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Pojo's MTG
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BMoor's Magic
The
Gathering
Deck Garage
As Dale himself
admitted, it's quite rare to see adults his age (50+
years) get into Magic. Magic gets a bad rap as being a
kid's game, I feel, most likely because of its close
association to the Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh TCG's. Heck, I
myself got into Magic through Pokemon (and no, I'm not
proud). But I do hate to make people feel
disenfranchised, and so how could I not help Dale here?
Well, if I did choose
not to, it would probably be because he broke a rule of
mine: one deck per E-mail. You see, I copy/paste your
E-mails verbatim into my articles, without even so much
as correcting your spelling (so watch it). This ensures
that when your deck gets fixed, you recognize that it
looks like the E-mail you sent me. It also means that
if you send me more than one deck, it's difficult for me
to split it up into multiple articles unless I just
delete all but one deck. Any way you slice it, this
creates extra work for me, and it's a struggle just to
keep up at one deck per E-mail. Most often, people who
get greedy, get deleted. But as Dale strikes me as one
whose tale deserves to be told, and since I never
actually came out and said that I don't fix multiple
decks, I'll make an exception. But in the future, send
two E-mails, because all double-dippers from this point
on will be skipped over to make time for the rest of
you.
So onto the deck...
er, decks. Onto the... first deck, I guess.
This breaks down into
your basic Storm deck, despite the fact that instead of
actual cards with Storm, you're using Storm Entity and
Wee Dragonauts. Now, Storm Entity doesn't care what you
play, as long as you play a lot of it. The Dragonauts
are a bit more restricted, caring only about instants
and sorceries and only about the ones you play. You
could actually drop it in favor of something less
demanding, but I like it in this deck because it doesn't
cost you any mana on the turn you play a lot of spells
to power it up. Storm Entity demands an additional 1R
after you're done emptying your hand, while Wee
Dragonauts is already on the board. So you're going to
want lots of cheap (or free) instants and sorceries. My
first change is to pull Repeal and Recall-- as powerful
as they are, X spells are not what you want here.
Repeal can become Snap to increase your amount of the
"free" Urza block spells. Recall has no obvious
replacement, but you hardly need that anyway.
Now, between Grinning
Ignus, Ornithopter, Frantic Search, and your one-mana
burn spells, I'd say you're already poised to be able to
play six spells on turn six and follow it up with a 7/7
Storm Entity and a 7/3 Faerie Wizard swinging in, plus
possibly a Brute Force'd Spark Elemental. But I have to
say I'm questioning if you need that many burn spells.
Any Holy Day-like effect might result in you "burning
out" because you dumped your whole hand and are out of
firepower. Sure Storm Entity sticks around, but Wee
Dragonauts shrinks back down. Since the Dragonauts
won't count creatrues anyway, I'd say Spark Elemental
isn't needed. And if you've already got Lightning Bolt
and Brute Force as 3-damage-for-R instants, Shock looks
mighty anemic. What to replace them with?
Cantrips, of course.
Cantrips are so powerful in
 decks
like these because they raise your storm count without
costing you a card in hand. And since your whole deck
is composed of cheap spells, that extra card will likely
mean an extra +2/+0 for your Dragonauts or the like. In
blue, the best cantrips I've found are Opt and Serum
Visions. You'd be quite well off with either of those,
but in your deck, I actually prefer Quicken. Why?
Well, most fo your cheapo spells are instans anyway, so
if you were to add in a few Empty the Warrens or any
other sorcery with Storm, then you'd be able to
piggyback off all your opponent's spells by playing
Quicken at your opponent's EOT (along with any other
instants you have the mana for) and Empty the Warrens.
If an opponent plays two spells on his turn (a
reasonable bid), then you Quicken and Warrens, that's
eight 1/1's for 3UR that are ready to attack on your
next turn.
Speaking of which,
how many spells should you aim to play before "going
off"? How many cards do you need to drop in one turn?
By my reckoning, two is enough. Think about it. If you
play two spells...
--Storm Entity will
be a 3/3 with haste for two mana, making it teh same
stats as Watchwolf plus an ability.
--Wee Dragonauts
(assuming they're instants and sorceries) will be a 5/3,
which is big enough to kill your average Dragon.
--Empty the Warrens
(which you really should have) will produce six tokens
for four mana. That's six power worth of creatures for
3R, which is the same price you pay for a Hill Giant but
twice the damage potential.
If you can play more
than that, that's even better of course. Just don't be
too reluctant to play your spells because you want more
in one turn, because if you start holding back waiting
to go off, you'll end up falling behind as your opponent
develops his board and you don't. Opt and Serum Visions
are also good for this, since you can play them early on
without fear of having one less spell to play when you
want it.
Finally, if you do
change your red/blue spell ratio, remember to change
your mana base accordingly. Think about dual lands,
too-- even if they're just Izzet Boilerworks.
Okay.... onto the
next deck....
....which basically
appears
 to
be a hamfisted attempt at U/B control, with Serendib
Efreet and Waning Wurm as your win conditions. The
Efreet I like. The Wurm I don't. I'm even less happy
that you're trying to Clockspin it into sticking
around. You're going to spend 3U a turn just to keep
from having to sacrifice a 7/6 that doesn't even
trample? Waning Wurm looks so tantalizing, I know, but
the truth is that it's a horrible card. It's not even
good in Limited. I learned that the hard way.
Out comes Waning Wurm.
In goes... what? Well, I want to say Moroii, since it
costs about the same and does what your'e trying to do
better. You insist that the life loss is minimal, and
I'm willing to take your word for it. Plague Sliver
could also work as a simple cheap muscle. But I'm a bit
worried about all this self-damage.
Without Waning Wurm,
Clockspinning can come out. So can the whole Reality
Acid subtheme, which includes Rescue and Dream Stalker.
If you want to kill permanents, you can do it in more
efficient ways. For creatures, for example, try
Tendrils of Corruption, which also conveniently solves
the issue of all that life loss your creatures are
causing you. And for noncreature permanents, Boomerang
is always nice, even without counters. It also works on
your own Control Magic if you so choose, a job you
probably already used Rescue for. If you also want
another way out of taking 1 dmaage on your upkeep, try
Peel from Reality-- also useful for saving creatures
from kill spells or combat while at the same time
costing your opponent tempo.
And with those
problems solved, all I see wrong now is Frozen AEther
and Skull Catapult. Do you need them? No. What shoudl
replace them. Whatever you want. More copies of
something good, I suppose. Or maybe Consult the
Necrosages.
That concludes this
edition of BMoor's Deck Garage. I hope you all enjoyed
this double-header issue. Now, if you'll excuse me, my
wrists are cramped and it's 1:54 in the morning.
Good night,
~BMoor
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