Dear BMoor:

I am a longtime player of magic (since Torment was the new set), & I also read your articles quite often. Keep up the good work! Anyways, I came across an interesting idea revolving around Windbrisk Heights. I wondered, "What big spell do I want to play for next to nothing?" Then I thought, "They don't get much bigger than Darksteel Colossus!" Here's my decklist, which I built for Extended.

4x Darksteel Colossus
4x Summoner's Egg
4x Street Wraith
4x Weathered Wayfarer
4x Kami of False Hope

4x Raise the Alarm
4x Promise of Bunrei
4x Renewed Faith
4x Sensei's Divining Top
4x Orim's Chant
4x Chrome Mox

4x Windbrisk Heights
4x Flagstones of Trokair
8x Plains

The Idea is to use Windbrisk Heights (aided by the Top) to remove a Colossus, then attack with a bunch of weenies & play the Colossus for a single white mana! Kami of False Hope & Orim's Chant buy me time to set up the alpha strike, while Raise the Alarm & Promise of Bunrei provide the creatures I need. The Flagstones, Weathered Wayfarer, Street Wraith & Renewed Faith thin my deck (which is really tough for white),
while Chrome Mox gives me some needed mana acceleration. Summoner's Egg addresses the issue of having a Colossus in my hand, and REALLY discourages my opponent from attacking!

Hopefully, this deck can stand up to some of the other infamous decks like Dredge, Goblins, 'Tog, etc. Any help would be greatly appreciated! As for my budget, that word doesn't exist in my vocabulary, so feel free to make ANY changes necessary to make this deck a lean, mean, Colossus spitting machine!

Justin 

--

 

Well, Justin, let's see what we can do to give this deck the speed required of an Extended deck.  This may be tricky since I'm more used to Standard, with a smaller card pool and a few more turns to be able to spend setting up.  But I'll do my best.

 

The first card that I see as being not good enough is Renewed Faith.  You say it's for deck filtering, so I assume you just use it to Cycle and not to hardcast.  If so, you're paying 1W for 2 life and "draw a card".  Sounds like Swift Maneuver to me, and that card was always horrible.  White is bad at deck thinning, but not that bad at it.

 

Sunbeam Spellbomb is a good choice, since it gives you more life, but makes you choose between life and a card.  It also lets you pay half now and half later, so you could drop it on turn one and use whichever ability later.  Conjurer's Bauble does the same thing, but you need a target card in your graveyard to use it.  It can also get you cards back, which with Weathered Wayfarer shuffling for you, you may actually get to draw again.

 

If you'd rather have a spell, I'd recommend a cantrip, preferably as cheap of a cantrip as you can find.  Bandage looks weak, until you realize a lot of your creatures will be 1/1 tokens from Raise the Alarm or Promise of Bunrei. Niveous Wisps's tap effect helps your "hold 'em off" strategy.  Scout's Warning allows you to pull off a surprise Summoner's Egg blocker into a surprise Colossus, or even a Street Wraith if the 3/4 swampwalker is all you've got at the moment.  To Arms! will help when you've just sent your army in to trigger the Heights, but really need some blockers.

 

Depending on how often you find yourself able to get in with your attackers, you may also consider Augury Adept.  Yes, it has to connect and deal combat damage, but drawing a card and gaining life (11 life?) is a good payoff, and having it out may convince your opponent that this seemingly foolish attack you've just made is really just a desperate bid to flip a card with the Augury, and your Windbrisk Heights isn't really hiding anything of note.

 

You may also want a few more creatures that can actually attack succesfully.  Knight of Meadowgrain, Savannah Lions, Isamaru, Hound of Konda, and Knight of the Holy Nimbus are all good choices, but it looks like you're building a combo deck, so I don't know what you'd want to pull.  Kami of False Hope, maybe.  It's hardly worth playing a creature just to sacrifice it for a Holy Day effect, and you're more likely to slow down your opponent by making them deal with your threat-- or by gaining life off a Knight of Meadowgrain.  It also helps soften up your opponent for when the Colossus hits the stage, and gives you a backup win condition if necessary.  You're probably going to need to do a good bit of attacking to trigger the hideaway land anyway, so wouldn't you like a creature that isn't just throwing itself away in the effort?

 

Good luck!

 

~BMoor