During my last daily deck-a-thon, there was a forum comment regarding the fact that a lot of my decks couldn’t be played online, because I like using older and unusual cards to fill out slots in my decks.
Now, my initial response was to think that I should remind readers that my decks are suggested as guides. If you like one of my decks but don’t have the right card pool, there are plenty of alternatives for you to choose from. You can also edit the core of the deck, adding or removing cards as you see fit. My decklists are not cast in iron — just print.
But I eventually realized that my initial response was unfair. The online format is much different than the real world one. If I include, say, Oubliette as a key card in a modern day deck, then I can tell people who don’t have Oubliettes that they are only a couple of bucks online. But the online player has no such option.
If you play Magic: The Electronic, then you should have some decks built for you. Today is that day, and here’s your bone. All of the decks in today’s article are able to be played online. In addition, I’m steering clear of expensive IPA rares, and using cards that can be easily acquired.
I’ve always liked how you can casually trade online for a variety of deck stock rather cheaply. Let’s see how that translates into today’s decks. If you do not play Magic: The Electronic but instead enjoy Magic: The Kitchen Table, don’t worry! You can use these decks as well.
Shielding Your Life Total
I decide to build my first deck around a Ravnica card. It’s a great new set with tons of deck ideas hidden amongst the cards. I think I could write a daily deck article for a year, each built around Ravnica cards, and still have plenty of unused space.
I love Pariah’s Shield. The other day, I was playing and it was on a False Prophet and then later a Pattern of Rebirth-enchanted creature. In a mono-White deck, Pariah’s Shield gives us a reliable Pariah effect, while also playing enough control mechanisms to allow you to survive to the point where the Shield can be useful. Mono-White also gives us a great creature to use with the Shield.
This deck tries to equip a creature with Pariah’s Shield and then remain untouchable until flyers, protected creatures, or Millstones kill your opponent. Every creature in the deck is a good target for the Shield.
Dawn Elemental is the ideal Shield-bearer. With a Pariah’s Shield on a Dawn Elemental, all damage dealt to you is essentially negated. If you get this combo, you’re telling your opponent they’d better slow down and find artifact or creature removal. The beauty of this is that you’ll have an opportunity to set up, to start milling, or to swing for some damage while your opponent worries about finding an answer.
If you get the Shield, but no Dawn Elemental is forthcoming, there are no worries. Kami of Old Stone can take a lot of damage before dying. You can also equip the double-protected Auriok Champion. Against Red or Black decks, it’s the same as equipping a Dawn Elemental.
If you play Voice of All against a mono-colored deck, then it is just as likely to be as good as a Dawn Elemental. Sure, your opponent could be playing artifact damage, but then again, they probably won’t be. In the meantime, your protected Voice is swinging for two each turn due to its unblockability.
The last creature in the deck is Starlight Invoker. I doubt you’ll use its ability much, but as a cheap 1/3, you get a good blocker early and an okay Shield target. If your opponent has out something small and annoying, you can equip the Invoker and keep yourself alive long enough to find better options.
But even without the Shield, your deck still has great defense. You can still stall for a time while the Millstone goes to work, grinding away a library.
I added a suite of removal in the form of Disenchant and Wing Shards. Lastly, a pair of Ivory Masks joins as a way to further keep an opponent from taking you down. If you prefer, you can use True Believer so that you’ll have extra creatures in the deck.
The deck does have a few rares in it, but they are low-value rares. Shields, Elementals, Champions, Masks, and Millstones are all relatively low value online. Voice of All has some value as well, being from IPA — but since it isn’t a rare, it shouldn’t be hard to find.
If you wanted to make this deck kitchen table-friendly, I’d find space for Cho-Manno, Revolutionary and Commander Eesha where the Invokers are. Auspicious Ancestor might not be a bad call for this deck either. I really miss card drawing, but I couldn’t come up with a good choice. Feel free to toss in the Tome of your choice, from Jalum Tome to Emmessi Tome.
Old School Blue/Black Control
Old control decks revolved around such goodies as Serra Angel/Sengir Vampire, Clone, Counterspell, Control Magic, and a host of other great cards. A lot of these cards were out of print — but no longer! Nothing stops us from building a modern-day, old-school U/B Control deck, so let’s see what we can do:
Creatures (16)
Lands (24)
Spells (20)
Watery Grave is a bit pricey these days, so I used Salt Marsh instead. Feel free to add in Watery Graves as you have them. Another great-but-expensive card would be Undermine. If the Specters are too much for you to acquire, feel free to substitute any flyer.
Counterspell, Sengir Vampire, Hypnotic Specter, and Clone are the exact same cards that were in old school decks. Rend Flesh substitutes for Terror, the “old faithful” of old removal spells. Dimir Doppelganger and Sakashima represent the old school original Doppelganger. Tidings fills the role held by great old-school cards like Braingeyser. Persuasion is a slightly more expensive Control Magic, and Hinder fills a role that a variety of poor counters filled (From Power Sink to Remove Soul).
The result is a deck with a definite role. You only have eight counters so save them for the good stuff. You have card drawing, versatile creatures, powerful effects, and plenty of potential, so play well.
Old-school decks used Clone to negate an opponent’s creature or, when there were no creatures, supplemented the attack by Cloning a Vampire. You swung with Vampires until either your opponent died, or your Vampires did. Your handful of counters were used to protect your lead or to stop a game-winning spell, but you’d let most stuff through.
One old-school card that is missing is Maze of Ith. If you have access to cards offline and you building this deck, toss in a Maze of Ith. Offline players could run more old-school cards, from Phantom Monsters and a Mind Twist to actual Control Magics and Doppelgangers. I think that ruins the idea of the deck, however, which is to build a modern-day old-school deck. The only reason I’d recommend running a Maze is because it is the only card that can seriously protect a player outside of Kor Haven.
Many of these cards are rare — although again, outside of the Specters, they have a low ticket value. If you cannot find all of these cards, don’t worry! I have some secret tech for you. You see, if you had a lot of money or you had been playing for a while, there was a card that was out-of-print that old school control decks loved to play. It has also been recently reprinted… And now you can run Icy Manipulators in your deck to substitute for cards you either can’t afford or can’t find.
“Test Your Abe Knowledge Deck”
This deck is a typical R/G deck built around a common theme. Every non-land in the deck fits the theme. Your job is to guess the theme (or, alternatively, you can look at the end of the article where I highlight this deck’s theme).
Creatures (24)
- 4 Krosan Tusker
- 2 Tahngarth, Talruum Hero
- 2 Silklash Spider
- 2 Forgotten Ancient
- 4 Viridian Zealot
- 4 Hystrodon
- 4 Kavu Titan
- 2 Homura, Human Ascendant
Lands (26)
Spells (10)
Remember, your challenge is to figure out what the theme of this article is… Or you can just cheat and go to the end of this article. (But what fun is that? — The Ferrett) Some of my card suggestions for other cards to play might help you out, as you’ll see what I recommend.
This deck plays like an R/G deck with several control elements tacked on. Card-drawing sources like Hystrodon and Krosan Tusker can help develop your game.
Tahngarth, Lightning Surge, Earthquake, Silklash Spider, and Viridian Zealot all help to remove unsightly permanents from the other side of the table. The deck has a lot of reusability.
Earthquake might kill a few of your creatures, but it’s great at taking out early creatures before most of your board can develop. Later, many of your creatures will survive a modest Earthquaking. You can even move Ancient counters to those creatures that the ‘Quake would otherwise kill.
You have some early drops. Kavu Titan and Viridian Zealot can come out early and get a few hits in or serve as defense until some of the big boys come online. Hystrodon or a cycled Krosan Tusker often follow. On the fourth turn you can flip Hystrodon or play Forgotten Ancient. Once you get to five mana, your deck really takes off. Tahngarth joins the fray, while Lightning Surge can deal out some damage.
Later in the game, Homura will start attacking and your opponent will be forced to either take four every turn, or kill it and give all of your creatures flying. Once that happens, feel free to Earthquake aggressively.
Several cards in the deck have multiple modes, and you can play them based on when you draw them and what you need. Kavu Titan is a fine 2/2 bear and you should never feel bad about playing it as such, but you can also slap it down as a 5/5 trampler later on. Krosan Tusker is great at fixing mana and drawing cards — but playing a 6/5 beater after someone’s Wrath of God is strong. Lightning Surge deals a solid amount of damage early on — but after threshold, you can deal twelve damage to someone with the draw of a Surge.
If you were to take this deck offline, I’d recommend Stormbind. It’s a great enchantment that slides into this deck with ease. With twenty-six lands and Tuskers, the deck can get mana flooded after a while, and having a nice outlet for those cards would benefit the deck. I also thought about Snake Basket as a way to use the extra mana, and you could take a look at that.
Okay, do you know the theme? Read on and find out if your guess is right!
G/W Aggro-Control Deck
Sometimes players just want to play a deck. Not a deck built around a Top 40 Hit Song or a particular card or a famous author or anything like that… You just want a deck with nothing fancy.
I decided just to build a deck. There’s nothing special here, no major themes. I wanted to build a nice, well-rounded aggro-control deck for your casual play. I’ve felt that I have been overusing Red/White decks in my articles, so I went back to every article I ever wrote and tallied the colors of all of the decks that I included. I found that that I use some color combinations a lot more than others. One of my least-used color combinations was Green/White, so I’m forcing myself to build a G/W aggro-control deck right now.
When I build aggro-control, I often make it aggro-tempoish-control. I don’t want to disappoint my tempo fans, and this gives me an opportunity to use a few Ravnica cards as well. Enter the deck:
Creatures (23)
- 3 Angel of Mercy
- 2 Mystic Enforcer
- 4 Weathered Wayfarer
- 2 Silklash Spider
- 2 Loxodon Hierarch
- 4 Selesnya Guildmage
- 2 Tolsimir Wolfblood
- 4 Watchwolf
Lands (24)
Spells (13)
You could also go in a Torment direction, grabbing Wild Mongrels and Basking Rootwallas instead of the Angels and Wayfarers… But I wanted to do something a bit different.
Obviously, this deck is designed to use a Glare of Subdual well, while not focusing on it too much. There’s plenty for your creatures to do, from swinging with cheap fat to including a few tricks for the crowd.
You have a set of Wayfarers as your one-drops. They can help you develop your mana — but if you don’t need them, they can get a hit in or be used for the Glare. Watchwolves and Guildmagi can be played quickly for some aggressive beating or cheap Glaring Subduals.
Mystic Enforcers and Loxodon Hierarchs bring a solid beefy body to play with other abilities. A thresholded Enforcer is possibly one of the best cards in the deck. A 6/6 flyer with protection from Black is a challenge for a lot of decks to bring down — especially after you tap any potential blockers with the Glare.
In addition to pumping your creatures, which is quite good on its own, Tolsimir Wolfblood also makes a nice 4/4 to use the Glare to block and attack. Hierarchs, Enforcers, Guildmagi, and Watchwolves all get +2/+2 with Tolsimir out — so protect him well, because he will be an obvious target.
Angel of Mercy gives us a mid-range flyer and a bit of life. Silklash Spider blocks flyers, provides great defense, can occasionally shoot down flyers, and is a great target for Subduing Glare.
To round out the deck I put in four each of Naturalize and Wing Shards. You could try out the new conclave White removal spell — Devouring Light. Because it removes a blocker as well as an attacker, you might want to try it out in place of Wing Shards.
Loxodon Hierarchs are expensive, so if you can’t get any, just toss in two more Mystic Enforcers. You could also run Benalish Emissary; it’s a solid 1/4 body, good for blocking and Glaring, while also adding some land removal (and thus some tempo advantage). Fleetfoot Panther can save creatures, gets double-pumped by Tolsimir, adds a nice surprise element, and is a solid beater — all in one package.
I also considered some equipment for this deck with the high creature count. Ultimately I decided against such a course of action, but that might be another direction that you want to explore.
I hope that these Online decks suit your needs. As always, feel encouraged to modify as you see fit, and let us know how it goes on the forums! Good luck in all of your deck building.
Until later,
Abe Sargent
P.S.
So you want to know the theme of deck number three, right? Well, in order to guess the deck’s theme, you have to look at the title of the section. The title suggests that it has something to do with me. It’s half-right. It has to do with something I write.
I have several ongoing series of articles here at StarCityGames — and one such series is the Underused Hall of Fame, where I retire some of the best underused cards of all time. Every non-land card in deck three is on that list.
Feel free to tell me in the forums that you guessed it immediately, even though we all know that you didn’t have a clue.