Multiplayer decks

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f-6

Guest
What decks do you play in multiplayer?

Most people play many different decks in multiplayer, but almost everybody has one or a few decks that is their favorite or just has some special feeling for them. I have a few decks myself that has a special feel to them.

Now, I was thinking. It would be interesting to know your favorite multiplayer deck, what you like about it, what its weakness is and so on. Also, it would be kind of cool to try to use Anthony Alongis ratings on them.
So:
What is your favorite deck for 3-4 player chaos multiplayer?
What do you like about it?
What is its weakness?
How good is it (1-10)?
How does it grade on the Alongi scales?

An example, a pet deck of mine (mostly because it was the first deck that I had that was any good); Fourth edition Wu.
4 Serra angel
4 Wall of swords
2 Air elemental
4 Mesa Pegasus
3 Prodigal sorcerer
2 Serrated arrows
1 Time elemental
2 Control magic
1 Balance
1 Crusade
1 Righteousness
2 Castle
1 Devine transformation
1 Blessing
1 Nevinyrrals disc
1 Jayemdae Tome
1 Alddins ring

4 Swords to plowshares
3 Disenchant
4 Arcane denial

2 Adarkar wastes
1 Tundra
13 Plains
9 Island

What do you like about it?
Well, as I said, it was my first good deck. It has a lot of powerful cards (for that time and my play group), it can punch hard and take care of just about anything-

What is its weakness?
Well, it's a pile... :D The mana base is not good for a deck like this, it has rather few tricks and no strategy. It just relies on the quality of the cards, really...
How good is it (1-10)?
4
How does it grade on the Alongi scales(1-10)?
Rattlesnake: 6
Gorilla: 3
Pigeon: 3 (Only because of the control magics)
Plankton: 1
Cockroach: 3

So, who is up for the challenge? ;)

For reference, Anthony Alongis categories:
Rattlesnake: the element that warns other players away, and/or redirects their attention elsewhere (e.g., Goblin Dynamo).
Gorilla: the element that smashes the board, and/or impacts multiple players, cards, or permanents (e.g., Wrath of God).
Spider: the element that sets a trap to punish stray opponents (e.g., Spinal Embrace)
Pigeon: the element that feeds off of more and more players (e.g., Congregate)
(Zoo)plankton: the element that feeds all players (e.g., Awakening)
Cockroach: the element that persists, and/or multiplies effects (e.g., Masticore)
 
T

train

Guest
the wildcard - my 4-color utility deck...

What do you like about it? Versatility
What is its weakness? There isn't one anymore... Crucible of Worlds fixed that...
How good is it (1-10)?9.2
How does it grade on the Alongi scales?

Rattlesnake: 8
Gorilla: 8
Spider: 6
Pigeon: 2
(Zoo)plankton: 0
Cockroach: 2

:cool:
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
I've never played Chaos mode before...

I think everyone I play with is too lazy for it or something...
 
F

f-6

Guest
Oversoul: I really recomend 3-4 player chaos. It is like a more diversified version of Diplomacy with Magic! Just remember, nobody likes Wraths, 'Geddons or lots of counterspells...

Killer Joe: Alongi gives different cards/decks/styles names and categorizes decks based on these (sort of...).
Rattlesnake: Says keep the #e££ avay from me or else! You will be Ok as long as you don't mess with ME. The threats are visible. Cards like Magma mine and False prophet are rattlesnake.
Gorilla: Doesn't care that much about what other players are playing, just swings away. Obliterate and Armageddon are Gorilla cards.
Spider: Like rattlesnake, but the threats are hidden. Spider looks all defeseless but when you try to hit it strikes back. Spinal embrace and Broken visage are Spider cards.
Pigeon: Gets big effects from own and others cards. Congregate is very pigeon.
Plankton: Pankton uses effects that affect all, but are generaly nice. Howling mine is Plankton.
Cockroach: This is a bit new to me, but I think it means that it endures just about anything that gets thrown at it and recovers easely. Nether shadow and Squee ought to be Cockroach.
 
T

train

Guest
I changed my ratings a little after looking at it... especially the cockroach - because, overall, the deck is one...

Rattlesnake: 9 (It shows threats, and carries them through, deeds, slicers, abyssals)
Gorilla: 9 (wraths, copperhoof - this is a beast! literally!, sideboard)
Spider: 4 (mainly in reunion, light, swords, abeyance)
Pigeon: 2 (genesis, blessing, they want opponents to allow me to recur)
(Zoo)plankton: 1 (I'm just not that nice unless you count wheel of fortune...)
Cockroach: 8 (This is what the deck does...)

Here's the current decklist - but it is being revised...

It's a true toolbox...

The Wildcard!!! (as of 7/31/04)

Main Deck:
1 Wrath of God
4 vindicate
3 Gaea's Blessing
3 Abeyance
4 Swords to Plowshares
3 Pernicious Deeds
2 Wall of Glare
3 Abyssal Gatekeepers
1 Aegis of Honor
1 Wheel of Fortune
1 Exalted angel
1 Gilded Light
1 Enlightened tutor
1 Genesis
1 Death Grasp
1 Solemn Simulacrum
1 Copperhoof Vorrac
1 Sylvan Library
1 heroes Reunion
1 Burning Wish
1 Living Wish
1 Death Wish
1 Mindslicer
1 Limited Resources
1 Mirari's Wake
1 Crucible of Worlds

Lands:
Volrath's Stronghold
Kjeldoran Outpost
The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale
2 Bayou
2 scrubland
Plateau
4 Savannah
Undiscovered Paradise
2 Krosan Verge
4 Swamp
2 Plains
1 Forest

Sideboard:
Rule of Law
False Prophet
Balance
Decree of Justice
Soltari Visionary
Ghitu Fire
Meltdown
Purify
Molder Slug
Multani Maro-Sorcerer
Iridescent angel
Kamahl pit Fighter
Sabertooth Nishoba
Haunting Echoes
Scion of darkness

If you ask anyone that plays against it, they swear there's more than 4 vindicates, 4 swords and 3 abeyance... Gaea's Blessing is just that cool!...

In Multi-player... they try getting rid of me first... unfortunately for them, that only happens 20% of the time, as no one plays a true burn deck, because they know it won't get far in multi...
 
F

f-6

Guest
No, chaos is just another term for all-can-hit-all. In some versions, there are limits to how far you can reach with attacks and how far your spels, even global effects reach. For instance, I once played a 12-player game where my spells only affect the two to my left and right. Also, attacking right and defending left is another common version.

So, anyone else? C'mon, don't be shy! ;)
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Oh, in my area we call that "multiplayer." It could get chaotic I suppose. But making some fancy name for it is too complex for us, or something...

Chaos Magic is the name of a variant I've heard of with rolling dice for random effects and stuff, maybe someone else here has heard of it?

My favorite deck for MP is Relentless Pony.

1x Soldevi Digger
3x Phyrexian Walker
3x Shield Sphere
3x Ornithopter
4x Sol Ring
4x Mana Vault
1x Donate
1x Ring of Ma’ruf
1x Echo Chamber
1x Karn, Silver Golem
1x Capsize
2x Windfall
4x Accumulated Knowledge
3x Intuition
4x Braingeyser
3x Time Spiral
4x Stroke of Genius
4x Mind Over Matter
4x Tolarian Academy
9x Island

On your fuzzy animal scale thingy...

Rattlesnake: 0
Gorilla: 0
Spider: 0
Pigeon: 0
Plankton: 0
Cockroach: 0

Seriously, my deck does none of these things. It aims to get its combo off first turn thanks to the infamous Double cards (Double Play, Double Take), or second turn if not, then sit back and let the opponents do whatever they want. Whether or not my opponents attack me once my combo is out is irrelevant. I might give them some Sliver tokens for their efforts. It will be even less relevant when I am the one deciding who attacks whom. I hate Mindslaver more than any other card besides Door to Pathetic, but it is probably the best improvement I could make to this deck. Being a god is fun, but being a god and eliminating the free will of others is far too tempting...

As a side note, I am considering removing the deck's namesake as its kill condition, in favor of Stroke of Genius, Tempest Efreet, and the Donate/Echo Chamber engine. This would force a concession from any victim, as a simple swing from Horrible Hoards or Snowfall or whatever could bring the opponent's life total to a number not divisible by ten, and they don't want to trade all their cards for tokens. But I think I'll keep the deck the way it is...

Also, I am going to try testing the Rhinoseeker engine for Relentless Pony. I think it will work very well, but I wanted to know what others thought about it...
 
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boozehound

Guest
Have got two multi-player decks that i like, the insurrection deck when it works properly, cos nabbing everyones creatures and attacking them with them before feeding them to ashnods altar to power up goblin offensive is just too cool not to like, but i built a deck around winds of wrath. What i love about this deck is putting armadillo cloak on ageless entity and then wrathing. Attacking with the entity gets fun as he then rises with each attack at an exponential rate- 6/6 - 12/12 - 24/24 etc, all with trample. Might never win world champs with it but it is a fun deck.
 
F

f-6

Guest
@Oversoul: If your deck does not care what your opponents do, I would say that it is a 8-10 on the Gorilla scale... BTW, again I think I am getting slow with age. How does your deck lock...? Also, now that you guys mention it, I have heard that the "global effect" thing being called Chaos Magic too.

@boozehound: Sounds like cool decks. List them and rate tham!
:D

@train: Really cool deck! Defenitly toolbox. It is very similar to one of my multiplayer decks except that I do not play wishes (my multiplayer group has banned them) and instead play 1 Demonic and 2 Vampiric tutor. Well, other cards differ as well, but the concept is similar. But mine does not win that often... :rolleyes:
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
To be brief, my deck uses an infinite mana/tapping/untapping combo with Tolarian Academy/Mind over Matter/Soldevi Digger/Stroke of Genius, then uses Capsize/Echo Chamber/Karn, Silver Golem/Ring of Ma'Ruf/Donate to generate infinite token copies of a card that lets me fetch cards from outside the game, this puts my entire collection of cards (except the ones already in play or wherever) into my hand, and as might be expected, makes me pretty godlike. From there I have fun messing with the other players in the game, although I lack the Mindslaver that would really make things interesting...

But I can use Time Warp to make anybody take extra turns. I can use Meditate to skip my own turns. I can counter any number of spells with Ertai and MoMa. I don't have Stifle for countering abilities either, but I do have Interdict. I can have whatever life total I want. I can bring in Unglued cards like Giant Fan and move counters everywhere. I can bring in ante cards and make people concede. It's great fun...
 
T

train

Guest
Originally posted by f-6
...It is very similar to one of my multiplayer decks ... But mine does not win that often...
The deck can be a serious threat... Spidey built one similar to mine after he saw it playing online (in our game forum) and his group considers it such a big threat also...

What spidey has told me, and playing it around here caused me to modify it a little to make sure it had some early game stamina... just in case the group recognizes it as the threat it is and begin bombing away at me...

"Now they're glad to take second in a big mp game...":D

I'm working on building an mp oath utility deck if I can pick up all the oaths...:rolleyes:

:cool:
 
E

Ephraim

Guest
Zombie Jamboree

My favourite Chaos deck is a suicidal zombie deck that aims to kill many opponents just a little bit faster than it kills you. It achieves this through use of cards like Shepherd of Rot, Vengeful Dead, and Syphon Soul. Undercosted creatures with drawbacks fill out the deck. Incidentally, it is also Peasant legal.

Deck List

Creatures (28)
4 Maggot Carrier
4 Carnophage
4 Shephered of Rot
4 Wretched Anurid
4 Blind Creeper
4 Vengeful Dead
4 Gempalm Polluter

Spells (12)
4 Dark Ritual
4 Vicious Hunger
4 Syphon Soul

Land (20)
20 Swamp

Card Discussion

Maggot Carrier -- The deck needed more one-drops than Carnophage and Maggot Carrier fit the bill perfectly. It's a zombie and it causes table-wide life loss.

Carnophage -- Not the best creature for multiplayer games, by a long shot, Carnophage is cheap and powerful. Additionally, if it becomes too disadvantageous to keep it active, I can simply keep it tapped. This is much better than some black creatures that require a constant investment of life/mana to keep them in play at all.

Shepered of Rot -- This is probably the focus of the deck. All of the other creatures are zombies, which means that I can regularly generate a global life loss of three life or more.

Wretched Anurid & Blind Creeper -- These cards fulfill the same function in this deck. Like Carnophage, they are undercosted creatures with disadvantages. Wretched Anurid in particular turns out to be pretty dangerous sometimes, since all players are losing life so quickly. Although Blind Creeper occasionally gets killed by somebody who can cast three spells, it's worthwhile for an early 3/3 beater.

Vengeful Dead -- Not only is it a 3/2 beater, which is quite useful, it helps the deck to survive attrition. If I can reduce my opponent to two or three life, I can force unfavourable combat situations in which the death of my creatures yields the same effect as them getting through.

Gempalm Polluter -- The deck lacks card-drawing and this helps a little bit. More importantly, it serves as a finisher, helping to eliminate an opponent who's managed to protect himself from the creature horde or when you're low enough on life, yourself, that Shepherd of Rot can't be used.

Dark Ritual -- It's a rare black deck that doesn't benefit from this. Often, it's used to get out two two-drops or Vengeful Dead on the second turn.

Vicious Hunger -- One thing this deck doesn't necessarily do well is deal with creatures on the table. Although Wretched Anurid and Blind Creeper are much larger than most other creatures that will hit the table at the same time, they can sometimes benefit from some spot removal. The life gain is also always welcomed.

Syphon Soul -- This card is extremely powerful in Chaos. The life loss is fairly insignificant for each opponent, but gaining six life can make a big difference, when I'd like to finish off one or more opponents with Shepherd of Rot.

This deck has a couple of weaknesses. The first is when facing a fast, aggressive deck. This isn't so important in Chaos, since there are lots of potential targets, except when people begin to realize that I may be able to kill off everybody at once, putting me at the top of all players' hit lists. Since I'm losing life almost as quickly as each of my opponents, a couple of burn spells or an unblocked creature or two can put me behind in the life count, forcing me into a situation where the best I can hope for is a draw. The second big weakness is the deck's susceptibility to board sweepers. Several people in my circuit are firmly convicted that Wrath of God is necessary in multiplayer. I saw it argued above that Wrath isn't any fun, but that's not really the case. If there were no way of dealing with a deck like mine or the mana elves + Centaur Glade deck, they'd dominate.

On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd rank this deck a 6. It doesn't necessarily win a lot, but that is often because it is such an obvious threat that it gets mobbed. If it were more subtle, it would rank higher.

Rattlesnake: 0
This deck simply can't threaten anything that would scare anybody off. All of my biggest threats are global, so the very worst I can do is have somebody in a position where they'll die when I use Shepherd of Rot to smack the entire table and that's not a situation that's typically open to negotiation.

Gorilla: 7
Although the deck has a potent global effect, it is nowhere near the calibre of a deck packing Wrath of God, Jokulhaups, etc.

Spider: 3
Particularly unwary opponents don't notice the speed with which this deck can bring about a win. A query of the table may reveal that everybody's at 13 life, but it isn't always totally obvious that it's usually mostly because of this deck.

Pidgeon: 9
The more players there are, the less likely they are to perceive any one player as a threat, no matter how dangerously that player's behaving. Even if all players consciously recognize the threatening player, it can be difficult to deal with him or her without opening oneself to attack. Particularly if only half of the players at the table would be necessary to eliminate the player using this deck, that leaves that half vulnerable to the other half. Each player fearing the betrayal of the other threatened players will avoid action, while this deck marches to victory. Syphon Soul gets honourable mention as a totally, unfailingly Pidgeon card.

Plankton: 0
This deck helps nobody. Everybody suffers. Nobody thrives.

Cockroach: 1
The purpose of this deck is to be just a little bit more endurant than everybody else. Hardly a cockroach sort of quality.
 

Killer Joe

New member
becuase it's about nothing. Just a pile :)

RGW "The Seinfeld Deck"
4x Powerstone Minefield
4x Seal of Cleansing
4x Sylvan Scrying
4x Burning Wish (Burning Wish Choices were: Fanning the Flames, Wash Out, Wheel of Fortune, Tsunami, Sickening Dreams, Wildfire, Void, Perish, Flashfires and Rout).
3x Pulse of the Fields
3x Moment's Peace
3x Fellwar Stone (important in order to cast blue or black spells)
2x Gaea's Blessing (VIP card of the game)
2x Living Wish (Living Wish choices were: Anurid Brushhopper, Metallic Sliver, Spitting Spider, Mystic Enforcer and Lavaborn Muse.)
1x Ivory Tower
1x Phyrexian Furnace
1x Memory Jar
1x Sylvan Library
1x Abundance
1x Cursed Totem
1x Regrowth
1x Sol Ring
1x Enlightened Tutor
1x Jayemdae Tome
1x Balance (Runner-up VIP card of the game).

2x Mountain
2x Plains
3x Forest
2x Taiga
3x Savannah
2x Plateau
2x Woodland Foothills
2x Windswept Heath
1x Nantuko Monastery (The token 61st. card)
1x Shivan Gorge
1x Kor Haven

This deck won a 10 hour "Chaos" game. You can read the article here:
http://casualplayers.org/article/get.php?action=getarticle&articleid=871
 
F

f-6

Guest
@Ephraim: Wow, that is a very brave deck to play in multiplayer. Really cool. Looks kind of dangerous though.

@killer joe: Heh, cool deck. How would you rate THAT on the Alongi-scales?!? :D

@train: Yeah, I tend to end up second most of the time. After a while people gang up on me and try to run me over as the deck has to start defending itself. Our group is a bit cutthroat and does not fall for the "I'm no danger to anybody"-trick any more and after a while they realize that I'm doing to little (!) and turn on me... :D
 

Oversoul

The Tentacled One
Yeah, I've played in different groups with MP decks. Some leave people alone if they don't do anything. Others will refrain from attacking only the most dangerous players, since those are the ones that can punish them in the future (even though they will all die at such a point, regardless of whether or not they attacked those players).
 

Spiderman

Administrator
Staff member
I have a couple of MP decks of my own but haven't really thought about rating them... maybe later once I get through all these posts. One is a Sleeper Agent Deck and another is a R/U Control Magic deck. I have used train's Toolbox deck and it's pretty cool - didn't know you changed it THAT much :) And I have a couple of other odds and ends around like my Manabarbs deck with I haven't played because once the Barb's comes out, I'm a target and I haven't really modified it for MP, just single player. And a Barbarian deck and a dwarf deck which need to be updated to use Mirrodin block cards and the equipment.

Oh, and I've played the free-for-all variant AND the roll the dice Chaos game (even here on the forums). Lots of fun and weirdness. :)
 
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