MTG thread

Hoss said:

Zero lands? How does that work?

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By cheating the rules, basically. Look at a card like Golgari Grave-Troll that has the mechanic Dredge on it. It looks pretty harmless, right? If it's in your graveyard, you can put 6 cards in your graveyard and "draw" the Grave-Troll instead of whatever you would have drawn for your turn.

Except... it works for any card draw. Also, lots and lots of things either trigger by going to the graveyard, or are trivially easy to get back. Narcomoeba is a 1/1 that comes into play if it goes straight from your library to your graveyard. So when you Dredge (and there are more cards than just Grave-Troll with that mechanic), if you hit a Narcomoeba you get a free 1/1. It's not much, but it enables a lot.

The card Bridge from Below has no text UNLESS it's in your graveyard, in which case you get a 2/2 zombie whenever you have a creature die. So you Dredge a bunch of draws, have a huge graveyard, and end up with a few free Narcomoebas. Then you use a "free" spell like Cabal Therapy or Dread Return that lets you sacrifice creatures instead of paying mana to flash them back (a mechanic that lets you cast from the graveyard). Sac a Narcomoeba, trigger Bridge from Below to get 2/2 zombies, and get your effect. In the case of Dread Return, this typically means animating a kill condition from your graveyard like Flame-kin Zealout (gives all your dudes a boost in power + haste), or Elesh Norn.

There are lots of other components to Dredge that make it powerful. Bloodghast and Prized Amalgam are just guys that easily come back from the graveyard over and over. The deck isn't totally manaless (in most cases), just very mana light. So it runs a few lands, but mainly those which have other effects like Cephalid Coliseum. That one you can sac later on to draw cards and then discard them... which is exactly what you want to do in Dredge. Replace those draws with Dredge creatures, and then pitch the same Dredge creatures back into the graveyard so you can do it again next turn. Effectively, your graveyard becomes your hand as you play, and you get access to your entire deck.

Dredge is EASILY the best game 1 deck in Vintage, where it is utterly busted because of Bazaar of Baghdad. In Legacy it's less powerful, but still a boogieman when people don't show up ready to respect the graveyard. Since most of what it does bypasses the spellcasting rules by being triggers, it's extremely hard to interact. It's like playing checkers while the other guy is playing chess.

That's just Dredge, btw. There are other zero mana decks, like Oops All Spells, which are just fragile and goofy combos. A lot of combo decks run land light, though, because you want more business in your hand. Storm usually runs 15ish lands, but other mana sources like Lion's Eye Diamond, Lotus Petal, etc. to make up the shortfall.

Hoss said:

I appreciate you need to know colors and theme to make solid suggestions, but I don't know. I just have to get some decks together and see how they play. That's why I'm looking for a starting point. The only general guidance I've gotten from my wife and daughter is 24 lands and 60 cards exactly (unless playing commander) and my daughter is fanatical about those 2 numbers. So fanatical that I don't even know for sure if 60 cards is an official rule. She hasn't been playing long, that's apparently just the advice other players have been giving her.

So far my favorite deck to play with was a white/black commander deck. Least favorite was all black vampires. I've also enjoyed playing a blue/green and a red/white. i'm almost settled that the first one I build will be black/green with a lot of artifacts just because I like the cards I've found. Or I might switch one of those colors out for red or white. Basically, only blue isn't appealing to me.
Tell me about your zero creature decks. How do they work, and what are their strengths and weaknesses?



Zero lands? How does that work?

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24 lands and 60 cards are guidelines more than rules. You should have enough lands to support your casting curve (1 mana cost spells on turn one. Two mana cost spells on turn two, etc.) or the size of casting costs in your deck (I have a very fast mono-black deck with nothing costing more than 3 mana and with a lot of acceleration like Dark Ritual, Necropotence, Phyrexian Arena so I don't need a lot of land). If, on the flip side, you have a slower deck with larger spells and creatures, you may need more land.

I think 18 is a "soft" minimum and roughly 25 land is a "soft" maximum. Play testing helps determine if you need more or less.

One of my decks with no creatures was mono-red and relied on direct damage spells (lightning bolts, etc.) enchantments (Repercussions) and Glacial Chasm thrown in as insurance. The second I have is a blue-black milling deck. It actually has 4 creatures (Nightscape Familiar) but they are only there for the mana cost reduction and to sometimes block. They were just decisions based on an interesting theme and some flavour where I wanted to make some decks that were a little different.

They aren't my most competitive decks, but they are fun. So, maybe it'll depend on who you're playing with? You can also make 3, 4, and 5 color decks, you know? You aren't limited to two colors. My brother has a 5 color deck that rips shit up real fast. 60 card too, not commander. So, don't paint yourself into a corner based on what you're told or what you read. Be creative and see how it works.

I play the legacy deck "Lands" and it runs anywhere from 34 to 36. The only spells that matter are Life from the Loam and Punishing fire. The rest are just more mana, or ways to find those cards.

You DO want to stick to 60 cards, though. No, it's not a rule (60 is the minimum, you CAN run more then 60, but you shouldn't). The reason for this is, whatever card you add as your 61st card, is just reducing the chance that you draw your better cards. i.e. if the card is worse then your other cards, why run it?

24 lands is a good rule of thumb when starting, but as others have said it all depends on your mana curve. If your deck is all 1 and 2 mana cards, you can be between 17-20 lands quite easily, for example.

If you are just making a basic deck to start, in green/black, I'd suggest about 20-24 creatures, 24 lands, and then 12-16 spells.

The easiest way to make a deck in the beginning, is to figure out 9 cards that you want to run and play 4 copies of each. Look at those 9 cards and figure out your game plan based on those. If you are playing a 'big creature' deck, you might have one or two big creatures that can easily win the game, then you play 2-3 'ramp' spells (things that accelerate your mana) to get to play those big creatures early. The last few spots are for creature kill or smaller creatures to stall, etc.. other things to help that plan, basically.

Once you get some games in with the deck, you'll start to realize some cards that looked good 'on paper' aren't working the way you thought they would and can improve it from there.

NOT ONE, BUT TWO WURMCOIL ENGINES.

Played vintage tonight. BUG Fish w/ Leovold. Oh my god that card is a beating and a half.

I had a game vs Oath where they played Oath turn 2, I cast Leovold turn 2. Oath triggers, I get to draw a card. Griselbrand hits play, but can't do shit. Untap, Jace, bounce him. Happened twice more.

It turns out when you staple Spirit of the Labyrinth to Rayne, Academy Chancellor in a deck that can play Abrupt Decay you get a powerful card.

I love this dude but our EDH crew doesn't really like lock decks. Need a cool twist on him for a build that isn't just sultai goodstuff.

Sultai Goodstuff is probably still better off with Damia as commander. Leovold can net you some cards, but only if the rest of the table fucks with you. When left alone, all he really does is keep the goofy ass draw decks honest.

Conspiracy 2 release was a lot of fun. Having a few 4 toughness butts in your deck to discourage aggression seemed pretty key to actually winning the multiplayer rounds.

Goad is hilariously good. It seems like a small tweak from normal threaten, but that tweak has huge gameplay repercussions when used correctly.

I'm sad that I'll never get to play these conspiracies outside of draft, some of them are really neat.

Got the "Choose a # between 1 and 3; you can cast creature spells of that CMC for any mana" Conspiracy and promptly drafted Sweet 2-Drops, The Deck.

Black is REALLY good. Regicide, Murder, and Deathwind make an amazing common creature destruction package. If you draft 3 regicides, you can force it to cover all 5 colors, which is really nice for a 1 mana instant

You can't really go wrong with fetches and goblin guides. Those will always have a place, even if they see a reprint.

Jumping from modern to legacy burn has a trivial cost. Both relevant cards (Chain Lightning and Price of Progress) saw EMA reprints, and weren't very expensive to begin with. It's a solid deck, too.

What's the next piece to pickup? Eidolons?

a_skeleton_02 said:

Eidolons and some duals.

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I assume you mean shocklands for modern? Legacy burn doesn't splash.

Should pull out any Sensei's Divining Tops as well.

Azusa also. Jitte, if it's not all the first Kamigawa set.

Kiki Jiki too

Also, the "bulk" rares in Kamigawa tend to be worth a bit more than most sets, due to EDH and the large playerbase die-off that coincided with Mirrodin-Kamigawa. Like, $1-2 instead of $0.35 for the legendaries.