The Sliver Hive

Last Friday the Premium Sliver Deck was released, and man i have been sooo giddy about it, i can’t wait for it to arrive(i was pretty quick to place a pre-order)! Now, i know there where a lot of naysayers out there *coughmedinacough* ;), but they are all nuts! Slivers never suck. Ever. Why? Because Slivers are friggin awesome Karona damn it! I get a shiver down my spine every time i think of all the carnage slivers would wreak on my deck back in the day. Back then i never played Slivers, because i was very “anti-establishment” and eh-eh-vrybody played slivers back then. But no! No more! Today, we build the epitome of a Sliver Hive—in the form of an EDH Deck. Now, i decided to use the the majority of the slivers from the Premium Deck for 2 reasons;

a.) They’re at this point easily acquired, and has some pretty damn good slivers to start off with.
b.) It feels appropriate.

But lets get started shall we?

[Disclaimer: while playing EDH Slivers will be epic, i do not take responsibility for the big, ginormous bullseye you will paint on your forehead for doing so.]

The Deck

As you can see its quiet the Swiss Army Knife, this deck has a creature for just about anything. The basic idea is to simply overwhelm your opponent, plain and simple… and probably very satisfying. Now initially i debated seriously whether i wanted to make Sliver Overlord the general, or delegate that role to Sliver legion. In the end i settled on the Overlord because it for one, felt more appropriate, and for two, he allows me to fetch any other sliver in the deck. Besides, if anyone ever dares to play slivers in their deck and make the fatal mistake of not using the Sliver Overlord as their General… Well, the Hive will simply assimilate them.

I also seriously considered tossing in a Hivestone but decided i wanted to go straight up the “We are the Borg, resistance is futile" route. And i mean, either you are Borg or you aren’t.

All Star Trek references aside, i already love the deck. While the Premium Slivers Deck was neat, I find this EDH deck represents the Hive-minded Sliver beautifully. Now, while it should be obvious why i added certain cards in (more Slivers, mana ramping cards etc.), lets inspect some of the other, perhaps not so obvious choices thrown into the Pot.

The Cards

Death Denied – This card is a personal choice more than anything. While i am aware Patriarch’s Bidding was probably better suited, i felt death denied fit to the theme more… If you have a hard time seeing how, just use your imagination—maybe the Sliver Overlord has some sort of necrotic power? Who knows, i know some of his Sliverlings do. But please feel free to edit the deck to your taste.

Nevinyrral's Disk – Any Elder Dragon deck should have some sweepers in it, and even though this isn’t any EDH deck removal i think is still a must. In most situations you will not want to sweep, in fact you are more likely to use Ghostway or Pulmonic Sliver to protect yourself about 90% of the time. Of course, if you happen to have your Crypt Sliver on the battlefield…

Heartstone – I kept the Heartstone in because the deck does still have a good amount of slivers with activated abilities in it, and being able to regenerate and fetch for less is always nice.

Riptide Replicator – Need more Slivers? Then fire up the Riptide Replicator! Not only did i feel it had some great utility, but it also fit with the theme rather well in that the Riptide Project has a rather… uhh… Colorful history with Slivers.

Liliana Vess – I know, i know it may seem like I'm going against my theme here but hear me out. Planeswalkers have had a history with Slivers and not only interacting with them, but sometimes even controlling them. Would Liliana Vess attempt to control and harness the power of Slivers? I’d say so. Theme aside however, she is still an immensely powerful tutor and recursion engine, both of which will come greatly in handy with so many creatures… The fact that i have a weakness for this card as of late has nothing to do with it!… mostly.

I really tried my best to keep the cost/value of this deck down, and make most cards as replaceable and accessible as possible because i know you(like me) probably aren’t rich, nor can you always get your hands on all of these babies—and yes i am calling them babies. Cards which i would recommend you add in if you ever get your hands on them are Mindbreak Trap, Gilded Lotus or Yawgmoth’s Will just to mention a few. Since i do not own any of them i obviously chose not to include. Some of you may also wonder why i did not include any proper counterspells (ignoring the possibility of Mindbreak Trap). The simple answer is that i simply do not like playing counter in EDH, its usually not fun for anyone. Of course, i may change my mind after some test playing(my premium deck should be here Wednesday). The cool thing about this deck i think, is that it really doesn’t need a lot beyond Slivers… and if you’re ever unsure of what to replace X card with that you plain don’t like, or you want to change it up a bit; Well, definitely can’t go wrong with another sliver, Kekekeke! And hey, if i get enough interest maybe I’ll post an updated version of this deck after some play testing a few weeks down the road.

So what more are you waiting for? Call upon the Hive and crush your friends with its ferocity!

Vampire troubles? Sweep it.

Every once in a while you will find yourself surrounded by a certain deck. A deck that everyone and their brother is playing. In my area this deck is the oh-so trendy ‘vampire’ deck. Only 4 people do not play vampires on a regular basis and my area has 30+ magic players. The 4 decks that are not vampires are also all mine (Generally a form of ramp + aggro), Jund, W/R/B control, and WW.I wonder how many of them watch twilight too… but as you can probably tell by now, my current meta is very creature heavy.

That’s where Turbo Wrath comes in. The idea is play a ton of board sweepers, and beat them with some resilient creatures. The deck has 15 board sweepers, each nastier then the next. After playing vampire decks for over a month there are many times I would have killed for a Pyroclasm. Since many of my sweepers kill through damage I added some tough creatures that can power right through them. As you read it, remember that this deck is not entirely done yet. However, I am going to go over the concepts behind it and give a full list next week with play results from a Standard tournament. Here is a very rough list of cards that I want in the deck;

The Deck

As you can see this deck pacts some heavy stuff. The creatures are tough, and the removal is plenty. In this deck you will generally want to mulligan until you have a howling mine(within reason of course). Once you have a mine just draw and play. Baneslayers are a big hitter, and while you don't need them the lifegain will help against aggro decks and the 5 damage a turn can finish a game quickly. I like to think of Felidar Sovereign as a mini Baneslayer, with vigilance, lifelink and at 4/6 he is almost as big of a threat when he hits the field, whereas Iona is the perfect finisher against mono decks (AKA Vampires).

Ajani is one of the few planeswalkers I actually like. He is fantastic against control and alright against medium speed decks. Howling mine is the corner stone of this deck and a must for the card draw. Now this deck has one really big weakness Eldrazi Monument, so i tossed in a Oblivion Ring to deal with that. The mass removal is all fantastic Day of Judgment, Pyroclasm, Volcanic Fallout, and my favorite Earthquake. Earthquake is one of the most underrated cards ever, its a bomb in all the limited formats as well as standard.

Luminarch Ascension is a bomb in this kind of deck I mean you only need to stall for 4 turns before they are overwhelmed with angels, and I love the artwork. The cards in here I will take out are probably Eldrazi Monument, Path to exile, and Pyromancer Ascension. I might add Font of Mythos, or some more mass removal, but i won’t know for sure until i know it does at the competitive scene. As far as the Sideboard goes I will need to deal with control decks with a fair amount of removal, here I might add Indestructibility, and 2 more Ajani's (I need to get a hold of them first), Pithing Needle to deal with planeswalker control, Devout lightcaster and Celestial purge might also make the list. Feel free to proxy it up and tell me what you think.

Till next week,

Alden

It’s some kind of magic~

I am terrible at openings… I mean i am REALLY terrible at the first few lines of a blog. I never quiet know what to say, how to set myself up… Its irritating really.

Huh, well now that we got that out of the way lets get cracking hmm? Zendikar was a set which brought with it many many new and exciting cards. As you all know by now i am an avid EDH fan. Generally when i look through new cards i have acquired i first inspect for exciting EDH material—and then for my 60 card decks(I know shocking, i do play both though). Of course, some cards are good material for either format, and one those cards just happens to be one of my favorites: Rite of Replication.

Just look at it! Imagine the possibilities… I mean, while a single replica is good, after a good kick this card is just plain freaking awesome. i mean come 'on five tokens? FIVE tokens!? How is that not exciting? Imagine the crazy havoc wreaking things this card can do… Lets explore some of the possibilities here:

Hagra Diabolist + RoR = Pretty straightforward; you play Hagra Diabolist, then Replicate it leading to 6 Diabolists triggering 5 times each. Did i mention that’s a 180 life loss? 5 x 6 x 6 = 180. Of Course, the same can go be done with Murasa Pyromancer if you really absolutely positively need to kill something… After all, there is no kill like overkill.

Captain of the Watch + RoR = 3 tokens per Captain that's 6 x 3 for a total of 18… now every Captain buffs all your soldiers save for itself meaning you add 6/6 to all your Tokens and 5/5 to your Captains; congratulations you now have eighteen 6/6 and six 8/8 with vigilance. Primalcrux is also a pretty terrifying possibility.

Confusion in the Ranks + X creature + RoR = Well… you will get 5-6 creatures that one of your opponent controls. If your playing EDH, for some extra style points you can take your opponents Generals and kill them with them. It is rather situational but with 5+ people in the game and you grab every last general… Kekekeke.

 

“But Nils!! You Say!
”that's all kids stuff! What is something REALLY exciting!?”
Hmm, well…
Oh!
i got it.

Twincast + RoR + Doubling Season + Opalescence = Play RoR, Twincast it, target doubling season with both… you create 10 tokens with the first Doubling Season, and then your second rite resolves triggering your 11 Seasons' twice. So mathematically it would look something like this; 5x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2x2= 10240+10 = 10250 tokens. If you ever pull this off in an actual game, please email us—because you have just achieved one of the many epitome’s of what is absolutely degenerate and utterly ridiculous in Magic: The Gathering. It’s also pretty darn cool. I’ve never played MTGO before, but i wonder how the game would handle ten thousand almost simultaneous token creation… Let me know if you find out.

Well that's all i have for you today, I hope you enjoyed the demonstration of madness that Rite of Replication is capable of creating. But remember that there are many more possibilities you can explore, such as with Turntimber Ranger, Siege-Gang Commando or even Malakir Bloodwitch. And please—if you have any other cool combo’s you can think of using Rite of Replication feel free to share them with us in the Comments—i love interaction! Till next time, and remember, knowledge is power, power corrupts—study those magic cards hard and be evil.

A second take; My EDH deck

I am going to show you guys one of my EDH decks. Nils posted an Mono black EDH so I thought it only right if I gave you my take on it. First off I want to say a few things about this deck and how it came to be. Once upon a time when I first started playing magic a friend of mine got the Mono black 8th edition starter deck and I got Little bashers Theme Deck from Mirrodin. After a few games Dark Banishing really got on my nerves so I started to play Mono Black so I would never have to worry about it again.

I played a Mono black deck for several years and over that time acquired many of the bombs for that color. I found in MBC (Mono Black Control) removal is key and its good to have a lot of it as well as some big threats.

This is basically an Elder Dragon MBC deck, with a little versatility on the general. When my gaming store holds tournaments no two players can have the same general. I built the deck so it was not dependent on any of them. Any of the legendary creatures in this deck would make a great general because they all fit with the theme of removal and the sub themes of Graveyard recursion and BIG threats. With out further ado my deck;

Mono Black Control EDH

I am going to Highlight a few of my favorite cards and explain why they are fantastic in this deck. The first is Vendetta, its like the black Swords to Plowshares its instant speed but instead of removing it from the game it just puts it in the graveyard which is better in this deck due to the graveyard recursion.

Soul Spike too, is a favorite of mine because Pitch spells are amazing and the life gain is always nice…

Rend Flesh Every once in a while you come across a card like Rend Flesh which is alright in Kamigawa but outside the block its grossly overpowered, Chill to the Bone is also another example.

Nekrataal is the old school Gatekeeper of Malakir and with first strike he is a god on the battlefield—especially with something like Hatred in this deck… I Guess i kind of have a soft spot for Hatred really, it makes it easy to win on turn 4/5 with a little ramp. Hatred is not that good when you are playing multiplayer but at the right time it can be the most powerful tool in your arsenal.

Minion of the Wastes is one of my favorite creatures in the deck I usually make him a 25/25 or something around there the game ends quickly once he hits.

Cairn Wanderer is really handy with all the removal he gets some fantastic abilities.

A lot of the other cards in the deck fit with the theme or are just too fantastic to leave out. When making EDH decks I try to add as much ramp as I can in mono black you do not have that many options but with Dark Ritual, Sacrifice, Bubbling muck you have enough to get of one of your bombs much earlier.

I also like to have tutoring in EDH for which i decked Liliana, Demonic, and Diabolic Tutor to get my damnation, Yawgmoth's Will, or even my beloved Hatred. I am not mentioning a lot of cards because it should be very obvious why they are in there. I hope you liked my MBC EDH.

Till next week,

Alden

Nightmares From Guul Draz

Why hello again!
Today’s Maniacal scheme Is an Elder Dragon Highlander Deck—if you have never played EDH before, then let me give you a quick run down: Elder Dragon, is the Ultimate Timmy Format. It makes use of a 99 Card Singleton Deck(meaning that you can only have 1 of any card except for basic lands) With 1 General—The General decides what type of cards you may play based on its own mana cost and must be a Legendary Creature. You also begin with 40 life, and 21 damage total ‘general’ damage will cause you to lose the game just as well as any other conventional way would. If you want more info—link to the Elder Dragon Homepage is on the sidebar!

Now, on to the main course! As I stated before, today your evil genius(and please, feel free to refer to me as such in conversation) has prepared a concoction—and I assure you it is only the first of many; which will blow your brains. So, better put your helmet on to keep everything in its proper place eh?

The Deck

As you can see, it’s Mono Black with a heavy Theme on Vampires—no surprise there right!? Look, I’m evil, Vampires are evil… it works. Now I am sure the next thing you will notice, at least if your an EDH veteran is: Where are the auto includes!? Necropotence, Sensei’s, Plague wind instead of Damnation!?” Well, how to put this…

Only people who want to ruins everyone fun play this format to break it, or make exclusive use of the so called ‘auto-include’ list. I mean come 'on guys! It’s a Timmy Format! if you want to play EDH, let your Spike go!…

at least for a little bit?
Maybe?
Please?

Alright thanks, I appreciate it.

The General idea here (hehe, get it?), is to make use of Vampires and their rather ridiculous abilities as of Zendikar especially. The General, Kalitas is not only a 5/5 beater, but also has a much MUCH better royal assassin type ability. For 3 swamps and a tap you get one less creature on your opponents side of the field and one more on yours—if that isn’t plain cool I don’t know what is. But not only that, a careful look at its ability reveals that the creature also happens to be a Vampire now!

Now just imagine how much damage that Malakir Bloodwitch will do…

But let’s get specific!

The Cards

Now all the cards that are in this deck, fit with the theme rather well… After all, Guul Draz is a spooky swamp with who knows what kind of horrors there!

Gatekeeper of Malakir – A utility vampire, plain and simple. Most of the time you will want to play him with the kicker—I actually can’t think of a reason why you would want to play him without a good kicking.

Vampire Hexmage – This is one of those cards which I absolutely adore no matter the format… the ability to eliminate those pesky planeswalkers is simply invaluable, especially I find in EDH.

Liliana Vess – This has got to be my favorite planeswalker. It has 3 of my favorite abilities; Discarding, Tutoring and Recursion on Steroids. This lady here allows you to do some very remarkable things… just imagine activating that 3rd ability late game with a Mephidross Vampire on the table and… I don't know, maybe a Coat of Arms too, or play Malakir Bloodwitch? She really is your best friend in this deck if you can get her on the table… But beware, once your buddies figure out just what you can do with her… Well, that target on your forehead for playing Liliana just got that much bigger.

Lim-Dûl the Necromancer – This is a card I stumbled upon while using the gatherer… I was struck by the lack of vampires I wanted to put in this deck, I really wanted to go hardcore Tribal Vampire originally. However, this was not a possibility so i decided to loosen up my restriction a bit but made sure to stay close to the nightmares of Guul Draz… so I suddenly stumbled upon this gem, which also happens to work beautifully with…

Xathrid Demon – This is another one of my favorite Cards, and as I said before, works well with The Necromancer… Simply fish out the creatures you want from his Graveyard, Sacrifice it, rinse and repeat. If you don’t want him anymore, just toss him on the Carnage Altar and show him that Demon’s make Wonderful Sacrifices too! Speaking of which…

Carnage Altar – I like draw power. I really like draw power. It is something I find invaluable, especially in my playgroup, and the ability to Sacrifice a creature which is getting in the way or which is not my own in the first place (which will be a common occurrence, trust me) to draw an extra card is fine by me. It was one of my motivators in putting Breeding Pit into this deck.

Coat of Arms – Look… with cards like Kalitas and Mephidross vampire, it would be insane not to make use of this card. Few EDH decks that I have played against are Tribal, and trust me, even if you do end up playing against another Tribal, the good outweighs the bad.

Measure of wickedness – Another one of my favorites and a riot when it hits the table with me and my friends… Why? well, because of it’s effect! When this card enters play, you WANT to throw something in the graveyard as fast as possible or take 8. You’d be surprised how much fun it can be to watch someone struggle to figure out just how to avoid that 8 point life loss!

Death Cloud – Bwahahaha! If there is a card that is evil, it is probably measure of wickedness… or more than likely this guy. This Card is absolutely brutal, and I recommend you treat it similarly to how I treat the card Obliterate; A Planet killing Nova Bomb from Starship trooper. Seriously, it’s a last resort type card. Threaten with it, but don’t use it unless the entire battlefield is infested by Bugs. Sweeping offensively is just plain rude.

There are plenty of cards in this deck which I did not mention that will help you out in some dark way; Sadistic Sacrament is definitely at the top, and Caustic Rain gets rid of some of the more annoying non-basic lands you will encounter. For the most part, cards like Wrath of God should not scare you too much—there is enough recursion in this deck to make a decent recovery after various sweeps. Zombify, Rise from the Grave, Death Denied… All ways to refill your hand or the battlefield with creatures—and if all else fails, just call in your general and take some of your opponents creatures… or you could just swing for five general damage, but where is the fun in that!?

If you haven’t figured this out yet, I am definitely a Timmy/Johnny type. I like flashy and offbeat, and would much rather win half the time in a grandeur fashion, than all the time in a simple dull one… it’s why I love EDH, it is the perfect format for that type of attitude!

Well, I hope you enjoyed reading my article as much as I enjoyed writing it. Remember, Knowledge is power, power corrupts—study those magic cards hard and be evil.

Making the most of your deck.

 

[Ed. Note: I apologize for the day late post, there was a mix up.]Hello, my name is Alden and I have been playing magic for several years now. I have gone through many phases of play from very beginner casual to some tournament play. I'll review some of my decks, give fun ideas on deck building, formats, and I might even break down some concepts I have gotten from analyzing Pro Tour and why some of their decks are so successful. But enough about me for now, lets get on to how to greatly improve your deck with what you have. As a side note most of my ideas will be in the standard format because most new players only have access to the current sets.

Deck strategy:

I find most decks that are successful follow a theme such as: control, aggro, discard, lifegain, stompy, and burn to name a few. When you have a deck that has a little burn, a little life gain, a little mill, and a little aggro you will not be very consistent. Try to figure out what you want to do and do your best to get that accomplished as fast as possible.

The Mana base:

This is probably the most important aspect of the deck. Without a solid land base you are never gong to win anything. The first thing you look at in a deck are the colors. Here are some questions to keep in mind.

1. How many colors am I going to use?
2. What are the colors offering me?
3. What can I cut?

I find it hard building consistent decks with 3 or more colors (Well its not as hard now with Alara but I'll cover that some other time.)   For most casual decks its best to stick with 1-2 colors unless the third is something you absolutely have to have. The next thing you look at for your mana base is your deck's curve. This principle is simple: have enough low to cast cards that you can consistently play things on the early turns of the game. As cards get higher to cast you want to have less of them. I find most aggro decks(Mostly 1-3 to cast) only need about 20 lands. Most regular decks even if they are aggressive need around 23-24. And typical control decks need at least 26 because they can not afford to miss a land drop.

Ratios:

You want the right number of creatures, to enchantments to spells in your deck. This really depends on the deck but for most decks you  will have:

• 4-16 One and two to cast creatures.
• 8 Three to cast creatures.
• 4-6 Four to cast creatures.
• 2-8 Five or more to cast.

As you can see, there are a lot of early drops compared to late game drops, this will make your deck much more consistent.

For enchantments and artifacts try to pick up to three that fit well and play 3-4 of those. You also want 6-8 removal spells, and some other useful spells. I find creature heavy decks are a lot more effective and if you are using a lot of acceleration feel free to use higher casting cost creatures.

The last point I am going to cover is how important it is to make your deck as consistent as possible. If a card is in your deck and it fits really well with your strategy, try to have 3-4 of them or find other cards that do something similar. When you do this it is easier to get what you need.

This is all I am going to cover for today. Next week I will cover some bombs that can turn the game around.

Till next week,

              Alden

Welcome, to our humble abode!

Welcome to the Magic the Gathering Deck source blog.

Now i am sure that you are wondering just what exactly we are about. Well, the fact that we are a Blog dedicated to Magic: The Gathering should be obvious. But to be specific, we primarily cater towards the casual player. You more than likely will not find that next high tech strategy that will win the Grand Prix(Though if you do let us know, and feel free to provide a “thank you” donation), what you will find however—is the cutting edge in deck building with what you have, and the most advanced technology in simply having a good time. Because i think that a lot of people forget that at the end of the day, it is still just a game, and Games are supposed to be fun right?! Now why, do we do this? Well, the most obvious answer is because we like to have a good time ourselves. While some of us do play at Friday nights magic—and do it rather competitively at that, none of us own a ridiculously expensive collection—and no one definitely owns a deck worth in the hundreds. Heck i have only bought a Booster Box ONCE and that was for my birthday this weekend—that same booster box is also where i pulled my Sorin Markov but that’s a different story. The point is this; for the most part, the decklists we provide will not be ridiculously expensive. They will be decks that we can either build at home right away with our current collection of cards, or they will utilize cards which are in our price range— all current writers are College students so you do the math.

So, once again; Welcome! Currently our staff consists of two people, Me and my Friend Alden, though if you have an article you have written and you would like to share, please feel free to send us an email at mtgdecksource@gmail.com. Who knows, we may even add you to our permanent staff if you like! But until then, we will have blog updates twice a week—Tuesdays, with posts authored by yours truly, and Thursdays with Alden sharing his depth of knowledge.

Well, that just about covers everything for now i think. On Thursday Alden Will kick you off with the first truly magic related article—he hasn’t exactly told me what he is writing precisely just yet, but from what he has foreshadowed it sounds rather interesting. Oh, and for the record—future blog posts will appear earlier than 9pm EST. promise.

So, take care—and I'll see you next Tuesday!