Community

Hello.  First post here. Wanted to get some advice on how to make this deck better.  Thanks in advance.

Creatures: (16)

x4 Figure of Destiny
x4 Cerodon Yearling
x4 Balefire Liege
x4 Bull Cerodon

Spells: (16)

x4 Lightning Helix
x4 Swords To Plowshares
x4 Pillage
x4 Raze

Enchantment: (4)

x4 Ghostly Prison

Lands: (24)

x4 Sacred Foundry
x4 Strip Mine
x8 Plains
x8 Mountain

You seem to have no repeatable land destruction and your mana cost is a bit high. liquimetal coating and gorilla shaman is a fun way to destroy land.

Also white has access to armageddon which can be fun if you use artifact power or indestructible land with something like consecrate land . You can also just sac the land before it all goes away with something like devastating summons or zuran orb

petravark and sundial of the infinite (or better yet parallax tide though it is blue)

Apr 26, 2012 -- 9:47PM, Devilhunter187 wrote:

Hello.  First post here. Wanted to get some advice on how to make this deck better.  Thanks in advance.

Creatures: (16)

x4 Figure of Destiny
x4 Cerodon Yearling
x4 Balefire Liege
x4 Bull Cerodon

Spells: (16)

x4 Lightning Helix
x4 Swords To Plowshares
x4 Pillage
x4 Raze

Enchantment: (4)

x4 Ghostly Prison

Lands: (24)

x4 Sacred Foundry
x4 Strip Mine
x8 Plains
x8 Mountain

This deck looks to be an archetype they call Ponza.  In its originial form it was mono-red, but this is basically a red-white ponza deck.

Ponza is an aggro deck that focuses on cheap and powerful creatures, removal, and enough land destruction to stall your opponent long enough for a kill.

The other main type of land destruction, which you don't appear to want to play (correct me if I'm wrong!), focuses on early game control and late game completely destroying the opponents mana base to win with some sort of slow combo or maybe 1 hard to kill creature like Quagnoth while your opponent is helpless to stop it.

So lets see what we can do!

Your curve should be about 24 lands, 16 creatures, 12 land destruction, and 8 removal. You can of course move a few of these numbers around but this is apx. the ponza formula.  Depending on your highest casting cost cards sometimes 22-20 lands is correct, for instance.

I like Figure, I like Cerodon, lets keep those.

I dislike Bull Cerodon, lets drop it.

I like Leige, but not as a four-of.  Lets go with 2.

You want some more 1 or 2 or 3 drop aggro in those last 6 spots:

Boros Recruit is decent because you will have burn to make his first strike even more powerful vs. creatures.
Isamaru, Hound of Konda is great but is hard to play more than 2 in a deck like this because they may not ever die and could be dead cards as duplicates.
Hearthfire Hobgoblin is pretty darn impressive even without pump.  It swings for 4 as a 3-drop, and kills anything with 2 or less in first strike!

I would run some combo of these in the last 6 spots.

You want 12 LD cards.
Pillage is great, keep that as a 4-of.
Despite being generic, I would run 4 Stone Rain .  I like it over other options because if you happen to not have RR mana, you can still cast it and getting that turn 3 LD is really important.
I would run 4x Boom instead of 4x Raze .  See Lands below for why.

Your removal is basically perfect.  Exactly what I would recommend in these colors for this deck and the exact amount of cards I would use!

The Land base is tricky, but if you can afford it will be amazing.

You need 4x Flagstones of Trokair , 4x Darksteel Citadel , keep your foundry's, strip mine is sadly a 1-of its restricted, and then a little bit more multilands like Battlefield Forge and Arid Mesa .

The reason why, is with flagstones and darksteel you can reliably use Boom with no drawback which is amazing.  2 mana cost LD is reserved for 1 card, Sinkhole .  This will help a LOT.

Goodluck!

Edit:  If you can afford him Ajani Vengeant is perfect as a 2-of for this deck.  Consider replacing 2 LD cards with him, or 2 creatures.  His +1 is basically LD (or many other uses), he acts a removal and lifegain, and his ultimate is very much on theme and a sure-fire win at that point.  However, you should basically read him as a Stone Rain + Lightning Helix for 4 mana that occasionally does something else as well.

It's why I would actually look at running green in this deck. Green can give you a lot in terms of versitility as you have

Acidic Slime - destruction on a beatstick, also easier for recursion
Creeping Mold - cheaper, but lacks the beatstick
Decimate - swap a green for a red and DO EVERYTHING AT ONCE 


A curious lack from your current build I think is Ajani Vengeant , who can lock one of their lands down for a few turns before wiping them all out for you. Personally I think that if you are running LD you might as well run him, even as a 1-or-2 of

Aah! So you did my mistake. What are your thoughts on adding green? It opens up a lot more options including ramping into some of the higher cost spells