Tuesday, November 30, 2004
Killdraw
Type I
There is no more utter a defeat than to be killed by running out of cards in one's draw pile. To be made so completely impotent has got to be humiliating. The cruel part is that this deck runs you out of cards with Howling Mines more than Millstones, so you get to draw and play a whole bunch of cards and flail about as you die slowly without having taken any damage.
The deck isn't as hard to play as you might think. The first thing is to survive long enough to get control. I like to get a Howling Mine out early. I trust the deck to have the right card to get me out of any situation, a Howling Mine helps me get to that card sooner. As soon as you can, hunker down behind an Island Sactuary or Moat. The Sanctuary is good because it will let you draw less cards. A Moat is less of a hassle to maintain, but costs a lot more to cast. Once you have yourself protected from the land based creatures use the Swords, Wraths, and Icy Manipulators to deal with their fliers. Save your Disenchants for Disks if they might have one. Protect your lock-down with counterspells, but only as much reasonable. Go ahead and counterspell a flying creature if you're holding an extra Moat/Sanctuary or have more than one Mine/Millstone in play, you can afford to let them slip a disenchant through. The important thing is to maintain control.
Unholy Enchantress
Type II
Going with the concept that you can't build a deck around a card, you have to build a good deck first, I build this Enchantress deck. It is an adaptation of Bayou From Beyond. I took a viscious fast creature deck that was already using some enchantments, and attempted to solve the slow-down problem by adding Venduran Enchantress. You will note that there are no pansy-ass defensive enchantments like Web or Living Artifact. It's a brutally fast deck, and with a well timed enchantress can achieve a massive card advantage (which is what this game is all about) and use that advantage to crush the opponent.
Monday, November 29, 2004
Lich Spawn
Type I
You can't build a deck around a single card (Balance being an obvious exception, but that's why they restricted it). You can build a deck around a set of very similar cards, or a single card can be the knockout punch, the final lock-down from which they never recover. But when you base a deck around a single card the other cards become just supporting cards. How can supporting cards keep you alive, or even win the game if you never draw that one card? This is how various decks that I have tried to build have failed. I built a Lord of the Pit deck with lots of fast mana and fuel creatures for him to eat. It would fizzle with a bunch of elves and birds, and rarely last very long.
That is exactly the situation that I found myself in when I tried to build a Lich deck. The life gaining cards were a waste of space without a Lich. And the card required so much support, counterspells so they couldn't kill you with a Disenchant, and lots of permanents; permanents are literally your life when you are the soul-sucking undead. I eventually built a deck good enough that you could live long enough to cast a Lich, but the Lich always just ended up sitting in my hand. So I took it out, and bumped up to 4 Control Magics and a Psionic Blast.
The resulting deck is good enough to take on any I've built so far. It's creatures are cheap but powerful for their cost and size. The control deck aspects mean you can take on anything of any size. It's more of the usual suspects, but that's hard to avoid in a type I environment full of finely honed decks playing only the best cards.
One thing that may not be immediately obvious is the need for City of Brass in a two color deck, and the lack of a full set of Moxes. The cards in this deck are really cheap to cast, necessary in this cutthroat speed and power environment, but nearly all of them require two mana of the same color. I usually make it a rule that no matter how many colors I'm playing, only one will require two of the same. But this deck broke that rule in favor of powerful spells like Control Magic and Counter Spell. Worth it of course, but it just wasn't drawing the right mana. I could have increased the amount of land in the deck, but that just dilutes it's power when what I need is the right color mana, not lots of it. So City of Brass was introduced and it's worked much better since then. A little painful at times, but what's a little sacrifice compared to consistency and power?
Sunday, November 28, 2004
Control
Type I
Here we have perhaps one of the more annoying decks I've built. Copy, steal and counter are it's mainstays, but it's not afraid to curl up behind a Greater Realm of Preservation, and what's worse, Sleight of Mind it to match your deck. I'd been noticing my decks slipping towards the slightly slower side in order to gain more power. On The Wings of Angels and Devils was the beginning, it got even worse with Sadomasochistic Djinn, where more cards cost 4 mana than not. Next I'll have to circle back and build faster powerful decks, with more distributed roads to victory than these control decks with 2 large creatures (serra/sergir, juzam/erhnam). Sounds like my original type I actually.
Hope I'm not establishing a precedent here, but this situation was amusing enough to warrant a screenshot. Check out these Scrybe Sprites who think they're all bad. There only 2 Djinn's in the deck, the rest are Clones and Dopplegangers.
On a side note, I tried it out and the card Lich does work in this game. Mirror Universe and Dark Heart of the Wood do not, which is a shame, but I'll have to figure out how to build a Lich deck anyway.
Thursday, November 18, 2004
Introduction
I'm moving this over to a blog format. It was inevitable. Follow the Magic PC Game Introduction link to find the content that was previously here. This blog will be linked to in the "Play" menu in my personal site.
I have a few goals for this mini-site. It should have:
- notes on setting up the game and writing decks,
- repositories of Type I and Type II decks,
- a running log of new decks with notes and public discussion,
- and an invitation for others to contribute their own decks.
I will now begin back-entering my posts up to this date while I think about how this thing needs to be organized.
Wednesday, November 17, 2004
Unholy Alliance
and Mental Flight
Type I and Type I
I've divided the decks in the Playdeck folder into Type I and Type II so that I can make a new deck run a gauntlet of opponents within its division. The trouble is, most of the Type I decks are only half-heartedly so. They have moxes, but no dual lands. They're just not as good as they should be.
Mental Flight and Unholy Alliance are the first that I've attempted to beef up. I'm not entirely satisfied, but they're better than they were.
Sunday, November 14, 2004
Sadomasochistic Djinn
Type I
I keep building darker and darker decks. This one is just pure evil. I think it's time to build a nice friendly Verduran Enchantress/Rabid Wombat or Gravity Sphere/Moat deck. Update: only Gravity Sphere doesn't work. On the list it goes.
Monday, November 08, 2004
Tip
Type I
As in "tip the scales". A Balance deck (pretending it wasn't restricted). Yes, again my sense of what makes a deck fun (Bottle of Suleiman) is on the demented side.
Sunday, November 07, 2004
Nevinyrall's Wrath
Type I
So I promised some "fun" decks, I can't help it if I have a twisted sense of what is fun. But in my defense, it is a deck with red and white and no Swords to Plowshares or Lightning Bolts.
Saturday, November 06, 2004
Edge
Type I
My latest creation, Edge, is a vicious little land destruction deck. It doesn't completely lock down all their land, just destroys enough to put them on the defensive. The creatures are low cost but hard to kill (Kird Ape, Granite Gargoyle, Serendib Efreet). With all the restricted cards and land destruction there wasn't even room in the deck for Lightning Bolts, but it seems to be doing ok without them.
Bayou From Beyond
Type II
Bayou From Beyond is actually embarrassingly similar to Swamp Thing. The only significant differences are, mine is type II, I replaced the Ashes to Ashes (as much as I do like the spell) with Lord of the Pit, and I ditched the deck's namesake, Howl from Beyond. Unholy Strength and Giant Growth are just better cards, even with all the first-striking creatures.
About the LotP, I've been trying to build a deck centered around the Lord of the Pit with all these fast mana creatures so you'd get one out early, and then have food for him. But it never worked because the deck sucked until you got the LotP, so you died before ever casting it. Bayou From Beyond is fast and mean, the LotP is just the knockout punch.
Friday, November 05, 2004
Four Color Counterspell
Type II
Nearly exact copy of a deck I still have. It's lots of fun to play, if somewhat inconsistent (being 4 colors with no dual lands).
Once I get these "powerful" decks out of my system I'm going to have to start building more fun decks. Start by restricting all those cards that you automatically put 4 of in a deck if you use a given color, like Lightning Bolt, Dark Ritual, Swords to Plowshares. That will add more variety. Then of course there are a number of novelty decks I'd like to build as well, like the Orchish Artillary and the Poisonous Walls decks.
On The Wings of Angels and Devils
Type I
My latest deck, On The Wings of Angels and Devils, ran the gauntlet of all my Type 1 decks winning 4 out of 5. The 5th match it lost to Explosion, who used a Black Lotus and a Tropical Island to cast Ancestrial Recall, Time Walk, and a Flying Man on the first turn. It then Giant Growthed the Flying Man, and had me down to 16 life before I took my first turn. A couple Unstable Mutations and a Psionic Blast later and I was dead.
Wednesday, November 03, 2004
Queen of Dark and Light
Type II
The challenge: a type II capable of defeating a type I. How to do it?
- it must be able to handle creatures of any size cast early in the game.
- it must be able to move quickly, without moxes that means cards have to be low cost.
- every card must kick ass by itself, no time to wait for killer combos, you'll be dead before they happen.
- while remaining powerful individually, cards should also compliment each other.
Turns out, this deck does well against type I creature decks, because it doesn't care what size their creatures are, and it can often beat a creatureless deck on speed, but it's not as good as I'd like against other decks, and often has mana problems. Not entirely satisfied, but the Black Knight / White Knight deck is one I'd like to keep persuing. Maybe it needs City of Brass to guarantee two of each color mana?
Whirling Armageddon
Type II
Now there's a tricky deck to play. Absolutely brutal when it locks down. Should be very fast. Considering squeezing in Elvish Archers, need little guys that can take out other little guys.
This deck gets out something big quickly, blows all the lands, then stomps on them while they're down. The goal is to achieve a creature advantage early, and then lock down long enough to win. Being green and white it lacks adequite removal, but the idea is to stay on the offensive with superior creatures.
Monday, November 01, 2004
Type One Counter Spell
Type I
This is the deck the guy used that won the first tournament I played in, to the best of my memory. It misses Mana Drain, but does allright anyway.
Type One Land Destruction
Type I
4 Demonic Hordes and 2 Granite Gargoyle added to Type One Land Destruction. Would love to fit in more gargoyles. A normal person would have a black vise or 4, but I prefer having plenty of defensive direct damage, and some creatures. Besides, Nether Void, The Abyss and The Tabernacl at Pendrell Vale all fail to work in this game, so a total lock is hard to achieve.
