Pojo's MTG
MTG Home
Message Board
News & Archives
Deck Garage
BMoor
Dolf
BeJoSe
Columnists
Paul's Perspective
Jeff Zandi
DeQuan Watson
Jordon Kronick
IQ
Aburame Shino
Rare Hunter
Tim Stoltzfus
WiCkEd
Judge Bill's Corner
Trading Card Game
Card of the Day
Guide for Newbies
Decks to Beat
Featured Articles
Peasant Magic
Fan Tips
Tourney Reports
Other
Color Chart
Book Reviews
Online Play
MTG Links
Staff
120x90 Ad Space
For Rent!
|
|
BMoor's Magic The
Gathering Deck Garage
Alex's White Weenie Resurrection
March 16, 2010
Dear BMoor,
I appreciate your taking the time to look at my deck. I
have always loved playing creature decks and decided to make
a white weenie deck. It has since become my favorite deck,
but I would always love to make it better!
Land
4 Emeria, the Sky Ruin
16 Plains
Creatures
4 Wall of Glare
4 Knight of the Meadowgrain
3 Riftmarked Knight
3 Serra Avenger
3 Epochrasite
3 Razor Golem
Other Spells
3 Holy Day
3 Oblivion Ring
2 Pacifism
2 Wispersilk Cloak
2 Mask of Memory
2 Journeyer's Kite
2 Hoofprints of the Stag
2 Luminarch Ascension
2 Devine Sacrament
What I was trying to go for was bang for your buck and all
for 3 white mana or less! Emeria, the Sky Ruin is pretty
much the ultimate goal of this deck. Attack, defend, and
stall long enough to win with an Emeria Ground and Pound!
My problem is that faster decks like burn take all the fun
out of playing, and this deck is particularly weak against
Burn.
Holy Day, Oblivion Ring and Pacifism really help
with
the stall, and even ensure my Ascension for the win! The
tokens from Hoofprints, however, seem to be the easier to
achieve of the two enchantments. Journeyer's Kite really
helps thin my deck and if played by turn four, can
almost guarantee me a turn 8 Emeria trigger. Mask works
wonders! It works really well with cloak, keeps me from
stalling, and can even feed my graveyard for threshold and
more importantly, Emeria late game, saving mana for my flyer
tokens.
As far as creatures, I love the big flyer tokens, and Serra
Avenger works really well with mask or cloak or both!
Because I don't mind stalling, Riftmark Knight works ok but
not as well as Epochrasite. And playing Razor Golem late
game for free is awesome! Knight of the Meadowgrain has even
saved the game a few times. Wall of glare is the only card
that seems to want to work great, but I haven't had much
success with it, and honestly, I'm not sure why.
Finally, I was hoping you could answer some questions I had
about card mechanics. Riftmark Knight's abilities trigger
at the same time when the last counter comes off, meaning I
get to choose which ability resolves first, since they occur
separately (I'm hoping I read the rules right!) Does that
mean that the token, if I play it first cannot be countered?
Also, Do creatures coming back with Emeria have summoning
sickness?
More than anything this deck is a lot of fun to play, but I
would like to speed it up a bit and try to find a way to
control losses to burn and creature removal. Also, If you
know of any other cheep strong flyers, I would love to play
more of them. Maybe even suggest a few cards to turn this
into a flyer deck! Cards I would be willing to part with to
part with in exchange for better/stronger cards would be
Wall of Glare, Pacifism, and Riftmark Knight. However, If
you feel any other cards are holding my strategy back, or
could easily be replaced, I would gladly welcome all
suggestions.
Thanks Again!
Alex
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Alex, I like your deck, but on paper there seems to be a
problem with your strategy. You're a white weenie deck, with
lots of cheap aggressive creatures, and you want to maximize
the effectiveness of Emeria, which doesn't start working
until turn eight and is designed to help you win a war of
attrition, a long game. Are you playing aggro or control?
Okay, it's not that big of a problem. You seem to know that
you're the control player, because you're playing cards like
Epochrasite and Wall of Glare rather than Elite Vanguard or
other pure-aggro creatures that would lose their luster
after turn four or five.
Emeria is a joke if all it can bring back is a vanilla 2/1
while your opponent is swinging in with 5/5's.
So for that sake, you need as least one heavy hitter in your
line-up. Black reanimation decks have always sought out the
biggest and toughest Demons, Vampires, Horrors, and
atrocities of nature they could to bring out on turn four
courtesy of Zombify, you need to do the same. The difficulty
is that White has never been known for being the color of
big creatures. It gets Angels, sure, but you'd be surprised
how few Angels are really that big and bad, and the ones
that are all that-- Baneslayer, Akroma, Reya Dawnbringer--
are really expensive to get, money-wise. Admonition Angel
might be a good choice, since her price tag is currently
being kept low thanks to Baneslayer sharing Standard.
Or you could find a big, bad, artifact creature. Sure,
finding good colorless beatsticks may be even harder due to
artifacts' need to not be better at any aspect of the game
than whichever color is worst at it, but there are still a
few good ones, even at uncommon. Phyrexian Snowcrusher from
Coldsnap and Wicker Warcrawler from Shadowmoor both look
pretty good. The Snowcrusher would be better if you had
snow-covered Plains, but it has no real drawback beyond
"attacks each turn if able". And while the Warcrawler
shrinks every time you use it, you don't really care because
all that will happen is that eventually it gets small enough
to kill by burn or combat damage, and then Emeria brings it
back at full strength!
And while we're on the subject of artifact creatures,
I
want to call your attention to Mindless Automoton. I think
the Automoton would be good for you for several reasons.
First, you can discard cards to it to make it bigger, and if
those cards are creature cards, Emeria will bring them back.
Second, you can use it to draw cards, which will fuel
Hoofprints of the Stag along with all the other wonderful
reasons you would want to draw more cards. And third, you
can remove its counters for cards without worrying that it's
going to die, because Emeria will bring it back! Once Emeria
is online, you can use the Automoton as a sort of one-sided
Howling Mine, if you get tired of using it as a free Zombify
every turn (or if you resurrect everything else in your
graveyard).
I know I'm switching gears rather abruptly here, but Divine
Sacrament was one of my old-time favorites. It was in my
first mono-white deck, mostly because I had a copy and it
was better than trying to track down copies of Glorious
Anthem because I was just getting started and didn't want to
spend a lot of money. But also like your deck, I ran Razor
Golem, and it didn't get +1/+1, and that made me sad. But
the good news is, there's been a better card printed for you
to use instead. Marshal's Anthem would be perfect in your
deck, since you're already of a mind to bring back dead
creatures, and to make the game last until you have eight
mana. You could cast Marshal's Anthem with two kickers the
turn after Emeria triggers, and suddenly you're up three
creatures, all of which get +1/+1! Whether they're white or
not!
And finally, since you mentioned that you were willing to
take Pacifism out of your deck if there was something
better, I'd suggest using Path to Exile or Condemn instead.
Either one will get rid of problematic creatures much more
effectively than Pacifism and can't be undone by a
Naturalize.
Good luck!
~BMoor
|