Pojo's Magic The Gathering news, tips, strategies and more! | |||||
|
|||||
Pojo's MTG
120x90 Ad Space
|
BMoor's Magic The
Gathering
Deck Garage
Ron wrote:
I knew that sooner or later I'd get a deck for each of Lorwyn's tribes. I'm not sure if I've gotten all of the major eight yet, but I guess we can count this as all eight at once and them some.
Now, the key to building a good Shapeshifter deck is really making it count that your creatures are all creature types. Woodland Changeling without some sort of tribal benefit is just a 2/2. Mothdust Changeling on its own strictly worse than Suntail Hawk, and so on. You need a many ways as possible to make your creatures' abundance of types matter as much as possible. However, add in too many of those "lord" cards, and you won't have enough Shapeshifters to make them matter. It's similar to the problem with Madness decks, where you have to find the right balance between cards that have the ability and cards that let you use that ability to the fullest.
So you currently have 18 Shapeshifters and 10 cards that benefit a creature type. That seems to be a good balance. The only cards with Changeling in your colors that you don't have in your deck are Mistform Ultimus and Wings of Velis Vel. The Ultimus is a bit weak, so you don't need to add that, but Wings of Velis Vel is a nice combat trick if you're interested.
As for your enablers, you've got Lord of Atlantis, Might Sliver, Bull Aurochs, Merrow Commerce, and Luminescent Rain. The first problem I have here is with Luminescent Rain. Cards that do nothing but gain you life are not worth a slot in your deck. If that's the sort of effect you want, try Distant Melody. Instead of gaining 2 life, draw a card instead. Next to go is Bull Aurochs. A 2/1 that gets +1/+0 for each attacking Shapeshifter? It's still an X/1 and dies to anything that blocks it. Try Aurochs Herd instead. It's more expensive, yes, but it lets you search your library for any of your Changeling cards. And it attacks as an X/4 instead of an X/1. Also, that X is bound to be higher than it would if it were Bull Aurochs, not only is it X+4 instead of X+2, it comes down later when you're likely to have more creatures to attack with.
Next is Lord of Atlantis. Having +1/+1 and islandwalk is nice, but the islandwalk is so situational. Why not try a more useful ability, like Shroud? Replace the Lord with Scion of Oona and you can! Not only will this keep targeted removal off all your creatures, but it can come down at instant speed to bestow shroud and +1/+1 in response to a burn spell. What, you're killing my Changeling? In response, my Changeling is now an illegal target and also that's three more points of damage I'm attacking for. You mentioned a vulnerability to aggro decks, and aggro decks like having a few burn spells to take out ungothroughsome blockers with. If your gusy have Shroud, that kills that plan!
Finally, if you find your deck being a bit slow, you can speed it up by replacing some of your more expensive creatures. Might Sliver, for example, may be better off as Gemhide Sliver-- it comes online faster and gives you extra mana to play your spells sooner. You could also look into Dormant Sliver, which pros have been using to turn their army into an inexhaustible supply of cards. When you've got enough board presence to make the final move, use Unsummon or your Changeling Titan to remove the Dormant Sliver from play and remove defender from your creatures.
See if any of these ideas work for you. If you're going to run a deck full of Shapeshifters, you have to be able to change your strategy when necessary.
Good luck!
~BMoor
|
||||
Copyright© 1998-2008 pojo.com
This site is not sponsored, endorsed, or otherwise affiliated with any of the companies or products featured on this site. This is not an Official Site. |