Edna

Of all the decks for Garruk, this honestly doesn't even seem like the best to me, although the ramp would be handy. I can hardly imagine a vengevine deck without the Fauna Shamans and a big spell deck without Lotus Cobra. These too things seem slightly at odds though. I think deck seems a bit conflicted. Do you want to go big or aggressive small? Right now it looks like go big, but then Vengevine doesn't honeslty fit so well here. Keeping him because of a "haste theme" just isn't worth it IMO. If you want to go big, I would suggest more Urabrask again, Lotus Cobra, and more Inferno Titan/Wurmcoil Engine. Both of those are unbelievably better with haste and the best creatures you could want in a deck like this to have haste. Hero seems slightly misplaced as well with the battlecry seeming like it's probably more underwhelming in this deck. Idk. I guess I'm just not sure where you're trying to direct this deck... It looks interesting, but a bit too conflicted at this stage of development.

Hmm. I like the changes overall, although I think the Crusader is just sick with a sword equipped. Also, as good as Batterskull is, I can't imagine too often when you'd need/want 2 in the deck and would maybe just swap the new Sword in instead for the ultimate Stoneforge Package and protection from EVERY color and thus EVERY deck! Overall though, this deck just keeps getting better.:) Best of luck with it as always.

Looks good.:) Only other change I'd maybe try is using Swords to Plowshares instead of Dispatch just because Dispatch can't work as well all the time.

Hmm. Interesting idea. I could see Venser being different with a slightly different build, but I think you're right Ethan. I would have to change quite a bit of this deck to make it truly work best. Wall of Omens really isn't much good in this deck, either. I usually want to be able to attack with my creatures and Preordain is just so much better than the Wall for a deck like this and helps me find my threats/answers/sideboard cards quicker and easier when I need to.

Unfortunately, as the deck is it really only seems most beneficial with the Journey and maybe a Hawk to shuffle a Jace brainstorm away. I may try Venser out in a cool UW proliferate variation on control that my friend has been trying lately, though. I'll have to check him out again once the new set comes out but probably have a different shell around him.:)

Well, it may not be right for this deck but it did basically inspire a whole new one, especially with the new set! Thanks.:)

I think you need a few more artifacts in the deck. I would suggest Signal Pest and Maybe Glint Hawk over Spiraling Duelist, Sunchaser, and maybe Edgewright if you find the WW cost is too hard for turn 2. Also, I'd add 2 more Stoneforge Mystics as they're card advantage that also gets you an artifact. With these, instead of just the Sword of Feast and Famine, I would use Umezawa's Jitte and Sword of Fire and Ice. Hope this helps a bit. Suggestions for my standard deck?

http://www.mtgvault.com/ViewDeck.aspx?DeckID=173886

Oh, and I love seeing the Garruk in the deck.:) Hope he works as well for you as he does for me.

Haha. Umm, it looks really solid all around. I really like it. To make room for the Linvala though, I would perhaps cut a Thrun, the Last Troll. Maybe even both for a 2nd Linvala (probably don't need it though) or just for another good sideboard card to help. Maybe a Celestial Purge or something. But anyways, I love Thrun a bunch, but at least how my meta is shaping up, he really just doesn't do much anymore. Back when UB control was the main deck to play he was great. Now that control is all about Caw-Blade, he gets significanly worse and control is really the matchup Thrun is best for! So yeah, wouldn't change much else. As always, best of luck with it.:)

So, just thought of something when looking through potential sideboard cards for my deck. Linvala, Keeper of Silence! I played against an Elf deck last FNM and if I'd have been able to cast one of these (especially on turn 3 thanks to some form of ramp) I almost could not have lost the game. Their elves don't tap for mana, their Fauna Shamans quit working, and they can no longer activate the "overrun" effect of their Ezuri. It's also just good against opposing Fauna Shaman decks and to some degree, even Caw-Blade as they can't cheat in the swords which uses more mana and it can block their sworded creatures all day. Just a thought. A one-of seems pretty decent anyways - sideboard or main.

Changes made. Testing will show on this one but I think I like it for now.:) Any more ideas here?


Switched up the land base a tad, too. Makes it a bit better overall I think and gives it more reach with the extra Colonnades. The M10/M11 dual lands don't work too effectively in this deck but so I think for this deck I prefer the Scars duals.

Hmm. Perhaps. Although, EVERYONE will be trying to play that which may be to my advantage, then, to not. And until then... I think I'm going to cut them for now, but I may add Mystic package back and update the deck post-NPH. I just think it's too many one/two-drops with Cobra, Hawks, Birds of Paradise, AND Stoneforge Mystic... I think this deck would maybe rather just go for the turn 3 Baneslayer and adding Beleren enables a turn 2 Jace which majorly halts opposing Caw-Blade decks.

In response to fling: Lightning Bolt. Opponent laughs.:) But in all seriousness, this is a neat idea for sure. Cool deck. Black has some amazing tutor effects though. Why not use a few? Like Liliana, Vampiric Tutor, Diabolic Tutor, Demonic Tuor, etc. Yeah, I know some are banned but so what.

So, I'm thinking of cutting the Stoneforge package... Probably swap in a couple more Baneslayers, a couple Jace Beleren and possibly even a Spell Pierce or two in the main. I feel like the Stoneforge Mystics were decent in here, but never amazing. More often than not I felt like the most that the sword did was untap my lands so I could then potentially block with one of the manlands. In otherwords, this deck has such explosive mana that it doesn't need the extra untapping. The discard is only slightly relevant and it's not even a true Duress effect letting you choose and see their hand.

Any thoughts on this?

Sounds like someone's on tilt. Take it easy man. So you had a bad nationals, so what? You can't run good all the time. Brad Nelson, player of the year 2010 dominated half the season straight. Then, he got to worlds and started off day one at 3-3, ending up overall past 100th place. Point is, we all have our bad days. Sometimes you played worse than usual, sometimes you had a great deck but just not the RIGHT deck for the tournament. The only thing you can do is really just shake it off and move on. Learn from what went wrong - what you lost to, what cards could have helped out, if you really just had the wrong deck for those matchups, etc. You've improved a ton in the past few months. Your next lesson in magic looks like it'll be learning to recover from the occasional setback/failure. I'm sure you'll do just fine and come out of it better than ever though.:) Best of luck with everything.

The sideboard is still a work in progress. As for taking out, it really depends on the deck I'm facing. I mean, not every caw-blade deck is the same, especially not at something more local like an FNM so it depends on what I see from the opponent. Basically, I take out what doesn't seem as good as what I put in. Sorry that's all I can give you for that half but it's really hard to say and I'm still trying to figure some of the perfect sideboarding plans myself.

Mortarpod is for nearly any fast aggro deck and was a possibility against Cobra decks, though I'm thinking the card all together may just be cut soon. Baneslayer vs. any aggro decks, red decks in particular.
Slimes vs. artifact heavy decks, decks with 3 or more colors (and a particularly difficult land base) and decks that plan to attack with manlands.
Condemn is for aggro again primarily.
Flashfreeze is for Valakut primarily but I also used it against elves when on the play and could work against red decks if on the play just fine as well, especially if you know they run Koth.
Spell Pierce is for any control matchup, Caw-variants included.
Day of Judgment is for heavy aggro again.

After some testing, I may be changing out the Condemns and Mortarpod. I really liked the Journey to Nowhere in the mainboard so may use a couple more of those instead of Condemn but I'm not sure yet.

Yeah, the biggest problem with it though is that the creature you want it to stop the most come down as two drops, which if you're on the draw means it'll come down too late and not be effective enough. It is still good, but won't cut it if you're on the draw.

Interesting deck. Believe it or not, I was actually just considering a mono-white controlish deck to build. However, I was thinking about a bit more of a proliferate theme. I feel like Admonition Angel could be quite the beating. Also, I could honestly see this deck having 4 Day of Judgment. Here's why - Your low end creatures really wont matter too much if they die because they've already gained you card advantage (Mystic, Hawk, and Wall) while you're top end actually get better post wrath anyways or in wurmcoil's case, still kinda stick around. Baneslayer is the exception here but obviously quite good on its own anyways. I would think Admonition Angel, if used properly, could even benefit from DoJ - you crack a fetch to exile your own creatures like Sun Titan and Baneslayer and then cast a DoJ. Their guys are gone while you still have a massive amount of board left. Maybe it's overkill, idk.

Either way, looks pretty cool though I question the Ratchet Bomb here... DoJ seems virtually just as good or better in most cases.

As a final note, I made some pretty big changes to the Bant deck of mine after testing with friends a bit and ran it through an FNM. Lmk what you think.

P.S. I'm sorry but I just have to disagree about Garruk. He's soo good! Haha.

Journey to Nowhere still works actually. It only shuts down creatures, not permanents.

Ok, so I'll be updating the deck soon after this post, but I took the deck to FNM last night. I've made some pretty big changes to it as well. I didn't actually do terribly well on my first FNM with the deck, but I still feel like it was a terrific choice. I lost 2 matches against decks I don't feel like I should have actually had to lose to. I lost to a friend's UB Tezzeret control deck off a mulligan to 5 and a mulligan to 6 where he was on the play with a double Inquisition of Kozilek hand to crush any chance of breaking out of the mulligan as all I did was topdeck a half dozen lands in an already land heavy hand...

The other match I lost with a mulligan to 5 against an elf deck and another match where I kept 2 land and a cobra and couldn't draw another land until he was able to overrun me on turn 4... It also didn't help that I lost EVERY die roll on the night.

But anyways, the every game I played I honestly felt favored, as long as I wasn't struggling with land. After the changes I'll soon post, the only other major changes I feel need to be made immediately are changes in the land base. I think I need a 25th land since I have 6 fetch lands in the deck and I need to cut it to 60 cards.

Acidic Slime never got a chance to do much on the night. It could have been great in one matchup against an opponent who had Wurmcoils but I had Journey to Nowhere anyways.. Overall the versatility was great against lands and artifacts.

Garruk was honestly much much BETTER than expected. He worked exceptionally well with the Squadron Hawks who allowed for a massive Overrun. I won a fair number of games off the back of Garruk more than anything else, usually in combination with Cobras and Birds. It was great. Birds of Paradise were a necessary evil in helping with mana fixing and were almost never a card I didn't want. Overall, I like the maindeck choices. I didn't have much variety and testing to know about the sideboard too much but it could probably use some work. Land base needs work though. Help here would be great. Thanks.:)

White is actually commonly one of the main 3 control colors actually (alongside blue primarily and often black). While Boros is admittedly more typically in aggro colors, it is perfectly reasonable to make it control style. I actually have a RW control deck myself. Red is quite nice at filling similar roles to black in the form of damage based spot removal that can take out creatures as well as help deal with the opposing players themselves.

What this deck really needs to run a control theme is Sweepers in the form of cards like Wrath of God or the similar and cheaper Day of Judgment. Lightning Bolt is a must have 4-of for nearly any red deck and a control deck is no different. It is cheap spot removal and the most efficiently costed burn spell ever printed! Your creature cards are fairly underwhelming and I do agree with surewhynot that Sunforger is incredibly sub-par in this deck. It's too inefficient and you should be cutting down on your creatures so you can play sweeper cards like DoJ instead anyways.

To do this, Oblivion Ring is almost strictly better than the Trumpeter I'd say. The Trumpeter can switch targets each turn which is handy, but it can't hit planeswalkers, enchantments, artifacts, etc. O-Ring does all of that and does it as soon as it's in play, while being less fragile. The same goes for the Stun Sniper.

I would also drop the Elixer. It's great life gain, but only for decks that can't normally gain that kind of life or need to reshuffle their deck. However, white is THE best lifegain color and has soo many options that to play Elixer is just kinda silly honestly. You could play Rest for the Weary instead even! Even then, I wouldn't suggest the lifegain in general as it just doesn't help win games.

Other cards quickly to consider for Boros Control:

Wing Shards, Path to Exile, Swords to Plowshares, almost any big angel/dragon as a 3 or 4 of for win conditions, Arc Trail, Journey to Nowhere, Isochron Scepter, Gideon Jura (not quite as budget friendly...) and many more.

Hope this wasn't too much and was a bit of help.:) Good luck with it.

If you're using Circu, I've got to imagine one of the best counterspells for the deck would be Memory Lapse. They try to cast something important right? You cast Memory Lapse followed by any other spell and now not only is that awesome threat gone, but can no longer be played at all! Most decks typically only have a small number of actual threat cards anyways - if you can remove them, you're golden. For example, try seeing how well a High Tide combo deck works when they can no longer cast High Tide...