One of the most popular entries on last years blog – viewed by over 100 unique visitors – was this. So in an attempt to drive up ad revenue, let’s do it again…
AW has been hard at work crafting a fiendish MTG infect deck. He has named it 22 Deadly Venoms and no doubt stuffed it full of cards like this or that. I can see it now and I shudder; it’s going to be a nasty piece of work indeed.
So I have to counter it, and I’m hoping between the nine decks heading south with me (540 cards total) at least one of them will be up to the task. In this post, I shall introduce each in turn with a little hint into their mysteries.
Elves
Guess what? This guy is full of elves. Every creature is an elf, and virtually every spell is elf-related. Lots of elf tokens as well. The idea is to get as many elves out as possible, buff them with the many lords in the deck, and start swinging. Basically a fast green weenie decks with lots of lords and very few spells.
Allies
Allies are cool cards that have effects that are triggered whenever an ally comes into play. Fill a deck with allies and things get crazy quickly. There are some good ones in this blue/white deck, but in test playing it is consistently winning by milling via the excavator. There are four of them in the deck, plus other cards that allow up to 7 more (using clones) PLUS 3 more cards than can turn themselves into allies every turn. It’s a bit combo-y, and a bit irritating to play against, but a real blast to use 🙂
Black
So your opponent plays Maralen, and you laugh inside thinking “That’s going to help me more than it will him!” And then in his next turn he fishes out and plays Painful Quandary and you realise you just lost the game. That’s the idea at least, but given this evil, nasty, disruptive deck has got a whole motley bunch of cards in it who knows if it will ever happen. In tests this has only about a 50% win rate, and I’m not convinced it may not need a tad more tweaking.
Cloudhost (aka. “White Fatties)
White is known for powerful weenie decks (low-costed soldiers, for instance). I thought I’d turn that on its head and therefore assembled a deck full of high-cost (no CMC < 4) stupidly powerful white fatties. The issue is mana of course, but I may have that beaten (the deck name contains a hint how), but even so this deck has a low win rate by virtue of it being a bit slow. When it ‘goes off’ it is unstoppable, and I expect it would fare quite well in multiplay. A very enjoyable deck to use despite it’s weaknesses.
Tokens
And here we have the high-concept green/blue deck. I love the combo afforded by the above two cards, and I had to build a token-based deck around it. The exact for of the deck is still in flux, but my goal is a deck that absolutely needs tokens (including +1/+1) to win. Lets see how it works out when finished…
Eldrazi
There is nothing subtle about an Eldrazi deck. Basically it is all about getting your Eldrazi spawn out as fast as possible, and then sacking them for mana to make the truly big guys. The inclusion of the above two cards are to firstly let the big guys come out twice as fast (since spawn are now worth 2 mana) and to get the most out of Annihilator: “Just put those two lands you sacrificed on my side of the table please…”
Reach For The Skies (aka “Green Fatties”)
The inclusion of Heartbeast was because these decks are primarily designed for fun. It’s a fun card. Yes I know it technically helps the opponent as well (possibly more) but it also means that whoever playing against this green deck with any other deck should be a different experience if Heartbeat comes out. And it needs to be, since in test-plays this deck is one of two with a 100% win rate.
And to think that 100% has come about despite me never even casting Mr 13/13 up there 🙂
Red/Blue Control
Without even realizing it I seem to have assembled a wickedly effective “Oh no you don’t” control deck. If this one gets going the opponent never keeps any creatures in play and either gets timmed to death or poked by one of several unblockable (and shrouded) creatures. The first deck containing blue control elements that I truly enjoy playing. A high win ratio as well.
Steel Army Of The Overseers
The other 100% win deck so far. (Yes, I should play it against green fatties). This deck has 57 artifacts in it – including every land – and so many token generators and break-the-game imprint-based card cloners and deck searchers it is just crazy and complex and completely mad to play or play against. Plus you can make everything indestructable as early as turn two!
But can it – or green fatties – beat 22 Deadly Venoms? Could my token deck be polished into a worthy contender? And which of these ten (including Venoms) will emerge with the highest win ratio after the extensive playing that will occur in that legendary Randwick apartment?
Time will tell…