Chaos Wins!

I have found myself at a crossroads. My first daily with my Mimic Vat Lifegain deck seemed extremely promising but I had to drop out with a 2-0 record due to personal issues that came up. I then joined a few 2-Man Constructed tournaments and have found myself in a funk of consecutive losses. A 2nd Daily resulted in a 0-2 drop.

At this point, I've reached the 50-ticket limit I had set for myself to try out rogue deck ideas and I feel like I am either expecting too much from this deck, or just need to find the right tweak to make it really competitive.

The only problem is that the 2nd option will require of course more tickets invested and if the reality of the situation is the first option, and I am trying to make a Tier 2 deck perform to the level of a Tier 1 deck, it will ultimately lead to more tickets lost in a hopeless effort.

I guess I am wondering, when do you decide to 'give up' on a deck? At what point do you stop tweaking and move on to another deck? I know this would be easy if the deck performed horribly. The problem is that when it works, it works really well. Amazingly I have had turn 4 kills with this deck, something I hadn't even considered possible. But I have been having consistent issues with Primeval Valakut decks and they seem to be gaining in popularity.

If it wasn't such a huge investment, I would simply go with my original plan of creating my own version of existing Tier 1 decks, specifically a Primeval Valakut deck. But when Primeval is going for ~30 tickets last time I checked, and me needing a full playset of 4, that is a HUGE investment for what may be yesterday's news before I can recoup the cost. Not to mention I would likely need Lotus Cobras which have been in the ~20 ticket range lately. That's 200 tickets for 8 cards. It just pains me too much to do that when I feel like I could make a viable rogue deck at a fraction of the cost!

What to do, what to do...

So in my last post, I hinted at this card as the key to my next deck. And while it's true that the next deck I built was focused around Silence, and I still am tuning it to be more streamlined and competitive, in the process I came upon another deck idea which I liked EVEN MORE and I just could not put off building it and testing it out. So I will come back to my Silence deck if this one starts to falter or I lose interest, but I am just so excited that I've actually found a 'rogue' deck that so far has proved to be VERY competitive.

So, this deck started with two cards that I've been using in most of my other decks: Mimic Vat and Culling Dais. The Dais lets me force a creature under the Vat and at only 2 casting cost and 1 colorless to activate the draw, it's actually EXTREMELY efficient card advantage.

I was using that combo to power my Silence deck and the intent was to use the Vat to generate a Mnemonic Wall every turn to return Silence back to hand and effectively lock down the opponent. The problem with that deck was that I often was too low on life by the time I could cast the Mnemonic, sac it, and then start production. So I thought of adding some creatures that give me life when they come into play.

But once I thought of that, I immediately recalled a 'Tier 2' deck that was making the rounds back in the previous Standard - a Mono-white deck built around various creatures with life gainm or benefiting from life gain. While some of those cards rotated out with Scars of Mirrodin, what was added actually made it much more viable. Here is the decklist and a basic rundown of how the deck works afterwards.

3x Mimic Vat
2x Culling Dais
4x Ajani's Pridemate
4x Lone Missionary
4x Serra Ascendant
4x Soul's Attendant
3x Sun Titan
2x Survival Cache
2x Ajani Goldmane
3x Origin Spellbomb
4x Day of Judgment
2x Emeria, the Sky Ruin
4x Kabira Crossroads
19x Plains

So it's essentially using the Pridemate, Missionary, Ascendant, and Attendant which is the previously used lifegain engine to keep me alive and get me to either 30 life (to transform the Ascendant to a 6/6 flyer) or pump up the Pridemate enough to be formidable. What is so much nicer is that I can now use the Culling Dais and the Mimic Vat to have unlimited life gain creatures and with a single Lone Missionary under the Mimic Vat I can shut down almost any offense.

The Day of Judgment lets me reset the board and also lets me use the vat to copy my opponents creatures (Primeval Titan in monowhite!). The Sun Titan is an additional big finisher as well as lets me bring back my creatures in an alternate way (as well as the artifacts if they get destroyed). The Ajani is a late addition and I swapped him in for Baneslayers since he is cheaper and gives me a little bit more flexibility.

Survival Cache and Origin Spellbomb are mainly there as cantrips with benefits. And finally the Emeria, the Sky Ruin as a third option for bringing back my lifegain creatures.



As for the Sideboard, I am still tweaking it and it is still not perfect for the metagame but I feel like my options are a bit limited. What is in there right now can be broken down like this:

2x Journey to Nowhere - Eldrazi
3x Kor Firewalker - Red Deck Wins
3x Leonin Arbiter - Eldrazi and Titan/Valakut Ramp
1x Luminarch Ascension - Any blue control
2x Ratchet Bomb - Any weenie deck
2x Revoke Existence - White mystic artifact
2x Solemn Offering - White mystic artifact (more for Boros)

Now I know in previous articles I have said the 2-man Constructed Tournaments are a horrible option from a pure financial risk/reward standpoint, but I have been loving this deck and felt so confident in it and my schedule was so out of synch with the dailies that I threw caution to the wind and started playing in the 2-Mans. Needless to say, this deck rocked. While definitely not 'broken', it has won about 70% of the time, and I would say some of the earlier losses were due to need for refinement. That may simply be from complete surprise on my opponent's behalf but I'll just pretend it's cause my rogue deck is just that awesome.

At the moment, I'm 2-0 and waiting for round 3 in the Standard Constructed Daily, so I'm hoping this will be the rogue deck I had been trying to find!

So after my poor showing in the Daily Standard Constructed, I decided to review my deck and the 'combo' at its core: Liquimetal Coating + Mimic Vat. I knew I wanted to keep this in the new deck, but I was hoping to now make it just one of the multiple viable strategies within the deck. Unfortunately, my brain seems to gravitate towards a 'free association' approach to deck building. If that doesn't make sense, please continue reading and follow along on what unfortunately is not an uncommon process when I am trying to build a deck. Now, as I write this I of course see a ton of new options and ways I could and should have gone while I was building this new version, but I want to show how my mind happened to work in this instance.

---

I start with Liquimetal Coating and Mimic Vat.


Then, I add Acidic Slime, a card that continually wrecked me in games 2 and 3. Not only can it kill artifacts and lands but also supports enchantment removal, all on a 2/2 body with deathtouch! Why didn't I think of this one before?

Then, I need some way to kill it (and opponent's creatures). My red burn was fine against the white and green decks I playtested against, but it just can't get the job done against Frost Titan. So, I turn to black and opt for simple effective Doom Blade.

Now, I said that Liquimetal Coating could help with Metalcraft, so let's see what's good with Metalcraft in black and green. Unfortunately, nothing really jumps out at me in either of these colors for metalcraft. This, I would later realize, is because I was searching only against the cards in my collection rather than all legal cards in the set. I'll discuss that in my next article.

So without good metalcraft, I decide to see what would benefit just from artifacts in general. I notice that Phylactery Lich would be pretty nice, but unfortunately don't see much else that meshes well. At this point, I think these colors won't work for this deck. I still like the Acidic Slime path, so I decide to re-evaluate black. Since I went into black as an answer to Frost Titan, I could either go into white and aim to stop it once it's in play, or go into blue and aim to either prevent it from coming into play via counters, or stealing it for myself.

As a general statement, I LOVE blue and will often play blue to a fault. In this case though, I think it would help solve one of the other problems I had with the first deck in that I now have access to card draw which should help me get to the Coating and Vat more reliably. Doing a quick search in my collection for Blue cards with artifact in their text shows me a whole slew of cards that get me giddy at the visions of amazing synergy now possible in the deck.

Vedalken Certarch is an auto-include. With the ability to lock down my opponents lands, creatures, and artifacts once I hit metalcraft, I start looking at this guy as if he's the next best thing since Liquimetal Coating! Stoic Rebuttal is also a great counter if I can reliably hit metalcraft. While not a 4x include, definitely want 2 or 3 in the deck, complemented with the real 'auto-include' Mana Leak. I also can't help but notice Grand Architect which I've wanted to use for awhile any way I could. Not only can I use him to get my artifacts out earlier but he can also pump up my blue creatures. Only one problem though...I don't have any blue creatures other than the Certarch!

    

On top of that, my only green is the slime and I think I'm only going to reduce the effectiveness of my deck if I include the green just for that card, especially since it's not a game winner on its own.

So I decide to switch gears and look at going at maybe a mono-blue deck that is just built around artifacts. At this point, I've essentially lost the focus of the deck although I don't realize it. I just keep following one connection to the next. Blue + Artifacts means I start adding Riddlesmith, Trinket Mage, and Argent Sphinx. I even go back to a 'combo' I tried to make work during Zendikar block with Dormant Gomazoa except now I figure I can make it an artifact and then untap with Voltaic Key! I think my lowest point was when I actually thought "Hey, Scrapdiver Serpent would actually be bomb with the Coating!".

    
Please don't judge me

---

I think this is the point when I realized I had completely lost the focus of the deck and I just wanted to call it quits. I decided Liquimetal Coating was nothing more than a red herring, included simply to distract and confound mediocre deck builders like me. Not really, of course. But I decided I needed to take a break from Liquimetal Coating and just try a completely new deck idea. Not that I am really giving up on the Coating, just that I think letting my mind rest before coming back to it will hopefully open my eyes to other potential synergies.

On a side note, this is actually one of the benefits of MTGO that I hadn't actively appreciated until now. In paper magic, when I make a deck, I have to pull out the cards from my collection and sleeve them. At that point, those cards can't be used in another deck. I would have to get additional copies, or constantly pull cards out from one deck to another, etc. Not to mention that if I wanted to have any chance at reconstructing my previous decks I'd need to maintain a separate file with each decklist. Maybe people actually do that for paper magic, but I've always been a '1 deck' kind of player (as far as paper goes).

With Magic Online though, it actually frees people up to go crazy and try out wacky deck ideas (I heard about this awesome combo...) without a large process overhead or product investment. If I don't like a deck, I just hit New in Deckbuilder and it's like my collection is magically sorted and available. I think it's something most MTGO players take for granted, myself included. Of course the downside for most people is they started with paper and the thought of trying to 'recreate' their collection in MTGO is a huge barrier to entry unless they're willing to sell their paper collection. But hopefully Magic will come up with a solution, maybe some sort of 'dual-booster' that has some increased cost over a regular booster, but each pack has a code that lets you redeem online to get 'both' versions. Kind of how DVDs now offer a 'special' digital download license in addition to the physical DVD. I don't know the financials around that or thought through the impacts to both play environments, but as a player I love the concept.

Anyways, enough rambling! To wrap up this article, let me give you a hint of what I'm CONVINCED is the key to my next deck idea...

For the low low price of 6 tickets, I have been reminded once again that I am NOT the master deck builder that I seem to think I am :) And that when playtesting in the Casual > Tournament Practice room (which I will now refer to as the TP room), I should note that Tournament Practice is considered a subdivision of 'Casual'. That is to say, what wins in the TP room should not be considered a 'winning formula' :)

So, back I go to devising a deck. I will not yet succumb to 'net decking' yet. I think I will set a limit of ~50 tickets to trying to come up with a viable Rogue deck. That allows for 5 daily tournaments and 20 tickets for card purchases. And that is starting from today, so this won't include the 9 tickets I used for the previous deck's cards, and the 6 tickets for the daily last night.

As for my next deck idea, I still want to try and build something that uses Liquimetal Coating + Mimic Vat. I think it's a highly potent combo that can allow for repeated abuse of metalcraft and versatile permanent destruction. The only question is what I should do about the other 52 cards.

It was pretty clear from my performance in the Standard Daily last night (which I'll do a write-up for later, hopefully with video) that my deck is flawed. It was obvious that lack of playtesting against Blue-Green-(White|Red) with Frost Titan was a factor as I didn't realize just how easily I was shut down. Unless I could pull one of my 4 Coatings, I had no way to get rid of the Titan. And way too often the Coating that I had managed to successfully draw and cast was simply destroyed the following turn.

I need to make the focus less on making the Coating some kind of 'killer' card, and instead make it a support card for more viable and versatile strategies. So far, the ones I'm thinking of have shifted me entirely out of red but I am going to spend a bit more time just reviewing available cards and seeing what other synergies I can find.

As I start looking over the results of the Standard daily tournaments on MTGO, I quickly see a pattern of what decks are winning. They basically fall into two large buckets: the Primeval Titan bucket and the Stoneforge Mystic bucket. There are smaller buckets that these break into but those are the key cards in the majority of the winning decks. There are of course the smattering of other deck types, such as black sacrifice or old skool Boros, and even a random green elves. But the buckets pretty much dominate.

After selling my Jace's, I had been thinking I would just find a winning deck and build that but I really hate feeling like I'm just following the pack, at least while I think I might still have a chance at coming up with a rogue deck that is competitive.

So rather than go through all the various winning decks and decide which is most likely to win, I decided to go through all my current cards that are standard legal and decide which cards I wanted to try and build a rogue deck around.

Now, when I want to build a rogue deck, I always start from the same place. I pick a card that I thought was 'cool/interesting'. I usually have a ton of cards that catch my eye, but after initial review, it becomes clear that the cards (or rather, the decks I've built around those cards) aren't viable for any number of reasons - too fragile, too difficult to get combo pieces out, too easy to work around, etc. But I still like to try and find some way to make it work, and at a bare minimum, I mentally file away that card as something to check again when the next set comes out since a new card rotating in, or cards rotating out, make it now a viable deck.

This time however, I wanted to try and stick to the most recent set, Scars of Mirrodin. I occasionally will play paper magic if I find the time, and the SoM launch party was one such event. Aside from pulling a Koth, I also happened upon a nice little artifact that created an awesome combo, but no one else seemed to be talking about it or playing it. I unfortunately did not get the combo off more than once but I had been wanting to build a deck to take better advantage of that card.

That card?

At the launch party, I used the Coating to turn the opponent's enchantment into an artifact and then promptly destroyed it with an Oxidda Scrapmelter. To me, this seemed unbelievably powerful! Not only could I destroy anything, but the amount of artifact hate in the set was naturally very high.

So, with my key card in hand, I decided to try and see what I could use to abuse it. Naturally, I thought of Oxidda, along with 'Oxidda-lite' Manic Vandal and the bare bones Shatter. I also added the dual-purpose Demolish, helpful against those pesky Eldrazi land-using ramp decks. At this point, I was pretty much going to be Mono-Red.

With the basic meat of the deck defined, I needed to add the support cards - the cards that would help me survive until I got a Coating and something to kill artifacts with into play. I went for the most efficient burn spells I could think of, Lightning Bolt and Burst Lightning. I also needed an alternate win condition, just in case I wasn't drawing a Coating or it was removed by Memoricide or something. I immediately thought of a card I had learned about recently that wasn't getting much notice and I was able to pick up on the cheap (like .25 tickets or something each): Kuldotha Phoenix. Being Mono-Red also let me make Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle an auto-add. Lastly, I added some generic good 'support' in the form of 2x Mimic Vat and 2x Ratchet Bomb.

When I build rogue decks, I start with the basic framework and playtest before I even think about a sideboard or playing with the number of copies. So, my very initial deck was the following:

4x Liquimetal Coating
4x Oxidda Scrapmelter
4x Manic Vandal
4x Shatter
4x Demolish
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Burst Lightning
4x Kuldotha Phoenix
2x Mimic Vat
2x Ratchet Bomb
4x Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
20x Mountain

Off I went to the Casual > Tournament Practice room and joined a game. First match was against a mono-white Quest for the Holy Relic deck and was pretty much a wash since the opponent conceded the match after I burned his Memnite while his Glint Hawk's come's-into-play ability was still on the stack he failed to find a 3rd land.

The second match was against a Primeval Titan ramp deck. I don't know what flavor of ramp deck this was as I died pretty quickly just to his titans after being stuck at 3 land.

At this point, there were a number of things I could see wrong with the deck so it was back to the deck editor.

First, I definitely needed more land. At 24 lands, I was often stuck at 3 or 4 lands and falling quickly behind as the opponent could either drop cheap creatures, or find land very quickly. I decided to try upping the land count to 26 but in order to maximiz the effect, decided to add 2x Mystifying Maze as this could also help stave off an attacker that I didn't have an answer for yet.

I also felt I had gone overboard on the artifact hate. Too often I was sitting with a shatter or an oxidda that didn't have a target and no Coating in play. After some thought, I decided to remove the Shatters completely. While they are the quickest to cast, as well as my only instant speed artifact destruction, they were just too situational. All of the other artifact hate had a secondary use (creature, land destruction). I also found the burst lightnings to be too weak. Maybe it was because of my low initial land count, but I kept finding myself with a Burst without the necessary kicker mana.

On the plus side, I discovered some nice synergies that weren't obvious to me before. For instance, there is amazing synergy between the Mimic Vat and the Oxidda/Vandals. The first time I chump blocked with a Vandal only to imprint it on the Vat with a Coating on the table, I realized that I could now destroy any of my opponent's permanents for 3 mana! And if necessary, I didn't even need to wait to chump block, I could just use a burn on my own creature. I decided I needed to use a full playset of Mimic Vats.

I also hadn't really focused on using Liquimetal Coating's ability on my own permanents. But now I realized, I could very easily hit metalcraft with only 2 artifacts as long as one of them was the Coating! I didn't want to change the 'focus' of the deck too much by overloading on Metalcraft abuse (although that is definitely on my list of other ideas to try) but I realized I could make my Kuldotha Phoenix more useful by slightly increasing my artifact count to hit metalcraft more often. Even better, now with Metalcraft as another 'force' in the deck, I found a replacement for the Burst Lightning I removed earlier - Galvanic Blast. I had already added 2x Mimic Vats, but I figured I could do with some mana acceleration and added 2x Iron Myr.

Finally, I needed to cut 2 cards since I had added 2 lands. I decided I had enough artifact destruction as it was and decided to cut 1x Oxidda and 1x Demolish.

So then, my deck was the following:

4x Liquimetal Coating
3x Oxidda Scrapmelter
4x Manic Vandal
3x Demolish
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Galvanic Blast
4x Kuldotha Phoenix
4x Mimic Vat
2x Ratchet Bomb
2x Iron Myr
4x Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle
2x Mystifying Maze
20x Mountain

Back to the Casual > Tournament Practice room for some more playtesting!

I definitely saw the improvements from my changes. I never got the chance to really play against a Primeval deck but got a lot of play in against various Quest decks. Given that the metagame seems to have a large number of these decks, it's not too shabby that I am pretty much set up as an anti-Quest deck. My only concern is handling the Kor Firewalkers after sb, and of course their own artifact hate in their sb.

Despite a big improvement from the first incarnation, I still had problems with having dead cards in my hands too often. One match against someone playing an Overwhelming Stampeding deck, I lost the final game with a Coating in play and a Mimic Vat waiting for an Oxidda or Vandal, but drawing nothing but land until the inevitable +x/+x. Needing some way to ditch the dead cards, I realized, I had a perfect answer in Chandra!

While Chandra Ablaze is a bit high on the casting cost, at that point in the game, I usually have most of the combo in play and just need one of my artifact creatures. I decided to replace a Kuldotha and an Oxidda (being on the higher end of my mana curve) with 2x Chandra Ablaze.

I also started working on my sideboard. I won't go into the details of my playtesting for that but here is a quick explanation of my current choices. I am pretty sure I will need to revise this though after playing against some more competitive decks:

1x Act of Treason - I have a singleton in case I run into a ramp deck with Eldrazi.
3x Chain Reaction - It may have just been the people that were playing at the same time I was testing but I continually ran into decks that dropped a ton of small creatures quickly. This is my attempt to try and clear the board.
3x Goblin Ruinblaster - Again for Eldrazi ramp decks
3x Ricochet Trap - I hadn't played against any Blue decks so this is just my standard anti-counter sb card.
2x Lavaball Trap - Again for Eldrazi ramp decks
2x Unstable Footing - One of my sb options for white decks that will bring in Kor Firewalkers
1x Brittle Effigy - Another option for both Firewalkers as well as Eldrazi

As I mentioned, I was limited to what decks I could play against in the Casual > Tournament Practice room. I know from experience that this is far from ideal but as a first pass, it should suffice. The only way now to really improve is to test it against decks that are really competitive. And the only way to do that is to play in an event that requires tickets. While there are a handful of options, to me the only ones that make sense are the 2-Man Constructed and the Daily Tournaments.

2-Man Constructed is my option if I just HAVE to play right now and I want to play against a competitive deck. Most people won't risk 2 tickets on a real casual/fun deck. The downside is that return is horrible. At 2 tickets to enter and winner getting a pack of SoM which is currently selling to bots at 3.9 tickets, unless you are winning more than 52% of the time, you are going to lose your tickets in the long run. This is usually not the best option if I'm not completely confident in my deck AND in my knowledge of the deck and the metagame. But again, if I just need to play at a more competitive level, this is sometimes the only option if I can't align my schedule with the dailies.

The Standard Daily is the best bang for the buck and I know others have written more extensively on this. At 6 tickets to enter, you play 4 rounds and prizes are 11 packs for 4-0 and 6 packs for 3-1. Not only do you get to play more games (4 rounds for 6 tickets versus 1 'round' for 2 tickets), the payout is MUCH higher if you win. I don't know the math for this but trust me, even going 3-1 is almost a 4:1 payout (versus less than 2-1 for a 2-man tourney). And if you are good (and lucky!) enough to go 4-0, you have almost a 7:1 payout!!

Anyways, now I am in the unenviable position of all 'decked' out with no where to go. I want to play in a Daily but the next Standard Daily isn't until 11pm. I want to maximize my Jace investment as much as possible so I am going to force myself to refrain from joining a 2-man. I just hope I don't massacre my deck second-guessing card choices as I continue playing/testing in the Casual > Tournament Practice room.

And speaking of Jace investment, I did have to purchase a few of the cards I added to my deck. I kept my shopping to cards that were either cheap (<.5 tickets) or could be used in more than just this deck. That being said, my purchases for this deck were:

2x Mimic Vat (2.7 each = 5.4)
2x Galvanic Blast (.15 each = .3)
1x Ratchet Bomb (2.5)
4x Kuldotha Phoenix (.12 each = .48)
Total : 9 tickets (8.68)

With luck, I will have a nice write-up of how this performs in tonight's daily. Until then, I'll be testing, testing, testing!


Current Jace-Ticket Tally
------------------------
Initial Amount: 364
Mono-Red Coating Investment: -9
Current Amount: 355

I started playing Magic back when Revised (3rd ed.) was just released and have been playing off and on ever since. I also started playing MTGO back when it was first released and have been playing off and on ever since. I recently went through a 'high' where I spent quite a lot of time and money playing when Zendikar block was released online. I also took a bit of a break on the tail end of Zendikar and M11. I am itching to get back into playing but rather than fork out a ton of money again to buy cards or packs to draft with, I figured I would try and recycle some of my previously purchased cards to fund my new stint in online play.

I primarily played Block Constructed previously, but had been itching to get into Standard once Alara rotated out. Now, my goal is to get into competitive Standard Constructed. Luckily, I think the current meta-game and the trading environment have combined to give me a very good option to do so - by selling my copies of Jace, the Mind Sculptor!

Now, I have a full play set, but most of the current 'hot' standard decks that play him usually play 3, and there are a slew of good decks that don't play any. So, my plan is to sell 1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor and use the proceeds to build a standard competitive deck to win enough packs (a.k.a tickets) to buy him back and then some. Here's my strategy:

Step 1: Sell Jace
Step 2: Build Winning Deck
Step 3: ...
Step 4: Profit!


It's practically foolproof! With that necessary due diligence out of the way, onward to profit!

First Step: Sell Jace!

Back when I was playing heavily during Zendikar block, prices would fluctuate immediately at release, and after a new deck was played and won in a high profile match in Paper Magic. For a card like Jace, prices could fluctuate as much as 10-15 tickets up or down in the span of a week. Now that it's not the current block however, I don't know whether prices are pretty stable, or prone to even wilder swings.

I do a quick search for Jace in the Community Classified section and see a few buyers offering anywhere from 70-91 (lower end being bots of course). Very few sellers but a few asking 96+ and a bot asking for 100+. I decide to undercut the competition and post my Jace for 93.

And now we play the waiting game.....

1 hour later
Things didn't exactly go as planned. After no one took me up on my price of 93, I started messaging the folks that were looking to buy. I suspected many were actually multiple accounts under 1 person since they had the exact same message but still gave it a shot and messaged every single potential buyer. No immediate response started to get me worried that my new adventure would have to either start at a lower investment point, or I'd have to wait around a few more hours.

Luckily however, I got a message back about 15 minutes later from one of the 'multiple account' persons and they were still interested for 91 tickets! A little less than I wanted but I'm way too impatient to hold out for 2 more tickets.

While we were in the trade window however, the buyer asked how many I wanted to sell. I realized I had accidentally marked all 4 as tradable, and now I had a big decision. Sell all 4 Jace's for a massive instant windfall that could keep me funded for a long long time, or keep to the plan? Without knowing how the price could fluctuate up or down, I didn't know whether it was likely that the prices would continue rising, or 'plummet' to the 70 ticket ranges (where it was at when M11 came out).

As you might know from the recent Geico commercials, this flawless bird in the hand was easily worth 2 in the bush. So I am now Jace-less, but very nicely funded to the tune of 364 tickets to build pretty much whatever deck I want (as long as it doesn't have any Jace's of course).

Now, the fun/agonizing part, deciding what deck to play....

Rogues are a nefarious newer tribe for the Tribal Wars game. Although introduced very early, they became quite viable with the release of Llorwyn block, and Morningtide increased their power level significantly.

Rogues can take advantage of their unique prowl keyword ability to get into play very quickly. They strike fast with cheap early drops, many of whom have some form of evasion. We can precipitate that by tempo effects that can stall out slower lumbering opponents. Control cards like Paralyze are cheap effective ways of dealing with larger blockers and force the opponent to make choices about either making their blockers viable or slowing down their deployment. Pestermite combos nicely with this effect.

On top of that Rogues can use typical removal like the under-costed agony warp for quality combat tricks and recoil to remove anything truly problematic. Discard is compounded with cards like Thoughtseize or the effects of Oona's Blackguard or Prowler.

Rogues - Classic Tribal Wars

Creatures

4 Nightshade Stinger
4 Oona's Blackguard
4 Oona's Prowler
3 Stinkdrinker Bandit
1 Sygg, River Guide
4 Pestermite
3 Earwig Squad

Spells

4 Paralyze
3 Thoughtseize
4 Agony Warp
4 Recoil

Land

4 Watery Grave
4 Underground Sea
4 Polluted Delta
3 Bloodstained Mire
1 Island
1 Swamp
1 Urborg Tomb of Yawgmoth
2 Mutavault
2 Wasteland

Because of a very low curve that functionally tops out at 3 mana, we can afford to go very lean on land. Only 22 in this deck, which gives us room for more removal. In fantastic lore rogues are fast, strike without warning and do damage very quickly. This deck is no different.

Goblins has been a popular tribal deck in any format since the early days of sligh. The tribe was considered underpowered however until Onslaught block was released and the Scourge set specifically catapulting a once marginal tribe into one of the most powerful.

I basically lifted the below list straight from an extended season way back in 2003. The original deck was coined Gob-vantage. It combined the deck stacking ability of Goblin Recruiter with the card drawing power of Goblin Ringleader that led to explosive combos of hasted Goblin Piledrivers attacking for well over 20 damage all in one turn.

Goblins - Classic Tribal Wars

Creatures

4 Goblin Lackey
3 Mogg Fanatic
3 Skirk Prospector
4 Goblin Piledriver
4 Goblin Recruiter
1 Sparksmith
3 Gempalm Incinerator
3 Goblin Warchief
2 Goblin Matron
1 Goblin Sharpshooter
3 Goblin Ringleader
2 Siege Gang Commander
1 Goblin Assassin

Spells

3 Rites of Initiation

Land

10 Mountain
2 Goblin Burrows
2 Wasteland
2 Bloodstained Mire
4 Wooded Foothills
1 Pendelhaven
2 Ancient Tomb

The combo is outlined in the linked article. The paragraph explaining it is here:

"Turn two Goblin Recruiter puts the following cards on top of your library: Goblin Warchief, Goblin Ringleader, Skirk Prospector and three Piledrivers. You draw and play the Warchief and on the next turn you play your Ringleader and put the Skirk Prospector and three Piledrivers in your hand. With the remaining mana you cast a Prospector and sacrifice your Ringleader, Recruiter and Prospector to cast all three Piledrivers and attack for the win."

Gob-vantage was a solid deck back then in Extended and in Classic Tribal Wars almost nothing changes. The vast majority of goblins hasn't really improved since then with apologies to beaters Warren Instigator and Goblin Chieftain. The cards in this version are basically the same with some sideboard concessions main-decked since card swapping isn't allowed in Tribal. I moved the Assassin and Sharpshooter into the main deck and added some sac lands, landkill and a Pendelhaven.

Gob-vantage is arguably the most potent tribal deck in the format right now. It has all the tools to win, and it can also do it very quickly with the ability to reduce an opponent with a significant life and board advantage to zero in a single turn.

I have a particular affinity for the rats tribe. It's a tribe with a ton of fluff and flavor. There are a large number of legends to choose from, and the discard sub-theme is a potent way of maintaining board control with otherwise sub-optimal and tiny creatures.

Some of these cards are powerful in any deck. Ravenous rats has been a tournament staple for years: Elegant card advantage attached to a 1/1 body. The legends have also seen some play, Ink-Eyes is a bomb and in this format is almost always going to have something good to grab out of a graveyard, especially if you just forced your opponent to dump a pricey creature with Hymn to Tourach. The Nezumi's are both quality cards that leverage board strength while generating card advantage as well. The Cuthroat can finish an opponent all by himself without even attacking while flipped to legendary form.

For removal options black has plenty to choose from. Nameless inversion is a good choice for this format as it can kill mid size creatures and then wipe any buff effects generated by tribe bonuses as well. The Disk is pretty much required in any mono-black deck as we have otherwise no other options for dealing with nasty show stoppers like Story Circle or problematic artifacts. Crypt rats are an earthquake/hurricane on a stick. I'm a big fan of creatures that double as removal in this format. It keeps those precious removal slots in play for either more removal or toys to help the cause.

I crammed Sword of Fire and Ice into this deck. I think the buff effect is necessary with so many small bodies. The +2/+2 is nice of course, but the card draw and removal aspect makes it one of the best equipments legal in this format.

Classic Tribal Wars - Rats

Creatures

3 Sewer Rat
3 Nezumi Graverobber
3 Nezumi Shortfang
4 Ravenous Rats
3 Crypt Rats
3 Marrow-Gnawer
2 Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni

Spells

4 Nameless Inversion
4 Hymn to Tourach
3 Sword of Fire and Ice
3 Nevinyrall's Disk

Land

1 Pendelhaven
1 Shizo, Death's Storehouse
2 Swarmyard
2 Mutavault
2 Wasteland
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Bloodstained Mire
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
10 Swamp

Rounding out the land we see staples like Wasteland and Mutavault (with fear!). I like Swarmyard and will always use this land when applicable in tribal wars. Pendelhaven is a nice touch here with so many 1/1 creatures available.

Rats are small but the disruption results of discard spells can be brutal to an opponent. If you can wipe their hand early they will have no answers to your endless horde of rodents.

Djinn are another set of genies in the M:TG universe that initially had a big presence in Arabian Nights and have seen some limited support since then. They have decent support as a creature type but suffer from being lumbering in terms of overall casting cost. This is not an insurmountable problem. This deck plays like a control deck with a significant amount of land. It looks to curb threats early on and then take over the game late.

Thoughtseize is used here to keep this deck in the game early. It can take out early threats, removal that my opponent will use or to protect our Nevinyrall's disk before we get a chance to use it.

Spells

4 Agony Warp
2 Loxodon Warhammer
3 Nevinyrall's Disk
3 Thoughtseize

Creatures

4 Fledgling Djinn
4 Old Man of the Sea
4 Juzam Djinn
4 Djinn of Wishes
4 Mahomotti Djinn

Land

4 Polluted Delta
4 Watery Grave
4 Underground Sea
4 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Diamond Valley
2 Wasteland
1 Reflecting Pool
4 Swamp
4 Island

For our creature base we have a host of Djinn's at our disposal. Fledling Djinn and it's elder brother Juzaam are cheap efficient beaters. Djinn of Wishes and Mahomotti fill up the top of the curve. Old Man of the Sea was ret-conned to be a Djinn and this deck takes advantage of that as it fits nicely into the 3 slot of the curve. We have some tricks we can use with his ability: Combat tricks with Agony Warp are something we can pull off if we desire; like stealing a more powerful creature and then feeding it to our diamond valley, or stealing an enemy blocker and feeding it to an incoming attacker. An equipped Loxodon Warhammer can also let us grab something more substantial, or we can just beat face with it and recoup any life lost from the dark djinn's in our employ.

If you can stay alive early the massive genies can take over the game. A resolved Djinn of wishes with mana to spare can wreak havoc on an opponent. Using the ability to dump expensive attackers into play, even during an opponents turn can overwhelm an them quickly.

Genies are potent creatures. This deck lets us maximize their abilities and exploits them for our amusement!

The efreet deck is a bit limited on creature selection. There are only so many efreet's in print. However the few that do exist are quite powerful. Old school favorites like the Serendib Efreet and Ydwen Efreet are quality undercosted beaters. The elusive Frenetic and Rainbow Efreet's are very difficult to get rid of because of their phasing abilities.

Efreets - Classic Tribal Wars

Spells

3 Echoing Truth
4 Fire/Ice
4 Prophetic Bolt
4 Force of Will

Creatures

4 Frenetic Efreet
3 Rainbow Efreet
4 Ydwen Efreet
4 Serendib Efreet
4 Wildfire Emissary
1 Capricious Efreet

Land

4 Scalding Tarn
3 Wooded Foothills
4 Volcanic Island
4 Steam Vents
1 Reflecting Pool
4 Ghitu Encampment
2 Mountain
1 Island
2 Wasteland

Backing up the creature selection are staples from the blue/red toolbox. Echoing truth is an excellent permanent removal choice that also has the added benefit of harming token decks by removing dupes from play. Fire/Ice is a great utility or removal spell. Force of Will provides protection against threats that we otherwise cannot deal with. Prophetic Bolt is a potent removal option that replaces itself and let's us search for necessary answers.

This deck can come out quick in the damage race and maintain that advantage with evasion. It has trouble dealing with large threats but with just enough tempo and reach can often finish off an opponent before major threats enter the battlefield.

Making a vampire tribal deck pre-Zendikar was a difficult endeavor. You were looking at a number of high casting cost creatures without a whole lot of utility. Sengir Vampire, Moroii and Skeletal Vampire were your all-stars. M10 introduced the powerful Vampire Nocturnus, but it wasn't really until Zendikar that the most efficient members of the tribe showed up. Lots of cheap powerful creatures to fill the 2 slot, and powerful cost effective creatures like the Vampire Nighthawk and Malakir Bloodwitch.

Mono color decks like this can also be challenging in an environment without sideboards. You have to be very careful that your deck can't get color hosed out of the game. Black can leverage hand destruction and artifacts to deal with the necessary problem cards.

Vampires - Classic Tribal Wars


Spells

4 Thoughtseize
3 Urge to Feed
3 Nevinyrral's Disk

Creatures

4 Vampire Hexmage
4 Kalstria Highborn
4 Gatekeeper of Malakir
4 Vampire Nighthawk
4 Vampire Nocturnus
4 Malakir Bloodwitch

Land

4 Marsh Flats
4 Bloodstained Mire
2 Wasteland
2 Mutavault
2 Cabal Coffers
11 Swamp
1 Dark Depths

This deck closely resembles the Vampire decks we saw at Pro-Tour San Juan just recently. It obviously has a more powerful pool of cards to draw from though. This deck employs Vampire Nocturnus as a potent weapon to augment the creatures in the deck significantly. Thoughtseize is a more powerful replacement for Inquisition of Kozilek. Nevinyrral's Disk an important staple to deal with problematic permanents that mono-black couldn't otherwise deal with. We also have access to Mutavault, Dark Depth's to combo with Hexmage and Cabal Coffers which allows us to ratchet up the power level further.

The rest of the creatures are right out of Zendikar block constructed: The highborn, gatekeeper and aforementioned nighthawk and bloodwitch.

Vampires is a very powerful tribe and this deck illustrates that while maintaining a strong tribal theme and even employing some cool soft combos. It's a solid deck for the format.

Kobolds were a fun deck building challenge. It's an interesting exercise trying to take advantage of a zero casting cost creature while desperately trying to ensure they don't remain 0/1 weaklings for any longer than a turn.

I considered green as a color option for this deck. Green offered buff effects like Rancor and hand reload abilities like Harmonize. It's also notable that despite all the creatures being red this deck only really splashes it for a few spells. The deck ended up being mostly white. I chose that over green because it allowed for creature augmentation as well as quality removal and utility.

Kobolds - Classic Tribal Wars

Creatures

4 Crimson Kobolds
4 Crookshank Kobolds
4 Kobolds of Kher Keep
2 Kobold Overlord
4 Kobold Taskmaster
2 Mirror Entity

Spells

4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Shared Triumph
3 Oblivion Ring
2 Sword of Fire and Ice
2 Glory of Warfare
2 Ajani Goldmane

Lands

4 Arid Mesa
4 Sacred Foundry
4 Plateau
4 Plains
1 Mountain
1 Kher Keep
3 Mutavault
2 Wasteland

This deck features 12 zero casting cost kobolds and then taskmasters and overlords to buff them. I included Mirror Entity as a quality finisher that doubled as a strong buff. The mana intensity of the effect is less relevant when you can just dump kobolds into play at no cost.

On the utility side I use both plow and rings to deal with just about any threat. Shared Triumph is another efficient buff effect and I used that with Glory of Warfare and Ajani to make the Kobolds as threatening as possible. This deck can consistently ramp up to 3-4 power kobolds. They will indeed get larger if your opponent doesn't use his removal options wisely. Finally I included Sword of Fire and Ice. This deck can really capitalize quickly with card draw effects. It likes buff effects as well. The sword offers both and is another removal or reach option to boot.

A kobold deck can be a challenge. But this one rises to it. Like its fantastic namesake, this is a quality deck that can swarm the opposition handily if not treated with respect.

I guess maybe I should do these in alphabetical order? It's not intentional but my next deck just so happens to be tribal Barbarians. B is for beat down.

Barbarians are a neglected tribe. They've had some solid contributors but kinda fell by the wayside compared to the likes of warriors, soldiers or knights. That doesn't make it a bad deck, but the quality cards aren't as obvious or as curve worthy.

Still, the tribe has some power. There are enough quality aggressive creatures to form the early core and then a host of legends that can really tie the deck together. Balthor the Stout is a personal barbarian glorious anthem that can attack/block and breath fire to boot. Lovisa Coldeyes can make the deck stomp quickly. Just note that her effect is global and not just limited to the barbarian tribe.

Red/Black works well for this tribe as it ties together the best of the creatures. It also offers great removal options like Terminate and Bituminous blast. The nature of this deck also allows for some powerful equipment that we can take advantage of.

Barbarians - Classic Tribal Wars

Creatures

4 Shivan Zombie
3 Balthor the Stout
4 Undead Gladiator
3 Jeska, Warrior Adept
2 Pardic Arsonist
2 Lovisa Coldeyes
2 Godo, Bandit Warlord

Spells

3 Thoughtseize
4 Terminate
1 Konda's Banner
1 Tenza, Godo's Maul
3 Bituminous Blast
3 Nevinyrral's Disk

Lands

4 Badlands
4 Blood Crypt
4 Bloodstained Mire
2 Wooded Foothills
2 Verdant Catacombs
1 Swamp
2 Mountain
1 Shinka, the Bloodsoaked Keep
1 Shizo, Death's Storehouse
2 Mutavault
2 Wasteland

The deck plays pretty straight forward. Get some early damage in with cheap creatures and then magnify them with buff effects with either additional legends that make your army more powerful or equipment that does the same. The Blast fits in nicely here and can remove a threat and accelerate a creature into play. I like Nevinyrral's disk for needed artifact and enchantment removal or as a necessary sweeper to deal with protection creatures.

This deck is land hungry and we're running 25 lands to address that need. 2 of them are mutavaults and can attack and block and as an added bonus benefit from both Balthor and Lovisa's buffs. We also benefit from a couple of quality legendary lands with can make any one of our 10 legendary creatures all the more powerful.

This deck can get out of hand for an opponent in a hurry. With careful play you can make this deck work for you.

I occasionally play Magic Online in the casual room (you're welcome to guess my screen name) and make it a habit of playing Classic Tribal Wars when I do. It's far and away my favorite format since it offers a lot of cool variations on deck construction without becoming entirely degenerate. Not that I hate competitive magic mind you, but if I'm going to do that I'll stick to tournaments and the Standard or Draft queues.

Classic Tribal Wars is not a perfect format. It still has a number of problem cards that I'd wish otherwise didn't exist (I'm looking at you Aether Vial). Regardless, despite some of the irritating elements of this format there is a lot of room for creativity. Today I present an outstanding example of this. I feature not Goblins nor Elves but rather Aurochs. Yes, I've created a cow deck.

Aurochs - Classic Tribal Wars

Creatures

4 Woodland Changeling
4 Bull Aurochs
4 Aurochs
4 Rimehorn Aurochs
4 Aurochs Herd

Spells

3 Fires of Yavimaya
4 Search for Tomorrow
3 Nameless Inversion
4 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Jund Charm

Land

2 Wooded Foothills
2 Verdant Catacombs
4 Taiga
4 Bayou
2 Snow-Covered Mountain
4 Snow-Covered Forest
2 Snow-Covered Swamp
2 Wasteland
2 Mutavault

Aurochs are fun but not just because you get to kill your opponent with cows. They are fun because they are beefy (pun intended) creatures that can swing for a lot in larger numbers. One thing I wanted to accomplish was making sure they swing for as hard and as fast as possible. A great way to accomplish that is to make them hasted cows. Please see Fires of Yavimaya.

Of course the rules of tribal enforce the deck to be 33% creatures of the same type. Since only 16 Aurochs exist we have to cheat. The Lorwyn changelings let us to do that. Woodland changeling isn't a great card, but it lets the deck exist in this format. I'll take it. Backing up the cows we have some mana acceleration and fix and some removal options. Jund Charm is a nice sweeper that also can be used as growth effect on our trampling cows. Maelstrom pulse (or Putrefy if you're on a budget) works well for permanent removal that we can't otherwise deal with. I like Nameless inversion for my spot removal since I can fetch it with Auroch's Herd if necessary. It also turns my Auroch's Herd into a ball lightning in a pinch. Pretty slick.

So that's our cow level. Probably isn't going to beat goblins, but maybe on a good day. See you in the casual room.