I ... got ... crushed ... hard.
I don't know if I've blogged this deck idea yet but the premise is simple. Is plays on the synergy of Mutavault and Haunted Plate Mail with board sweepers.
That shell can exist in a few colors. White is a traditional wrath direction. Red usually has some sweeping as well as black. Blue even can do it via bounce. So the world is my oyster. I decided to start with a traditional WU control build and we will go from there. I'm going to go through what I learned from the testing card by card.
Lessons learned from testing:
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I love this guy. I probably will never use the lifelink option but the other two are great. Smoothing draws early is always solid and the removal mode is pretty good too. Look for places to keep aggro off their mana and a way to pseudo-remove things with death triggers. Solid 4 of.
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This guy is in the deck just to give me some turn two action. Perhaps it could be a Augur of Bolas but that is a creature which I'm trying to avoid. It may be that against aggro these go out for the Bolas. 4 of but only until I find something better.
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Probably wrong. Looking for something better. Does anyone know how to multicolumn in blogger without editing the HTML. I was hoping there was a fiddly bit at the top for it but no such luck. Placeholder until I find something better.
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Love it, it gets planeswalkers, it gets Voice / Geist w/o the downside. It slices, I love it. 4 of city.
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Love it. This guy kills every creature, also planeswalkers. The lifegain is great! And it's an instant. Auto 4 of. I know what you're thinking ("whoa Pete a Red splash?"). Shocklands are great! Never had any trouble hitting this guy off of just a bunch of shocklands.
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Sometimes you gotta wrath. Everyone plays creatures now so this isn't going to be dead. It is a bit annoying with persist and voice. Still it's a 4 of.
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Heart and sould of the deck. Must stay. That being said I loved this dude. I hated the casting cost, but it was just brutal. Only sorcery speed removal gets this guy. He survives my wrath and then bashes. Just sweet.
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Super important. There were several games where I just needed to draw this guy and I win. However I had a lot of trouble finding it. Not sure what to do because I am already playing 4.
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And that's everything I've been playing with. Now I'm going to checkout some WU control decks and look for tech. I think the Cancel slot is weak. And there is room for another 2 cards because I am going down to 26 lands.
Decklist:
26 lands - 4 Mutavaults and 24 dual lands, every combination in WUR. (yeah it doesn't add up, figure it out)
34 spells - 4 of everything.
- 2drop: Azorious Charm, Think Twice
- 3drop: Detention Sphere, Cancel
- 4drop: Supreme Verdict, Haunted Plate Mail, Warleader's Helix
- X: Sphinx's Revelation
got some more testing in. decided to drop the mutavaults, they just were chumping against aggro/midrange and that is an awful place to be. kept red and am considering something like izzet charm. probably should add snapcaster. needed more wraths, Terminus time.
ReplyDeletemichael switched to playing the R/G aggro deck kibler used for the Championships, things got a lot worse for me.
have they finally gotten rid of all the brainstorm/preordain/ponder effects? that would help you get to your big revs more frequently. That may be the role the augur is filling that thinking twice is missing.
ReplyDeleteI think you could use augur instead of think twice. you only have 4 wraths, and I think augur makes the opponent commit an extra creature so you don't necessarily have to wrath on t4.
The downside is that your plate mail cant activate? even if you just chump, then augur is card selection, replaces itself and gains life. if you don't have a chump opportunity, do you care that the mail can't activate for free?
think twice takes 5 mana (in installments and as an instant, sure) to get 2 cards out of it. augur is like drawing a 1/3 for 0 and then selecting the best spell of your next three cards.
synergy be damned. augur is stronger than it looks, especially against aggro, which is where think twice is at its worst.
spot on. I also (from testing) feel what you are saying. as i've been playing a i feel a personal pull towards using a WUR shell for the Plate Mail. And recently there was a MWC so see, http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/eventcoverage/wc13/video3
ReplyDeleteI really have trouble coming up with major differences from what they do.