Jamie’s Decks

Hi everyone! So like Tom, it was Stu who introduced me to Magic during the DnD sets. When I took a look at the precons one immediately stood out: Galea, Kindler of Hope. Generally I enjoy playing decks with fairly simple gameplay strategies and a fun theme, but I’m starting trying out some more complicated ones!

Unrelated to anything else but it seems pertinent to add – I have an uncanny ability to order French cards by accident!

Hi I’m Galea, could I be wearing any more artifacts?!

Galea is my first and most tuned deck. It’s essentially a Voltron deck designed around manipulating the top deck to make the most of Galea’s ability to play artifacts and auras from the top of the deck.

The game plan is pretty simple, it’s all about tooling Galea up and relying on commander damage to win the game. To do that I need ways to get round blockers – either with trample or unlockable damage. Whilst I do have some equipment that does this, like the Behemoth Sledge and Hedgewitch’s Mask, I find instants are more helpful. This is because my opponent knows what equipment I have on Galea, but doesn’t know what instants I have in hand. So I can swing out with Galea, let me opponent chump block with a 1/1 and then play something like Massive Might or Bull’s Strength.

However, to make this work I need a few ways of either sourcing what I need or manipulating the top deck. Things like Curate and Nazahn, Revered Bladesmith help out with this.

Finally, I recently went through and added some counter spells – with all my hopes pinned on Galea I needed ways to counter targeted removal that hits her. Also Galea has blue so might as well make use of it!

Decklist – Hi I’m Galea, could I be wearing any more artifacts?! – Galea, Kindler of Hope – Voltron

Maximum Blood Tokens

The second precon I got was Strefan during the Innestrad set, which I’ve gone back and forth on. It has the ability to get out of control really quickly, and being able to cheat out vampires is really cool! However I’ve found that this tends to make me the target on board and the removal of a couple of key pieces (or a board wipe) sets the deck back which can be hard to recover from.

The key thing with this deck is ensuring you generate enough blood tokens so you can sack them with Strefan’s ability. Whilst some cards from the set do this automatically like Bloodcrazed Socialite and Olivia’s Attendants, Stu’s suggestion of a Sanctum of Stone Fangs has proven really good at this. Because it pings every opponent for life and Strefan’s second ability cares about who has lost life that turn it helps generate a bunch of tokens ahead of the next round of combat.

Some other standouts in this deck are Markov Enforcer (though be careful that their fight trigger doesn’t end up with them dying!) and Crossway Troublemakers for making all your vampires that bit more deadly on the attack and being a source of card draw as well (after all life is just a resource…)

All in all, it’s a decent deck that can swing for a lot of damage when needed. I just need to figure out how best to utilise all of the deck’s potential.

Decklist – Maximum Blood Tokens – Strefan, Maurer Progenitor – Vampire Tribal

Squid Happens

This was the first deck I built outside of a precon. Inspired probably my favourite cards: the Sharktocrab and Shark Typhoon, I wanted it to create a sea monster deck. I thought Arixmethes would be a fun commander as he is a massive sea creature being a 12/12, can tap for mana to help spawn other sea creatures and acts as a ticking time bomb on board with its slumber counters (who isn’t a creature when he first comes in so cannot be targeted!).

I eventually narrowed it down to Krakens, Leviathans, Octopuses and Serpents as there are a few synergies between them in a number of cards, particularly thanks to Serpent of Yawning Depths and Spawning Kraken.

Whilst it started as a bit of a fun deck, it actually works surprisingly well. I recently introduced a few ways to cheat out the monsters, such as the Quicksilver Amulet and Monster Manual as a lot of them have a high mana cost.

Then it’s simply about swinging out with as many big squidboys as I can and then using cards like Overwhelming Stampede just helps to solidify the victory!

Originally my commander was Arixmethes, but recently I decided to change the commander to Kiora, Sovereign of the Deep.

Decklist – Squid Happens – Kiora, Sovereign of the Deep – Deep Dwellers Tribal

Where the Sun don’t Shrine

A recent deck idea came out of a running joke in our group that my Strefan deck was actually Shribal. When I pulled Go-Shintai of Life’s Origin I knew it was fate and decided to take the plunge on a full Shrine deck.

As if that wasn’t niche enough, looking at a few similar deck examples on Moxfield I was inspired by the idea of running the deck as a full enchantment deck with Umori, the Collector as a companion. This means there are no instants, sorceries etc. As a result the deck can struggle at times in terms of counter play but there are a few ways of ‘removing’ with enchantments, such as Imprisoned on the Moon and Doomwake Giant.

In general I’ve found this deck to play like time itself, slow, steady and inevitable. It builds up a lot of momentum but can take a bit of time to get there. It has ways of generating a lot of tokens other than shrines and because everything in the deck is an enchantment, cards such as Enchantress’s Presence and Hallowed Haunting become even better!

It’s even possible to go semi-voltron on the commander, with cards like Ethereal Armor seriously buffing a creature!

The only thing I think it lacks is a good wincon currently – it creates a lot of shrines, spirits etc and whilst I don’t have a super obvious way of quickly closing the game out, with cards like Boon of the Spirit Realm and Cathars’ Crusade I can buff up my shrine tokens and other creatures to surprisingly big power/toughness!

Decklist – Where the Sun don’t Shrine – Go-Shintai of Life’s Origin – Shrine Tribal

Other than this, I also have a couple of precons that I enjoy as is, namely the Tyranid Swarm deck from the 40k sets (basically my Squid Happens deck but with space bugs!) Obscura Operation from New Capenna (an interesting deck around player damage triggers) and Tinker Time from March of the Machines (who doesn’t love Gremlins?!). Next up will be looking at one of the LotR decks for sure, maybe it’s time to swear my allegiance to the Dark Lord…

All images are taken from the Magic the Gathering card database – can be accessed at https://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Default.aspx