This is a list of good, solid multiplayer cards – the cards to look for if you don’t have them. Each group starts with really inexpensive cards – generally commons, all available cheaply. Then I throw in a couple slightly more expensive cards towards the end, and finish it up with one or two expensive cards that are nearly always worth it.
I want to talk about the must-have cards that are not really expensive. These are the cards that you should try to get hold of first, before anything else, if I wanted to build a new collection and planned to play many formats (including multiplayer) for a long time.
I’m going to try something different; I’m going to try to go through my deck construction process in steps, as it occurs. Usually, I come up with an idea, then refine it while showering or driving or whatever. This time, I want to try noting the ideas and steps when they occur… And my main idea is killing with Pestilence.
I untapped and cast Wheel numbers two and three during my upkeep. He pitched all seven cards to the first Wheel (taking twenty-eight damage), drew seven more (fourteen damage), pitched them (another twenty-eight damage) and drew seven more for a final fourteen points of damage. Over a hundred damage in his end step and my upkeep phase. Lifegain is not a winning strategy; my Dreams deck, on the other hand, seems to be.
Last week, I sat down in a multiplayer game with a handful of opponents. I smashed them. It wasn’t even close. I pulled out another deck – a deck that was a lot weaker – and smashed them again. Then I bashed them with a deck I had drafted the day before. Why? Because I had a better understanding of how mana worked than they did…. And yes, it is that important.
Last weekend, a local store held a Saint Patrick’s tourney where only green cards could be used. I like these alternative formats – for one thing, there are no netdecks, and the metagame is pretty much whatever you can conceive… Which is why I had mixed feelings upon seeing Abe Sargent’s article about this format a while back. On the plus side, he writes well and covers interesting topics. On the down side, now there were netdecks to copy. However, I noticed that he left out two or three archetypes…
I have met a lot of casual players who are unwilling to play, or afraid of playing, in big tourneys. But the current cycle of Pro Tour Qualifiers is Onslaught/Legions sealed deck, and it is a perfect place to start playing in bigger tourneys. Here’s why.
* Opponent 1’s turn: Your stuff untaps. Tap Savannahs and Elf, make a soldier. Tap Cradle for five mana, tap bird, make two soldiers.
* Opponent 2’s turn: Tap Savannah’s and Elf, make a soldier. Tap Cradle for eight mana, tap Bird, make three more soldiers.
* Opponent 3’s turn: Tap Savannahs and Elf, make a soldier. Tap Cradle for twelve mana, tap Bird, make three soldiers and draw a card off J-Tome.
* Opponent 4’s turn: Tap Savannahs and Elf, make a soldier. Tap Cradle for sixteen mana, tap Bird, make four soldiers and draw a card.
* Your turn: Draw a card, play land, tap everything but Cradle, make a Soldier (with two mana floating) tap Cradle for twenty-one mana, play Planar Portal, search with Planar Portal, play Catapult Master, make two soldiers. (Nineteen soldiers in play.) Tap soldiers and Catapult Master to remove four opponent creatures from play.
Okay, as the last deck in this article – and series – I want to look at my favorite Extended and multiplayer deck at present. Typically I build a new deck every week or so, play it once, then do something else. This deck is staying together – probably indefinitely. It’s a solid deck that loses very little in the transition to multiplayer. It’s Rock.
By the time you read this, Extended season will be over – at least for sanctioned play. But casual players can keep playing Extended decks all they want, so I’m going to look at several of the tier one and tier 1.5 decks from this Extended season with a view towards modifying them for multiplayer games.
Old Extended had some broken decks, but nothing like Type 1. I play TnT – Mishra’s Factories, Juggernauts, Su-Chi’s, Triskelion, plus the broken stuff: Ancestral Recall, Goblin Welder, Survival of the Fittest. I’m short one Factory, but the deck still does okay.
A week or so back, Jon Mattison posted a Phantoms deck to one of the my email lists. I had been looking for a deck to play myself for a casual play session, since I had promised not to use anything with an infinite combo or anything too game-controlling…. And Phantoms looked interesting enough to spend some time thinking about.
PT level decks are NASCAR-caliber stockcars, custom-built from the ground up and tuned to a perfect pitch. Casual decks are more akin to normal, civilian transportation – but even a ’73 Nova can benefit from a tune-up and a pair of fuzzy dice. In that spirit, here are ten things that will help every deck you build.
If you look hard enough, you can find almost any Magic spell replicated in the form of a 187 creature. These creatures are generally pretty good in duels, but are often even better in multiplayer. A good spell that leaves a chump blocker is almost always superior to a good spell on its own, so let me list the best ones for you and give you an overview.
I want to tell you about two multiplayer decks that work well: One’s mono-black, and one’s G/W/R. The mono-black deck won nearly every one of the half-dozen or so games I played it in, which is pretty good for a multiplayer deck – especially once people started gunning for it.
