Thursday, December 31, 2015

Six Packs of Shadowmoor Online

These continue to be affordable.













[Standard] Mantis Rider and White Enchantments

This deck has turned out to be a lot of fun. It is good in Standard where most decks are creature-based. The sideboard is designed to counter non-creature decks, such as Milling decks.





In this win, I faced a lot of target destruction (and even target exile, ouch!).


Then my opponent dropped tokens and it seemed like I was going to lose.


The tide turned when my opponent did not remove my buffed Mantis Rider.


This win was part of a match I won 2-1. The loss was to a lot of Land Destruction. For the last game  I took out the two Narsets, and moved in my Negates while taking out some of the white enchantments. Haste is awesome, and here I am able to hit hard early.


My opponent wiped me out but could not remove this Mantis Rider.


Den Protector hit and my opponent failed to anticipate that I would counter their Radiant Flames for the win.


In this win I was able to take out from play threat by threat.


Here is another threat temporarily exiled. It was gg after this.


In this win my opponent was able to force me to sacrifice creatures. I took my time after these losses.


Here is another early game sacrifice.


And another target removal, this time by a Ruinous Path.


I was able to stall my opponent.


And to also use one of my white enchantments.


And another.


By now my opponent does not have an answer to a 6/7 Monastery Mentor.


And after it gets removed, I land an 8/7 Narset and attack with it for the win.


Thursday, December 24, 2015

[Modern] Butcher of the Horde Almost Monoblack

There are three fun decks to make around this card, each one focusing on one of the colors. This one is almost mono-black. I tried a white weenie and a goblins shell and both were just not that good with Butcher of the Horde. This shell is the one that works out well in Modern.




This deck uses devotion to black as a minor effect, yet I was able to have enough devotion for Erebos to become a creature often enough.


Inquisition of Kozilek is very good in this deck. With the ability to draw it early and the two other major threats (Path to Exile and Lightning Bolt), it is fairly common for this deck to disarm an opponent in the first three turns.


Here my first Erebos takes negative counters from a Wither creature and I am able to play a second one.


In this deck Meddling Mage made Blood Artists dead in my hand for the early game. But once I played Geralf's Messenger it was GG.


Here is a case of me using the three disarmament spells to trim my opponent's hand of threats.


Here I faced a deck with a ton of target removal. I was able to attack around all that target removal and the occasional hand discard.


Whip of Erebos won me this game. Even if I sacrifice the creature, I can bring it back for a swing. 


Look at how much removal and discard my opponent was packing.


But at some point my opponent ran out of cards and I could swing for the win.


Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Khans of Tarkir Deck Challenge

I didn't play with the three-color creatures headlining the five wedges of KTK at rare:

Siege Rhino Abzan
Butcher of the Horde WBR
Savage Knuckleblade RUG
Mantis Rider WUR
Rakshasa Vizier BUG

I am leaving Siege Rhino for later.


The Rakshasa Vizier deck turned out like other fails I have tried in the past. The best way to improve on the many deck variations I tried is by removing Rakshasa Vizier. Instead of boring you with a bunch of losses, here is the deck as a failed experiment.





Six packs of M15 online

Pulled a Chandra, Obelisk of Urd (which I always want to call Obelisk of Turd), and In Garruk's Wake.