Two Philosophies

I've been theorycrafting a couple decks recently:

First, one based on the recent uptick of Red's wheel effects. 

2 Elixir of Immortality

2 Sheoldred, the Apocalypse
3 Magus of the Wheel
4 Shocker
3 Tourach, Dread Cantor
1 Glint-Horn Buccaneer

4 Waste Not

4 Dream Salvage
4 Infernal Grasp
1 Sudden Edict

11 Mountain
11 Swamp

2 Liliana of the Veil

4 Reforge the Soul
4 Burning Inquiry

This is clearly unfinished: I've got the most basic manabase for now, because I'm not sure how/if it will be interesting. There were also four Sheoldred, the Apocalypse in the initial build, but that card is $55+ and I can play Liliana of the Veil for $13. But after seeing someone play a Wheel deck on Youtube, I thought: but what if it had Tourach, Dread Cantor?

And here we are.

The second started as a G/W 'spells' build and changed to B/W because of my love of Agent of the Fates. 

4 Phalanx Leader
4 Mavinda, Students' Advocate
4 Leonin Lightscribe
4 Agent of the Fates
3 Tormented Hero
3 Sedgemoor Witch

4 Loran's Escape
3 Blessed Alliance
4 Guided Strike
2 Reverent Mantra

11 Plains
11 Swamp

3 Read the Bones

I really like Mavinda and definitely want to do something with this card. The switch from Green to Black came simply because of Agent of the Fates providing me more to do than anything Green had, which could effectively be described as "I'm big now". 

Big doesn't let you win games though; big and (something else) does, where the something else is trample or haste or 'fuck yo' stuff'. Having a vanilla 9/9 doesn't cut it. However, it is likely true that Green offers me more in the spells category. 

It was while playtesting both these decks, and Matt's reaction to them (he liked the first one more) I realized that there's two design philosophies at play here: one that proactively does stuff to your opponent, as with Red's discard continually disrupting their plan, and one that proactively does stuff just to you as with the B/W deck's plan. There really isn't an axis of interaction with the opponent, which puts it in the realm of a combo deck.

But combo decks need to vomit all their cards out by turn 3 and just win, otherwise the opponent gets to do things, and combo decks cannot allow that!

The other thing is that I have a deck that's doing something like what the B/W is doing, so maybe let's work on the R/B one...

But I'm out of town this weekend, so no new post until Thursday, July 20th!