Why are you even running Tempered Steel at all? Steel is ONLY good in a deck built around it. In your deck it will sometimes give a few of your dudes a decent boost, but the rest of the time it's a dead card. And since you should be getting rid of Steel, I'd also put your 2 artifact creatures up to the cutting block as well. Legionaire and Skurge are fine, but they both share the same major Achillies Heel, 1 toughness. Since an increasing number of decks are moving towards maindeck Geistflame and Gut Shot , they will often go down hard and fast, leaving you open to aggro to crush you. You do need early defense though, so instead consider cards which are significantly harder to deal with. Wall of Tanglecord is a decent blocker, Cathedral Membrane also comes down early and stops most attackers, while also being able to trade with a Titan in the late game (honestly, I'm suprised that more Wx control decks haven't tried to pick up on it). Midnight Hauntings can also be a blowout for opponents and also lets you leave removal mana up. Phyrexian Rager has already been mentioned as another early drop. Doomed Traveller should also be in consideration since it basically gets to block twice and can often be a 2 for 1 against aggro decks. I also think that titans are better than Sheoldred, since you don't really have anything in the way of hard value to return. I've found Army of the Damned to be way to slow. Remember the tokens come into play tapped, so unlike other bombs, you can't really rely on it to stablize. You already have a lot of ways to win the late game, so you don't really need Shrine of Loyal Legions. Finally, just like whoever said that decks with white shouldn't run BSZ over day, decks running black shouldn't run Dismember over Doomblade/GftT. Here's a revised, 60 card list.
It seems to me that if you want to have a token deck that can get big guys out and have plenty of control, you would want to run Zombie Infestation and definitely not run Day of Judgment mainboard, since that works against your tokens.
I was thinking something like this, not sure on the sideboard yet.
Also, Cathedral Membrane suffers from the uselessness syndrome : it does nothing except block. Against Titans, they just got two activations. It's crappy.
The tokens producers are there to swarm up lategame. You crack your Shrine when there are eight counters on it, and your Tempered Steel wins you the game. Also, TS will boost these early blockers past one toughness, and will net you a lot of life with the lifelinkers and a lot of first striking power.
To Manbear :
The tokens aren't there to swarm up before the late-game. Day is there to wipe the board once or twice before you drop your thirteen tokens on the board and get in the red zone.
Yeah... Until next game, where it'll be right back.
Seriously, there's no way to deal with Rancor in any format. It should be banned, except Gleemax is a lobbyist for the Rancor party, so that'll never happen.
You can't ban rancor, it just returns to your deck.
You might want to actually talk to the Flavor & Storyline Board people... since, you know, our whole reason for playing Magic is the flavor. I'm willing to bet you'll get a lot more interest there than in General.
Indeed, both posters down there would be thrilled.
When talks about banning Jace first started, I was thinking that I would see him banned come June 20th. But as I think more about it, I don't really think that Jace is the problem anymore. Sure his power level leaves very little to the imagination (opening Jace is like opening a refrigerator box with a naked girl on the inside), and sure his price does have a strong impact on what players choose to play (playing Jace is like being intimate with a woman and she doesn't charge you in the morning), but it is not the source of all the problems in Standard.
How do people think saving room to print more abilities on cards is dumbing down the game?
Do you really think, say, Akroma would ever be printed if she said, "Akroma can block by creatures with this ability and cannot be blocked by creatures without this ability. If a creature without this ability would deal combat damage by Akroma would be destroyed, prevent all combat damage that creature would deal to Akroma this combat. Attacking does not cause Akroma to tap. If Akroma is blocked and deals lethal damage, it deals the remainder of its damage to the defending player. Akroma may attack and use abilities that require tapping in the casting cost the turn it enters the battlefield. Akroma cannot be damaged, enchanted, equipped, blocked or targeted by black or red sources" rather than her "dumbed down" wording she has? No freaking way. Keywording and shorthand allows them to make complicated cards easy to play with, allowing them to be printed in the first place.
1. cast frankie peanuts 2. ask opponent "will you concede the game this turn"? if they say yes, you win; if they say no, play a staying power 3. subsequently ask "will you attack this turn"? and "will you cast a spell this turn"? (using a Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir for the second question if necessary) to ensure they can't disrupt the combo 4. donate them a platinum angel 5. play a mox lotus and braingeyser them for every card in their library. play an opalescence and donate them a glorious anthem and a blacker lotus , then play enchanted evening . play and activate a mindslaver and then donate them a fastbond and the mox lotus (returning one of the donates to your hand with eternal witness or whatever) 6. during their turn, play every permanent in their hand (playing lands with fastbond) then (as yourself) cast mirrorweave on the blacker lotus, so every permanent becomes a copy of it. proceed to tear up every card they control, and hopefully do it before they notice that they aren't bound by staying power's ability anymore and can concede
Dark Ritual being overpowered is determined more by what is done with it than the card itself.
True, but the fact that it enables so many ridiculous things is pretty telling. It's like, sure I can use a shotgun as a bludgeoning instrument, but that doesn't make it not a shotgun.
Shortly before Serra died, she transferred her spark into an angel whose full name was Asha Avacyn Bolas. Her dragon father groomed her for her positions in Alara and Innistrad, and she's also been getting help from her uncle Ugin in the form of Urza, who was resurrected as Marit Lage to be the avatar as which she projects herself into material realms. Grieslbrand is a split personality who sometimes wanders the planes disguised as a human woman named Liliana Vess.
Everyone's life would be easier if players would, instead of coming to the 'net for help with a deck, just netdeck and be done with it. And I'm not talking about some Top 8 lists, for the Casualists, too, can benefit from netdecking. I've netdecked plenty of decks from the Casual Play forums from users such as Mown, Raedien, Floopfoot, and a few others. I snatched straight the heck out of my web browser. Yes, people, your original idea fell victim to a savage netdecker. You have been assimiliated.
Suppose I wanted a Zombie deck. Why on earth would I spend time searching Gatherer for a decent list of Zombie cards when Raedien already did it for me? Taking time to be creative or waiting on people on the forums to tell you why your deck sucks or 'go to Casual forums' is a disasterous waste of time (to me).
That being said, Magic was ruined back in Alpha when they added all that rules and cards [Debutantes avert your eyes]. My friends and I still like playing it the "pure" way (Basically we go into the woods and hit eachother with wiffle bats while shouting made up obscenities. You know, the way Garfield wanted it to be played).
Don't worry about it. I've come up with a list of changes to fix EDH.
-First off, there's no commander. -The minimum deck size is 60 cards, and each deck can have up to four of each card, save basic lands and relentless rats. Also decks have no color identity. -Starting life total is 20.
Here's a clever play you can try yourself: -Convince friend to run relentless rats.dec in legacy tournament -Get a deck with lots of mill, yixlid jailer, and humility -Drop humility and jailer, wait for him to dump his hand, mill him out -All his rats now have no abilities. Call a judge because he's playing an illegal deck with more than 4 of a single card. -Get him/her banned from competitive magic play
L, is for the leather gloves you weaaaar. O, is for the organs that guy could spaaaare. V, is very very, extraordinay. E, is for every vagrant i butchered in a wine cellar befooooore.
The outer layer of the Magic: the Gathering box, the carton, or crust, is fairly thin and light, and contains largely aluminosilcates.
Within that lies the middle layer, consisting of the familiar booster pack. Although solid, the booster packs' high temperatures allow them to acutally move around within the booster box. This flow, sometimes called convection, is cited by frustrated box mappers as one of WOTC's most genious uses of thermodynamics since the Ravnica block.
No one knows what lies at the core of the booster box, but scientists theorize that it must be especially dense in order to make up for the large amount of fluff distributed amongst the booster packs.
I imagine [Ajani 3's] second ability involves him hurling the creature at your opponent Brion Stoutarm style, then the guy is just like "Okay, that may have worked, but don't- GOD DAMN IT!" as he does it again because cats don't give a **** :33.
Its like that one time Elves broke out in a field of Jund. Elves became a resurgent hit, then died off again once Jund adapted to the rest of the field of G/W that it required mass removal that inherently pooped on Elves too.
Submit to the menace. Delver can, and will blot out the sun.
"I remember my days as a youth at Tolarian Academy ." "Wow, small multiverse, I actually went there too." "WAIT, DON'T- Well ****, there's $200,000 in student loans well spent."
And flavor goes out the window when you cast a second copy of a planeswalker right after the first one dies, so...
"Hey Nissa, I need a favor." "You just asked me for a 'favor' like thirty seconds ago, and it turned out to be having Sarkhan Transmogrify my only follower into a dragon like 5 times -which dickery aside also violates some laws of causality - and then you let me get beaten over the head by that hedron crab." "...I'll give you " "...Well all right then."
GM, I don't think Dill is better than you. I KNOW it. Even if he wakes up every morning, clubs a baby seal, steals all the TV remotes from within a block's radius of his house and then robs hungry orphans of their food he'd be better than you, for the simple reason that he learns from his mistakes.
What would they have to fight about? Like, all I can think of now is Gideon going "Hey, long-ears! I'm gathering a group of 'Walkers together to fight some tentacle monsters.....you want in?" and Tamiyo going "Ew! Hentai no bakka Gideon-desu desu!" and flying away.
I open 4 packs just to be on the safe side. Not only do I get more cards than everyone else, but I also get to spend the rest of the night off. Win Win.
MaRo has a thing for people opening boosters with bad cards. But since he can only get so many bad cards printed in each set, he has found a devious way of getting more bad cards into circulation: He makes entire print sheets with just bad rares, then puts them onto the assembly line. He proceeds to wring his hands and twirl his evil mustache that he grew for twirling purposes as a lightning bolt strikes in the background. Afterwards, he goes to make sure that the good cards are only opened by everyone's friends, and that we all only get to open bad cards. He does this by memorising each booster, than switching them around accordingly. Whenever someone complains about a card, he immediately jumps out from behind a chair to yell "WELL, IT'S NOT FOR YOU!" before merging back into the shadows in order to devise new ways in which he can screw over players, then claim that he has valid reasons for doing so.
Mark Rosewater is sitting in a seemingly innocuous cable TV van, outside of Bankaimastery's house. Sitting nearby are two hardened criminal hackers, fresh out of prison, and filled with resentment at their lack of physical fitness. "Have you managed to hack his brainwaves yet? The set deadline's coming up fast." "We're almost through. It should be coming up on the screen any second." The hacker presses a button, and Kevin's thoughts flash onto the screen. Mark and the hackers stare in amazement at the sheer beauty, the elegance, and the raw truth of what they see. It's like the ending to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Brilliant light shines across the screen, the truth of existence is made clear to them, and they despair at their own foolishness, their own ignorance, their own inadequacy. And then they steal his ideas. As they return back to R&D, Mark sneers at a haggard old man chained to a cast-iron sphere. The man looks up from his laborious task of breaking rocks in the dungeon of Wizards of the Coast headquarters, and asks a question: "Kevin, my greatest student. He - he's all right, isn't he? You didn't hurt him?" Mark deals him a weighty blow with his boot. "Know your place, Richard. Get back to work."
I'm only opposed to it because it bears so little relation to how people actually play the game. The example of Miracles is actually a much better one then the Clone example I was trying to use.
From the game's perspective, the card can move instantly from face down in the library to revealed in the hand and that's fine for the rules. But in real life, we can't actually do that, so the card spends a good bit of time in locations that are neither where that player's library is nor where that player's hand is. And that's fine for real life. What I don't want is the disconnect to be explicitly codified. Along the lines of
183664.697 A game of Magic as laid out by these rules exists only as a pure Platonic ideal, utterly unrealizable by fallible mortals limited by the confines of physicality and the ravages of evil and sin.
183664.698 The cake is a lie, too.
I know it's true, but I don't want the rules to actually straight-up tell me that.
Pfft this cant be serious can it? If it is please delete your account OP. Its not even close to ban worthy, considering what JTMS and stoneforge had to accomplish to get banned i see the WotC selling magic to aquire Pokemon before that ever happens.
I'm trying to imagine sorin markov as a gym leader in one of those pokemon games which you have to beat him to get his badge... somehow I imagine that he would stab you in the chest with his sword before giving you the badge, even if you beat his pokemon....
Personally, I'd be fine with tea time but then I'm not gonna waste the mana summoning Emrakul, the Aeons Torn . He always takes all the sugar, drinks the whole pot of Earl Grey and doesn't even say thank you. SO. RUDE.
Break the Card is a regular thread in the Cards and Combo Forum. Quite simply, the participants are given a Johnnystatic card (e.g. Xenograft ) and are asked to build a deck around it. The winner and honorable mentions are sigged below. Get brewing!
This week's Break the Card was based around Xenograft . Thread : http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75842/27681049/Break_the_card_:_Xenograft?pg=1
Winner : Axterix with his Vampdrazi deck. Finalist : Vektor480 with his Ally/Golem/Plant deck. Honorable mentions : Zammm for the Turntimber Ranger combo and TinGorilla for suggesting Sarkhan the Mad .
Here's the link to the Mindlock Orb contest : http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75842/27697565/Break_the_Card_:_Mindlock_Orb?sdb=1&pg=last#497536269
Here's the link to Break the Card : Bludgeon Brawl : http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75842/27715169/Break_the_Card_:_Bludgeon_Brawl?sdb=1&pg=last#498208797
Winner : Vektor and his Grab the World deck. Finalist : Crandor with his Awesome Aliteration deck. Honorable mentions : RP Jesus with his Wat deck and Zix200 with his Signet Renewal deck.
This week was Followed Footsteps : http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75842/27748677/Break_the_Card_:_Followed_Footsteps?pg=1
Winner : Tevish_Szat with his Exponential Growth deck. Honorable mentions : Zix with his Carbon Copies deck and Escef with his Fungus of Speed and Time deck.
This week's card was Jace's Archivist : http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75842/28063377/Break_the_Card_:_Jaces_Archivist.
Finalists : Jentaru with his "Consecration of the Draw" deck and HereticSmitty with his "ADHD: The deck" deck. Winner : JaxsonBateman with his "The Archives Are Endless!" deck.
How you deal with control that have less creatures with full of counters and removals? Control can clean your board by DoJ or BSZ and hit just one strong creature or planewalker Gideon Jura to finish up
This thread have 2 pages now...have you test? I don't see this deck can win against strong tier decks
Tempered Steel is not strong for few turns and likely dead in the water for while. Like you said you will bring up big artifact gangs late which take long time to get there
Okay, sorry for the long abscence, I'll try to give a quick answer to everyone here...
@RegalFanton: The thing about Tempered Steel is that the majority of my rank-and-file troop creatures are artifacts. Vault Skirge, Percelain Legionnaire, and the Myr Tokens all benefit from it. The Phyrexian Ragers are nice cards, but I agree with Dilleux that they probably shouldn't go in the deck with the Bloodgifts, thats why they were slotted for the sideboard. Besides, they have the same CMC as TS, so by the time I could get out a single Rager, I could play TS and pump up all of my Skirges and Legionnaires. If my opponent was to play a Gut Shot of Geistflame before then, then it wouldn't really be anything I could do about it either way. I'd just bide my time till I could summon Sheoldred, then bring them back one by one. I do personally like Cathedral Membrane, I was originally going to put it in there, and I might still put it in the sideboard if I find the need for it in playtesting, but for the moment there are just others cards taking priority.
@Manbear: I actually like the looks of that list, it looks like a solid strategy, it's just not the strategy I was going for. The thing with the tokens wasn't supposed to be the main theme to it. If I was to make a token/swarm deck though, I'd probably take that advice.
Quick sidenote @ both Regal and Manbear: Not raging/trolling, just an honest question; why would you put both the Rager and the Demon in together, but take out both the Skirges and the Priests? Especially in your token deck idea, Manbear. That takes away both main sources of lifegain, and exchanges them for cards that use life for fuel. One of the main points of the most recent version of the deck was to have the Skirges and Priests cover the cost of the Demons and Ragers.
@mallrat: I don't mean to sound offensive, but it was a little hard to understand your post at first. I think I got the gist of it though, correct me if I'm wrong...
As for counters, I've got nothing, Blue decks always piss me off. I mean, how are you supposed to deal with something like Cancel or Dissipate except to play your own copy of them to counter your opponent's counter? COUNTERCEPTION! D:< ...Anyways, back on track. As for sweepers like DoJ, the Shrines can handle that, to an extent. With multiple copies in the deck, you could stash one aside and keep building up counters, waiting for a sweeper to hit, then use it to re-populate the field. Of cource that brings us back to the possibility of it being stopped by something like a Naturalize , but then again no deck is flawless, and there's a lot of luck and chance involved. There's no guarantee that your opponent will draw the Naturalize in time to break your Shrine. On the topic of Tempered Steel, it's the same as I said to RegalFanton. It's not all about the Myr tokens; Vault Skirge and Percelain Legionnaire benefit just as much if not more in the early game. Best case scenario, you could get all three Skirges out in the first two turns, then drop your first TS. I know it's not likely for that exact scenario to happen, but you get the idea.
As far as testing the deck goes, no I haven't yet. That's the whole reason I started this thread in the first place. I wanted to start ordering specific cards to build a deck, and came here for ideas. By now I think I've got enough to get started. I'm going to order the cards I don't have ASAP, put the deck together, do a few test runs, then either post here or in a new thread to let everyone know how it went. If it doesn't go so well, then lesson learned, I'll post here again for suggestions on how to fix it. Just because I'm putting a certain deck together now doesn't mean it won't change later. Also, if anyone still wants to chat about the deck cconcept, or has more ideas for me in the meantime, I'm open to them. I'll keep checking back here every now and then just in case.
Once again, a big thank you to everyone who's posted so far. You've all helped whether you think so or not.
For your side note, the simple truth is that you don't need to run anything to counteract the life-loss from Rager and Demon because the life cost per card is so low. If you looked at the old standard from when Zendikar was legal, decks didn't play lifegain effects in order to counteract the cost of running fetchlands, and if you look to the modern, between the fetchlands and shocklands most decks effectively start at 15 life instead of 20. Yet none of them run life gain to counteract this, because time and time again has shown that it's not worth it. Heck, even decks playing Dark Confidant, which can take out significantly larger chunks of your life, don't run lifegain to counteract his effect. That being said, Suture Priest could be a sideboard card against token decks, because them getting shocked when they cast Midnight Haunting , bolted when they cast Geist-Honored Monk , and probably killed if they try to cast something like Army of the Damned , but it shouldn't be run for the lifegain.
Also, I realize that Tempered Steel boosts Skirge, Legionaire, and Myr tokens, but I still don't like it. To re-itterate my points against it i)In order to take full advantage of Tempered Steel, you need to be all in on the Tempered Steel plan. That means that every creature or close to it should be an artifact. I'm talking at least 24 artifact creatures, not the 12 you have. As it is, the effect is going to be underwhelming when it's online compared to a real steel deck, and a lot of the time certain pieces are just going to be dead in your hand. ii)In your attempt to play Tempered Steel, you're running a few mediocre cards. Vault Skirge isn't the greatest and Porcelain Legionaire is outright disapointing (real Tempered Steel decks don't run Legionaire). As I've said before, Shrine of Loyal Legions isn't at it's best in this deck, which looks somewhat slower, because if you don't have it on turn 2 or 3, which is very likely, it's just not going to do enough to win you the game. I stand by my previous statement that you would be better off playing a card that either a)Helps you survive to the lategame or b)Can still win you the late game no matter when it resolves.
@Dilleux_Lepaire I understand what you are saying about playing the DoJ before you slam an Army down. The problem is that the deck already runs plenty of removal. I think you could maybe justify running 1 or 2 main deck depending on your meta, but I would say it is more of a sideboard card than anything else.
@Xanesh There isn't a lot more that I can say that Regal didn't. Life gain isn't necessary. That being said, the decklist I gave might do better with some number tweaking and maybe using Geist-Honored Monk , Hero of Bladehold , or Liliana of the Veil instead of Bloodgift Demon . I just threw it together without any testing.
As for strategy, unless you are building a deck around tokens there is no reason to run them other than from the sideboard (Timely Reinforcements ) to keep a fast aggro/token deck at bay, or as a wincon in Army of the Damned . There is no point in putting tokens on the board if you are just planning on wiping them off a turn or 2 down the road. You might as well be running more utility creatures or spells instead that set you up for the win, like maybe, Liliana of the Veil , Despise and Phyrexian Rager .
EDIT: Also fwiw (l know it has a slightly different bent than what you were looking for) I updated my list.
: Regenerate.
