Pagoda of Gaming

Welcome to the first request I’ve gotten all season on the Magical Ninja Deck Chef. It’s pretty obvious to you that I know nothing about women, but I think I know enough to make a pretty decent magic deck based round the fairer sex – as my challenger has requested. Not to sound too cocky, we’re not shooting Womp Rats here, but I think this is one of the better articles I’ve written. So please, stick around and check it out…

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iGather

I’ve been looking for a Magic the Gathering App for my iPhone for a while now and I think I found one. iGather is basically your usual Gatherer functionality, and at the same price of Free, but it doesn’t always require a net connection to use – only if you want to view the card visually or can’t put up with a text translation. What I really need though is an all in one app that’s a card Database, dice and life counter, and deck building functionality. Something like that will probably never materialise, and if it came from Wizards I’d be sceptical of it’s true functionality

Archenemy

We got our first look at the rules and some of the cards from the Upcoming Archenemy variant and I’m less than thrilled with the reveal. It just doesn’t jump out to me as being interesting enough to go out and buy these new sets – well first of all I rarely get the chance to play magic let alone against a flock of enemies. And anyway since this is a Casual variant. shouldn’t we just fucking print the cards off the internet and use them proxy style?

It’s getting a little more nickel and dimey than usual with Wizards these days, We’re already getting 4 sets a year from now on, I don’t want to fall to the bottom of the money pit only to find the floor crack beneath me revealing yet another money pit.

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The Challenge

Onto the first challenge of the season. The Lithbro writes…

“You know what’s wrong…allot of those Vampire chicks are hot XD

Infact! I have a challenge!

I challenge you to create a working deck made entirely of hot women cards! I have faith in you! Land may be a problem though 0.o

Rules of the hotness deck, should you choose to accept it!

1: All creatures must be hot females!

2: All spells must have a hot woman in the image!

3: All artifacts and equipments must be useable by hot women!

4: Land does not need to be hot…although if you could find land with hot women on it that would be awesome! XD”

That’s… an interesting request. I’m just going to skip right over the part that I wonder where you came up with this idea and offer you my fair amended version of your rules:

• Rule #0 – Any female featured on any card in the following deck must be as far from “Furry” status as possible; this includes anything where the skin is infact scaled.
• Rule #1 – All creatures must be relatively attractive females as seen in their art – Alternative art versions featuring Female characters instead of originally male characters is also allowed as long as that alternate art version is used at all times.
• Rule #2 – As many Non-Creature Spells as it is possible will feature relatively attractive Females, but not to the point of making the deck less powerful or un-functional.
• Rule #4 – Land should not feature a Creature in any way so as to remain Sexually Ambiguous.

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The Choises

I originally thought that this challenge would be one I’d have to turn down. But as these things do, it kept picking away at me until I had to find an answer. I figured that the best way to approach this challenge is to find a Creature type that is either predominantly Female or find a creature type so abundant with cards that there would be enough female cards to build something out of.

I should also say that to pull this off I’ll have to go back as far as Vintage legal to large enough effective pool of cards.

The other aspect was to approach the potential hotness of that creature type. More Megan Fox and less Susan Boyle. Something Barney Stinson Approved. So this basically auto kicked creature types like Zombie and Dragon. Merfolk and the like also get the boot for approaching the Furry side of things (because Ewwwww…).

So my first stop was Human, but Humans as a creature type were never really good at working together in any interesting ways – unless you break that down a little further and go for Human “somethings” – Wizards, Soldiers, Clerics and the like, but that diluted the pool too much to be powerful. The Human creature type is a bit of a sausage-fest anyways.

At that point I thought a fun option might be just to make a many-coloured Female-only Legendary deck, and that’s something I might explore later. Probably starting on a Green base for some mana fixing like Asuza, Lost but Seeking and then going from there in to any decent colours for creatures like Jeska, Maralen, or Uyo. But the problem here is finding enough decent creatures to put into the deck, since it’d be suicide to pack 4x of the best legendaries.

So my next stop after Human was “Angel”. It works out rather well, apart from the fact that the first turn I’d be able to play one was turn 4. Like the Legendary Idea – this one is in the back pocket, maybe for later. I’d totally go for a White and Red setup for access to the extra Akroma and all the good and the good Boros coloured cards there has been these past years.

And then Elves hut me in the face with a big “Duh!” As a rule of magic, you basically can’t go too wrong with an Elf deck. Elves haven’t been bad as long as they’ve been in sets (looking at you Kamigawa). So this provides a great starting point. We’ve already got the good deck not we just need to remove all the Dudes – yes, even Rofellos.

There isn’t much need for Non-Creature spells in an Elf deck either. A lot of Elf creatures come built in with some of the stuff green is already good at - like Creature Boosting, Lifegain and Mana Boosting/Fixing. So there’s going to be a good high 20’s to low 30’s amount of creatures in the deck.

The deck can also run Red too, for the simple reason of Bloodbraid Elf – and to extend the Non-creature pool a bit to up the chance of totally satisfying rule #2.

I wasn’t going to build the deck at all, but now I think I like the idea so much that I’ll give this Elf deck a proper shuffle. Let’s take a look at version 1 of the deck before I go into the particular cards…

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Deck Version 1.0

Let’s start with the land. There’s only a small amount of Red in the deck, and that’s just for two cards main deck and one in the sideboard. Oran-Reif The Vastwood  will pump every creature in the deck for a little tap, and it isn’t legendary, so we can have multiples in play at once. Llanowar Reborn is a card I’ve always wanted to try out in a green deck so it’s in too – and gives some validity to the deck’s title. Other than that it’s a standard pool of Mountains, Forests and mana fixing Refuges.

The Creature board fulfils all the Offensive, Defensive and support needs of the deck. Bloodbraid Elf is the most expensive elf in the deck, and can Cascade into almost any other creature in the deck. Best scenario is that she pulls out one of the lords and I get to swing with a 4/3 haste. Imperious Perfect is the better of the two Lords in the deck, way better than Elvish Champion for the fact that every turn she pumps out a 2/2 Token – but I felt that 6 slots works rather well, and that the Champion would be useful at some point against a foe packing Forests themselves. As a Plus, you totally need to check this High-Res version of Imperious Perfect’s art right HERE – It’s an example of Magic art at it’s best.

Joraga Treespeaker is the new Llanowar Elf. It’s speed is a little slower, Comparatively, but a single Treespeaker may only get you 2 mana on turn 2, it will give you 5 mana on turn 3 – whereas a Llanowar Elf gets you 3 mana on turn 2 but only 4 mana on turn 3. There’s also no bad reason she shouldn’t be levelled up to her fullest at the deck’s leisure. Farhaven Elf  helps with the Mana Acceleration too – effectively being a Rampant Growth on a Stick – albeit a little stick.

Wellwisher is the most defensive card of the deck and should never be used for attacking and rarely for chump-blocking. She also often forces opponents to get rid of her before your life total gets too out of hand, wasting some removal that they’d better have used on a Lord. Wren’s Run Vanquisher is offensive in the early game, and defensive in the late game, and there shouldn’t be any problem paying her additional cost with half the deck being Elves.

Mul Daya Channelers are in for a little experiment – I have little idea how they’ll play, but a 5/5 swinger or a boost of an extra 2 mana a turn is something that very much worth considering, they seem like a very fun card. Drove of Elves was in contention for a while with Heedless One, but it’s Super-Shroud made it a lot more appealing.

There’s only 6 Slots for non-creature spells, so only two cards to go over. I actually feel that this is probably the weakest part of the deck, but I felt the need for a little removal and another reason to put in some red. Branching Bolt hits two creatures and it deals with early game flyers. Gilt-Leaf Ambush deals is also removal of a sorts – potential removal – and it can drop two creatures off one card if some additional aggro is needed.

The Sideboard has some cards that should help with some difficult matchups. Deconstruct should help against any Artifact heavy decks, whilst not wasting a turn where you could spend the mana elsewhere. Ghitu Fire is the best X damage spell I could find with a lady in the art, so it goes in as the staple Fireball. It’s there as some additional removal if needed or to get past an annoyingly defensive opponent. Gaea’s Herald is in for any annoying counterspelly control decks. And Jagged-Scar Archers work very well against any sort of Flying centric deck or if you know your opponent has some annoying ass flyer.

So as I said I’m going to get me some proxies and sleeve this one up and see what comes of it.

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Testing Notes

I did a bunch of testing, mainly against Rush and Control decks. Here’s some of the main points I gathered from testing.

• The deck can run out of steam rather quickly. Since Green hasn’t got an amazing assortment of card drawing capabilities, I should find a way to put in a little recursion into the deck and a couple more two-for-one’s.
• In the same Vein, the deck often has a lot of mana at it’s disposal when it runs out of steam, so it might be good to capitalise on that extra Mana.
• There are a couple of attributing factors that are slowing the deck down a bit. The first is that there are too many come into play tapped lands for this deck. I should find some alternatives. Llanowar Reborn isn’t really cutting the mustard anyway.
• Farhaven Elf  is rather out of place, and I found that the deck worked well enough mana-wise even after I sideboarded it out. It’ll be easy enough to cut.
• Drove of Elves and Wellwisher aren’t working out so well, mainly because the deck isn’t able to totally swarm the table with Dudettes and Tokens – The deck works better with a select A-Team of creatures on the table.
• I’m not feeling the love from Branching Bolt – it doesn’t sit well on the deck’s curve – I’d rather be playing a 3-mana creature and smashing face. I’m often scared op playing it too early – effectively missing it’s two-for-one purpose.
• Gilt-Leaf Ambush shares a similar fate, it doesn’t sit well within the deck since it’s not one for holding mana back to do something out of a main phase. They don’t fit too well into the A-Team angle either.
• Ghitu Fire and Jagged-Scar Archers are getting the boot from the sideboard, it often turned out that it’s a bad Idea to Side them in.

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Deck Version 2.0

With the Creature Board I cleaned out alot of the creatures that weren’t worth it and upped some of the better creatures in the deck to a 4-off. I added in a

Wren’s Run Packmaster which gives the deck something to do when it’s got to much mana on the board and to also have a little Totem Armour effect with the creatures (Protip: You want to Champion a creature with a "Comes into Play” ability so you get to use it again if the Packmaster is killed.

The Elvish Visionaries let the deck draw into itself a little more and sit well on the curve in the two mana spot. It’s basically a bear anyway when there’s a Lord in play.

In the instant corner I dumped Branching Bolt and Gilt-Leaf Ambush like I said and added a play set of Lightning Bolts and Punishing Fires. The latter works a little recursive combo with Grove of the Burnwillows that effectively changes the land’s ability to “Tap: Return a Punishing Fire from you graveyard to your hand and your opponent gains 1 life.” And that little bit of life gain can mean the world when you’re in a position where you need to get rid of a cump blocker or whittle your opponent down. As for Lightning Bolt it fits in well – it’s just an all round great card.  I did a little checking too, and that’s totally a lady throwing that Lightning Bolt in the M10 version of the card – after hours of MS Paint investigating, you can see my proof to the right. 

As for the sideboard, I added in the remaining Elvish Champions to make up the play set, which are very useful against opposing green decks, and for a little fun there’s a set of Lush Growth’s too, which twofold have a Spreading Seas effect against primarily Blue and Black decks – shutting their lands off to their colours, and letting the Elves Landwalk into the red zone. The Elvish Harbingers also allow the deck to draw into an Elvish Champion when needed for the combo to work, or set a creature atop the deck for Mul Daya Channelers and Bloodbraid Elf to use.

All in all I’m very happy with the deck as it is now.
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I hope that answers your request Lithbro. I actually had a lot of fun constructing the deck, which isn’t always the case when I get a request. Sure, it isn’t as powerful as an Elf deck can be, but it sure is full of ladies. Excluding Land, the only card in the deck that isn’t mammary equipped is Lush Growth, and that’s only in the Sideboard. Magic is a very versatile game, and I wouldn’t have been able to complete this deck without access to the game’s 11,000+ cards.

Join me next time as I return to rebuild what was probably my most favourite Deck Build of all time that produced a really powerful deck at the time. I’ve never really wrote about on the PoG before so be prepared.

like my Waffle House hashbrowns

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Like what you saw? Want to Contribute? Then please send me your ideas, requests, or your experiences testing the decks that I’ve posted. I’ll be happy to cook up just about anything I’m asked, in any format - All I need is a decklist or an idea to start things off. Remember that I’m not building competitive decks here, I’m aiming for the fun and functional, or even the most budget of decks, and I don’t troll forums for decklists or ideas. email me at themissingnin@hotmail.com or leave a comment on this post (please remember that if you email me, please make it clear in the subject line what you’re emailing me about, or else I will kill it with my mighty delete button, and if you leave a comment on the site and it doesn’t appear immediately, know that it’s probably been picked up by the wordpress filter and I will approve your comment asap). Also, the more I’m sent the more I’ll have to talk about! ‘Nin Out!

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I need to begin with a pre-apology. This article isn’t my best work – probably because I left it so long after actually putting the deck together to sit down and write the important bits. I developed this deck at the same time as the Vampire deck I posted a couple of weeks ago, and by the time that deck was done, this one practically done also. I try to write these articles in stages, but when the final list is done, anything that I haven’t written gets a little bit left behind. I’ll try and keep that in check for future builds. So this Article is a little cut down than others, but it gets to the point regardless.

Anyway, I’ve got an experiment for you that should accomplish two things – First I should get an awesome Eldrazi list out of it, and secondly it should analyze the state of modern Pre-Constructed Decks (oh sorry, “Intro Packs”). Picking a theme deck as a starting point, what happens down the road to making a fun, effective and functional deck.

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Starting Off With The Intro Pack

So what’s in the intro pack? Well there were a couple that came out with Rise of the Eldrazi, but the “Eldrazi Arisen” deck is probably the most to the point when it comes to the colourless beat sticks – Despite it’s odd choice of shiny rare. Here’s the list:

I figure I should add whatever is appropriate from the bonus Booster pack too, here’s what I opened:

So I’m going to add the Ondu Giant, Heat Ray, A Forest and a Mountain to keep the balance, and the Splinter Twin rare – which should be great on some of the “come into play” effect creatures in the deck.

So let’s sleeve up and get testing.

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The deck lost. Lots. But I did learn a couple of interesting things.

I think it’s time to Bump the deck up to 60 cards, and at this point I’m going to do it on the cheap by adding only common and uncommon cards, and here’s what I’ve come up with:

I’ve just added in a couple of multiples, double the Flame Slash, a couple more Growth Spasms, and the same with the creature board. The idea is to simply add in more of what the deck wants and is good at dealing out. The additional Hand of Emrakuls are there to try and see how they’ll work, and if they’re worth the investment speeding them out as fast as possible. On average this should happen about turn 4, and turn 3 if I’m lucky.

This is the kind of thing a new player should be aiming to build from their pre-constructed deck. Just to add enough cards to bring it up to the universal legal limit, continue the themes of the original deck, and flesh out what was good about that original list or add some more support cards.

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So after that I did a little more play testing, and the deck was still losing when I pitted it up against my best decks, so let’s inject some money into this thing…

The Eye of Ugins and the Eldrazi Temples are basically mandatory for this deck getting two Temples and an Ugin into play often cut the price of the decks finishers in half. Khalni Garden is AH MAZE ING. Any green deck that isn’t concerned with a little slowed pace due to a tapped come-into-play land should run a playset of these. Why? It’s a free chump blocker, it’s something to count towards your creature count - if that’s something that matters to the deck, and a pain in the ass for anyone who’s bearing down on you with a Consuming Vapours. I might have to add a little more land later, since the Eye of Ugin’s aren’t exactly land-like, more like a cheap Artifact.

So I dropped a bunch of cards for a new set of 9 Eldrazi and 9 Accelerators. There’s one each of the Big three legendaries, to see how they’ll run as finishers. The Artisans should be pretty good card advantage wise – forcing my opponent to deal with an uncounterable resurrection and a big fat swinger. And the Hand of Emrakuls are still getting a ride for the moment, but I’m still not 100% sure on their usefulness.

I decided to drop the Ondu Giants – which was a really tough decision, but for the same amount of mana I get a little bit more speed out of two Eldrazi Spawn than a tapped basic land. The Nest Invaders are still excellent turn 2 cards, and the Hatcher. Also the 3/3’s are rather useful for one of the other new cards I added.

Momentous Fall is about the best that green can do for itself when it comes to sheer card draw. Don’t get me wrong, the life gain is good too, but it’s the card draw that helps. Twofold, it can take one of those 3/3 and turn it into a Harmonize, or it can take a BIG/BIG Eldrazi and draw me a hell of a lot of cards. You might be thinking that saccing a big Eldrazi isn’t the best Idea, but believe me when I say that the Eldrazi either win you the game or die quickly after they come out – and when it’s the latter, drawing a bunch of cards can certainly make up for initial investment.

Explore works very well at running the land out, and in a worse case scenario it’s a Cycle for 2. Awakening Zone is also very important – despite the fact that it doesn’t fill either role very well, between accelerating mana and creating blockers – it’s the fact that it does both that makes it valuable.

And we’ve got a removal suite of Chain Reactions and Flame Slashs.

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Testing Phase 2

Here’s a quick list of some of the good and bad stuff I noticed:

• There’s pretty much nothing wrong with the Mana Base. Getting an early Explore and using the extra to boost out a tapped land makes it as effective as never being tapped in the first place – mitigating some of the backlash from having tapped lands come into play.
• The Hands of Emrakul aren’t working out at this point. By the time they hit the table, I’ve either wasted all of my resources bringing one out, allowing me to be swarmed – or my opponent outright kills it and well, I’ve just wasted all of me resources on a dead creature. It’s probably getting the boot.
• The removal suite is not bad, though there are some problems with controlling the size of a Chain Reaction – it only really works at it’s best when I’ve got an Awakening Zone out. I could do with something a little more predictable.
• The Artisans of Kozilek are great cards, but they’ve got some problems. First of all, with the Legendary Eldrazi in the deck there often isn’t a graveyard left to resurrect from if one gets discarded. Secondly, there isn’t much anything totally abusive to take back from the grave other than a little mana boost.
• The three Legendaries are freaking awesome. And I’d much rather cast one of them than any of the other big Eldrazi in the set.
• Between the three Token making Eldrazi the Predator is the best one. It sits well on the curve. I feel as though I could be doing something more interesting with those creature slots in the deck.

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So taking that stuff into account, and some more stuff I totally forgot, here’s what I’ve finally managed to come up with…

As I said, the mana isn’t a problem. Sometimes an extra rogue Eye of Ugin comes along, but it’s often easy to ship to the graveyard, and it’s good to have a spare in case my opponent’s packing Tectonic Edges.

The creature Board is almost totally stripped. I opted for only the big Legendary Eldrazi for the deck, since I was always looking to cast them over the choice of the Artisan or Hand of Emrakul. Joraga Treespeaker is a fantastic turn 1 Elf that boosts the deck up to five mana on turn 3. She also works well with the Oracle of Mul Daya’s when she’s fully leveled. The Oracles work like a constant Explore, which when together just shits land out of the deck like explosive diarrhea. The Predator stays where he is.

Earthquake is my solution for the problems faced with Chain Reaction, and it’s great to have something else in the deck to dump mana into. Ancient Stirrings works by either drawing me a particular land (and I’m going to want as many Eldrazi Temples and an Eye of Ugin as fast as I can) and it can also ship unwanted legendaries to the bottom of the deck. All the other spells remain the same as I stated before in the previous build.

The sideboard is prepared for two types of matchups. For counter decks and control decks I’ve put in Spellbreaker Behemoth, to make all of my Eldrazi uncounterable. Banefire is a great last chance against those types of deck too. And Not of this World works against most targeted removal. Whilst the removal suite is now a lot better, it has some problems dealing with flyers. I thought about straight up 4 copies of Windstorm, but it’s not so good as Hurricane, which I totally would’ve put in if it were standard legal. So I opted for some Oran-Reif Recluses instead, which kill when kicked and then stick around and block for a while.

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It was great fun putting this deck together – I’ve never been one to put a deck of utter fatties together but the Eldrazi make it possible.

There are plenty of other options open to potential Eldrazi players - a lot of options there for a Budget deck, totally rareless, relying on the awesomeness of the Hands of Emrakul or Artisans of Kozilek. On the other hand there’s also potential for a Token rush deck Using something akin to Overrun for a finisher, pumping an army of easily summoned Eldrazi Spawn.

The Eldrazi are something we’ve not really encountered before – Wizards have never really developed a modern method for hardcasting ridiculous creatures (and you’d want to Hardcast them, that’s some hardcore shit), but with the Eldrazi they’ve had to try, and devote a huge chunk of a set to it.

Next time I’m going to be answering a request for a rather… odd… idea. Bring Vaseline and some Tissues.

Still remain the things we couldn’t kill

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Like what you saw? Want to Contribute? Then please send me your ideas, requests, or your experiences testing the decks that I’ve posted. I’ll be happy to cook up just about anything I’m asked, in any format - All I need is a decklist or an idea to start things off. Remember that I’m not building competitive decks here, I’m aiming for the fun and functional, or even the most budget of decks, and I don’t troll forums for decklists or ideas. email me at themissingnin@hotmail.com or leave a comment on this post (please remember that if you email me, please make it clear in the subject line what you’re emailing me about, or else I will kill it with my mighty delete button, and if you leave a comment on the site and it doesn’t appear immediately, know that it’s probably been picked up by the wordpress filter and I will approve your comment asap). Also, the more I’m sent the more I’ll have to talk about! ‘Nin Out!

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It hasn’t been a totally interesting couple of weeks since we last caught up. It’s mostly been a haze of work and then holing up for an evening of Movies and Deck Testing. Thankfully things have picked up a little – and the Parents have gone away this weekend, so I’ll get a couple of quiet chillax nights –and there’s nothing more relaxing to me than a parentless house.

Alan Wake

I’m Happy to say that Alan Wake is as awesome as I hoped. I think we all know how you feel when a game has gone so long in development and it comes out to fail in regards to it’s hype train. I had fears that Alan Wake would be just that.

I’m only as far as finishing Episode 2, and I’m happy with taking my time with it, an Episode at a time. The game’s structure near demands it. And I hope to continue that way up until the end.

The Max Payne references so far are abundant, though not to the point that you get a slap in the face every time one appears. And some I think wouldn’t be noticed by the un-core Payne Fan. The ‘This door is locked’ sound in Wake is the same as in both Max Payne’s, which brings a smile to my face every time I encounter it  - where I’m sure some trolls might look down at remedy for reusing an old sound. Fuck those guys, the sound design is AH MAZING.

It was a sound decision getting the collectors edition. There’s a bonus disk that’s loaded with content that chronicles the game’s – for example, there’s a screenshot gallery for every year the game gas been in development. There’s some Dashboard Theme’s and shit on there too, but I’m sure the golden egg is going to be the additional in-game developer commentary. It comes with a soundtrack CD, though unfortunately it doesn’t contain the non-operatic music of the game. And there’s a hard cover book, which seems like it contains extra info on some of the games characters, though written from an in-game perspective. I think I’ll get my worth of all that stuff once I finish the game.

I’ll hopefully have more to talk about next time, but so far it’s been a thumbs up all the way. I really hope they put out a PC version at some point, because sadly there’s some people out there that don’t have a 360. But I’d say that this is another reason on the long list of reasons to own a 360. If you want to see a little of what you’re missing, GiantBomb has an excellent Video Review of the game right HERE.

Halo: Reach Beta

I got the chance to play some of the Halo: Reach Beta over the past couple of weeks. I was almost playing it daily, ensuring I played at least my three required matches to get ranked in the Slayer Arena.

They’ve even got some of the Bungie.net connectivity working too. So you can view stuff like your player profile (mine here), and directly upload  screenshots (that’s 1920×1080 resolution btw), and game replays. And that’s all stuff I w ish other games had, especially MW2 and Bad Company 2.

You know, there’s even a company that’ll take those screenshots and directly print them out all high quality style and frame them and shit. It’s True.

Besides that, the game’s good fun. Still Halo, but with enough new changes to enlighten the experience whilst keeping the solid framework of the old games intact. And now that there’s some proper player progression in the multiplayer experience I’ll definitely stick around this time – especially if the ranking system works as it is intended and lets me play with all the other plebs. Not that’s I’m too plebby - that’s one of my finer moments above – I’m the red guy with the gravity hammer. The guy in blue, well, he’s very dead.

Duels of the Planeswalkers Expansion 2

Wizards continues to fail at videogames, though as a community we’re not really sure if it’s solely the developers fault, or the relationship imposed upon them by wizards. The content of the new expansion was broken for the better part of two days after it’s launch – a period that the paid for expansion was not removed from the live marketplace. Neither was it’s inability to function very well advertised.

The Developers have done a decent job of updating the game – once it got working that is -  with some streamlining of the gameplay and the new content, but I can’t shake the surrounding shell of brokenness, that I could surely, as both a long time Magic The gathering player, and as a gamer in general, devote entire blog posts to.

To sum it up, the game is noticably sluggish in parts, and some of the card abilities don’t work either at all or correctly. What really pissed me off is that in desperate situations, the game chooses what lands you tap to cast a spell, and there are a couple of times where it just straight up taps the wrong basic lands, and you’re left with either an ability I can’t activate or spell I can’t cast.

And some of the decks have a lot of crap in them, considering the huge spectrum they’ve got to choose from – and whilst I understand the need the game has for restricting almost all kinds of deck construction, it would be really great if I could remove some of the base crap from the core deck. Boring crap like Hill Giant and cunt-fucking Goblin Piker.

But the number 1 thing that really really pisses me off about this game is the stream of content. It took them over six months since the last released DLC to get this expansion out, and it took them that time to create 3 new decks, 5 new puzzle challenges, and the AI opponents to use them. Instead of getting that every month or two (which would be really fucking great btw) they’ve started charging micro-payments for stuff like new in game backgrounds and in-game avatars. Now they’re even offering players a fee to unlock additional cards for decks – cards that you get from playing the game anyway.

All of this is reminiscent of the old crap EA used to put out – charging for in game cheats or currency in single player games. I get the feeling that Wizards wants to turn Duels of the Planeswalkers into the closest thing to MTGO they can get – and what Duels’ should be is the furthest fucking thing from MTGO.

Counter Strike: Source Beta

Surprisingly, Valve announced that it’s running a Beta for some new features they’re looking to add to CS:S. It must be about three years since the game had a proper update, probably because all of the attention that Team Fortress 2 has got. Infact it’s all TF2 style improvements they’re making – stuff like lifetime stats, Achievements, the domination and revenge system, and some other good Steam profile integration stuff.

As a lapsed CS:S player, I’m really happy to see the game getting a bit of a modern update – even if it isn’t an announcement of a brand new game. There’ll probably be some pissed off players out there, due to the hardcore nature of the game, but it’s stuff like this that’ll draw me back in.

The Achievement list – which someone posted HERE – look really epic, in a way that it’ll take a long long time to get some of those. But anyway, I hope that this update, and more, make it through the beta. I’d be checking it out myself, but I missed my chance to get in. T_T SADFACE.

Transformers: War for Cybertron

I honestly don’t remember much of Transformers from when I was younger. I think I just understood it as a concept, but never really bought into the story. It’s a long shot that any game could be a Transformers revolution akin to Arkham Asylum levels of success – but War for Cybertron has me intrigued at least. The multiplayer alone appears as if it has depth the likes of Modern Warfare 2, take a look at this video…

OnLive in the UK

Remember OnLive right? That thing that streams games to your PC or telly without the need for decent hardware, only a decent internet connection. Well Kotaku reports that BT have signed a deal to bring OnLive to the UK at some point in the future. That’s kind of cool – if it works that is. Though in general I’m happy to see that this is happening, simply because this is the kind of thing I didn’t think we’d get in the UK due to it’s server restrictions and our generally crappy broadband provisions. I guess we’ll have to see it to believe it, at least now we know we’ll get the chance.

Biting Zingers. Wat.

My favourite ‘wat’ moment of the past weeks has to be Joystiq’s report of a House game (that is - one based on the fucking brilliant TV show starring Hugh Laurie) coming to the DS and PC this August. All you need to know is in the trailer, and it is clearly on the far opposite spectrum as Arkham Asylum when it comes to games based on non game IP’s. You better check it out…

The Great PC Hunt

I talked a little last time about my need for a new PC. I’m well on my way to saving up enough the cash, but I’m still confused when it comes to buying the thing. I’ve come to the understanding that I’m probably going to have to get it online – the ‘Shire doesn’t appear to be equipped, but I’ll take a look in Aberdull next weekend when I’m through. And don’t get me started on our local establishment – who’s only open whenever I’m at work.

THIS is the kind of configuration that I’m aiming for, though I’d go a little higher that that if I got the chance. So now it’s just a case of ‘where’ now that I’ve somewhat figured out the ‘what’. As always I’m taking any suggestions and recommendations, I’ve got about 4-5 weeks to get the thing ordered anyway.

TV And Stuff

The non-leaked version of the new JJ.Abrams thing hut the web a couple of days ago. And going by the name and the trailer, I can’t put my thumb on the genre. It’s either Cloverfieldy meets aliens, or something Superheroey. “Super 8” is a really weird name. I’m sure it’ll be great when it comes out in like a year’s time. You can check that trailer HERE.

The latest season of Supernatural came to a close on Friday, and it was surprisingly satisfying and held well together – not often the case when you bring God, Satan and the armies of heaven and hell together wrapped around a story 5-seasons in the making. But yeah, it was really good, just like the rest of the show. It’s been picked up for a 6th season, but with the lead creative director leaving with this season, I think we can say for sure that this 5th season is the end of this story. Or at least that’s what we can say when th studio milks the show right into pwnblivion.

I leave you today with a final luls. A hilarious video remix of a WoW Freak Out – a rising genre – the original of which I’m sure I posted about a year ago. Prepare to have your happiness stat modified by +5…

Yes, at one point he is trying to sodomise himself with a TV remote through sheer rage. Here’s the original in case you want to make sure.

Next Time on My Life…

Next weekend I’ve got another attempt at passing my Driving Theory, so next weeks deck building post might be a little late unless I finish it before hand – which is a possibility since the Deck list itself is finished, it’s just the explanations I’ve got to put down on blog-paper.

Red Dead Redemption is also out next week, which has unexpectedly been hitting my radar recently. GTA in a dirty western form should be good fun right? Hopefully we’ll get some reviews next week before the game hits on Friday.

Now I’m off to enjoy the rest of my parentless weekend. I know, I should just move out already. I’ll start saving once I get this fucking Driving Test thing out of the way. Anyway, remember to leave a comment! and I’ll catch you on the flipside.

Now a week in the country is just what I need

Welcome back to another on-time deck building article! I’ve been working on this week’s deck the moment I finished building the last. So that means that this deck is two weeks in the making, along with the initial setup I’ve got for my next deck. Yeah, I’ve been playing alot of magic the past fortnight, and all against myself. And in that time I’ve gone through seasons 2 and 3 of Criminal Minds. Anyway, let’s hop to it…

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Concept

So for today’s article I’m finally going to get round to building the long awaited Mono-Black Vampire deck I’ve been promising myself since Zendikar was announced. Now is opportune time since the block has rounded itself off in Rise of the Eldrazi, and we’ll get the chance to play with Vampire Nocturnus in standard before M11 kicks him out this summer.

Now that the creature type finally has the tools to compete with the other tribes, the structure of the deck will follow the traditional format for tribal decks – allow for a stream of creatures that build benefits off each other, and play spells to support those creatures.

Vamps are relatively new to this game, as before M10, Vampires have been few and far between, highly costed or have been basically unplayable.

I’ve been trying to not go over the top with the card pool choices, because as I’m sure you can imagine, it takes alot of time to write, but this deck is the exception. Check it out…

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Card Pool – Creatures

This is a comprehensive list of all the available Vampire creatures and spells that are currently Standard legal. I figure It’d be best to break this down by overall Converted Mana Cost – to make sure I’ve got an eye on the mana curve.

1 CMC Vampires

• Guul Draz Assassin – Much more Control than Aggro. As an early game attacker I’d have to waste two turns to get him to his first set of levels, and after that he doesn’t necessarily guarantee the kill at only -2/-2. Pretty darn awesome if he makes it to the late game.
• Guul Draz Vampire – I’ve used this card successfully in my previous tries at a vampire deck. All you have to do is make sure your opponent gets bloodied enough to get the Boost before his defences go up.
• Pulse Tracker – The first of many decent multiplayer vampires from the Zendikar block. Might be worth the slot in an aggro build since he’d basically be hitting for 2 every turn.
• Quag Vampire – I suppose this card would be really good if you found yourself able to constantly swampwalk him. He’s decent late game insurance if you topdeck him. Otherwise I feel that he’s a little costly.
• Vampire Lacerator – Really good in budget aggro builds, but I keep getting the feeling that there’s better investment in the early game. Plus the lifeloss can really hurt if the deck can’t keep it’s shit together.

2 CMC Vampires

• Bloodthrone Vampire – Really excellent card when there’s lots of willing Eldrazi spawn creatures ready to be Sacced, which basically means Limited. (Protip: This is not Limited)
• Blood Seeker – Not very impactful for 1v1, but probably alot more effective in Multiplayer.
• Bloodghast – I’d be hard pressed to get a set of these for the Aggro deck since they’re going for about £5 each. He’s completely built for Aggro, so I will test him out at least. Shame that his haste is situational.
• Gatekeeper of Malakir – Excellence. Keeps the creatures flowing, and deals with an early game threat in the mean time. He targets the player too, and not the creature, so he’s got some angles on protective foes.
• Child of Night – Perfect in a budget deck, but I’m not so sure these days.
• Kalastria Highborn – Pretty cool card, also worth a test especially in the control build. Shame that her activation is dependant on one of my creatures dying, and that I’ll have to keep some mana back to pay for it.
• Ruthless Cullblade -  Meh, Guul Draz Vampire is better and quicker.
• Vampire Hexmage – With all the Levellers, Quests, Planeswalkers and Allies going about, it’d be mad not to want a Hexmage or two in the deck. SHE KILLS PLANESWALKERS. Not to mention the additional First Strike and decent stats. She’ll be in the sideboard at least.

3 CMC Vampires

• Arrogant Bloodlord – I played this guy at the RoE Pre-release a couple of weeks ago, and I’m not sure where he stands. I found that most of the time he’d have to sit there acting like a wall when my opponent had a single measly Eldrazi Spawn token on the field. However I can see this card’s potential – he’s worth a shot.
• Bloodrite Invoker - Er… No thanks.
• Nirkana Cutthroat – I’d really like to try this card out in both Aggro and Control decks. Whilst i did have some success with her at the Pre-release – Constructed is a different game, and I think I’d be doing something wrong if I were spending my fourth turn levelling a creature instead of playing another. It’s the conundrum that these levelling creatures present – if and when they’re worth levelling.
• Pawn of Ulamog – Could be cool, but there’s better cards I could play for 3 mana.
• Bloodhusk Ritualist – I suppose she’s really a 4-5 or even 6 mana card, much like Gatekeeper of Malakir. Pretty perfect in a control deck if the mana keeps flowing – better if I can pump her with something. not quite sure about where she sits Aggressively though.
• Vampire Aristocrat – This guy practically loses to Bloodthrone Vampire which wont be in the deck anyway. Excellent choice in limited though.
• Vampire Nighthawk -  Downright the best three-mana vampire, also possibly the best three mana black creature in standard right now. He works in Aggro and in control. He’s great aggro and great defence. Guaranteed 4-off.

4 & 5 CMC Vampires

• Vampire Nocturnus – There’s a lot of players out there that will poo-poo on Vampy Nocturnus. I personally like him very much. Granted his lord ability is only active something like 60% of the time.
• Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief – Drana is the new heavy hitter from Rise of the Eldrazi, and is in major contention with Malakir Bloodwitch for the high-end creature slot. Drana is an excellent source of instant speed removal for the late game when all you are doing is topdecking, and is also a decent evasive threat at the same time.
• Anowon, The Ruin Sage – I’d really like to use Anowon in the Control version of the deck. He’s great at just keeping stuff off my opponents side of the field, and like Drana, keeps going when I’m just topdecking. As a side note – he could be pretty cool in Multiplayer.
• Malakir Bloodwitch – The blood witch will end up in non-vampire decks for it’s rare “protection from white” stapled onto a well balanced 4/4 & flying for 5 mana body. At least worth the sideboard space. Also near the end of the game can swing the life totals in your favour, provided you’ve got some other vamps in play.

6+ CMC Vampires

• Blood Tyrant – No. Double No.
• Butcher of Malakir – Pretty solid creature if you can feed into the built-in grave pact.
• Kalitas, Bloodchief of Ghet – Costs way to much for an effect the deck shouldn’t really need. An army of token vamps would be pretty cool, but it’s hardly worth the effort required.
• Vein Drinker – We’re not playing red, so no… but it’d probably still be a no if we were.
• Nirkana Revenant – Would be a winner if she had some build-in evasion, but she doesn’t. Her mana doubling effect is more suited for a combo deck, or one that wants to finish on an epic Consume Spirit.

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Non-Creature Vampire Spells

• Vampire’s Bite – Might work out in the Aggro build, but even at that there are other pump-spells out there. Some of the Vampires already Bite anyway
• Urge to Feed – Kills weenies, or acts as a negative Giant Growth against anything bigger. It’s boosting works best when the vamps are blocking, leaving them free to tap for a minor boost.
• Feast of Blood – Probably my most favourite Vampire Spell that’s not a creature. The 4 points of life gain help a little bit, the best part is that it doesn’t discriminate against colours, which makes it extremely useful against opposing black decks.
• Blood Tribute – And there’s a nice combo with this and Sanguine Bond, which auto-wins the game provided you can kick the Sorcery. By itself it can be rather useful and punishing. I’ll consider it for the Control Build.
• Blade of the Bloodchief – I figure any Equipment would slow either decks down, and whilst rather cheap, Blade of the Bloodchief takes a slot away from either a Vamp or some removal. It’s more of a combo card really.

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… And Other Awesome Spells

• Bloodchief Ascension – Getting the quest counters on shouldn’t be a problem. How to get the life loss effect to trigger is. The odd removal spell or discard effect would easily trigger it, but how often that happens depends solely on the deck.
• Sanguine Bond – There should ne plenty of Lifelinky Creatures available for the deck, so technically this card doubles their effectiveness. And there’s the Blood Tribute combo that I mentioned above.
• Liliana Vess – She’s pretty awesome, but a little slow for an aggro deck. Utterly perfect in control for the discard and tutor effects.
• Sorin Markov – As appealing as Sorin is, I’m not sure how good he’d be. The Vicious Hunger effect doesn’t really hold up against an environment of generally sizeable creatures, and I would like to hope that my opponent would be at about 10 life by the time I get to 6-mana. His ultimate is… Interesting.
• Doom Blade – Black’s new staple removal. Good stuff.
• Smother – As if black didn’t have enough stellar removal, we get a blast from the past, Onslaught style. Works best against weenie decks, since it won’t bring down a Baneslayer or an Eldrazi. So as much as I adore it, and it’s amazing new art, it’s ranking low.
• Tendrils of Corruption – This would be great for heading up the top of the removal suite. Gets better as the game goes on, and the card while featuring tendrils and corruption and not fangs and blood is very flavourful for the deck.
• Consume Spirit – Great finisher if the deck can ramp up some mana, but I doubt the deck would need it for that with a Vampiric Armada heading up the offensive. As a removal spell, see above for something better.
• Dead Reckoning – Useful in Vamp decks that have stronger and more important creatures than your usual aggro build. But it’s a little bit slower than the rest of the available removal.
• Deathmark – 100% Sideboard Material. Never in the Main Deck.
• Duress – Very good early card against any control or combo deck, less effective against an aggro deck full of annoying creatures. Hence this should always be a sideboard option.
• Mind Sludge – I didn’t really think that this card was any good until I thought about it when compared to Mind Shatter. For the same price as a Mind Sludge, a Mind Shatter only discards 3 cards. The Sludge would probably do more than that by the time the deck ramps up to 5-Mana. (I say probably because the deck might not just be running swamps.)
• Sign in Blood – Mono-Black decks don’t have much access to card draw. On the basic level Sign in Blood is a cheaper Divination with a mostly minor drawback. The additional effect is that it can be used on your opponent to ping them for 2 life.
• Sadistic Sacrament – Could be cool against control decks alongside some sideboarded discard effects, probably Duress. It can seek out and remove anything horrible that would get in the deck’s way. The kicker’s pretty badass, but I’d never hang onto it that long – I’d rather get rid of my opponent’s Day of Judgements before turn 4.
• Mire’s Toll – I’m interested in this card compared to Duress – Whilst Duress kills in the early game, Mire’s Toll works better in the mid to late game, and only discriminates against lands.
• Marsh Casualties – It’s one sided, but lacks any decent punch for a maindeck slot, even kicking it for 5. Might fit in the sideboard against token floody decks or if this whole Eldrazi Spawn thing takes off
• Mistvein Borderpost & Veinfire Borderpost – If there’s a Vampire Nocturnus in the deck these should be considered for some of the land slots to better ensure that the top card of the deck isn’t colourless. Otherwise it’ll only slow down the deck.
• Eldrazi Monument – Indestructibility alone is almost worth the price of admission, the problem is finding the creatures to comfortably sacrifice
• Howling Mine – It’s the go-to card for card draw when you’re not playing blue.
• Consume the Meek – Theoretically, I could put together Vampire deck that had no creatures with CMC 3 or less. But that’s too restrictive for the standard card pool.
• Consuming Vapours – My new favourite removal spell, and I’m itching for a chance to try it out. It gets rid of things that other removal spells can’t. Would fit in the same slot as Tendrils of Corruption.
• Last Kiss – Decent budget damage, but there’s better removal available.
• Inquisition of Kozilek – And the Mire’s Toll/Duress throne has another contender, straight from Rise of the Eldrazi. It gets rid of anything you’d need to in the early game, after that, I’m not sure how effective it would be – I’m more than willing to try it out.
• Virulent Swipe  - This is absolutely what I’d choose over Vampire’s Bite for an aggro Vampy deck. The boost isn’t quite a Giant Growth, but it’s the Deathtouch that makes the boosted creature into a removal spell after blockers or somewhat evasive before blockers. But even more so the Rebound is probably it’s strongest feature – it’s a two for one – pure card advantage.
• Everflowing Chalice – Whilst the deck doesn’t really play to require alot of Colourless mana, The control deck I’ll be building might need a little boost to get it’s powerhouse going a little sooner.

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Land

Since the deck will be running only Black cards, and since we’re playing for speed, the less non-basics the better, and the less tapped lands the betterer.

• Bokuja Bog – This card would actually be pretty cool in the sideboard for a Tormod’s Crypt effect when needed, whilst not removing any other card from the deck’s rotation.
• Crypt of Agadeem – For this card to begin to be beneficial, You’d need to have three creature cards in your graveyard. Most decks that I’ve seen run the crypt are built around using it, and I don’t think either of the decks I’m going to build can handle the space. That’s not to say that it wouldn’t work out in the Aggro build.
• Gargoyle Castle – Might be cool as a one or two off in the Maximum-6 Slots I’ll probably leave for Non-Colour producing lands. A land that can pop a 3/4 flyer into play at any time, especially after a wipe, might be really useful.
• Piranha Marsh – Might be fun in the aggro deck, but it might slow it down too. I figure it would work the best in a budget version of the deck.
• Tectonic Edge – Ooh, yes please. Whilst I want to keep the amount of non-colour producing lands low, this card can fuck up a good portion of a High-End Control deck’s mana base. And since the deck will have something like 24 lands, there should be room. (yeah, 24, more on that later).

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Deck Version 1

So since I’m still not sure whether I’ll end up with an Aggro or Control type build, or something in between, I’ve come up with an initial skeleton build that somewhat covers all the bases. It’s a bit ‘bulky’, and lacking in some areas, but I’ll be switching cards in and out of play tests. I often find that I like a lot of cards that end up failing me, and oppositely dismiss some really good cards. So in order to plumb the depths of that insane card pool you see above this paragraph I’ll have to try a but of everything.

Mono Black  Vamps – Standard Legal  60 Cards – Skeleton Build – V1.0

Lands x24 20x Swamp (The Sexy Full Art Kind ) 4x Tectonic Edge Creatures x23 4x Kalastria Highborn 4x Gatekeeper of Malakir 4x Vampire Nighthawk 4x Nirkana Cutthroat 4x Vampire Hexmage 3x Vampire Nocturnus Other Spells x13 4x Inquisition of Kozilek 3x Virulent Swipe 3x Urge to Feed 3x Feast of Blood

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Testing Notes

I was rather confused throughout playtesting. Eventually I realised that The Vampire deck, that is, the Archetype, is extremely modular. But all the different builds I tried revolved around a midrange philosophy. So in essence, the deck is neither Aggro or Control but something in-between. This makes the deck rather hard to gauge, because depending on card draws, or more so on opening hands – the deck can swing either way in any match.

So what about card choices then? Well, for starters I played with all of the one-drop vamps at some point, and they all rather lacked in staying power. Guul Draz Assassin was probably the most disappointing of the bunch – he’s just too slow to get active, and I never wanted to level him up on turn two or three, just because I had better things to play. The best one was probably Guul Draz Vampire, because it just gets bigger in the late game. But inevitably the one-drops got cut from the deck.

What I put in their place were the one-mana discard cards. Remember what I said about the deck being modular? Every time I switched out a card or two, Duress, Mire’s Toll or Inquisition of Kozilek were going in or out too. They all have their strong points, and I’ll elaborate more on that in the final list.

Kalastria Highborn took some learning to use her properly, and for a while she was out of the deck completely. She’s should almost always be played as a turn 3 card, like Gatekeeper of Makalir. Without the backup to use her ability, then she’s just a 2-mana 2/2.

As such, I ended up dropping all of the three mana vamps from the deck, as a Kicked Gatekeeper or an ability ready Highborn was very much a better deck. I never wanted to play Bloodhusk Ritualist until at least turn 4, just for the kick, and that didn’t set well with the flow of the deck. And Nirkana Cutthroat, much like the Assassin, required mana I’d rather be spending on something else. But she was marginally helpful for a little deathtouch here and there.

As for the Bigger vamps – I tried Anowon, but he was really slow at removing things where I could just as easily remove it myself. Bloodwitch is good, but Drana is much better – a little trick I found was to use her ability on herself if I really had to – making her a 7/1 flyer.

The removal suite switched out alot too. I found that Feast of Blood was dead in my hand a lot more than I could deal with. After I dropped it, I was never without some Doom Blades, provided I had some backup in the sideboard if I faced another black deck.

I didn’t really mess about with the Mana Base at all. 24 seems to be the magic number, as long as I give the deck a proper shuffle between matches. I tried Gargoyle Castle at one point, but It didn’t have the impact I wanted. Whereas a Tectonic Edge can wreak a lot of havoc on my opponents mana.

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Deck Version 2

I’ve been testing the deck on and off for the past two weeks now, and I think this build is the best that I can come up with and I only settled on the final list last night. Take a look…

The two and three mana vamps speak for themselves. They’re practically staples of the Archetype. I really would’ve liked to squeeze in another Highborn, but thems the breaks.

Vampire Nocturnus is a player for sure. For a while in playtesting, he wasn’t in the deck, and the deck suffered for it. He’s important to quickly synch a victory, or ensure my vamps remain relevant towards the late game. Drana works well as a two-off, and like Nocturnus, lends well towards victory.

Most players would scoff at putting both Duress and Inquisition of Kozilek in the deck at the same time – but having six slots dedicated to that type of card seems right - so I’ve got a 1 in 10 chance of one of my opening hand cards being a discard. My contention lies with having to choose between those two and Mire’s Toll. I really like Mire’s toll for the mid-late game, but both of the cards I’ve chosen guarantee me a look at my opponents entire hand as early as turn 1 and Mire’s Toll doesn’t.

Consuming Vapors is a great removal card, and if my opponent isn’t flooding the field, it forces my opponent to play round the card’s rebound, either wasting mana on weaker creatures to keep the ones they want in play, or even skipping playing creatures for a turn to avoid a sacrifice – which is often a downright timewalk.

About the sideboard. The Bloodwitches are excellent against most white decks, or any slower control deck where the deck has some more time to ramp up some mana. Mind Sludge is pretty much the same deal. Tendrils is there for the mono-black mirror, or where ever else a Doom Blade or a Urge to Feed doesn’t fit. And finally Marsh Casualties works great against any kind of swarm deck, particularly a mass of Eldrazi Spawn. But I’d easily drop them for a set of Consume the Meek.

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I’m really glad that I’ve finally got my vampire deck together. That’s another thing checked off my insanely long list of decks.

Like I said in my post last week, I’ve got the timing down to get one of these out Fortnightly, and have a couple of general Gaming posts in between –  Which I apologise for not putting up that type of post more frequently.

Next-next week, I think I’ve figured out what to do with all those Eldrazi, and I’ve got an interesting way of showing how to build it. Should be helpful to some of the newbies out there. Until then, remember that an organised deckbox leads to an organised mind.

There’s a tiny little window

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Like what you saw? Want to Contribute? Then please send me your ideas, requests, or your experiences testing the decks that I’ve posted. I’ll be happy to cook up just about anything I’m asked, in any format - All I need is a decklist or an idea to start things off. Remember that I’m not building competitive decks here, I’m aiming for the fun and functional, or even the most budget of decks, and I don’t troll forums for decklists or ideas. email me at themissingnin@hotmail.com or leave a comment on this post (please remember that if you email me, please make it clear in the subject line what you’re emailing me about, or else I will kill it with my mighty delete button, and if you leave a comment on the site and it doesn’t appear immediately, know that it’s probably been picked up by the wordpress filter and I will approve your comment asap). Also, the more I’m sent the more I’ll have to talk about! ‘Nin Out!

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Surprisingly, I suppose this is me on schedule for my once- a fortnight between articles, though I haven’t  posted anything since the last one at all. I’ve been recovering from my Fundee adventures since last weekend – stroking my magic boner as it were. Hopefully you caught some of the action on my Twitter feed. To my detriment, I haven’t really been playing any games other than tweaking the deck you’ll see below, and patiently waiting for Rise of the Eldrazi to drop, which it did yesterday when a booster box arrived at my door yesterday.

I love how it was packed like how you see blocks of cocaine packed in the movies –cellophane and duct tape holding the box together, wrapped in brown postage paper.

Naturally I O.D.’d last night and opened all of them at once…

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The Rise of the Eldrazi Prerelease

Despite going 3 wins and 3 losses in the rounds, I had a really great time at the Prerelease. According to organisers, it was actually the largest Prerelease Scotland has ever had at something like 65 players. It was cramped for the entire tournament. One round I had about a foot squared of table real estate to work with, and another I had to deal with the crack between two tables precariously dividing my permanents.

The deck I put together was a Red, Green and Black mix of cards, mainly for the removal and the speedy cards I got. But as the tournament went on, I realised how weak the removal I had was against dealing with the constant fatties of the set. And my triple win streak began to fall apart. For the last game I played, I sided in a Pathrazer of Ulamog, the only Eldrazi I opened from my sealed pool and whilst I did manage to cast it, it got immediately Vendetta’d the turn after. I managed to squeeze in at 25th place.

I’m Glad I got my booster box yesterday, because Rise of the Eldrazi is a freaking awesome set, and it’s certainly bringing in the new players and re-lapsers. And I’ll be figuring out what to do with all the new cards I got in future Articles.

I’ve already found an awesome substitute from the Artifact deck I featured last time. I’ve already dropped the Elsewhere flasks for a set of Prophetic Prisms, and I’m set to go back through many of my old builds to swap out some cards for some more modern alternatives.

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Deck Concept

So what are we going to build today? Well I’ve always wanted to throw an Ally deck together ever since their Debut in Zendikar. It’s a shame that we only have two sets (Zendikar and Worldwake) to draw cards from to build the deck – all of which can be seen HERE.

But where’s the twist? Well I thought I’d make the first version of the deck without any Rares. Whether you think so or not, I believe Magic is a very expensive game indeed, and when you aim to build as many decks as myself, the monetary cost of deckbuilding can get rather ridiculous. This should also be a perfect example of a deck a new player can easily build for a couple of pounds.

I’ll add some rares at some point, but not within the first version of the deck. Most of the staple Ally cards are printed at Common and Uncommon anyway.

There are Allys of all colours, but I think white is probably the best colour to start with – for the reasons I state below, and the colour fits with the general philosophy of the deck – the closest common archetype being your average White Weenie.

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Card Pool - White

• Kazandu Blademaster – The All-Star Uncommon of the deck. For one he’s extremely cost effective, in that he feels like a three mana card. First Strike and Vigilance make for one hell of an equally offensive and defensive card. All in all, he’s half the reason the deck is primarily white.
• Hada Freeblade – Turn one Ally that grows throughout the game. Great stuff. While he lacks the First Strike and Vigilance of his older brother, he makes up for it by simply being cheaper.
• Ondu Cleric – I figure I should be able to gain a lot of life out of this card, allowing the deck to swing for the face rather than holding back and letting myself take a couple to the face.
• Makindi Sheildmate – Decent defensive card, and it is going in the first version for the deck purely to make up the numbers – after that it’s probably going to be the first card cut for a couple of rares.
• Join the Ranks – The other main reason why the deck is primarily white is this card – which is the only Non-creature card that has anything to do with Allys. It’s an instant to boot, which lends nicely to some Ally boosting combat tricks.

White will also lend to the deck it’s various weenie combat tricks, some limited creature removal in the case it has to stand against a brood of Eldrazi, and hopefully some general protection against opposing removal.

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Allys of Other Colours

Black – I don’t know what the hell they’re trying to do here. Generally all the Black Allies are pretty weak for combat and have a high cost or drawback. They lend to more control type builds, which isn’t really what we’re going for here. And it’d be nice to build a deck for once that didn’t have black in it

Red – The mountainous Allies run along a similar vein as their Black counterparts: High Costs, noticeable drawbacks. They are on the opposite end of what the White Allies are trying to do, get big as quick as possible, and survive the encounter.

Green – Green was my original choice as White’s counterpart, but most of the interesting meat lies in the Rares, and the colour lacks from having truly solid Common and Uncommon allies.

Blue – Has only 5 Allies to choose from and of those, only three are non-rare and two are playable. But they are solid Allies nevertheless. Thankfully, the best blue Allies are low cost, and not so heavy on the U’s when it comes to casting cost, so it doesn’t muscle in on White’s operation. It also presents an interesting alternative win condition.

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Card Pool – Blue

• Umara Raptor – This Ally is the most evasive of the lot, in that he’s the only Ally printed with non-conditional evasion of any kind. This one can get pretty big if he gets out early, the Ideal turn 3 drop.
• Halimar Excavator -  I imagine this one can do quite a bit of damage to an opponent’s strategy, especially if I manage to start dropping Allys every turn. And at the extremes lines itself up well for a secondary win condition of decking my opponent.
• Seascape Aerialist – Well, this guy is pretty bad, and well above the curve mana wise. He’s not going in the deck at all, he’s just the third and last non-rare Blue Ally.

Blue also gives me access to Counterspells, Bounce-magic, and most importantly steady card draw, which I’ll need if I want to be playing an Ally on every single turn.

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Deck Version 1

For a change I figure I’d show you version 1 of the deck before I went into the particulars on any tertiary card choises.

So the land is a pretty standard affair. I didn’t want to overload the deck with “Come into play Tapped” type lands, but the Refuge’s are worth the mana fixing, and i figure the 5 other effect-lands shouldn’t hinder the speed of the deck.

Treasure Hunt and the Three Ponders make for an interesting draw suite, they ensure that I should always draw into something else I can play – but I’d really like to refine what I’ve got in these slots as the development continues, I don’t think they will deliver as much as I need in Volume.

Journey to Nowhere is the only removal the deck has, and it only works against creatures – I figure this will probably be tweaked at some point to make it a little less situational.

Since this is a “budget” deck, I figured I’d see how budget it actually is, so I plugged the decklist into both CoolStuffInc.com and MTGMintCard.com – two sites I’ve bought singles from in the past. And here are the results, minus the basic lands and shipping costs:

• CoolStuffInc = $20.40 => About £13.25
• MTGMintCard = $30.34 => About £19.70

You might be thinking that that’s still a bit much. For reference, these days, a Theme deck costs £10 and that’s an intentionally shitty 40-card deck and a booster. Not to mention that any regular magic collector would have some of these cards already, and newbies wouldn’t have a totally hard time begging for some of these cards from the Vets.

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I actually had the deck along with me to the pre-release, and so I managed to get a couple of games in with it. It went rather well, but there were a couple of problems I encountered.

• The Tapped Lands were pretty useless, not including the Sejiri Refuges which were excellent in every way. I’m not sure if I should drop the bad ones entirely or find an alternative.
• Makindi Sheildmate is really pretty lame – it goes against the aggressive nature of the deck in almost every way, whilst continuing to grow bigger for basically no reason. It’s out for sure, but I’m not sure for what instead.
• The deck has some problems against removal, in both upfront and the aftermath. The deck needs some proper protection.
• I should probably replace the Journey to Nowhere’s with Oblivion Rings as soon as possible. Or come up with some entirely better Standard-Legal Removal.
• The deck can run out of steam real fast, leaving me to top-deck whatever I can to survive. I suppose, technically that’s a problem with removal giving my dudes a massive bitch-slap, but whilst the card drawers effectively filter what I draw, they lack abundance.

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Version 2 and new Card Choises

After Dropping the Makindi Sheildmates, it was really just a case of tweaking the support cards of the deck. I went through about 20 different options and configurations, and this is what I ended up with.

I nearly forget about Path to Exile in my initial build. It’s one of the best removal spells white has, and now it’s one of the best cards in the deck. Into The Roil fills the role of being cheap temporary removal and the second card in the deck to generate some card advantage. This card wants to be kicked for 4, but isn’t always necessary. Oblivion Ring rounds off the removal suite with a great way of dealing with pretty much anything that gets in the way.

I figure the Sideboard isn’t really important for this deck, you can pretty much throw in any good Colour Hosers that fit. Celestial Purge and Kor Firewalker are both musts, along with something that takes direct care of Artifacts and Enchantments. You get the idea. That gives the deck a well curved removal suite at one, two and three converted mana costs.

So how much does the deck cost now?

ZOMBIE JESUS! Ok, so it turns out that Path to Exile is practically as expensive as most decent mythic rares – Clocking in at  about $8=£5 EACH. But even a savvy player could wrangle up a playset of these through trading. Or even finding a cheaper alternative. It wouldn’t hurt to drop them back for a set of Journey to Nowhere. Magic is such a diverse game that is shouldn’t be hard to get a decent alternative. Otherwise version 2 is pretty much as inexpensive as version 1.

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Rise of the Eldrazi Commons & Uncommons

So I also got the chance to cycle in some ROE cards to test in the uncommon/common slots, and there was one card that really stood out to me: Eel Umbra. It does a couple of interesting things. First off, it lets your best allies survive both mass and targeted removal. Secondly it makes for some sweet minor combat trickery. There were two Totem Armors that were cheaper: Crab Umbra and Hyena Umbra. But they both offer the deck either things it already had or doesn’t really need. Some of the Green Totem Armors would have been pretty awesome in this case, but the Flash ability of the Eel Umbra gives it a double- purpose.

Other ROE cards I tried included: Repel the Darkness, Oust, Reality Spasm, and even Wall of Omens. But none of them really contributed much as other cards that I’ve tried.

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Adding Rares 

There are 4 Cards that should really help the deck out that I’m going to recommend to myself. The deck now stands well enough on it’s own, but I can’t help but taunt it with a little Golden Symbol booty.

• Talus Paladin – ($1.59 to $3.99 = £1 to £2.50) He grows like the best allies – through his +1/+1 tokens, but the Lifelink is where the Party’s at. He would also be the deck’s “Finisher”, at the very top end of the deck’s mana curve at 4 mana, up there with Join the Ranks.
• Jwari Shapeshifter – ($1.39 to $1.99 = £0.90 to £1.20) Out of the other two Rare Allies I’ve nodded two, Jwari Shapeshifter is a bit of a toss up. Whilst having a potential 8 copies of Talus Paladin or Kazandu Blademaster in the deck is an interesting prospect, I’m not sure if it’s worth the risk including this card when there’s always the chance it’s a dead drop. but otherwise it’ll copy whatever badass Ally you’ve got on the field for some double trouble.
• Kabira Evangel – ($2.99 to $3.39= £1.90 to £2.20) Mass Protection like what this guy’s rocking is a tool to be abused. Mainly I guess the best use is for a little unblockability, but thanks to the Instant speed of Join The Ranks, you’ve got a sweet little counterspell to boot. This guy also costs 3 mana, which would really fill a hole in the deck’s curve.
• Mind Spring – ($0.84 to $0.99 = £0.50 to £0.65) – The non-Ally spells of the deck work rather well, and I wouldn’t really look to replace any of them without going outside standard territory. But Mind Spring does something rather sweet. I often found the deck running out of cards rather quickly, especially after some mass removal – and by that time there’s usually something like 5-6 mana on my side of the board doing boring things like playing the one mana Hada Freeblade I just top decked. I’d gladly take a turn to tap out for a Mind Spring and draw myself a new hand.

So with those cards in mind, I guess this is what a rarefied version of the deck would look like, along with a couple of Totem Armors for good measure…

I’ve basically trimmed the fat a little to squeeze the rares in, and since the deck has a few more cards that cost near the top of the curve I’ve upped the land count a bit and thrown in a sweet set of  Glacial Fortress from M10 (they’re about £5 each BTW)

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The Ally concept was rather easy to build around – it’s one of those sets of cards that usually just work when you put them together, the challenge is to eliminate the “Usually”. It’s much along the same lines as previous concepts like the Ninjas from Betrayers of Kamigawa or the weird hybrid mana tribe thingies that was going on with Shadowmoor. And it turned out to be a pretty decent deck, that I’ll probably make sure to get the rest of the cards for at some point.

I think we can all agree that Magic is a financially destructive obsession a lot of the time, and Building on a Budget is one way to tackle that. I hope that I’ve shown in this article that a great deck need not cost you a month’s wages. There’s THIS handy guide for this sort of stuff that I found on the MTGSalvation forums by Yakusoku that’s well worth a look. It goes over many of the ways a player can spend less for much the same effect as paying 5 times the price.

There are also the weekly Building on a Budget articles on the official Magic the Gathering website, which are about a billion times more awesome than what I’ve just wrote.

So there you have it, another instalment of the Magical Ninja Deck Chef. Next time, I’m not really sure what I’ll be shuffling up. I’ve got plenty of ideas for deck builds, so I’m going to let you in on a few.

I still want to get a Standard Legal Vampire deck built, and I’ve got two concepts in mind for that one. Secondly, I’ve just got to so something with those Eldrazi, and I think I’ve got an interesting starting point that should also prove some points at the same time. I also want to  try me hand at this Elder Dragon Highlander that everyone’s mental for. But the build I’m most excited about is going back to rebuild and update my old Sharingan Control deck – I’m pretty sure it can be done, and that I can add another colour to my U/R creation.

Until next time, remember to untap at the start of your turn… It’s a bad habit.

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Like what you saw? Want to Contribute? Then please send me your ideas, requests, or your experiences testing the decks that I’ve posted. I’ll be happy to cook up just about anything I’m asked, in any format - All I need is a decklist or an idea to start things off. Remember that I’m not building competitive decks here, I’m aiming for the fun and functional, or even the most budget of decks, and I don’t troll forums for decklists or ideas. email me at themissingnin@hotmail.com or leave a comment on this post (please remember that if you email me, please make it clear in the subject line what you’re emailing me about, or else I will kill it with my mighty delete button, and if you leave a comment on the site and it doesn’t appear immediately, know that it’s probably been picked up by the wordpress filter and I will approve your comment asap). Also, the more I’m sent the more I’ll have to talk about! ‘Nin Out!

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