Discussion Forum

As I've mentioned before, I'm trying to be a competitive player(Goal to be competitve at GPs but, right now i'm still trying to be the animals who do FNM out here) so, here are several decks awaiting some critique. As an FYI, I'm working on aggressive mulliganing.

If you would be so kind, Please post suggestions for build in the thread and pilotting ideas on the deck's page. It's just how I'd like to organize comments ^_^


Thank you all in advance for any help!

Without Further Ado:


Here's a Deck I constructed at 4:00 am - just a couple days ago - which seems to be the only viable Opponent-milling deck I've seen in Standard. Having said that, I haven't really been looking for those kinds of decks. This was all about using Jace's Erasure and Mind Unbound in a deck together. I would like to get this one busted into serious shape. There is the small hitch here in that you run the risk of decking yourself, due to the nature of the looter and the draw in general. For this reason, I recommended to my buddy Rob (whom I built the deck for) to hold off on casting mind unbound until you have at least two Jace's Erasure on the board. Though one would still put cards into their graveyard, milling doesn't require graveyard anything. It requires the deck running. At a one to one ratio, that's obviously not the best risk. At 2-1 or more, yes it is. The ideal ratio, I think, is 3 erasures and a single mind unbound.

The thing about milling the opponent is that you have to have a variety of permanents for the opponent to deal with. Even one or two milling threats is insignificant. The exponential growth of that with Mind unbound/erasure or looter/erasure (again, the stipulation being two erasures are on the board), combined with all the milling of Jace himself and the mesmerists, I feel offers a good balance. I'm also a fan of using multiple types of cards to accomplish a single goal (in this case, a planeswalker, creatures, and enchantments) so that no single play can stop it dead. Green functions to "flank" the opponent by hitting them with Village Survivors as well as to accel as needed. The Survivors are collosal enough to offer up a Victory if the milling is somehow disabled in total. It needs more testing and a sideboard but, this deck i want to get into tournament shape

http://www.mtgvault.com/ViewDeck.aspx?DeckID=320943



This is a quite powerful Monoblack Zombie build using pretty much all the standards. It evolved from a deck which was originally 4 captains, 4 C.Reaper and 4 Zombie infestation with the rest being Islands and Swamps. Has only seen a few games online(I don't own all the requistes to build it) so I don't have a long winded second paragraph.

http://www.mtgvault.com/ViewDeck.aspx?DeckID=309786



My usual FNM competitor. This is a R/G Aggro Deck that centers around a few human/werewolves. If I can't flip humans, the lords still pump them plenty (its not uncommon to end up with a board full of 5/5 humans instead of 10/10 wolves). Hellrider functions as... well... hellrider. The strangleroot geists give me the option, if my opponent is edging over me too much, to fight aggressively for a turn or two and keep them on the defense.

In this environment, my knowledge and play of control playing has allowed me to make this deck last well into the late game by choosing my plays and forcing counters out of opponents or hitting them hard enough with what's on the board to elicit wasteful creature destruction and enough fear to tap out on their turn so i can cast whatever card is in my hand when I decide to apply these tactics.

http://www.mtgvault.com/ViewDeck.aspx?DeckID=319502



Always out performs R/G at FNM but, I stopped using it when I got tired of all the U/W, U/B, U/x/x, and delvers. It's much more fun to play wolves! This is the strongest build of what started as a rather pathetic solar flare deck(http://www.mtgvault.com/ViewDeck.aspx?DeckID=261627). I've forsaken a lot of "traditional" numbers and removed things like snapcaster and Forbidden alchemy altogether. I've found that this build gives me a solid variety of answers without bogging me down with dead weights (like late game manaleaks or negates against all creature decks, among many others). The endgame here is surviving to 7-8 mana. Then there are 5 different bombs (one-ofs) so that if my opponent has an answer for one, I have another that's COMPLETELY Different.

The trick with this one is draining the opponent's resources. A lot of players around my area are very good at playing around control decks through timing and cunning. The answer as the control player is to identify when they are setting those types of timed plays up and essentially reversing the roles (making yourself the control player xP). This has, at times, included letting their game-changers stick in favor of another card they've calculated into my defeat. It's definitely hard to use this one against players who beat you in the experience department.

http://www.mtgvault.com/ViewDeck.aspx?DeckID=319504



Monogreen, no sideboard. I think that sums up the deck. The numbers on this one are a little janky but, it's pretty hardcore. No sideboard yet. I've been waiting for AVR to take this one out of the casual box. I don't think I need to explain the tech on it too much. Village Survivors is usually what seals the victory. Depending on the board, I'm quite fond of using garruk to draw. If not, Pump him to ultimate for a buttload of wurms. It's as good as Zombie Apocalypse but with 6/6s right out of the gate. I mulligan here until i predict the ability to play turn 3 Vorapede/Garruk - the expensive aggressors of the deck. I say predict because, it takes 5 cards to make that play happen and I will gladly mulligan away a hand of 5 if I don't see a victory when I look at it. This, to me, ensures that it's simply a matter of draw and drop from the earliest possible point in the game. Doubling chant is simply awesome. If I had four, they'd all be in here.

No second paragraph here either.

http://www.mtgvault.com/ViewDeck.aspx?DeckID=319506

Phew! Sorry about the mad long post. I figured if I want to be competitive, I should lay out as much information as possible on how each deck ended up where it is.