Tuesday, May 15, 2012

MTG: Vexing Delver Deck (Standard 2012)

What happens when you combine this nasty little creature to the standard delver deck of 2012?

You get an abomination. A very fast and aggressive deck that can also be defensive and can outsmart your opponent when the counter spells are properly used.

What Vexing Devil has in its favor is an insane potential damage to mana cost ratio. It can deal 4 damage for one mana and if the opponent would choose not to take that damage this critter can deal 4 damage every turn if unblocked. For a single red mana you get a creature with a power of 4 and 3 toughness? Talk about getting your money's worth.


Here is my build for a blue red Vexing Delver Deck for Standard of 2012:

Main Board (60):
Red (15)
2  Grim Lavamancer
4  Incinerate
4  Vexing Devil
1  Bonfire of the Damned
4  Pillar of Flame
Blue (21)
4  Gitaxian Probe
2  Vapor Snag
4  Mana Leak
3  Snapcaster Mage
4  Delver of Secrets / Insectile Aberration
4  Ponder
Colorless (24)
7  Island
6  Mountain
1  Batterskull
1  Runechanter's Pike
4  Sulfur Falls
1  Ghost Quarter
2  Desolate Lighthouse
2  Cavern of Souls

Side Board (15):

Black (1)
1 Dismember
Blue (3)
1 Tamiyo, the Moon Sage
2 Dissipate
Green (2)
2 Corrosive Gale
Red (9)
3 Arc Trail
4 Galvanic Blast
2 Combust

Deck analisys:

You won't find your spells hard to cast with this mana curve average 1.8 and you can just save your mana once you have drawn the Bonfire of the Damned.
This deck consist of 38% Blue and 27% Red with 36% Colorless cards.


Other Decks you may also want to check out:
Top 1 Delver Deck (Standard 2012) 
Gideon Jura Soldier Deck

Thursday, May 3, 2012

MTG: Top 1 Delver Deck (Standard 2012)



I don't even know if this is a controversial statement at this point, but I think Delver of Secrets is not just good, but both the best creature and the best card in Standard.

In a relatively short time, Delver of Secrets has grown into one of the most influential creatures—influential Magic: The Gathering cards—in recent memory (maybe history).

Here is my blue white Delver of Secrets Deck:

* Main Board (60)

Colorless (25)
1 Plains
4 Seachrome Coast
1 Batterskull
2 Sword of War and Peace
3 Moorland Haunt
1 Runechanter's Pike
9 Island
4 Glacial Fortress

Black (1)
1 Dismember

Blue (28)
4 Mana Leak
4 Ponder
4 Delver of Secrets / Insectile Aberration
2 Invisible Stalker
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Gitaxian Probe
2 Thought Scour
4 Vapor Snag

Multi-Color (4)
4 Geist of Saint Traft

Red (2)
2 Gut Shot

* Side Board (15)
Blue (6)
1 Jace, Memory Adept
2 Phantasmal Image
1 Negate
2 Dissipate

Colorless (1)
1 Batterskull

Green (2)
2 Corrosive Gale

White (6)
1 Divine Offering
2 Timely Reinforcements
2 Celestial Purge
1 Revoke Existence
I have used this deck on Standard tournaments and have never lost. Although this is before the release of Avacyn Restored which can change the tide for Standard format this year.


What did good players think of Delver of Secrets?

This is something that I was interested in and a question I asked myself when I first realized how influential Delver of Secrets was becoming.

... did writers (in their various "Innistrad review"-type articles on the websites various) realize at the outset how good Delver might become?

Quiet Speculation:

"This is extremely marginal but if it's possible to set this up as an early 3/2 flier consistently, it may see some play."

ChannelFireball.com:

Luis Scott-Vargas rated Delver of Secrets a "2" ("niche card"), focusing on the card's awesome flavor (and I think we can all agree there is some nice Jeff Goldblum going on on the card), although he did speculate that it might be "sweet" and possibly where.

TCGPlayer.com:

Conley Woods was the most optimistic about the Insectile Aberration-to-be, rating the one-drop a"3" (his "backbone of Standard" level, comparable to Makeshift Mannequin or Mind Spring)... but acknowledged that some might see this as a stretch. While Delver of Secrets didn't make Conley's Top 10 list for all of Innistrad, it did make his "Top 3" mini-list for blue, saying it was one of the cards he was most interested in working on.

My goal isn't to call anyone out on this front, but more to illustrate that even the experts can miss (or at least underrate) some of the most powerful cards.

I think that in this case, that came from not realizing what a very little amount of tuning (playing lots of spells and a four-pack of Ponders) could do for the Delver.

So what makes the Delver so awesome?

Essentially, it redefines a lot of what it means to be a blue creature. Delver of Secrets is aggressive. It is a one-drop... you can play it before the stage in the game where you "need" to keep your lands open for Mana Leak or whatever. You can put other decks on notice (while threatening to take over with the aforementioned Mana Leak). And what was really underrated initially: Delver of Secrets hits hard!

Have you ever seen one of those draws where one player goes turn-one Delver of Secrets, turn-two two Delvers? I mean 9 damage coming in on turn three, over the top of potential blockers, is impressive almost unconditionally... but from a blue deck? Ka-pow!

Factor in all that stuff about holding back the old Mana Leaks, and you have something pretty special.

Did you ever come to the realization, looking at an Extended blue deck splash just for Tarmogoyf, that the age of Keiga, the Tide Star in tapout strategies might be over? Delver of Secrets is that, over and over again ten times.

Why is Gut shot on his deck?
(And how do I even cast that with my blue and white lands?)
Gut Shot is amazing in the Delver deck!

You can Gut Shot a small creature, tap out for Snapcaster Mage, and Gut Shot again.
Gut Shot is one of the best cards against the viable non-Delver of Secrets decks. Red-green variants from beatdown to Naya Ramp rely on cards like Birds of Paradise to get the jump on other decks. Gut Shot—being "zero" mana (especially in a deck that can't cast it legitimately)—lets a white-blue deck get a similar mana advantage, interactively, to a red-green deck advancing actively with an actual accelerating one-drop.

Other links you may also want to check out:
Vexing Delver Deck
Gideon Jura's Soldier Deck

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

MTG: Gideon Jura Planeswalker




Gideon Jura is a planeswalker who wields white magic. Unlike most planeswalkers, Gideon doesn’t hesitate to enter combat. He also practices hieromancy, the magic of holy justice.

Life before the Order

Gideon never knew his father, as he had left sometime before Gideon was born. He lived with his mother until her death while he was still a young man. With no better options, Gideon joined a gang, which he soon became the defacto leader . With high ideals, he led the other boys to start stealing from the mansions of the rich, taking only what they needed to survive and giving the rest away to the poor.

Alas, he was caught and Gideon found himself in prison, one poorly suited to keeping him. With that in mind, the local constabulary found a man able to deal with Gideon. He took him from prison with the intention of rehabilitating Gideon by teaching him Hieromancy – the magic of order. After a few failed escape attempts on Gideon’s part, he eventually settled in, finding the magic fascinating and enjoying the feeling of power he was cultivating. His teacher recognized something within him though and began teaching Gideon of planeswalkers, one of whom had been his teacher, and the man that had given him his sural. He also instilled in Gideon a warning against pyromancy, the form of magic that had killed his former master.

Gideon’s spark ignited when he killed a much stronger opponent. The impossibility of his survival seemed so overwhelming that as Gideon tried to reconcile what he found, he achieved momentary enlightenment, a perfect perception of the entire multiverse, and slipped into the Blind Eternities. When he arrived in another world his sense of clarity quickly faded, and he returned to tell his teacher what had happened. His teacher revealed that he had been expecting it, having only ever seen one hieromancer as powerful as Gideon, the man who had taught him. He passed the sural onto Gideon that day, and Gideon left to try and find enlightenment once more.


Who or what is Gideon? If we can step out of the multiverse of Magic the Gathering (if only for a few seconds) – lets define where the name Gideon actually originated. What does it mean?

Gideon or Gedeon: (Hebrew: גִּדְעוֹן) which means “Destroyer,” “Mighty warrior,” or “Feller (of trees)”.

In the novel – ‘The Purifying Fire’, by Laura Resnick – one can delve a bit deeper into what is to come from the many details that exist already about this human Planeswalker – an excerpt is below.

All is not well in Regatha. A society called the Order of Heliud, comprised primarily of white mages, has decided that it is their duty to “bring peace and harmony to the land”. Sure enough, they attempt to outlaw the practicing of fire magic, because of the supposed inherently violent nature of anyone who wields it.

*Uh oh Chandra!*

A free spirit with a fiery temper, Chandra Nalaar will not stand for this, and engages on a reckless crusade to drive the dictators out of the plane she has learned to call home.  There are those who would do anything in their power to stop her, from hordes of angry ouphes to fellow planeswalkers with allegiances and backgrounds more cryptic than those of Chandra herself.

Among them is a planeswalker named Gideon, a white mage who seems to be fighting both alongside and against the fiery heroine’s attempts at survival. Through her acquaintance with Gideon, Chandra becomes stronger on her quest to self-realization, while learning more about the Multiverse around her and the many different sides of white magic.

Through the lands of Regatha, Kephalai, and Diraden — Chandra and the enigmatic Gideon showcase very different behaviors from their traditional color stereotypes. Although she has the reckless passion known to red mages, she also has a strong sense of loyalty to her fellow mages.

Gideon on the other hand, promises peace and order in a way that Thomas Hobbes would have admired, the concepts of which are very white-aligned, but the means used to achieve that end most definitely are not. Gideon, on the other hand, is not as “pure” as he would have people believe; he shows many traces of black characteristics, such as the willingness to sacrifice human life to further their own agenda.

Other related topics:

What is a Planeswalker?
Gideon Jura Soldier Deck

MTG: Gideon Jura Soldier Deck


Gideon Jura is a very good card if you know how to use it. He’s not ridiculously broken, but he’s very good at what he does, and is one of the best balanced Planeswalker who's able to be used both defensively and offensively. With his reprinting in Magic 2012, Gideon Jura is now much more readily available, and where he was a $30 card before, he’s able to be purchased as a singleton for between $15-20 a copy. Considering that you rarely, if ever, would run more than 2 copies of him, suddenly budget deck brewers have a fantastic strong card to build around. It’s obviously no coincidence that Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012 so heavily featured Gideon. The 2012 Core Set was clearly built to favor White-heavy control decks.

Below is my sample version of a balanced deck containing Gideon.

Colorless (20)
18 Plains
2 Emeria, the Sky Ruin

White (40)
2 Veteran Swordsmith
4 Perimeter Captain
4 Ballyrush Banneret
2 Captain of the Watch
4 Aven Trailblazer
4 Gideon's Avenger
4 Preeminent Captain
2 Gideon Jura
2 Thraben Sentry / Thraben Militia
2 Righteousness
2 Oblivion Ring
4 Honor of the Pure
4 Veteran Armorsmith



Deck Analysis:

Average converted mana cost is 2.7 meaning it won't be too hard for you to get your soldiers into the battlefield.
Aven Trailblazer will ensure that you can both attack and defend from the air.
Emeria, the Sky ruin can return your dead soldiers back into the battle field on the begining of your upkeep during late game to ensure that you dont run out of creature on the battle field.

This deck is in Legacy format.

Combo:

Preeminent captain will make it very easy for you to fling Captain of the watch into the battlefield without paying for the high casting cost which will also trigger its ability to add three tokens who are instantly 2/2 with the captain's presence and would pump up your preeminent captain with +1/+1.

Perimeter Captain and Gideon's Avenger will ensure that you can defend Gideon Jura once you have activated his ability to force your opponent's creature to attack and when they do you can cast Righteousness to easily take our your opponent's toughest creature rendering him helpless on your next turn.

The Veteran Armorsmith and Swordsmith will also come in handy to pump up the offense and defense of your soldiers.


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