Thursday, July 23, 2015

Saturday, July 18, 2015

[Modern] Maze's End Build

This deck is very weak to land destruction in single games. I have added a sideboard to weed out LD cards, and plan to play matches next. In this post I am showing the deck, a few instructive losses and a few wins. The deck has the main win condition in Maze's End that if I control at least ten gates with different names (one of each, really), I win. I also have a playset of Wurmcoil Engine as a secondary win condition.





Here is a loss to flyers. I got to five gates.


Here I got to nine gates... so close, and my opponent's deck was really good, including Liliana of the Veil, which I think is not a fair card in Just for Fun.


In this earlier version of the deck I had no artifact removal and my opponent kept using Mimic Vat once per turn to return my critter to my hand with Aether Adept. Now I have Naturalize in the deck.


Here is a gate win against a Vampire deck.


Here is a win against a white enchantment lock down deck. I was at 8 gates and with Walking Atlas I was ready to drop two more gates in the next turn for the win, but my opponent gave up before me doing that.


Here is a win from my Wurmcoil Engines. My opponent had no way to remove it, and I kept hitting with it.


Sunday, July 12, 2015

[Modern] Another Devotion to Black deck

Not shown is a playset of Nykthos.



Here I get to use Damnable pact to draw four cards. Deck wins against opponents without flyers are fairly easy with this deck.


This is a great position to be in with this deck: gg.


Here is a second win. I was able to Tragic Slip all of this deck's 1/1's thus stalling it to enable my win. 


Here is yet another example of the need for flyers. Also, lifegain in most decks delays the inevitable.


Here is a super strong Ajani's Pridemate enchanted with Celestial Mantle ("Enchanted creature gets +3/+3. Whenever enchanted creature deals combat damage to a player, double its controller's life total.")


My opponent has a lot of life, but no flyers, and I have flyers, and especially Nightveil Specter, my favorite 'your deck is my deck' card.


My opponent makes a great play with Felidar Sovereign ("At the beginning of your upkeep, if you have 40 or more life, you win the game." And my opponent came really close to being able to satisfy this win condition!


But my flyers kept on pounding: gg.


Thursday, July 9, 2015

[Standard] White Black ahead of Origins Part 2 of 2

Link to the deck and two wins

Sometimes people play competitive decks in Just for Fun, and that isn't any fun. Here are two games as examples.

First, the Kiora deck. I was able to gain life early.


I even exiled the first Kiora.


My opponent cast a Crux of Fate.


And then my opponent took over my flyer.


The second Kiora came with a slew of new critters from extra draws to it and the blue siege.


I cast a Crux of Fate.


And then more critters came down from my opponent and my draws were all low end critters. If only I had drawn my mid-range flyer!


Here I was doing reasonably well and then my opponent cast an Ugin (ouch, Ugin does not belong in 'Just for Fun').


Target removal against my lone critter. Once Ugin lands I know I am on a 'I will lose' clock. I just wanted to know how many turns I would last.
In this case, the Ugin came down turn 9 and I lost turn 12.


Here is the swing for the win. A Crux of Fate would have helped a lot but I am only running two.


[Standard] White Black ahead of Origins Part 1 of 2

This deck tries to gain as much life as possible to enable Erebos as a draw engine. It works well and I have spent some time optimizing it, but recently a lot of Just for Fun games are against players with previously competitive decks that they now play in Just for Fun, and that sucks for us casuals. Ugin and Kiora are the big culprits, and I show here a loss to each. First, the deck and some wins.




Here I played a mid-range red deck that gained life on casting red spells. Its a breath of fresh to play against a red deck that is not a Red Deck Wins deck. RDW decks are good to tune decks against, but if they are too common, it can get annoying. If you draw the wrong hand against RDW it can be 'Not Just for Fun.'


With my flyer and Whip of Erebos I gained a lot of life.


My opponent played Mob Rule, a very interesting and fun card. But even after hitting me with my critters I still had so much life that I could win.


This white/black deck tried to slow me down with Stab Wound but as before, my life gain during the game helped and I had a flyer that could not be blocked was not destroyed. 


Link to some annoying losses