This weeks rant is purely my opinion and is probably going to be disagreed by several people. Regionals is a joke. There I said it. I will be playing at regionals this weekend and I will not be taking it seriously. I will be there to attempt the almost impossible and try to qualify for the nationals tournament. Why do I say that regionals is a joke? In Texas we are going to have to play ten or eleven rounds with roughly 500 people to get to final eight people and get the invitations. The number of people attending my regions tournament will be the equivalent of a Grand Prix event and isn’t a two day event. Regionals provides no Pro points, provides lower prizes than a Grand Prix, and has a harder cut than just about any tournament to win it all. The tournament will be long, hot, and very taxing on the mind for little reward for most of the people that will be entering. So here is what I will be suggesting for most of you that are attending regionals this weekend. Don’t take it seriously. Have lots of fun and don’t think about the prizes.

If your in Texas and playing, come talk to me and make my day better. I will be wearing my luck blue Team Game Close t-shirt. Go with your friends and when the tournament is over have a nice dinner with your friends. Take the time to make some new friends and have regionals not be a joke to you. Next week I will have a major tournament report from my experience at reagionals for you all. So now that the rant is completed we will go on to the deck fix.

Here is the email that I received from one of you the loyal readers.

Hey jason, i only started bout 3 days before this email, but I have been getting help from a few friends who have played bout 3 years, verifying rules and such for me, not helping me with decks though~_~ I was hoping to make a mono red deck, And below is my current deck.
IM ON A BUDGET OF 50 DOLLARS RIGHT NOW

LANDS -

19 mountain
3 darksteel citadel
3 great furnace

CREATURES -

3 krark clan stoker
2 steel wall
3 oxidda golem
2 vulshok war boar
2 iron myr
1 stone giant
1 arcbound bruiser
1 goblin replica
1 gemni engine
1 rustmouth ogre
1 uthden troll
1 krark clan grunt

OTHER -

2 barbed lightning
2 electrostatic bolt
2 pyrtie sepllbomb
1 pulse of the forge
1 molten rain
2 darksteel brute
1 scale of chiss-goria
1 detonate
1 viridian long bow
1 ether spellbomb
1 vulshok battle gear

End email content

The first thing that I noticed right off when looking at this deck is that is pretty much a Master Blaster pre-con deck from Darksteel. There have been a few changes made to the deck but I am about to pull this deck into the deck garage and give it a fifty dollar overhaul. I have my limitations set with fact that my friend here only has a fifty dollar budget and he wants to keep the deck a mono red deck. He hasn’t specified any cards he want to keep and that gives me some room to work with. Here we go.

Problems with the deck as it stands.

1)The deck has a classic pre-con build and that means that it has a lot of one of cards. It has fourteen copies of single cards in the deck and only nine different cards have multiples in the deck excluding lands. So the first thing that I am going to make note of is that I will add some consistency to the deck when I build it by using multiples.

2) As with most precons the creature selection is only from the block is was created from and that means that there will be some very sub par creatures. So after evaluating the creatures in the deck I have decided that all must go and be replace with some better options. Once again the precon build has single and that really ruins the consistency so I will use multiples of the creatures I select.

3)The spells and artifacts that are in the deck are really some good spells, its just a shame that there only one of each in a lot of cases. So in order to make some better selections I will remove some of the bad stuff and insert some more of the existing good spells. I do this to make the deck have a better and more reliable selection of spells to draw upon.

The Budget

I used a lot of resources to come up with the prices for the cards that I would suggest. Rather than go with a price guide, which could be unreliable depending on your local area and availability of cards in that area. I used Shuffle and Cut Games website, my own store, and Ebay to get an average of the prices to use for this build. I have include a price next to each addition of cards so that you will know what to expect if you get an average price. These prices are all listed in US currency. The price listed is the total price for all of the copies.

Here is a list of the cards I needed to change the deck.

+1 Great Furnace ($0.50)

+4 Slith Firewalker ($4.00)

+4 Viashino Sandstalker ($4.00)

+2 Arc Slogger ($7.00)

+3 Duplicant ($10.00)

+4 Stone Rain ($1.00)

+3 Molten Rain ($3.00)

+2 Pyrite Spellbomb ($0.50)

+2 Pulse of the Forge ($10.00)

+4 Shock ($1.00)

Total Parts List Estimated Price ($41.00)

Here is the deck after the changes that I would make with the budget of fifty dollars worth of changes.

17 Mountains

4 Great Furnace

3 Darksteel Citadel

4 Slith Firewalker

4 Viashino Sandstalker

2 Arc Slogger

3 Duplicant

4 Shrapnel Blast

4 Pyrite Spellbomb

3 Pulse of the Forge

4 Shock

4 Molten Rain

4 Stone Rain