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BMoor's Magic The Gathering Deck Garage
Deck help for Dale
September 24, 2007

hi, first let me thank u for a great forum for magic players to get help.
i've been out of magic for just over 5 years thanks to having all my cards stolen, but thats another story.
 
im now back into it,boy is my wife gonna hate me now (haha).
 
anyway  i have a good friend who gave me a crap load of cards, plus the stuff i bought.
i better say now i play lots of blue, but i hate counterspells of any kind, i find more enjoyable building a strong blue deck without em.
 
and my friend is 49 and im 51-sure that caught your attention,  you should see that faces of the kids at saturday night magic we go to-just to funny.  anyway im sure i've rambled on for way to long. please help out a old timer .
 
deck 1
3-ornithopter
3-grinning ignus
4-mogg fanatic
3-spark elemental
3-wee dragonauts
3-cloud of faeries
3-storm entity
2-frantic search
2-repeal
1-recall
3-lightning bolt
4-brute force
2-shock
2-desparate ritual
16-mountain
6-island
 
deck2
3-willbander
2-riftwing cloudskate
2-fledgling mawcor
2-dream stalker
4-serendib efreet
2-shimian specter
4-waning wurm
1-frozen aether
2-rescue
4-reality acid
4-clockspinning
2-dark ritual
2-control magic
2-icy manipulators
1-skull catapult
13-island
10-swamp
 
as you can tell these are for fun/casual games.
 
the 1st deck is built for speed,get out dragonauts and storm entity will be huge all the while pumping up dragonauts and dealing direct damage.
the 2nd deck is get out efreet the life loss is minimal,then get out the wurm ,clocking him,acid and control magic,and icys-no counters.
 
 
please help
thanks
dale
As Dale himself admitted, it's quite rare to see adults his age (50+ years) get into Magic.  Magic gets a bad rap as being a kid's game, I feel, most likely because of its close association to the Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh TCG's.  Heck, I myself got into Magic through Pokemon (and no, I'm not proud).  But I do hate to make people feel disenfranchised, and so how could I not help Dale here?
 
Well, if I did choose not to, it would probably be because he broke a rule of mine: one deck per E-mail.  You see, I copy/paste your E-mails verbatim into my articles, without even so much as correcting your spelling (so watch it).  This ensures that when your deck gets fixed, you recognize that it looks like the E-mail you sent me.  It also means that if you send me more than one deck, it's difficult for me to split it up into multiple articles unless I just delete all but one deck.  Any way you slice it, this creates extra work for me, and it's a struggle just to keep up at one deck per E-mail.  Most often, people who get greedy, get deleted.  But as Dale strikes me as one whose tale deserves to be told, and since I never actually came out and said that I don't fix multiple decks, I'll make an exception.  But in the future, send two E-mails, because all double-dippers from this point on will be skipped over to make time for the rest of you.
 
So onto the deck... er, decks.  Onto the... first deck, I guess.
 
This breaks down into your basic Storm deck, despite the fact that instead of actual cards with Storm, you're using Storm Entity and Wee Dragonauts.  Now, Storm Entity doesn't care what you play, as long as you play a lot of it.  The Dragonauts are a bit more restricted, caring only about instants and sorceries and only about the ones you play.  You could actually drop it in favor of something less demanding, but I like it in this deck because it doesn't cost you any mana on the turn you play a lot of spells to power it up.  Storm Entity demands an additional 1R after you're done emptying your hand, while Wee Dragonauts is already on the board.  So you're going to want lots of cheap (or free) instants and sorceries.  My first change is to pull Repeal and Recall-- as powerful as they are, X spells are not what you want here.  Repeal can become Snap to increase your amount of the "free" Urza block spells.  Recall has no obvious replacement, but you hardly need that anyway.
 
Now, between Grinning Ignus, Ornithopter, Frantic Search, and your one-mana burn spells, I'd say you're already poised to be able to play six spells on turn six and follow it up with a 7/7 Storm Entity and a 7/3 Faerie Wizard swinging in, plus possibly a Brute Force'd Spark Elemental.  But I have to say I'm questioning if you need that many burn spells.  Any Holy Day-like effect might result in you "burning out" because you dumped your whole hand and are out of firepower.  Sure Storm Entity sticks around, but Wee Dragonauts shrinks back down.  Since the Dragonauts won't count creatrues anyway, I'd say Spark Elemental isn't needed.  And if you've already got Lightning Bolt and Brute Force as 3-damage-for-R instants, Shock looks mighty anemic.  What to replace them with?
 
Cantrips, of course.  Cantrips are so powerful in decks like these because they raise your storm count without costing you a card in hand.  And since your whole deck is composed of cheap spells, that extra card will likely mean an extra +2/+0 for your Dragonauts or the like.  In blue, the best cantrips I've found are Opt and Serum Visions.  You'd be quite well off with either of those, but in your deck, I actually prefer Quicken.  Why?  Well, most fo your cheapo spells are instans anyway, so if you were to add in a few Empty the Warrens or any other sorcery with Storm, then you'd be able to piggyback off all your opponent's spells by playing Quicken at your opponent's EOT (along with any other instants you have the mana for) and Empty the Warrens.  If an opponent plays two spells on his turn (a reasonable bid), then you Quicken and Warrens, that's eight 1/1's for 3UR that are ready to attack on your next turn.
 
Speaking of which, how many spells should you aim to play before "going off"?  How many cards do you need to drop in one turn?  By my reckoning, two is enough.  Think about it.  If you play two spells...
 
--Storm Entity will be a 3/3 with haste for two mana, making it teh same stats as Watchwolf plus an ability.
--Wee Dragonauts (assuming they're instants and sorceries) will be a 5/3, which is big enough to kill your average Dragon.
--Empty the Warrens (which you really should have) will produce six tokens for four mana.  That's six power worth of creatures for 3R, which is the same price you pay for a Hill Giant but twice the damage potential.
 
If you can play more than that, that's even better of course.  Just don't be too reluctant to play your spells because you want more in one turn, because if you start holding back waiting to go off, you'll end up falling behind as your opponent develops his board and you don't.  Opt and Serum Visions are also good for this, since you can play them early on without fear of having one less spell to play when you want it.
 
Finally, if you do change your red/blue spell ratio, remember to change your mana base accordingly.  Think about dual lands, too-- even if they're just Izzet Boilerworks.
 
 
Okay.... onto the next deck....
 
....which basically appears to be a hamfisted attempt at U/B control, with Serendib Efreet and Waning Wurm as your win conditions.  The Efreet I like.  The Wurm I don't.  I'm even less happy that you're trying to Clockspin it into sticking around.  You're going to spend 3U a turn just to keep from having to sacrifice a 7/6 that doesn't even trample?  Waning Wurm looks so tantalizing, I know, but the truth is that it's a horrible card.  It's not even good in Limited.  I learned that the hard way.
 
Out comes Waning Wurm.  In goes... what?  Well, I want to say Moroii, since it costs about the same and does what your'e trying to do better.  You insist that the life loss is minimal, and I'm willing to take your word for it.  Plague Sliver could also work as a simple cheap muscle.  But I'm a bit worried about all this self-damage.
 
Without Waning Wurm, Clockspinning can come out.  So can the whole Reality Acid subtheme, which includes Rescue and Dream Stalker.  If you want to kill permanents, you can do it in more efficient ways.  For creatures, for example, try Tendrils of Corruption, which also conveniently solves the issue of all that life loss your creatures are causing you.  And for noncreature permanents, Boomerang is always nice, even without counters.  It also works on your own Control Magic if you so choose, a job you probably already used Rescue for.  If you also want another way out of taking 1 dmaage on your upkeep, try Peel from Reality-- also useful for saving creatures from kill spells or combat while at the same time costing your opponent tempo.
 
And with those problems solved, all I see wrong now is Frozen AEther and Skull Catapult.  Do you need them?  No.  What shoudl replace them.  Whatever you want.  More copies of something good, I suppose.  Or maybe Consult the Necrosages.
 
That concludes this edition of BMoor's Deck Garage.  I hope you all enjoyed this double-header issue.  Now, if you'll excuse me, my wrists are cramped and it's 1:54 in the morning.
 
Good night,
 
~BMoor


 


 


 

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