The Magic Deckbuilding/Criticism/Advice thread.

These are the only cards you can play with Melek which provide alternate win conditions.

A buddy of mine who I haven't seen in a while opened up a board game cafe near school, which has led to me finally getting back into the game. I'm signed up for a prerelease event in a few weeks, but for now my deck consists entirely of what I was able to scavenge from an Origins fat pack. Here is what it looks like now, and here is where I'd like it to be. Does that second one look good to you guys?

edited 6th Sep '15 8:18:05 PM by KyleJacobs

Add some more control with this, this, and/or this. 18 creatures is more than enough for me with UB.

This needs some trimming down.

Caveats:

• Cannot add new cards (the remaining budget is for getting sleeves and the commander)
• I actually lack Forest cards (I have 10 remaining, but only included 9 to make it 40 lands total). I would have to get some from other decks...lol

Here's my latest creation, a Standard Morph deck I just finished building, and I'm now wishing I hadn't procrastinated so long on, seeing how it'll only be in standard for about six months. What do you think I could do to improve it?

I tried making something like this myself.

You'll want Deathmist Raptors, though with there price tag I can understahnd to skipping them. Have you coincided Gudul Lurkers?

edited 23rd Sep '15 9:21:18 AM by chaosconsortium

The one time I played standard at fnm i lost to a bant morph deck because he had Hooded Hydra, so I would suggest that card.

Since I'm fairly new to the game, can someone review my Mono-black Rat Waste Not deck?

Creatures- 20

4 Drainpipe Vermin; 4 Pack Rats; 4 Ravenous Rats; 4 Desecration Demon; 4 Ogre Slumlord

Sorceries- 12

4 Duress (Although I love Thoughtseize, I hate its price); 4 Sign in Blood; 4 Mind Rot

Instants- 2

2 Hero's Downfall (now that I think about it, it's redundant in a deck like this, but I can't think of anything else)

Enchantments- 4

4 Waste Not

lands- 22

20 Swamp; 2 Mortuary Mire

I figured that rats would be a good deck to learn for a beginner like me. This deck focuses around Waste Not, and forcing my opponent to discard cards to get its benefits, while also summoning tokens as a secondary strategy.

edited 24th Sep '15 4:16:49 PM by Nate-of-a-Hundred-Things

Went to the prerelease yesterday. Went 1-2-1 with a GW landfall deck. I really liked how it played, and figured it'd be good to put in some effort to expand it to work in standard. If it's OK to post spoilers, I'll link it here.

Nate, that mostly looks good. I'd suggest swapping out Sign In Blood with something that gets you direct removal, but take that with a grain of salt since I'm not exactly experienced here myself.

edited 27th Sep '15 4:59:01 PM by KyleJacobs

I'm planning to avoid removal stuff, since I think all the discarding and Desecration Demon would be removal enough.

What I want to replace my Hero's Downfall with is something non-creature, black, CMC 3, and legal in Modern.

Makes sense. Here's what I was thinking about running with. GW aggro/buff deck built around the new Landfall mechanic.

edited 27th Sep '15 8:08:39 PM by KyleJacobs

honestly I'd main Swell of Growth in a Landfall deck.

EDIT: I've also been thinking about making a G/W Renown deck, but I can't decide if I want my secondary strategy to be Bolster, or enchantment control.

edited 28th Sep '15 11:46:31 AM by Nate-of-a-Hundred-Things

I've got another new deck. This one is a Sultai Processor deck. Its goal is to spend the early game ingesting, the midgame processing and ramping, and its end game is destroying my opponent with Eldrazi. Your thoughts?

I'm trying to build a standard, monogreen deck built around +1/+1 counters.

So far I know I'm going to include 4 of each Servant of the Scale, Honored Hierarch, Avatar of the Resolute, and Inspiring Call with the idea that it's mostly build around Avatar as my main work horse. I'm also thinking of putting in either Seek the Wild or Gather the Pack as well as Map the wastes.

Can someone give me some ideas for filling it out, especially for more creatures? I can't really afford any cards that cost more than about $2 each.

edited 10th Oct '15 5:55:53 PM by BigMadDraco

It's a shame you haven't bought Hardened Scales before. It was $1 a few months ago. $5.35 is the new median price.

Get Hooded Hydra. It can be an emergency low P/T blocker or a potential mana sink when the game drags on.

edited 10th Oct '15 7:28:37 PM by entropy13

Luckily, I happen to have two hardened scales already.

Squeeze Managorger Hydra too if you can, or MAYBE Surrak, the Hunt Caller.

Man, if only Hangarback Walker wasn't so damn expensive...

Speaking of budget decks, I put this together. Don't tell me to throw in Drana; 50 bucks is pretty much my cap.

Possibly off topic - I only have a few cards worth selling, but one of them is Undergrowth Champion. Where could I go that would be a good place to sell a small number of singles?

edited 11th Oct '15 11:30:07 PM by KyleJacobs

I would suggest maybe looking into Retreat to Emeria to help with your rally triggers.

The bane of all deckbuilders...$$$

Ok, I'm looking at a potential combo but I'm not sure if it works or not.

How does Orbs of Warding combine with the Emblem produced by Ajani Steadfast's ultimate? Would it prevent that last point of damage Ajani lets through? It's a question of getting the two effects on the stack in the right order, right?

edited 17th Oct '15 9:08:55 AM by Elfive

Emblem must prevent all but 1 first so that the 1 prevented by Orbs of Warding is really just 1.

Ok, good. That sounds like it does the thing I thought it did. Invincibility here I come.

I recently bought myself the Green/Blue Commander 2015 precon deck, led by Ezuri, Claw of Progress. As of right now, it's almost exactly as it was out of the box, except I've replaced the Ezuri's Predation I traded away with Avenger of Zendikar. Now I'm looking for suggestions to customize it further and make it truly my own.

The main focus will be getting low-power creatures into play to get my experience counters and to buff them up with Ezuri's other ability. Cards that bring multiple low-power creatures into play at once, like the Avenger of Zendikar, Myr Battlespere, and Hornet Queen will be very good for the deck, as will cards that repeatedly pump out small creatures like Myr Turbine. I could also throw in a Deadeye Navigator to flicker a creature to build my experience counters.

I might also use some powerful morph creatures, such as Sagu Mauler. I could put enough counters on it to make it big enough for an opponent to want to chump block with something tiny, then flip it up and trample right over the tiny chump blocker. Whisperwood Elemental could also be a recurring source of creatures and experience counters, and insurance against board wipes.

Maybe I could add some proliferate cards like Inexorable Tide and Contagion Engine, to buff up both my own experience counters and the +1/+1 counters on my creatures.

I've even been considering throwing in a few infect cards (the number of poison counters to kill someone is still 10 in commander, right?), even though Infect is an all-or-nothing kind of mechanic normally. The idea here would be to get an evasive infect creature like Blighted Agent, pile on the counters, and start one-shotting people. Or maybe get poison counters on my opponents and proliferate their poison counters along with my experience counters and my creatures' +1/+1 counters. Phyrexian Swarmlord could advance both the infect plan and the main one, if I can manage getting poison counters on my opponents beforehand.

So, what do you all think?

I think poison counters go up to 15 in EDH, but I'm not positive.

Also, I think it sounds bullshittastic. :|