This is one of the hardest parts of making a deck. It is a daunting task for many new players and even for some veteran players. Some players don't understand the concept of what a sideboard is really meant to do and some players understand that, but are unsure how to build one appropriately and how to sideboard.
The essence of sideboarding can be broken down to a few key rules:
1. Bring a list. The floor rules have changed and you are now allowed to bring notes with you and refer to them between games. That means that after the first game, you can look at your notes, determine how you should sideboard (which cards go out and which cards go in) as well as any notes you may have written about how your game plan may change with a new sideboard card.
2. Use narrow cards. I notice many players make the mistake of either putting narrow cards in the main deck or putting too many general cards in the sideboard. The sideboard's main role is a place to put those narrow cards that are bad in most matches, but play a pivotal role or are incredibly powerful in certain matches. Celestial Purge is very bad against mono-white, but against a deck with red or black creatures, it's one of the best removal spells out there and it doesn't trigger abilities when a creature goes to the graveyard and prevents them from returning it from the graveyard.
3. Don't sideboard too much. It's a common mistake for some players to go overboard and have too many cards for a certain deck. That's usually a bad idea for two reasons. The more cards you devote to a single strategy, the fewer cards you have to devote to other strategies. The other problem is that you must take out cards to bring in your sideboard cards. It's definitely possible that you take out so many cards that you can dilute your strategy and suddenly your control deck doesn't have the right answers or your aggro deck doesn't have enough threats.
PLAY. MORE. LANDS.
This is the most succinct and best advice you will get regarding lands. Odds are, you are playing too few lands. You think that your Werewolf deck can get by on 20 lands? It probably doesn't really thrive on so few lands, but it's easy to dismiss the times you get "land screwed" to bad luck. The problem is that if you are getting unlucky on a regular basis, it's time to rethink the fact that maybe your deck design has a flaw. Generally, you want to start with 24 lands and adjust your lands up or down, accordingly. If you're playing a control deck, odds are that you need 25 or 26 lands.
Don't fall into the trap that mana guys (Avacyn's Pilgrim and Arbor Elf for example) count as mana sources. An Avacyn's Pilgrim is NOT equivalent to a Sunpetal Grove in your deck. You can't suddenly run four Avacyn's Pilgrim four fewer lands. First of all, you need a land to cast Avacyn's Pilgrim. You don't need any land to play a Sunpetal Grove. Secondly, Avacyn's Pilgrim is easily killed.
The common counter-argument is that if you have too many lands, you will lose. That is true. The dreaded "mana flood" can cause you to lose against someone who has the right number of lands. However, let's go through all the possible match-ups:
Too Few vs. Too Few: You're both in a pickle and one of you will win. It doesn't matter for the sake of this analysis, though. Both players need more lands.
Too Few vs. Just Right: the person with the right number of lands will generally win against the person with too few. We've all played a game like this. It's frustrating and our first instinct is to blame the deck, blame our opponent for being lucky, and blame the Gods of Fate as if they swooped in and clumped all the lands on the bottom. Take just a moment and consider that maybe you can't cast your three-drop on turn three reliably is because you ran twenty lands and figured that one-third of the deck should get you, on average three lands between your opening hand of seven cards and two draws. The key word there is "average".
Too Few vs. Too Many: this is one that's very subjective, but odds are that the person who has too many is in a better position. For one, that person can play every spell in his hand, even if there are very few of them. While you may be able to spam out a bunch of one-drops, they may only have a three drop and four drop (and five lands) that they can play, but their two creatures are probably way better than your three creatures that cost one mana. Furthermore, if they start drawing five-drops, they can play them, while you still need to catch a string of lands to start playing anything else.
Just Right vs. Too Many: Just like the land screw, the land flood loses against the guy who gets a good draw. This is to be expected.
Too Many vs. Too Many: another coin flip. One person will start drawing better spells and win. Again, not very important.
So, we can see from these matchups that ideally you want to have just the right number of lands, but if you have too many, you are better off than with too few (you are a favorite in the too few vs. too many matchup).
So, given a choice, play with 24 rather than 23 lands. Play with 26 lands rather than 25. Your deck will be better for it and you will win more games.
Now that we've covered the number, the next biggest problem is just what combination of lands is correct? This is more of an art than a science, and the best way to really tell is to play several games and see if you have problems with your lands. However, a good place to start is to count up the number of spells of each color and make your lands have a similar ratio. So, if you play a U/W deck with 20 white spells and 16 blue spells, 20/36 (56%)of your spells are white, and 16/36 (44%) are blue. Taking 24 lands, that means that we could start with 13 (24 * 56% = 13) Plains and 11 (24 * 44% = 11) Islands. To add in Glacial Fortress, we can take out two plains and two islands and still see that there are more lands that produce white than blue. This is only a start, as there are other factors to consider. Geist of Saint Traft is both white and blue. If you're running a green/red deck that wants to play Avacyn's Pilgrim or Arbor Elf on turn one, then it is very crucial that you have enough lands that can produce green on turn one.
There are two ways to build a budget deck: top-down or bottom-up design. In the context of deckbuilding, we can think of top-down design as finding a deck you like and trying to make it fit in a budget (thus you take out expensive cards and replace them with cheaper cards), while the bottom-up design we start with an empty deck and add cards (all budget) until we arrive at a list of 60 cards. Bottom-up design usually means that you have a general sense of what you want to build and just need cards to help you towards that goal.
I thought about that, but I think the problem is that a 2/3 isn't as strong in Standard, actually - it can't go head to head against other 3/3's or 2/3's in the format. I think that Naya should still stick to its strengths, which at the moment seems to be powering out mid-range guys, rather than really early beaters. Woolly Thoctar and Bloodbraid Elf are the big pulls for the deck, creature-wise. However, I'll give it some thought and consider a far more aggro Naya deck a chance, perhaps with 8-10 one-drops, 8 two-drops, 4 Woolly Thoctar, and 4 Bloodbraid Elf + 12 spells + 24 lands.
How about Ruthless Cullblade over Child of Night in non-Rare Vamps? I'm not sure it's such an easy substitution, as both have their merits.
I did think about that, and in an earlier version, I actually listed Ruthless Cullblade, but RC just barely missed the cut. In the end, the problem is that at least Child of Night is a 2/1 Lifelink creature all the time; it's always "on". RC is "off" until the lategame. I don't think it would be the end of the world to play one over the other, though. The main thing is to try to stick to the core of the deck, which I find far too many Vampires players stray away from - you want a full set of Nighthawks, Gatekeepers, Hexmage, Tendrils, Sign in Blood, and probably Urge to Feed is good enough to justify an automatic 4-of.
I thought about that, but I think the problem is that a 2/3 isn't as strong in Standard, actually - it can't go head to head against other 3/3's or 2/3's in the format. I think that Naya should still stick to its strengths, which at the moment seems to be powering out mid-range guys, rather than really early beaters. Woolly Thoctar and Bloodbraid Elf are the big pulls for the deck, creature-wise. However, I'll give it some thought and consider a far more aggro Naya deck a chance, perhaps with 8-10 one-drops, 8 two-drops, 4 Woolly Thoctar, and 4 Bloodbraid Elf + 12 spells + 24 lands.
I did think about that, and in an earlier version, I actually listed Ruthless Cullblade, but RC just barely missed the cut. In the end, the problem is that at least Child of Night is a 2/1 Lifelink creature all the time; it's always "on". RC is "off" until the lategame. I don't think it would be the end of the world to play one over the other, though. The main thing is to try to stick to the core of the deck, which I find far too many Vampires players stray away from - you want a full set of Nighthawks, Gatekeepers, Hexmage, Tendrils, Sign in Blood, and probably Urge to Feed is good enough to justify an automatic 4-of.
love your stuff think you can add a jace the wallet sculptor to your sig?
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My Current Decks
Standard
Turbo Flare
Green Blue Eldrazi
Blue White Control
Its really sad to see that is the only deck color where you can't play Mono
Hi, i thint that loam lion would be good in a bant deck in replacement of noble hierarch in a budget bant, considering that yakusoku's version have green as a second color...also i have same opinion of explore, in first turns with a tapland could be good in this deck...finishing my post i would to se a control "ish" bant deck in this post cause this aggro bant is too explosive but too weak against mass removal (pyroclasm, fallout, jund charm, chain reaction, etc.)
In the naya no rare deck, I am disappointed to see no wild nacatls or loam lions, they are some of the best early beats and chumps. This had been pointed out, but swinging for 3/4 loam lion turn two is great beats, not to mention I am able to block bloodbraids in a trade.
Other than that, you did an amazing job, I have this bookmarked.
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Thanks to Darth Monkey and SGT_Chubbz at Damnation Studios for the sig and banner.
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This virtual world is begining to feel more and more like Tron, exept with less motorcycles and more card games
I also have a question for you, should decks consist of only 60 cards?
I'm playing/tweaking my Kor Armory deck, but it currently consists of 65 cards, in order to have all the creatures, land, spells and equipment.
You should probably cut your deck to 60 cards for the sake of consistency. There's almost certainly five spells that are worse than the rest. By including them, you hurt your chances of drawing your best spells. Take a deck like Jund for instance: There are lists with Master of the Wild Hunt, lists with Abyssal Persecuter, and take a look at the removal in Jund. It has almost no four-of removal spells after Lightning Bolt. Those spells are all wonderful, but you want to keep the deck to 60 cards because you almost always want to draw and play Blightning, Bloodbraid Elf, etc. Not that Jund can't win without those cards, but it always wants to play them because they are that good.
In conclusion, you should always be at 60 cards. There are a few exceptions where competitive decks have had 61 cards due to some odd situation where they wanted the extra land or couldn't cut a card from a toolbox deck.
In the naya no rare deck, I am disappointed to see no wild nacatls or loam lions, they are some of the best early beats and chumps. This had been pointed out, but swinging for 3/4 loam lion turn two is great beats, not to mention I am able to block bloodbraids in a trade.
Other than that, you did an amazing job, I have this bookmarked.
There are two problems with the one-drops:
1) Ranger of Eos is no longer "budget". It's shot up to $7+, so I've removed it from all the budget decklists. Without Ranger of Eos, the viability of all one-drops in W/x/y decks need to be re-evaluated. After an Earthquake, being able to play Ranger of Eos and search for two Wild Nacatls and suddenly have 9 power on the board/hand is pretty powerful. Simply holding back on threats isn't nearly the same, particularly since a deck like UWR control wants you to vacillate between overextending to get past Wall of Denial and pinpoint removal and keeping creatures in your hand so to avoid getting wrecked by Earthquake. Ranger of Eos does a good job of that, but it's not budget-friendly any longer, so I think the best compromise is to up the curve on Naya some to play with better threats.
2) Wild Nacatl and Loam Lion off of Marsh Flats => Temple Garden net you a 2-power creature on turn 1 in Extended (obviously NOT on a budget), but that kind of consistency isn't as available in Standard and certainly not if you're on a budget. So, I could have gone either way, with a deck that's potentially more explosive, but less stable, or one that's less explosive, but more stable. I chose the latter, but I can understand if someone prefers the former.
I'll look into making two Naya decklists, one with a much lower curve.
----
As for the 60 vs. 61+ cards decks, let me make a little analogy here:
On a professional sports team, say baseball, there are a limited number of slots on the starting lineup. Ignoring the rules of how large you can make a starting lineup, ideally, you'd like the lineup to consist of your four best hitters. Every four at-bats, your best hitter is up again. (I've used four players, because if if you have a lineup less than four, if they load up the bases, you need a fourth player to bat next.)
Because of the rules, you can't do that, but you might ask yourself, what if I included 20 people on my starting lineup instead of 9?
It might be that you have 20 good players on your team, but chances are, there's a definite ranking to them, and some are clearly better than others. If you have one guy that is your homerun leader and one guy that doesn't do better than a single, you want the first guy at bat as often as possible, and the other guy as little as possible, perhaps not even on your lineup. With 20 players, your best player only hits 5% of the time. With 9 players, your best player hits 11% of the time.
It's not about taking *bad* cards out of your deck, but rather, trying to concentrate the percentage of your BEST cards in your deck.
60 versus 65 cards doesn't have such a huge swing, but in Magic, you'll often find that winning sometimes isn't about huge changes, but accumulation of lots of little ones. Running 60 cards versus 65 cards might help you win 2% more often. Playing with 24 lands instead of 22 lands might help you win 3% more often. Practicing with the deck before a tournament might help you win 4% more. Buying 4 copies of a key rare and putting it in your deck might help you win 5% more. Using a friend's decklist that has proven to win at FNM might help you win 6% more. Combining all these things together might help you go from ending the night 2-2 all the time to going 3-1, or even 4-0 at FNM far more often.
Hey yakusoku, first of all, great guide (once again!), second of all, I have 2 questions for you about grixis control in the no chase rare. The first concern lightning bolt. I was looking at Searing Blaze and I know its a little harder on the mana and not as fast as the bolt but it does much more (I think...) like take care of garruk and his beast token or what ever just a creature with less than 3 toughness and 3 to the guy or his plainswalker.
Second question, red has Earthquake as a kind of board sweeper but I was also looking at Chain Reaction which I liked but I don't see how I will cause my opponent to over commit to the board if i'm countering or removing... he will probably never over commit whereas white has Scepter of Dominance and wall of denial... I don't know if you could comment on Chain Reaction ?
Add this deck to the OP under No Chase Rare, I've found lots of success so far on MWS. Only real problems I see so far are Black Knight and Malakir Bloodwitch in Jund and Vamp builds... that's why World Queller is in the SB as well. Path can be replaced by Journey to Nowhere in extreme budget builds. Honor of the Pure isn't really replaceable, though you can find Promo versions on the cheap. Same with Path. (I bought 2 promo paths at $5 a piece)
I think Fetch Lands are going down in price, so maybe include 1 or 2, because they are very good, then again maybe not, because they don't have that much impact on the game.
also, I really like the "no chase rare" decks, they seem quite powerful! good job!!
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Standard RU Owling Mine (Runeflare Trap) RU
Recent FNM's
3-1 2nd
2-0 drop (Yeah, that is 2 wins and a drop...)
3-1 3rd
As far as I can see, the only expensive rares in that deck are the fetchlands. Simply replace them with Terramorphic Expanse and/or Esper Panorama and/or Grixis Panorama.
Somehow I missed this (probably since there are constantly new deck threads every hour). I agree; the biggest hinderance is lands. If you "budgetize" them, then you have a much more affordable deck.
Somehow I missed this (probably since there are constantly new deck threads every hour). I agree; the biggest hinderance is lands. If you "budgetize" them, then you have a much more affordable deck.
This is NOT an optimal deck. First of all, you're running too many lands. This deck does fine with 21-22. Second of all, you aren't running Grim Discovery. It's necessary to get your Crypts out (and can even help with your land drops). Also, Panoramas are just too slow (and only 7 lands produce colored mana and don't EtBT). With that said, I'd like to submit this list to the "no chase rare" database
SIDEBOARD
This is one of the hardest parts of making a deck. It is a daunting task for many new players and even for some veteran players. Some players don't understand the concept of what a sideboard is really meant to do and some players understand that, but are unsure how to build one appropriately and how to sideboard.
The essence of sideboarding can be broken down to a few key rules:
1. Bring a list. The floor rules have changed and you are now allowed to bring notes with you and refer to them between games. That means that after the first game, you can look at your notes, determine how you should sideboard (which cards go out and which cards go in) as well as any notes you may have written about how your game plan may change with a new sideboard card.
2. Use narrow cards. I notice many players make the mistake of either putting narrow cards in the main deck or putting too many general cards in the sideboard. The sideboard's main role is a place to put those narrow cards that are bad in most matches, but play a pivotal role or are incredibly powerful in certain matches. Celestial Purge is very bad against mono-white, but against a deck with red or black creatures, it's one of the best removal spells out there and it doesn't trigger abilities when a creature goes to the graveyard and prevents them from returning it from the graveyard.
3. Don't sideboard too much. It's a common mistake for some players to go overboard and have too many cards for a certain deck. That's usually a bad idea for two reasons. The more cards you devote to a single strategy, the fewer cards you have to devote to other strategies. The other problem is that you must take out cards to bring in your sideboard cards. It's definitely possible that you take out so many cards that you can dilute your strategy and suddenly your control deck doesn't have the right answers or your aggro deck doesn't have enough threats.
PLAY. MORE. LANDS.
This is the most succinct and best advice you will get regarding lands. Odds are, you are playing too few lands. You think that your Werewolf deck can get by on 20 lands? It probably doesn't really thrive on so few lands, but it's easy to dismiss the times you get "land screwed" to bad luck. The problem is that if you are getting unlucky on a regular basis, it's time to rethink the fact that maybe your deck design has a flaw. Generally, you want to start with 24 lands and adjust your lands up or down, accordingly. If you're playing a control deck, odds are that you need 25 or 26 lands.
Don't fall into the trap that mana guys (Avacyn's Pilgrim and Arbor Elf for example) count as mana sources. An Avacyn's Pilgrim is NOT equivalent to a Sunpetal Grove in your deck. You can't suddenly run four Avacyn's Pilgrim four fewer lands. First of all, you need a land to cast Avacyn's Pilgrim. You don't need any land to play a Sunpetal Grove. Secondly, Avacyn's Pilgrim is easily killed.
The common counter-argument is that if you have too many lands, you will lose. That is true. The dreaded "mana flood" can cause you to lose against someone who has the right number of lands. However, let's go through all the possible match-ups:
Too Few vs. Too Few: You're both in a pickle and one of you will win. It doesn't matter for the sake of this analysis, though. Both players need more lands.
Too Few vs. Just Right: the person with the right number of lands will generally win against the person with too few. We've all played a game like this. It's frustrating and our first instinct is to blame the deck, blame our opponent for being lucky, and blame the Gods of Fate as if they swooped in and clumped all the lands on the bottom. Take just a moment and consider that maybe you can't cast your three-drop on turn three reliably is because you ran twenty lands and figured that one-third of the deck should get you, on average three lands between your opening hand of seven cards and two draws. The key word there is "average".
Too Few vs. Too Many: this is one that's very subjective, but odds are that the person who has too many is in a better position. For one, that person can play every spell in his hand, even if there are very few of them. While you may be able to spam out a bunch of one-drops, they may only have a three drop and four drop (and five lands) that they can play, but their two creatures are probably way better than your three creatures that cost one mana. Furthermore, if they start drawing five-drops, they can play them, while you still need to catch a string of lands to start playing anything else.
Just Right vs. Too Many: Just like the land screw, the land flood loses against the guy who gets a good draw. This is to be expected.
Too Many vs. Too Many: another coin flip. One person will start drawing better spells and win. Again, not very important.
So, we can see from these matchups that ideally you want to have just the right number of lands, but if you have too many, you are better off than with too few (you are a favorite in the too few vs. too many matchup).
So, given a choice, play with 24 rather than 23 lands. Play with 26 lands rather than 25. Your deck will be better for it and you will win more games.
Now that we've covered the number, the next biggest problem is just what combination of lands is correct? This is more of an art than a science, and the best way to really tell is to play several games and see if you have problems with your lands. However, a good place to start is to count up the number of spells of each color and make your lands have a similar ratio. So, if you play a U/W deck with 20 white spells and 16 blue spells, 20/36 (56%)of your spells are white, and 16/36 (44%) are blue. Taking 24 lands, that means that we could start with 13 (24 * 56% = 13) Plains and 11 (24 * 44% = 11) Islands. To add in Glacial Fortress, we can take out two plains and two islands and still see that there are more lands that produce white than blue. This is only a start, as there are other factors to consider. Geist of Saint Traft is both white and blue. If you're running a green/red deck that wants to play Avacyn's Pilgrim or Arbor Elf on turn one, then it is very crucial that you have enough lands that can produce green on turn one.
There are two ways to build a budget deck: top-down or bottom-up design. In the context of deckbuilding, we can think of top-down design as finding a deck you like and trying to make it fit in a budget (thus you take out expensive cards and replace them with cheaper cards), while the bottom-up design we start with an empty deck and add cards (all budget) until we arrive at a list of 60 cards. Bottom-up design usually means that you have a general sense of what you want to build and just need cards to help you towards that goal.
4 Somberwald Vigilante
4 Ashmouth Hound
2 Hinterland Hermit
4 Rakdos Shred-Freak
4 Gore-House Chainwalker
4 Pillar of Flame
4 Brimstone Volley
4 Annihilating Fire
4 Wingcrafter
4 Welkin Tern
4 Aven Squire
4 Azorius Arrester
4 Sunspire Griffin
4 Vassal Soul
4 Pacifism
2 Burden of Guilt
6 Island
12 Plains
4 Avacyn's Pilgrim
2 Young Wolf
4 Darkthicket Wolf
4 Trusted Forcemage
4 Orchard Spirit
4 Titanic Growth
4 Giant Growth
4 Tragic Slip
4 Victim of Night
4 Highborn Ghoul
4 Vampire Interloper
4 Markov Patrician
4 Searchlight Geist
4 Liliana's Shade
24 Swamp
[deck=RDW]
4 Goblin Arsonist
4 Rakdos Cackler
4 Blistercoil Weird
4 Gore-House Chainwalker
4 Rakdos Shred-Freak
2 Lightning Mauler
4 Pillar of Flame
4 Brimstone Volley
4 Flames of the Firebrand
22 Mountain
4 Phantom General
4 Vitu-Ghazi Guildmage
4 Call of the Conclave
4 Lingering Souls
4 Midnight Haunting
4 Gather the Townsfolk
4 Selesnya Charm
4 Intangible Virtue
4 Evolving Wilds
1 Swamp
1 Island
5 Plains
5 Forest
4 Selesnya Guildgate
4 Desperate Ravings
4 Geistflame
4 Think Twice
4 Forbidden Alchemy
4 Pillar of Flame
4 Izzet Charm
4 Searing Spear
4 Rakdos Guildgate
8 Mountain
8 Island
4 Rakdos Cackler
3 Goblin Arsonist
4 Rakdos Shred-Freak
4 Ash Zealot
4 Gore-House Chainwalker
3 Hellrider
4 Pillar of Flame
4 Brimstone Volley
4 Doomed Traveler
2 Selfless Cathar
4 Cloistered Youth
4 Loyal Cathar
4 Gather the Townsfolk
4 Fiend Hunter
4 Silverblade Paladin
3 Arrest
23 Plains
4 Champion of the Parish
4 Avacyn's Pilgrim
4 Mayor of Avabruck
2 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Fiend Hunter
4 Thraben Doomsayer
4 Champion of Lambholt
4 Oblivion Ring
4 Sunpetal Grove
4 Gavony Township
6 Forest
10 Plains
4 Avacyn's Pilgrim
4 Borderland Ranger
4 Champion of Lambholt
4 Geist-Honored Monk
4 Angel of Glory's Rise
4 Unburial Rites
4 Faithless Looting
4 Rootbound Crag
4 Sunpetal Grove
2 Shimmering Grotto
2 Evolving Wilds
1 Swamp
5 Forest
3 Plains
3 Mountain
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Drogskol Captain
4 Runechanter's Pike
4 Midnight Haunting
4 Thought Scour
4 Syncopate
4 Azorius Charm
4 Drowned Catacomb
6 Plains
8 Island
2 Swamp
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I thought about that, but I think the problem is that a 2/3 isn't as strong in Standard, actually - it can't go head to head against other 3/3's or 2/3's in the format. I think that Naya should still stick to its strengths, which at the moment seems to be powering out mid-range guys, rather than really early beaters. Woolly Thoctar and Bloodbraid Elf are the big pulls for the deck, creature-wise. However, I'll give it some thought and consider a far more aggro Naya deck a chance, perhaps with 8-10 one-drops, 8 two-drops, 4 Woolly Thoctar, and 4 Bloodbraid Elf + 12 spells + 24 lands.
I did think about that, and in an earlier version, I actually listed Ruthless Cullblade, but RC just barely missed the cut. In the end, the problem is that at least Child of Night is a 2/1 Lifelink creature all the time; it's always "on". RC is "off" until the lategame. I don't think it would be the end of the world to play one over the other, though. The main thing is to try to stick to the core of the deck, which I find far too many Vampires players stray away from - you want a full set of Nighthawks, Gatekeepers, Hexmage, Tendrils, Sign in Blood, and probably Urge to Feed is good enough to justify an automatic 4-of.
love your stuff think you can add a jace the wallet sculptor to your sig?
Green Blue Eldrazi
Blue White Control
Regards!
Other than that, you did an amazing job, I have this bookmarked.
Thanks to Darth Monkey and SGT_Chubbz at Damnation Studios for the sig and banner.
I also have a question for you, should decks consist of only 60 cards?
I'm playing/tweaking my Kor Armory deck, but it currently consists of 65 cards, in order to have all the creatures, land, spells and equipment.
In conclusion, you should always be at 60 cards. There are a few exceptions where competitive decks have had 61 cards due to some odd situation where they wanted the extra land or couldn't cut a card from a toolbox deck.
There are two problems with the one-drops:
1) Ranger of Eos is no longer "budget". It's shot up to $7+, so I've removed it from all the budget decklists. Without Ranger of Eos, the viability of all one-drops in W/x/y decks need to be re-evaluated. After an Earthquake, being able to play Ranger of Eos and search for two Wild Nacatls and suddenly have 9 power on the board/hand is pretty powerful. Simply holding back on threats isn't nearly the same, particularly since a deck like UWR control wants you to vacillate between overextending to get past Wall of Denial and pinpoint removal and keeping creatures in your hand so to avoid getting wrecked by Earthquake. Ranger of Eos does a good job of that, but it's not budget-friendly any longer, so I think the best compromise is to up the curve on Naya some to play with better threats.
2) Wild Nacatl and Loam Lion off of Marsh Flats => Temple Garden net you a 2-power creature on turn 1 in Extended (obviously NOT on a budget), but that kind of consistency isn't as available in Standard and certainly not if you're on a budget. So, I could have gone either way, with a deck that's potentially more explosive, but less stable, or one that's less explosive, but more stable. I chose the latter, but I can understand if someone prefers the former.
I'll look into making two Naya decklists, one with a much lower curve.
----
As for the 60 vs. 61+ cards decks, let me make a little analogy here:
On a professional sports team, say baseball, there are a limited number of slots on the starting lineup. Ignoring the rules of how large you can make a starting lineup, ideally, you'd like the lineup to consist of your four best hitters. Every four at-bats, your best hitter is up again. (I've used four players, because if if you have a lineup less than four, if they load up the bases, you need a fourth player to bat next.)
Because of the rules, you can't do that, but you might ask yourself, what if I included 20 people on my starting lineup instead of 9?
It might be that you have 20 good players on your team, but chances are, there's a definite ranking to them, and some are clearly better than others. If you have one guy that is your homerun leader and one guy that doesn't do better than a single, you want the first guy at bat as often as possible, and the other guy as little as possible, perhaps not even on your lineup. With 20 players, your best player only hits 5% of the time. With 9 players, your best player hits 11% of the time.
It's not about taking *bad* cards out of your deck, but rather, trying to concentrate the percentage of your BEST cards in your deck.
60 versus 65 cards doesn't have such a huge swing, but in Magic, you'll often find that winning sometimes isn't about huge changes, but accumulation of lots of little ones. Running 60 cards versus 65 cards might help you win 2% more often. Playing with 24 lands instead of 22 lands might help you win 3% more often. Practicing with the deck before a tournament might help you win 4% more. Buying 4 copies of a key rare and putting it in your deck might help you win 5% more. Using a friend's decklist that has proven to win at FNM might help you win 6% more. Combining all these things together might help you go from ending the night 2-2 all the time to going 3-1, or even 4-0 at FNM far more often.
Second question, red has Earthquake as a kind of board sweeper but I was also looking at Chain Reaction which I liked but I don't see how I will cause my opponent to over commit to the board if i'm countering or removing... he will probably never over commit whereas white has Scepter of Dominance and wall of denial... I don't know if you could comment on Chain Reaction ?
Legacy: Burn, U/R Delver
Modern: U/R Storm, Soul Sisters
Vintage: #ImBrokeLOL
EDH: Nin, the Pain Artist (Chaos), Roon of the Hidden Realm (Blink)
14 Plains
4 Sejiri Steppe
2 Emeria, the Sky Ruin
Creatures
4 Soul Warden
4 Hada Freeblade
4 Kazandu Blademaster
4 Kor Aeronaut
4 White Knight
4 Honor of the Pure
4 Brave the Elements
4 Harm's Way
4 Oblivion Ring
4 Path to Exile
4 Devout Lightcaster
4 Kor Firewalker
4 Celestial Purge
3 World Queller
Legacy: Burn, U/R Delver
Modern: U/R Storm, Soul Sisters
Vintage: #ImBrokeLOL
EDH: Nin, the Pain Artist (Chaos), Roon of the Hidden Realm (Blink)
I think Fetch Lands are going down in price, so maybe include 1 or 2, because they are very good, then again maybe not, because they don't have that much impact on the game.
also, I really like the "no chase rare" decks, they seem quite powerful! good job!!
RU Owling Mine (Runeflare Trap) RU
Recent FNM's
3-1 2nd
2-0 drop (Yeah, that is 2 wins and a drop...)
3-1 3rd
4 Spreading Seas
2 Jace Beleren
4 Oblivion Ring
2 Soul Manipulation
4 Vampire Nighthawk
3 Deft Duelist
3 Sphinx of Jwar Isle
I have this and regular Grixis Control sleeved and I'm not sure which is better :/ Only thing is I don't have nor can I afford the new Jaces.
Temporarily retired from the game
Thanks a bunch to Rivenor from Miraculous Recovery Signatures for the awesome sigpic!
Rage quit reason of the moment:
I'll try to recreate this one and put the same idea with some additions from Zen & Worldwake
3 Kederekt Leviathan
4 Spellbound Dragon
2 Banefire
2 Cancel
2 Countersquall
4 Courier's Capsule
2 Cruel Ultimatum
2 Double Negative
3 Slave of Bolas
2 Soul Manipulation
2 Soul's Fire
3 Terminate
2 Volcanic Fallout
2 Grixis Panorama
8 Island
5 Mountain
5 Swamp
How I can covert "T2 Dredge" into budget? (The deck is http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=219302&highlight=Crypt+of+Agadeem)
4 Crumbling Necropolis
4 Terramorphic Expanse
4 Grixis Panorama
1 Mountain
4 Island
3 Swamp
4 Extractor Demon
2 Fatestitcher
4 Hedron Crab
3 Monstrous Carabid
4 Rotting Rats
4 Sedraxis Specter
4 Viscera Dragger
4 Tome Scour
Alliance of Rogue Deck Builders Member. Check us out!
http://forums.mtgsalvation.com/showthread.php?t=157704
EDIT: disregard this, I don't know what I was thinking.
Yes
This is NOT an optimal deck. First of all, you're running too many lands. This deck does fine with 21-22. Second of all, you aren't running Grim Discovery. It's necessary to get your Crypts out (and can even help with your land drops). Also, Panoramas are just too slow (and only 7 lands produce colored mana and don't EtBT). With that said, I'd like to submit this list to the "no chase rare" database
4 Crypt of Agadeem
8 Island
1 Mountain
4 Swamp
4 Terramorphic Expanse
4 Architects of Will
4 Extractor Demon
2 Fatestitcher
4 Hedron Crab
1 Kederekt Leviathan
4 Monstrous Carabid
4 Rotting Rats
4 Sedraxis Specter
2 Viscera Dragger
4 Grim Discovery
2 Ponder
4 Tome Scour
I've won multiple FNMs with the deck and it's extremely consistent.
GX Tron XG
UR Phoenix RU
GG Freyalise High Tide GG
UR Parun Counterspells RU
BB Yawgmoth Token Storm BB
WB Pestilence BW