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BMoor's Magic The
Gathering
Deck Garage
Jonathan's green artifact/modular deck
June 5, 2009
Today's E-mail comes from
way back in Mirrodin Block, which was right about the time I
myself started getting seriously into Magic. Several years
later, the old favorites still have a place in my heart.
Lands:
20 Forests
1 miren,the moaning well
Artifacts:
1 terraion
1 darksteel forge
2 energy chambers
1 synod sanctum
1 wurms tooth
equipments:
2 Ronin warclub's
1 Leonin Bola
1 loxodon Warhammer
1 Vulshok Morningstar
1 Leonin Scimitar
instants:
3 Nourish
1 might of oaks
1 roar of jukai
1 kodama's might
1 Wild Might
Sorcery:
1 dosan's Oldest Chant
2 monstrous Growth
Enchant Creature:
1 serpent skin
1 mythic proportions
Creatures:
4 Arcbound Worker
4 Arcbound stinger
2 arcbound Hybrid
3 Arcbound bruiser
2 Arcbound overseer
p.s this deck used to contain 2 world slayer before i choose
to take them out. please let me know what i can do to make
this deck better. I sometimes win a few games with this deck
and other times i get beaten on a regular basis. Thanks
Jonathan dalton.
________________________________________
Well, Jonathan, the main reason I chose your deck to review
isn't just because I have a soft spot for Arcbound decks.
It's because I honestly feel your deck is a perfect example
of the kind of deck made by someone who's pretty much brand
new to the game and is just learning how to build decks. Pay
close attention, because we can all learn something here.
First, Jonathan's deck contains a lot of singletons, and
most of his spells don't really have any synergy with each
other.
Second, Jonathan is running quite a few cards that don't
actually do anything to make him win any faster.
Third, almost none of Jonathan's cards are interactive with
what his opponent's doing, they just look cool if he gets
them in play.
Together, these three symptoms remind me of a person playing
Real Time Strategy (RTS) video games for the first time. (If
you're not familiar with those games, they usually revolve
around gathering resources to fund construction of an army,
and going to war with another army. Think Age of Empires,
Starcraft, or even Risk) When a new player takes up one of
these games, their first impulse is to build up as big of an
army as possible, with as many troops and specialty units as
they can. But when the opponent's army comes knocking,
they're actually completely unprepared because they don't
know what to do tactically, and so the opponent destroys the
only units that really matter, leaving you with a bunch of
troops that can do nothing but throw themselves uselessly
into your opponent's grinder.
At least that's what kept happening to me in Age of Empires,
until I just got bored and built a Wonder of the World for
automatic victory. (Wonders of the World in AoE are like
Coalition Victory or Battle of Wits in Magic.)
The lesson here is that you have to remember-- Magic isn't
like most sports. The goal isn't to have the highest life
total at the "end of the game", it's to end the game by
dealing 20 to your opponent (or milling, or whatever) as
fast as possible. It's not about having the biggest creature
out, it's about whether you can swing with it enough times
before your opponent finds a kill spell.
So, that said, the first thing we need to do is to remove
all the cards here that just plain don't do much. In the
"artifacts" section, the only thing that really does
anything is Energy Chamber. Darksteel Forge is almost good
enough, but at 9 mana, it's too slow. And besides, Arcbound
creatures don't get to pass on their counters unless they go
to the graveyard. Getting bounced or removed from the game
won't work, and that's what Darksteel Forge doesn't help you
against. So if your Arcbound creatures are indestructible,
anything your opponent could do to them that would let you
trigger Modular won't work, but anything
that
won't trigger Modular still will work. And Synod Sanctum?
Why on Mirrodin would you want to remove your own permaments
from the game? Sure you can bring them back later, but why
get rid of them in the first place?
In Equipment, Loxodon Warhammer is the only thing you've got
worth using. Everything else is just too much mana for not
enough payout. Yes, even Leonin Scimitar is just not worth
spending a slot in your deck on.
Keeping with the "one good spell and junk the rest theme",
the only instant you have worth playing is Might of Oaks.
Nourish? Let me say something I've said time and time again,
Jonathan--life gain is only good if the card that gains you
life does something else. Like Loxodon Warhammer-- the life
gain part isn't what makes it good, although it does help.
What mostly makes it good is the extra 3 damage PLUS the
trample, ensuring that some of that extra damage goes
through to the opponent, PLUS the fact that you gain life
every time you hit. But if there's one lesson I can impress
on you, it's this:
Making your opponent's life total go down is preferable to
making your own go up.
Having said that, let's move on to sorceries. This time, you
haven't got a single one worht keeping. I hope I've already
explained why Dosan's Oldest Chant is bad, but with
Monstrous Growth, you've got a new issue. Creature pump at
sorcery speed is, as a rule, bad. Instants that pump
creatures are good, because you can play them during combat
to surprise a blocking creature and kill it, or play it on
the creature that wasn't blocked to force through more
damage, or play it response to a burn spell to save your
creature. At sorcery speed, all you can do is play it on
your main phase and attack, at which point your opponent
knows that the creature is +4/+4, so he won't expect his
now-not-big-enough creature to kill it. It lets your
opponent play aroud it is what I'm saying. Goodcreature pump
spells don't do that.
That brings us to your Enchant Creatures. Normally I'd say
these two are okay, but you only have 15 creatures in this
deck. That's a problem.
You need more than that if this deck is going to work, and
until then, you can't worry too much about having
enchantments to put on them, because you might draw them and
not any creatures.
So, now we get to the fun part-- adding cards. First, you
need more creatures. Arcbound creatures, preferably. First,
get more copies of Hybrid and Overseer, and next, look into
getting some Arcbound Fiends as well. A 3/3 for 6 isn't
much, but its ability to grow itself plus Fear make it very
good. Learn the power of abilities that make blocking more
difficult for your opponent.
Next, remember when I said you needed ways to interact with
your opponent's cards? Well, that's not all your fault.
Mono-green decks have always struggled with that, but the
best solution I can see for you is Tower Above.
But wait, BMoor, I can hear you say. Tower Above is a sorcry
that pumps my creature! You just went through a whole
paragraph saying that was bad! Why is Tower Above good? Very
simple, imaginary rhetorical questioner. It's not the +4/+4
that makes Tower Above good. It's not the trample, although
that helps. It's not even the wither, although that is very
nice. It's the part about "When this creature attacks,
target creature blocks it this turn if able." Remember,
Monstrous Growth was bad because it gave your opponent all
the information prior to his decision about what to block
with. Instants don't happen until after that decision is
made. But Tower Above? This card takes that decision away
from him completely. This card says, "Hey, you, I'm gonna
grow to +4/+4 and crush you like a bug, and you don't get a
choice about it." This isn't a normal pump spell. It's a
kill spell. And green doesn't usually get those, so take
what you can.
After that, you definitely want to take advantage of some of
what green does best: +1/+1 counters! All your creatures
love having more counters on them, so add in some
Battlegrowth (permanent instant pump) and some Incremental
Growth (more counters for everybody!)
Finally, if you have room, a few Commune with Nature will
help you get creatures out of your deck and into your hand.
Good luck, Jonathan, and I hope you can take what I've
taught and apply those lessons to your game. There's no
better teacher in Magic than a good opponent!
~BMoor
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