azen

Great deck! If you really want to improve the aggressive tribal theme, you should play "Wren's Run Vanquisher."

Dark Ritual is very good. Thrumming Stone, as RoughneckBarbarian pointed out, should also be a top choice. Perhaps you should play some budget mana-fixing lands?

I can gurarentee that you will NOT run out of cards in your library. Do you really think that 120 turns are going to pass without any player winning or losing? The better your draw spells, the stronger your deck.

Listen to our comments, skittensro - we know what we're doing. 66 cards is too much. White doesn't play a theme crucial enough to your deck. Limit your deck to 60 cards and play Black-Blue for greater consistency.

Are you on a budget of any sort?

...But I bet they don't have Black Lotus, Ancestral Recall, Time Walk, or Timetwister, lol.

Oh, you're new... welcome to the game, then, skittensro! I'll give you an explanation of my tips.

1. Many beginning players like to play one-of's (single copies of cards) in their decks. As you'll probably learn, your chances of drawing your stronger spells are too low and inconsistent. You want to play as many copies of your stronger cards as you can (the maximum is four). Good commons that you'll want are Ponders and Merfolk Looters.

2. Life gain is a stall tactic... you waste slots in your deck and give your opponent more time to set up by "wasting" turns and mana casting these life spells. Replace them with good countermagic and draw.

Looks great. I would run more copies of Magma Jet, Incinerate, and (above all) Fireblast. 40 card Burn decks are just ridiculous, heh.

Heh, no problem. Thanks for the reminder. Mana Vault is very powerful and banned, but it is much more budget than Black Lotus. Budget is actually my only restriction when I build decks, since I don't play competitively.

You usually want to stay away from playing one-of's. I know it's difficult to find four copies of spells like Planar Cleansing, but your should at least increase the number of Ponders, Merfolk Looters, etc.

I would stay away from running life gain spells to start with, to be honest.

Thanks Cakins. I'm not worried about countermagic, since it's not very common in my playgroup. I was offering an alternative choice for other players.

I run Covetous Dragon because I have four copies sitting around. Most Wildfire decks play Crater Hellion, which is probably a good choice.

Heh, just about any deck can use Black Lotus. This isn't really a dream deck because I have all of the cards (although I did get a majority of them from a 1999 World Championship deck). I think I covered this in the deck description.

Thanks for your tips!

You have a lot of one-of's. Why don't you select your most powerful spells and run four copies of those spells? I know that you might not have access to four Sarkhan Vol, but Terminates / Savage Lands are easy to find. Otherwise, this deck looks great - thumbs up!

Hm, I don't think the countermagic is necessary. I would up the Thrumming Stone count to four, cut the Islands / countermagic, and run Dark Ritual. That'll probably make your wins more consistent (as you don't have to worry about drawing the wrong lands).

Razerous, you can make direct modifications to your decklist. If you intend to take this deck pretty far and try to make it as developed as possible, you should start a new decklist entitled "DDD, Version 2" or something along those lines. There is no rule to what you do - this is just what I have seen other posters use.

I'm so sorry about the Standard problem. Unfortunetely, I can't offer you much help on that, since I am hardly a competitive player. If you're aiming to build a Forced Fruition deck for Standard, I would consider searching it up or something. You'll get nice ideas this way.

Hope this helps,

Azen

I recently picked up my Hymns for $0.99 per copy, so I would consider Hymn a budget option - although the choice is entirely up to you, lunabass.

I'm sorry for that suggestion, then. Thanks for pointing this out, Druler. Seeing that the deck was listed under "Artifacts" and not under "Tournament Quality," I really had no idea that we were talking about Extended. Then again, I am only a casual player...

But Pacifism and Condemn are so much more fitting when building on a budget. Regardless, the choice is up to you, Razerous. Hope these suggetions help!

Tezzeret the Seeker and Scourglass are much too costly for a deck that aims to swing for lethal damage as early as turn three. Perhaps you should run Disciple of the Vault, as every Ravager Affinity deck does? Aether Vial is also a prime choice.

realmwizard is slightly boastful, as you can probably tell. Regardless, his comments are helpful a large percentage of the time.

Razerous, Path to Exile is used because of its raw efficiency as a removal spell. When your opponent drops a powerful creature spell, being able to erase it for only one white mana is worth the side effect. On the other hand, Path is expensive to buy and not as useful in casual formats. If anything, I would consider sticking to Pacifism or running CONDEMN. Surely you don't mind your opponent gaining a handful of life?

Hope this clears things up,

Azen

Hi Razerous,

The above comments are a bit harsh, I must say, but they do make some good points which you should consider. The biggest concern in your deck is combining the "mill" win condition with the "damage" win condition - which don't mix very well, as thealextheory pointed. Why don't you reconstruct your deck with focus on Discard & Control?

You want to shut off all of your opponent's early game options with powerful Discard outlets and removal / countermagic / card advantage. Hypnotic Specter, as you already have in your deck, is a prime choice. Try increasing the card count to four. Meanwhile, you can run the best Discard spells like Hymn to Tourach to further wreck your opponents' hands, among other choices. Mind Spring in a deck that runs little ramp is a bit too slow, don't you think? How about Brainstorm or Impulse? Doom Blade and Mana Leak are also excellent utility spells that you want to consider.

Your creature base needs a bit of tweaking, although it looks relatively solid. My greatest suggestion is to up the card count of your best spells to four or three. Don't forget to cut the more situational spells! While Inkfathom Witch can lend your creatures more damage, you should be spending those four mana on keeping control of the board (via removal and countermagic), as any good control deck does. Efficiency is key in a solid creature base. If four Nyxathids are not enough, try Nihilith or (if your budget is slightly larger) Tombstalker. Your deck's consistency should improve greatly.

As a final note, I would recommend removing the Forced Fruition / Underworld Dreams / Megrim combo entirely. Allowing your opponent to draw many spells every turn is nearly suicide, as they'll be able to find answers to your threats at an accelerated pace. It may work if you happen to find all three pieces and put them on the board - but the enchantments are fairly useless otherwise (with the possible exception of Megrim).

Hope this helps. Good job with the deck! I'm certain that it will improve.

Azen

Hi catfish36216,

Summer break's only days from over and I still have to catch up on some studying. I don't think I'll be able to post on MTG Vault unless I find some free time over a break or something. Sorry about that.

Azen