What’s on the Cards – August

In the first of a new regular feature, here’s a run down on what we’ve been doing with our MtG decks this month.

Tom

I recently decided to try and make one of my decks a little more powerful so that it stood out amongst my other decks. My Trelessara, Vrondiss and Miirym decks have previously all been fairly similar in power level and I wanted to add some spice to one of them to play higher power level games.

I chose to spice up my Miirym deck, which unbenownst to me would start an arms race in the MutantSnakeEyes that could rival the cold war.

I went a bit mad and ended up adding around 20 cards to the deck. I started by streamlining some of my creatures. Adding Sakashima the Imposter, Adrix and Nev and Spark Double to clone Miirym and other powerful dragons, whilst also being able to double up on the tokens Miirym generates. I also took out some of my weaker dragons and added in a Goldspan Dragon, Birds of Paradise and Sarkhan the Unbroken.

Next I tried to focus on improving my fast mana, board interaction and card draw. I added a Blasphemous Act, Vandal Blast, Cyclonic Rift, Rhystic Study, Dockside Extortionist and Mana Vault to the deck.

The changes I have made have definitely increased the power of this deck and whilst it has changed drastically, the next upgrade will be to sort out the land base. However that can wait until another another month!

Stu

This month Tom and I have been in an escalating arms race/egging each other on too much. We both wanted to have a higher power deck for some gaming variety. I thought a mono-coloured deck would be best so I didn’t have to spend all my money on a fast-land base!

My favourite colours are black and blue and out of my current decks my Sheoldred deck has more potential than my mermaid deck! Also Tom opened an Imperial Seal and a Vampiric Tutor over the years which I have beg/borrowed/stolen off of him so mono-black it is!

I opened a couple of Sheoldreds in packs a while back including an extended art one and have been playing with it from time to time but it lacked some punch and needed some upgrades. I added in some fast mana with a Jewelled Lotus and an Ancient Tomb – I found the Balin’s Tomb alternate art which looks awesome and suits the dark theme of the deck. Added in some unexpected removal with a Deadly Rollick to help me slow down opponents. Renaminate is one of my favourite cards and is a way of casting my commander for 1 black!! Good combo potential there! I had a couple of games with loads of cards and no mana and so Skirge Familiar is a cool way of getting extra mana by discarding cards. Maze of Ith is really helpful against Voltron decks but also protection for my commander if she gets goaded. Imp’s Mischief is a way of protecting my commander and combo pieces whilst also bouncing

Looking forward to trying out the deck more and making some more tweaks once I have a better idea of how it plays. 

I also discovered a cool situational infinite loop in my Minsc deck (that I didn’t know existed) whilst playing with it this week! Boo attacked with the Sword of Hearth and Home equipped and Akki Battle Squad on the table. My opponents were playing a white/green deck and a WUBURG deck with only white/green creatures on the board. So when Boo attacks it triggers Akki and untaps itself and triggers a new attack step. Then Boo does damage and blinks in Akki due to the trigger on Sword of Hearth and Home. Then when he attacks next step he triggers the new copy of Akki, which untaps him and generates a new combat step. Then rinse and repeat! Only works if opponents have no creatures or only white or green ones. But a cool janky combo for sure – and it also dumps out tonnes of lands!

What’s instore for me next month? You’ll have to wait and see but for now fly you fools!

Jamie

Whilst the other two have gone a bit bonkers tweaking/ramping up their decks, I made the most of the Enduring Enchantments precon to improve my shrine deck. You can read a fuller breakdown of the deck here, but essentially it’s a slightly janky version of the WUBURG Go-Shintai of Life’s Origin in that everything is an enchantment (meaning I can run Umori as a companion). When I first built the deck I crammed it with what enchantments I could find from the cards I had, but when I saw WotC was releasing an enchantment focused precon I knew I had to get it.

I ended up taking out about 15 cards in the end and replacing them with the below:

Given everything in my deck is an enchantment, you’ll see a lot of these synergise nicely. Some standouts are the Doomwake Giant that gives me some counter play/removal for my opponents, whilst Cathar’s Crusade and Boon of the Spirit Realm both buff my shrine tokens nicely.

Having played a couple of games with it recently, I think the changes have definitely improved it – it plays a lot better and I can do some pretty fun stuff with it. However, I’m still largely going to be relying on others around the table for removal/counter play when an opponent plays something nasty!

In other news, I changed one card in my squid deck – though that card happened to be my commander! Arixmethes has moved into the 99, whilst Kiora, Sovereign of the Deep has taken the reigns.

Both Tom and Stu suggested this commander and, whilst it still plays the same ‘spawn big squids, make them unlockable and crush my opponents’, Kiora adds a bit more tempo to the deck by letting me cheat out more denizens of the deep! This has been great fun as I have ways to cast my squids cheaply but still reap the reward of their high mana cost by casting spells using Kiora!