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BMoor's Magic The Gathering Deck Garage
Protection Deck

August 28, 2006

Protection Deck

I recently started making a protection deck that was black/white and quickly learned the black was just hurting it because the only black protection cards I had were Enemy of the Gulidpact and Hand Of Cruelty. I took all the black out and it got better but it still aint as good as it could be.It is based on concerted effort because that card makes wonders of this deck. There is going to be a Magic Tournament in my school and Slivers are banned in the tournament (wonder why...j/k). This deck wins a lot but it needs to win more.

Creatures:22

1X Lionheart Maverick
1X Blazing Archon
1X Pristine Angel
2X Hand of Honor
4X Order of the Stars
1X Veteran Armorer
2X Beloved Champlain
1X Courier Hawk
1X Empty-Shrine Kannushi
1X Mirror Golem
1X Skyhunter Prowler
4X Gurdian of the Guildpact
1X White Shield Crusader
1X Lantern Kami

Enchantments:12

1X Ivory Mask
4X Faiths Fetters
1X Absolute Grace
1X Abslolute Law
3X Concerted Effort
1X Privleged Postion
1X Honden of Cleansing Fire

Instances:1

1X Stir the Pride

Sorcery:1

1X Peach Garden Oath

Artifact:3

1X Tower of Murmers
1X Tower of Eons
1X Sunbeam Spellbomb

Lands:21

21X Plains

1 thing I've noticed is it bad against is Wrath of God(Destroy all effects).It also does bad when my opponent has unblockable creatures.I buy all my cards off a site and dont want to spend more than $30.00 on it but i would like to put an Akroma in it which would cost me $15. I play mainly in chaos games against a crappy burn deck, a decent  Orzoff, a good cats deck,a good token deck, and a very fast darksteal reactor deck.I also play 1 on 1 with a blue white life/wrath of god deck which i can harly beat.Could you help me out a little please.Im tired of having to use 1 of my sliver decks to win.LoL

Tnx
Well, Trew(the name on the correspondant's Yahoo! account), after a broad look at your deck and the themes it encompasses, I've come to a preliminary conclusion that this deck is too focused on protection and preventing damage, and not enough about actually winning the game.  We can therefore start by removing several cards that serve as defense only and replacing them with more hard-hitting, aggresive cards.  The traditional mono-white tournament level deck, after all, is White Weenie, a deck devoted to getting out a quick army and beating down hard.  There's a reason people keep playing it.  Because it works.

So what do we pull as being too defensive?  Absolute Grace and Law, because they are pure sideboard tech.  Honden of Cleansing Fire, because you simply do not bother running one copy of one Honden if you're not using any other color of Honden.  Peach Garden Oath, because a pure life gain spell just won't do enough for you.  And the Towers of Murmurs and Eons respectively, because they require too much mana.  If you're desperate for something to do with a lot of excess mana in the late game, we'll work on that later.

Now, the next job is to tighten up your creature base.  Like so many problem decks I see here in the Garage, you've got lots of single copies.  It's not as bad for you, since this style of deck often doesn't care which creature it draws because they're all so similar.  But you're using sub-optimal creatures.  To save time, let's just go through the list of creatures again, and I'll rate each creature as sub-optimal (remove it) or optimal (get more copies if possible).

1X Lionheart Maverick (sub-optimal)
1X Blazing Archon (sub-optimal, too expensive)
1X Pristine Angel (reasonable)
2X Hand of Honor (optimal)
4X Order of the Stars (good, leave them in)
1X Veteran Armorer (optimal, works best in multiples)
2X Beloved Champlain (optimal)
1X Courier Hawk (optimal, takes place of Lionheart Maverick)
1X Empty-Shrine Kannushi (sub-optimal, belongs in multicolor decks)
1X Mirror Golem (optimal)
1X Skyhunter Prowler (sub-optimal)
4X Gurdian of the Guildpact (optimal)
1X White Shield Crusader (optimal)
1X Lantern Kami (sub-optimal)

If anyone has any questions about those decisions, you can E-mail me for a more in-depth explanation.  Also, I don't recommend going over the current creature count to add more "optimal" creatures, I simply point out which creatures are good, efficient, and aid your strategy and which fail to do so.  A lot of my decisions are based on the presence of Concerted Effort in the deck, which seems to be a key part of Trew's strategy.  As such, Order of the Stars and Courier Hawk really shine here, while Lantern Kami doesn't as much as normally.

Now, finally, are there any card that you could add to strengthen the deck?  Paladin en-Vec comes to mind.  So does Glorious Anthem.  Those Towers that suck up mana?  That mana would be better invested in the abilities of more White Shield Crusaders, or maybe Genju of the Spires.  Remember, if you activate the Genju's ability multiple times, it gains multiple instances of "whenever this deals damage, you gain that much life".  And of course Trew already mentioned Akroma, who would be amazing in this deck.

That about does it.  I foresee great things for this deck, if it can put aside its crippling fear of taking damage and learn to deal some of its own.  Good luck!

~BMoor



 

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