Polymorph Solar flare

Polymorph solar flare decklist

Lands (24)

• 3 Arcane sanctum
• 2 Rupture spire
• 2 evolving wilds
• 1 Vivid meadow
• 1 Vivid Creek
• 4 Plains
• 6 Islands
• 5 Swamps

Creatures (5)

• 1 Elesh norn, grand cenobite
• 1 Sheoldred, wispereing one
• 1 Jin-Gitaxias, core augur
• 1 Harvester of souls
• 1 Drogskol reaver

Spells (31)

• 4 Forbidden alchemy
• 3 Lingering souls
• 1 Moan of the unhallowed
• 1 Sever the bloodline
• 3 Unburial rites
• 1 Mana leak
• 1 Dissipate
• 1 Geist snatch
• 2 Beckon apparition
• 1 Wretched banquet
• 1 Doom blade
• 1 Geth’s verdict
• 1 divine offering
• 2 Infest
• 1 Crib swap
• 2 Oblivion ring
• 2 Polymorph
• 1 Painful quandary
• 1 Necromancer’s covenant
• 1 Grave exchange

The comments I’ve got on this deck turn around “This is complete cheat”. All five creatures are finishers, create massive card advantage and are near impossible to remove thanks to the Unburial rites. Forbidden alchemy finds the perfect answer to any given threat and dumps your winning conditions and flashback cards into your grave. There is an abundance of token creator to go with Polymorph: Lingering souls is the perfect chump blocker and draws a handful of cards with Harvester of souls; Moan of the unhallowed trade better in combat than little 1/1 spirits, but with more budgets could be replaced by Grave titan; Beckon apparition is at worst a 1/1 flash flyer (still really good) and at best a 1 mana Geist snatch for flashback spells (which is great) and finally Necromancer’s covenant can completely turn the tide of battle and gain you tremendous amount of life. The usual all around control spells are all here: Mana leak, Dissipate, Oblivion ring and the new but powerful Painful quandary. Even if your opponent has a card to deal with it, it is still a Lava axe or a Mind rot, and if it sticks it’s game.

For the creature control, Sever the bloodline is an absolute beast and I would put two more in the sideboard if I had them. Crib swap is an answer to Geralf’s messenger and Vorapede. Wretched banquet is surprisingly strong, killing early deadly creatures like Champion of the parish and Delver of secrets. Even Polymorh can be used as a removal against an aggressive opponent and weenie deck.

This deck buries its opponent in card advantage. On one of my games, my opponent started fast with two Phyrexian arena. I played the entire game against an opponent that drew 3 cards per turn (he had life drain to keep himself alive) and was able to keep the pace. Often, I even had more cards in hand, on the battlefield and in the grave than him simply because every card I played was at least two for one. Sever the bloodline and its flashback on two Blind hunter and a Falkenrath noble, one half of Lingering souls he had to Wrath because with the arena he was ticking 4 lifes per turn, Harvester of souls he had to double block, Sheoldred he had to kill 3 times because of Unburial rites… He eventually killed me with a combination of another Falkenrath noble and his last Wrath of god when my side of the board was full of 1/1 spirits, 2/2 zombies and Drogskol reaver. I understand now the power level in tournaments…

Thinking differently

A way to be creative is to find other ways to see the same things. By shifting perspective, you can unlock completely foreign ideas that most of the time can lead to something amazing. In my case, I wanted to find new ways to build around Miracle cards. Those cards have a draw trigger, caring to be the first card drawn in a given turn. And then madness comes and I rift on my ideas…

 

First, Kinship. Random hey? Rereading Kinship, it strokes me in the face: I look at the top card of my library before my draw step every turn! Surely there is an abundance of ways to remove useless card I see like an Etherwrought page sort of effect, the kind found on Lurking informant. Think about Call of the wild, Charmed pendant or even Deranged assistant if you can use this mana at instant speed. If you have multiple kinship triggers, then Hair-strung koto allows you to tap those creatures to ensure your first draw is always a miracle card. You have perfect control over Mindshrieker’s milling and will always be able to Predict your next card. Go Kinship!!

 

Second, what if you don’t draw card? Flash of insight, Forbidden alchemy, Maralen of the mornsong, Telling time, Abundance, Ad nauseam, Augury adept, Dark confidant… If you prevent yourself from drawing cards with, say, Necropotense, and every card you “draw” is simply putted into your hand, then Brainstorm can set the perfect miracle card on top of your library for Necropotense to draw at any given time. If only Chimney imp and Chittering rat could target you instead of your opponent… Oh but there is Leashling that does this, as does Reclaim and Noxious retrieval!

 

Thirdly, organising the top of your library. Scry and top-deck manipulation are a given, starting with Ponder and Telling time, but also Dimir machinations. Cream of the crop does everything we want. Cryptic annelid is also cute. This one is so obvious that I’ll leave you find other cards yourselves.

 

Lastly, what if you removed all cards from your library except miracle cads? Trench gorger does half that, and Endless horizon can remove all plains from our deck. Skyship weatherlight does the opposite of Trench gorger, removing artifacts and creatures. And to finish, the combo between Puresight merrow and Utopia vow will always leave a miracle on the top at your command.

 

Be the messenger of god and unleash miracles on this poor world!

Avacyn restored my Prerelease

There is only so much you can do with a bad card pool. Here is what I opened and what I looked at in order:

Rares:

• Moonsilver spear(A) (yeah, the promo card)
• Harvester of souls(B)
• Demonic rising(B)
• Wolfir silverheart(G)
• Captain of the mist(U)
• Descendant’s path(G)

**Ok, I think I’ll go black or green… or both. Let’s see the rest**

Number of cards

• White: ≈ 15
• Blue: ≈ 20
• Black: ≈ 20
• Red: ≈ 10
• Green: ≈ 20
• Artifact: 3

**Ok, no red. What’s playable?**

• White: 3 creatures, 1 removal, 0 bomb
• Blue: 1 creature, 2 removals, 0 bomb
• Black: 7 creatures, 2 removals, 3 bombs
• Red: 1 creature, 0 removal, 0 bomb
• Green: 7 creatures, 1 removal, 1 bomb (+1 situational)
• Artifact: 1 creature, 1 bomb

**Sight… BG so it seems, and loner at that! Demonic Rising(B) and Homicidal reclusion(B)… So I’m stuck to play around my rares… Sight.**

Even with all the time spent and preparation, you still need luck to win. The player right next to me opened both a Griselbrand(B) and Bruna, light of alabaster(M) with an awesome card pool. I just had a suboptimal card pool that coudn’t play anything other than it’s rares’s color, like so many others at the prerelease. So I finished with a mediocre 6/5 win rate over five matches. I won some games by curving from a turn three Angel’s tomb(A) into a turn four Druid’s familiar(G). By stacking you’re triggers correctly, the bear can pair with the angel and will stay bounded even if it reverts to an artifact. Wolfir silverhearth(G) won by pairing on a simple Bucher ghoul(B). It is so powerful! But I was most impressed by the loner mechanism since I was forced into that. Demonic rising(B)’s best friend is Bone splinters(B) and it is surprisingly easy to end your turn with only a single creature. I could still play lots of soulbond in my deck and be able to trigger the Rising every time it came out or gain tons of life to Homicidal seclusion(B). Driver of the dead(B) was really weak, just a plain 3/2 for 4. There was not enough 2 mana quality creatures in the set to make it awesome, although it did curve well as a virtual vanilla. The most obvious target, Bucher ghoul(B), never stayed in the grave long enough to get raises. I lost many games to Angelic armaments(A) and didn’t have the luck to find an Eaten by spiders(G) to deal with it. This equipment was really strong, once on a paired Nearheath pilgrim(W) and another time on a really annoying Dark imposter(B). Good time.

Just a though like that, would you play this kind of Titan?

• Soul titan
• 4BB
• Creature- Demon
• 5/5
• Deathtouch
• Whenever Soul titan comes into play or attacks, you may draw two cards.

Because this is the way I see Harvester of souls(B). The turn it comes into play, I almost always drew 2 to 3 cards and another 2-3 the next turn when I attacked. I will not be surprised to see this take the place of Grave titan in 3-4 months when M13 bumps the Titans out of view.

Anyway, I had a good day at the prerelease.

Semi pauper deck for friday

A few days ago I talked about vanilla creatures in Magic. To continue on this vein, I wanted to build a basic deck with no synergy at all, but still structured well enough to be able to win. No tribal, no instant or sorcery caring like Delver of secret, no interactions. Simply well built.

The first thing to take into account is the mana curve of permanents. Creatures are the most important, but also artifacts and world enchantment. A mana curve, for those who don’t know, is how your deck will chain their spells in the turns of the game. You want to have as few unused mana that you can so you can get the most quality out of your resources. Mana is one very important resource and it is maximised by watching the mana cost of spells. For example, if you have 12 3 mana cost creatures, but none with 1 or 2 mana cost, you will lose the mana of your first two turns by doing nothing, thus a loss of resources. A good mana curve for intermediate aggro deck should look like this:

8-10 one mana cost permanents

8-10 two mana cost permanents

8-10 three mana cost permanents

2-5 game wining 4 mana cost permanents

The rest in support spells to be played after your creatures (so with converted mana cost of 4 or 5)

The goal of this mana curve is to be able to use all of our mana. Play a creature on turn one, on turn two, on turn three and then win the game on turn 4 or 5 with a spell to control your opponent creatures. But usually, not all mana cost have the same quality. A support creature is one with power 1 or 0. The damage will often be delivered by creatures with power of 2 or 3 for 2 mana. At three mana, the creatures have the same power, but become harder to block or interact more with the battle field. Then, the spells with higher mana cost should create card advantage an clear the path for your creatures.

8-10 one mana supporters

8-10 two mana cost attackers

8-10 three mana cost evasion

2-5 game wining 4 mana cost permanents

The rest- card advantage.

For the one mana supporters, Gideon’s lawkeeper helps remove an annoying blocker or taps a threat. Sanctuary cat is surprisingly hard to deal with without losing mana advantage or card quality. Darksteel Axe is cheap and deadly on a flyer.

At two mana, we have the bears (1C 2/2). Safehold sentry is resilient and doubles up has a defensive option. It can even trade with Mirrian crusader while on the attack. Benalish Cavalry is quite hard to block. Spined thopter and Porcelain legionnaire, although costing 3, should be played on turn two for better value of flying and first strike respectively.

At three mana, we need to be able to make room for our guys to attack. Pestermite can do as much as Gideon’s lawkeeper, but on a 2/1 flying buddy. Pretty useful to prevent an attack, untap and turn the tables by attacking yourself. On the aggressive team and benefithing from Pestermite is Neurok commando. A few hits and the card advantage should allow you to win the game. Some Voiceless spirits round thins up and don’t trade with 1/1 spirits token like Pestermite.

The support cards are ones that deal with multiple treat at the same time. Feeling of dread is about the same as a Time walk. Use it during your opponent’s turn and watch him struggle as your creatures enter the red  zone. Lost in the mist is the perfect mana cost to get the most value from it in this deck. It comes down after your creatures and deals with your opponent’s bomb and removes an attacker/blocker.

Basic WU pauper deck

• Lands (24)
• Creatures
• 3 Sanctuary cat
• 2 Gideon’s lawkeeper
• 1 Porcelain legionnaire
• 1 Spined thopter
• 3 Benalish Cavalry
• 4 Safehold Sentry
• 4 Pestermite
• 2 Neurok Commando
• 3 Voiceless Spirit
• 2 Glimmerpoint stag
• Spells
• 2 Darksteel axe
• 1 Tumble magnet
• 4 Feeling of dread
• 2 Prison term
• 2 Lost in the mist

Steal and dump deck

I’ve wanted to participate to yesterday’s “Zero to Sixty” article on Daily magic. So here is my letter.

Dear Gavin Verhey,

Sorry to contact you by email even though you asked to submit our deck list on the discussion board but I’ve had a few account problems recently and can’t do otherwise. Regarding your article “Zero to Sixty”, I found that it was really good advices about deck building that I never actually saw written anywhere. It made me realise that I was building my decks around cards and not goals and your “Crunching numbers” really helped too. So with that said lets go to the deck.

The deck is a Rg control type that aims to close the game by attacking with my opponent’s creatures. At the end of the game, the graveyard is stuffed of mass removals and temporary steal spells with some cards used to sack the creatures I stole. My opponent’s grave should have lots of creatures in it.

Card like Act of aggression, Act of treason and Traitorous blood steal my opponent’s creatures until the end of turn. But we don’t want to give them back so we use sacrifice outlets like Culling dais, Feed the pack, Helvault or Garruk to gain significant card advantage. The early protections consist of circle of flame and a few mass removals along with the Walls of tanglecord. The Charmbreaker Devils is our finisher if we ever need one and can be fetched by Garruk.

On a quick note, Feed the pack allows us to use freely our steal spells because it triggers before we have to give the creature back.

Deck list: Steal and Dump

• Lands (25)
• 4 Copperline Gorge
• 4 Rootbound crag
• 2 Forests
• 15 Mountains
• Creatures (5)
• 1 Charmbreaker Devils
• 4 Wall of tanglecord
• Spells (28)
• 3 Act of aggression
• 4 Act of treason
• 4 Circle of flame
• 4 Culling dais
• 2 Feed the pack
• 3 Helvault
• 1 Jar of eyeballs
• 2 Slagstorm
• 2 Traitorous blood
• 3 Whipflare
• Planewalker (2)
• 2 Garruk relentless
• Sideboard (15)
• 3 grafdigger’s cage
• 4 Kuldotha rebirth
• 2 Corrosive gale
• 4 Dismember
• 2 ancient grudge

This deck has a lot of problems with tokens and humans, even with Slagstorms. I’m really not sure about the sideboard and other control or aggro-control decks tend to beat this one in the long run. Zombie recursion and Geralf’s messenger are also problematic.

With all due respect and anticipation of your articles.

Pascal T-L

Exile it deck

For today, I’ll bring a really relaxing deck to FNM: WB exile it. This deck doesn’t care if my opponent is playing Spider spawning, Lingering souls, Zombies or Undying. They are treated at the same level as a non recurring deck. The graveyard is no more an advantage since all your answers exile threats.

Beacon apparition is essentially a 1/1 flying flash for one and a counter to all flashback half of spells. Tidehollow sculler, Field hunter, Oblivion ring and Journey to nowhere are essential in this deck as they interact well with Flickerwips, Galepowder mage and Glimmerpoint stag. You can reset the first with the later or blink your own blinkers to keep your opponents creature of the board during their turn. The blinkers are also a neat way to kill tokens. Order of the whiteclay is really good with all our two and three mana creatures and will annoy opponents who rely too much on lightning bolt. Altar’s reap can do shenanigans with Tidehollow sculler and Field hunter and the sacrifice isn’t a big issue with our little cleric.

Unmake is the main removal of the deck. The fact that it can target anything is well worth the three manas. A few Crib swap count for Unmake number 5 thought 7. I personally don’t really like Path to exile, but it could find its way in the deck. The same is true for Sword to plowshares. Sever the bloodline’s flashback gives us a little card advantage, and we’re happy if we’re lucky to do it on multiple tokens.

A single Celestial purge is never wasted in main deck. Curse of oblivion really shines in this metagame as there is just so much flashback that it will almost always negate some sort of card advantage.

A single Archon of justice provides the 4/4 body against spirit tokens with sword as well as a wining condition.

Leonine relic-warder will easily find home in the sideboard. Two more copies of Celestial purge and a few Revoke existence, the later for combo, affinity and token anthems. Surgical extraction for more combos, Sever the bloodline for more tokens and the deck is ready to go.

 

• Exit deck
• Lands (24)
• Creatures (15)
• 3 Tidehollow sculler
• 3 Field hunter
• 3 Flickerwips
• 1 Galepowder mage
• 2 Glimmerpoint stag
• 2 Order of the whiteclay
• 1 Archon of justice
• Spells (21)
• 4 Beacon apparition
• 3 Oblivion ring
• 1 Journey to nowhere
• 3 Altar’s reap
• 4 Unmake
• 3 Crib swap
• 1 Sever the bloodline
• 1 Celestial purge
• 1 Curse of oblivion
• Sideboard (15)
• 2 Sever the bloodline
• 2 Celestial purge
• 3 Revoke existence
• 4 Surgical extraction
• 4 Leonine relic-warder

5 mana spells deck review

As I thought, I loss. The deck was to slow to race against Honor of the pure or Lingering souls and Swords. Other control decks add an easy time dealing with its one spell per turn, and I couldn’t do anything against non-creature combo. So that’s its downside, now let’s boost it.

For now, we got turn four five mana spells, but there is lots of ways to get turn three five mana with only one card: Lotus cobra, Harabaz druid, Bloom tender, Smokebraider, Veldaken engineer, Joraga treespeaker,  Devoted druid or Skyshroud ranger. Each one creates a new kind of deck, so I won’t go into the details.

Then, there’s the problem of Lingering souls, THE card right now that is almost everywhere. I found a forgotten card in my collection, one that deserves more attention right now with all those 1/1 fliers around: Scatter shot archer. Against Caw-blade, this little dude will draw allot of attention from your opponent. Save him from Tragic slip, lightning bolt and the likes, it’s worth it.

Against combo and Honor of the pure, Ray of revelation is the new Ancient grudge. This means we need a color shift from grixis to bant, but we were going there anyway for the mana boost and our little archer. Spell pierce is also great against combo and keeps your things alive against removal.

Lastly, Titans. The most played titans are in order: Primeval titan, Grave titan, Inferno titan, and the other two in no particular order. Mind control, is good, but easily disturbed. We would use Tragic slip or Go for the throat if we were in black, but in white we still have Path to exile and Bant charm, or Pacifism in a last resort. Also, a few planewalkers would be welcome.

With all this, I believe I’ll be able to stand my ground next time at a FNM.

First deck construction: 5 mana spells

Second day, I’m planning to go to the Friday night Magic tonight. The few last times I went, I beated most of my opponents with a human splicer WG deck. The splicer part consist of a full set of  Blade splicers and Master splicers, along with two copies of Vital splicers. The human side holds 4 of Avacyn’s pilgrim and Mayor of Avabruck along with the copies I had of Mentor of the meek, Hamlet captain and Champion of the parish. The deck is rounded out with Elesh norn, Mimic vat and some Oblivion rings. This deck has a blighting start, and continue to gain power by popping 3/3 golems. It’s not rare to attack with both the golem and the splicers because they are often just as big. But for today I wanted to change strategy, and here I am before my collection of cards.

I built many deck for Modern format, but none of which was good enough to bring tonight. There was a jund sacrifice deck, a WR mass token production deck, a WU ‘’annoying’’ deck, a UG Spider spawning deck and a WB exile deck, but it wasn’t enough. Probably I’ll build a deck at the last minute and it will be awful.

Right now I’m trying a ‘’5 mana cost’’ deck. It’s something I built once, when Alara came out, when I wanted to prove that the obelisks were playable. The goal is to go from 3 mana to 5 by playing an obelisk and maximizing my mana by using the obelisk to play a one mana spell the turn it comes on the battlefield. The curve of the deck is highly important, although it will never be really powerful. The top decks prefer to go from 2, to 4, to 6 Titan ramp, but this isn’t for a pro tour. So let’s go for the good bad deck!

Manalith is the new obelisk, but unfortunately, I have only one, so I’ll do with real obelisks. Lightning bolt is one of the top quality one mana cards in modern, and Burst lightning doubles out as a five mana spell for our curve. I know I’m playing red, so no esper or bant color distribution. For the five mana slots, I’d like to put some Muldrifters as I love this card. We’re going on a control streak and this creature is just pure card advantage. So grixis we go. Raven’s crime can help dump all our lands past the fifth one, as can Flame jab. Because we aim to play one spell per turn, Gitaxian Probe will help us chose the best answer to our opponent’s threats and Silent departure can gain us the little time we need to play the big spells. For the top end of the curve, Mind control, Beguiler of will, Consume the meek, Curse of death blood, maybe a Falkenrath marauders and a Fiend of the shadows as wining condition, oh and at least a copy of Incremental blight (personal favorite) and Shriekmaw. Spellbound dragon is also neat, but I think I’ll stay with the two earlier bombs. Normally, the deck would play with 7 or 8 obelisks, so I’ll just find replacement for them. As for the lands, Vivid and Reflecting pool is great, so is fetch land and dual land, or just about anything you happen to have. Round out with some two mana spells and card draw, like Telling time.

So that’s it. Tomorrow, I’ll tell you how it went.