Tuesday, July 12, 2011

$300

Let's just get into it, shall we?
First, a link to Gatherer in case people want to look up cards. Eventually I'll probably be incorporating links into decks but for now I'm going with the easy solution.

Next, a link to the source for the deck's title. Decks I build are usually titled after songs or G1 Transformers.
Lands
9 Forest
9 Plains
4 Temple Garden
Instants
4 Afterlife
4 Bind
3 Sigil Blessing

Enchantments
4 Shield of the Oversoul

Creatures

2 Knight of New Alara
4 Qasali Ambusher
4 Qasali Pridemage
4 Seedcradle Witch
4 Valeron Outlander
2 Wilt-Leaf Cavaliers
3 Wilt-Leaf Liege
When the Lieges came out in the Shadowmoor/Eventide block (one of my favorite blocks) I felt I had to build decks using each of them. Because I've been playing for so long, finding the appropriate creatures to fill in wasn't too hard-one of the benefits of having an old collection of cards is you always have ways to fill in those gaps..

This deck isn't too complicated, really; get out creatures, land a Liege or a Knight of New Alara (or both) to make them huge and swing as constantly as you can. Most of the Liege decks work around this principle, with the enemy colors being a bit more challenging/restrictive than the allied colored Lieges but I still want to swing with men for damage.

Sigil Blessing is the kind of cool trick that can really surprise people and Afterlife takes care of troublesome creatures your opponents may play.

Bind is the weird card here and has long been a favorite of mine. It draws cards, counters things nobody is expecting and it's cheap.

Cheap is a watchword for this deck; aggressive starts are what I'm shooting for and so a card that can be played on turn 3, even if it doesn't help me win, is going to be better than one will win and can only be played on turn 5.

Brief moment of aha!; I had to pull the Temple Gardens from another deck but when coupled with Qasali Ambusher, the choice was easy to make. I think that this is one of those subtle things that happen more often than players might realize but also show how finely crafted the game is.

Knights of New Alara were also left out of the original build because I want to try and maximize my card choices and Knights wants cards that have multiple colors. But when I think 'multiple colors' I'm thinking three or more--some way to just really make it awesome!

I don't have to really make it awesome all the time, I just have to win. Giving every creature I have +2/+2 and running Lieges four and five is probably more than enough.

Questionable choices: Sigil Blessing. While I like the card it's also hard to justify. Because it's a card that wants multiple creatures available, it encourages overextension and using it with two or more creatures, specifically creatures that are attacking.
But. There's always that nagging thing in the back of my head that says; 'this is just the glory of cool things.'

And while there are many rules to Magic, one of the unwritten ones is 'the glory of cool things will not win you games'.

Exceptions abound but it's a pretty good truism.

Second questionable choice: Qasali Pridemage. While it's true that the Pridemage is very, very good and fits this deck far better than I could ask it to, the long and short of it is that the Pridemage isn't a creature that  supports a massive attacking deck. However, it shores up so many other weaknesses that not playing the Pridemage would be a bad idea.

Finally, the one drop of Seedcradle Witch is...well, it is what it is. But aggressive decks need one drops and that's the only G/W one I could find.

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