Someone came in and asking for deck help:
 

“Alright, as I said here is the decklist. I know that it is not the BEST put together deck in the entire world, but it has served its purpose so far. If you can, I would maybe like some help or a review please.

I seem to play this a bit like Yu-Gi-Oh, so please give a newer player a bit of a break, lol. The main idea of the deck is to burn my opponent with affects and abilities. I happen to be very successful with the Hierophant and Wazzuli out, no real need to attack there. I know that the monsters have really high resources costs and I am trying to find a way to offshoot that, but with only the Warlock starter deck and two packs, there is not much I can do, lol. Several of the cards are my "heavy-hitters" and there is a lot of Ferocity in the deck. Mind helping me out a bit?

Radak's Burning Revenge.

Monsters: 26

1 Infernal
3 Ka'tali Stonetusk
2 Benethor Draigo
1 Karkas Deathhowl
1 Opheila Barrows
1 Guardian Steelhorn
1 Kulan Earthguard
4 Taz'dingo
3 Vesh'ral
1 Moko Hunts-at-Dawn
2 Wazzuli Wildmender
2 Arnold Flem
2 Hierophant Caydiem
2 Sarmoth

Weapons: 2

1 Whitemane's Chapeau
1 Rod of the Ogre Magi

Abilities: 12

1 Fall Back
1 Life Tap
2 Steal Essence
2 Skewer
3 Sever the Cord
3 Shadow Bolt


Quests: 20

2 It's a Secret to Everybody
1 Chasing A-Me 01
2 Kibler's Exotic Pets
1 Blueleaf Tubers
3 A Donation of Wool
4 Into the Maw of Madness
3 Your Fortune Awaits You
4 The Princess Trapped”

            Well Mr. Deckbuilder, you’re in luck. I was just making some plans for a warlock deck similar to this one so I already have some of the lists drawn up. You didn’t really give me a set budget so I am going to put it at an easy 20 bucks, and I’ll attempt to stay as close to it as possible. It shouldn’t be so hard since you already seem to have a good skeleton in place and now I am going to put some meat on it.

            First thing’s first, to increase the efficiency of your allies, we’ll get rid of all vanilla allies. (vanilla- an ally with no abilities)

-2 Benethor Draigo

Now at this juncture we can either increase the defensive ability of the deck by adding more Sarmoth or go with the main idea of the deck by adding Grimdron. I figure to help smooth out the “mana curve” on this deck we’ll add the cheaper costing Grimdron.

+2 Grimdron

            With no other vanilla allies in the deck, we now start to evaluate the abilities and allies as a whole according to the main idea of the deck. The cards that stood out to me as potentially weak were: Fall back, KarKas Deathhowl and Wazzuli Wildmender. Fall back and Karkas are definitely goners because they have only a single copy in the deck, meaning that even if they were essential to the plan they would hardly ever show up. Wazzuli will be a tough call later on but for now we’ll leave him be.

-1 Fall Back

-1 KarKas Deathhowl

One of’s in the deck are a trouble because if you depend on them too much they will always disappoint. To prevent this, we’ll use the extra slots to reinforce other “one of’s.” Life Tap is an excellent draw ability, and a good way to maintain tempo in the game at a very small cost. Tempo is the ability for a player to maintain stability and/or advantage when expending his or her resources. Skewers aren’t the most cost effective removal abilities, they require two costs for one goal (both the exhaustion of one creature and valuable mana).

-2 Skewer

Ok, we’ve cleared out 4 slots; still more to go.

We’ve narrowed down a lot of the easier pieces, now to make some really hard choices.

Ophelia, Steelhorn, and Kulan EG are singles, making them very unpredictable. Not a very good trait for protectors. Stonetusk is a neat little creature but I found that not many things would target him that would only deal one damage, making his ability useless. The Ogre Rod is a hard choice, it’s a poor weapon but straight forward effect. In the beginning game this card is nice but later on it’s horrible because it can still only deal one damage. Still that is better compared to Chapeau’s effect, which is marginal because none of the abilities used are real game breakers. To fix our protector problem, I am going to take out both Kulan and Ophelia to put in the best protector this deck has working for it: Sarmoth

-1 Rod of the Ogre Magi

-1 Whitemane’s Chapeau

-3 Ka'tali Stonetusk

-1 Ophelia

-1 Kulan

+2 Sarmoth

Another hard choice, how to deal with Wazzuli Wildmender. He costs 5 but is a 3/5, this isn’t so impressive. The healing ability is nice, being as it effects everyone but this isn’t the real tone of the deck. The deck’s idea is to burn and healing abilities have no real place in it.

-2 Wazzuli Wildmender

The good news is this, we can now start adding. Voss Treebender is an excellent one dropper not only because of his 2/1 stats but his ability to negate protectors. We’ll also add in some Steelhorns for some early protection.

+4 Voss Treebender

+2 Guardian Steelhorn

We’ve taken a lot of the punch out of this deck, so we need use our last 5 slots to put it back in. Another copy of Infernal will help along with a Moko. With 3 slots to go we’ll try something new and add in Watcher Mal’wi for some extra burn control.

+1 Infernal

+1 Moko Hunts-at-dawn

+3 Watcher Mal’wi

Now that we’ve got a nice creature base going on, we’ll take a look at how our quests can help us boost the abilities.

The quests seem really scattered, not very focused towards a specific goal. Often times quests help to solve problems that occur in the deck. For example, Zapped Giants is used in ability heavy decks to dig into the deck to find useful abilities faster. We’re going to dump The Princess is Trapped, I don’t like giving away any sort of power to the opponent. Blueleaf Tubers may seem useful because a game can go out so long you can deck yourself, but it’s a trap. There is no technology out there right now meant to deplete your deck. Into the Maw of Madness is a nice card for quick decks that use a lot speed. Your curve seems too heavy to use such a card

-1 Blueleaf Tubers

-4 Princess is Trapped

-2 Into the Maw of Madness

All of the other quests are good, especially It’s a Secret to Everybody. Chasing a-me 01 is fantastic and so is Your Fortune Awaits.

+2 It’s a Secret to Everybody

+3 Chasing A-Me 01

+1 Your Fortune Awaits You

With the one slot left over we’ll put it to Life Tap

+1 Life Tap

To finish let’s draw up a curve to make some last minute changes to get the deck to flow better.

1 XXXXXX

2 XXXXXXXXXX

3 XXXXXXXXXXXXXX

4 XXXX

5

6 XXXX

The curve looks pretty good, it may be a benefit that the 5^th slot is open just because that will be the turn you’ll use most of your quests for their abilities. Around 6^th turn most of your beaters will come through. Now to see just how the bill came along.

Moko Hunts-at-dawn x1

Infernal x1

Life Tap x1

It’s a Secret to Everybody x2

Chasing a-me 01 x3

Your Fortune Awaits You x1

Voss Treebender x4

Grimdron x2

Sarmoth x2

Watcher Mal’wi x3

Guardian Steelhorn x2

Total approx: $23 dollars

It appears this deck reconstruction was a success. Enjoy the deck, happy hunting.

-Alex