For those of you that liked reading Wally West, he's back. Kind of. Only I'm going to go by my real name now, Vishu. I want to take a second to apologize to all of those people who sent me decklists or read my articles. I also want to apologize to my editor, Scott, for not pulling my weight around here. I sort of took a hiatus from writing, and then I just let it go too far, to the point that writing a new article started looming over me like this impossible task, just because I knew I'd have to write an apology also. So now, you are witnessing me getting off of my ass, and writing an article. I've also read a good amount of the mail I received, so I want to make a few quick comments:
1) I don't "make" decks for anyone. Don't tell me what type of deck you want and then ask me to build it. Build the deck yourself, and I'll try to steer you in the right direction, and suggest better card choices. If you want a pre-made deck...YOU'RE ON THE INTERNET FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!! Go get a deck list from someone else's website. I don't encourage playing net decks or having someone else build decks for you. My purpose here is to show you how to build a better deck, so the next time, if you submit something, I don't have to correct as much until, someday, you build tournament winning decks without any help.
2) It is very important, for me to be helpful to you, to know what your money limitations are. This way, I can make changes you can afford. Sure, I want anyone who reads my articles to be able to say: "that deck that he shows there is a good deck," but more importantly, I want the person who sent the fix to me to be able to build a better deck, not just look at my suggestions and realize they can't afford them.
Now, onto the fix. Today I'm going to do a pretty basic fix for DEW0505, tuning up his sligh deck so it wins a little more and stops losing to those pesky white enchantments. Here's the deck we're starting from:
CODE RED
4 JACKAL PUP
4 MOGG FANATIC
3 MOGG TOADIES
3 FIRESLINGER
3 GOBLIN PATROL
3 KRIS MAGE
4 KINDLE
4 INCINERATE
4 SHOCK
3 FIREBLAST
4 SONIC BURST
4 RECKLESS ABANDON
3 SMOLDERING CRATER
14 MOUNTAIN
SIDE BOARD
3 PYROBLAST
3 RED ELEMENTAL BLAST
3 CANYON WILDCAT
3 SHATTERING PULSE
3 SCORCHING LAVA
Well, we can do alot with this deck, especially since its only gotta be Type 1 legal. There aren't any slight cards that aren't legal in 1.5, so this allows us to go nuts, so to speak. So let's hit the creatures first. The jackal pups, Mogg fanatics, and Fireslingers are fine, but the goblin patrol, Kris Mage, and Mogg toady need to go. We can add in some Ball Lightnings, Viashino Sandstalkers, and the last fireslinger to fill the void. So where’s that put us:
4 Fireslinger
4 Jackal Pup
4 Mogg Fanatic
4 Ball Lightning
2 Viashino Sandstalker
Now as far as burn goes, sonic burst and reckless abandon are…less than impressive. Since the point of sligh is to kill your opponent in as few turns as possible, and the land count is generally low, why throw away useful creatures or cards to reckless abandon or sonic burst? We’ll throw in the fourth fireblast, and also put in 4 lightning bolts, being that they’re the most efficient direct damage spell ever, and we’ll replace the randomness of sonic burst with the planned randomness of cursed scroll. We’re also going to cut the kindles in this deck, since we’re gonna regularly need three mana for many of the better spells in the deck, especially he activation cost of cursed scroll. One thing to note is that seal of fire will be better than shock because it is a card out of your hand so using cursed scroll becomes more accurate without having to USE the spell to get it out of your hand. Also, we can’t play type 1 red without utilizing the all-too-broken Wheel of Fortune. We’ll cut a seal of fire for it. Even though it hurts our ability to use cursed scroll, the sligh deck’s capacity to drop its hand really quickly means that there’s almost no drawback to the wheel for you. So what’s our burn look like now?
4 Lightning bolts
4 Incinerate
4 Fireblast
1 Wheel of Fortune
3 Seal of Fire
4 Cursed Scroll
Now onto the land. For one, a sligh deck will never, ever want to have land come into play tapped. Its much too useful untapped. Also, When playing in formats such as type 1, cards like wasteland and strip mine are immensely useful. We don’t want to overdo our non-red producing land though, since we need red, and mountains also, for ball lightnings and fireblasts. So now our land is going to look like this:
2 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
19 Mountain
So, our fearless pilot of the deck was going to go as far as to play smoldering crater to dodge sanctimony, as a lot of people in his area play sanctimony and warmth. That’s where the sideboard comes in. Let’s see if I can help him out of that mess. First, anarchy, the white sorcery that destroys all white permanents, should solve his white enchantment problems. He also mentioned problems with mono-brown decks. For those, I suggest meltdown, rack and ruin, or shatterstorm. We’ll go with 3 shatterstorm, for the most efficient answer. So, that’s 7 slots in our sideboard that are used up. We’ll use 4 pyroblasts and 2 red elemental blasts, since pyroblasts are worded such that you can use them on non-blue spells to empty your hand for cursed scroll. We’ll make the last two cards scorching lava, to solve the recursion problem DEW0505 said he had trouble with, but you should be able to run over a non-rec/sur deck before the recursion matters. So here’s our sideboard:
4 Anarchy
3 Shatterstorm
4 Pyroblast
2 Red Elemental Blast
2 Scorching Lava
Well, DEW0505, I hope this helps, see you in a flash!
-Vishu