This thread is for discussing strategy for the 100-card Unified Singleton event for the Community Cup Challenge.
I have copied all of the relevant posts from the original thread here for continued discussion. If you want to comment on one of the other events, or on the CCC in general, please use the appropriate thread.
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"Sorry, but this thread seems just like spam. TT is for off-topic discussion, not no-topic discussion." -WizO_Kwai_Chang
"Stop that! If you're not careful, rational thinking may catch on!" -Sax
"... the only word i see that fits is incompitant." -Mr44
"You know a thread is gonna be locked when it gets to the hexadecimal stage." -Gathion
"It's a good gig" - Gleemax
"I tell people often, if you guys want to rant, you've certainly got the right to (provided you obey CoC/ToS stuff), and I don't even really blame you. But if you see something you think needs changing a well thought-out, constructive post does more to make that happen." - Worth Wollpert
I've talked about it with a couple people, and some ideas came up. GSG had Goblins as a good plan, as you can skip more of the RDW hits for excess Gobbos.
Reanimator is worth considering. Overcosted jank has a home, plus quirky discard spells (both discard x cards, etc), while needing few of the truly strong cards.
After that, I think we can do goodstuff decks. UB or UW control, a rock deck, a RG aggro deck, White Weenie, Bx aggro, and then potentially just one bad deck, or a midrange UGx deck.
Hey guys, here is my WW 100 card deck. It doesn't use a lot of cards that other decks want, except for swords and it's friends. It will have to get changed for zendikar but its a start at least.
Now get out there and win the return of MOMIR for us!!!
100 card decks are a pain to read online, just copy paste it into a text file then load it into MTGO.
28 Plains 1 Order of the Golden Cricket 1 Blessed Breath 1 Mistral Charger 1 Mishra's Factory 1 Ravages of War 1 Glorious Anthem 1 Boros Guildmage 1 Safehold Elite 1 Æther Vial 1 Knight of Meadowgrain 1 Veteran Armorsmith 1 Akrasan Squire 1 Order of Leitbur 1 Mistmeadow Skulk 1 Mana Tithe 1 Savannah Lions 1 Soul Warden 1 Elite Vanguard 1 Phantom Nomad 1 Wizened Cenn 1 Armageddon 1 Icatian Javelineers 1 Loxodon Warhammer 1 Raise the Alarm 1 Serra Avenger 1 Isamaru, Hound of Konda 1 Flagstones of Trokair 1 Kami of Ancient Law 1 Ethersworn Canonist 1 Mirror Entity 1 Winter Orb 1 Harm's Way 1 Benalish Cavalry 1 Daru Encampment 1 Leonin Skyhunter 1 Oblivion Ring 1 Swords to Plowshares 1 Grafted Wargear 1 Kinsbaile Skirmisher 1 Pendelhaven 1 Eiganjo Castle 1 Stormfront Pegasus 1 Eight-and-a-Half-Tails 1 White Knight 1 White Shield Crusader 1 Soltari Priest 1 Blinkmoth Nexus 1 Veteran Armorer 1 Soltari Monk 1 Amrou Scout 1 Suntail Hawk 1 Path to Exile 1 Kjeldoran Outpost 1 Knight of the Holy Nimbus 1 Honor of the Pure 1 Griffin Guide 1 Goldmeadow Harrier 1 Silver Knight 1 Bonesplitter 1 Kitchen Finks 1 Spectral Procession 1 Whipcorder 1 Ajani Goldmane 1 Crusade 1 Blade of the Sixth Pride 1 Azorius Guildmage 1 Hand of Honor 1 Scepter of Dominance 1 Sacred Mesa 1 Order of the White Shield 1 Militia's Pride 1 Lantern Kami
Sideboard 1 Windborn Muse 1 Circle of Protection: Red 1 Blinding Angel 1 Guardian Seraph 1 Battlegrace Angel 1 Calciform Pools 1 Baneslayer Angel 1 Holy Light 1 Boros Garrison 1 Magus of the Moat 1 Azorius Chancery 1 Ghostly Prison 1 Zealot il-Vec 1 Burrenton Forge-Tender 1 Saltcrusted Steppe
This is pretty awesome of wizards. I'm rooting for the community team and especially Danger, repping the classic community.
The unified deckbuilding seems like quite a challenge, especially for 100S because that format already forces you to dig pretty deep into the cardpool. I agree with the people who say having some monocolor decks is the way to go, because not only does it save the available mana fixers, but if you were to take the best cards from another color you'd just be stealing them from another deck. Tribal also seems like a good way to avoid overlap. For starters I would try something like the following:
- WW with Ravages / Armageddon, or possibly Boros
- Elves
- Goblins
- Zombies / Mono Black Aggro
- Merfolk
- UB Control
- WGx Board Control / Midrange
- ?? (Maybe reanimator, or another beatdown deck like RG, if the first deck was mono white and not Boros)
I've played a bit of 100C singleton, and as others have pointed out, mana fixing is going to be limited. I would got with 4 mono-color aggro decks that don't overlap much, then four minimally overlapping multicolor decks:
Goblins Elves Red Deck Wins White Weenie --- Zoo UBx control GB Rock-ish (attrition)
Then for the last deck, maybe reanimator, or heartbeat combo. UWx control could also work given how deep blue is, and how many wrath variants there are. Zoo gets a lot of its power from multicolor creatures/burn like Kird Ape, Wild Nacatl, Lightning Helix, etc., so it should be ok.
It's so amazing to see 6 pages on this forums, all with different advice. The ladies of GamingAngels have been really excited about this, too, especially for me getting this chance.
Hm, I'll have to rethink the whole Mill strategy per these suggestions... I'm not quite used to this level of competition.
So, are there any ideas on burn decks or Izzet-style decks? I like avoiding the commonplace style decks as much as possible, because don't most people use those anyway?
Wow! this is fantastic. Good luck to all of you. Gleemox or Momir will be good
I'm with the previous post - don't put too much pressure on yourselves. You'll do fine!
So the unified constructed eh?!? only 1 of any card in 8 decks for singleton. Man that's gotta suck. Only one swords, only one path, only one mystical tutor... OMG only one Sensei's Divining Top!!!!
Right, deep breath...
I'm of the opinion that 8 reasonble decks are better than 4 insane and 4 might get there. I've thought about it and here's my suggestion, trying for minimum overlap:
Mono Red Goblins
Ubw Artifacts (should include Grindstone/Painter combo)
GW - Armageddon
G - Elves
BUg - Reanimator (should include the Flash/Protean hulk combo)
Mono Black Control
RWG - Zoo (Naya Aggro)
UW Control
It's important not to forget that Zendikar will be available when you build these decks. Is there a landfall deck possibly?
Exploring 100CS quickly, the 'real' decks seem to offer little else than generic aggro or control in varying colors, so there we probably need to do more work than with Standard. rimaur's list looks like a good starting point to me. I tried to think if some linear strategies could be converted from paper highlander, but they don't have that many either, and they depend on cards not available here. High Tide without Urza's block, anyone?
- red burn with splash of black for some stuff like Choking Sands / Poisoned Well (mana denial plus damage) and red / black spells with a black / red damage effect kicker - while some might not find it fun, a red / green land destruction deck with some shroud creatures might steal some wins from decks that have a fragile mana base
The singleton rules call for 8 deecks, 100 cards + 15 SB, and no more than one copy of any given card. That's a challenge.
We recently had a Singleton PE. Could someone look over the Top 8 decklists and see what cards were repeated? I'm suspecting that the mana will be a big problem, but what else is tight? Alternativey, can we modify those decklists? That question will also require some knowledge of what we have to share / lose to another deck.
If someone can do the grunt work - cool. (hint: try pasting into Excel and sorting...)
The singleton rules call for 8 deecks, 100 cards + 15 SB, and no more than one copy of any given card. That's a challenge.
We recently had a Singleton PE. Could someone look over the Top 8 decklists and see what cards were repeated? I'm suspecting that the mana will be a big problem, but what else is tight? Alternativey, can we modify those decklists? That question will also require some knowledge of what we have to share / lose to another deck.
If someone can do the grunt work - cool. (hint: try pasting into Excel and sorting...)
I'd guess Mill isn't a good strategic option, is it? With Tome Scours and Twincast + Time Walk + Jace or Twincast + Archive Trap, I would think you could take out one deck fairly quickly. Or if it's 8 opponents at the same time maybe it's not.
For the 100 Card singleton, I'd suggest one deck that just has a lot of the most powerful, cost-efficient, card-advantageful cards - the ones that end up in every deck like Solemn Simulacrum, Sword of Fire & Ice, Light & Shadow, Krosan Tusker, Eternal Witness, some Wrath effects, Angel of Despair, etc. etc. Might be good to try another deck that's jammed full of mana accel (all 10 signets, etc) and ridiculously powerful high cost spells. Round out with some decks that are strongly themed & syngerstic that cater to the team members play skills and tastes. Make sure to throw a Debtor's Knell in there somewhere. That thing rocks! MTGO Screen Name: Felorin
I'd guess Mill isn't a good strategic option, is it? With Tome Scours and Twincast + Time Walk + Jace or Twincast + Archive Trap, I would think you could take out one deck fairly quickly. Or if it's 8 opponents at the same time maybe it's not.
But I'm a mill lover, so GO MILL!
Thank you!! I'm not alone! I actually plan on attempting a Mill deck of sorts... maybe. My real-card mill deck is built around twincasting traumatize and archive trap. Jace is amazing, too, of course, and he's in my deck.. actually, what you described *IS* my deck just with Hedron Crabs instead of Time Walk.
I'd guess Mill isn't a good strategic option, is it? With Tome Scours and Twincast + Time Walk + Jace or Twincast + Archive Trap, I would think you could take out one deck fairly quickly. Or if it's 8 opponents at the same time maybe it's not.
But I'm a mill lover, so GO MILL!
Thank you!! I'm not alone! I actually plan on attempting a Mill deck of sorts... maybe. My real-card mill deck is built around twincasting traumatize and archive trap. Jace is amazing, too, of course, and he's in my deck.. actually, what you described *IS* my deck just with Hedron Crabs instead of Time Walk.
Don't forget the stall cards. Sleep for mono-blue and Day of Judgement/Angelsong are important for a mill deck as well.
I forgot to post my username, but it's GravespwnGoddess
Here's 2 sample decks for RG aggro and mono red that, I believe, don't overlap. I don't have a few cards in there on purpose, like Mishra's Factory and Eternal Witness, since I think they would be better in other decks, and Tarmogoyf will probably get moved somewhere else later, but it's a start. Also, no sideboards since those can come later. We might throw some cards that are normally sideboard fodder into a maindeck (like I did with Vexing Shusher and Dwarven Miner).
Well to be honest, i like the low mana cost of suspend cards. it adds time to the game, but you can suspend a few using relatively low mana. my pauper deck is nine suspends with a bunch of kill and counter cards. if i can get enough of a mana base to cast two or three counters/kills, i will win the game.
My favorite format is 100 card singleton, and i've been playing a red green white deck for the past 2 years that I've updated with each new set. The list is pretty solid and wins a lot, however it needs a good sideboard to deal with combo.
1,Ajani Vengeant 1,Ankh of Mishra 1,Armadillo Cloak 1,Barbarian Ring 1,Basking Rootwalla 1,Battlefield Forge 1,Berserk 1,Birds of Paradise 1,Boartusk Liege 1,Boggart Ram-Gang 1,Boros Garrison 1,Boros Swiftblade 1,Brushland 1,Char 1,City of Brass 1,Cursed Scroll 1,Cylian Sunsinger 1,"Elspeth, Knight-Errant" 1,Epochrasite 1,Eternal Witness 1,Firebolt 1,Flame-Kin Zealot 1,Flametongue Kavu 1,Flooded Strand 1,Forgotten Cave 1,Fyndhorn Elves 1,Garruk Wildspeaker 1,Genesis 1,Ghitu Encampment 1,Gruul Turf 1,Hammer of Bogardan 1,Hell's Thunder 1,Icatian Javelineers 1,Incinerate 1,"Isamaru, Hound of Konda" 1,"Jaya Ballard, Task Mage" 1,Jötun Grunt 1,Jungle Shrine 1,Karplusan Forest 1,Kird Ape 1,Kitchen Finks 1,Krosan Grip 1,Lightning Bolt 1,Lightning Helix 1,Llanowar Elves 1,Loxodon Hierarch 1,Magus of the Scroll 1,Mishra's Factory 1,Mogg Fanatic 1,Nantuko Monastery 1,Naya Panorama 1,Noble Hierarch 1,Oblivion Ring 1,Pendelhaven 1,Phantom Centaur 1,Plateau 1,Price of Glory 1,Quirion Dryad 1,Ranger of Eos 1,River Boa 1,Rugged Prairie 1,Rumbling Slum 1,Sacred Foundry 1,Sakura-Tribe Elder 1,Sarkhan Vol 1,Savannah 1,Savannah Lions 1,Scrabbling Claws 1,Selesnya Guildmage 1,Selesnya Sanctuary 3,Snow-Covered Forest 1,Snow-Covered Mountain 1,Snow-Covered Plains 1,Stomping Ground 1,Sunpetal Grove 1,Sword of Fire and Ice 1,Sword of Light and Shadow 1,Swords to Plowshares 1,Taiga 1,Tarmogoyf 1,Temple Garden 1,Terramorphic Expanse 1,Thornscape Battlemage 1,Tormod's Crypt 1,Tranquil Thicket 1,Treetop Village 1,Vinelasher Kudzu 1,Viridian Zealot 1,Watchwolf 1,Wild Mongrel 1,Wild Nacatl 1,Wilderness Elemental 1,Wilt-Leaf Liege 1,Windswept Heath 1,Winter Orb 1,Wooded Bastion 1,Wooded Foothills 1,Woolly Thoctar
I think especially for Singleton it will be pretty hard but pretty important to find 8 decks, which don't take any cards away from each other, something like:
MBC
White Weenie
RG Aggro
UW Control
Big Red
Gx Ramp
?Suicide Black/Black Aggro?
?any blue deck that doesn't want to play all good counterspells?
If you see something that needs VCL attention, please use this thread to make a request and a VCL will look at it as soon as possible. CoC violations should be reported to Customer Service using the "report post" button. Please do not disrupt the thread by making requests of either kind in-thread.
"Sorry, but this thread seems just like spam. TT is for off-topic discussion, not no-topic discussion." -WizO_Kwai_Chang
"Stop that! If you're not careful, rational thinking may catch on!" -Sax
"... the only word i see that fits is incompitant." -Mr44
"You know a thread is gonna be locked when it gets to the hexadecimal stage." -Gathion
"It's a good gig" - Gleemax
"I tell people often, if you guys want to rant, you've certainly got the right to (provided you obey CoC/ToS stuff), and I don't even really blame you. But if you see something you think needs changing a well thought-out, constructive post does more to make that happen." - Worth Wollpert
One thing I noticed in some of the other posts is that people are just posting their 100C decks. That's great, but you need to remember that we need more than one deck and we can't have any overlapping cards. Why does your deck need Wasteland, Eternal Witness or Force of Will more than a different deck? I'll try and work on some other decklists using the old events as a start (there's a cool graveyard/reanimator deck that I'll go for first), but just keep in mind what other people have posted before you make a decklist. The White Weenie deck that someone had is a good start since so far we have mono red, RG aggro, mono white, and we'll probably have a UB control deck and some sort of BGW goodstuff deck, since I think that won the last PE.
1 Adarkar Wastes 1 Bad River 1 Bayou 1 Bloodstained Mire 1 Breeding Pool 1 City of Brass 1 Exotic Orchard 1 Flood Plain 1 Flooded Grove 1 Flooded Strand 1 Gemstone Caverns 1 Gemstone Mine 1 Godless Shrine 1 Grand Coliseum 1 Hallowed Fountain 1 Horizon Canopy 1 Mystic Gate 1 Overgrown Tomb 1 Polluted Delta 1 Reflecting Pool 1 River of Tears 1 Savannah 1 Scrubland 1 Temple Garden 1 Tendo Ice Bridge 1 Tropical Island 1 Tundra 1 Underground River 1 Underground Sea 1 Wasteland 1 Watery Grave 1 Windswept Heath 1 Wooded Bastion 1 Wooded Foothills 1 Yavimaya Coast 1 Birds of Paradise 1 Cephalid Illusionist 1 Dark Confidant 1 Dimir Cutpurse 1 Doran, the Siege Tower 1 Elves of Deep Shadow 1 Eternal Witness 1 Exalted Angel 1 Genesis 1 Hermit Druid 1 Kami of False Hope 1 Kitchen Finks 1 Knight of the Reliquary 1 Looter il-Kor 1 Loxodon Hierarch 1 Meloku the Clouded Mirror 1 Merfolk Looter 1 Narcomoeba 1 Noble Hierarch 1 Nomads en-Kor 1 Qasali Pridemage 1 Quirion Dryad 1 Ranger of Eos 1 Shadowmage Infiltrator 1 Sutured Ghoul 1 Sylvan Safekeeper 1 Tarmogoyf 1 Thought Courier 1 Tidehollow Sculler 1 Wall of Blossoms 1 Weathered Wayfarer 1 AEther Vial 1 Brainstorm 1 Buried Alive 1 Cabal Therapy 1 Chrome Mox 1 Compulsive Research 1 Daze 1 Deep Analysis 1 Dragon Breath 1 Dread Return 1 Duress 1 Eladamri's Call 1 Fact or Fiction 1 Force of Will 1 Krosan Reclamation 1 Lightning Greaves 1 Mind Twist 1 Mox Diamond 1 Mystical Tutor 1 Obsessive Search 1 Pact of Negation 1 Path to Exile 1 Ponder 1 Primal Command 1 Putrefy 1 Reanimate 1 Remand 1 Sensei's Divining Top 1 Sword of Fire and Ice 1 Swords to Plowshares 1 Tainted Pact 1 Thoughtseize 1 Vindicate 1 Worldly Tutor
Here's the first version of the graveyard deck from the deck archive (copy/paste, no edits). I think that this can be changed a little to be more of a combo deck, since right now it's more of a 4 color goodstuff thing with a heavy graveyard theme. I think we can make this all graveyard all the time, and maybe cut green color if possible to save our mana bases. We could do the Cephalid combo (use Nomads, Shuko or Lightning Greaves to pull that off) to mill our library and play Sutured Ghoul. This deck plays Hermit Druid, but it also doesn't run any basic lands, so I think we have to skip that. We can run every reanimator spell in the format play valid discard outlets. Also, this deck gets every Duress available since it needs to protect its combos. Lets see what we can do with this!
Here's some ideas to get started. Lots of people have posted varying archetypes to breakdown the 800 maindeck and 120 SB cards, so let's breakdown the decks into mutually exclusive groups.
Group 1: Red Deck Wins Group 1.1: Burn Group 1.2: Red Weenies
Group 2: Blue Counters Group 2.1: Blue Tempo
Group 3: White Weenie Group 3.1: Equipment (this seems like the best fit for using the marginal equipment)
Group 4: Elves
Group 5: Big Black Spells Group 5.1: B/X control cards (Vindicate, Deed, M.Pulse, Putrefy, Mortify etc)
Group 6: UG Heartbeat/Desire Combo (regrowth effects used here)
Group 7: Land Destruction (RG or RGB)
Group 8: 3-4c Midrange
WW, Elves, and RDW are the most insular, and build themselves for the most part. This is simply an exercise in finding the best 100 cards.
MBC can be tricky on its own - I've found that splashing Green and a smaller white splash opens more versatile options such as better and cheaper removal, and better filtering. Sylvan Library is really nice here, along with Sensei's Top and Mirri's Guile (adds redundant effects for consistency's sake).
UG Combo is a two part deck, 1) ramping 2) time walks. It can be slow out of the gates, but uses off the wall creatures (Blue Myojin) along with more utility green ones (Sakura Tribe, Eternal Witness, Green Walls). Card drawing is the most important for this deck.
Land destruction simply aims to mana denial decks. It may not be the best fit however, so as someone suggested, a UWB artifact deck might be better.
Blue can be broken into 2 camps that can be separated. One is the counter-wall group, of which perhaps 12-15 solid counters are highly effective. The second group generates tempo and include Vindilion Clique, Venser (MVP literally!), Tradewind Rider, bounce, and steal effects (Bribery, Persuasion, Sower of Tempation). The latter group pairs really well with green aggro and tempo, but at the cost of removing key cards from the UG combo deck. UG may as well be one of the decks in either case.
The midrange deck should probably be the first one build as it needs the most specific cards to operate (5c mana elves, fetches, duals, utility). It could concievably morph into a reanimator/Living Death style deck, but functions better utilitizing Genesis, Shriekmaw, and Ravenous Baloth fueled by Buried Alive. Plow Under, Stunted Growth, and Primal Command probably belong in this build.
Rukcus I like your comments via the breakdown. I personally am interested in seeing if there are enough cards to build a viable 4 color deck from the remains of RDW, Control Blue and MWC. As I mentioned on mymtgo there are a couple of intriguing ideas. One is the recursion style deck of Living Death varients (animate dead, living death, corpse dance, beacon of unrest etc) and whether there will be graveyard hate enough to stop such a deck. The other idea Ive been toying with is a 5c Elemental deck using Flamekin Harbinger, Ranger of Eos, Reveillark, Mulldrifter, Shriekmaw, Cloudthresher, Smokebraider, Incandescent Soulstoke, Horde of Notions, etc. Yes its jank, but it might be coherent enough to win if you toss in tutors and some control/removal elements.
A good way to start is to consider how to allocate the various non-basic lands, powerful staples and also how to maximize annoying strategies (reanimation, enchantments, artifacts and combo) as they will be REALLY strong in the face of a lack of good flexible removals.
Following the non-basic land rule of allocation (minimizing them), splashes are a no-go as with 3 colored decks. Decks that do similar things should also be minimized as with decks that rely on the same cards to win and they tend to share the same sideboard plans.
Decks like gobs n elves use mainly their own cards so it's much easier to allocate cards to those decks without affecting the decks of the same colors by compromising on some of the cards played in them.
UB and UW are very easy to build together because they do things differently and you can choose the counterspells that go into each without compromising too much as well. UW can be created to be a more controllish build with the charbelcher kill while UB can be made flexibly more aggressive and can sport the game breaking upheaval and thus psychatog n the 5/5 delve flier.
1) Elves 2) Goblins (needs to share burn spells with RG) 3) White Weenie 4) UBR Reanimator (I think this is a clear choice) 5) RG Aggro (loses some elves and goblins but still has a lot of good creatures) 6) UW Control with Charbelcher + painter/stone (water it down just enough to help the other decks a bit, but basically use up the good blue cards in this deck) 7) BGW Rock control, or maybe Crosis control or 4 color control (you're sharing blue and/or white with UW, but you want to use the good gold and black control cards somewhere) 8) UGW evasive creature aggro (doesn't have to share a lot of stuff with the other decks except some good blue cards)
It's a lot easier to come up with six or seven decks than eight. One useful exercise might be to create those first six or seven good deck lists and then see where the most power is left over from the rest of the classic collection.
I don't like MBC. I think you're better off using the good cards from black in a better control deck, like UB or Crosis or The Rock. MBC isn't such a good deck. The only caveat to that statement is that it's good against creature decks, and this format might have more creature decks than regular 100CS.
I've built some artifact decks that don't use permission, and I'll offer the following comments: I haven't gotten them to be better than mediocre. The strongest builds use a bunch of really good UBW control cards that are better used in a UW deck or some other legitimate deck. It is certainly possible to make a list with a high artifact count that has little overlap with other decks, but you end up running a bunch of guys like Tidehollow Stryx, Faerie Machinist, Tower Gargoyle, and Epochrasite that are not especially powerful. You're always on your heels against aggro decks, and you auto-lose to permission. You'd have to pull some of the good creature control cards from black and white into the build, like The Abyss and a couple of wraths. It could claim Vindicate and Mortify, I suppose. It can do some fun card advantage things with Skeleton Shard and Academy Ruins. You can pull a Myr Incubator out of nowhere for the win. You can run Winter Orb and/or Armaggedon with the artifact mana, but it doesn't always do a lot since the aggro decks get ahead of you. Upheaval is good with the artifact mana and creatures if you can steal it from UW. Sphinx Summoner + Sharuum + Sanctum Gargoyle are good. Triskelion is really good against some decks. Maybe Grim Poppet makes the cut. Duplicant is good. Master Transmuter and Arcum Dagsson are a lot of fun, but probably not good enough for a "real" deck. The artifact mana reduces the pain of losing some of the dual lands and allows you to play through land hate. Tezzeret is good when you have a lot of targets to tutor up. The 4/5 cc transmute cards are great tutors in this deck. It's a really neat, fun deck, but it's not necessarily a good deck, especially when you start taking cards like StP/Path/FoF away from it.
I'll keep an eye on these boards, and if people get excited about artifacts despite my assertion that it's bad-to-mediocre, I'll be here to offer suggestions.
By the way, this is a really cool deck building challenge. It has my brain swimming with the different possible combinations.
The Classic cardpool is really deep, so it's going to take a lot of diligent work to sort through it. Let's start by picking up cards that are auto-includes in various archetypes: (this is not a complete list, but a start to the process)
Ruckus and Tarmotog are on the right track. The biggest concern is goign to be the lands by far as nearly every deck in 100CS runs 4-5 fetches plus duals. One interesting thing is that if Zendikar is legal that means that there are now 10 Fetches to use and since decks function fairly well currently that means there can be 2 decks that make decent use of a few colors, but splashing in mostly mono color decks is a bad idea as you are taking away valuable lands from decks that need them to add very little power to decks like RDW/Gobs or WW or Elves. Elves is maybe the most questionable here as Geddons are quite powerful in that deck and white should be included if at all possible based on the needs of the other decks unless using the geddons in WW.
The first few decks that I would choose are fairly obvious as they have extremely little overlap with other decks both in color and decks that use their colors.
Those decks are Goblins, Elves, and WW. I consider those near locks for a format such as this sence they require few multilands to retain their overall power.
After those 3 is gets a bit tricky. I would likely next choose a UG storm list similar to what Thalai has used to make T8 in the past. This deck uses almost exclusively basic lands and the regrowth, mana ramping, sorcery speed draw, and mana flare effects don't get used in any other decks.
There certainly needs to be a Blue control deck that uses the counterspells, bu tI would not split the counters as Tarmotog proposes. I think that the better route is to go Ub with heavy use of the coutners and then UW as more of a prison/combo style deck with Painter/Grind Stone and Belcher as the primary kills. Enduring Ideal may be interesting to include in this type of deck since it already wants to run Moat and Humility. Any counters in this deck should mainly be for light disruption and protection. Cards like Muddle the Mixture, Remand, and Memory Lapse are good here. This would also be your deck that uses the wraths.
2 more decks to fill out. Decks that I don't consider viable are 4/5 color good stuff and MBC. 4/5 color good stuff because it hogs too many of the duals/fetches and they need to be spread out a little more than put into only one deck. MBC jus tbecause people always try it and it never does well. It is just too inconsistant; it will draw all of its discard vs aggro and lose on tempo or all of its creature kill vs control/combo and have dead cards or draw discard once the opponent is out of cards and allow the opponent to get right back into the game.
Thus the viable possibilities in my mind for the last 2 decks are UG/UGw tempo, Reanimator, RG aggro, RG Ramp/Mana Denial, and GBW rock. I would definately choose GBW Rock as one deck as it would be a shame to leave all of the good 3cc removal left unused. Reanimator may be difficult as it tends to want a lot of dual lands to run a version similar to the one the has made several T8s. If you cut those and run a UB list you are probably overlapping a lot of lands with the Ub control deck. Most of the good cards from UG are probably going to be canabalized by the Ub, Uw, and GBW deck so that one I think is out. That leaves RG, which is going to have to share burn with the goblins deck, because of this and the fact that the GBW deck is going to want the Tarmogoyf and maybe the boas I see an RG Mana Denial deck being the best route here. This gives a Home to the powerful bloodmoon effects and the miners.
In Summary these are the decks I would run:
WW Goblins Elves UG Storm Ub Control UW Prison/Combo GBW Rock RG Mana Denial
I'm willing to help share and develop lists for any of these decks as the list sort of need to be developed together.
