Discussion Forum

so what if the other guy has a fast tribal deck that kills in 4 turns (goblins, slivers, white weenie, elves) or has artifact removal (qasali pridemage, ancient grudge, harmonic sliver) or has pithing needle and some trinket mages or has counterspells (spell pierce, negate, mana leak) or creature removal (diabolic edict, swords to plowshares, terminate). Your decks as no defense against anythng that slows you down while their creatures kill you unhindered.

You complain about the cost of decks but as long as you can't build a balanced deck the cost is not the issue.

So scathing, Seth. So very Scathing. Almost made me think you believed I didn't know that already.

The idea of this was built around the multiplayer meta, and even more so on Two Headed, I play most commonly, where turn 5 is when people start really hammering away.

I designed this before with much more in the way of walls and such, but it seemed to wreck any predictability.

So in your omniscience, what would you suggest be done to fix the issue of defense?

I believe any deck, be it multiplayer, 1 on 1, commander, doesn't matter should have at least an early and a mid game plan. Some strategies like control or formats like Commander and other multiplayer formats will need a good late game plan as well.

I also don't believe in cards like Quicksilver Amulet as a win condition. They are cute as a 1 off, an alternate strategy but otherwise unreliable.

If you want to play big creatures, see to it that you can hard cast them as well as cheat them in. (and I'm talking about casual play here).

The hardcast plan + defense:

You could device a strategy to slow down your opponent while you accelerate your own mana base. Typical creatures I use for this are Sakura-Tribe Elder, Wood Elves and Solemn Simulacrum. Basically blockers that bring along a land.
These are very good creatures in long multiplayer games because they serve multiple uses and are pretty much always good.

I've seen other strategies with Kodama's Reach/Explore/Compulsive Research and Urzatron lands. A good Tron deck can generate a lot of mana very fast and really overpower other strategies but it's not easy to get in balanced.

Anyway, so you accelerate your mana base, then you blow up the world (wrath of God, Akroma's Vengeance, Oblivion Stone, Austere Command), then you play a big guy that poses a problem.

Just a stupid big guy isn't good enough. It has to have some kind of evasion or you have to give it evasion because if they remove it your strategy is fucked.
A perfect old school example is Simic Sky Swallower. It's big, it's mana cost is manageable and it has flying/trample/shroud.

So that's pretty much the big creature strategy, accelerate, sweep, play, win.

Put a single amulet in there and you have an alternative strategy. This actually makes the deck stronger without being predictable.

Tutor creatures are a good tactic as well. I like for instance a single Riptide Shapeshifter as an alternative tactic. A creature like Fierce Empath is awesome as well. This is actually good enough to play as a full set as it turns your deck into a tool box. It can fetch the likes of Duplicant which is an awesome solution as well as one of your win conditions like Avenger of Zendikar. Playing a single Avenger of Zendikar with multiple ways of finding it is very playable.

anyway, this is just one method of building and I could go on and on about various strategies but just remember to include some elements in every deck you make.

1. Defense, how do I survive
2. Win condition (preferably more then 1)
3. The plan to get to the win condition.

Thank you Seth, that is actually very helpful to me. Coincidentally, my local magic shop was just selling the Tron cards very cheap so I bought a set of each for uses undetermined. I'm thinking some of these with some expedition maps will do me much good here.