Discussion Forum

First off, I'd suggest making it 60 cards. control decks usually run 22-25 lands in a 60 card standard format. theres a lot of one-of's which is a concern to me. If you look at the top 8's at mtgtop8.com youll see that there's rarely 1 of's because decks usually have a theme and or a goal (win condition) and a card that is good at achieving this win condition is usually good enough to run 4 of, unless of course it threw off the mana curve. Lets say for argument sake that this deck's win condition is control / creature beat. so we have 4 creatures to go towards winning. That seems like a dangerous play against the top decks that run about 12 removal spells. your deck seems like it would be crushed by a couple day of judgements and oblivion rings. Then again youd probably have to wait it out and leave counterpells in your hand before you try and cast creatures and hope they stick. But this is also dangerous because something like caw blade will have developed by then and be beating your face with a sword bird. And also a deck like mine (turbo valakut) would have won by turn 5 if you held on to your control cards. its hard to say whether this deck would be successful or not. tell me how it goes in your local tourney's (please note which decks you won and lost against and I can better give you advise).

Thats the whole reason I posted on here, i'm not sure which cards to keep and which to toss to make this work better, and I also havent begun building a sideboard yet. Should I be focusing more on counter-control and protecting creatures I do drop or should I swith some counter to removal and put more creatures in?

A lot of it is also proactive control like praetors and memoricide(which I admit I need at least one more of) to keep win conditions from ever becoming an issue on the opponents field.

Specific advice on cards is the most helpful thing anyone can give me right now since im just getting back into the game after a couple years and I have no idea what synergizes together in the latest sets.

http://www.mtgvault.com/ViewDeck.aspx?DeckID=232008
Here, I made a sketch of what a good synergetic deck looks like. The only way you can run a fair amount of one-of's is fi you have a good amount of draw / control. Here 4 Jace and 4 preordain is enough draw and digging in early game to set up a play. now this adds another win-condition element, which is planeswalkers. Karn and liliana double as win conditions along with the creatures. This decklist got 5th place in nationals. Blue Black unfortunately doesn't see play like it used to because caw-blade is so efficient at taking it down.

I don't mean to run a lot of one-ofs and will do my best to get rid of them.

My main thing is that I just started building this deck less than a week ago, and I don't have any cards from the Zendikar block to use, so I'd rather avoid using any to build this deck and instead focus on building a strong base deck to go into Innistrad when it releases. Obviously there's no way to make it a national level deck with only using half the available cards, I'm really more looking at how to build around a solid win condition.

I hadn't considered Karn Liberated at all but he seems to fit the idea very nicely. I didn't realize the 2011 Core set was still legal in standard? How much longer will that last?

I updated the deck list a bit and tried to cut out some of the less useful cards. If I can work out a solid decklist soon I'd like to try taking it to a local tournament by the end of the week and see how I do with it.

http://www.mtgvault.com/ViewDeck.aspx?DeckID=231656

The entire zendikar block and m11 cycle out when innAstrad comes out.

I definitely recommend going up to 26 lands. You've got a few high drops and control decks love their mana. As far as card choices go, I'd definitely recommend Preordain over Ponder as Ponder isn't really really good without running fetchlands to shuffle away what you don't want out of it. Preordain you can ship stuff to the bottom.

Preordain cycles out of atandard in barely over a week which is why im avoiding in. Im gonna rethink this deck a little bit with innastrad cards and repost later.

Edit:

http://www.mtgvault.com/ViewDeck.aspx?DeckID=231656


This is the work in progress. The deck builder doesn't have Innastrad cards in it yet but I plan to add the following once it releases:

4x Skaab Ruinator - http://sales.starcitygames.com/carddisplay.php?product=285920
4x Woodland Cemetery - http://sales.starcitygames.com/carddisplay.php?product=284627
4x Hinterland Harbor - http://sales.starcitygames.com/carddisplay.php?product=284633


Cards I'm debating about for either money or play reasons:

2x Liliana of the Veil - http://sales.starcitygames.com/carddisplay.php?product=284646
3x Snapcaster Mage - http://sales.starcitygames.com/carddisplay.php?product=285914


The whole idea is to throw down a birthing pod early and use Reassembling Skeleton's ability to move itself from the graveyard back to the field to sacrifice it to bring out Skaab Ruinator or Glissa the Traitor from my deck without paying ruinator's extra cost, but I can still play it from my graveyard later if necessary.

Spellskite allows me to protect birthing pod from artifact hate and sac it to pull a skaab if it doesn't seem to be doing anything else. Acidic slime for artifact hate plus a sac for grave titan or consecrated sphinx.


What I'm debating now is what to remove or move to the sideboard to fit in the cards from Innastrad. Should I keep acidic slime on my sideboard for backup artifact hate and just get rid of the grave titan? That only worries me that I won't have end-game plays to blow up an artifact and dump a huge token-dumping beatstick. Consecrated sphinx is great, but he's sitting at the top of my list of things to take out.

Thoughts?

INNISTRAD INNISTRAD INNISTRAD INNISTRAD INNISTRAD InnIstrad InnIstrad Inn!strad

[QUOTE=dagbaker]INNISTRAD INNISTRAD INNISTRAD INNISTRAD INNISTRAD InnIstrad InnIstrad Inn!strad[/QUOTE]

This post was informative and helpful to all involved and I want to take time out of my day to thank you personally for making it. I hope you will continue to make such lucrative contributions to our discussions in the future good sir.

[QUOTE=Echaos]This post was informative and helpful to all involved and I want to take time out of my day to thank you personally for making it. I hope you will continue to make such lucrative contributions to our discussions in the future good sir.[/QUOTE]

Hey man, I was just correcting the person who put a capital 'A' where the 'i' was supposed to be in Innistrad. Don't be such a troll.

[QUOTE=dagbaker]Hey man, I was just correcting the person who put a capital 'A' where the 'i' was supposed to be in Innistrad. Don't be such a troll.[/QUOTE]

Im not being a troll, making a post that consists of nothing but "innistrad" over and over would be considered more of a troll since it adds nothing to the thread nor did you even state why you posted it until I said something.

Can I not be excited for Innistrad too?

I like the deck, but Glissa just isn't that great in standard. She's really only good in EDH actually.