Puschkin

Yes, I've seen that Hive Mind - Pact - Deck, actually that's why I was inspired to do a Hive Mind deck, too. However, I wanted to go a different path, besides, I traded away all my Pacts.

I WILL go witch Witchbane Orb, that's the premise of the deck. My concern with burn is the format we play with it we are 5 people, Pentagram. You win, if the opposing 2 players are dead (no matter WHO kille them). Look at the back of a Magic card and imagine each of the coloured dots is a player. Black wins if White and Green are dead. Now, if I am Black, have Hive Mind and Orb in play and then cast a Fireball for 6 on Green, both White and Blue might target Red with their Fireballs and kill Red. If I killed Green with my Fireball, both Red and Green would be dead - and that means Blue wins. That's why I think direct damage spells are too dangerous. I would need a way to keep my flanks alive but that isn't an easy task since if I play a heal spell like Reward the Faithful, my opponents can heal their flanks as well.

I won't use draw spells if they give my opponents cards, too. It's too dangerous - they also draw creatures for example. But I could use draw in the form of tomes (like Jayemdea Tome - just need to find something better fitting).

Elephant Grass ... usually played woth Darkest Hour. But if I nuke creatures, why should I leave out black creatures just to stop them with Elephant Grass? I'll probably go with something like Pyroclasm. WIth Hive Mind out that's 10 damage to each creature for 2 mana and players are unscathed.

Lol, when I say "modern creatures" I don't refer to "Modern legal creatures", read "modern" as "new-fangled" :). See, when I started, Hypnotic Specter, Kird Ape and Juggernauts were considered the best of the best. Fatties were either ridiculosly overcosted (Scaled Wurm) or had harsh and dangerous upkeeps (Force of Nature, Lord of the Pit). By the time Oath of Druids came out it was slightly better. But even then ... I mean, if you have a card like Oath that lets you both "search" for any creatures you wanted and put it into play without having to pay for it, you'd exspect something earth-shattering and game-ending, right? Well, Oath decks back then ran Morphling, Akroma and Spirit of the Night as the heavy hitters. No Emrakuls or Progenitus or Darksteel Colossusses or anything close to that. But if you play Oath of Druids today, you are almost certainly running into one of those. Hence, it is much more dangerous to play Oath these days.

Hunted Phantasm isn't that good here because it is a creature itself, I do not want to Oath into that. But Beast Within is brilliant, exactly what I am looking for, muhaha :)

I don't really need Worldly Tutor if I keep the creature count low and the creatures similar enough. Then again, there might be situations where I need a specific creature - let's say my opponent oaths up a, let's say, Multani, then I can't steal it with my targetted effects and need Progenitor Mimic to copy it. Hm. For now in the sideboard. (but what has money to do with it?)

Yeah, the Shared Fate deck is finished (you commented on it). But I don't see interaction with Oath of Druids. I would still Oath MY library which doesn't contain any creatures, vice versa, I would give my opponent a method to get their creatures into play.

I am doing an experiment and try to redeem my commenting credits I earned so far:

I published 4 of my decks under construction. They are still in brainstorming or development phase, usually I only publish finished decks. Maybe they'll get more views and most importantly suggestions and criticism because now there is more room for improvements. The decks in question are:

http://www.mtgvault.com/puschkin/decks/dont-mind-the-hive/
http://www.mtgvault.com/puschkin/decks/life-is-life/
http://www.mtgvault.com/puschkin/decks/biting-shamans/
http://www.mtgvault.com/puschkin/decks/oath-of-thieves/

Come on now, this is THE chance to be creative and to return favours (also, for some of you a welcome change from this budget deck madness :P )! If this goes well, I will release more of my decks in development. Moreover, everybody is welcome to make their own versions of these decks or deck ideas, I don't even ask to give me credit, all I want is to fight the stagnation in creativity that plagues this site and Magic in general.

That's cute and all but you need FOUR different cards to make that work and two of them a very fragile creatures. You will be able to pull that off maybe once every 20 or so games. Does this need to be Standard legal? A lot could be done on older formats.

Etched Champion and Skullclamp are what this deck needs but if Metamorph is too expensive for you, then those will be, too.

Arcbound Crusher could be great in this deck.

There isn't anything better than Dark Ritual and Mana Leak, at least nothing you could afford. The closest would be Sol Ring, but it would make this deck Vintage only.

Chariot of Victory would be a cheap way to give the Lich trample (among other things).

You could replace 4 Swamps with Vault of Whispers to increase the number of artifacts for the Plating and Sculptor.

Sounds good :)
You can ping me here http://www.mtgvault.com/puschkin/decks/puschkin-please-help-me/ and I (plus some othe regulars) will review your deck.

Do what you want. I am just trying to encourage people to get creative, yes. Take card that you think is interesting and build a deck around it. Or a card that is widely considered as crap. Something like that. It's not only more entertaining for everybody involved, you'll also learn a lot about deck construction, since you have to leave that dirt trail behind that so many others have already grinded to death.

At the very least, if you do that, I can guarantee you that I will comment and contribute :)

Why don't you make a somewhat original deck? If you make yet another Golgari or Izzet deck, half of the deck's content is already set. I really don't get why a) people keep on building and posting these redundant decks and b) those decks are the ones that draw the comments. Again. And again.
Probably for the same reason why everybody complains about reruns in TV but statistically speaking reruns do actually better than new things :)

FELLWAR STONE! And Exotic Orchard for that matter. I should have thought earlier about this ...

Yes, I have to assemble and actually play it to make any calls. I got 3 Shared Fates recently and can now assembly this baby. I'll post results when I played it!

And you weren't rude in the first place, this "deck" is one of the few where you are supposed to ask for help.

I know nothing of Spongebob and wouldn't know what to contribute.

The problem in this case: iqee's deck doesn't have a description and the the deck itself looks very generic, I don't really know what to suggest.

Walking Sponge:
You can target a Grizzly Bear with it if you want, it will just have no effect. It says "Target creature loses ...", if there were any restrictions which it can target, then that would have been mentioned between "target" and "creature". For example "Target creature with flying loses flying until end of turn".
Likewise you can use Maze of Ith on a Serra Angel. Maze says "Untap target attacking creature", so the only restriction is that the creature you target is attacking.

So, yes, Walking Sponge works with Cowardice. However, I am sure you can find something better that still targets creatures but doesn't tap, so you can use it multiple times per turn. Unnatural Selection for example.

I understood that part. But I'd rather mulligan aggressivly than adding a another card disadvantageous card like Cantor.

The Moxes and the 3 Revised duals. Diabolic Intent, Academy Rector and surprisingly Aven Mindcensor are about 6-12 euros apiece as well.

Yes, that's what I meant, it affects ALL opponents now. As it's written on the card (the original from Weatherlight, that is), it only affects target opponent. Must have been erratad at the same time as Underworld Dreams.

But Cantor doesn't produce mana. It either stores it for one turn or just filters it. Given the fact that ALL of this deck's initial 12 mana sources are one-shot, I can do the math and realize that adding yet another one-shot card that needs a mana investment in the first place will NOT make this perform better ... simply save that Simian Spirit Guide to pay the colorless part of Priest of Titania or Sylvan Caryatid. Even you should realize that this deck is different enough from both your simulations and other experiences and experiments and that normal rules of thumb don't apply here. 9-Land-Stompy decks still run 9 LANDS plus Land Grant to fetch those lands, aka permanent mana sources.

I don't think this deck can afford more card disadvantage just to filter a single mana ...

Erm ... you deleted my comments so I comment again!?

She studied here and I picked her up in a Döner shop :P ... not a very romantic story, I know. I live in Hamburg, it's a melting pot of cultures and ethnicity anyway. She was struggling with the language and I had studied being a teacher (never finished that one, though), so I had a good excuse to talk her into meetings/dates :) That was 8 or 9 years ago.

Will a BA get you a job anyway? I read so much about the situation in the US ... okay, mainly articles on cracked.com but interestingly enough, that site does actually a better job at journalism than regular news outlets. Okay, now I am the one digressing ...