6.11.2014

Luyman's Terms #5: The Evolution of a Deck

If only these were still available!

As of today, there are around 1,500 unique cards in standard (with that number set to grow by 250+ late next month). That number grows and grows as you begin to look at different MTG formats culminating at just under 14,000 total unique cards in all of MTG! This means there is practically an endless amount of ways to construct a deck and, as a result, is not an easy thing to do. I thought I would tell you about my first foray into deckbuilding, and how my deck has evolved. While I wasn't naive enough to think that I knew what I was doing, I did think that my deck would be able to hold its own. Here is that deck:

My theory behind the deck was to burn my opponent directly early, and block my opponents creatures with the Sedge Scorpions. I could then get a Bladetusk Boar or 2 onto the battlefield, and swing in for the last 6-9 points of damage. If the game ended up going long, I would cast Portent of Betrayal and kill my opponent with his/her own creatures

No surprise that I was wrong. With 28 lands, mana flood was not uncommon. Not only would I usually not last long enough to get a have a boar swing for more than two turns, I simply played the deck wrong, and used my burn spells to always attack the player as opposed to using them as removal, which is what I probably should have been doing. I was incredibly vulnerable to creatures with flying, and pretty much any creature with power > 2 (spoiler alert: there are a lot of them). 

I also learned that only one legendary-subtype card of a given name can be on a players side of the battlefield, so I had to rethink how many copies of the Bow of Nylea were worth running. This was also the point where I decided I really wanted to get into MTG, and allowed myself to splurge on a couple cards. That lead to this deck:

I ran with this for about two hours before I realized how terrible it was. My thought was that if I could stall until I get to Elspeth, I could just keep generating soldier tokens and then give them flying after 3 or 4 turns. This turned out to be a viable strategy when in games in which I both had Elspeth in my hand and the mana to cast her. However, that just didn't happen very often, and this deck just did what my first deck did and I lost a lot. I decided R/G was not working out for me, and that I needed to try something different.

I decided that neither the Sedge Scorpions nor the Nyxborn Rollickers were pulling their weight. While having a 1/1 for 1 with some upside is a nice creature on turn one or two, but neither deathtouch nor a cheap bestow that essentially just gives a creature a counter were all that great in the late game when I was ready to be on offense. I knew I liked Elspeth, and the Boon Satyr was quickly becoming a favorite of mine, so I decided to go G/W. That decision yielded the following deck:

I brought in the Hopeful Eidolon to fill in the void that taking the Sedge Scorpions and Nyxborn Rollickers left behind. I really like being able to play a creature on turn one, and I thought that the Hopeful Eidolon's bestow ability would be enough to make it relevant in the late game. How do you guys think this deck performed? What changes do you think should be made? I'll tell you how the deck actually performed and what changes I made in my next post. 
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1 comment:

  1. Glenn6/11/14, 2:46 PM

    Looks to be on the slow side. Your early drops are all Bestow creatures, but they aren't cheap bestow costs. You have one heroic flyer, but it's a midgame drop. I'm going to say it didn't do very well.

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