Getting into Proper Formats

[Terentius]

So I started playing MWS, and realized that when I say casual, people take that as "anything goes", and put all dual lands in there decks, while what I meant is something along the lines of a casual real life deck. So I decided to put some of my decks into a sanctioned WOTC format. This thread is about similar replacements/alternatives I'm looking for that are Extended legal. If from your experience you know anything that could stand in for these non-Extended cards, I'd appreciate advice:

Beast Deck:
Invigorate (I like the card because there are many times I will have the opponent gain life so I can play it. The replacement I have lined up right now is Giant Growth, or maybe Reckless Charge)
Defense of the Heart
Gaea's Embrace
Gaea's Cradle

Discard: (I'm not sure if I want to switch this to Extended or keep it Legacy)
Mother of Runes (probly Devoted Caretaker)
Necromancy (a good reanimation, also need reanimation for another new deck)
Hymn to Tourach
Dark Ritual (something to give speed)

Enchantments: (don't think this one can go from Legacy to Extended either)
Soul Sculptor

T3h Zombies:
Tombstone Stairwell
Drain Life

Warped Devotion:
Snap
Hoodwink

 

[orgg]

Well, to be honest, I feel that I can't help uless I see the REST of the decks. It does no good to recommend Zombify for Necromancy or Duress for Hymn to Tourach if they're already in the deck.

 

[Oversoul]

There was some article by, I think, Oscar Tan (might be on this website...) that explained this principle pretty well. Sometimes you can't just take a deck and change it by substituting the cards for cards that have a similar effect. You'd be better off tweaking the overall strategy of the deck to fit the format, rather than simply dressing down the original deck. It takes a bit more thought, but should produce a better deck...

 

[Terentius]

As you wish...

As of now:

Beast (Ext):
4 Vine Trellis
4 Krosan Warchief
4 Krosan Vorine
3 Ravenous Baloth
3 Ember Beast
2 Feral Throwback
2 Copperhoof Vorrac
2 Shaleskin Bruiser

4 Dragon Fangs (Gaea's Embrace)
4 Giant Growth (Invigorate)
3 Naturalize
2 Hull Breach

4 Karplusan Forest
4 Mountain
3 Contested Cliffs
12 Forest


Discard (Legacy):
4 Dark Supplicant
4 Blood Celebrant
4 Mother of Runes
2 Confessor
1 Scion of Darkness

4 Dark Ritual
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Gerrard's Verdict
3 Duress
3 Ostracize
4 Necromancy
4 Vindicate

2 Plains
3 Tainted Field
14 Swamp


Zombie (not sure yet):
4 Undead Warchief
4 Gempalm Polluter
4 Vengeful Dead
3 Noxious Ghoul
4 Undead Gladiator
3 Nantuko Husk
2 Soulless One
2 Twisted Abomination

4 Call to the Grave
3 Patriarch's Bidding
2 Tombstone Stairwell
4 Dark Ritual
1 Drain Life

2 Phyrexian Tower
3 Cabal Coffers
15 Swamps

Enchantment (Legacy):
4 Tethered Griffin
4 Soul Sculptor
2 Soltari Visionary

4 Hidden Herd
3 War Dance
4 Serra's Hymn
4 Seal of Cleansing
2 Wax/Wane
3 Aura Mutation
2 Sterling Grove
2 Opal Titan
3 Opal Archangel
2 Wrath of God

8 Forest
12 Plains
3 Serra's Sanctum


Warped Devotion/Megrim (Ext):
4 Sunscape Familiar
2 Dromar, the Banisher

4 Warped Devotion
4 Megrim
4 Wash Out
4 AEther Burst (Snap)
4 Recoil
4 Echoing Truth (Hoodwink)
3 Noxious Vapors
4 Urza's Guilt
2 Barrin's Spite

8 Islands
6 Swamps
5 Plains
2 Dromar's Cavern


And there you are. What me and my friend decided, now that I'm away at college and we realized we can play online over MWS, is that before a game we'll both choose Extended, Legacy, or unaltered real life decks to play with (to ensure fairness, if you read my other thread).

I suppose this post will cause this thread to get moved to the Deck Shop...

EDIT: Yeah Oversoul, I got mixed feelings about that. My Warped Devotion deck is doing fairly well in t1.5. My Beast deck is SERIOUSLY lacking without Invigorate and Gaea's Embrace. I can not believe that all the other creature enchantments blow so hard.

 

[Spiderman]

I suppose this post will cause this thread to get moved to the Deck Shop...

Actually, I was thinking about moving it from the very first post because it seemed to be calling for "deck ideas"... so carry on...

 

[Oversoul]

Discard (Legacy):
4 Dark Supplicant
4 Blood Celebrant
4 Mother of Runes
2 Confessor
1 Scion of Darkness

4 Dark Ritual
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Gerrard's Verdict
3 Duress
3 Ostracize
4 Necromancy
4 Vindicate

2 Plains
3 Tainted Field
14 Swamp

Would you consider Pox? I built a Pox deck for Legacy (back when the format was newer) and actually got it to where I felt my build was better than any other build I saw people running (it couldn't sideboard as well against aggro, which was a bad weakness, but it handled blue control easily). Pox decks are harder to play than a regular discard deck would be, but you get the advantage of having, well, Pox.

 

[Terentius]

How exactly do you build a deck around Pox?

And my deck looks more like this now:

4 Dark Supplicant
4 Blood Celebrant
4 Mother of Runes
2 Confessor
1 Scion of Darkness

4 Dark Ritual
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Gerrard's Verdict
4 Duress
4 Ostracize
4 Reanimate
4 Vindicate

2 Plains
3 Swamp
4 Scrubland
4 Polluted Delta
4 Flooded Strand

At first, I thought it'd be cool to play new people over MWS. And it is, sometimes, seeing new card strategies. But the reason I stopped playing YGO using YVD is because almost ever deck I played was the same except for a few cards. M:tG isn't quite as bad, as it has five times the card base, but I'm still running into a lot of burn and control. And everyone and they momma runs dual lands, Birds of Paradise, and Chrome Mox; I've had to stoop so low to use the former to keep up. Is anyone here who plays over MWS looking for a more casual game, with a deck that is of my own original thought and pheasable (i.e. affordable) for me to actually own, Legacy or Extended?

 

[Oversoul]

This article is kind of long, but is a comprehensive article on Pox. It's quite dated, but the overall concept and a lot of the individual card choices are still useful. I'd recommend reading the whole thing. Even if you don't build a Pox deck, the article is a good one and might give you some other ideas.

The article predates the change from the old Type 1.5 to Legacy and doesn't have a decklist you could actually use in Legacy. I don't have my best Pox decklist, which was fine-tuned from playtesting. But I do have a decklist I wrote down at some point. It might be a nice exercise to improve the decklist and update with new cards anyway, although I've sort of given up on Pox, as I no longer have faith that the archetype can hold its own in cut-throat Legacy tournaments.

Here's what I had written down for a Pox decklist. But if you're going to build one, I suggest changing some things up. As I recall, this list was later scrapped for a moderately different one because of some key weaknesses. Here it is...

4 Duress
4 Hymn to Tourach
4 Pox
4 Diabolic Edict
3 Spinning Darkness
4 Sinkhole
4 Dark Ritual
3 Chimeric Idol
4 The Rack
3 Cursed Scroll
4 Chrome Mox
19 Swamp

Sideboard:
3 Choking Sands
3 Funeral Charm
3 Dystopia
3 Phyrexian Negator
3 Planar Void

Some notes...

I was originally hesitant about using Spinning Darkness. I'd never want to use it on my own creatures and against black decks it would be a dead draw. However, Legacy was then and still is a creature-heavy format with precious few monoblack decks. Spinning Darkness isn't necessarily a 4-of. But given the state of the metagame, it seems like it's still a maindeck card. Chrome Mox was something that sometimes lost games for me when it often came up as a dead draw, but given its synergy with Pox, it seems too strong not to be a 4-of. Being that this deck is often at such an extreme card disadvantage, perhaps Hypnotic Specters would be good to fill up some of the slots. I'm pretty sure it was added into my next build. Sinkhole is very good, but is not a budget card and could probably be replaced by something else...

 

[Force of Will Smith]

man it blows my mind that a deck that revolves around pox , chimeric idol , and the rack.. with almost no creature kill at all...*thinks*

oh and when i play casual i think rogue to junky or really good but not cutthroat.
im not on much, and i kinda change my name a million times
maybe there could be a place for ppl to meet online somewhere..

 

[Oversoul]

I think the problem wasn't a lack of creature kill. With Pox decks, you could build one that had the defense to deal with aggro early on and take it down with damage over time, or you could build one that could keep up a constant offense against control decks without getting burned out. The problem was doing both.

I think Pox could still be viable as a rogue deck, but it wouldn't be my first choice of a deck to bring to a tournament...

 

[Terentius]

Pox definitely sounds badass combined with Spinning Darkness, Sinkhole, and discard. But you're right, I'm not sure it could be premier in Legacy. It's just that that changes my deck from a fun/viable thing I thought of to more of control. Control is boring for me.

maybe there could be a place for ppl to meet online somewhere..

That'd be nice.

 

[Spiderman]

There's a chat room on the front page...

 

[Mooseman]

There's a chat room on the front page...

Anybody ever get it to work?

 

[Killer Joe]

To comment on "adjusting" decks for formats, I have always had a fascination with doing such things when it comes to Multiplayer. I have, for the past five years or so, had the notion that if a deck works well in dueling then with a few changes but keeping the flavor of the deck, it can be turned into a multiplayer deck.

As most of you know the two styles of gameplay (dueling & multiplayer) are on opposite sides of the coin. Now I don't believe this to be a hard and true notion (turning successful dueling decks into successful multiplayer decks) but in most of the decks I've "transformed" have worked really well.

Several years ago I wrote a front page article about how to transform 3-Deuce into the new extended format of that time and it went bad. In fact, "Timster" even told me so (but that's a totally different story). But in a way he was right, it's not typical that a deck archetype can survive beyond its original format though some have, to include; UB Psychatog, UG Madness and even Sligh, though I must admit "Sligh" went through such a change that only the Mountain cards were the same as the original deck.

Tsi: Turning "casual" decks into Wiz Co formats for others sake is not something I would like to do myself, but if that's the only thing on the menu in your area, then by all means do it or find folks like yourself. If that's the gist of what you're saying, if not, I have no idea what the HELL I'm talking about









tag guard

 

[Terentius]

Nah, I think I got it now. Like I said, before me and my friend play we'll either say Extended or Real Life Legacy. The Discard and Enchantment deck can't be made into Extended, so I'll keep them in the latter category. The Beast deck will have variations in both, and they Warped Devotion/Megrim deck has entirely switched to Extended.

 

[Spiderman]

Anybody ever get it to work?

Does it not work now? I haven't tried it lately (like in 4 or so years) because of the firewall I'm behind. I guess I could try it now...

Nope, I get "Unable to connect to server". I think it's still my firewall, but somebody without a firewall needs to check...

 

[DarthFerret]

The chatroom is now defunct. I went there about 1.5 yrs ago, and I think it worked, but noone was there. Now it seems the lack of activity has caused the cobwebs to scramble the chat protocol.

 

[Ransac]

I just tried and it didn't work.

Ransac, cpa trash man