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Post by Daij_Djan on Sept 14, 2020 21:39:31 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 thirteenth challenge!
The winner of the “I am not Left-Landed! poll“ was Lady Mapi with... |
{Comments} OK...  I Hate Lands - Elf Edition
So, Elves are an archetype that are already able to get away with not running that many lands... so why not go all the way? We're running 16 different cards that can generate on turn 1, along with a ton of mana dorks. Leyline of Abundance can ramp our mana nicely, and is a lovely mana sink for later. Eventually, we can overrun off of Ezuri. EDIT: After a little playtesting, this deck tends to putter along for a few turns getting itself set up, and then starts going off at obscene speeds. |
And the challenge issued by one of our runner-ups was... Zendikar Rising has now been copmpletely spoiled, so your challenge is to pick one of the cards from the set and design a deck with that card playing a key role in it. Any format is allowed! And now, time to begin the challenge! Best of luck, competitors! |
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Post by ZephyrPhantom on Sept 14, 2020 21:48:46 GMT
I'm glad we had a good voter turnout even in spite of the fact the challenge itself was pretty narrow. Thanks everyone that voted. Party seems like the obvious go to but I've seen all sorts of interesting jank proposals ranging from Myriad Construct Storm (might even take a crack at this one) to Thieving Skydiver + Colossus Hammer. Curious to see if we can get even more janky and unusual than that. |
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thaneofglamis
8/8 Octopus
Thane's activated abilities can't be activated
Posts: 444
Favorite Card: Slimefoot, the Stowaway; Phyrexian Rager; Swarm Shambler
Favorite Set: Midnight Hunt
Color Alignment: Green
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Post by thaneofglamis on Sept 15, 2020 0:00:41 GMT
I was absolutely delighted to see +1/+1 counter synergies in black, and I immediately built an EDH deck around Grakmaw, which you can find right here! |
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Post by Lady Mapi on Sept 15, 2020 1:35:00 GMT
Oops, sorry! I've been off the forums for a few days because of a death in the family, and missed my chance. For anyone curious, I was going to ask people to make a deck for 237 Magic, because that format is weirdly interesting to me. I might use it as an extra restriction on my entry, if I get around to submitting one. |
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Post by ZephyrPhantom on Sept 15, 2020 2:05:07 GMT
For anyone curious, I was going to ask people to make a deck for 237 Magic, because that format is weirdly interesting to me. I might use it as an extra restriction on my entry, if I get around to submitting one. The neat thing is that this actually works with most of the land DFCs too. (The fact we're in one of the Kicker sets is practically gravy.) Seems totally feasible to hit both challenges and still have an interesting/unique deck too in this case; I might just have to try that out. |
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Post by Lady Mapi on Sept 15, 2020 20:22:26 GMT
The strategy here is pretty simple. Step 1: Get a Scute Swarm and six lands onto the battlefield. Step 2: Mutate something nasty onto the Scute Swarm. Step 3:  Step 4: Slam into your opponent with your huge swarm of monsters. All three of our mutate creatures can ramp out more lands, and coincidentally replace those 1/1s with something scarier. EDIT: I might make an alternative version that's 237 legal. But this is the first thing that popped into my head (other than my DIMIR MART deck¹, which is way less silly.) ¹ Blue-Black Mill-Aggro Rogue Tribal. Shop smart. Shop DIMIR MART. |
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Post by sdfkjgh on Sept 16, 2020 16:57:14 GMT
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Post by ZephyrPhantom on Sept 21, 2020 6:22:13 GMT
What's a good party without any  ? Esper Flash-Pinata aims to answer that question with a lot of Flash-y prizes, swarming the board with a bunch of Party-goers to answer your opponent's challenges. DecklistDeck BreakdownParty Payoffs Because a party deck needs to be jammed full of party creatures, we really need to select our "Pinata", aka our payoffs, with care. Part of this process is asking the question of "What does a Party version of a deck offer that a non-party deck wouldn't?" There are a lot of cards that reward Party, but that does not mean all of them are superior choices - for example, Linvala, Shield of Sea Gate could end up being a slower Selfless Spirit that also dies to Lightning Bolt. Two of the best cards that answer this question in my opinion are Coveted Prize and Thwart the Grave. A lot of party cards suffer from being weaker or overcosted if not cast at full party or at least party = 3 - at party = 2 , Thwart the Grave can still be comparable to a sorcery speed Collected Company and Coveted Prize is a Grim Tutor that doesn't shock you. This allows the deck to be a bit more forgiving with its party requirements and aim for getting party = 2 or party = 3 - we still have the opportunity to get a nut draw for full party, but the deck is capable of operating without it. Honorable mention to Spoils of Adventure here, which this deck could be easily be reconfigured to use instead of Thwart the Grave, but I felt the potential advantage of getting cards back on the field is more in-line with what a party deck wants to do. Tazri, Beacon of Unity (and Valiant Changeling) likewise offer substantial aggressive bodies that can threaten to eat player's life totals on turn 3 and onward, but the amount of mana/setup required to get them is rough to work with (and interferes with another critical component of our strategy seen below). As the first spoiler might've indicated to you, a Party deck wants to swarm the field with tons of creatures that quickly enable party so that its Party payoffs are costed very cheap or hitting extra hard. One might immediately think mana dorks solve the issue here, but they create two problems: 1) It has the usual mana dork problem of "bolt the bird" - if your Birds of Paradise, Llanowar Elf, or Noble Hierarch is bolted, you're not only behind on creatures/mana, you're also behind on your party payoff. 2) Most mana dorks don't enable party! Deathrite Shaman, Elves of Deep Shadow, Gilded Goose....you're probably noticed at this point that most dorks are either Druids, Shamans, or have no class! This isn't helpful for us because we want to be set on enabling party from turn 1.  We thus turn to Aether Vial, using in a manner similar to more generic tribal archetypes like Humans and Merfolk. Our turn 1 play, being an artifact that can pseudo-Flash things out at instant speed (and avoid counterspells), ensures that by turn 3 we've got a very high chance to suddenly jump from party=1 to party=3 out of nowhere, putting us in the ideal zone for our payoffs - suddenly Coveted Prize is Demonic Tutor! It also acts as a way for us to turn almost every single creature in our hand into a pseudo counterspell response, as many of our sorcery-speed creatures like Selfless Spirit, Unsettled Mariner, and Deputy of Dentention act as ways to fizzle removal spells or removal. This mostly is here to make note of a few other synergies not covered in the other sections:   Unsettled Mariner, being a Faerie, also enables Spellstutter Sprite and with Aether Vial in play effectively means we are running 8 counterspell Faeries to act as both more weenies to gum up the board and as removal. Keeping a hand with a Mariner and a Faerie is extremely beneficial to us as a result, since it gives us two counterspells that help us build party.  Normally, not having a lot of spells for Jace, Vryn's Prodigy to recycle might be seen as a bad thing, but in this case it's an excellent opportunity to preemptively dump a weenie or two for Thwart the Grave later on, or even bin Thwart the Grave itself if you know it's not going to be useful right now. Should Jace actually flip, he can still help gum things up with his +1 to help his fellow partygoers rush in and chip down the opponent. May your parties have plenty of colorful prizes! |
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Post by Daij_Djan on Sept 23, 2020 13:35:45 GMT
Seeing as I wasn't able to finish my deck for the previous challenge, I'll definitely participate this time - and I decided to do it with a deck actually fitting both challenges 
Deck not yet completely done, but working on a Akoum Hellhound Pauper deck.
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Post by gamma3 on Sept 23, 2020 16:14:06 GMT
Pauper Party Punches
The strategy is simple: play creatures, beat face. Every creature is a potential party member here, and the class types are pretty evenly spread, so draining 4 with Malakir Blood-Priest or making Grotag Bug-Catcher a 5/2 beater shouldn't be difficult at all. All of our beaters are power 2 or less*, so we can make them unblockable if need be using Goblin Tunneler or Pathmaker Initiate. Stronghold Confessor is an ok 1-mana evasive creature that can be much bigger if we draw it later in the game, and dread warlock is mostly there to fill out our Wizards.
*While Grotag Bug-Catcher can hit hard, he only gets bigger after attacking and can still be made unblockable beforehand
Sideboard is pretty standard, so I don't feel the need to explain it.
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Post by Daij_Djan on Sept 28, 2020 23:54:12 GMT
This thread is now closed, the poll can be found here. And here's the next challenge! |
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"When in doubt, do a common." 
