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BMoor's Magic The Gathering Deck Garage
Jonathan's green artifact/modular deck
June 5, 2009

Today's E-mail comes from way back in Mirrodin Block, which was right about the time I myself started getting seriously into Magic. Several years later, the old favorites still have a place in my heart.

Lands:
20 Forests
1 miren,the moaning well

Artifacts:
1 terraion
1 darksteel forge
2 energy chambers
1 synod sanctum
1 wurms tooth

equipments:
2 Ronin warclub's
1 Leonin Bola
1 loxodon Warhammer
1 Vulshok Morningstar
1 Leonin Scimitar

instants:
3 Nourish
1 might of oaks
1 roar of jukai
1 kodama's might
1 Wild Might

Sorcery:
1 dosan's Oldest Chant
2 monstrous Growth

Enchant Creature:
1 serpent skin
1 mythic proportions

Creatures:
4 Arcbound Worker
4 Arcbound stinger
2 arcbound Hybrid
3 Arcbound bruiser
2 Arcbound overseer

p.s this deck used to contain 2 world slayer before i choose to take them out. please let me know what i can do to make this deck better. I sometimes win a few games with this deck and other times i get beaten on a regular basis. Thanks

Jonathan dalton.

________________________________________
Well, Jonathan, the main reason I chose your deck to review isn't just because I have a soft spot for Arcbound decks. It's because I honestly feel your deck is a perfect example of the kind of deck made by someone who's pretty much brand new to the game and is just learning how to build decks. Pay close attention, because we can all learn something here.

First, Jonathan's deck contains a lot of singletons, and most of his spells don't really have any synergy with each other.

Second, Jonathan is running quite a few cards that don't actually do anything to make him win any faster.

Third, almost none of Jonathan's cards are interactive with what his opponent's doing, they just look cool if he gets them in play.

Together, these three symptoms remind me of a person playing Real Time Strategy (RTS) video games for the first time. (If you're not familiar with those games, they usually revolve around gathering resources to fund construction of an army, and going to war with another army. Think Age of Empires, Starcraft, or even Risk) When a new player takes up one of these games, their first impulse is to build up as big of an army as possible, with as many troops and specialty units as they can. But when the opponent's army comes knocking, they're actually completely unprepared because they don't know what to do tactically, and so the opponent destroys the only units that really matter, leaving you with a bunch of troops that can do nothing but throw themselves uselessly into your opponent's grinder.

At least that's what kept happening to me in Age of Empires, until I just got bored and built a Wonder of the World for automatic victory. (Wonders of the World in AoE are like Coalition Victory or Battle of Wits in Magic.)

The lesson here is that you have to remember-- Magic isn't like most sports. The goal isn't to have the highest life total at the "end of the game", it's to end the game by dealing 20 to your opponent (or milling, or whatever) as fast as possible. It's not about having the biggest creature out, it's about whether you can swing with it enough times before your opponent finds a kill spell.

So, that said, the first thing we need to do is to remove all the cards here that just plain don't do much. In the "artifacts" section, the only thing that really does anything is Energy Chamber. Darksteel Forge is almost good enough, but at 9 mana, it's too slow. And besides, Arcbound creatures don't get to pass on their counters unless they go to the graveyard. Getting bounced or removed from the game won't work, and that's what Darksteel Forge doesn't help you against. So if your Arcbound creatures are indestructible, anything your opponent could do to them that would let you trigger Modular won't work, but anything that won't trigger Modular still will work. And Synod Sanctum? Why on Mirrodin would you want to remove your own permaments from the game? Sure you can bring them back later, but why get rid of them in the first place?

In Equipment, Loxodon Warhammer is the only thing you've got worth using. Everything else is just too much mana for not enough payout. Yes, even Leonin Scimitar is just not worth spending a slot in your deck on.

Keeping with the "one good spell and junk the rest theme", the only instant you have worth playing is Might of Oaks. Nourish? Let me say something I've said time and time again, Jonathan--life gain is only good if the card that gains you life does something else. Like Loxodon Warhammer-- the life gain part isn't what makes it good, although it does help. What mostly makes it good is the extra 3 damage PLUS the trample, ensuring that some of that extra damage goes through to the opponent, PLUS the fact that you gain life every time you hit. But if there's one lesson I can impress on you, it's this:

Making your opponent's life total go down is preferable to making your own go up.

Having said that, let's move on to sorceries. This time, you haven't got a single one worht keeping. I hope I've already explained why Dosan's Oldest Chant is bad, but with Monstrous Growth, you've got a new issue. Creature pump at sorcery speed is, as a rule, bad. Instants that pump creatures are good, because you can play them during combat to surprise a blocking creature and kill it, or play it on the creature that wasn't blocked to force through more damage, or play it response to a burn spell to save your creature. At sorcery speed, all you can do is play it on your main phase and attack, at which point your opponent knows that the creature is +4/+4, so he won't expect his now-not-big-enough creature to kill it. It lets your opponent play aroud it is what I'm saying. Goodcreature pump spells don't do that.

That brings us to your Enchant Creatures. Normally I'd say these two are okay, but you only have 15 creatures in this deck. That's a problem. You need more than that if this deck is going to work, and until then, you can't worry too much about having enchantments to put on them, because you might draw them and not any creatures.

So, now we get to the fun part-- adding cards. First, you need more creatures. Arcbound creatures, preferably. First, get more copies of Hybrid and Overseer, and next, look into getting some Arcbound Fiends as well. A 3/3 for 6 isn't much, but its ability to grow itself plus Fear make it very good. Learn the power of abilities that make blocking more difficult for your opponent.

Next, remember when I said you needed ways to interact with your opponent's cards? Well, that's not all your fault. Mono-green decks have always struggled with that, but the best solution I can see for you is Tower Above.

But wait, BMoor, I can hear you say. Tower Above is a sorcry that pumps my creature! You just went through a whole paragraph saying that was bad! Why is Tower Above good? Very simple, imaginary rhetorical questioner. It's not the +4/+4 that makes Tower Above good. It's not the trample, although that helps. It's not even the wither, although that is very nice. It's the part about "When this creature attacks, target creature blocks it this turn if able." Remember, Monstrous Growth was bad because it gave your opponent all the information prior to his decision about what to block with. Instants don't happen until after that decision is made. But Tower Above? This card takes that decision away from him completely. This card says, "Hey, you, I'm gonna grow to +4/+4 and crush you like a bug, and you don't get a choice about it." This isn't a normal pump spell. It's a kill spell. And green doesn't usually get those, so take what you can.

After that, you definitely want to take advantage of some of what green does best: +1/+1 counters! All your creatures love having more counters on them, so add in some Battlegrowth (permanent instant pump) and some Incremental Growth (more counters for everybody!)

Finally, if you have room, a few Commune with Nature will help you get creatures out of your deck and into your hand.

Good luck, Jonathan, and I hope you can take what I've taught and apply those lessons to your game. There's no better teacher in Magic than a good opponent!

~BMoor