Today I bring you a deck that is, in my opinion, quite good. I have yet to come across this deck in any major competition, so there arent many builds that directly oppose it. Now, let's get to the list.
Creatures:
4 Turntimber Basilisk
4 Greater Basilisk
4 Vampire Nighthawk
2 Grave Titan
2 Death Baron
Artifacts:
4 Sword of Vengeance
Other Spells:
4 Diabolic Tutor
4 Harrow
2 Overrun
4 Doomblade
Land:
11 Swamp
11 Forest
Sideboard:
2 Acidic Slime
2 Juggernaught
2 Sign In Blood
2 Gigantomancer
2 Rise From The Grave
5 Cards of Your Choice
Let me break the deck down so you can see my reasoning behind it all.
Turntimber Basilisk gets equipped with Sword of Vengeance and becomes a 4/1 with Deathtouch, First Strike, Vigilance, Trample and Haste. He becomes rather hard to kill with creatures, but of course, he "dies to Doomblade". That too can be addressed, if your opponent is running removal of any sort you sideboard in Rise From The Grave. You Bring back your Basilisk and re-equip him. Now he's different though, he is also a Black Zombie creature, which means no more Doomblade AND he gets +1/+1 from Death Baron because he is now too a zombie. Creating a monstrous 5/2 Green/Black Zombie Basilisk with Deathtouch, First Strike, Vigilance, Trample, and Haste. Pretty scary if you ask me.
Another aspect of Turntimber Basilisk if his Landfall ability, which forces an opponents creature to block him. This gets rid of that creature AND tramples through him causing damage to your opponent. Harrow, allows you to tutor two lands and place them on the battle field, untapped, triggering the basilisk's ability twice! "Say goodbye to two creatures buddy!"
Now turning away from Turntimber Basilisk to a close relative of his Greater Basilisk. All I have to say is this, Combo'd with Sword of Vengeance, this card rocks. Who doesn't like a 5/5 with that annoyingly long string of mechanics? Your opponent.
Next on our list we have Grave Titan, not only is this guy crazy by himself I've paired him up with a match made in heaven... or,erm... Hell rather. Death Baron, a seemingly inane three drop, turns Grave Titans tokens into frightening 3/3 Zombie Deathtouchers.
And finally, we have Vampire Nighthawk. A staple in most Black decks right now, of course, had to be in this deck too. With Deathtouch and Lifelink, as well as being a flyer, you can't go wrong. Throw on this deck's favorite card, Sword of Vengeance, and he becomes even better.
The only other maindeck spell I feel that I need to talk about is Overrun. Why do I want this card in the deck? Because it gives all my creatures +3/+3 and Trample! Goodbye defending creatures, goodbye opponent, hello victory!
There's one card in the Sideboard I want to call attention to, and that is Gigantomancer. He's expensive yes, but he can make any of my creatures into a 7/7 in addition to any other effects that might be attatched to him.
now to put all of this into perspective let me illustrate to you what one of your creatures could look like.
13/8 Black Zombie/Vampire with Flying, Deathtouch, First Strike, Vigilance, Trample, Haste, and Lifelink. Not bad, right? (Vampire Nighthawk, targeted by Gigantomancer, equipped with Sword of Vengeance, brought back by Rise From The Grave, and targeted by Death Baron, with Overrun in play.)
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Vampires on Fire
Hey guys, sorry for the long break between posts. I was out in the winderness where, sadly, there is no internet connection. Now I am back and ready to go with new content!
I recently picked up a deck list from the top eight of PTQ Amsterdam: Orlando. This particular deck was sported by Max Malesch. Here's the original list.
4 Black Knight
4 Bloodghast
4 Gatekeeper of Malakir
4 Malakir Bloodwitch
4 Vampire Hexmage
Creatures [20]
4 Blightning
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Sign in Blood
4 Terminate
Spells [16]
4 Akoum Refuge
4 Dragonskull Summit
4 Lavaclaw Reaches
12 Swamp
Lands [24]
SIDEBOARD
3 Doom Blade
4 Duress
2 Manabarbs
2 Slave of Bolas
4 Vampire Nighthawk
For my own deck I made a few changes with the mainboard. I substituted the Black Knights in for Nighthawks. This works better for me because I now have a flier that can block and kill a Baneslayer and a combat trick for any white decks that I might come across in a second game.
I have found, however, that having so many comes into play tapped lands hinders my ability to get my spells out quickly enough to be affective. So, soon enough I may just put in a few Mountains and be done with a set of the tapped lands.
That about wraps it up for this post, The M11 Previews will be up in a few days. With my impressions and possible deck ideas along with them.
Stay tuned,
Hatter
I recently picked up a deck list from the top eight of PTQ Amsterdam: Orlando. This particular deck was sported by Max Malesch. Here's the original list.
4 Black Knight
4 Bloodghast
4 Gatekeeper of Malakir
4 Malakir Bloodwitch
4 Vampire Hexmage
Creatures [20]
4 Blightning
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Sign in Blood
4 Terminate
Spells [16]
4 Akoum Refuge
4 Dragonskull Summit
4 Lavaclaw Reaches
12 Swamp
Lands [24]
SIDEBOARD
3 Doom Blade
4 Duress
2 Manabarbs
2 Slave of Bolas
4 Vampire Nighthawk
For my own deck I made a few changes with the mainboard. I substituted the Black Knights in for Nighthawks. This works better for me because I now have a flier that can block and kill a Baneslayer and a combat trick for any white decks that I might come across in a second game.
I have found, however, that having so many comes into play tapped lands hinders my ability to get my spells out quickly enough to be affective. So, soon enough I may just put in a few Mountains and be done with a set of the tapped lands.
That about wraps it up for this post, The M11 Previews will be up in a few days. With my impressions and possible deck ideas along with them.
Stay tuned,
Hatter
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Marketing Your Cards - How to Successfully Increase Your Sales and Trades
While I bow down to the Magic financial genius that is Kelly Reid, I thought that I would offer my thoughts on how to make the most of your card collection from a marketing point of view.
Most Magic players that have been in the game long enough to amass a collection of cards have a trade binder. And almost just as many put every mythic, rare, and uncommon they own in it. Not only does that make for a heavy load to take to your local FNM or tournament, it also overwhelms the eyes of potential traders or buyers. What I have found most effective as a trader and seller is to analyze the metagame, and to see what uncommon, rare, and mythic cards are popular and thusly in demand.
Another step you could take in making your binder more easily accessible to potential customers is to organize your binder by color and rarity. While yes, this does take considerable time to implement if your collection is as vast as mine; the upkeep of the system is fairly easy. When I reordered my trade binder my trades and sales soared without me putting any new cards in. Just the organized nature of my binder allowed people to find the cards they wanted without the hassle of scanning page after page trying to find the ones they wanted.
If you wanted to go one step further down the trail to simplicity you could weed out the cards that are no longer in the dominant format of your binder. For example, my binder predominantly consists of cards that are in the current Type II Standard format; however, I have a separate organized section for my cards that are in Extended, so that there would be less confusion while perusing my cards.
We all know the people who sit down with your binder and look at it for a solid 5 minutes thinking and thinking about what cards they might like to buy off you. These people reduce the precious time that your binder has for circulation amongst the seething masses that want to take a peek and thusly REDUCING YOUR POTENTIAL PROFIT! This can all be prevented! Enter the final step in organization, simplification, and accessibility, the spreadsheet. Herein lies the ultimate answer to your Magic binder needs. It is, however, very time consuming to create. It took me well over a week to catalog all of my cards into the database. I myself chose to create the following columns in my spreadsheet: card name, number of copies, rarity, foil (?), price of card, and price of card (foil). Is all of this necessary? No. Is it tedious? Yes. Will it help you in your goal in moving more cards? YES! Having a quick reference sheet of your stock and your prices will help with customer traffic and sales due to the accessibility of the information and the swiftness in which cards can be bought and sold.
Again, these are just my thoughts on the subject. All of these plans are those that I have implemented and have found successful. I hope that you too can benefit from my methods and succeed with a more organized trading system.
For more financial guidance in the world of Magic: The Gathering, check out Kelly Reid at www.mananation.com.
Most Magic players that have been in the game long enough to amass a collection of cards have a trade binder. And almost just as many put every mythic, rare, and uncommon they own in it. Not only does that make for a heavy load to take to your local FNM or tournament, it also overwhelms the eyes of potential traders or buyers. What I have found most effective as a trader and seller is to analyze the metagame, and to see what uncommon, rare, and mythic cards are popular and thusly in demand.
Another step you could take in making your binder more easily accessible to potential customers is to organize your binder by color and rarity. While yes, this does take considerable time to implement if your collection is as vast as mine; the upkeep of the system is fairly easy. When I reordered my trade binder my trades and sales soared without me putting any new cards in. Just the organized nature of my binder allowed people to find the cards they wanted without the hassle of scanning page after page trying to find the ones they wanted.
If you wanted to go one step further down the trail to simplicity you could weed out the cards that are no longer in the dominant format of your binder. For example, my binder predominantly consists of cards that are in the current Type II Standard format; however, I have a separate organized section for my cards that are in Extended, so that there would be less confusion while perusing my cards.
We all know the people who sit down with your binder and look at it for a solid 5 minutes thinking and thinking about what cards they might like to buy off you. These people reduce the precious time that your binder has for circulation amongst the seething masses that want to take a peek and thusly REDUCING YOUR POTENTIAL PROFIT! This can all be prevented! Enter the final step in organization, simplification, and accessibility, the spreadsheet. Herein lies the ultimate answer to your Magic binder needs. It is, however, very time consuming to create. It took me well over a week to catalog all of my cards into the database. I myself chose to create the following columns in my spreadsheet: card name, number of copies, rarity, foil (?), price of card, and price of card (foil). Is all of this necessary? No. Is it tedious? Yes. Will it help you in your goal in moving more cards? YES! Having a quick reference sheet of your stock and your prices will help with customer traffic and sales due to the accessibility of the information and the swiftness in which cards can be bought and sold.
Again, these are just my thoughts on the subject. All of these plans are those that I have implemented and have found successful. I hope that you too can benefit from my methods and succeed with a more organized trading system.
For more financial guidance in the world of Magic: The Gathering, check out Kelly Reid at www.mananation.com.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
100 mph.deck
Here is a version of RED DECK WINS that a friend (http://theothersamb.com/) and I put together before ROE became relevent. We are not the original creators of this deck type, nor do we claim to be.Basic concept is spam creatures into a turn four Bloodbraid Elf which cascades (hopefully) into a Violent Outburst which in turn cascades into a creature and then swing with all creatures and scoop. I have fielded this deck several times with satisfying results in the FNM environment. Outrunning the Jund beast and blasting through Baneslayer Angel, I am very pleased with this deck of low-cost, high-pressure creatures.
Creatures
1 Blitz Hellion
4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Goblin Bushwhacker
4 Goblin Guide
4 Akoum Battlesinger
4 Rip-Clan Crasher
4 Skitter of Lizards
Other Spells:
4 Burst Lightning
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Violent Outburst
Land:
4 Forest
13 Mountain
2 Raging Ravine
4 Rootbound Crag
Sideboard:
3 Quenchable Fire
4 Searing Blaze
4 Unstable Footing
4 Vithian Renegades
Creatures
1 Blitz Hellion
4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Goblin Bushwhacker
4 Goblin Guide
4 Akoum Battlesinger
4 Rip-Clan Crasher
4 Skitter of Lizards
Other Spells:
4 Burst Lightning
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Violent Outburst
Land:
4 Forest
13 Mountain
2 Raging Ravine
4 Rootbound Crag
Sideboard:
3 Quenchable Fire
4 Searing Blaze
4 Unstable Footing
4 Vithian Renegades
Hello World!
Hello All,
As you can see I have started a blog. My aim for this site is to post my thoughts and ideas regarding Magic: The Gathering. I will post all of my latest deck ideas, card analyses, and blow by blow reports of tournaments I attend. My goal, above all else, is to help you get a clearer view at the meta games for Type Two Constructed and Limited formats.
Now for a bit about myself. I have been playing magic off and on for several years. However, I have only recently (the past year) become a hardcore magic player. A friend of mine brought me back into the magic world during the release of M10 and I have never looked back. I have rapidly amassed a collection of cards beginning in the Alara block up until the most recent release of Rise of the Eldrazi. I am an MTG bible carrier (the complete rules set as of M10), and can assist you with any rules clarification that you come across. (I am also looking to become a judge, so any DCI level twos out there...)
At any rate, I hope that you enjoy my blog and that I hear from a good many of you soon.
With all the best,
Hatter
As you can see I have started a blog. My aim for this site is to post my thoughts and ideas regarding Magic: The Gathering. I will post all of my latest deck ideas, card analyses, and blow by blow reports of tournaments I attend. My goal, above all else, is to help you get a clearer view at the meta games for Type Two Constructed and Limited formats.
Now for a bit about myself. I have been playing magic off and on for several years. However, I have only recently (the past year) become a hardcore magic player. A friend of mine brought me back into the magic world during the release of M10 and I have never looked back. I have rapidly amassed a collection of cards beginning in the Alara block up until the most recent release of Rise of the Eldrazi. I am an MTG bible carrier (the complete rules set as of M10), and can assist you with any rules clarification that you come across. (I am also looking to become a judge, so any DCI level twos out there...)
At any rate, I hope that you enjoy my blog and that I hear from a good many of you soon.
With all the best,
Hatter
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