Thoughts for Modern

    Modern is a format that I have a rather large desire to play. I really can't afford to play it right now. Also, I don't wanna have to drop a grand just on the mana base for a deck. Wizards really needs to reprint fetch lands if they want to make modern more affordable and accessible. There are several decks that I really wish to play.
   The deck that I want to make is u/r delver. The decks core would consist of 4 delver, 4 snapcaster, and 4 young pyromancer. The rest of the deck would be your standard instant/sorcery package, lightning bolt, mana leak, etc. The one thing that I can't decide if I wanna do with it is wheather or not to add faeries to the deck. I would add both spellstutter sprite and vendillion clique. If I did that then I would have to change around the amount of creatures in the deck because I still want for delver to flip.
   The deck that I will probably end up making though is some form of burn. It is a lot cheaper to build this. I would probably play mono-red and be playing all the bolt effects that I can possibly play. The creatures in the deck would be Goblin Guide, Grim Lavamancer, and probably some amount of Vexing Devil.  

Teneb, The Harvester

    Teneb is by far my favorite commander deck that I have ever made. It does everything that I could possibly want from a deck. It can ramp up into oblivion and then kill everyone if it wants. It can start reanimation chains for all the value ever. It can even control people really well. The deck is probably the best deck I have that doesn't have blue in it.
    The deck plays like a junk mid-range/control deck. The control aspects of the deck are all the wraths and spot removal that it plays. I play some of the better wraths that you have access to which include Damnation, Terminus, and Decree of Pain. As far as spot removal goes I play path, swords, and, Unexpectedly Absent. Other control effects are discard and land destruction. One of my favorite things that you can do with the deck is play Terrastodon and slowly start to ravage someones mana base. We get it back into play with either Nim Deathmantle and a sack outlet or by just casting Reanimate.
   The deck plays really well and is both feared and respected in my play group. 

Kaeverk, The Merciless

   A deck that I have been working on a fair amount recently has been Kaeverk, The Merciless. The basic idea of the deck is black red control. Once you get Kaeverk into play then you get to have a lot of fun with it. It's very important though that you find some way to protect him, whether it is from Lightning Greaves or Swiftfoot Boots it doesnt matter. What you can then do is either pick off the creatures on the board one by one or you can do what I do and pick one person and ruin their day. After a few turn cycles they should die from the sheer amount of burn you send at their face.
   Aside from Kaeverk the deck needs to be able to control the board. Some things that need to be played are several different wrath effects. The high priority ones that I play are All is Dust, Damnation, and Blasphemous Act. I could also run something like Death Pits of Wrath. That way Kaeverk only needs to target something for it to die.
     One last thing that I would like to do is make it so that Gray Merchant of Asphodel can kill people in the deck. To do so I need to play several black enchantments such as Grave Pact, so that my devotion is large enough to kill. Worse come to worse I can gain a bunch of life from it and live for an extra turn.

Empress Galina

So I decided since everyone else I know was making a stupid deck that was fairy degenerate I figured that I should join in on the fun. I decided that I would just play some mono-blue deck. I just got Empress Galina from my friend and figured what the hell why not. The deck was built from an artifact shell. Some might say that if I'm doing mono-blue artifacts than I should just play Arcum Dagsson as the commander. I really dont like the way that Arcum runs as a deck. Its to consistent and gets really boring after you play it a few times.

     The way that I built the deck has a little more control elements to it. It has plenty of counter-magic and it has a lot of ways to get things that are problematic off the board. The best ways for me to deal with problems is usually an All is Dust. It kills almost all of my opponents things and it even leaves me with all my artifacts. Another thing that I use to my advantage is Nevinyrrals Disk which has been wrathing peoples boards for years.

    As for its ability to win it has several options. The option that is the most fun is just taking peoples commanders with Galina and using them to kill them. It is an ironic way for people to die. The other wins cons consist of a Mindslaver lock or from taking infinite turns with time walk, Mnemonic Wall, and some bounce effect.

   Over all I really enjoy the new deck and plan on using it a lot more.  

Thoughts on Slobad

My latest deck that I have been playing with has been my Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer commander deck. It is a mono-red artifact deck that usually tries to win by blowing up my opponent’s lands. I am still deciding on whether or not it is a competitive deck. For a deck to be competitive it has to do all of the following things, it needs to have synergy, it needs to be able to win, and it has to have good cards in it. I feel as if my deck does all of these things fairly well and that it is actually a fairly competitive deck.

            The criterion for a competitive deck that my deck follows the best is synergy. Everything in the deck just interacts all too well. The way the deck works is that it will start off by ramping with several different mana rocks. Some of the mana rocks that I use in my deck are Sol Ring, Thran Dynamo, Gilded Lotus, etc. So I am using some of the better more pricy ones to make my deck that much better. After that the game plan is to get either a Ring of Three Wishes into play or a Planar Portal into play. These allow me to tutor for combo pieces. Also I like to rush an Unwinding clock in this situation. It allows me to untap my artifacts on other peoples turns. So by the time its my turn again I can almost certainly combo off for the win. Some other synergy that can be seen in the deck is my commander Slobad. Not only can he help protect my key cards, but he can help me get rid of cards I don’t need or he can help me reset something like a Pithing Needle. Also, he works way to well with Spine of Ish Sah. I’m able to just keep getting it back and cast it. Although the decks synergizes well the one cars that does so much more work than anything else would have to be Trading Post. This card does everything you want it to do and more. It draws cards, recurs cards like Mindslaver, gains life, and even makes chump blockers. The fact that the cards in this deck play off each other so well fuel some very explosive starts and finishes to games.

            Another thing that makes a deck competitive is whether or not the deck can win. The deck usually does not have this problem at all. If I had to guess I’ve played the deck about 10 times and I’ve won 8 of those games. I have played against a rather large variety of opponents. Usually I play in games with three other people. The decks that I play against vary. Some examples of the commanders that I have played against are Thraximundar, Sigarda, Host of Herons, Animar, Soul of Elements, Skythrix, The Blight Dragon, and Momir Vig, Simic Visionary. So I have tested the deck against many different strategies and decks. The deck has several ways of winning the game, some of the more common win cons are Mindslaver lock, I win because my opponent never gets another turn, Mycosynth Lattice and Vandalblast, and Mycosynth Lattice, Nevinyrals Disk, and Darksteel Forge. So the most accessible win con of the deck is to destroy all of my opponent’s resources including their lands. When things go poorly for the deck it can recover and still win, but it has a hard time due to the restrictions on mono red. Some things that the deck has a hard time dealing with is anything that is indestructible. I have no way to remove something that is and therefore I can’t beat something like an Ulamog, The Infinite Gyre. The only way for me to deal with this is to add a Brittle Effigy to the deck or to put in my own Ulamog. Overall though the deck is really good at doing what it wants to and often I find myself the victor of a game when I use it.

            The last thing that makes a deck competitive is the power level of all the cards in it. The deck does have a lot of good cards in it, but the deck relies on having other cards in play. Most of the cards in the deck are not just good by themselves, they need help. Like I said before the deck is made to be full of synergy. The draws the deck gets usually are not that explosive and I find myself having to rely on my board. Not all of the cards rely on others to be powerful some of the cards that are just good on their own are Spine of Ish Sah, Mindslaver, and Nevinyrals Disk. These cards are very strong on their own. They get even more powerful when I combine them with some of the other cards in the deck. I feel that most artifact decks are not meant to have cards that are just good by themselves. Most artifact decks that I have seen usually try to do what I’m doing, which is to have their cards work really well with one another. An example of this is with my friends Arcum Dagson deck. What the deck tried to do was assemble all of its key artifacts and then combo out. What it would do was use Arcum to tutor for all the combo pieces and then the game would be locked down in his favor.  My Slobad deck does have powerful cards in it, but sometimes the cards are not as strong as I wish they were.

            So in conclusion I feel that Slobad is a competitive deck. The cards in it work way to well with each other; I’m allowed to play off of my cards to do some really stupid things. The deck has no trouble winning at all and has won 80% of the game that it has played in. The cards in the deck are powerful, but they are not intrinsically good cards on their own. I believe that Slobad is a competitive deck, but it is not as strong as my Maelstrom Wanderer deck. That deck is just insane. All the cars come together really well, the deck has lost a total of about 5 games of the hundred or so of games I’ve played with it, and the cards are really strong on their own and don’t need any help. I feel that Slobad is a competitive deck, but isn’t my most competitive deck. 

Cheating

    Well today I'm going to discuss a sad, but true reality of magic. People do tend to cheat and it annoys  the hell out of me. For example in my play group there is this kid who cheats pretty badly, but no one really wants to say anything to him. The way in which he cheats is that he always seems to have a sol ring and some form of a tutor in his opening hand. We have tried several ways to try and stop this, such as cutting decks. This works for a little bit and then we forget about him cheating. Then after we forget he goes right back to doing it.
    I think that the best thing that we can do in this situation is to confront said person on their cheating. Tell them that if they don't stop blatantly cheating that they won't be allowed to play with us anymore. Does anyone else have this problem in their play group and if so how did you deal with this problem.
 
  

Slobad in Action

     Well just thought I'd let you guys know how Slobad went as  a commander. I felt that it was a lot of fun and is completely different than my usual playstyle (no green). The deck usually goes one of two ways. It can be artifact control by abusing Spine of Ish-Sah or by making an indestructible Nevinyrral's Disk. The ability to always have a wrath on board is great. Although we can get blown out pretty bad by a Krosan Grip. The other plan that the deck goes with is goblins. Which as you might guess involves just swarming the board with goblins.
     The reason why there are so many goblins in the deck is because I ran out of good artifacts to play. I basically needed to add like fifteen cards to the deck so I went with a Goblin plan. Once I get more cards for the deck the goblins will sadly get cut. Although I may build a Krenko, Mob Boss deck with all the goblins I have laying around.
   The main cards that i still need for the deck consist of Mycosynth Lattice, Vandalblast, and Obliterate. Once i get these cars we can really start to be more of a power-house deck. Although once I do start playing these cards people will mercilessly try and kill me. People don't tend to enjoy having their mana base screwed.

             

Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer

I thought that today I would share the next deck that I am trying to make. it is going to be Slobad, Goblin Tinkerer


I decided to go with the obvious choice for this deck in mono-red artifacts. The main idea of the deck is going to be make my things indestructible, while I laugh as all of your things die. It may be seen as a bit of a scumbag move to run both Obliterate and Jokalupps, but in my play group ramp is a common strategy and no one really tries to punish it. The win con in the deck will be wrath and then still have some giant beater still in play such as a "Blightsteel Colossus". The deck looks like a lot of fun and I will post news soon about how it does.

Proxies

As many of you may or may not be aware proxies of cards do exist. Whether its a really nice one made by an artist with custom artwork or its someone writing over a card with black sharpie. In my opinion I feel that allowing proxies or not depends on the situation. For example in my play group there are some guys that have much less of a card pool than most. I would be fine with them proxying a few cards so that they can be on the power level of everyone else. Than you have people who are just assholes. These are the type of people that will proxy up power nine and then, bitch when you tell them they cant play.
   I feel as if proxying can be like most things only good in moderation. You should always check with the people that you play with before you play to see if they are okay with a proxy. Most people I've noticed don't mind for the most part. So long as your not proxying several thousands of dollars.
   One last note is that there have been a lot of fake magic cards put into circulation as well. These cards look almost identical to the originals and are very hard to tell apart. Below is a link to a starcity article that better covers the subject.

http://www.starcitygames.com/article/27693_Counterfeit-Cards.html  

Fun New Way to Play

   Are you and your friends getting sick and tired of playing the same decks against each other. Do you need a new way to play the game, then boy do I have a crazy idea to try.
     What your gonna do is make a deck of about 250-300 cards and share that deck with the people that you play with. Its not that hard to do either. I'm sure that commons and uncommons would be real easy to find and everyone has  a few janky rares laying around that could get some good use. Also, it really gives your friends that have a lesser collection to have fun.
   I've played only a few times, although I will say that it is a lot of fun. For example the deck that my friend built is five colored. It has a lot of mana fixing and a lot of funny cards in it like "Door to Nothingness". I really enjoy it because even though you play with the same deck every game, you don't always have the same cards and it makes you play differently.  

Sylvan Primordial Banning

     As many of you are already probably aware, Sylvan Primordial was recently added to the commander ban list. Many people feel as if this was needed and that it was well deserved. Now i can understand where these people are coming from but personally I don 't agree with it at all.
   I feel as if there were several things that deserved to be banned before Sylvan Primordial, such as Omniscience or Consecrated Sphinx. These cards are broken entirely on their own and will win the game if left unchecked. Whereas with Sylvan you need to abuse it a little more to actually break the card. Whether its being reanimated or cloned. Although I will say that an early sylvan can really ruin the game for your opponents. It slows them down dramatically, while it accelerates you ridiculously.
   I am fully aware of how strong of a card that Sylvan is, I just feel that others things are a lot less healthy for the format. As mainly a green mage I can't help but feel like were getting screwed. First Primeval Titan gets banned and now Sylvan, while blue is still allowed to have Omniscience, its ridiculous to me.