MTG Brewhaus: Jacetice League Recruitment Thread

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > MTG Brewhaus: Jacetice League Recruitment Thread

YeehawMcKickass: Jan 2, 2003; WE WELCOME THE OPPRESSORS

Last thread was a disappointment, but it had more to do with how standard ended up playing than anything anyone here did (seriously, barely 11 pages of stuff in six months while other iterations of the thread got to 40 in a full year) SOI looks to be impressively fun after the snoozefest that was BFZ, but the biggest thing we can take away from it is that four-color-good-stuff.dec is largely gone due to the rotation of the fetch lands eliminating perfect manabases. We�re back to two, maybe three, color decks.

I know I made the crack about Seige Rhino last thread, but the card wasn�t all that bad. Nowhere near as annoying to play against as something like Sphinx�s Revelation.

Before I get into the meat of the OP, I want to link something from ChannelFireball that�s worth reading: http://www.channelfireball.com/articles/magic-math-shadows-over-innistrad/

The summary on that is basically:
Sin Prodder is meh, Sorin is good.
The Thing In Ice needs about 23 instant/sorcery to reliably flip by around turn Six.
Delirium takes a bit of work to get, but it�s doable.
Duskwatch Recruiter needs about 23 other creatures in the deck to be reliable.
Triskadekaphobia is LOL, someone needs to win some games with this poo poo.

Some important things to note before you post your deck:

DO include what you're building your deck for, be it casual, FNM, or a Grand Prix. Also, mention if this is for a specific format (Standard, Extended, Modern, Legacy, Vintage, Commander, Pauper, Theme Deck, etc.).
DO mention if your deck has a budget associated with it.
DO READ THIS ARTICLE BY CONLEY WOODS! Your deck and some of your choices are going to be questioned, and you're likely to feel insulted. We're not out to hurt your feelings and make you go all on us. Even some of the best deck builders get their work blown up by other people. You might even be ignored, don't take it personally.
If you're searching online for cards, I can't recommend using Wizard's website, Gatherer. It tends to be slow and difficult to use. Magiccards.info is a better bet.
For Sixty-Card constructed decks, please try to use deckstats or tappedout's deck building tools, and use the full embed code if you can. The links help make your deck pop off the page when scrolling.
For Commander/EDH decks, you can post them, but do remember there is a dedicated thread for this, and that you�re a horrible person. Use only a link to deckstats/tappedout if you do decide to post it here. If your deck is on MODO, go ahead and give us a screen shot of it.

Enough with the notes, on to some of the deck building basics.

Before you build:

Decide what your deck's win condition or conditions will be. Try to have a plan B when you can.
Decide how your deck will achieve that goal.
For competitive play, never exceed the 60-card minimum (99+general in commander).
Don't be afraid to net deck. It's not a bad thing. If there's a pre existing deck out there that does what you want to do, feel free to copy it. It's likely going to be optimized already. Star City Games keeps a list of all of the top decks from its events, as does Wizards in their event section.
If you don't want to build a pre-existing deck but want to use its archetype, still view the deck lists. That will provide an excellent starting point to build your mana base. This is the start of what's called, "Going Rouge".
Speaking of the Internet, consider using one of the deck building tools out there, such as https://www.deckstats.net and https://www.tappedout.net. Also, use something like magiccards.info to search out cards you may want to use. See the second post of the main discussion thread for more online resources.

Now that I've mentioned them...

Deck Archetypes

Aggressive; Hit them hard and fast. If you haven't won by turn four or five, you've probably already lost. Historically, these are Red, Green, and Black; but can exist in all colors. Examples include Red Deck Wins. Pure aggro decks tend to have low amounts of land, sometimes as few as 16 and rarely have utility lands.
Stompy: Rides the border of Aggro and Midrange. Usually appears to be an aggro shell with buffs. Examples would be SOM/INN R/G Aggro (because of swords buffs and having a bit of a late game) and Tempered Steel. Land count in Stompy decks tend to hover in the 21-23 range, sometimes include a couple of utility lands, and will often include some Ramp elements (usually mana producing creatures).
Midrange: A variable type of deck that can play the aggro role against control, or the control rol against aggro. Abzan decks from the standard we just rotated out of are the perfect example of midrange. Land count for midrange decks tends to hang in the 22-25 area with a decent amount of utility lands.
Control: Built to take the game long and outlast an opponent, usually through mass removal, card advantage and counter spells. This type of deck usually runs few actual threats. Historically, these decks are Blue based with White or Black. U/W control from RTR/THS and The Deck are examples of control. Control decks will run 25+ lands, and will include numerous utility lands.
Tempo-Control: This deck type blurs the line between Aggro and control by using tempo cards like Vapor Snag and other unsummon variants along with small, evasive beaters and other value cards to control the game. Recent examples being Caw-Blade from ZEN/SOM and Delver from SOM/INN
Ramp: Decks built to hit a certain point on their mana curve as fast a possible (ramping up through land search or mana producing creatures) then crushing their opposition before they can react to their massive threats. This archetype can suffer with out of order draws, (not drawing land search sorceries or mana producing creatures early, etc.) but tends the be extremely explosive. Valakut decks in late ALA/Zen and early ZEN/SOM and the various Wolf Run variants from SOM/INN are examples. Very rarely do Ramp decks run less than 25 lands, with upwards of 28 not being unheard of.
Combo: While combo isn't hugely prevalent in standard, it's quite frequent in modern, legacy, and vintage. These decks are generally non-interactive, and sometimes do nothing, until they go and win in one fell swoop. The biggest recent example came from Rally the Ancestors with Collected Company and a good sacrifice outlet like Nantuko Husk, or the first major combo Channel/Fireball.

Next up, Building!

While you build:

Remember that consistent decks with a clear plan to victory (and a backup plan) win the most.
Mono-colored or two-colored decks tend to be the most consistent and least vulnerable to disruption. You can fan out to a third if the format's mana base allows it (KTK/BFZ manabases are going to be awesome for going three or more color. Not quite as good as INN/RTR with checks and shocks, or the rotations centered around Lorwyn/Shadowmoor, but very good still.)
You generally want somewhere around 22 to 26 lands in your deck, depending on format or archetype. Your Mana Base should generally skew similar to the amount of colored mana in your spells. More on this after this list.
Give this article by Alexander Shearer a read and check out the spreadsheet.
Be mindful of your Mana Curve. As an example, if you're playing an aggressive deck with the goal of simply going at your opponent, your mana curve should terminate at a converted mana cost of NO HIGHER than four and the majority of your spells hovering around the CMC 2 range. There's no hard and fast rule for what a mana curve should look like. This is the 2010 Worlds top standard deck, note that the mana curve has a huge amount of things to do at CMC 1 and 2

I can't stress enough how much you have to consider your mana base.
Your forseeable manabase DTK/ORI/BFZ/OGW/SOI Standard �or- YOU�RE NOT PLAYING LEGACY ANYMORE, gently caress YOUR PERFECT MANA BASE:

Basic Lands: Plains, Island, Swamp, Mountian, Forest.

Wastes: Basic lands without a type that debuted in OGW. Only produce colorless mana. You can have as many of these in a constructed deck as you�d like. If you�re drafting, you have to draft them. THESE ROTATE OUT OF STANDARD WITH BFZ BLOCK.

Shadows Land Lands: Allied cycle of lands that ETBT unless you reveal a land with the type of one of the basics that produces that color. They play well with Battle Lands and will probably be about on par with Scars Fastlands for standard, which is to say they're better early game.

Battle Lands: These will be considerably less powerful than the last format, but still plenty playable. With no more real fetches, they're better late game.

Enemy Manlands: Lands that ETB Tapped but can have mana pumped into them to be turned into a creature until end of turn. They�re ok fixing and generally fairly good cards. U/R and B/W are probably the best of the bunch.

Enemy Painlands: Rare lands that enter the battlefield untapped and can be tapped for colorless, or one of two colors of mana from an enemy pair at the cost of 1 Damage. These and the M10 checklands tend to be the standard baseline for dual lands, though R&D tends to prefer the checks because of new players. After two consecutive printings they�re not hard to get a hold of, and even foils are relatively cheap.

ETBT Paired duals: Allied pairs in OGW, Enemy pairs in SOI. These are your baseline dual lands for the time being. They�re not pretty, but they�ll get the job done

Evolving Wilds: With the Fetches gone, this is the premiere fetching land. Delirium Decks will want this as a four of to reliably get a land in their graveyard.

Warped Landscape: Evolving wilds that produces colorless, but requires 2 mana to fetch.

Ally Encampment: Are you playing allies? Then this is for you.

Corrupted Crossroads: Are you playing standard Eldrazi? Then this may work in your deck.

Mirrorpool: An oddity that allows you to clone a spell or copy a creature for a cost. Also a colorless generator

Ruins of Oran-Rief: ETBT colorless generator with the ability to add a +1/+1 counter to a colorless creature that hit the field that turn. Works on Devoid creatures and Artifact creatures.

Sea Gate Wreckage: [B]THIS IS REPEATABLE CARD DRAW ON A LAND![/B] Sure you have to have no cards in hand to use it, but we�re in a format with madness.

Haven/Crucible of the Spirit Dragon: Does your deck run dragons in it or care about them? You probably want to run Haven as a 2 of to recur your rawr. Crucible isn�t quite as good unless you�re looking to ramp.

Westvale Abbey: There�s a lot going on with this card. It does produce colorless and for a lot of mana, it can get you a steady stream of 1/1 tokens. The last ability to transform it to Ormendahl, Profane Prince is what has causals going apeshit. Remains to be seen if this will be a constructed player, as the last time we had something like this it wasn�t good.

Foundry of the Counsuls/Spawning Bed: Colorless lands that allow you to pay mana and sacrifice them for token creatures. Foundry if you want fliers, Spawning if you want sacrificial 1/1�s for mana generation or whatever the gently caress.

Mage-Ring Network: A colorless storage land. Similar to Crucible of the Spirit Dragon but no rawr Requirement.

Rouge�s Passage: Wasn�t horrible last time it was in standard, but not great. Lets you spend mana to make a creature unblockable. Generally best as a 1-of.

Sanctum of Ugin: Colorless fetching for when you cast a big colorless creature. Potentially more useful in Modern with the banning of Eye of Ugin

Shrine of the Forsaken Gods: This is mainly to get you from infinity mana to beyond. It�s a monster once you�ve got seven lands.

Holdout Settlement: This is functionally a Springleaf Drum land with the ability to tap for colorless when you have no creatures.

Crumbling Vestige: ETBT, but give you a color when it hits, then goes to producing colorless. Ended up being excellent in limited, but my local metagame hasn�t shown much use for it.

Unknown Shores: Taps for colorless or filters one color to another. Kind of a last resort land in constructed but was excellent in BFZ/OGW limited.

Drownyard Temple: Taps for colorless and you can pay 3 to bring it back from the graveyard to the field tapped. SOI has a lot of self milling and the Delirium ability, so this may be useful in standard.

Blighted Lands: A cycle of colorless producers that can be sacrificed for a minor effect for 4 or 5 cmc. Usefulness depends on what kind of deck you�re building. Blue, Black, and Red are much better than White and Green in a vacuum, but who knows what ones will be the best when the cards hit standard.

Fertile Thicket, Looming Spires, Sandstone Bridge, Skyline Cascade, Mortuary Mire: Zendikar and World wake each had a cycle of spell lands that ETB tapped but generated a small effect. These are another iteration of this cycle, and they all seem to be relatively effective (though the white one isn�t as good as the red one).

A special note: If you�re opening BFZ for any reason, you may run into an Expedition land (full art foil). This can be any of the Ravnica Shocks, Fetches, or the new Battle lands. If you open one of these in a draft or sealed event, you can use them. Only the allied Battle Lands are Standard legal. OGW has expeditions as well, but none of those cards are standard legal.

After it's built:

Test it out a little bit! You can even use the hand generators on deckstats.net to get a feel for what kind of opening hands you're going to run into. Goldfishing (solitare play) helps as well, but if you have friends or Magic Online, go to it.
If the deck seems like it might have some merit, post it here! Use the deckstats.net or tappedout.net builders. (I recommend deckstats, as it will give you the proper BB code with links to individual cards on magiccards.info as well as all the mana curve data and even pricing.)
Take the advice you get here, and make your first tweak. Only change one thing about a deck at a time so you understand the changes you've made function in relation to your deck's previous incarnation.
Test it out again! Then continue to make your changes.
Play your deck against every kind of deck you can. If you're going to a tournament, build a gauntlet of expected decks and play as many games as possible against those decks.
Don't forget your sideboard!
And don't forget to play post-sideboarded games!

One other thing to note when you're building your deck is that there's a good chance you're going to have a "pet card" you want to try to shoehorn into every deck you build. I recently tried to jam Tymaret, the Murder King into whatever I could. Be aware of this card and make absolutely SURE it fits into your deck.

Alternatively, the OP of this MTG Salvation thread does an excelent job of going over all of this.

Some questions you may ask:

Can I post the full list of my Commander/EDH deck?
Use a link to deckstats/tappedout for your Commander/EDH Decks
DON�T POST FULL LISTS OF COMMANDER/EDH DECKS
Or just post it in the Commander thread and know that you�re a horrible person.

How many of each card do I want in my deck?
Here's a good way of looking at it (this excludes basic lands):
Four of a specific card: I want this card in my opening hand and/or want to see as many copies of it as possible.
Three of a specific card: Having this in my opening hand isn't bad, but I generally only want to see one or two copies of it during the course of a game (Legendary Creatures, Planeswalkers).
Two of a specific card: I'd like to see this card on occasion, but never really want it in my opening hand.
One of a specific card: I NEVER want to see more than one of this card or something I'll be searching for with a tutor effect or drawing through massive amounts of draw. (Singletons are often a deck win condition in vintage or legacy, and frequently a win condition in a combo deck.)

Why does my deck keep getting slaughtered by this other type of deck?
Your deck may have an inherent weakness to that deck. As an example, a creature ramp deck can be stalled out horribly by a mono-red burn deck. A deck with no flyers can be completely out of luck if your opponent drops a large flyer like a Baneslayer Angel. That mono-red burn deck has a huge weakness to life gain and shroud/hexproof creatures. You have three options to deal with this. First, you can make main deck changes. Second, you can dedicate slots in your sideboard to shore up this match. Third, you can just accept that your deck is bad against that type of deck.

What's a sideboard?
That's 15 extra cards you can use to modify your deck between games in a tournament. You can use this to solidify your deck against a bad match up, or transform your deck into something else. It's a good idea to consider your sideboard options in parallel to your main 60.

How do I tune my deck for my local metagame, what about my sideboard?
Well, thats a bit of a doozy and specialized. You'd need to tell us what your expected metagame is, then we can help you.

I want to build a mill de--
Wizards does a good job of printing stuff that mills. Especially in SOI with things like Startled awake. I have news for you: Mill decks are still bad. I�m not saying they�re not fun and can�t catch an event with its pants down like it did over the summer, but they�re a slow burn or combo deck at best. They lack consistency and are open to just being run down by even midrange decks. TurboMill from LOR/ALA is probably the closest, most recent example of a consistent mill deck. It took the rise of 5-color-control for it to be a player though. And none of that mattered once Seismic Swans came around.

Here�s the thing about mill with SOI: You want to be turning the smaller mill spells at yourself to enable delirium, zombie tribal shenanigans, and any kind of recursion things.

Why did you rip my awesome deck to shreds? It was the best thing in the world! You have no idea what you're talking about!
While there's a decent chance that someone commenting on your deck may not have the best deck building sense (including me), the same holds true for you. Also, I warned you this would happen, and even gave you this link earlier. Put your ego aside, we're trying to help.

Hay guyz! I just got given a bunch of new cards from someone and I want to post my deck list. Should I do it?"
JerryLee put it pretty succinctly in the first thread, but I'll sum it up here: Probably not. If your card pool is really tiny what you can put together isn't going to be of much interest to us, and you're likely to be ignored. If you want to list out a fully fleshed out deck (include cards you want to acquire for it) BASED ON what you currently have, or get some suggestions on what to look for, that's fine. If you want to save some money, you can buy from other goons!

My deck didn't get commented on. :smith:

This is likely to happen for any number of reasons. More often than not this tends to happen for Legacy and Vintage decks posted, but don�t worry if you want to talk older formats, Go here and post the list. Another reason your deck may have been ignored is because you didn't specify what format it's for and/or your budget. You could have also posted in the middle of a fury of decks being posted and it was just missed. Don't take it personally, this just a single thread in a sub-forum of a sub-forum that's doesn't exactly have a huge amount of traffic.

That said, If you want to get competitive, don't hesitate to go to Star City Games top deck lists from their open series and use that as a place to start on the type of deck you want to use.

I'd like to remind everyone to INCLUDE WHAT FORMAT YOU'RE BUILDING YOUR DECK FOR! The format a deck is built for is key to getting help.

If you'd like to get a hold of me in regards to something with the thread, talk Wizard Poker Deck building, or berate me for being a jackass, feel free to PM. I might actually get back to you on that.

League Memberships start after the line below. Free Moon Socks for all members provided by Tamiyo and her clues.

YeehawMcKickass fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Apr 8, 2016

# ¿ Apr 8, 2016 19:17

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 10:17

YeehawMcKickass: Jan 2, 2003; WE WELCOME THE OPPRESSORS

I'm solidly on an Eldrazi flavor of some sort. Either mono-u or mono-r.

I've tested mono blue and done well with it in events; I don't have Chandra's for Mono-r, but thopter engineer, habgarback, and mom/dad make the deck play very different from mono blue.

# ¿ Apr 8, 2016 21:13

YeehawMcKickass: Jan 2, 2003; WE WELCOME THE OPPRESSORS

I am a bad magic player and I play bad decks whenever possible. Like this jank:

Deck: U/R Eldrazi

//Lands
2 Foundry of the Consuls
3 Island
6 Mountain
2 Ruins of Oran-Rief
3 Sea Gate Wreckage
4 Shivan Reef
2 Spawning Bed
3 Wandering Fumarole

//Spells
2 Chandra, Flamecaller
4 Fiery Impulse
3 Spatial Contortion
2 Warping Wail

//Creatures
3 Eldrazi Skyspawner
4 Hedron Crawler
3 Herald of Kozilek
4 Reality Smasher
3 Ruination Guide
4 Thought-Knot Seer
3 Vile Aggregate

//Sideboard
2 Dispel
2 Negate
1 Warping Wail
1 Spatial Contortion
3 Eldrazi Obligator
2 Drowner of Hope
4 Displacement Wave

Display deck statistics

This is a horrible mish-mash of stupid and I should be shot. My numbers are all over the place with creatures and I'm not sure if the two drowner of hopes in the side should just be Oblivion Sowers

Of note, Displacement Wave is incredible to play against people relying on tokens or low cmc creatures. I nailed a Bant Company deck with a wave for 3 after two consecutive CoCo's once, the tempo hit pushed them so far back that by they time they'd stabilized, I had two TKS out and was flying over their crew for 6-8 per turn.

# ¿ Apr 19, 2016 18:28

YeehawMcKickass: Jan 2, 2003; WE WELCOME THE OPPRESSORS

Borachon posted:

Having just come back after a long hiatus, I'm working putting together a modest-budget ($75) Standard deck for a local FNM group, based on the recent UR Thermo-thing deck. I've picked that deck as a starting place because it's a neat mix of interesting effects, control, and burn, and the budget is pretty modest. In addition, since I'm just coming back, I'm interested in a deck that survives the next rotation basically unchanged.

Without further ado:

Deck: Rotatable UR Thermo-Thing

//Creatures
3 Thing in the Ice
4 Thermo-Alchemist

//Planeswalkers
2 Jace, Unraveler of Secrets

//Enchantments
4 Fevered Visions

//Instants
2 Dispel
2 Unsubstantiate
2 Fiery Temper
2 Lightning Axe
2 Geistblast
4 Galvanic Bombardment

//Sorceries
3 Collective Defiance
2 Nahiri's Wrath
2 Incendiary Flow
2 Tormenting Voice

//Lands
2 Geier Reach Sanitarium
4 Highland Lake
5 Island
9 Mountain
4 Wandering Fumarole

//Sideboard
2 Bedlam Reveler
1 Collective Defiance
2 Compelling Deterrence
1 Incendiary Flow
2 Kozilek's Return
2 Negate
1 Spell Shrivel
2 Summary Dismissal
2 Weaver of Lightning

Display deck statistics

Geistblast is an experiment to see if it can provide some secondary burn in a pinch, but more importantly protect key spells against being countered/quelled; thoughts on the viability of that strategy would be great. I could also use a lot of help on the sideboard, which right now is really just a rough guess as to things that might be useful. I'm also still using Radiant Flames in the sideboard instead of KR until I trade for some of those.

EDIT: After doing hte math, I'm going to stick with Fiery Impulse over Galvanic Bombardment. The odds of draw enough Galvanic Bombardments for it to be worth it aren't high enough, especially if you ever want to sideboard out just one or two of them.

I've been putting together Thermo-Thing as well, but instead of Jaces of any kind, I'm going with Curious Homonculus//Voracious Reader.

I may get cute in the sideboard and put Harmless Offering in place of Bedlam Reveler to pass off Goldnight Castigators for surprise burn wins.

# ¿ Aug 11, 2016 22:39

YeehawMcKickass: Jan 2, 2003; WE WELCOME THE OPPRESSORS

Borachon posted:

Pedro Carvhalo, how originated the Thermo-Thing deck at Sydney, has a really nice discussion of the deck at channel fireball, including it origins and evolution, card selection reasons, and sideboarding.

Can confirm, great read.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2016 18:36

YeehawMcKickass: Jan 2, 2003; WE WELCOME THE OPPRESSORS

Nah, stay with 24 lands.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2016 21:01

YeehawMcKickass: Jan 2, 2003; WE WELCOME THE OPPRESSORS

Just brew it!

# ¿ Aug 30, 2016 18:32

YeehawMcKickass: Jan 2, 2003; WE WELCOME THE OPPRESSORS

If anyone else would like to take over as OP for this thread when Kaladesh comes out, let me know. I don't think I'm going to be able to swing doing the update.

# ¿ Sep 12, 2016 22:36

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 10:17

YeehawMcKickass: Jan 2, 2003; WE WELCOME THE OPPRESSORS

Oh hey, this thread is still going. Good to see, considering I pegged it for dead.

Should I refresh the thread for Amonkhet release or just leave it be?

# ¿ Mar 22, 2017 22:38

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > MTG Brewhaus: Jacetice League Recruitment Thread