Thursday, March 31, 2016

[Legacy] Weatherlight Air Forces Theme Deck

This deck is by far my favorite after playing three Mirage theme decks in solitaire. It has an awesome combo.




Ophidian is a great, great card. Game 1 it did not shine as much as it could. It was a simple beater ending in six turns.


Game 2 is when I first encountered the combo that makes this deck awesome. You enchant a creature other than Ophidian with Empyrial Armor and instead of playing the additional cards you get from Ophidian, you keep your hand at 7. Its a two or three turn game-ending clock.


Game 3 was a six turns beater.


Game 4 had the combo with one Ophidian ending turn 5.


Game 5 was a straightforward seven turn beater.


Game 6 was similar to game 5. Sage Owl is awesome, like Ponder awesome.


Game 7 was another combo game. I could have ended it turn 5, but got trigger happy and cast the second Ophidian.


[Legacy] Visions Unnatural Forces Theme Deck

This deck is not well suited to solitaire. Many of the cards are all about disrupting your opponent, which is a very Blue Black thing to do.




Game 1 ended turn 9. Waterspout Djinn must have been a good creature back in the day when a four-drop 4/4 Flyer had to have some annoying drawback. In this case, you just keep dropping and sending back to your hand an Island.


Game 2 was a slow beater ending turn 10.


Game 3 was very slow. It almost ended turn 12. I just needed to hit for one turn 13. I got to use Necromancy on one of the creatures in my graveyard.


Game 4 was a cool game because in solitaire Coral Fighters acts on my library instead of my opponent's and I could use it to Scry 1 every time it hit. Again, this deck in solitaire is very different from how it would behave against a real opponent. I just need more real opponents willing to play truly casual Legacy decks on MTGO.


Game 5 was a relatively fast beater, ending turn 7.


Game 6 was very similar to game 5.


Game 7 was a little 'faster' and ended turn 6. Fetid Horror would be an all-star in a mono-black deck. In this deck, it looks like it was thrown in just because the theme decks are there to showcase a specific block of sets.


[Legacy] Mirage Ride Like the Wind Theme Deck

This is a white-red deck. It is fairly linear. The major not so linear combo in the deck is to enchant a white creature with Favorable Destiny.




Here are seven solitaire games. If there are new casual players when Eternal Masters comes out, I will try it against humans. Game 1 ended turn 6. I got to enchant a white creature with Favorable Destiny.


Game 2 was a simple beat fest that ended Turn 6.


Game 3 was more interesting. It ended Turn 6 and I was able to enchant Mtenda Herder to make it a 3/4.


Game 4 was a beater ending turn 6.


Game 5 was a beater ending turn 5.


Game 6 was a little more interesting. It ended turn 6 and I had a doubly-enchanted 4/5 Zhalfrin Commander.


Game 7 I got to enchant Burning Shield Askari with Agility, ending turn 6.


Superguild White Black

This deck has lots of small creatures, and triggers Extort to ping your opponent often.






The deck has a reasonable mana curve. The lower curve is great for enabling Extort.


Here is game 1, ended Turn 6.


Here is game 2 early, as I trigger a bunch of Extort.


Game 2 ended turn 7.


Game 3 ended turn 8. Elspeth is great to drop tokens.


Game 4 also ended turn 6. Ajani gives me a +1/+1 counter with his +1 every turn.


Game 5 ended turn 7.


Game 6 ended turn 8. Ajani is a great closer in solitaire.


Game 7 had two planeswalkers and ended turn 7.


And in case you were wondering why there is no room for casual decks for Legacy online, I would say a big component is that even in Just for Fun, all of the decks are 'good stuff,' and here is an example. Modern and Standard have the same issue. We need a format for casual constructed decks. Umezawa's Jitte in Just for Fun... well, I play JTMS, and am just as guilty of playing over-powered broken cards.


Superguild White Blue

I am so glad that MTGO has a solitaire option because it enables me to use my gigantic casual stash of cards. I wish there was a format other than solitaire that allowed me to do so. Playing against real players will have to wait for these decks, though. Here are some restrictions that would enable that type of real play:

1. Your deck can only have at most two of a non-land card. (This is what I would refer to as the Hearthstone rule.)
2. Your deck must have at least 14 creatures.
3. Your deck must have four planeswalkers, one of each.
4. Your deck must have cards from exactly three blocks from Mirage to date. It can be any three blocks. Lorwyn and Shadowmoor are considered separate blocks. You can substitute any one block with the core sets and Tenth Edition as one block-this would be a gigantic selection of cards, but many were reprinted across many of these core sets. Reprint sets (Vintage Masters, Modern Masters, Eternal Masters) are considered as core sets but one of these sets corresponds to a block. For example: you can do two blocks from Modern and Modern Masters. Coldsnap is the odd set but its not out, it does go in Ice Age block... we will have to wait until MTGO has better coverage of the very early sets to add Coldsnap to this format. Once MTGO covers all sets, we can group the early sets in fake blocks for inclusion.
5. Black border only. White cards look terrible.
6. Legacy ban list.

With these six restrictions there would be a mix of casual cards and powerful cards that would enable all those poor limited jank cards of old to be played again. Here is one such deck. The three blocks are, of course, the blocks in my Superguild cube.






The deck has a reasonable mana curve.


Here are a few solitaire games. In game 1 I dropped a few creatures and finished on turn 7.


Second game I got to play two planeswalkers. The deck hits in low numbers but has solid evasion and the ability to stall with tappers.


Game 3 I got mana screwed, yet still finished on turn 7.


Game 4 was really fun (well, as much fun as solitaire can be, and Storm players know a lot about this.) I would have close to a Tamiyo ultimate in this one.


I finished turn 8.


Game 5 I got to play Jace, the Mind Sculptor (JTMS). JTMS slows the game some, but the draws become really stable and I set up for a solid game. As someone said once, JTMS can take a game over for you. I finished turn 10.


Game 6 I also got to play bigger creatures and finished really early for such a slow deck on turn 5.


Game 7 was another JTMS slow blow-out, this one on turn 7.