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BMoor's Magic The Gathering Deck Garage

I'd tap that to death.
December 21, 2007

 

I wrote you a few weeks ago about my U/B Royal Assassin deck.  I have made several good changes to it and would like to try to submit it again.

 

Creatures:

3x Avatar of Woe

3x Mulldrifter

4x Puppeteer

4x Royal Assassin

3x Shriekmaw

 

Artifacts:

4x Coalition Relic

3x Rings of Brighthearth

4x Thousand-Year Elixir

 

Other Spells:

4x Frozen Aether

4x Diabolic Tutor

 

Land:

4x Vivid Creek

4x Vivid Marsh

8x Island

8x Swamp

 

Basically --  I tap opponent's creatures with Frozen Aether or Puppeteer.  Untap RA or AoW with Thousand-Year Elixirs or Puppeteers.  And all the while throwing my evokes into the graveyard to get a cheap AoW.  I lose primarily to non-creature or removal decks.  I feel that the weakest part of my deck now are the evokes -- but I am unsure of what to replace them with.  And that would also mean having to wait longer for the cheap AoW.

 

Looking forward to hearing from you,

 

Jon

 

Well, Jon, thanks for the E-mail, and for the update E-mail.  This deck looks fun enough that I've been looking forward to fixing it.

 

Now, for the benefit of the audience, Jon's first E-mail included a lot more tappers and untappers-- Rathi Trapper, Stonybrook Angler, Coral Trickster, and Twitch.  I'm glad to see that he's dropped most of them, since that's way too much of a deck to devote to tapping an opponent's creatures.  Avatar of Woe is also a good addition, since it not only adds to the number of creatures that can kill other creatures, it also gives you a win condition.  Once the board is clear, after all, Puppeteer and Royal Assassin attacking for 1 each looks pretty bad.

 

So where to continue the reform?  Well, let's start with the evoke creatures, since Jon considers them the weakest part of his deck.  Ironically, Mulldrifter and Shriekmaw are powerful cards, but they don't fit the theme here.

 

We'll start by replacing Mulldrifter-- what else can we use to draw cards?  Well, in a Thousand-Year Elixir deck, it just seems logical to use a creature with a tap ability to draw cards, yes?  Well, your choices are Merfolk Looter, Magus of the Bazaar, and Arcanis the Omnipotent.  Arcanis draws you the most cards, but comes out pretty late and you probably want card draw to draw into your tapper/Assassin combo.  The Magus draws you a good deal too, but makes you discard an awful lot, which is bad for everyone but Avatar of Woe.  Merfolk Looter is probably the "safe option", coming out early to filter you into the combo while still helping pad your graveyard.  Any one of these would probably be useful to copy with Rings of Brighthearth.

 

As for Shriekmaw, well, I'd say between the Assassin and teh Avatar, you've got enough ways to off creatures.  In its place, why not try another decent win condition, complete with tap ability of course.  There's plenty to choose form, but I like Clockwork Hydra from Time Spiral as an option.  It's a 4/4 for 5 that taps to put +1/+1 counters on itself, and whenever it attacks or blocks, you remove a counter and ping something for 1.

 

Wait a minute.  An artifact creature... five mana... with a tap ability... that can ping for one... from Time Spiral?  Why does that sound familiar?  Hmmm... well, there's plenty of stuff you could use in this deck, so I won't worry about listing every single thing.

 

Now then, let's see your artifacts.  Four Elixirs is good.  Rings of Brighthearth is cool, since you'll be activating quite a few abilities.  But I'm not sure about Coaltion Relic.  All your best stuff costs three mana-- most of your creatures and the Elixir.  Do you really want mana rocks that also take up your big turn?  You need a two-mana accelerant, to already have down when yout're ready to start dropping Puppeteers and such.  Mind Stone and Prismatic Lens work about equally well here.  Pick the one that suits your needs best-- do you want an option for colored mana, or an option to draw a card?

 

That's just about everything I can do here, Jon.  So for this article, I'll leave you all on an amusing note: combos requiring frequent tapping and untappping of permanents always reminded the folks in my playgroup of acid jazz DJ's, since the motion of turning the cards sideways and back was similar to the scratching of records on the turntables.  As a result, the card Rewind in my group has always been announced by yelling "Reeeewiiiiiiind!" like in reggae dancehall songs, or under the nicknames "Replay" or "Remix" or "Pon de Rewind".  Pity it isn't Standard-legal anymore.

 

So good luck Jon!  Here's hoping you rip through your opponents as easily as you rip up the turntables!

 

~BMoor