gaming The Magic the Gathering Thread

[*derpy* 101]

Hey guys I just built two decks and am wondering what you guys think.  Their still coming in the mail so I haven't had time to test them out yet.  One is a "Land" deck, it has 50 lands, 10 of each color.  It has 4 of each type of Zendikon plus 3 creatures whose power and toughness are equal to the amount of lands I control.  Then I have a lot of spells that deal damage or give me life equal to the mana I spend.  The flag ship is a spell that makes me win the game if I have a land and permanent of each color when I cast it.

 

Then I have a land destroying deck that has 25 destroy land spells, and about 10 creatures that destroy lands, plus about 15 cheap creatures with haste.  It's an all red deck and is only 65 cards about.

 

Limited Resources it's not red but it may be a good card for one of the decks you are using. If you destroy their

 lands you can play more of your own and they cant play any more lands.

http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/magic_single_card.asp?cn=Limited%20Resources

[Staticthor Draconus 958]

WOOHOO, I FINALLY FOUND THIS THREAD

 

i go to a shop called AJ's Gaming to get my cards

 

they even have friday night magic there

 

sadly im a noob, but im still knowledgeable of some of the top combos

 

and my dream build to have one day

 

RED/BLACK VAMPIRES AND HELLKITES

[thebobmaster 31]

I just got into Magic within the last year. I have my own deck, though. It's a custom-built Black/White deck. I call it the Michael Jackson deck. It's a pretty cool deck, but my sister and brother in law are the real Magic players. They have a binder literally filled with copies of their cards. No repeats, just single cards so they can look up what they have. If you want the actual cards, they have them in two boxes, each about 3 feet on each side in the shape of a square. They easily have over 2,000 Magic cards. And yes, they have their own decks, of pretty much any combo you could imagine.

 

Off the top of my head, they have a full combo (all colors), Green/Black with scavenge, Green/Black with drudge, Blue/White, a Red deck with Krenko (god, I hate that goblin asshole), and a Blue/Red.

[firetorn 187]

me and my room mate just started playing magic and so far, we have sorin vs. tibalt and the deckbuilder's toolkit. (he got tibalt and i got sorin and we split the toolkit). i certainly enjoy it a lot but i find my friend must have gotten all the good cards because he beats me almost every game just with crazy powerful monsters and spells that do like 5 damage. right now im running the sorin deck with a few swapouts that i thought complimented the style more and my friend is running a hard hitting red/green deck. any deckbuilding advice? like what i should look for and what to buy?

[Alex Kennedy 1,228]

me and my room mate just started playing magic and so far, we have sorin vs. tibalt and the deckbuilder's toolkit. (he got tibalt and i got sorin and we split the toolkit). i certainly enjoy it a lot but i find my friend must have gotten all the good cards because he beats me almost every game just with crazy powerful monsters and spells that do like 5 damage. right now im running the sorin deck with a few swapouts that i thought complimented the style more and my friend is running a hard hitting red/green deck. any deckbuilding advice? like what i should look for and what to buy?

 

If you're willing to drop the money on it, Sheoldred, Whispering One is great for any black deck (really, you can say that for any of the praetors and their respective colors, except maybe Urabrask the Hidden). If you're getting your life drained down to quickly, you might want to look for some cards with lifelink. Oh, and Killing Wave is always nice, especially if you already have Bloodchief Ascension active. Choice of Damnations can be a great card to use late game, and it's so frustrating it often makes people ragequit. If you're killing a lot of creatures, you might want Grave Betrayal. Speaking of killing a lot of creatures, Murder is the old reliable of the kill spell world, and Hex is great if your opponent has a lot of creatures. Of course, I assume you're playing standard, or at least 60 card casual, and I'm used to Commander, so I'm not sure how much my advice will really help. If you need ideas, you can always look up deck builds other people use. 

[Demon's_Crusader 0]

O.o I thought... Never mind. I goofed, sorry.

 

Anyway. I currently have a red/blue Izzet and Red/Green Eldrazi. I plan to make a Boros when I get my box of Gatecrash.

Edited June 13, 2013 by Demon's_Crusader

[Creamy Arty 6,252]

@Demon's_Crusader,

 

I ran a search and came upon an older Magic thread. I went ahead and merged yours with it so you wouldn't have to repost everything you said above.

[Evilshy 5,090]

me and my room mate just started playing magic and so far, we have sorin vs. tibalt and the deckbuilder's toolkit. (he got tibalt and i got sorin and we split the toolkit). i certainly enjoy it a lot but i find my friend must have gotten all the good cards because he beats me almost every game just with crazy powerful monsters and spells that do like 5 damage. right now im running the sorin deck with a few swapouts that i thought complimented the style more and my friend is running a hard hitting red/green deck. any deckbuilding advice? like what i should look for and what to buy?

 

You probably want a midrange or control deck.

Mid range is going to have some fast, efficient creatures along with a lot of removal and maybe disruption. The point of the deck is to use removal and discard to keep your opponent from keeping any threats on the field while you use some small but good creatures to beat their face in. It's great against aggro because it can usually match your opponents horde of creatures with your own creatures backed up by your mass of removal spells. Be careful against control decks; they don't have a lot of creatures so your removal is mostly useless (the ones they do have are usually protected in some way, too), they have plenty of car draw so your disruption isn't as effective, and since your deck isn't focused on aggro, you usually won't be able to kill them before they can take control of the game.

 

Control is similar, but the control is more pronounced: you have a deck full of counterspells and removal, and spend most of the game preventing the opponent from doing anything they want to do. You trade 1 for 1 (they play a spell, you counter it, they get out a creature, you kill it, etc.), all the while building up your mana base (being able to match your opponents plays with your own is tantamount in control) and drawing extra cards when you have the mana open. Generally, you want Instants that draw you cards, because you can leave your mana open during their turn in case you need to counter/kill something, and then at the end of your turn, use what mana you have left you can draw cards. Then, on your turn, you untap and have all your mana back.

Eventually, you have control of the entire game, and can drop a finisher, usually a big creature with protection (abilities that make it harder to block) and protection (abilities that make it harder to kill) to just beat them down over several turns. While doing this, you use your spells and such to keep them from stopping your finisher. Be careful, against fast aggro decks, since they can often kill you before you can really control the game. As I said above, you'll generally be pretty good against midrange, since most of their stuff is less effective against you.

 

 

If you're willing to drop the money on it, Sheoldred, Whispering One is great for any black deck (really, you can say that for any of the praetors and their respective colors, except maybe Urabrask the Hidden). If you're getting your life drained down to quickly, you might want to look for some cards with lifelink. Oh, and Killing Wave is always nice, especially if you already have Bloodchief Ascension active. Choice of Damnations can be a great card to use late game, and it's so frustrating it often makes people ragequit. If you're killing a lot of creatures, you might want Grave Betrayal. Speaking of killing a lot of creatures, Murder is the old reliable of the kill spell world, and Hex is great if your opponent has a lot of creatures. Of course, I assume you're playing standard, or at least 60 card casual, and I'm used to Commander, so I'm not sure how much my advice will really help. If you need ideas, you can always look up deck builds other people use. 

 

Sheoldred is too expensive and fragile to be very good, except maybe in EDH where the high cost and spell variety lessens these drawbacks. And actually, Urabrask is the second best Praetor, and the only one other than Elesh that is playable in any format other than EDH; the others just come down to late in the game to be worth it. All your opponents creatures coming down tapped and all your creatures getting haste is AMAZING in an aggro deck. The biggest weakness of creatures is that they aren't fully effective until a turn after they come down, which is why creatures with haste are awesome. Urabrask takes away this weakness for you and actually ADDS to it for everybody else; not only can they not attack the turn they come down, now they can't even block until a turn later. The Urabrask player effectively knows each and every creature the opponents have an entire turn before those creatures actually effect the game. They get free attacks, free opportunities to kill the creatures, etc.

 

Of course, not even Urabrask can live up to Elesh's "kill all your small dudes, weaken your big ones, and make all my small dudes into big ones". A big part of Elesh's effectiveness is that she immediately effects the game. With Sheoldred, your opponent doesn;t get hit until they're turn, and you don't get your benefit until your next turn, meaning your opponent(s) have some wiggle room in dealing with her. Same with Jin Gitaxias; if they have a Doom Blade or something, you just spent 10 mana for... nothing (although, you can Flash him in at the end of their turn to lessen this problem). Even if Elesh gets killed later in the turn, she still effected the entire board.

[firetorn 187]

thanks for the advice! i have alot of blue control type cards now and im gonna have a go at building a control deck. my current deck has actually been working quite well against all of my friend's. its a mono white token deck that pretty much out aggros him and swarms his lifepoints before he can even get off the ground XD.

[Evilshy 5,090]

thanks for the advice! i have alot of blue control type cards now and im gonna have a go at building a control deck. my current deck has actually been working quite well against all of my friend's. its a mono white token deck that pretty much out aggros him and swarms his lifepoints before he can even get off the ground XD.

 

Yeah, if it's a slow aggro deck, a fast Red or White deck can usually take them out faster than they can get going. A popular deck archetype called Red Deck Wins is basically small, fast, red creatures and burn. Mine runs 18 lands (4 less than the normal 22), is mostly 1 or 2 mana creatures (with a few 3, and 4 4costs, because Hellrider is SO FUCKING GOOD), and generally wins on turn 4 or 5. If I can't win through creatures, I can at least get them down to a few life and then burn them out.

RG and RW are similar. White has more focus on creatures working together, so you'll have a lot of stuff that benefits multiple creatures, while green just has raw power, so pairing R with either W or G can result in a very powerful and very fast aggro deck. All 3 together gives you Zoo, which was an extremely powerful deck for a long time, but is so expensive because in order to have all of your colors early, you have to have a VERY specific and expensive mana base.

 

 

 

In other news, m14 looks pretty good so far. I'm very excited for Young Pyromancer and Chandra's Phoenix (especially because I still have my old Phoenix's from m12, so I won't even have to buy them), especially since it hints at Red starting to head back towards burn spells rather than just GRRRRRAAAAAAA CREATURES SWING BEAT FACE CREATURES RAAAAAAGE GRAAAAAA.

Depending on how the set looks once we have a full spoiler, I might go RG, since I already grabbed a decent standard RG mana base for another deck (and because shock lands will always hold value because they're the best lands in Modern ). Or maybe just improve both decks.

[silverreverb 129]

o .o magic thread

 

I started playing magic late last year, septemberish. since then I've built a variety of decks but my favorites ones are my BU mill deck and my WG token deck. 

 

right now I'm kinda mad at modern masters for reprinting doubling season and mind funeral and running out so quick

[Evilshy 5,090]

o .o magic thread

 

I started playing magic late last year, septemberish. since then I've built a variety of decks but my favorites ones are my BU mill deck and my WG token deck. 

 

right now I'm kinda mad at modern masters for reprinting doubling season and mind funeral and running out so quick

 

 

MM was always meant to have a low print run. Enough to ease the cost of some staples, but not enough as to devalue everybody's Modern collections. Nobody wants to find out that their Dark Confidants have dropped $30 overnight.

[silverreverb 129]

MM was always meant to have a low print run. Enough to ease the cost of some staples, but not enough as to devalue everybody's Modern collections. Nobody wants to find out that their Dark Confidants have dropped $30 overnight.

I figured as much when I heard it was supposed to be a single print run but I didn't figure it would be this annoying. there aren't even any singles of the new cards on amazon /=|

[Evilshy 5,090]

I figured as much when I heard it was supposed to be a single print run but I didn't figure it would be this annoying. there aren't even any singles of the new cards on amazon /=|

 

Amazon isn't exactly the best place for singles... boxes maybe, but they'll be sold out.

 

eBay is honestly the best place for singles. If you don't like eBay, there are plenty of online stores. I personally like tcgplayer, as they list prices for a bunch of small and medium businesses, so you can get better prices.

Avoid Starcity. They overprice almost everything, although if you're diligent, you can sometimes find decent prices there. I don't bother, though, since I don't buy online very often.

[Alex Kennedy 1,228]

 

 

eBay is honestly the best place for singles. If you don't like eBay, there are plenty of online stores. I personally like tcgplayer, as they list prices for a bunch of small and medium businesses, so you can get better prices. Avoid Starcity. They overprice almost everything, although if you're diligent, you can sometimes find decent prices there. I don't bother, though, since I don't buy online very often.

 

I'm not a fan of eBay myself, but that's because I just don't like it in general for some reason. Tcgplayer is probably the most reliable source, and I believe the other one my friends use is Card Kingdom, but I think they might be listed on tcgplayer anyway. If you can, buying from a local comic book or game shop is another good option, if only because you have a chance at being able to haggle with them, or getting lucky and they'll just practically throw away some of their cards. About half of my deck is made from cards that were in a giant box where the guy just said he didn't feel like dealing with them and they were all fifty cents each. Oh, and there's hotsauce. I've been told they're really overpriced, but they have pretty much everything, so you could always check there as a last resort if you can't find something.

[Evilshy 5,090]

I'm not a fan of eBay myself, but that's because I just don't like it in general for some reason. Tcgplayer is probably the most reliable source, and I believe the other one my friends use is Card Kingdom, but I think they might be listed on tcgplayer anyway. If you can, buying from a local comic book or game shop is another good option, if only because you have a chance at being able to haggle with them, or getting lucky and they'll just practically throw away some of their cards. About half of my deck is made from cards that were in a giant box where the guy just said he didn't feel like dealing with them and they were all fifty cents each. Oh, and there's hotsauce. I've been told they're really overpriced, but they have pretty much everything, so you could always check there as a last resort if you can't find something.

 

Yeah, local card shops are always the best way to go. Always great to support the local shop so they can keep running events and whatnot. Also, I'm friends with the owners of both shops I go to, so I can usually get a little discount, or info about stuff that's coming up, or extra value on a trade-in

[silverreverb 129]

Yeah, local card shops are always the best way to go. Always great to support the local shop so they can keep running events and whatnot. Also, I'm friends with the owners of both shops I go to, so I can usually get a little discount, or info about stuff that's coming up, or extra value on a trade-in

there's a card shop like 5 streets from where I live. that's usually my first choice when I want to get some cards.

 

by the way, thanks for suggesting tcgplayer. if I had enough money for it right now, I would've bought the cards I've been looking for =P

[CobraCommando 37]

Hey we could always play through Google hangout or something, I'm not much for heavy compatition in the magic stuff but i have a few mono color deck's i like playing but there too old for most stuff but great for casual. Now thing i hate about magic is it became a 1 turn win game and that's why i stoped buying card's after getting back into it, but hey i still love my draft turrny's 

 

So if ya wana play some magic or hell even 2 headed oger that would be so fun.

[Evilshy 5,090]

Hey we could always play through Google hangout or something, I'm not much for heavy compatition in the magic stuff but i have a few mono color deck's i like playing but there too old for most stuff but great for casual. Now thing i hate about magic is it became a 1 turn win game and that's why i stoped buying card's after getting back into it, but hey i still love my draft turrny's 

 

So if ya wana play some magic or hell even 2 headed oger that would be so fun.

 

 

Do you have Cockatrice or Magic Workstation? Both are free programs that let you build decks and then play against others. However, the rules aren't built in; it's a virtual tabletop, you just have your deck and play how you would in real life.

[CobraCommando 37]

cockatrice was sent a Cease and desist warning or be sued into dust, so that's out other then that magic workshop i can look into but i prefer using my own card's ya know Real object's vs "Real object's" argument blah blah, but meh program's are still program's i can use them but why not just use the card's i don't get to pull the deck's out much anymore and world love too.

[Evilshy 5,090]

cockatrice was sent a Cease and desist warning or be sued into dust, so that's out other then that magic workshop i can look into but i prefer using my own card's ya know Real object's vs "Real object's" argument blah blah, but meh program's are still program's i can use them but why not just use the card's i don't get to pull the deck's out much anymore and world love too.

 

Cockatrice can still be used, all that's gone is the official server, there are still various other servers working. I'm just not sure you can still get the download of the original program anymore.

[CobraCommando 37]

yup that's the problem, so if i can get a Rar file of it or some such then that would be baller but meh i can do without. But my offer still stands to play the real thing over google hangout.

 

So we game?

[Evilshy 5,090]

Not sure how that would work exactly...

 

In any case, I have to go to class soon, and afterwords I'm going to the game shop for FNM. Or just to hang out, I don't remember if it's Modern or Standard tonight.

 

 

 

 

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO PULLED A TARMOGOYF!! $112 right there

 

Anyway, drafted Modern Masters today...

 

... and I got 7 Thallid Shell-Dwellers.

 

Fucking seven. Fear my impenetrable wall that spits out fungus minions.

 

Also had 2 Thallids, 2 Sporoloth Ancients, 2 Germinators and a Pallid Mycoderm. Oh, and some removal and Giant Duskwasps. Oh, and I also pulled a foil Lightning Helix. Traded it and the 'goyf after the tourney for some fetch lands and another Top.

Anyway, went 3-1, only losing to 5/5s.dec (creatures who can kill Shell Dwellers are really annoying). 3 other players also went 3/1, but I ended up in first because I beat 2nd and 3rd place. They all voted to split the prize pool to 6-5-5-5 instead of the normal 10-6-3-3. At first I was kinda mad, but I pulled 2 shock lands from those so all was well.

Oh, and my friend talked to his boss and I got an interview with him, so if all goes well, I can probably go to GP Vegas, too

Edited June 16, 2013 by Evilshy

[PonyEcho 1,610]

So Magic 2014 came out yeasterday

And its awesome, just spent a good hour building my own deck ( a green white one since I got a primordial hydra and an Angelic destiny)

[Evilshy 5,090]

Wait, you can build decks now in DotP 14?

 

That's awesome. Wish I'd remembered to pre-order it; I really wanted that promo Scavenging Ooze