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.