Hello to all my fellow magic players. Welcome to the first installment of Jason's Deck Garage. I would like to start off by telling you all a little about myself. If you don't want to know about me by all means go further down the page and read what you came here for in the first place. If your still here enjoy the rest of the article.

 

     My name is Jason Matthews. I started playing magic on the tail end of the beta edition. I took a small hiatus from magic after Homelands was released and returned shortly after Nemesis came out. I work for The Game Closet in Waco, Texas. I play mainly tournament Magic. I prefer Standard and Extended. I am a certified judge like dear old Judge Bill, although I am only Level 1. I enjoy all aspects of magic, be it casual or tournament play. You can find me on Magic online from time to time under the name Harbor. I also am a referee for a local paintball park. I have played paintball all over United States and the world. I played paintball competitively on many major circuits. Well that’s just a bit about me. I will share more than most want to know as more articles are published.

 

   In doing the Jason’s Deck Garage, I will take on all challenges when it comes to reviewing decks. If you would like to send in a deck list for me to look at send it to Pojojason@hotmail.com I do have a few suggestions for getting me to use your deck as the possible deck to review. Please tell me what format you will using the deck for. When I speak of formats I mean, type 2, extended, type1, type 1.5, block constructed, League, or yes even casual. I would really like to know what you like about the deck you are having me review. I need to know if you like certain cards in your deck so I don’t accidentally take those cards out. Let me know why you like the deck so I don’t ruin your favorite deck. If you are going to include a sideboard let me know what style of decks are giving you trouble so that I can help you deal with those decks.

 

    For this first installment of deck garage I will be sharing how I construct a sealed deck for Magic Online League formats. The League format starts with a tournament starter deck and two booster packs. In the first week this is all you get for cards to play with. In the following three weeks you receive a may provide an additional pack to add to your deck. I will start with what amounts to the basic starting set of cards, although of course product will vary. What follow is a list of the card that were opened.

 

Mirrodin Starter and two boosters.

 

30 Creatures

18 Non-Creature Artifacts

23 Other Spells

 4 Non-basic Lands

30 Basic Lands

 

Black

Barter in Blood

Consume Spirit

Disciple of the Vault

Irradiate

Moriok Scavenger

Wrench Mind

 

Blue

Annul

Disarm

Inertia Bubble

Neurock Familiar

Override

Regress

Thoughtcast 2X

Wanderguard Sentry 2X

 

White

Luminous Angel

Raise the Alarm

Soul Nova

Sphere of Purity

Tempest of Light

 

Red

Grab the Reins

Incite War

Krark-Clan Grunt

Mass Hysteria

Molten Rain

Ogre Leadfoot

Vulshok Berserker

 

Green

Battlegrowth

Bloodscent

Deconstruct

Fangren Hunter 2X

Groffshithur

Tel-Jilad Chosen

Trolls of Tel-Jilad

Turn to Dust

Wurmskin Forger

 

Lands

Blinkmouth Well

Cloudpost

Vault of Whispers 2X

 

Artifacts

Cathodian

Clockwork Beetle

Cobalt Golem

Dampning Matrix

Fireshrieker

Gilded Lotus

Hematite Golem

Leaden Myr

Leonin Scimitar

Malachite Golem

Mask of Memory

Mindstorm Crown

Myr Adapter

Necrogen Spellbomb

Neurok Hoversail

Nim Replica

Omega Myr

Ornithopter

Pewter Golem

Power Conduit

Pyrite Spellbomb

Quicksilver Fountain

Scale of Chiss Goria

Scrabbling Claws

Serum Tank

Silver Myr

Slagwurm Armor

Sun Droplet

Sunbeam Spellbomb

Titanium Golem 2X

Tooth of Chiss-Goria

Yotian Soldier

 

    Well this is about as bad as it can get when it comes to opening product for sealed. I opened this product and was shocked at how evenly the creature count was in the actual colors. White being the exception in that it only has actual creature spell but Raise the Alarm is pretty much a creature spell. When you open a product that has a distribution that is almost evenly spread such as this it becomes a necessity to go into multiple colors.

With the product sorted by color I begin to sort the cards in the color into two piles, creature and spells. So next I will show you how I did the color choices.

 

  White is a good example of getting a good rare and not being able to use it. The Luminous Angel is a great card that is too cost restrictive with the triple white. Raise the Alarm and Soul Nova are both amazing but with the lack of other creature it is evident that white is just too weak to even splash.

 

 Black is much like the white we have in that there are some good cards but there are just too few. Barter in Blood is good but with the creatures being so few in this pool of cards I decided to avoid it. If there were a Nuisance Engine in the artifact I wouldn’t hesitate to use the black. The fact that I have to go two maybe three colors removed the Consume Spirit from thought. The Moriock Scavenger and Irradiate only have one black mana in their casting cost so that makes them a good splash color.

 

Red is the last color that is bad for using in this product. There is no removal spells and now artifact removal. The red is just week all around in this card pool. The only good card for this pool was Grab the Reins. So even though red is my favorite magic color I passed on the red.

 

Green offers up a little hope with a few big creatures that trample and some artifact removal. Tel-Hilad Chosen is a no-brainer because of it pro artifact ability. The green is still also struck by not having some of the better creatures in a green and not enough creatures in general.

 

Blue doesn’t offer a lot in creature from this pool but does give some good card draw and control cards. The Regress is good for dealing with a threat or saving one of your own creatures. The Annul and Inertia Bubble also help with a set that insures that everyone will have at least one or two artifact-creature or artifacts to target.

 

Artifacts are where I had to pull most of my cards from in this deck. The creatures are all self-explanatory. The serum tank is great because with so many artifact coming out of this deck you can at least get some cards and the Sun Droplet will give you a little time to build up your board position. There are a lot of good cards in the artifacts but some can be counter productive like the Dampening Matrix. The matrix is a great card that unfortunately works against the deck because I had to use the golems as creatures.

 

What follows is the deck I decided to build with the available cards. I don’t think it is the optimum build but with the card pool so sub par it is what I would play. The saddest part of the card pull is that if you wanted to have fun there is a combo of Quicksilver Fountain and Power Conduit. You could make them have a lot of Island while your creature just gets bigger and bigger. If I had Fabricate in the card pool I would have used this combo.

 

 

The Deck

Green                                                      Artifacts

Deconstruct                               Cathodian

Fangren Hunter 2x                    Clockwork Beetle

Tel-Jilad Chosen                       Cobalt Golem

Trolls of Tel-Jilad                      Leaden Myr

Black                                          Malachite Golem

Irradiate                                     Nim Replica

Moriok Scavenger                    

Blue

Annul                                         Neurock Hoversail

Inertia Bubble                            Pewter Golem

Neurok Familiar                         Serum Tank

Regress                                       Silver Myr

Thoughtcast 2x                           Sun Droplet

                                                   Yotian Soldier

 

 

Lands

Vault of Whispers 2x

Swamp 1

Island 5

Forest 8

 

   So what you have just seen is a small idea of some of the ideas I use when I look at a pool of cards in sealed deck. Next week I will have an actual deck-fixing article. If you would like me to take a look at your deck list please remember to answer some of my question from the start of this article so I can help you better. Send your deck list or if you would just like to ask me a question or send a comment to pojojason@hotmail.com

 

   Happy New Year to all the Pojo readers and Happy Holidays as well.