MTG Deck

Hey guys, just bringing to you a deck I’ve been tweaking around with for a while: it works like the reeeaaaally oldschool WW decks, with multiple strong 1 drops like Elite Vanguard and Akrasan Squire, and the late game beef to steal the match like Conqueror’s Pledge and Captain of the Watch:

The deck isn’t terribly complicated, and it should be pretty straightforward to play. The only real complications come in when playing around Infest, Volcanic Fallout and Day of Judgement.

I would say that to pressure a control deck, you ideally want either three 1-drops, such as Soul Warden and Akrasan Squire, or 2 creatures of a higher drop, like Ranger of Eos or either Veteran.  Against aggro, obviously it varies, but you want to capitalise on the mini-anthems and just keep pressure on, really.

The sideboard is tailored against the online meta atm, which is ruled by Vampires and RDW.

Against Vampires:

+4 White Knight

+4 Devout Lightcaster

-4 Veteran Armoursmith

-4 Veteran Swordsmith

Against RDW:

+4 Landbind Ritual

-2 Akrasan Squire

-1 Kazandu Blademaster

-1 Path to Exile or Veteran Armorsmith.

The 3 Brave the Elements are for siding against Volcanic Fallout and decks with excessive sport removal; what you take out will depend heavily on the deck you’re playing against.

Happy testing!

Okay guys, here with Round 2 of mono red burn.
If you’ve read the previous article on the deck, you already know the reasons for each card in the sideboard, and the sideboarding strategy you use in each case.
That said, I’ll be going through each matchup and a preboard and postboard analysis of each matchup.

UW Wizards.
This is a fairly new deck to pop up, largely cropping up recently in the German Nationals. I didn’t see much hype about this deck on any forums, so it either spawned in team circles and was kept hush-hush or was spead on Magic Online. It’s a potent deck if it can stick a few wizards on the board with counter protection, and so the main ideas in this matchup are to
1) Burn out the key wizards (Sygg, River Guide, any Lords, Wake Thrasher ) ASAP, and try to do it at end of turn if that isn’t possible - draw out any countermagic while it’s still their turn so that you can cast your Boggart Ram Gangs and Hellspark Elementals in your own turn without any problems.
2) As with any blue deck, play around Cryptic Command. You cannot rely on an unearth victory at any point that your opponent has more than 3 lands untapped, so try not to unearth more than one creature each turn, and bait any Commands with Flame Javelins to the dome and cheap removal on their dudes. It’s all about tempo and damage, and these are the only reasons a player would use his precious Commands against you.

Sideboard Plan:
+ 4 Volcanic Fallout
+ 4 Ashenmoor Gouger
- 4 Ball Lightning
- 2 Hell’s Thunder
- 2 Shard Volley

BR Blightning
The general premise of BR Blightning is to start off with a bit of aggro, in the form of Figure of Destiny and Hellspark Elemental, alongside disrutption like Thoughtseize and Blightning, and use solid burn and Demigod of Revenge to mop up the game. It’s similar to this deck in the way it plays, but it is definitely a slower, steadier deck. It’s arguably better in a vacuum, but against this deck, it tends to lose out a little.
The key strats in this matchup are:
1) Philosophy of Fire; you cannot afford to play long against this deck; they look like red, they tap mountains like red, but they have more card advantage than you, and while they have some dead card maindeck (Anatheamancer, Volcanic Fallout), they will bring in damaging cards like Firespout and Dragon’s Claw postboard.
2) Remember to always plan for a Demigod next turn. I would only burn out the first Demigod of Revenge your opponent plays, and as soon as that Demigod swings or dies, you need to be mopping up the game. A second Demigod (say on turn 6 or 7) is both unlucky for you and heralds the end of the game for one of you. Use the one turn timeframe of the opponent casting the Demigod and swinging with it well.

Sideboard Plan:
+4 Ashenmoor Gouger
-4 Ball Lightning
-1 Shard Volley
+1 Smash to Smithereens

Your opponent is likely to side out his Volcanic Fallout and Anatheamancer for Dragon’s Claw and Firespout.
Ball Lightning is a liablity against any red mage that runs both Magma Spray and Lightning Bolt, so he comes out for the dork who lives through fallout and has a huge body.
If you see a Dragon’s Claw in Game 2:

-1 Shard Volley
+1 Smash to Smithereens

Faeries
This deck is probably the best matchup for mono red burn, and you should rejoice every time your opponent plays a first turn Secluded Glen.
The opponent cannot race you, and will find it difficult to halt your onslaught, and their key card, Bitterblossom, turns into a liability.
Against Bitterblossom, you want to initially attack anyway, and once they establish their board with 2-3 tokens, just throw burn at them.

Sideboard Plan:
-2 Magma Spray
-2 Shard Volley
-2 Hell’s Thunder
-2 Tattermunge Maniac
+4 Volcanic Fallout
+4 Ashenmoor Gouger

Your opponent will be brining in Sower of Temptation and probably Infest. Gouger can’t block, so is useless with Sower, lives through any removal spell the Faerie mage has, and puts around a 3-4 turn clock against the opponent.
Volcanic Fallout, obviously, kills almost every creature they play, at instant speed, without an answer.

Reveillark Variants:

This deck is pure card advantage in every spell it casts. This is a classic race of cards versus damage, and one which I would say relies heavily on luck. Just play out your hand, and try and kill them, I guess.

Sideboard Plan:
-2 Shard Volley
-2 Hell’s Thunder
+4 Ashenmoor Gouger

Get a few crits down, then burn away. You’re racing against Cruel Ultimatum, and watch out for Celestial Purge and Runed Halo in Postboard.

Kithkin/Tokens
Both of these decks have similar strategies and counterstrats, so I’ll be grouping them for the purpose of matchup analysis.
Kithkin more than Tokens is a bad matchup, probably around 40/60 or 30/70. The main problems are racing a very fast deck, against the card advantage of Windbrisk Heights and token generators, while fending off Burrenton Forge Tender.
You make the best of a bad situation here, and adjust your deck for Game 2 accordingly.

Sideboard Plan:
-4 Tattermunge Maniac
-2 Shard Volley
-1 Hell’s Thunder
+ 4 Ashenmoor Gouger
+ 3 Pyroclasm

Forcing a Forge Tender to detonate with a Pyroclasm is great, and Ashenmoor Gouger will be working alongside Boggart Ram-Gang to force through some damage. You’ll be leaning heavily on your burn spells, so try and save them for sending to the dome.

Elves!
Ah, back to a great matchup. You are fast, with efficient pinpoint removal for their key guys. Play fearlessly, and burn out [card]Heritage Druid[card] and Lords on sight.

Sideboard Plan:
-4 Tattermunge Maniac
-2 Shard Volley
-1 Ball Lightning
+3 Pyroclasm
+4 Volcanic Fallout

Postboard, you have all the board resets you could need against a token generating deck. Enjoy the ride on this one, you should win the match

That’s a wrap with the matchups, folks. I’ve covered the top decks from the last Nationals, as I will continue to do on matchup analysis; I don’t fancy hunting down every archetype :p

Cheers for reading- next will be a Kithkin Tokens update, and later in the week, Elfball!

Hey again, it’s Jeeves, and on this fine fine day I’ve received my AS level results! Not that any of you Magic buffs care, but I got 4 As and a B, which should get me though to Uni, and I am happy as..well, a happy happy thing.

Now that all that worry is over and done with, I can get down to the really important stuff, like Magic! Recently, a few awesome decks have been popping up, a lot of which seem like they could either be budgeted or seem cheap enough as they are. Obviously, any such deck appeals to myself and hopefully, you the reader, so I’ll be going through them and their matchups and strategies through the next two weeks.

Today, an old favourite: mono red burn. This deck has and is, of course, such an ubiquitous (yay, long word ^^) deck is budget circles since Magic even began, and ever since Lightning Bolt and Ball Lightning met, things just took off. It’s a shame really, but cards like that are too powerful to be printed now, and ever since mono red burn has been relegated to tier 2, tier 1.5 at best.

Wait, there’s a new core set?

And they reprinted BALL LIGHTNING?

AAND LIGHTNING BOLT

This has to be divine intervention, my friends. Our budget prayers have been answered! Lorwyn block has already provided a strong base on which to build a mono red deck, and along with a few key cards from the plane of Alara, we can come up with the following list:

Now that you’ve seen the list, I’ll have to make the only concession I’ll make in a while, so savour it while you can: Figure of Destiny is a card I would love to add to any aggro deck based in either white or red, and as such, any aggro decks in those colours without it loses something immediately in power. That’s not to say that all deck’s should run it, as some decks may of course run a heavier curve, or be deemed so mana intensive that they cannot support the card. But basically, what I’m saying is, this $20 card is not something I am willing to fork out for a month before rotation, so the deck has 2 Magma Spray (which appears to be quite popular in Rg Burn variants) and 2 Shard Volley, which could easily be 2 Spark Elemental

Phew. Now that’s over with, we can get to the card choices. Much of this deck is very self explanatory, so I’ll just outline the key cards and possibly contentious card choices.

Maindeck:

Hellspark Elemental, Ball Lightning, Lightning Bolt, are fairly obvious inclusions, nothing to see here.

Tattermunge Maniac and Flamekin Bladewhirl have drawn a lot of flak in the past. I agree totally with everyone that the Maniac often suicides himself, and represents card disadvantage, lack of options, yadda yadda yadda, but the reason he’s in this deck is because he’s worth 2-6 damage in pretty much every game. That’s right, in my books this guy is worth on average, a Lightning Bolt or better. This may sound like an exaggeration, but in testing he’s been, while obviously not as good as Bladewhirl, efficient and good at his job.

Having said all of this, the Flamekin Bladewhirl looks pretty damn good. He’s ‘worse’ maybe than [cardGoldmeadow Stalwart[/card], but play a Bladewhirl on turn 1 revealing a Hellspark Elemental, and on turn 3 your opponent is on 10. Vicious stuff.

The rest of the deck is essentially support. Stigma Lasher and Boggart Ram-Gang round out the curve and do enough damage to allow burn to finish the game- Namely cards like Shard Volley, Hell’s Thunder, etc.

Sideboard:

The sideboard has consistently been mono red’s biggest weakness in Magic. Red doesn’t usually have cards that are meta dependant (outside of Mirrodin Block), and since the only permanents it can destroy effectively with any given ease are lands and artifacts, Red has often struggled to make good sideboards on its own. That said, there are a few cards to combat specific decks out there, and I’ve thrown these all together in the side to do the best we can, really.

Volcanic Fallout mainly comes in against Elves! and Kithkin, at the expense of Tattermunge Maniac, who would just eat a token.

Pyroclasm also comes in against Elves! and Kithkin, but this time replaces 2 Shard Volley and 1 Stigma Lasher

Ashenmoor Gouger replaces Tattermunge Maniac against Kithkin, since your opponent will without a doubt side in Burrenton Forge Tender, so you’ll need both Ram-Gangs and Gouger on the offence to break through for some damage.

Smash to Smithereens is pretty exclusively for the new Time Sieve combo decks - use this against and borderposts they play early game to force them back on mana while you stay up on damage, and to pretty much win the race. Your opponent plays no creatures - more on this in the next article

I’ll give it to you straight; this deck is balls-to-the-walls aggro, and it usually (and I’ll probably regret saying this) wins game 1. Most decks depend on halting the onslaught with a Volcanic Fallout, but this deck doesn’t honestly care. Board position is largely irreleveant (I find it you only really consider it when you’re facing lethal damage next turn) and card advantage is non-existent. When you play this deck, you need to forget everything you learnt about holding back, and you need to play the Philosophy of Fire. For those of you who haven’t heard of it, it’s essentially when you think of everything as a fraction of your opponent’s life total. Your Boggart Ram-Gang getting through this turn is about 1/7 of their life, and if you can hit twice, about 1/3rd. Every time you play a spell, you have to evaluate whether it will result in more damage caused to your opponent as a removal spell or spent directly on your opponent.

I know what you guys really want is the matchups, and this will be in the next article, probably published tomorrow or Saturday. I’ll be going through some actual matches I play with the deck, how to play the matchup, and a matchup evaluation for every one.

Until then, pick up the deck and play it - it’s cheap, it’s fun, and it’s good. Trust me on this one.

Jeeves

Welcome all, to the first article on mtgdeck’s first ever article.

If your reading this, I hope you find the site aesthetically pleasing and easy to use. If this isn’t the case, the feel to drop me an email on jeeves_1991@hotmail.co.uk. I’m giving you my personal email here, in the hope that people will not just contact me with their ideas or even just for a testing partner for any format, really.

I guess before I launch into the article, I should tell you a little about myself.

My name is Jeeves, I’m 17, and I’m an avid mtg and WoW player. I’m very much a Spike; that is, I play to win, and I will pick the best deck that enables me to do this. However, even being Spike, I have severe monetary restrictions. I would love nothing more to pick up 4 of each money land in standard and build some stupid 5cc build, but alas, this is not going to happen with my bank account. I’ll try to explain just how bad it is. My current bank balance is $5.45. Yup, it’s pretty dire.

With these constraints, it’s a rare occasion that I can make a deck that will do well competetively on a budget. You’ll often see me PTQing, GTPing and drafting in London, and such events for me are a chance to not only show that I can play Magic well, but also that the best decks aren’t neccessarily those with $200 manabases, or 4 Bitterblossom.

Such events are rare, and the when you build such a deck for the first time, you get this funny tingly feeling and the feeling that, yes, this deck could make it, I could top8 with this deck. I’ve only felt this twice before, when I build my Uw Matyrtron deck to qualify for a PTQ and when I piloted a GBwu deck, harnessing the awesome budgety goodness of Sakura-Tribe Elder and Kodama’s Reach to qualify for JSS.

All that said, I bring you my latest tingly feeling:

Alright, so after a first look at this deck, it looks kinda like a less disruptive version of BW tokens, and a less resilient version of GW tokens. In my experience testing the deck, it has its own strengths, namely more anthems. In a format dominated by the combat step, and my conditional sweepers (read:volcanic fallout), running 11 anthems can bring your tokens above a critical threshold to both dominate said combat step, and force card advantage through 1 for 1 trades with actual creatures.

Onto the card choices: The deck features the cute combo of Knight of the White Orchid and Wildfield Borderpost, to give a touch of ramp to a deck which uses 4 X spells, and can squeeze the most out of every single land it has down.

Knight of the Meadowgrain and Burrenton Forge-Tender both team up to give a strong early game against red decks, or increasingly, the gold decks using Bloodbraid Elf to cascade into red hasty creatures, most of which have 2 toughness, and all of which are red.

The deck is far from complete, and still going through testing, as demonstrated by 1 Rise of the Hobgoblin and 1 Knight-Captain of Eos. The Rise of the Hobgoblin seems like a redundacy of Martial Coup, granting your tokens First Strike to avoid trading and forcing damage through, but is terrible in multiples, hence the one of, while the Knight Captain of Eos feels like he would be great in a deck that produces so many soldiers through Martial Coup, Rise of the Hobgoblins, Cloudgoat Ranger, and of course himself, which should allow you to use him either as a 5th Cloudgoat Ranger, or attack more aggressively in a stalemated situation.

Now the sideboard: the three Pollen Lullaby seem like a great choice in an aggro mirror, acting as 1-2 extra combat steps, and is usually unexpected, due to the view of ‘trash’ of holy day effects. Path to Exile replaces Burrenton Forge Tender against green-based beatdown decks, such as Dark Bant, allowing you to gain a large tempo swing in the midgame. The Wispmares are in the side to replace Forge-Tender against BW tokens, which uses 7-8 enchantments, which means it will usually 2-for-1 against the deck, or 1-1 and block all day long, buying you time to play out anthems and build a powerful board presence.

The last three slots are meta-dependant. They could be Wrath of God, Hallowed Burial, Oblivion Ring, Condemn, Elspeth, Pithing Needle, Relic of Progenitus, etc etc ad infinitum. These slots really depend on what you can afford and what you expect to face.

Well, that’s it for the deck’s introduction. Next article, I will bring you some match logs, along with analyses of individual matchups.

Until then, hoped you like the article, and post happy testing!

Over and out

Jeeves