upon?
I'm assuming there are different answers depending on the type of play. For the most part my group that I play with is casual. I've played some local tournaments in the past, but I never attempted to play outside of what is labeled standard.
I run old cards all the time. It's not a problem. Just one note, however: You should play old cards with card sleeves. Slight variations in wear can make the old cards easy to pick out of your deck, which makes them marked.
In general my cards are in good enough shape that I'm not worried about being called for marking. But I may have to start sleeving whenever I play with my original Ravnica lands. They see a lot of use.
The next crazy deck I plan to brew will be some mix of Immortal Servitude, Fanatic of Mogis, and Ogre Battledriver. Can't decide if I want to go B/R or W/R, or three color. This deck really, really wants a board sweeper and there is nothing in red or black that works.
I'm guessing it comes down to the draft archetypes that are known to work: Heroic, Devotion, and Monstrous. Heroic means white in general and Wingsteed Riders specifically. Devotion means black and Gary (although I have seen a winning Blue devotion deck in draft). Monstrous means green and/or red; the Asp isn't required but it's nice.
So the best colors for the best archetypes are White, Black, and Green. Blue is a solid pairing with any of them. Red, not so much. Pick whichever card represents the archetype you prefer to play in that draft.
(Are there any other working archetypes? U/G Tempo, maybe? Voyage's End would be that deck's representative. Any others?)
Ingots would be good for the more midrange version, as ramp. But this version does not have problems with mana fixing.
You may be underestimating the effect of having 6 scrylands in the deck. They allow you to tune your land draws to match what you need. You may not be able to cast the Chromanticore on turn 5 every game -- if that's important to you, the mana base can be fiddled with. I could certainly add more shocklands.
Gift of Immortality. Put it on a Baleful Eidolon or High Priest, give it flying with a bestowed Herald, and you'll have an infinite blocker guaranteed to gain you card advantage. Put it on a River Trawler and you'll be recurring 2 creatures per turn for W.
The Riders are only for the control matchup -- slow decks with more planeswalkers than creatures. You'll get to seven mana in that match. But I'm not sure they're best...I'm thinking maybe Sin Collector might be a better option.
The Coeds is a BW deck with splashes of other colors that almost exclusively contains enchantment creatures. It is an aggro deck that concentrates on cheap Bestow creatures, with a powerful recursion element to add gas in the midgame.
I think there are a lot of ways this deck could be built, but here's a list featuring the best enchantment creature in standard, the Chromanticore.
3 Hopeful Eidolon
3 Nyxborn Shieldmate
3 Baleful Eidolon
2 Eidolon of Countless Battles
3 Ghostblade Eidolon
3 Herald of Torment
2 Archetype of Courage
2 Chromanticore
Non-enchantment creatures:
3 High Priest of Penance
3 Odonu River Trawler
Support cards:
4 Doom Blade
3 Gild
3 Gift of Immortality
4 Godless Shrine
2 Transguild Promenade
2 Temple of Plenty
1 Temple of Deceit
1 Temple of Enlightenment
1 Temple of Malice
1 Temple of Triumph
6 Plains
5 Swamp
3 Ashen Rider
3 Illness in the Ranks
3 Blood Baron of Vizkopa
3 Drown in Sorrow
3 Hero's Downfall
Notes:
From testing, I've decided that six temples is the right number. In this deck I've spread them evenly around the colors, with 2 GW temples because the BG temple isn't out yet. You also do not want more than 2 Transguild Promenade. Between the land base and the mana fixing from Gild, the colors in this deck work out just about perfectly.
There are a lot of synergies in this deck. Gift of Immortality can be back-breaking on a High Priest or a Baleful Eidolon, or it can become a massive card recursion engine on Odunos River Trawler. The lifegain creatures (Hopeful and Chromanticore) more than compensate for Herald of Torment. There are multiple ways to combine First/Double Strike and Deathtouch. And so on. There are a lot of 3-ofs in the above decklist because I'm not sure which two-card synergies to focus on.
The aggression of this deck starts slow but builds quickly as you assemble a voltron creature. If the creature is killed all the bestowed creatures come into play and you begin assembling again. This isn't the kind of deck that hits early on and keeps up with constant pressure. It builds up then ends the game suddenly with hard hits on turn 6 or 7. I'm tempted to take it more midrange with cards like Silent Sentinel, Treasury Thrull, and Arbiter of the Ideal. But I worry that could hurt the currently strong match against aggro.
I'm not sure about the sideboard. Ashen Rider helps against control, Illness in the Ranks stops Elspeth and Master of Waves, Hero's Downfall comes in against plainswalkers, and Blood Baron is a near auto-win against Monoblack (but he can't take a bestowed creature, so I'm not liking him much.) Drown in Sorrow could help against aggro, but between High Priest and Baleful you shouldn't need that help. I'd appreciate other sideboard suggestions.
This same deck concept could be used in a three-color deck. I think the main deck needs to stay BWx, but you could lose the Chromanticores, add enchantment creatures from blue, green or red, and change the mana base to accomodate it. Obviously Green gives you big creatures but their bestow costs can be high. Blue brings in extra card draw and unblockability (Flitterstep Eidolon), as well as a lot of control options. Red gives us more cheap bestow creatures and Mogis, who might be the god that best fits the deck.
Any thoughts and suggestions? I'd especially appreciate help with the sideboard.
Went 3-1, losing only to a faster W/U heroic deck. He used anything and everything to activate his heroic creatures, including otherwise worthless cards like Ephara's Radiance. Don't know what his final record was but he had great luck against me.
With the introduction of BNG, Sealed feels a lot better than in Theros. There is more creature removal and more enchantment removal, but the voltrons can get even crazier than before.
I don't think that last sentence is true. For Theros, there were 8 possible rares in the seeded packs and they appeared at about that frequency -- 1/8th of the time, or about 12.5%. Even the gods.
I tested this myself. My store sold their unused prerelease seeded packs, and I bought 10 red and 10 black. I got 2 Erebos and 2 Purphoros; a 20% frequency, which is within the margin of error of 12.5% considering the small sample size.
I'll also note that the set contains 3 sweepers (4 if you count Scouring Sands). That's sure to shake up Standard. Once all the aggro decks have been tamed a bit, other deck types will rise up to take their place. That's a good thing.
Is it well-designed? So far...no. They're using enchantments (and most of the new mechanics) in lazy, uninspired ways.
However, I have learned not to form an opinion about a block as a whole until the last set in it comes out. Avacyn Restored completely re-defined Innistrad block, for example. If they are going to wow us with crazy enchantments, they'll do it in the third set of the block.
Not at all. Gaea's Blessing existed long before the Eldrazi did. The Altar of Dementia deck partially milled itself first, to fuel the Tombstone Stairwell. If you discover that one of your opponents can't be milled out, you kill them with Stairwell tokens. Note also that Stairwell activates every turn, so the deck scaled to any number of opponents. (But stairwell wasn't necessary because of Llurgoyf creatures.)
What killed the deck was the competitive Commander format. EDH decks are too fast now for a slow combo deck to just durdle until it can tutor all its combo pieces. A Phenax-based EDH deck wouldn't have to durdle, though; it could play any creatures and then bring out its commander for a win.
I had a winning mill deck for EDH. Altar of Dementia and Tombstone Stairwell is an incredible combination.
Let me repeat that: I don't believe WoTC meant Phenax to be for mill decks.
Why do I say that? Because all these cards exist:
Azorius Charm
Griptide
Time Ebb
Totally Lost
Not to mention Ashiok, which effectively does what Phenax does, for much-needed redundancy. WoTC is enabling a mono-blue or mostly-blue control deck where the main 'kill' is bouncing creatures to the top of the library then milling them away. You only need one small creature plus Phenax to turn this into a strategy.
Is it a good strategy? No. But WoTC likes making alternate strategies, and with the other mono-blue goodies in Theros block, I am convinced this what they intend by printing these mill cards. They don't want mill to be a legitimate threat, they want it to support a control archetype.
I'll be proven right if we get a reprint of Gaea's Blessing or something similar that makes mill completely unviable as a win condition but leaves it as a support strategy for control. I predict it will either be in this set or the next. They won't wait until next block.
Not top tier in standard right now, but very strong in block and might be a powerhouse after Ravnica rotates.
I wanted to make a Hellkite Tyrant deck. Artifact mana ramps up into Darksteel Forge, or use Obzedat's Aid to reanimate the forge early. Hammer of Purphoros turns land into artifacts that you can populate. It might work in a casual game...but I can't see such a deck surviving in Standard. All the existing artifact creatures are too frail and too expensive to stop an aggro rush.
I run old cards all the time. It's not a problem. Just one note, however: You should play old cards with card sleeves. Slight variations in wear can make the old cards easy to pick out of your deck, which makes them marked.
In general my cards are in good enough shape that I'm not worried about being called for marking. But I may have to start sleeving whenever I play with my original Ravnica lands. They see a lot of use.
I am planning on running this next FNM. My favorite triggers are Omenspeaker and Lavinia of the Tenth. I'm using Bubbling Cauldron as my sac outlet, and threw in Angelic Accord for the hell of it. I should wreck any red deck I see.
The next crazy deck I plan to brew will be some mix of Immortal Servitude, Fanatic of Mogis, and Ogre Battledriver. Can't decide if I want to go B/R or W/R, or three color. This deck really, really wants a board sweeper and there is nothing in red or black that works.
So the best colors for the best archetypes are White, Black, and Green. Blue is a solid pairing with any of them. Red, not so much. Pick whichever card represents the archetype you prefer to play in that draft.
(Are there any other working archetypes? U/G Tempo, maybe? Voyage's End would be that deck's representative. Any others?)