Guest Meddling: Upgrading the Coalition
I’m a fan of preconstructed decks, especially some of the non-intro products Wizards has been putting out. However, I take a different approach than Jay. I like to customize, tear apart, rebuild, refocus, and repurpose what I pull out of those boxes.
Sometimes I like to retool decks into easier-to-play, more-consistent versions of themselves, so that I can hand them to new players and explain them quickly. Other times I like to tinker with decks and fill them with bomby, splashy cards that make for lots of fun. Once in awhile I like to optimize for the kill. Either way, I feel like personalizing preconstructed decks is a great way to make them more interesting and more fun, utilizing some of the basic framework.
One of my favorite preconstructed decks in the past year was the Duel Decks: Phyrexia vs the Coalition set, because I loved that storyline and was thrilled to be able to play as Urza and Yawgmoth, re-enacting that climactic battle. Then I played the decks.
Duel Decks- Garruk vs Liliana: Liliana’s Deck Review (Part 2 of 2)
After the epic clash last round that saw Garruk himself directly intervene to save his deck from ignominious defeat, we weren’t quite sure what to expect this go ’round. There are only so many miracles in a deck at any given time, and the thought was that Garruk had burned all his. Nevertheless, Sam volunteered to pilot his deck, based as it was on her most accustomed archetype: Big Dumb Beats(tm). That left me behind Liliana, and here are our notes from the confrontation.
Duel Decks- Garruk vs Liliana: Garruk’s Deck Review (Part 2 of 2)
One thing I derive a lot of personal satisfaction from is seeing Magic players improve their game. Jimi’s been playing a lot lately, between the site’s reviews and the Precon Championships, and more and more I’ve been finding her ever the more worthy opponent. In a game where even the pros admit they make multiple mistakes in each game, I’m always looking to improve my skill as well. As I’d find, piloting Garruk would put these skills to the test. We set the table for the customary three matches, and here are our notes from the clash.
Duel Decks- Garruk vs Liliana: Liliana’s Deck Review (Part 1 of 2)
Having introduced ourselves to Garruk and his surprisingly creature-light deck, we now turn to his opposite in this storied conflict, Liliana. On a strict creature-card basis Liliana actually has a very slight edge (19 versus 18), but unlike the more straightforward Green deck, she has comparatively few beaters, instead looking to gain some ground on the back of utility creatures. As we’ll see, though, that’s hardly the extent of her reach, and she might almost be as dangerous as a Red mage in the endgame- consider yourself warned!
We’ll begin today’s analysis with the creatures of darkness.
A Meddling of Sorts: Garruk vs Elspeth
On the lookout for a good read? Head over to Gathering Magic, where Erik Saeger’s tinkered with the Duel Decks to make an Infected Garruk battle an Elspeth with an Equipment theme. Let’s support our Precom Community, and tell ’em Ertai sent ya!
Duel Decks- Garruk vs Liliana: Garruk’s Deck Review (Part 1 of 2)
Just over a year ago, in Octover of 2009, the fourth of the Duel Decks series was released. Based upon the animosity between its two namesake planeswalkers as found in lore (as well as a novel that actually never ended up getting published, for reasons still unknown), the deck pits a mono-Green beats deck against a comparable mono-Black creation. It continued the tradition of the late-season, planeswalker-themed Duel Decks release begun with Jace vs Chandra, and continued with Elspeth vs Tezzeret.
Garruk’s deck is an interesting construction. For the most part, when you think of mono-Green beats, you tend to think of decks that ramp into the very large beaters Green has been known for for all of its history. That’s not an unreasonable expectation, but Garruk’s Deck bucks convention quite dramatically. Yes, you have the beaters, and yes there is ramp (albeit very little, more on that later). Instead, what’s most surprising is that the deck is split dead-even between creatures and noncreature spells. This is highly irregular- mono-Green beats tends to flood its deck with critters to ensure a steady stream of them, then slave its noncreature options to be ramp and a few support cards, like Giant Growth.
Duel Decks- Divine vs Demonic: Demonic Review (Part 2 of 2)
After a less-than-satisfactory performance in our last playtest, the Demonic hordes would take to the field one last time in a clash against their hated foes, the Angels of Divine. Under new leadership, would they at last assume their rightful place of dominance in the multiverse, or would the heavenly host flush them like so much offal back to the hells they spawned from? We played the customary three matches to find out.
Duel Decks- Divine vs Demonic: Divine Deck Review (Part 2 of 2)
And so the earth cracked and was torn asunder as the forces of Hell boiled up from the abyss to meet the legions of Heaven descending from the sky. Alternately… Sam and I sat down at the table to pit the Divine against the Demonic for a series of three games, to see how each deck would perform. The former may sound more full of Sturm und Drang, but on a lazy Sunday afternoon the latter was just what was called for. Here are our notes from the three games.
Duel Decks- Divine vs Demonic: Demonic Deck Review (Part 1 of 2)
Far from the hallowed heights of heaven, today we descend into the brimstone pits of hell to take measure of the infernal forces arrayed against the Divine deck. When it comes to the Duel Decks, the second analysis is often the more interesting one, as the grand vision of the decks’ designers comes into focus. For Divine, we had a trade-the-early-game-for-the-late-game strategy, with gobs of absurdly expensive bombs, little removal and even less ramping. The idea there was to stall out for the early and mid-game with some light creature presence, then take over the skies as early as turn 4 and beat down your opponent.
There are, naturally, a number of different responses to this strategy. Obviously, there’s always the option of the ‘mirror’- do the exact same thing, but in Black (this was the Anthologies method). Alternately, you could go the other direction entirely and show a contrast in strategy, meeting a slower opponent with a faster Black creature rush (as seen in Phyrexia vs the Coalition). In the end, however, it looks as if Demonic charts something of a maiddle path here. Faster than Divine but not blisteringly fast by any means, it comfortably moves into the ground abdicated by Divine and demands control of the mid-game.
To see how it accomplishes this, we’ll turn now to the creatures of Demonic.
Duel Decks- Divine vs Demonic: Divine Deck Review (Part 1 of 2)
Flush off the success of 2008’s Duel Decks: Jace vs Chandra, Wizards alternated back to the “tribe vs tribe” theme that had kicked off the series (Evles vs Goblins) with the April 2009 release of Divine vs Demonic. Featuring some of the all-stars of the Angels and Demons factions, the set pits a mono-White deck versus its mono-Black counterpart. In both cases, the designers have followed a strategy of “large creatures, light ramping.” This balance tends to yield a relatively uneventful early game with things picking up in the mid- to late-game- heavily lopsided games are always possible (this is, after all, Magic: the Gathering), but in general there should be some dynamic interactions between the two decks.
Today we’ll be taking a look at the mono-White Divine. Packing in an impressive fourteen Angels, the question then becomes whether or not the deck sacrificed some playability for flavour. That said, Duel Decks aren’t like your normal preconstructed products, as they’re generally only intended to be balanced against each other. A deck can be nearly unplayable, but if its opposite number is equally so then voila! Balance!
Obviously it is not in Wizards’ interest to develop an unplayable product. Instead, what this means is that in reviewing the Duel Decks, we shouldn’t judge too harshly when we note that there are a higher-than-comfortable number of very expensive spells in the deck if it is a component of the play experience the Duel Deck is trying to foster.
With that said, let’s now turn to Divine and see how the deck has been constructed, starting of course with the creatures.
Ertai's Lament 