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Mc2wire says, "As long as your cards are tournament legal, there is no question that what you bring to the table is viable (control and burn are 2 popular types of decks)"

Mc2wire out!

Oct 4, 2011 -- 12:55PM, Burning_Forest wrote:

try posting in normal font and colors next time so people can read this

A thousand times this.

Now all I see is a smiley face, "Traumatize" in a retarded font, "Surgical Extraction" and "Sorin Markov."

Directed at me or him?  'Cause I'm not gonna help if I have to highlight his post in order to read it.

Especially when highlighting it reveals even more painful-to-read font.  Remove ALL text formatting from your post and stop trying to be cute, I literally have a headache.

Edit: Ugh, fine, pink shows up on my theme.  Why can't you just leave it on default?  Default shows up light against dark profiles and dark against light profiles.  But the intensely bad font is still there, what's up with that?

The following sets are standard legal as of today:
Scars of Mirrodin
Mirrodin Besieged
New Phyrexia
Magic 2012
Innistrad

You may have as many cards in your deck as you want as long as you can shuffle it unassisted, you may have up to four (4) of each card in your deck, except for basic lands on which there is no limit.  If you have a card from an earlier set that is reprinted in one of the sets named above, it is standard legal.  For example, Goblin Grenade from Fallen Empires or Anthologies, Volcanic Dragon from Mirage or Anthologies, Dissipate from Mirage.

Personally, I'm a really big fan of mono red aggro.  It's short, sweet and to-the-point.  I would NOT recommend buying Stromkirk Noble right now as his recent victory in a StarCityGames tournament has completely ****ed his price for anyone who didn't yet have any ($12, up from $2).

As a standard environment fills out, blue-white or blue-black control (or maybe blue-white-black) control inevitably becomes the dominant deck by which all other decks are measured (if it doesn't beat control, it's not competitive).  As we've just had a rotation, the pros are still tinkering with the perfect obnoxious soul-crushing control build, so the masses are playing decks that were largely unaffected (or not negatively affected) by the rotation, primarily Red Deck Wins and Tempered Steel .

Red Deck Wins is good because it hits hard and fast before the opponent can stabilise, ideally, burning through early blockers and mana dorks to get in 6-10 damage as soon as possible, and then finishing the opponent with burn.  The key to a successful RDW build is to have a bunch of aggressive 1-2 mana creatures, maybe with a couple 3-4 mana creatures for a few turns in, but plenty of burn to go to the opponent's face for when your creatures are outclassed.  Red aggro is USUALLY budget, Stromkirk Noble 's sudden retarded price not withstanding.  This deck gets weaker the longer the game goes on, so smash them quick 'cause you can't compete with a Titan or planeswalker.

Tempered Steel is the deck named after the enchantment that boosts your 1-2 mana artifact creatures into a very dangerous force of sizeable beaters.  It relies heavily on Mox Opal for dropping things into play a turn sooner.  Its mana base is generally mono white, with a crapload of artifacts to enable Mox Opal , Dispatch and maybe in the future Galvanic Blast if people start using Clifftop Retreat and a single Mountain (I'd really like to do this).  Tempered Steel (the deck, not the card) is weak to sweepers, heavy spot removal and artifact destruction.  This deck is less budget than RDW, but it lost virtually nothing ( Ornithopter , Steel Overseer ) in the rotation.

U/x (x can be white, black, red or some combination thereof) control is a most-infuriating opponent.  It uses countermagic ( Mana Leak , Dissipate , Cancel , etc) to keep you from getting threats onto the board, card draw ( Azure Mage , Consecrated Sphinx , Think Twice , etc) to keep its hand full of countermagic, and planeswalkers ( Elspeth Tirel , Venser, the Sojourner , Liliana of the Veil , Gideon Jura ) and sweepers ( Day of Judgment , etc) to rule the board.  Once you're out of ways to protect yourself/harm your opponent, control then sends in massive, card-advantage-generating fatties ( Sun Titan , Frost Titan , Wurmcoil Engine , Gideon Jura , etc) to end you in the next couple turns.  The key to beating control is to be faster and more clever than its pilot.  Red aggro is okay at this before sideboard, but after sideboarding, control just has way too many answers to deal with.

Hope this helps.