I recently sold all my cards online that were for STD as I have not been playing much online lately.  I have mainly been playing STD in RL.  So, this past week I sold all my cards online to get a couple of cheap legacy decks.  I started off by making a dredge deck.  Then I made an affinity deck.  Inititially I was running an affinity deck without tezz, but after playing with the affinity deck for a week I chose to put Tezz into the deck.  His power is massive alone, and he can either win the game by himself, stop standoffs, or just finish off the last little bit of life your opponent has.  I miss not running galvanic blast, but I feel that this deck has a lot more mid game than my last deck and keeps my opponents from being able to just play freely.

My dredge deck is also fun.  However, because of the massive graveyard hate post sideboard and Mental Misstep, the deck can be completely shut down if your opponent has proper SB for it.  In addition decks that can sacrafice their own creatures, or burn their own creatures can get rid of all your bridges, and then any chance of getting off a combo from your graveyard seems slim.

Anyways, thats my update.  I am having a lot of fun with legacy and I am happy to see that my decks are doing as well as they are for being the two cheapest decks in legacy.  Feel free to message me if you have any questions about these two decks or if you are considering playing one and want to see if it the right fit for you.

Thanks for Reading,

Konrad

He's Mad!!!

So I have been practicing with my newly finished Black and Red Deck, and I figured that I would try out Sarkhan the Mad on my sideboard to see if he fits in my deck at all.  With all the Black Vampires and Kalastria being able to grant life to me and take it from my opponent when my vampires go to the graveyard from the battlefield, I figured having one Sarkhan the Mad wouldn't be a bad idea to try out.  Considering he can pop up a 5/5 flying and then the next turn throw the 5 damage into my opponents face, that isn't bad.  Oh yea, and after that he even gets to draw me an extra card.  Not bad in my opinion.  Especially against something like a green deck that has no fliers.  So hopefully Sarkhan the Mad will work out in my deck.  he seems like he will throw a good curveball at my oppenent since you don't see him in as heavy of use as other planeswalkers.  Or, well, you almost don't see him at all.

If you would like to leave your comments below on any experiences that you have had with Sarkhan the Mad, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

Kalastria Highborne's New Home

So Kalastria Highborne came to the party today, she brought her vampire friends.  However, sick of the constant black control scheme she wanted something even more quickly violent!  So she called up her friend Sarkhan and asked him if she could dwell within the mountains, feeding off their delicious red mana!  From her union with the mountains, she had Arc Lightning on her side! Lightning bolt! and Burst Lightning!  Also those shify Lavaclaw mountains came in handy as well when controlling blue and black decks tried to tell her what she ought to be doing.  Well, this wasn't going to happen, especially with her crazy bloodghast friends.  No matter what was to transpire on the field of battle, they just didn't seem to want to stay dead.  Meanwhile, Viscera Seer's sick self enjoyed taking advantage of the Bloodghasts resiliency and kept sacrificing him to see into to the future.  Kalastria Highborne just seems to laugh, as she doesn't care because all she cares about is the victory, and total dominance, and that is something that the current state had brought them.  Furthermore the Gatekeeper of Malakir never allowed anyone to sneak into the mountains and take the upper hand, as it didn't seem like he felt that anyone had truly paid the toll.  Only the Vampire Lacerator seemed to understand, as the Lacerator made even the Gatekeeper of Malakir seem sane.  trails of blood could be seen dotting the foilliage along the road sides where the Lacerator had hunted his last meal.  This was not a mountainside Villa that you would ever want to visit.  For just beyond the blood spattered roadsides lurk the Pulse Trackers that were meant to scare you just back the way you had come right into a straight clubbing in the face by the Gatekeepers of Malakir.

Kalastria's brood of vampires had made its new home.  Wielding a Sword of Body and Mind, its energy defying signifying the denial of the illusory magics and those of the forest.  Yes, for only the swamps and the heights of Dragonskull Summit, to the ends of Lavaclaw Reach would be made their home.  And if they kept up with their Dark Tutelage at nights, maybe Kalastria could keep them sharp enough to reign form many centuries to come!

So I figured I would update my blog of what I have been doing lately in MTGO.

I have continued working on my black obsession in magic lately.  I was building a deck that revolved around Liliana Vess, Sorin Markov, etc.  Then while messing around with my cards, I decided that I would try or a really fast Vampire Deck that could actually win against fairly descent decks.

I picked up a couple more Bloodghast Vampires so I would have a playset and away I went play testing my new fast Vampire deck.  For those of you who don't know about Bloodchief Ascension, it is kinda like a reverse Luminarch Ascension.

I threw some Pulse Vampires, Hex Mage Vampires, x2 Basalisk Collars, x2 Sword of Body and Mind, of course x4 Gatekeepers of Malikir.  The next thing I did of course was throw in three Dark Tutelage that would insure that I would have cards flying at me.  I also put Vampire Bite in the deck to pump up my vampires as well.  This is also a card that has two uses kinda like a "Into the Roil", the kicker is three mana more than its initial 1 mana cost and it allows you to have lifelink on that damage you deal.  This is crucial when running Dark Tutelage, since you are running against the clock with your own life going down.  Fortunately in a deck where nothing costs more than three mana to put out its not bad.  And when Bloodchief Ascention has its three counters on it, and you run multiple in a deck, you can really have cards flying at you in the game without much bad effect.  Over the past day or so i have been testing out the deck with Quest of the Gravelord as well, which pops you out a 5/5 zombie after 3 creatures have gone to the graveyard.  All of this is a sweet combo, including the other cards that I haven't mentioned.  But I will be sure to post my deck in my blog once I feel solid with it.  As it stands now the deck wins a good 70-80% of its games at least, but there is no accounting on bad draws or just bad luck at times.  The good thing about this deck is the fact that I have been steering away from using magic that targets the opponent, as actions like that in a game can be re-directed towards you, or worse, they can be completely dissalowed by Leyline of Sanctity.  And don't think that white decks won't be using about three of those in their sideboard at least.  So please note this before you get your hopes up of making a massive black discard deck, its just not going to get through tournaments.  Make sure that if you are using magic that targets the opponent that you can swap out with your sideboard.  Of course, there is Memoricide, which if you can get it out fast enough can dissa allow this from happening.

My largest debate is whether or not to use Inquisition of Kolizek.  It is by far one of the best cards in the game in my opinion.  Simply but massively slowing.

Also a card that I play one of in my deck and sideboard a few others is I "Marsh Casualties" which I believe is very useful against Eldrazi ramp decks.  Since all the little Eldrazi tokens are 0/1 creatures.

All in all this has been a fun deck to play with.  Im still working on the sideboard of the deck as well.  Its not quite where I want it yet.  However, when this deck clicks, it clicks and it really stomps opponents.  I also have Vampire Nighthawks in the deck as well if I didn't mention that, which is one of the only reasons I can stay in a game if it goes to long and I haven't gotten any equipment out, or I haven't killed them already.  Keep in mind however that the deck still works even without Bloodchief Ascension or Quest of the Gravelord going into effect.  Its a beating when they do, but I don't always count on that happening.  One big game changer is Ratchet Bomb, which i run in my own sideboard.  This card can take out all permanents on the board that share the amount of counters that it has on it.  So in the case of Bloodchief Ascension they only need a turn until they can destroy it.  Also if someone else had a Vampire hexmage it would be a mute point.. Therefore always remember to have something with swampwalk on your SB, and then whack them with the sword of body and mind.  By the way, if you have never hit someone with a sword of body and mind when a Bloodchief Ascension is active, its friggin' "sweet".  That is the only way that I can describe it.  In fact I have hit someone with a vampire with two swords on him while Ascension was active.

Overall this isn't one of my more serious decks, but it certainly is a really fun deck to play, and it is doing very well in tournament practice room games which I was surprised by.  After this deck took out a control deck using multiple Gideon Jura's and jace the Mindsculpters I was rather proud of it.  I did however use "Sadistic Sacrament" in the second game to help cripple him up since I knew what he was throwing at me.

Next on my plate aside from getting this deck as close to perfect as I can is working yet again with more black cards.  This time to get my vampires to come to terms with "Sarkhan the Mad", and bring their ultra fast to his party of ultra Madness!  I believe that this will be a fun combination as well a a deadly one.  Of course I will probably have to have Deamon of Deaths Gate on the sideboard so that I can switch things up from game to game so I am not so reliant on just that one card.  I will most likely run x2 Sarkan the Mad's in the deck.  All I have to do now is get the dual lands that I need for blue and black.  I am halfway there right now, so after some trading I should be good to go.  The more painful proposition is going to be getting some Kalastria Highbornes which are about 6 tix per.  But I don't mind that much because this is where the fun is in Magic, playing the game simply to have fun!(**as well as win).  Coming from the days where my favorite card was a Sengir Vampire and a Fallen Angel deck, I really enjoy playing black as a color, and I believe that being able to pick up red again with only about a $20 investment on my part wont be too bad.(**Note I bought a Ob Nixilis, The Fallen just because something inside me tells me that I need to collect all the big fairly ackward to use cards black produces.)

Enough of rambling however!  I figured I would update my blog on deck building.  Even though this week seems to be on a bit of a silly slant.  The good news is that I averted from making a Green/Black infect deck because I own no Green and that would have cost me an arm and a leg.

If anyone has any questions on card uses or card discussions let me know.  Im not the greatest player in the world, but if you want to ask me my honest opinion about something that you are working on I am more than glad to give you my feedback.

Until next time, have fun and may the cards fall in your favor!

There aren't many things funner than whacking your opponent with one of these bad boys, or two!

So the past week has been one of those weeks where I can't seem to figure out what deck I want to stick with.  I mean, I think most people like to build decks of all colors, however they usually always want a main deck as well.

For the longest time I was playing Blue and White, yet I have moved over to play Blue and Black mainly.  This being said, I have worked on all sorts of different variations of black decks and infect decks.  I must say though that I have not really made a fully infect deck.  Mainly a deck that can get you with infect if the game goes deep or your unprotected.

Anyways, I have been working on my mono blue mill deck recently with the acquisition of my two new Jace the Mind Sculpters, but of course it seems like half the time I can't pull him in a game.  So then I moved to running a Blue and Black deck to see if I could pull him that way.

After going through all these different decks, I then tried throwing a couple Sword of the Body and Minds into the Blue Mill deck.  I of course, couldn't pull them and a creature concurrently, so that was a bust.  I lost that game by about 8 cards when I usually win with my Mill Deck.  It seems like keeping the Archive Traps in place is the best idea.

Finally I decided to throw only one of the swords in the deck that I made with Liliana Vess x2 in it.  I used to have four of her in the deck, but I found that it was pointless because she was 5 mana and I can just use diabolic Tutor for my first card search.  That game went well and I was able to use he sword, yet the funnest part was the fact that I got to kick my Sadistic Sacrament.  I am finding this card to be very nice since its only three mana to play and you can look at their entire library and choose a variety of cards in case the person you are playing against isn't using play sets.

The final game of the day for me in which I used the sword in my Black Deck was also much fun because of the fact that going against a white and green deck that had a bunch of creatures leveled up on the front lines called for Sorin Markov!  I know it sounds funny, however, they also had two Mysterious Mazes in the backfield.  This being said it was a stalemate.  Because the Sword of Body and Mind has protection from green and blue, so my Abyssal Specter was an 8/8 flying and could block his 8/9 green leveled up creature fine.  I also had two vampire nighthawks that were holding him off as well.  Because of the circumstances Sorin Markov the often under rated Planeswalker was able to pop off him -7 after I called for him via My Deamonic Tutor.  The guy I was playing against thought I was going for my Grave Titan again, but when he was Sorin come out he was thrown off a bit.

The funny thing about this whole story is the fact that the deck that I played near the end seemed o be the one that I had set up earlier in the week.  It appeared that all i have been doing recently is breaking my decks, lol.  I think sometimes I get in trouble because I want to use certain cards I enjoy, yet they don't fit well enough.

I was thinking about getting into green a little bit this weekend, but I realized I would be out all my money by the end, so i should just forget about it for now.  I did get a Vengvine caught in one of my mimic vats this weekend, so it was almost like I was playing Green! and I save myself 30 bucks!