So a friend of mine has recently began the process of sucking me into Magic: The Gathering.
I’ve gotten into it more than I expected (and more than I intended), and have decided to try my hand at designing my first deck. The criteria are simple: a mono-color deck for under $60 that places “Fun To Play” as priority one. I settled on a mono-black discard deck.
My first iteration was pretty crappy, but I’m back with try number two. Any MTG kids out there want to have a look and see what they think? It’s a Legacy deck, by the way.
4 Blackmail
4 Dark Ritual
4 Doom Blade
4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
2 Persecute
2 Sign in Blood
2 Stupor
1 Wrench Mind
22 Swamp
The goal here is to control the opponent with the discard mechanic while bringing my various creatures in for the kill. The 2x Sign In Blood keep me moving a little more efficently, and Doom Blade should be able to handle most creature threats.
I wanted to stuff Zuran Orb in there but I couldn’t figure out how. I figure this deck will run about $55, and it seems pretty fun and straightforward to me.
Doesn’t look too much different than every other black discard deck I’ve seen. Why no throw in Megrim? Diabolic Edict helps against untargetable creatures.
The problem with a discard deck is that most discard effects only work on your turn. So whenever your opponent draws a card, he still always has a chance to play it before you can steal it from his hand.
The Rack isn’t still a legal card, is it? No discard deck should be without that, if allowed.
Showed this one to my son, who plays the game when he can. Here’s what he had to say:
Hi. I like the deck. I see that you have a decent number of swamps. Generally in a one colored deck, about one third of it should be swamps.
I recommend throwing in Skeletal Vampire (Shadowmoore set) and Coat of Arms (reprinted in M10). What the combo does is it boosts the power of the bat tokens that you get with Skeletal Vamp. with each additional bat you get. So if you have 10 bats and you play Coat of Arms, your bats get boosted from 1/1s to 10/10s. I’ve won several matches with this combo.
I’m not familiar with all those cards, but I think you could probably stand to swap out two lands for two of something else. I like to run a 2-1 ratio of spells to land.
Also, if you become known for running a single color deck, you may find your oponnents loading up on Protection from Black…
The games I play are informal, and guys are running 200 card decks, so that may not be as much of an issue against smaller decks.
Discard, for fun? It may be fun for you, but good times in M:tG are generally best when all players are enjoying the game. If you run this deck keep an eye on your friend’s fun meter and offer to switch decks(or even take a turn playing theirs while they play yours) or you may find your game night ends early.
Your creature control comes in the form of Shriekmaw, Funeral Charm, and Smallpox. They Phyrexian Arena is really a key card here as it keeps your discard coming faster than their card draws. The main thing I’d recommend is getting cards like Pox and Smallpox and giving them a look. A properly built and played Pox deck is a real terror, and with some [&color=+**"]Madness cards](http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Search/Default.aspx?action=advanced&text=+[madness)(Hello Gorgon Recluse) can be ridiculous.
The above decklist isn’t something you should necessarily build. It’s just something to give you the names of some other cards you may want to look at and get some inspiration from. Take a look at how the cards work together. See how you get two for one out of Shriekmaw. One of the major disadvantages of most discard effects(non-creature based) is that they don’t advance your win condition. You need a way to get them dead. Thus the suggestions of Megrim above, but I think your better bet is things like Pox and ways to turn the downside of Pox/Smallpox into advantages(via Madness, Dredge, etc).
Welcome to the hobby, it’s a great game and if it seems overwhelming, well, that’s part of the charm.
This is a good point. A friend of mine has a permission/direct damage deck that he keeps around that none of the rest of us can beat, but he only ever uses it at most once per night, because it’s not really possible to have much fun losing against it.
Straight burn decks are some of the easiest ever to beat.
Get ahold of Counterbalance, Sensei’s Divining Top and some life gain in the form of an offensive force (like Loxodon Hierarch) and you’re good to go. Straight red has no ability to remove the Counterbalance or Top.
Be aware and ready for Sulfuric Vortex though, that card is a huge bitch. Since you’re in blue, you should counter it, duh lol. If you go with white for life gain, Disenchant will handle Vortex quite nicely.
EDIT: Now I see you said permission/direct damage. That will make things slightly more difficult, but in my experience, he will do neither the controlling or the burning well enough to beat a well-tuned control deck.
Of course, we’re old-timers, and none of us ever dropped all that much money on it. Some of those cards probably didn’t even exist at the time we were playing, and even those that did, nobody had, or would put into a deck just for the one game a night we’d be up against it. Even with the cards that existed at the time, I knew of a few things (that I didn’t have) that would work against it, like, say, Kjeldoran Outpost.
Right off the bat, it’s obvious this isn’t Type II.
But, If you are going Rats and Discard, then I got a few comments::
I second Megrim. I finally, FINALLY got a 4th Megrim in a 2010 booster. The card is great. Add in Dream Halls ? (Each opponent discards a card at his upkeep) Yeah.
Dark Rit and Hyms? Well, they stopped making them, so I guess we know that they are good.
But again, it’s not currently Type II legal. Same for The Rack, Chronos. (Hi). If you are going with The Rack, throw in Black Vise as well, no?
Rats? Have to have the original Plague Rats in there. [/ where * is equal to number of Plague Rats in play.] Relentless Rats, which is what Plague Rats used to be, get a bonus for each Relentless rats in play, and it is stated on the card, that you can have more than 4 copies in your deck. Chittering Rats IIRC, has your oppoent discard a card when it comes into play.
I guess asking you to toss in Hypnotic Specters and Nightmares is a bit out of the question?
I’m not sure that follows… They stopped making Mon’s Goblin Raiders and Grey Ogre, too. Seriously, would anyone bother with a 1/1 with no special abilities any more? Or a 2/2 with no abilities for 3 mana?
This has turned into a really interesting thread, thank you guys. I’m surprised at the love for Megrim around here - in fact, the original iteration of this deck had 4 Megrim as the primary focus. Then several people suggested I remove it, saying that it’s “too slow” and has no place in the deck. How interesting that you guys are so much in favor of it!
Chronos, the rack is indeed legal in Legacy. It’s a card I was unfamiliar with, thank you for pointing it out.
PaperBlob, please thank your son for me! That’s a very cool combo that I wasn’t aware of.
MTGMan, no worries about my friend’s fun factor. I generally play with a single friend who gets a kick out of playing his permission deck against me, so I’ll have a rough time mustering sympathy for him. When I’m not up against him, I’m playing in a local weekly Legacy tourney where I’ll go up against six or seven different folks an evening. My competition is varied enough that I don’t think anyone will get too pissed at me. And hey, thanks for pointing out the Madness and Dredge mechanics. I was having a hard time understanding the benefit to Smallpox until now.
Meeko, the Type I, Type II thing always throws me. I can never remember which is which. Fortunately, Legacy is 1.5 and I can remember that it’s right in the middle. Relentless Rats looks pretty cool, I’ll have to take a closer look at that as well as Nightmare.
Black vise is pretty much anti-productive in a discard deck. I’d recommend looking at the Hypno Spectre and Shriekmaw as your creatures, perhaps including a couple Dauthi Slayers to speed up the game. Otherwise, your deck looks fairly solid for a mono-black discard deck
Yeah, unless you’ve got just the right deck for it, Black Vise is great if you get it in your starting hand, but pretty much useless otherwise. In a land-destruction deck, say, where you’re guaranteeing that your opponent can never try to cast anything in the first place, it’s fine, or if you’re trying to run your opponent out of cards with a bunch of Howling Mines and the like, but in a normal game, most players will be using cards about as fast as they get them anyway, so it mostly sits idle, and all the more so in a discard deck.
It can be used either to make your opponent discard a card, or you draw one. It was a common card from the Miirrodin set, so acquiring copies shouldn’t set you back too much.
One little interaction you might not have caught. If you attack with both a Nocturnus and a Hypnotic Specter, the discard the Specter forces won’t increase the amount of damage the Nocturnus deals. You need to make the discard happen before the Nocturnus assigns damage.
Another creature you might want to consider is Nyxathid. It’s fairly poky once you get your opponent’s hand size down, and can act as a quick finisher for games that might otherwise drag on too long.
(The links go to pages from WotC’s own Gatherer database.)
I’ve never been a huge fan of discard decks, either they work, and it leads to a miserable game, or you run out of gas, and your opponent draws something on their turn you can’t control. 4x Doom Blade seems a little short on removal. Tendrils of Corruption might be OK as a common removal spell, with the added benefit of lifegain. Or Nekrataal/Bone Shredder/Dark Hatchling, as a means of beats+removal.
And keep in mind that in multiplayer, which many casual games turn into, you’re basically SOL.
If that’s the case, I recommend your next experiment be with land destruction.
Consider a planeswalker tag team if you can find her for a reasonable price. She’s extremely versatile, please don’t overlook her middle ability. It’s seriously good.
If you want to really mess up the game with discard, your best bet is a little guy called Insidious Bookworms. This is one of the few sources of discard effects which can be both played as an instant(with a sacrifice outlet, not too hard in Black) and easily recurred to produce a lock. Two bookworms a Recurring Nightmare, a sacrifice outlet and a few points of mana and you’ve got about as solid a lock as is possible with discard. With an addition you could make it very nearly a hard lock and have something which puts them on a clock(for virtually no benefit) and helps you find the rest of your lock components.
Here’s how it works. Normally players don’t get priority during the draw step, but if an ability triggers, then players get priority as normal. Let Maralen’s ability resolve, but instead of passing on the empty stack(thus ending the step), activate the Adante, sac the bookworms. The Adante’s ablity resolves, adding a point of mana to the pool and now we stack the bookworms triggered ability. When it resolves(if it resolves) pay one extra(over and above what the Adante added to the pool) and force them to discard whatever they just paid three life to search for. Each turn they pay three life, search for a card, and then you take it away from them before they can use it. Now if they drew an instant that can shut down your Andante(keeping your worms from doing their evil) then they use it and you tutor up another on your turn with Maralen. Or play a less fragile sacrifice outlet like Diamond Valley(Warning, very non-budget card) or Miren, The Moaning Well(budget friendly, mana hungry version of the previous card).
The main disadvantage to this soft lock is that they get to tutor for whatever they may have in their deck which can break it. The good part is that most of it can be recurred and if they don’t take out Maralen you can just tutor for whatever other part they did take out. If they take her out you just recur her. If you can get it to stick it makes their life extremely hard. They’ll never be able to play another land because you’ll make them discard it during their draw step. No sorceries, no planeswalkers. Nothing that can’t be cast with the mana they have on the board a the time the lock comes online.
It’s a lock which requires luck and skill to put together and keep working, and because it’s a soft lock(unlike a Zur’s Weirding or Orim’s Chant type lock) it doesn’t piss people off as much. It won’t come together every time, but if you enjoy discard, this will put a smile on your face as it does.
What are Planeswalkers? They didn’t have those back when I was playing (except as an in-game term for the players themselves).
And if we’re going to talk about locks and the like, an old-school one I was fond of was Orcish Spy and Millstone. Every turn, you use the Orcish Spy to see what your opponent’s next three cards are. Then, you pick between the first card drawn and the third, and decide which one you’d rather they get. If you want them to get the first card, you wait until after their next draw phase and use the Millstone; otherwise you use the Millstone before their draw. It’s not a complete lockout, since they might get good cards on both (though depending on what you did last turn, you might be able to mill away them all in such a case), but you can typically restrict them to, say, lands of one color and spells of another, for a good long while.
This thread reminds me, too… A friend of mine and I were playing a game recently where a situation came up which we weren’t sure how to deal with. I’ll start a new thread for it.
