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gaming Any other Magic the Gathering players willing to help me out?


Twi The Totodile

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So I've been getting back into magic recently, and I have a new deck that I've been working on. It's not standard legal by any means, but it's as close as my current collection allows. This is what I've got so far:

Creatures:

Sunhome Guildmage x 3

Boros Elite x 3

Bomber Corps x 2

Foundry Champion x 2

Mardu Hateblade x 2

Fencing Ace x 4

Daggerdrome Imp x 4

Blood Artist x 4

Reckless Waif x 3

Rakdos Shred-Freak x 3

 

Instant/Sorcery:

Act of Treason x 3

Searing Spear x 2

 

Lands:

Mountain x 4

Plains x 5

Swamp x 5

Boros Guildgate x 3 (Replacing with Sacred Foundry)

Bloodfell Caves x 4

Orzhov Guildgate x 3 (Replacing with B/W Shock land)

 

 

 

Any suggestions on how to improve this would be helpful. Standard or not, I don't care as long as it makes this better

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Heya - it's great to see another M:tG player around the forums :)

 

Firstly, what sort of deck are you planning to build? From the overall trend of your deck, you look as though you're building towards an aggro deck in Mardu colours - hitting hard and fast with cheap creatures and hopefully bringing your opponent into burn spell range before they can get anything powerful onto the board. Foundry Champion doesn't really fit into that strategy - by the time you've drawn enough lands to cast your 6-mana creature, your opponent will have enough time to start casting their larger creatures, which generally trumps your aggro creatures in a drawn-out game. Fencing Ace and Daggerdrome Imp both stand out as creatures that would benefit greatly from cheap equipment (such as Bonesplitter) while being somewhat average on their own, while Blood Artist is a somewhat risky card for aggro decks (since it's great at finishing off a nearly-dead opponent but struggles if your opponent can answer your early creatures).

 

As far as inclusions go, the first thing that I'd recommend would be four copies of Lightning Bolt - it's one of the classic Red cards that can either kill off your opponent's creatures or finish an opponent that's hanging on by the last few points of life. While aggro decks are great at dealing plenty of damage in the first few turns, but once your opponent starts casting larger creatures and assembling a field full of blockers, your burn spells are generally what ends the game. Boros Charm is another great choice, since you can either protect your creatures from mass removal spells like Wrath of God or end the game with a well-placed 4 points of damage. If your find yourself wanting to remove creatures, then Flame Slash can be rather useful on a budget - you generally don't want to be allowing the game to continue for long enough to encounter many creatures with 5+ Toughness and killing your opponent's creatures for R leaves you with plenty of mana available to go aggressive. If you want a substitute for Foundry Champion at the top of your curve, then creatures like Hellrider are an excellent way to go - for a much lower mana cost, you can do an equal (or higher) amount of damage on the turn you cast it, making it another perfect game-ender once your cheaper creatures have done most of the work.

 

You might also find that removing Black from your deck and running a Red/White aggro deck would be more consistent - the less colours your deck needs to access, the more likely you are to draw the right combination of spells and lands (which is especially important for aggro decks, which can't afford to stall on the first few turns). Cards like Mardu Hateblade and Daggerdrome Imp are nice, but they're cards that you can afford to cut and streamlining your mana base would probably be worth it overall (as well as saving some money on shock lands). If you're happy putting some money into your mana base, then picking up some Clifftop Retreats alongside your Sacred Foundrys would make it extremely easy to access the colours you need. If you particularly like Daggerdrome Imp but still want to cut Black, then you could consider running Vault Skirge instead - it's functionally identical under most circumstances, but you can also play it as a 1-mana creature (regardless of whether or not you're running Black in your deck).

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Well I kinda wanna keep the black for Blood Artist... It's done a pretty good job of keeping opponents from killing my creatures.

 

I'll get rid of foundry champion, I don't get it out to often anyway.

 

Do you think Elspeth, Sun's Champion would be an effective addition to this deck? Her +1 Gives me more creatures to attack with, her -3 gets rid of the bigger creatures I wouldn't be able to deal with otherwise, and her -7 permanently buffs my creatures along with making harder for the opponent to block them.

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Honestly for your deck and since it isn't Standard legal, look at cards lie Mentor of the Meek, get extra value out of your cards. Maybe even add some Swords to Plowshare/Path to Exile. How about a Wrath of God? Gives your deck answers to creatures or when your board gets floored and your opponent attempts to start building up. Maybe look at some Sorins, give your low costing creatures more value.  Elspeth is fine but in a weenie deck, I'd much rather run some removal and a few Sorins than have only one specific card be the central command because if that goes, then problems start. Keep in mind, going Mardu isn't bad but make sure your three color mana base is worth the hassle. I'd probably drop black and run WR aggro since the only notable one I see is Blood Artist so unless black gets more fleshed out(no I'm not talking $20 Thoughtseizes or $50 Liliana of the Veils), the higher risk of getting screwed on mana in a three color deck, especially without fetches might not be all that worth it. 

Edited by Chaco
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(edited)

So I tried Mardu at the fate reforged prerelease this Saturday... 1 win 3 losses. So I realized, "Wow Mardu is not as good as I thought." Then on Sunday I played Abzan and went 3 wins 1 loss, so here's a new deck I'm trying:

Lands (24)

Forest x 5

Swamp x 3

Plains x 5

Blossoming Sands x 3

Jungle Hollow x 3

Scoured Barrens x 3

Sandsteppe Citadel x 2

 

Creatures (26)

Aven Skirmisher x 4

Kin-tree Warden x 3

Warden of the First Tree x 2 (If I weren't running on such a low budget I'd have four of these)

Ainok Bond Kin x 3

Highland Game x 3

Abzan Falconer x 4

Saltroad Patrol x 2 (Coming back to the Warden, these would be replaced for the other 2 copies)

Elite Scaleguard x 3

Anafenza, the Foremost x 2

 

Instants/Sorceries (5)

Map the Wastes x 2

Abzan Charm x 3

 

Enchantments (6)

Citadel Siege x 3 (I swear to god that annoyed everyone in the prerelease tournament)

Abzan Runemark x 3

 

Actually looking to make this one standard legal

Edited by Twi the Totodile
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Uuuh probably take out one - two lifelands for one or two more wedge lands since you're on a budget.

 

 

Here's the real question, what is your budget? Give a relative estimate, it helps out a lot to help you find cards you can use within your range. 

 

 

As for sealed...honestly just because you picked a wedge doesn't mean you will be playing those colors, all goes down to your pulls. I picked Abzan, ended up playing a mediocre Esper deck that actually did decent. Mardu is good but really Siege Rhino makes Abzan stand out as the top dog in the WBX pool in standard. 

Edited by Chaco
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