Hello all and welcome to the newest smattering of articles revolving around bringing you a daily deck. Each day opens with a warm and welcoming deck, ready for you to play at your local kitchen table.
In these series of daily articles, I’ve recently focused on selecting something at random and then forcing myself to build a deck around it. I’ve used everything from low value rares to random creature types and, in fact, any random card in the game.
There’s a lot of Magicdom to mine for daily dosages of all things deck. I could even write a deck without selecting some random thing to spark my imagination. Sometimes, when you choose a random card to build around, you get something lame like Clockwork Steed.
I’ll tell you what… let’s build with a random card for this entry, and we’ll see how it goes from there. I may call an audible in a later article if I am not happy with the result.
Here’s how it works: I roll a d100 and divide by two (rounding up) to get a set number. Then I start with Arabian Nights as number one and count my way down the expansion sets until I hit the number I rolled. For today, I rolled 27, which is set number 14.
Which set is the 14th expansion set? Exodus. (I skip Portal sets and Un- sets and Chronicles). Now that I have my set, I need to roll a random card.
There are 143 cards in Exodus, so I randomly determine if my card is in the first hundred or second hundred. I roll the first hundred. Then I simply roll the d100 a second time and get 89. So, I am looking for the 88th card in Exodus, which is the first expansion set that numbers its cards, so that’s easy to do. What overpowered Exodus card did I roll?
This causes me to laugh profusely. See, one of my friends just built a Mogg Assassin deck, so it’s ironic that I would just roll Mogg Assassin. I suppose that I should just heed the writing on the wall and build a similar deck to expound on the Mogg Assassin of happiness and joy.
Creatures (12)
Spells (48)
This is a coin flipping deck, which you almost assuredly already knew. It wins by winning coin flips. There’s some solid removal here with the Scales, Assassin, Gambits, and Verdicts. This makes the deck pretty casual friendly, and even more so around a multiplayer table. When you kill Akroma with Crooked Scales, no one gets upset.
Planar Chaos might need to be removed… it’s multiplayer unfriendly and paints a target of death and destruction around your cute little coin flip deck. However, it may help to protect your big guns (Chance Encounter, Goblin Bomb) so your mileage may vary.
I added the Crazed Firecat because you can make it really big, and that’s comedy. I like the idea of super big Kitty of Doom swinging for thirteen damage in a pop because you made a bunch of coin flips in a row.
Game of Chaos replaced jank like Mana Clash from my friend’s deck. The Game can kill someone with twenty life by winning six coin flips in a row, five if they are at sixteen or less life. You also gain life from it, so you can use it to help yourself out. Also, unlike many coin flip cards like the Fiery Gambit, if you lose, your opponent might choose to keep going, although unlikely.
There’s a pair of Chance Encounters here, obviously. You have to have a couple, but again, they are multiplayer unfriendly and paint a target on your otherwise funny deck. The Goblin Bomb is much better. A Goblin Bomb says, “I can kill just one player” where Chance Encounter says, “Kill me now before you all lose in one coin-flipping massacre.”
Once you have five counters on the G. Bomb, it also becomes the best rattlesnake ever in multiplayer. A rattlesnake, according to writer Anthony Alongi who created the concept, is a card that sits there and tells people to go elsewhere or suffer the consequences. It’s sort of like a Seal of Fire – that tells someone not to attack you, whereas a Shock, sitting in your hand, would not.
Now, imagine a permanent that you could sacrifice at any time to deal twenty damage to someone. That’s a huge rattlesnake. It almost always says, “Attack me, boys, and I kill you,” or, “Destroy my stuff, and I kill you.”
Fiery Gambits are amazing with Thumb and Bookie backup. You can kill something, Lava Axe everybody, and draw an amazingly broken amount of cards. That’s a great card. With a Thumb out, and no Bookie, you have a 75% chance of winning each flip, and a solid chance of going the distance.
This deck should prove to be fun for some players, but it really doesn’t fit everybody’s playing style. Don’t worry if it’s not your thing though, because hopefully another deck this week will be.
Until later,