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Sean From New York's Deck Garage
Type 2 Wizards
May 15, 2007

I need some help with my wizard deck.  But first, i must tell something. We play Magic between some friends. We're about 15 person. But we couldn't catch up with editions for years. So we created our own edition :) we use cards from the beginning to 7. edition. And again, we divided cards in 2 groups like, "strong but acceptable" and "too silly strong". And we don't use the cards of the second group. For example, we use dark ritual, it's acceptable but we don't use black lotus. It's too silly strong.

So i'm sure, when/if you advise me a card, you can decide which group it belongs to.
I used to play with blue-counter deck. That's my style. And when came to think of "countering ability", wizard deck idea amazed me.

But i have problems, i decided the basics already but after a point, i can't decide which one is useless, which one doesn't suit on my deck.

The deck i built is a 70 card deck. And i can't reduce it to 60.If you can help me at this point i'll be grateful.

my deck is;

4 Daring Apprentice
4 Cephalid Constable
4 Disruptive Pitmage
4 counterspell
4 accumulated knowledge
4 extract
4 daze
3 Temporal Adept
3 Aphetto Alchemist
3 force of will
2 archivist
2 Mask of the Mimic
2 Ghosthelm Courier
2 Apprentice Wizard
2 Patron Wizard

2 saprazzan skerry
4 mox sapphire
14 island


in this deck, there are 2 cards that can belong to the second group i told you. One is "force of will" and the other is "mox sapphire". But i'm not sure that much. So maybe you can tell me. Are they really too silly strong or acceptable?

The idea of the deck is clear i think. If i can place enough wizards on the floor, it brings me the perfect ability of counter.

But maybe you can ask "this is only defience. What is your defeating strategy".
In counter decks, people usually put a few strong creatures, like morphling, and they just try to hang on till they can play it and try to protect it afterwards. But my idea is "Cephalid Constable". This is the card that amazes me the most among all the cards i'd ever seen. I'd even tried to build a green-blue "returnity" deck based on this card. But it's an other story :)

I put the Ghosthelm Courier to help Cephalid Constable to do more damage. Once i'd put "Crafty Pathmage" too. This 3 cards can work together well but using 3 different cards for a single strategy is not so handy i think.

And there is one more card I want to talk about, that is "extract". maybe you can say "it's a good card but it doesn't belong to your deck" Actually this card is for a special person. One of my friends in our group plays with a blue-black discard deck based on megrim. So extract is for him. And again maybe you can ask" then why it is not on your sideboard". Well i thought this card can be handy anyway.

So this is the deck i want to build. And now let's talk about the problems of this deck

The first one is mana of course. Blue decks always have this problem. My whole cards except a few cards cost 3 mana to play. So it looks cheap but on the other hand, i always have to keep some mana to play my instants. To play a simple wizard, i must have 5 mana. Other way i can't counter that turn. I never had the chance to play with this deck yet, so i didn't see the result. This is a deck built up on paper and still waits to be done. But i'm sure mana issue will always be there.

But my more and more important problem is speed. I can never stand against a green speedy creature mass deck. Is this the fate of blue players, that we can never catch up with fast decks?

So thats all, thank you for reading this much. I hope you can help me. At least tell me if this deck idea sucks or worth trying.

Emir Yanat

First let me apologize for not replying sooner, between computer problems, illness, and finals, I’ve been rather strapped for time. *ahem* Hi there Emir! So, a wizard deck huh? As a tribe they can be pretty powerful, but as you mention, they do tend to cost a bit, but that’s not a worry when you’re playing defensively. And don’t worry, your idea doesn’t suck, any idea is worth trying, after all, Magic is supposed to be fun, and all deck ideas are valid. Before I get to the deck, I’ll address your question about cards that are “too silly strong.” Magic has a restricted list for a reason, and that reason is that some of the cards it has printed are either A) poorly designed in such a way that they become incredibly overpowered upon release or B) interact with a card that they didn’t play test in such a way that it creates a massive power vacuum. Cards in these categories get restricted or banned out right. Dark Ritual provides very good acceleration for Black, but it’s far from being “broken.” As for the Mox’s, they’re very good acceleration, and if you’re just playing casually I see no reason why you’re play group would object. And as for Force of Will, I personally don’t think it’s broken, particularly in the case of your deck, where you’ll need all the effective counter spelling you can. Obviously if there’s one or more players who don’t have access to cards like this then they might object, but that is when you can make playing with “proxies” allowable, that’s where you use a card as another if you don’t actually own it.

Alright, now that that’s out of the way, let’s look at what you’ve got in your deck. Firstly let’s look at the creatures. Daring Apprentice is an interesting wizard, but it’s a one shot counter that’s vulnerable to creature removal, so out it goes. Next we have Disruptive Pitmage. He can be a bit redundant with the Patron Wizard, but he provides the opportunity to counter, so he can stay. Ghosthelm Courier protects and pumps your Cephalid Constable so I think increasing his count by 1 would be appropriate. Temporal Adept, Aphetto Alchemist, and Apprentice Wizard all lack abilities that further the goal of the deck, though Temporal Adept could still have a place in the deck, but his mana cost and activation cost are a bit pricey in a slow deck. And as for Patron Wizard, I like him, so he can stay as well, and if you can get more copies of him, go for it! Now, one card that is frequently seen in wizard decks is Voidmage Prodigy. Archivist, while drawing you cards, is overcosted and fragile, so I’d take him out all together. While getting a hold of 4 copies could be difficult, I’d recommend it, as he lets you sacrifice any wizard you have to counter a spell, and that can be quite useful. It is also important to note that the morph abilities on your wizards allow you to make use of a very high degree of surprise.

As for your spells, Accumulate knowledge is good, and any other cheap card drawing spells like Brainstorm would be highly useful. Counterspell is good and so is Force of Will. Mox Sapphire gets a thumbs up since it’s an excellent source of mana acceleration, but as for Daze and Extract, they really should go. Daze is poor, but Extract is pretty amazing, however, it really should go into a sideboard for defeating combo decks, otherwise it doesn’t further the aim of your deck. I’d recommend either Boomerang or some form of cheap card draw, though boomerang can bounce pesky permanents that get past your counters. A spell I recommend adding is Levitation. It’s a 2UU enchantment that gives all your creatures flying, which isn’t the best thing in the world, but it does allow your Constable to retain the protection of the Courier and makes it easier to connect to your opponents’ life points.

As for your mana, Saprazzan Skerry is fine, but you need more Islands, I suggest a minimum of 18, and even then that’s a little light, but with the Sapphires you should be ok. Below is a tentative deck list, but I’d like all readers out there to remember that Wizard decks tend to be a bit expensive, because the best wizards are rare. However, if you can get the cards, then Wizards can be quite a powerful tribe to use.

Type 2 Wizard Deck v2

18 Creatures:
4 Voidmage Prodigy UU
4 Disruptive Pitmage 2U
4 Ghosthelm Courier 2U
4 Cephalid Constable 1UU
2 Patron Wizard UUU

22 Spells:
4 Accumulated Knowledge 1U
4 Counterspell UU
4 Boomerang UU
3 Levitation 2UU
3 Force of Will 3UU
4 Mox Sapphire 0

20 Land
2 Saprazzan Skerry
18 Island

15 Sideboard:
1 Disruptive Pitmage
1 Ghosthelm Courier
3 Temporal Adept
4 Extract
1 Flight
4 Daze
1 Island