Is that kind of game plan (just wait fot the others to kill each other and then win) really working where you play!? Okay, let's pretent that is the case, here are some suggestions:* Serra Angel is heavily outdated. I know this is budget, so no Baneslayer Angel. However, there are two cheap alternatives that would fit the theme way better:- Avacyn, Guardian Angel. Better stats and abilities to protect your creatures and yourself. Note that you could also prevent damage to other players, sometimes you need to do that in multiplayer.- Archon of Justice. Your current deck runs NO artifact/enchantment removal whatsoever - if your plan is to just outlast everyone, you absolutely need removal! The Archon is very nice because it's still a decent beater and because players with artifacts/enchantments will be reluctant to attack you. Both are rares but less than 30 cents.* Sphere of Safety is a nice card but you only run 8 enchantments (2 of them being creature enchantments aka "going to the graveyard fast enchantments"). So, I would run more regular Propagandas instead (there is a white one, too).* Pongify isn't that great in multiplayer. See, Pongify only destroys, so it can't kill regenerators, indestructibles and so on. It also gives your opponnent a 3/3 token. Yes, Swords to Plowshares and Path to Exile aren't allowed because of budget, but again, there are alternatives. I would run Soul Snare instead. Note that it also works as a deterrant to attack you and that it provides another enchantment for Sphere of Safety (in the case you want to keep the Sphere)* Geist-Honored Monk doesn't fit to the deck! See, you are playing control and just want to outlive everyone - so, why play a creature that requires you to have many creatures in play? You only ever want to play as few creatures as needed, read: A few blockers and maybe a beatstick when the time is ripe. But never more because you risk to lose them all when the next sweeper hits the board. Running Geist-Honored Monk requires you to overextent, something you don't want to do in a control deck.There are many, many alternatives for this. Here are some:- AEon Chronicler: The great thing about him is that you can suspend him way before you actually want to attack, drawing extra cards until his arrival. Fitting your theme exactly.- Archon of Justice in case you haven't added him already earlier- Ixidron: Great choice for a deck like this that doesn't run mass removal and relies on Propaganda and Fog Bank. Opponents will have many creatures, so this will be big when it hits play. And then he is king of the battlefield (you might win fast with an Aqueus Form on it). Additionally you disable all of them permanently, no matter what their abilities are.- Kiyomaro, First to Stand: Also VERY fitting to your theme!* Illusionist's Gambit. Check it out. Hilarious in multiplayer. Unless your opponents are completely idiotic there WILL be a time where they notice what you are up to and then gang up on you, probably on low life. Someone kills your last Propaganda and another player launches an all-out attack on you. That's where you play Illusionist's Gambit and watch your opponents killing each other :)* Guard Gamazoa:Not a bad card but you run 4 Fog Banks already. Your deck is vulnerable to big tramplers - everybody can afford to pay Propaganda mana for a single big attacker and if that attacker happens to have trample, Fog Banks and Gamazoas aren't of much help. Wall of Denial is my replacement of choice.* Nearheath Pilgrim:Also doesn't fit the deck and theme for the same reasons Geist-Honored Monk doesn't fit. Additionally, the deck has currently only 5 creatures that have a power high enough to be a worthwhile target! Run Nyx-Fleece Ram instead - it will actually gain you more life even though it's just one per turn and it is considerably more durable.
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Also, you can always opt to not pay the upkeep, then it gets sacrificed, too!
Those won't work - it is crucial that control of the creature changes beginning of upkeep and end of turn. So, beginning of upkeep only triggers for me but not for the opponents. If I donate Damia, they get full use of her, something I obviously don't want.If you can't come up with another possible creature, focus on support cards. I am leaning towards white now. Solitary Confinement alone is worth splashing white, so is Light of Day.I'll make some adjustments and then lets see where that gets us.
Because I have done the non-weird ones already :) I consider this the true way to play Magic :P
This deck was infected by the budget virus, so no Timber Protector.
Well, the thing is, you ONLY draw the card when you sack it to draw a card, not when you are dealing damage! The flexibily is worth to run Spellbomb if you face nasty low toghness creatures a lot. However, the rarer you use the damage, the better you would be off with Chromatic Star. Note that the Star will let draw you a card when it hits the graveyard - this means you would also draw a card when you Shrapnel Blast it or when you feed it to Atog! The Spellbomb will only replace itself when you sacrifice it to do so, which costs mana and doesn't generate any additional effect.I know the differences are minimal, but sometimes it is worth to go the extra length, even in casual.Here the deck I am currently breaking my head over:http://www.mtgvault.com/puschkin/decks/peaceful-assault/Help needed, from you too, Necrumlsice.
*** DECK UNDER CONSTRUCTION ***The description says what I am trying to do and where I need help. Please brainstorm and throw card names at me - since I am not even decided on the colour mix, you can basically suggest whatever you want. For example, if you find an awesome creature in red that goes well with the Suit, I might change the entire concept.
About the Spellbomb:Will you mainly use it to fill your graveyard with artifacts? If so, you might want to replace it with Chromatic Star. Since it gives you mana, you'll be faster.About helping me: I am brewing up a deck where I need help but I don't have descriptions ready yet. I'll tell you.
Think twice about Think Twice - it doesn't really do anything in this deck! With so many mana producing dudes I would have expected something like Brain Geyser instead.And I am missing Rancor. Might be boring because everyone and your mother is using it, but there is a reason they do. And this deck really needs it - first of course to give your Superion trample (there is a window of only few earl turns where he is good and if the opponent can bridge that window with small chump blockers, you will lose!), secondly to turn your mana dorks into a threat.
The Spotlight protects, too, if only for one turn, but it is usuall the turn that counts. Also, it can be used in reaction to something. The whispersilk cloak has to be equipped first and the opponent can react to it with spot removal. You could run both, of course, but then - what to cut?
Ah, this is something casual screaming for me :) Let's see,* Have you considered Straw Golem? I am not sure if he would be an improvement, though.* The Keyrune won't do much in this deck. You don't need the extra mana, you don't need the blue and the carddraw is very unlikely. I would drop them.* Instead of the Keyrune I would run Glaring Spotlight! It is so beautiful - makes you Slag Fiend unblockable AND fills the grave with another artifact at the same time :)* Arcbound Ravager would be a beast in this but 2 of them would cost more than the rest of the current deck ...* Ichor Wellspring >might< be the right card for this deck, depending on the final number of cards that can sacrifice artifacts. Could replace the Howling Mines which are quite risky to play.
Arcane Sanctum and Command Tower:Yes. :) Change made."what keeps you alive?":There are several cards like Maze of Ith, Tawnos' Coffin and Sun Droplet that help me stall. They force the opponent to play more than one threat and thus encourage them to what control players refer to as "overextent". And this means that the next board sweeper will create card advantage.But the true answer what keeps me alive is: Politics. The format. Smart opponents. My environment. Aggro decks lose, so nobody plays aggro in my environment. Imagine one of the decks you are used to in a environment where all decks look similar like this one - you'll never going to kill anyone. That's the point I was trying to make (or rather tried avoid to make because nobody here would be able to understand): The more experience with EDH (and to lesser extend free-for-all games and multiplayer in general), the more controllish your decks will become. The more controllish the environment as a whole becomes, the worse aggro decks will peform - it is a vicious circle that drains the fun out of the format."if u have no blockers people will attack you even if you are not being threatening":If people gang up on me in EDH for no reason, then they do not understand neither multiplayer nor the format they play. If the rest of the table is hellbent on killing you, no deck will save you. So why prepare for something that you can't prevent anyway?
Tri colour lands, while not bad, are not for this deck - they can't be fetched!I might include one that has BUW because those are my main colours, however, that one doesn't exist - yet. It will probably be in one of the upcoming 2 expansions.
Being creature light is the point I was trying to make - they get destroyed left and right anyway, so why should I make the effort of playing tons of them? This is a control deck, the only thing you can play in EDH. Control doesn't need many win conditions. What you try to achieve with lots of creatures, equipments and other stuff, I do with single cards. A well timed Shriveling Rot or late game Debt of the Deathless is enough to kill half if not the entire table. So is Reins of Power. Or Kokusho with a reanimation engine. Or Luminarch Ascension. See, I don't need creatures myself, the opponent is providing them for me! Have you ever seen a Mimic Vat in action in a EDH game where everybody is playing fatties? Do you understand what happens when I use a kickered Rite of Replication in Kokusho? The crazier the creature is that my opponets play, the better for me! I Copy them, I animate them (Clique, Beacon), I steal them and then sacrifice them (Slave of Bolas) or steal them out of your library (Bribery, thank you) or just kill them with added damage for the controller (Shriveling Rot, Agonizing Demise).And that's just my utility. My own engines are even deadlier: Recurring Nightmare, Survival of the Fittest, Squee, Karmic Guide, Puppeteer Clique, Eternal Witness, Glen Elendra ... look at what these do in combination. Not all of them, just a few, and they are able to fetch each other. With engines like this and the hard-as-iron control I can kill you with whatever I like. I don't need anything else. I have time. Go and waste your time and cards building a "proper" offensive. It is 2200$ mostly because of the duallands which I happen to own - you asked for it, you got what you asked for. In my meta, most decks look like this.
If I had to make one, it would probably look like this:http://www.mtgvault.com/puschkin/decks/child-of-alara-edh/It's a first draft, though.
NOTHING you do on the first 10 or so turns has any effect on the outcome of the game! In fact, playing your commander on turn 3 is the dumbest move you could do: Everybody still has it's fists full of removal plus early utility drops that can beat the planeswalker's head in! Even if it survives a turn or two, you produce a few tokens and then? I guarantee you that at least one player has a board sweeper ready by turn 5! And the rare case where nobody has a board sweeper ... well, that's actually the worst scenario for you because you are now the threat and everbody well be hellbent on stopping you, oftentimes keeping this attitude way beyond the point where you aren't a threat anymore.Where I come from you won't see a commander in the first 20 or so turns. Why even try to cast it? It will be in your command zone with a +2cmc very quickly. And you can call yourself lucky if it gets back to your command zone. If you are unlucky it gets Spell Crumpled, stolen or something like that.
I have bought all 5 Commander 2014 decks. The green planeswalker sucks, he is just a Disenchant every 2 turns. The + ability is useless since it only produces manaelves which get killed by a million things. You are never going to use that ultimate - even if, it's just card draw and doesn't translate into anything useful immediatedly. If I activate an ultimate, I expect the board to explode or a powerful emblem, not just a few cards that *may* do something useful *later*.
The problem is: If players of at least average intelligence do "drunken social casual fun" for 20 years straight, there will be the point where their casual play ends up more organized and streamlined than many "serious" decks, especially when these players collected cards throughout. It becomes increasingly hard to keep the powerlevel of your decks in check when you have both the knowledge and card pool to do significantly better. Add to that the craziness of newer cards - many new cards are so powerful and borderline broken that you don't need to do much in order to screw over games. And everytime something nasty steamrolls you, you notch up your decks a bit, too. The premade commander decks are considered crap in my environment, BTW. Note that my regular playgroup doesn't play EDH, when I am talking of EDH it's a different and bigger group of players, basically all the veterans of ye olde days of my city (Hamburg).
That's the point, though: In my environment the players are veterans and DO have the cards to optimize the decks to death. Some even have enough spares to equip more than one EDH deck with all the staples typically at least four since they own the card 4 times for regular tournament play, but sometimes even more. Only 30 cards banned but otherwise Legacy means you have a pool of about 15000 different cards you can build from. A variety of 60 single cards isn't much then, especially if you include tutors (which everybody does), so you basically play against the bombs of this format all day. In an environment that has the cards. Which mine does. Your probably not. Therefore, don't listen to my ramblings regarding EDH.
A lot of players enjoy EDH. It's boring if too many participants have "figured it out" and optimize to win. Basically, if there are no Spikes and enough Timmys (and if the Timmys play their decks like Timmys) then it can be a lot of fun. I don't participate in Northys EDH article because I know my opinion is warped by the environment I play in and therefore skewed.
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