I've been messing around with an online deck maker, and now I'm making a mono black control deck. It has proven to be able to stall pretty effectively, but can't really end the game.
It was this:
After some editing, it is now:
I haven't tested this, but I am almost certain it won't be much different. Any tips?
I've been looking at:
Also, everything in the deck is post rotation. So do not suggest anything rotating. (Even though I'd love to throw grave titans in there instead of griselbrand)
Edit: Also, any way of dealing with planeswalkers, enchantments and artifacts? Besides attacking the planeswalker.
Last edited by I own a horse; 08-05-2012 at 02:57 AM. Reason: Forgot something
Who cares about a fountain of youth, how about a fountain of SMART?
In mono black? Nothing. You either need red for burn, blue for counterspells, white for oblivion ring, or green for beast within / bramblecrush if you want to kill it without combat. That said there are currently 2 colorless answers in standard:
Do any of you follow competitive standard? I don't play often but it's been pretty fascinating lately. Everyone thought delver was the next caw-blade, and there was even a lot of people calling for something to get banned. Wizards said no and then suddenly... delver stopped being super oppressive. This magical thing called bonfire of the damned turned things upside down: It was great in aggressive decks rather than controlling decks, good against delver decks, and just a super-powered card all around. Also, cavern of souls really did work in said aggressive decks, and suddenly the format opened up. Now there are decks like the black market, which uses trading post and mirrodin wellsprings to generate huge card advantage in a mono black control deck, infect decks using wild defiance, and GW elf combo decks using mana elves into craterhoof behemoth to end the game, topping it off with genesis wave and village bell ringers to go huge.
Naya pod decks look to be the best at the moment, because the pod allows for unreal mana efficiency and it's the best deck to abuse bonfire of the damned. But even through that there's all this cool stuff. Grand architect is seeing play, zombie decks are all over the place, talrand is seeing play in delver decks, everything is so cool right now
I don't follow Standard at all, but I know it's a lot more varied than Caw-Blade era -- thankfully. This Black Market deck sounds really cool -- and I'm pretty ashamed for not having thought of it. I liked the idea of Trading Post when it was spoiled.
I've been trying to put together an RWb reanimator, becuase I love playing reanimator, and it seems to have good targets by the truckload right now.
The era when Jace, The Mind Sculptor and Squadron Hawk were in standard was pretty fucking miserable. Playing against Valakut wasn't much fun either! I think Standard is pretty good right now, and I can't wait to see what RtR brings, especially seeing as it's a multi-colour set.
I think the second planeswalker in Return To Ravnica has a high chance of being Ral Zarek.
He was in Duel of the Planeswalker, but yet had his own card yet. Also, he was originally in Izzet, which is one of the guilds in RtR.
I really really hope it'd be Ral Zarek, but I'm not sure if they'd print two Blue walkers in the same set. They've still got the 2nd and 3rd sets for him though.
It feels weird to consider Garruk as Black in my mind.
Also, I think it is really cool that each planeswalker is a different kind of Mage.
Garruk is a beastmage, Liliana is a Necromancer, Koth is a Geomancer, so on and so forth.
I think my favorite planeswalker is either Tibalt or Sorin (I think Nissa is cool except that I wasn't playing Magic when Zendikar was in standard).
I have an emergency question for all and sundry:
I just acquired a playset of Knowledge Pool
what do I do with them?
it's a funny card and I really want to use it but I can't think of a decent way to get any actual advantage besides just having a lot of cheap or X-cost spells
I guess "Whenever you cast" effects that come from board items could be funny but I don't know of any that are cheap and effective enough to be worthwhile
"A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm." -Hamlet
"now you're making steampunk sound like a gender identity or something" - seedy
I've narrowed the list down to three general themes:
1. Spiritcraft to take advantage of the multiple-cast frenzy, using especially Sire of the Storm with the green land-search and land-play kami to gain overwhelming cards and mana so I can play every card from both decks
2. Sphinx-Bone Wand and Talrand with a deck made of almost all counters+filtering. This lets me either cheaply take opponents' bomb spells or cast my own instants and sorceries for powerful on-cast effects, and because I have almost all instants and my opponent likely as fewer I can dominate the use of the shared counterspell pool.
3. Fuck the police, play Eye of the Storm, Panopticon Mirror, Planar Chaos, Confusion in the Ranks, and everything else. My opponents will be completely unable to do anything meaningful as the game becomes a madhouse, and since I control triggers I have a better chance of winning with their stuff than they do.
"A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm." -Hamlet
"now you're making steampunk sound like a gender identity or something" - seedy
I think there's a U/W venser deck that uses Knowledge Pool and Curse of Exhaustion to create a lockdown. I'll see if I can find it
Oh, yeah, of course there is
since... having those two things out together means the cursed player cannot cast spells ever
another funny idea for Knowledge Pool is to play it with Erayo, since she's almost guaranteed to go off as soon as you use the Pool, but I would probably put that into the Eye/Confusion in the Ranks/Panopticon Mirror deck
"A man may fish with the worm that hath eat of a king and eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm." -Hamlet
"now you're making steampunk sound like a gender identity or something" - seedy
I'm making a Standard Deck for when the Mirrodin stuff rotates out, but I'm having trouble deciding what to actually choose. I am dead set on tokens, but I am alternating between WB tokens, or Esper (WUb) tokens, which lacks Blood Artist and has black only for lingering. I think WB will pay off in the long run, with Orhzov coming around, but who is to say it won't benefit esper tokens as well? My WB runs some odd choices, like Cathars' Crusade and Attended Knight. Cathars' is game winning at times, and Attended Knight stops some early creatures, like many zombies. Esper basically has many instants and sorceries that make tokems, along with dissipate and think twice.
Basically, I'm asking which seems better to run in your opinions. I love tokens, and I love both builds.
Been playing MtG casually since Prophecy, though first boosters I bought (= my dad bought me) were Homelands.
Too lazy/disinterested to get into standard. I mostly play Legacy and EDH, though I've been thinking of getting into modern as it's competitive, different enough from Legacy, and "eternal". I guess I'm in the Johnny-Spike territory when it comes to player stereotypes. I love to tinker and tweak my decks and make them the best they can be with my knowledge and skills, but I'm into creating weird/fun shenanigans rather than playing the NUTZ. EDH is awesome for that. I'm really proud of my Lich-deck (Karona-deck that plays as a token deck for the beginning of the game, and then tries to play Lich and survive. First game: lost to a disenchant. Second game: won with Tokens/Karona-run. Game three: won via Lich + Repay in Kind YEAAAAAAAH).
In Legacy I've been playing storm-combos like Doomsday, Fetchland Tendrils, ANT and Mountain Grapeshot (Mono R storm), but I'm thinking of building a MUD/Stax next.
First few RTR spoilers are out. Populate sure seems like a narrow, narrow keyword. But I guess it could be worse.
Same here. That'd probably improve it a little. As it stands, though, a pretty cute mechanic but, as I said, pretty narrow. Not that I truly dislike it, though. It works great for the intent of having mechanics that feed into the old Ravnica mechanics. I'd like to see the others sometime soon, too.