facebook

CoolStuffInc.com

MTG Foundations available now!
  
Account Meeple
Location IconLocations
Account MeepleLogin
0 Item
Advanced Search
   Sign In
Create Account
Main » Articles » 5 Decks You Can't Miss This Week

5 Decks You Can't Miss This Week

Carlos Gutierrez
Posted on December 14, 2013
 Reddit

Two new midrange decks for Standard, a Deathcloud rock deck in Modern, and a sweet new take on Doomsday in Legacy. We've got plenty of ground to cover, so let's get started!

What happens when the control decks start focusing too much on beating the creature decks of the format? While the Esper decks change into Blue-White decks with Last Breath, they become less prepared for other control decks. Combomaster is ready to take advantage of that with his new RUG midrange deck:

RUG Midrange - Standard | Combomaster, 3-1 Standard Daily Event

Instead of packing his deck full of answers, Combomaster is playing a UR deck packed with bombs and other cards that are awesome in the control mirror. Jace, Ral Zarek, Aetherling, and more. But he's also splashing green for things like Sylvan Caraytid and Xenagos to help get these things out ahead of time.

If you're expecting to play against a ton of control decks, you want to play something that can overwhelm their relevant answers so that you can create an opening to resolve critical threats. Combomaster's deck does this by playing all of the best four-drops, three Aetherlings, plus Mistcutter Hydra and backup Elixer of Immortalitys in the sideboard.

If you're tired losing to Blue-based control decks, look no further; Combomaster's deck may well be the best deck for the job.

Looking to get an edge in the Pack Rat mirrors instead? nsw1074 is playing a pretty unique take on the Black devotion shell that has cut a lot of the devotion engine in favor of powerful multicolored cards. Let's take a look at his Orzhov midrange deck:

[Cardlist Title= BW Midrange - Standard | nsw1074 , 3rd Standard Magic Online Event]

I like a lot of what this deck is trying to do. When the best deck in the format is built around Pack Rat, Thoughtseize, and various removal spells, I think it's great to be all in on exactly the same thing plus more discard and Blood Baron of Vizkopa.

You can still curve Thoughseize into Pack Rat. In fact, your Duresses give you even more opportunities to do so. However, you also have Last Breath as another incredible removal spell, Blood Baron of Vizkopa as an unkillable threat that helps stop Pack Rat and swing races.

Sin Collector seems especially insane in the current metagame. It's an aggressive creature that also eats removal spells and counters and clears the way for your bigger threats. This seems absolutely incredible against the midrangey and control decks of the format, while your removal and enormous monsters do incredible work against the creature-based decks.

Looking to play a Green-Black strategy without playing Jund, Junk, or one of the other Deathrite Shaman amalgamations of good cards? _VFS_ is reviving the old Green-Black rock strategy, not to be confused with Josh Utter-Leyton's Green-Black midrange deck from Worlds. _VFS_ isn't looking to curve out with Deathrite Shaman, he's looking to crush you under overwhelming card advantage and grind you out with Planeswalkers and Death Cloud.

Deathcloud - Modern | _VFS_, 4-0 Modern Daily Event

Just look at the amount of value built into this deck. You can very easily ramp out an early Garruk Wildspeaker and just start overpowering your opponent with four and five drops. You can make a beast and let Garruk get eaten by Lightning Bolt. What does it matter? You're going to Eternal Witness him back anyway. You're even playing Golgari Rot Farm for pure value, not for some kind of Amulet of Vigor combo nonsense.

This deck is basically just a pile of discard, removal spells, and two-for-ones. You're basically looking to get ahead on mana or stick a Planeswalker and then resolve a Death Cloud to eat your opponents entire hand and board. What happens if Death Cloud gets countered? Just keep grinding away with your discard and value creatures until you hit another one.

This is the purest kind of resource control deck. Every card either destroys your opponents board or hand, or generates card advantage. It's hard for you to lose to a fair deck that's not packing something like Sphinx's Revelation to get back ahead of you. The biggest problem with this style of deck is that it's hard for you to come back if your opponent does something unfair. You lean pretty heavily on just stopping your opponents from assembling their combo with discard spells or being able to kill their combo with Abrupt Decay if that plan doesn't work, you're probably out of luck.

Speaking of unfair decks, let's take a look at a new kind of Tendrils of Agony deck for Legacy. Doomsday has always been a card that has fascinated me. There are all kinds of insane piles that you can put together to win games from the most absurd of situations. Doomsday is the ultimate Magic: the Puzzling kind of card, and I'm excited to find out what Vacrix's Veteran Explorer Doomsday can do:

[Cardlist Title=Veteran Explorer Doomsday- Legacy | Vacrix]

That's right, a Legacy deck playing Wild Dogs. This deck is doing so many things that I'm still not sure I have my head wrapped around it. At it's core, you're a Dark Ritual combo deck that's added Summoner's Pact, Veteran Explorer, and sacrifice outlets like Cull the Weak and Cabal Therapy to supercharge your ability to combo early.

What I like about this deck is that you can do the traditional combo plan of cantrips, rituals, Lion's Eye Diamond into Infernal Tutor into Tendrils of Agony, but you can also use Veteran Explorer plus Cabal Therapy as a ritual plus discard spell, and grind out games with Sensei's Divining Top. Summoner's Pact gives you even more redundant copies of Veteran Explorer and is also an Elvish Spirit Guide plus shuffle effect for your Sensei's Divining Top.

So what do Doomsday piles look like? Well, you're basically just going to use Sensei's Divining Top[/card, [card]Brainstorm, or Summoner's Pact for Wild Dogs to draw the first card of your pile. Then you just Cruel Bargain or Ideas Unbound into more mana, more cantrips, maybe a discard spell, and Tendrils as the last card to kill your opponent.

The last few weeks, we've looked at very permanent heavy Commander decks. This week we're going hard in the other direction with a creaturless take on CommanderTheory. Are you ready to draw all the cards and take all the turns? Let's get started:

[Cardlist title=Proteus Staff Jeleva - Commander | CommanderTheory]

  • Lands (0)

This deck is built around giving Jeleva haste and casting her over and over again to continuously find some of the most powerful spells in Magic and cast them for free. You've got plenty of ways to gain haste, tons of ways to bounce or sacrifice Jeleva, and piles of [card]Time Warp" href="/p/Magic%3A+The+Gathering/Jeleva%2C+Nephalia%27s+Scourage+by+%3Ca+href%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fcommandertheory.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F64990365031%2Fapplied-deckbuilding-theory-jeleva-nephalias-scourge%22+target%3D%22_blank%22%3ECommanderTheory%3C%2Fa%3E.+Are+you+ready+to+draw+all+the+cards+and+take+all+the+turns%3F+Let%27s+get+started%3A%0D%0A%5BCardlist+title%3DProteus+Staff+Jeleva+-+Commander+%7C+CommanderTheory%5D%0D%0A%5BCommander%5D%0D%0A1+Jeleva%2C+Nephalia%27s+Scourge%0D%0A%5B%2FCommander%5D%0D%0A%5BLands%5D%0D%0A%5B%2FLands%5D%0D%0A%5BCreatures%5D%0D%0A1+Hall+of+the+Bandit+Lord%0D%0A1+High+Market%0D%0A1+Phyrexian+Tower%0D%0A1+Riptide+Laboratory%0D%0A1+Akoum+Refuge%0D%0A1+Ancient+Tomb%0D%0A1+Blood+Crypt%0D%0A1+Comand+Tower%0D%0A1+Crumbling+Necropolis%0D%0A1+Dragonskull+Summit%0D%0A1+Drowned+Catacomb%0D%0A1+Evolving+Wilds%0D%0A1+Grixis+Panorama%0D%0A1+Jwar+Isle+Refuge%0D%0A1+Steam+Vents%0D%0A1+Sulfur+Falls%0D%0A1+Terramorphic+Expanse%0D%0A1+Urborg%2C+Tomb+to+Yawgmoth%0D%0A1+Vivid+Crag%0D%0A1+Vivig+Creek%0D%0A1+Vivid+Marsh%0D%0A1+Watery+Grave%0D%0A6+Island%0D%0A5+Mountain%0D%0A5+Swamp%0D%0A%5B%2FCreatures%5D%0D%0A%5BBomby+Spells%5D%0D%0A1+Acquire%0D%0A1+All+is+Dust%0D%0A1+Army+of+the+Damned%0D%0A1+Beacon+of+Tomorrows%0D%0A1+Blatant+Thievery%0D%0A1+Bribery%0D%0A1+Cabal+Conditioning%0D%0A1+Cruel+Ultimatum%0D%0A1+Decree+of+Pain%0D%0A1+Devestation+Tide%0D%0A1+Doomsday%0D%0A1+Enter+the+Infinite%0D%0A1+Evacuation%0D%0A1+Knowledge+Exploitation%0D%0A1+Plague+Wind%0D%0A1+Promise+of+Power%0D%0A1+Recurring+Insight%0D%0A1+Rise+of+the+Dark+Realms%0D%0A1+Rite+of+Replication%0D%0A1+Sins+of+the+Past%0D%0A1+Spelltwine%0D%0A1+Stolen+Identity%0D%0A1+Temporal+Mastery%0D%0A1+Time+Stretch%0D%0A1+Time+Warp%0D%0A1+Wake+of+Destruction%0D%0A1+Walk+the+Aeons%0D%0A1+World+at+War%0D%0A%5B%2FBombySpells%5D%0D%0A%5BHaste%5D%0D%0A1+Fervor%0D%0A1+Hammer+of+Purphuros%0D%0A1+Lightning+Greaves%0D%0A1+Strider+Harness%0D%0A1+Swiftfoot+Boots%0D%0A%5B%2FHaste%5D%0D%0A%5BRamp%5D%0D%0A1+Coalition+Relic%0D%0A1+Chronomatic+Lantern%0D%0A1+Everflowing+Chalice%0D%0A1+Gilded+Lotus%0D%0A1+Sol+Ring%0D%0A1+Thran+Dynamo%0D%0A1+Worn+Powerstone%0D%0A%5B%2FRamp%5D%0D%0A%5BUtility%5D%0D%0A1+Crystal+Shard%0D%0A1+Empyrial+Plate%0D%0A1+Erratic+Portal%0D%0A1+Expedition+Map%0D%0A1+Leyline+of+Anticipation%0D%0A1+Journeyer%27s+Kite%0D%0A1+Omniscience%0D%0A1+Sensei%27s+Divining+Top%0D%0A1+Trionic+Resonator%0D%0A1+Vedalken+Orrey%0D%0A1+Vampiric+Tutor%0D%0A1+Mystical+Tutor%0D%0A1+Cruel+Tutor%0D%0A1+Personal+Tutor%0D%0A1+Long-Term+Plans%0D%0A1+Brainstorm%0D%0A1+Scroll+Rack%0D%0A1+Proteus+Staff%0D%0A1+Fabricate%0D%0A%5B%2FUtility%5D%0D%0A%5B%2FCardlist%5D%0D%0A%0D%0AThis+deck+is+built+around+giving+Jeleva+haste+and+casting+her+over+and+over+again+to+continuously+find+some+of+the+most+powerful+spells+in+%3Cstrong%3EMagic%3C%2Fstrong%3E+and+cast+them+for+free.+You%27ve+got+plenty+of+ways+to+gain+haste%2C+tons+of+ways+to+bounce+or+sacrifice+Jeleva%2C+and+piles+of+%5Bcard%5DTime+Warp">Jeleva, Nephalia's Scourage by CommanderTheory. Are you ready to draw all the cards and take all the turns? Let's get started:

[Cardlist title=Proteus Staff Jeleva - Commander | CommanderTheory]

  • Lands (0)

This deck is built around giving Jeleva haste and casting her over and over again to continuously find some of the most powerful spells in Magic and cast them for free. You've got plenty of ways to gain haste, tons of ways to bounce or sacrifice Jeleva, and piles of [card]Time Warps, Cruel Ultimatums, and other bomby spells that can just end games.

The thing that impresses me the most is the amount of control this deck has over the top of its deck. Sometimes you'll be playing against Mono-Green decks without any spells for Jeleva, but this deck uses Scroll Rack, tutors, and cantrips to set up the top of its deck with powerful spells to cast for free. Most importantly, this deck has access to Proteus Staff. This deck plays zero other creatures, so you will get to literally stack your deck. Unfortunately, this won't trigger Jeleva, but when you're stacking your deck you can find a way to work around that.

The thing that surprises me most is that there's no Elixir of Immortality effect to help rebuy some of your more powerful effects. This deck is much more focused on setting up the Omniscience plus Beacon of Tomorrows lock with Doomsday. The idea is Doomsday most of your library away and to getBeacon of Tomorrows as the only card left in your library and take infinite turns with Omniscience.

This deck is obviously a very powerful, robust take on Jeleva. It's a little combo heavy for my tastes, but it's pretty easy to scale the power as you see fit for you playgroup and make space for favorites like Cryptic Command.

Check out the latest holiday deals for gamers from CoolStuffInc!

TAGS articles, standard, current events, deck lists, legacy, decks, commander, modern, carlos gutierrez, 5 decks

Recent Articles

View Archive
Sell your cards and minis 25% credit bonus