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Picked up azorius authority yesterday . Looks like a fun deck to play

Might even go out for a game later

inserviceofultramar wrote:
Picked up azorius authority yesterday . Looks like a fun deck to play

Might even go out for a game later

Yeah, I picked up Rakdos Revelry last night too... might reconstruct my rakdos deck from Return to Ravnica with some cards from Dragon's Maze...

I really love magic, got into it about a year ago. I would probably class my self as a metagamer when it comes to MTG, cause I like winning and being competitive (but not win at all costs type of thing)

I run R/W Aggro (standard). Standard to me is the funnest format, because I get to make my own deck play with the cards I want to play with, and fill them into the deck to the max (four card maximum blah blah... should be six!) and kick ass with it. R/W aggro isn't that competitive but I have a goal to make it competitive dammit. Never really took to edh, I can only have one of a card which is really annoying, ONE boros charm... ONE boros reckoner... ONE SEARING SPEAR! Blah.

I mean standard can be causal if you want it to be, just play it at home with mates/family and practice for up coming tournaments or w/e.

 Poppabear wrote:
I really love magic, got into it about a year ago. I would probably class my self as a metagamer when it comes to MTG, cause I like winning and being competitive (but not win at all costs type of thing)

I run R/W Aggro (standard). Standard to me is the funnest format, because I get to make my own deck play with the cards I want to play with, and fill them into the deck to the max (four card maximum blah blah... should be six!) and kick ass with it. R/W aggro isn't that competitive but I have a goal to make it competitive dammit. Never really took to edh, I can only have one of a card which is really annoying, ONE boros charm... ONE boros reckoner... ONE SEARING SPEAR! Blah.

I mean standard can be causal if you want it to be, just play it at home with mates/family and practice for up coming tournaments or w/e.

You may only be able to have a single Reckoner (assuming correct collors of course), but you have 98 other cards to combo with that and then the general to make an overall deck that is greater than the sum of the reckoner. Having a duplicate limit at 4 as opposed to 6 creates balance within the deck. There is more room to make things combo within the deck. Look at this way: in a world where there's a limit of 6 of a card, you're losing out on 4 of a card, when looking at having 6 of 2 cards. In a clearer manner: you have Boros Reckoner, Boros Charm, and Searing Spear; in a world where the duplicate limit is 6, you're losing out on 4 Searing Spears by having 6 Reckoners and 6 Charms.

I run a mono-white creature token deck. I planned a new mono-white token deck that would supposedly be waaay better, but the one I have wins way more than I expected... so I guess its good for now.

I recently disbanded my red/green werewolf deck. It was fun, but it was too weak. To make it somewhat competitive I would have needed to put a lot more money into it.

I have a white/blue enchantment deck built around Sphere of Safety and Ethereal Armour. Its kind of funny when I can play Ethereal Armour for 1 white mana, and give someone +10/+10 and first strike.

My last deck is a Golgari Scavenge Deck, which I am making into my Jund commander deck. I made the scavenge deck for the Dragon's Maze pre-release, and it won every game there.

I'm currently running a Rakdos unleash deck, although I've built and occasionally use an Azorius lockdown deck (I arrest things, if I remember the way the deck works correctly), with a Return to Ravnica Jayce thrown in there for good measure. I've got a Selsyna Populate Deck (I enjoy this one, nothing like 5/5 worm tokens everywhere ), and a Gruul deck with Elementals... It's kind of my "weakest" deck as I don't really know what it does for certain and I've only played it once.

And I have a Boros deck that I've yet to play

I used to play fethloads of magic back during the Odyessy block all the way up to the first block of Ravnica (I have a dimir deck somewhere), quit and sold off my collection for a 100 bucks (just wanted to be rid of it), and then got back into it with Return to Ravnica. I would love to play the way I used to, but I find myself arguing with my friends who played with a simplified version of the stack. So I get into gameplay arguments when I resolve something and they try to counter it, even when I asked if it's resolved. So suffice it to say, I'm in this weird boat where I hate competitive magic (because I could never beat my friend who did a lot of competitive magic), and where I hate this "more casual than I like" sort of magic that a majority of my friends play, because they're a little loose with the rules, and it feels like abuse of the rules to me. Which sucks because I've got all these cards and I'd like to actually play more than once a month.

Quick question from a semi-new MTG player. I'm currently putting together an Eldrazi-themed deck. What colours other than green (for mana ramp) would you guys recommend? I was thinging Green/Blue to get the control/card drawing power of blue. I won't be including Cloudpost as it's banned in both Vintage and Modern, which is what I mostly play.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
Quick question from a semi-new MTG player. I'm currently putting together an Eldrazi-themed deck. What colours other than green (for mana ramp) would you guys recommend? I was thinging Green/Blue to get the control/card drawing power of blue. I won't be including Cloudpost as it's banned in both Vintage and Modern, which is what I mostly play.

you can go the cheesy elf-drazi route, which is mainly green, or you can really do whatever you want-- I started in innistrad so I don't know the eldrazi set very well, but I think you can really go with whatever colors you want.

I picked up the Rakdos Revelry deck and I've been mixing and matching with my Return to Ravnica deck I had. Haven't gotten a chance to play it, but here is what I'm sitting on right now.

Creatures:
4x Rakdos Cacklers
3x Rix Maadi Guildmages
4x Splatter Thugs
2x Bloodfray Giants
2x Carnage Gladiator
1x Exava, Rakdos Blood Witch
1x Ashenmoor Liege (from the original Ravnica Block)
2x Rakdos, Lord of Riot
3x Spawn of the Rix Maadi
1x Master of Cruelties
1x Carnival Hellsteed

Artifacts:
2x Rakdos Cluestones
4x Rakdos Keyrunes

Instants:
2x Auger Spree

Sorcery:
3x Toil // Trouble
2x Dreadbore

Lands:
9 Mountains
9 Swamps
2 Blood Crypts
4 Rakdos Guildgates


Thoughts?

You might be able to go a little slimmer on mana, with all those keyrunes and cluestones. I've always leaned light mana with a speedy aggressive deck.

------------

Friday I decided to do FNM for the first time. Drafted the current block, with a hankering to try Orzhov, and got Teysa in my first pack. Score! Also got Angelic Skirmisher later as another bomb. Went almost straight black/white with a little bit of blue, focusing on a combination of defense/removal/evasion and hard to stop damage (drafted and ran three Hired Torturers), plus a few bombs and a little bit of Lifelink. I managed to go 3/0, straight wins, though a few of those games were very close, with Gruul giving me scary moments with big smashy monsters. I had a fantastic moment where my opponent tapped out to get Ruric Thar, the Onbowed, onto the table, and I had a Slum Reaper in hand. Won some packs and a foil Judge's Familiar (which was awesome as I had drafted one, and he was great).

I guess my problem with magic has always been crippling myself with lack of mana. I like the key runes simply because once I have enough mana, they're 3/1 creatures for a turn.

Like I said, haven't gotten a chance to play it yet... I've got no one to play with now that it's summer.

Here's the commander deck I've been building slowly:
http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/jund-commander-deck/

I'm planning on buying Cauldron Dance, Sadistic Sacrament, and Bloodhall Ooze for it something....

 Alfndrate wrote:
I guess my problem with magic has always been crippling myself with lack of mana. I like the key runes simply because once I have enough mana, they're 3/1 creatures for a turn.

Like I said, haven't gotten a chance to play it yet... I've got no one to play with now that it's summer.

No, I get it. I like that the Keyrunes can be creatures, and I like that you can cycle the Cluestones into a draw once you don't need them anymore. I just think you might be able to go with slightly fewer lands, maybe fit in a couple more fast/cheap creatures or combat tricks.

I usually aim to run 20 land in a deck, if you remove the expensive creatures like the Hellsteed and use things like the Spike Jester or Gore House Chainwalker you'll speed up the deck. You don't need 24 land and cluestones, put in some regular burn or kill spells to kill small early game creatures, use Pillar of Flame or Searing Spear if they need to be in standard.

Mannahnin wrote:

 Alfndrate wrote:
I guess my problem with magic has always been crippling myself with lack of mana. I like the key runes simply because once I have enough mana, they're 3/1 creatures for a turn.

Like I said, haven't gotten a chance to play it yet... I've got no one to play with now that it's summer.

No, I get it. I like that the Keyrunes can be creatures, and I like that you can cycle the Cluestones into a draw once you don't need them anymore. I just think you might be able to go with slightly fewer lands, maybe fit in a couple more fast/cheap creatures or combat tricks.

Howard A Treesong wrote:I usually aim to run 20 land in a deck, if you remove the expensive creatures like the Hellsteed and use things like the Spike Jester or Gore House Chainwalker you'll speed up the deck. You don't need 24 land and cluestones, put in some regular burn or kill spells to kill small early game creatures, use Pillar of Flame or Searing Spear if they need to be in standard.

I'll take a look, the Hellsteed is there for some large punch, but at the moment I think I've got it covered with Rakdos, and a few others. I'll see about dropping out some lands. if I find myself deficient then they'll go back in until I can find a suitable balance.

I don't know if I have Pillars of Flame, I have 3 Searing Spears from my Boros Event Deck I could probably grab them from it. I'm not sure I like the Gore House Chainwalker, he's not bad and I certainly have enough of them to throw into my deck. I'll test it out.

I could drop the Hellsteed, and 4 lands, and throw in what... 3 Searing Spears and 2 of either the Spike Jester or the Chainwalker?

Thanks for the advice guys

How much black mana do you generate? I'd also suggest Sign in Blood or Altar's Reap to draw cards. I'd take out a couple of lands, all the cluestones/keyrunes, Auger Spree, and the larger creatures like Hellsteed and put in card draw, Searing Spears, Pillars of Flame or even Brimstone Volley. These will slow your opponent down by burning his creatures or letting you finish him off when low on life, also it makes it easier to get things like the Rakdos Lord out. If you're hoping to use the Master of Cruelties then you want to clear the way for him and have a spell to do that last single damage directly.

When your deck is full of cheaper things and card draws, you won't need all that mana generation. Also having a deck full of cards that let you do stuff like kill things and draw cards every turn is more fun to play generally IMO.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
How much black mana do you generate? I'd also suggest Sign in Blood or Altar's Reap to draw cards. I'd take out a couple of lands, all the cluestones/keyrunes, Auger Spree, and the larger creatures like Hellsteed and put in card draw, Searing Spears, Pillars of Flame or even Brimstone Volley. These will slow your opponent down by burning his creatures or letting you finish him off when low on life, also it makes it easier to get things like the Rakdos Lord out. If you're hoping to use the Master of Cruelties then you want to clear the way for him and have a spell to do that last single damage directly.

When your deck is full of cheaper things and card draws, you won't need all that mana generation. Also having a deck full of cards that let you do stuff like kill things and draw cards every turn is more fun to play generally IMO.

I can't determine how much black mana I generate I'm terrible at figuring out the odds of it. I've played maybe a dozen games with my deck before changing things around with the release of Dragon's Maze, I would say that on average I get maybe 5 lands a game, and 2 Keyrunes (this is before the inclusion of the Cluestones). Master of Cruelties is in there temporarily, I like the card and what it can do, and I'm not too worried about whether or not he has a clear path for him unless he's getting double blocked. First Strike and Deathtouch means that I can, for the most part choose who lives and who dies. I'm not going to worry too much about him dying. Again I have 1 in the deck and I know it's not worth it to have 1 of a card in a deck of magic. I'd rather trade him out for another Exava.

I'd like to play like 2 games with the deck how it is, something like 5 games with the deck with the changes I thought about in my last post, and some games with some other changes suggested in this thread. And the reason why I'm in the RTR block is because that is where I started with Magic after almost 7 years of not playing the game. I'll look at some of the suggestions... I would just need to play more than once a month :-\

edit: Does anyone know of a good way to play over the interwebz?

I was just asking what your land balance was, do you have dual lands or only basic lands, and how many of each? If you think you'll safely be able to generate two black, use Sign in Blood. If you're only likely to play five land in a game, that suggests you'll rarely get to play the larger creatures without the keyrunes. And instead of playing smaller creatures, you're spending the early game on those keyrunes, not creatures and kill spells.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
I was just asking what your land balance was, do you have dual lands or only basic lands, and how many of each? If you think you'll safely be able to generate two black, use Sign in Blood. If you're only likely to play five land in a game, that suggests you'll rarely get to play the larger creatures without the keyrunes. And instead of playing smaller creatures, you're spending the early game on those keyrunes, not creatures and kill spells.

I've got 9 swamps and 9 mountains, the Blood Crypts and Guildgates are Black or Red Mana, but come into play tapped (the blood crypts can bypass the coming into play tapped if I pay 2 life).

Note: All this talk has me wanting to test my deck, but I don't have the available players to do so :-\

It's been forever since i played, and that was only with a starter deck.

Do you play to do 20 points of damage to the other player? Empty their deck?
Other means of winning?

If you run out of life (starting at 20) or have to draw a card when there are no cards in your deck, you lose. You don't actually lose the game for running out of cards, you only lose when you have to draw and there isn't a card there to do so. There are a few specific cards that let you win or lose, Door into Nothingness for example, or Battle of Wits.

So turns out I have 3 Searing Spears, 4 PIllars of Flame, and 2 Sign in Blood. The first two spells came from the Boros Event Deck I bought, and the Sign in Blood was from an old Deckbuilder's toolkit I got as a gift during the Eldrazi block

Gotta find someone to test this on now

I've played mtg over Twitter once. We built super fast decks that could win in two turns. Mine used Memnite and infernal Plunge to play Souleater on turn one, turn two was pay life to pump it to 10 damage and then fling or give it double strike to do 20 damage. Twitter still made for slow games even at three or four turns max.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
If you run out of life (starting at 20) or have to draw a card when there are no cards in your deck, you lose. You don't actually lose the game for running out of cards, you only lose when you have to draw and there isn't a card there to do so. There are a few specific cards that let you win or lose, Door into Nothingness for example, or Battle of Wits.

Thank you.

It's been a long time since I've played. I don't even have those cards anymore. Was looking for them the other day.

Unless you have a Platinum Angel, in which case you *can't* lose the game...

I hate that damn angel played against it a few months ago and I just couldn't draw my artifact destruction cards... pretty demoralizing :-\

The angel isn't all that bad. Force it to block, or have some sort of creature/artifact removal and win the game after that. It's both artifact and creature, so there's even more ways to kill him. The problem is killing multiple angels.

The problem is forcing it to block. My Gruul deck could probably do it simply because I can force it to battle things.

I just found a deal online that has 12 Innistrad and 12 Dragon's Maze booster packs for ~$50. Innistrad booster packs are going up in value since they Innistrad is now out of print. Do you think I should go for it? Or do you guys think they are Box Mapping?

Idk... I doubt he's box mapping (had to google that ), but at the same time you could probably find Dragon's Maze boosters cheaper than 50 bucks for 12 (I can get 12 for 40 at my flgs). The Innistrad ones might be worth it though.