slot-based deck building microformat

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folding_music
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Post by folding_music » 2 years ago

I've got so many mid-early cards and they never make it into decks; I don't have much of the super expensive reserved list pieces but I have a bunch of commons and uncommons from 4th, Ice Age and Mirage, plus choice cards from The Dark, Fallen Empires, Legends etc, etc. I kinda set up a template for constructing sixty card casual decks based on edition slots, goes something like this:

01-10: Cards from Fourth Edition, (or reprints/preprints of such)
11-20: Cards from Ice Age or Alliances (or reprints/preprints of such)
21:30: Cards from Mirage or Visions (or reprints/preprints of such)
31-35: Cards from terminally old sets that DON'T appear in 4th Edition: ABUR, Antiquities, Arabian Nights, Legends, The Dark or the book promos (or reprints of such)
36-40: Cards from Fallen Empires or Homelands
41-60: Wildcards from any of the above sets or Portal 1

The thing about 4th Ed is that it's the first reprint set, with lots of AQ, AN, LEG and DRK in it, so it's a cool focus for that kind of time period and it removes most of the OP stuff from Revised. (if you squint at Mana Vault, Balance, Channel and Winter Orb, I mean) Chronicles and 5th Edition also reprint a lot of these cards, and 5th ed has its own basic lands with new art, so it's not TOO strict or inaccessible to make something like this. I've got a headstart with an old if patchy collection, but the idea is to make CASUAL decks just out of what I have, not buying any extras and especially not buying any reserved stuff.

one I'm happy with (insanely low-power, if you hate looking at unoptimized kitchen table stuff then look away now)
Spirit Linking an Orcish Artillery is so classic and sweet, but Spirit Link on the Embermage is just as cool. Castle and Scars also make Embermage big'n'strong and also makes Orcish Captain activations more academic. Generally it's a creature-based pinger control thing with absolutely no utility besides that; trying to work out where I'd slot in bolts or pillages without making the typical Draw 7 even worse. there's no card drawing either, giggle, just classic zero power do-your-thing-and-hope design.

Hematite Talisman or Jandor's Saddlebags might be smexy in terms of untapping an enchanted Artillery or double-dipping on a Witch Hunter?

the deck kinda needs help but I think it's the best assortment of cards for this theme that I can find to fit the template! more decks around this concept later!

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folding_music
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Post by folding_music » 2 years ago


really old-school controlling deck... Ice Floe is a bad Maze of Ith but it still combines insanely well with Nevy's Disk. Illusionary Terrain can hammer opposing deck's mana bases and also sets up Seasinger to do what it does. Time Elemental can gainfully bounce the Disk and the Terrain, etc. etc. probably a good bit more powerful than the catapult deck, oh well.

next to attempt: G/B kill you with auras? in the early days you got Maddening Wind and Pestilence and Seizures and I love them all, time to make a really bad deck.

edit: also realized how constrained I was by having a limited amount of lands collected from back in the day :))) my reserves of 4th ed Forests means I can make a lot of green decks but beyond that it's gonna get scrappy, Portal basics are coming in before long.

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Post by folding_music » 2 years ago


problem with all the old-school stuff is that the easiest thing to build is always anti-creature control, so then you have two anti-creature control decks facing off and doing nothing for a million turns, and I'm sure this isn't a spoiler, but in that case the deck with Drain Life in it wins. lol. so this is the deck to beat in many ways, slow and clunky as it is;

tricks: Infernal Harvest + Ivory Tower - set handsize back to seven
Drift of the Dead + Final Strike - a big finishing blow out of nowhere. Way worse than Fling, whatever, Fling hasnt even been printed yet lol
Bottomless Vault + Drain Life - always smexy
Pestilence + Binding Agony + their highest toughness creature - usually a death sentence!

this needs more ways to get back to seven handsize but, um, Necropotence is a bit over the top, Contract from Below is banned and Infernal Contract gets ya killed even more than your own cards do, so basically you play this deck by sitting back, getting one control permanent in play and pumping mana into that instead of casting more stuff. Anyone's who's studied Pestilence in Pauper or in Limited knows the inherent game-changing effect the card brings.

edit: oh yeah two of the drain lifes are Fourth Edition, the other two are Mirage. sticking to the slot chart makes this sort of thing happen now and then

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Post by Diz » 1 year ago

I really like this, in theory, and would love to see this concept expanded to sets with, shall we say, a little more modernism!

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Post by folding_music » 1 year ago

:3 modernism is currently a no-go for me, I am definitely in my useless, naive nostalgia arc! but yes you could do this with a far more recent set of four blocks; partially the idea is to use all my old cards (or convince myself to complete playsets of ones I find that I really like playing) and partially it's to mimic the original gencon format where your deck needed cards from every expansion.

i've changed how this works a little, though. it goes:
00-09: has appeared in 4th ed.
10-19: first appeared in ICE/ALL
20-29: first appeared in MIR/VIS
30-39: first appeared in any of these sets: ANQ/ARN/LEG/DRK/BOOK PROMOS and hasn't been in 4th ed.
any of the above slots can be swapped for a basic land or a snow basic land
40-44: first appeared in FEM/HML
45-59: highlander wildcard zone from any of the above sets, or from P1/P2/P3, or WTH/TMP/STH/EXO/USG/ULG/UDS (or a basic/snow basic, ignoring the highlander rule in this case)

- you can also sneak in extra playsets by putting three copies of a card where it should be and the fourth in the highlander wildcard zone :3
- any of the cards can be a reprint (or proxy) and the cutoff is up to you; to me, Chronicles, 5th ed. and Anthologies are perfectly fine but 7th ed's art tends to turn me off so it doesn't work for me.

So you could definitely do yr own version of this starting from Odyssey, or Shadowmoor or whatever suits you. even if it's a format no-one else plays it still feels happier to me to have cards stored in decks than in file.

here's a very silly deck I assembled, full of wonder and hope, Mother Nature-themed with illustrations I love. sometimes it even does damage to the opponent;
Outstanding area of natural beauty
Approximate Total Cost:

3 Howling Mines cos that's how many I have, 0 Wrath of Gods cos that's how many I have that aren't 9th Edition. giggle. with the 1x Balance, 1x Regrowth I decided to keep to the vintage restricted list, the cards are too efficient compared to most old cards. very simply, a deck where you stall, smile sweetly, try to Hurricane for a million, get killed by a single Hypnotic Specter etc. <3 perfect deck to attempt to Ice Cauldron/Hollow Trees out a big X spell. You would definitely put Mox Diamond, Wraths, more Brushlands in this if you had them, but the point of all this to me is that you can look through the deck and see how it wants to win, or match it up against another silly low-powered deck and see which goes off first. threatening another player with actual efficiency isn't really a strat on my radar

I also wanna try Wooden Sphere in this, as low-powered as that is, cos I think it'd help you get back from below 1 when you have Sustaining Spirit out, so you can get back in the game instead of stubbornly upkeeping a creature which ties up all the mana you wanna use to hurricane. or some other progressive life gain thing? 1x Warrior Angel? if only Pulse of Murasa had been printed in Homelands... (edit, this bit doesn't make sense, I was treating Sustaining Spirit as if it was a "You don't lose" card but it pegs yr minimum life at 1! although... being able to climb above 1 is still valuable in a format with stuff like Brush with Death or Subversion in it)

next: trying to make my dream Trade Caravan + Caribou Range deck

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Post by folding_music » 10 months ago

who would win: a cruel 4x Nevy's Disk, 4x Swords to Plowshares, 4x Peace Talks stall deck (with a one-of smexy Kjeldoran Outpost in it, even), or one ephemeral boi?

running a league among 20 decks and I'm noticing that spicy one-ofs are frequently the antidote for otherwise hopeless control strategies... it's becoming entertaining! Both Ephemeron and Blinking Spirit are shooting way up my rankings and are making me consider a new Foul Familiar deck. not much seems to beat those cards except counterspells, or winning first. (edit: or Jester's Cap!!!) the disk deck runs Invulnerability rather than things like Pentagram of the Ages or Safeguard in the quest to hardly run any permanents, but Ephemeron catch 22s that card really really hard :))))) pleased at this discovery

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