If you could choose the format for your next PTQ what would it be?

Showing posts with label Green. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Green. Show all posts

Friday, May 15, 2009

Favorite EDH generals


Right now I'm playing an Esper EDH deck with Sharuum the Hegemon as my general. I guess I just have a thing for artifacts. I'm also building a deck around the popular general; Momir Vig, Simic Visionary. He is incredible with some of the new hybrid cards that have come out in the last couple sets and provides insane card advantage. I'm thinking of making a mostly creature deck with decent abilities so that after you play Momir, pretty much everything you get after that will trigger his ability. Also cheap hybrid cards such as Slippery Bogle will trigger both abilities because of how they are put on the stack. This means that any hybrid card is a tutor for any other creature in your deck. (Let me know if I am mistaken in this regard please!) Should be fun and I will post a decklist as soon as I get done! What generals are you using in your EDH decks and what is your favorite?

(Pictures and links provided by Wizards of the Coast Inc)

Thursday, May 14, 2009

If I Was Going To Regionals...

Because I'm going to Disneyland this weekend (WOOT!) I will be unable to attend regionals. This is actually a relief because I'm nowhere close to having a deck tournament ready. If I weren't so lazy maybe I would be more dissapointed :P If I was going to go to regionals on Saturday I would most likely be playing either the Doran Lark deck from earlier this week or a Red/Green Aggro deck I've been working on that utilizes some new Alara Reborn cards such as: Bloodbraid Elf, Jund Hackblade, Violent Outburst, and Colossal Might. It has made the pair of colors much stronger and I filled the deck with cards that would compliment the hasty strategy that these cards encourage. The basic premise of the deck is to hit early and often and for as much damage as you can. It also lets you play multiple spells for a single cost by using cascade. It is a simple deck but it is fun to play because it is so blisteringly fast!

RG Aggro

Creatures:

4x Bloodbraid Elf
4x Jund Hackblade
4x Figure of Destiny
4x Rip-Clan Crasher
4x Hellspark Elemental
4x Boartusk Liege
4x Boggart Ram-Gang

Other Spells:

4x Incinerate
3x Colossal Might
4x Violent Outburst

Lands:

4 Forest
4 Fire-Lit Thicket
9 Mountain
4 Karplusan Forest
2 Treetop Village

Speed and stability are two very different things. The Sideboard that I'm working on is going to help make this decklist more stable against the current Meta. Though if it proves to be too unruly then I will probably go towards a Jund approach rather than just Red/Green. Please let me know what you think!

(Pictures and links provided by Wizards of the Coast Inc.)

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Homebrew Decklist: Doran Lark

Since Reveillark is the Homebrew Pick of the Week I tried to find creative ways to utilize its ability. Out of the hoards of great lark targets that are currently type II legal, Doran, The Siege Tower is one of the most efficient and hilarious. Instead of getting back your little 2/2 with some decent ability you are essentially getting a 5/5 with an ability that severely changes the game state. Coupled with cards like the freshly printed Grizzled Leotau and Lorwyn's Treefolk Harbinger it makes your side of the board extremely mana efficient and, at times, just plain scary! Since both of those are also great lark targets it makes sense to build a deck around this idea of putting out low mana creatures with less than two power and huge toughness. That was the idea behind this week's Homebrewed deck: Doran Lark!



Doran Lark


Creatures:

3 x Doran, the Siege Tower
4 x Grizzled Leotau
4 x Tidehollow Sculler
4 x Birds of Paradise
4 x Treefolk Harbinger
3 x Ranger of Eos
2 x Reveillark


Other Spells:

4 x Crib Swap
2 x Behemoth Sledge
4 x Captured Sunlight
4 x Maelstrom Pulse


Lands:

2 x Brushland
2 x Fetid Heath
2 x Forest
3 x Llanowar Wastes
4 x Murmuring Bosk
3 x Plains
1 x Swamp
2 x Treetop Village
1 x Twilight Mire
2 x Wooded Bastion

The general idea of this deck is to get highly efficient creatures out quickly along with Doran to seal the deal. Tidehollow Sculler keeps their big threats at bay or at least forces them to use a path on your Sculler instead of Doran later on. Birds of Paradise is the main fixer for the deck and allows a turn two Doran which is blisteringly fast. It also can swing for one flying damage if once you get your Doran on the field. Treefolk Harbinger both tutors up Doran and can beat for 3 once he is out. It can also grab a forest if you find yourself up against a wall or getting mana screwed. All for one green! Grizzled Leotau is both a great lark target and a great card to pair with Doran both early and late game. Ranger of Eos is good in this deck because he can grab both your Birds and your Harbinger for yet another explosive play.


Maelstrom Pulse and Crib Swap are your main removal cards in the deck. The Pulse keeps tokens and basically any non-land permanents from becomming a problem. These are going to be especially good against the even stronger post ARB Black/White tokens match up. You may be asking yourself why I'm using Crib Swap instead of Path to Exile. Two reasons: 1) With a deck this efficient I'm not worried about spending the extra two mana to get a card with a lesser drawback 2) It can be tutored with a Treefolk Harbinger. This gives those Harbingers a viable target (besides a forest) if you already have a Doran in your hand or on the field.


The last two cards are fresh off the printing press and are especially fun/awesome in a deck like this. The first is Behemoth Sledge which is basically a colored Loxodon Warhammer. It is far superior to the Hammer in this deck because once Doran hits the field, the sledge remains equally useful while the Hammer loses quite a bit of its potency. It seems to be made for Doran and is very fun/funny to play in this deck. Cascade has brought a wave of useful cards to the meta and one of the most fun and great in this deck is Captured Sunlight. It mitigates the hurt of your numerous pain lands and can pretty much cascade into anything in the deck besides your Ranger.


Wait!!!!! What about Reveillark?


This deck probably seems like more of a Doran deck than a Reveillark deck and well...it is. Lark brings back most of the cards in the deck and makes for explosive middle and late game plays. It's the card that inspired me to build the deck and it is what makes it all the more potent against a slew of decks full of various types of spot and mass removal. It is the glue that holds the deck together, its foundation, its very life force!! OK enough with the metaphors already! I think you get the point! I'm still working out the kinks so let me know what you think of the decklist and how you think I can improve on it.

(Links and pictures provided by mtgfanatic.com and magiccards.info respectively)

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

EDH-ification


EDH or Elder Dragon Highlander is a form of constructed magic that my play group is getting involved in and its been pretty fun to think of deck ideas. Basically an EDH deck consists of a "General" creature which starts out the game removed from game and can play it any time you normally could as if it was in your hand. You can only put cards in your deck that share colors with your general. The other limitation on construction is that your deck must have a minimum of 100 Vintage-legal cards and cannot contain multiple copies of the same card (besides basic lands). If you play your general throughout the course of the game and it is killed, instead of putting it into your graveyard you remove it from game again. You can play it again once it has hit RFG but every time you do, the cost increases by two colorless. It leads to some interesting deck building strategies and some out of the box thinking! I threw together a mono white soldier deck with Akroma, Angel of Wrath as my General. I'm also toying with the idea of a blue/black deck with Circu, Dimir Lobotomist as the General or a Red/White/Green deck with Rith, the Awakener as the General. I will post a decklist or two tomorrow after Ive had a few hours of sleep and a few cups of coffee..

Monday, March 23, 2009

Druids!

Who says you can't have a fun, competitive type II deck that isn't Tier I? "Druids!" utilizes the basic strategy of accelerating into Gilt-Leaf Archdruid and then stealing an opponents lands. Using the "Elfball" elements of the deck (Heritage Druid, Nettle Sentinel, Hunting Triad, and Elvish Promenade) you can accomplish this task as quickly as turn 4! Avoiding those pesky Wraths if you are on the play. I've been wanting to build this deck for a while but I've been too busy prepping for the PTQ next month and getting my Esper-Control Deck ready for tournament play. (Both my Extended "Ravinity" and Type II "Esper Kevilark Control" decks will be previewed in later posts!) Against control decks it's a glass cannon but against any other type of deck it fairs pretty well and is a blast to play! I am still working on a sideboard that will toughen it up a bit for control match ups but this is the deck in it's current form:

"Druids!" Decklist:

Creature Spells:
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Elvish Harbinger
4 Gilt-Leaf Archdruid
4 Heritage Druid
4 Nettle Sentinal
4 Treefolk Harbinger
4 Devoted Druid
2 Farhaven Elf
2 Leaf Gilder
2 Noble Hierarch
2 Imperious Perfect

Other Spells:
2 Elvish Promenade
2 Hunting Triad

Lands:
20 Forest