Post by ZephyrPhantom on Aug 3, 2020 23:11:54 GMT
Welcome to the Deckbuilders' Challenge originally created by sdfkjgh! To participate in this Contest you'll have to design a deck along the contest guidelines and throw it into the arena with other competitors' entries! At the end of every two weeks, a winner will be determined by forum poll, and the winner decides the challenge for the next fortnight's Contest!
Here we go, competitors: our tenth challenge!
The winner of the “Deckbuilders’ Challenge VIII : Big vs Small" poll was ZephyrPhantom (myself) with...
ZephyrPhantom said:
(Modern) {Comments} " style="max-width:100%;"] " style="max-width:100%;"] Self-Mill Heavyweights " style="max-width:100%;"] " style="max-width:100%;"] Decklist: Creature-based Payoffs: 4 Cryptic Serpent 4 Bedlam Reveler 4 Ore-Scale Guardian Control Spells: 4 Reduce / Rubble 4 Never / Return 4 Bedeck / Bedazzle 4 Magmatic Sinkhole Self-Mill: 4 Discovery / Dispersal 4 Breaking / Entering Lands: 2 Watery Grave 2 Swamp 2 Island 2 Blood Crypt 2 Mountain 2 Bloodstained Mire 2 Fiery Islet 4 Polluted Delta 2 Scalding Tarn 2 Steam Vents 2 Darkslick Shores This deck's core strategy is to use the Breaking half of Breaking / Entering to try and mill a ton of instants and sorceries into our graveyard. Since we are running mostly instants, sorceries, and lands, it is easy for us to bring the costs of any Cryptic Serpent, Bedlam Reveler, and Ore-Scale Guardian* we draw into a cost efficient range to throw down. The Discovery half of Discovery / Dispersal functions as Breakings 4-8, allowing us to have a high chance of milling ourselves on turn 2 to ramp into our payoffs. Failing that, we are capable of playing like a more traditional control deck with spells like Never / Return and Reduce / Rubble until we can put down a big creature on the board, likely accelerated out by our heavy use of instants, sorceries, and fetches. One of the benefits of having almost all our cards be Aftermath or Split Cards is that our spells can take on different roles at different stages of the game - if we're desperate for a creature, we can cast the Entering half of Breaking / Entering for example to fish out a fatty we milled into our graveyard. Perhaps if the graveyard is well stocked and we're looking to clear the board further instead of self-milling more, we can use the Dispersal half of Discovery / Dispersal to clear the way for another swing. This deck has very few dead draws as a result and is very flexible with its hands. *Note: I specifically chose payoffs that wouldn't have to worry about exiling cards in the graveyard so that it would be easy to drop multiple of these on the field at once. Magmatic Sinkhole is our sole exception here because it's just that good a removal spell (and sometimes doubles as an emergency combat trick). Playing on a Budget: The good news is that since most of the cards in this deck are split cards and payoffs intended for limited or jank brewing, the majority of the deck is relatively inexpensive. The main pricyness comes from using a fetchland manabase to to benefit Ore-Scale Guardian and the use Bedlam Reveler for even more card advantage. {Spoiler}Creature-based Payoffs: 4 Cryptic Serpent 2 Tasigur, the Golden Fang 2 Gurmag Angler 4 Ore-Scale Guardian Control Spells: 4 Reduce / Rubble 4 Never / Return 4 Bedeck / Bedazzle 4 Fireblast Self-Mill: 4 Discovery / Dispersal 4 Breaking / Entering Lands: 4 Evolving Wilds 2 Island 2 Lantern-Lit Graveyard 6 Mountain 4 Sulfur Vent 2 Swamp 4 Waterveil Cavern We swap Bedlam Reveler with a 2 each of Tasigur, the Golden Fang and Gurmag Angler, which you can adjust as you feel as appropriate - I primarily chose this split to minimize the number of multi-Tasigur draws that occurred each game. Delve isn't as ideal for this deck since we have to exile cards from the graveyard, but it's a necessary evil when many of the cards are so cheap. That said, we still want to keep Delve to a minimum and find ways to power out Ore-Scale Guardian, so we trade out Magmatic Sinkhole for Fireblast and use Evolving Wilds to take advantage of the fact we often don't have a turn 1 play. While Sulfur Vent is a bit clunky, it also is a powerful 3-mana burst acceleration for a payoff if used right, so I think it was worth giving it a try here - the mana base is a bit experimental so perhaps proxy this deck out if you really want to give it a shot before you buy any of the cards in it. Our average CMC is still a nice smooth 4.17 - just above the limit! Otherwise, happy spell slinging! May your heavyweights drop off the rush of an 8-card self-mill. |
And the challenge issued by our winner was...
@ZephyrPhantom said:
The fanmade set Spectral Chaos (aka "the Magic Set that was never released") has been a popular subject with various Magic groups across various groups and eras, starting with The Misprint Guy's video and going on to have attempts to be reproduced and distributed by players that got so big WoTC's lawyers stepped in! Recently, they had an episode on The Commander's Quarters that brought them to the attention of Commander players around the globe.Your challenge for the next two weeks is to make a deck featuring any number of cards from Spectral Chaos. You can use as many or as few Spectral Chaos cards as you'd like in combination with regular cards, but your final deck should have at least 1 Spectral Chaos card in it.
If you want a more visual view of the Spectral Chaos Cards with updated wording, check out Modern Spectral Chaos or ChanSterling's mostly-complete Spectral Chaos cube. Good luck!
Note: If you want to get a look at some of the interesting cards of the set, The Commander's Quarters episode in the prompt is a good place to start; while Mitch doesn't cover every single aspect of the set, he does outline a bunch of general strategies for his favorite groups of cards. If you just want to skim for interesting effects, Chansterling's visualized cube is probably your best bet since it sorts mostly by color.
EDIT: For those who want a super-fast breakdown of Spectral Chaos:
- Spectral Chaos is mostly a set focused on enemy/ally color pairs, with effects ranging from the simple Gybe's Spell Freeze to the expected limited-archetype creatures like Bricklayer to pushed effects you might recognize today like Dawn of the Dead and Voodoo Doll
- If I had to break the archetypes down into a very quick nutshell after looking at them (keeping in mind that old Magic design wasn't as focused as present Magic design), it'd be something like:
{A Very Brief Color Combo Breakdown}
- Clerics Telmarian Acolyte, Lifegain
- Tempo control (especially given something like Mass Unsummon)) into a big fatty, artifacts (Magpie)
- Creatures dying (something like Wall of Death, Soul Sucker, combined with say, Avenger)
- Burn, Orc Knights ( Gahchgah One-Eye, Spirit of Excalibur , or Dead Orc Swordsman )
- Stompy, non-flying lords-spam (E.g. King of the Jungle along with Hanging Vines)
- Stealing permanents, Counterspells (only hard counterspells seem to be in this color combo)
- Stealing permanents (Shared with WU, see below comment), Burn (either via various 1-damage 2-damage pingers or Landfall)
- Straightforward Rakdos aggro with some mana sinks.
- Stompy, Knights (?) (Moorish General)
- Ramp into something big like Swarm, though a lot of Cats are also in this color combo.
- Mass reanimation - Dawn of the Dead, Afterlife seems very similar to Living Death.
- Combat manipulation Instigator, Lightning Rod, Voodoo Dool
- Making things creatures (Stream of Consciousness, Stunt Doubles), and a bunch of miscellaneous other effects that generally involve creatures.
- Stax-like effects, perhaps? Not sure how else to better qualify stuff like Chain Reaction, Entropy's Little Helper
- Reducing damage, "everyone draws cards" (Equilibirium, Solar Flare )
Note: There's also a set of enemy color duals in this set that basically go something along the lines of "You can't play a land named ~ if you control a land named ~" Promotory and tricolor lands for Naya ( , "Dale") and Esper ( , "Moor"). The latter seems to be deliberate because Esper has a lot of Control Magic type effects in this set, and the former may be for Knights, given things like Moorish General
- Clerics Telmarian Acolyte, Lifegain
- Tempo control (especially given something like Mass Unsummon)) into a big fatty, artifacts (Magpie)
- Creatures dying (something like Wall of Death, Soul Sucker, combined with say, Avenger)
- Burn, Orc Knights ( Gahchgah One-Eye, Spirit of Excalibur , or Dead Orc Swordsman )
- Stompy, non-flying lords-spam (E.g. King of the Jungle along with Hanging Vines)
- Stealing permanents, Counterspells (only hard counterspells seem to be in this color combo)
- Stealing permanents (Shared with WU, see below comment), Burn (either via various 1-damage 2-damage pingers or Landfall)
- Straightforward Rakdos aggro with some mana sinks.
- Stompy, Knights (?) (Moorish General)
- Ramp into something big like Swarm, though a lot of Cats are also in this color combo.
- Mass reanimation - Dawn of the Dead, Afterlife seems very similar to Living Death.
- Combat manipulation Instigator, Lightning Rod, Voodoo Dool
- Making things creatures (Stream of Consciousness, Stunt Doubles), and a bunch of miscellaneous other effects that generally involve creatures.
- Stax-like effects, perhaps? Not sure how else to better qualify stuff like Chain Reaction, Entropy's Little Helper
- Reducing damage, "everyone draws cards" (Equilibirium, Solar Flare )
Note: There's also a set of enemy color duals in this set that basically go something along the lines of "You can't play a land named ~ if you control a land named ~" Promotory and tricolor lands for Naya ( , "Dale") and Esper ( , "Moor"). The latter seems to be deliberate because Esper has a lot of Control Magic type effects in this set, and the former may be for Knights, given things like Moorish General
Note: There's a few one-offs that go and do their own thing in each color/color combination.
Some other points worth keeping in mind:
{Other Points}
- Tribal: there's a lot of Lords in the set, but there is a decent concentration of Orcs and Knights in at least . See Gahchgah One-Eye, Spirit of Excalibur , or Dead Orc Swordsman for example. I also found Moorish General which implies this may be the Naya or even Gruul archetype.
- Cycle of Multicolor Chaotic cards - Mitch discuss this to some extent in the video but the multicolor build-arounds of the set (You can find most of them at the bottom of the visualized cube page) have large swingy effects that can change the flow of the game .Graveyard Waltz for example is a ::GB:: instants/sorceries in graveyard matters enchantment that could be a recurring value engine, which Mitch covers. An example of one he doesn't cover in the video is Resonance, an X Simic Sorcery that acts similar to Ratchet Bomb effects.
- Five-color - There's a few Morphling-esque five-color creatures like Felice of Many Colors, Sequential, and Kaleidoscope Beast.
- Another good spot to look for interesting jank to build around is the artifacts section. Holy Grail's massive lifeswing comes to mind. (Personally, I think I'm going to try something fun with Antiredunancy Coil).
- Tribal: there's a lot of Lords in the set, but there is a decent concentration of Orcs and Knights in at least . See Gahchgah One-Eye, Spirit of Excalibur , or Dead Orc Swordsman for example. I also found Moorish General which implies this may be the Naya or even Gruul archetype.
- Cycle of Multicolor Chaotic cards - Mitch discuss this to some extent in the video but the multicolor build-arounds of the set (You can find most of them at the bottom of the visualized cube page) have large swingy effects that can change the flow of the game .Graveyard Waltz for example is a ::GB:: instants/sorceries in graveyard matters enchantment that could be a recurring value engine, which Mitch covers. An example of one he doesn't cover in the video is Resonance, an X Simic Sorcery that acts similar to Ratchet Bomb effects.
- Five-color - There's a few Morphling-esque five-color creatures like Felice of Many Colors, Sequential, and Kaleidoscope Beast.
- Another good spot to look for interesting jank to build around is the artifacts section. Holy Grail's massive lifeswing comes to mind. (Personally, I think I'm going to try something fun with Antiredunancy Coil).
Please provide a decklist using deckstats, tappedout or similar. Feel free to add some comments as they will be included in the final poll. Please provide a deck name as well as choose a card to represent your deck in the poll.
And now, time to begin the challenge!
Best of luck, competitors!