Question:
Is my magic deck good?
1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Is my magic deck good?
Four answers:
?
2016-10-25 10:09:09 UTC
A deck round nicol bolas is truly demanding to do in an casual recreation. His mana expenditures are very severe and extremely complicated to fulfill because there is 3 double mana expenditures and it calls for a black/blue/purple upkeep each and each and every turn.
Gryph E
2009-05-02 17:23:07 UTC
What kind of games are you considering playing in? Kitchen table or some sort of tournament?



Here is your mana curve

1xxxx

2xxxxx

3xxxxx

4xxxx

5xx

6xxxxx

7

8x

Not a bad curve, but it could use more defenders for early/mid game. It's not unreasonable you could die before you got to put any creatures out.



Some comments:



Consider replacing darkblast with terror

Why the piracy charm?

Lacks things to sac for dread return

Why captivating glance?

Seems like you're depending a lot on mana filters for several of your creatures, which makes them pretty slow. There are some great shards of alara lands that I'd consider instead of filters.

Have you considered adding Draco?
2009-05-02 13:32:33 UTC
It needs some improvement, but it is much better than mine.
2009-05-03 10:27:15 UTC
It looks like the basic goal of your deck is:



1. Get a dragon into the graveyard using Magus of the Jar, Magus of the Bazaar, Bonded Fetch, Merfolk Looter, Looter il-Kor, Darkblast, Piracy Charm, or Ideas Unbound

2. Play Makeshift Mannequin or Dread Return to bring the dragon back into play

3. Win by having a huge flying creature.



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Here's what I think about your deck:



1. It has exactly 60 cards. This is good.



2. It has enough land. This is also good. In my opinion, almost any combo deck should run at least 24 mana sources.



3. I think that you have slightly too many ways to get things into the graveyard (16). You don't need to devote so much of your deck to that. Twelve or thirteen should be more than enough--with twelve you'll see at least one virtually every game, and more than that in most games. I would suggest cutting the Piracy Charms (really not very good), the Magus of the Jar (too slow), and perhaps one Merfolk Looter (Merfolk Looters are okay, but the other things you have seem better).



4. I'm not sure why Capitivating Glance is in your deck. It does allow you to clash a lot, which will help get you the cards you need, but there are better ways to do that. It does disrupt your opponent a little bit if you are lucky, but there are better ways to do that. I would suggest cutting all copies of Capitivating Glance--it doesn't seem to be effective in getting you towards your goal.



5. Your deck has no way of getting rid of creatures with more than 1 toughness. This will be a problem if you face a deck that drops several creatures early in the game. You aren't going to get a dragon out in time to save yourself. I think you should use some of the slots freed up to include more creature removal (at least 4 spells). Terror was suggested by a previous answerer, but Terror leaves you helpless against black creatures. I suggest 4 Last Gasp for this deck. (Last Gasp is an instant for 1B which gives target creature -3/-3 until end of turn.) Last Gasp will kill almost anything that comes out before you're ready to reanimate a dragon. Last Gasp won't kill large creatures, but that isn't very important for this deck, because ideally you'll get a large creature on Turn 4 and win the game from there.



6. If you take my suggestions above, you'll still have 4 slots free. I'd suggest including a bit more disruption. I think that Remand might be a good choice for this deck. (Remand is an instant which counters a spell, but puts it back into its owner's hand instead of the graveyard. Then you draw a card.) Remand will help delay the game until you have enough mana to cast Makeshift Mannequin or Dread Return, and it also lets you see more cards, so you will hopefully see a dragon, a way to get it discarded, and a way to get it back into play.



Remand is a slightly more expensive card than Last Gasp (Remands should cost around $2 each), but you'll probably get a lot of play out of them. If you don't want to invest in Remands, you could run some more creature removal instead--or you could run another less expensive two-mana counterspell, such as Memory Lapse, Rune Snag, or Mana Leak.



7. I don't think that you should play Gemstone Caverns. It's only good if you're playing second, and you don't want to play second with this deck if you can avoid it. You want to play first and go off as fast as you posssibly can.



8. Your deck is going to lose to almost any decent control deck, but that's part of the nature of playing a combo deck of this sort. If you want to combat control decks, play 4 copies of a decent discard spell, like Duress or Hymn to Tourach. (Duress costs B and lets you look at an opponent's hand, choose a non-land, non-creature card there, and have them discard it. Duress is a little more expensive than Remand, but you'll get a lot of play out of it.) (Hymn to Tourach costs BB and has target player discard two cards at random.)



Even if you do play one of these cards, the control decks are going to win a lot of the time anyway--control decks just tend to beat combo decks most of the time. Duress or Hymn will let you win against control a bit more often.



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Well, that's my two cents. Good luck with your deck.


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