I can only say, try it again.

I'm serious. Make a GoL of at least 66 but no more than 70 cards and then play 2hg. I'm not saying this to be sarcastic, or obtuse or whatever, but for you to discover. Don't just throw cards in there though but put ones you want to play. At 70 cards, run 25 lands or, I promise you, you will get mana flooded. If you run 24, you'll get mana screwed. Yeah, that sounds weird, but it's true.

Since it's 2hg, try to team with someone with a lot of creatures you can enchant. That means no Dodge and Burn and no Mana Maze. Go light on creatures. Run 4 x kor, 2 x mesa, 2 x Totem Hartebeast, Dawn Elemental, and whatever else you prefer. Run as many enchants as you can 5 and under mana, but none above. Run all tutors. Run Retether. Focus on enchanting your opponent's creatures, they won't mind, I assure you,lol. Don't run many more creatures but the ones you do, focus on quality chumps as that's what they'll basically be.

If you have a steady partner, have them run Hunter's Strength and make sure they know to put Sacred Wolves in. I'm sure they'll know to put predator ooze in but many do not see the advantages to hexproof creatures like the wolves. I once had a serious argument with mjack over this. I ask you, friend, how can anyone not see the advantages to hexproof creatures?

You will find you'll speed through a lot of draw. I've milled myself down to 7 cards at times. When you have to discard, discard an enchant you don't need atm. You'll be setting up a retether win if it occurs. If you win with retether, unless you're the host or partnered with the host, don't be surprised if they kick you out of the lobby. It's happened to me so many times I've digital footprints on my ass.

You will find, if opponents are quality, that they know how to handle enchant decks but do NOT know how to handle the enchantment flood that you will unleash on them. That reminds me, spread the wealth in regards to the enchants. don't go for one super creature. Yeah, occasionally you can sneak one in but it's best to plan for more than that.

Be careful with Angelic Destiny now. Halo Hunters are now a staple in Lords of Darkness decks due to the influx of angels.

A spell often ignored but invaluable is Divine Favor. No, it's not the 3 hp it brings but the huge boost to defense for a cheap cost. On an early turn 3 sacred wolf, it makes up for the 1 toughness deficiency. For a kor, it auto turns it into a 3/7.

Learn not to enchant the mesa and you'll be surprised how it gets ignored while it's cranking out draw after draw.

Turn off simplified targeting. One very simple protection is to put pariah on an opposing creature, make sure it's one directly across from you, and then putting indestructibility on it. also,if vs illusions that are unprotected, your low mana enchants like Divine Favor become doom blades.

Give it a shot.

Edit: One important thing. You'll get called a lot of names at times so have a thick skin. When they do call you names, do me a favor and stretch the match out until they rage quit. I've been called every name in the book and then some.

ANd get used to them chalking up your victories as "luck".

I think you completely missed the point I was trying to make, Shadow. I don't want 70 cards in my deck, as that breaks Draco's First Law of Deck Building: There will always be X cards between you and the card you really need, where X is the number of cards you have over the minimum. Therefore, stick to the minimum.

And thanks for those 'tips', by the way. I especially like how you automatically assume that I'm some kind of rank newbie who doesn't even know how to work DOTP's options correctly.

My apologies. So you're stuck on a certain dogma? Willing to defend that dogma by refusing simple suggestions to the contrary?

So when I say players defend the dogma of 60 cards, it's the same as those defending their religion against all dissent?

I say this not to be sarcastic, but to show you how you've limited yourself. Open your mind to new possibilities and do not become a zealot.

Now the following IS sarcasm:

Yes, I posted all that merely for your benefit and no one else who happened to read it. I apologize for daring to infer that you're anything but the forum god and an infallible MTG player. As one not familiar with your religious zeal for 60 cards, what is your god's punishment for daring to suggest otherwise:

1. Do I lose a hand?
2. Do I get tied to a stake with a huge bonfire lit at my feet?
3. Do I get tortured on the rack until I confess to whatever you want me to confess to?(hint: If tortured, I'll confess to being the second coming of christ to make you happy)
4. Do I get nailed to a tree?
5. Do I get ganged up on and verbally stoned to death by your fellow zealots?
6. Do I have to do penance?

Pick a fate for me, please? I'm betting it's #5.

zeal·ot
noun ˈze-lət

: a person who has very strong feelings about something (such as religion or politics having only 60 cards in MTG) and who wants other people to have those feelings : a zealous person

I think Webster might add my boldened part to the future definition.

When those simple suggestions involve poor choices that I learnt not to make in my first 2 years playing these sorts of games? Yes, I am quite willing to refuse them out of hand. I fail to see how this is illogical.


I never said I was the forum god. There's a big difference between 'forum god' and 'idiot who hasn't even found the Simplified Targeting button'. You assuming I was the latter is a little bit insulting, and quite frankly betrays your own arrogance.

If the insult fits, wear it. You're behaving exactly like religious zealots in chat rooms where an agnostic like myself wanted to chat with like minded people. They would come in and start their sermons, always followed by "Go by this or go to hell".

Wow, that is hilarious coming from you, the guy who comes in here, preaches his little sermons, and then follows it up by hurling insults at any dissenters.

Dude, if you want to run 64 or 70 cards or whatever, that's great. But droning on about "expanding your mind" and "alternative thinking" (or whatever the title of that laugh-fest thread is) and claiming those who agree with the PROVEN science/math of 60 card decks to be "math nazis" (lolwut?) and "zealots" makes YOU sound like the zealot.

"I'm serious. Make a GoL of at least 66 but no more than 70 cards and then play 2hg. I'm not saying this to be sarcastic, or obtuse or whatever, but for you to discover. Don't just throw cards in there though but put ones you want to play. At 70 cards, run 25 lands or, I promise you, you will get mana flooded. If you run 24, you'll get mana screwed. Yeah, that sounds weird, but it's true."

You typed that. How again, is that statement based anywhere NEAR fact's zip code?

Man, I bet your ancestors were a hoot during the great debate of the world's geometry.

*sigh* Really guys? Really? It's been what 3 days since we all did this dance last? Is this going to turn into another 'everyone shouts at everyone, no-one achieves anything, thread is locks pending moderator review' thing? Because we literally just had one of them. Can we not at least attempt to keep these things from getting personal? Please?

So long as you're enjoying playing with your deck, nobody is wrong for running any amount of cards within the rules.

Its not **** hard to grasp.

And Shadow you're just as bad as what you argue against.

So it was indeed # 5. Told ya so.

Listen to yourselves. Anytime someone with a different way of doing something says anything, you got into ape **** mode. You can't stand a person suggesting anything different as it means, gasp, that someone doesn't subscribe to your dogmatic views.

You gang up on anyone who "dares" go against your 60 card mindset and can't even see your closemindedness and group mentality

Look at the title of this thread and the sarcastic way it was portrayed.

The more you continue your diatribes, the more convinced I am of your fallacies. Thank you for reinforcing them time and again.

And Elijin? I'm not here to please you. I don't know you and I could care less of your opinion. I'm going to continue to post my different views.

Whoa where did that come from? The guy just said that in the end personal enjoyment is all that matters when it comes to playing the decks. That's an argument I happen to agree with and one you yourself have put forth before. Why so much hostility in your response?

I clearly just posted that any number of cards was fine so long as you're having fun. This is what everyone's talking about. You just bunched someone who doesnt care for the 60 card rule with everyone else, because they didnt agree with your way of doing things.

You constantly show the exact behaviour you're critical of in others

And one last time for emphasis:
So long as you're having fun, your deck can be as small or large as you like(within the rules)

Whoa. Couple things:

You are certainly allowed to run more than the minimum number of cards if you want, but I don't understand handicapping yourself by doing so. Losing isn't my idea of fun. Can a deck win with 70 cards? Yes. But it won't win as often as a deck with 60 cards, and to my knowledge there is no strategy that cannot be executed within the 60 card limit, with the sole exception of Battle of Wits, so why include more?

Anecdotal evidence is not evidence. "Try it and you'll see" is not a solid argument for including more cards. The numbers are pretty clear cut on this. You will lose games because you include even a single extra card over the minimum, never mind ten. You may have played a 70 card deck with success, but that isn't hard to do. Those ten extra cards won't make winning impossible. But they will make it tougher, and there's no reason to do it. It would be like wearing a windbreaker and running at the Olympics. If you're good, you might win anyway, and if you're bad you might have lost anyway, but it is still just a needless handicap.

Also, calling someone a zealot and a math nazi is a bit extreme, but if you want to get down to it, yeah, I'm a zealot and a math nazi. A zealot is a person who is fanatical and uncompromising in pursuit of their ideals. I don't see any reason not to be fanatical and uncompromising about objective truth. And any time you call someone a "[noun] nazi" you should remember that aside from killing millions of innocent people, the nazis were pretty efficient, so I don't think any kind of nazi other than an actual nazi is really much of an insult.

If you like to do something because of a personal preference, you're certainly allowed to. Play 70 cards all day long. But try not to be disingenuous. If there is any part of you that is trying to optimize your deck, trimming it down to the minimum is the easiest thing you can do. Some people play subpar tribes because they just love that tribe. Some people play a certain card because they like the art. Some people don't run a certain card because they hate the art, or because they just can't afford it. But no argument that I've heard makes a case for running more than 60 cards, even a Vorthosian one. Saying that a 70 card deck is just as good or getting mad at someone who tries to tell you that it isn't is just silly. 70 cards is always, always, always worse.

Well, that's why I didn't cut the ramp spells in the first place. Adding five threats and "losing" one ramp spell in the process is still better than being up a ramp spell and down five possible threats. Sure your opening hands might be a little worse, but you wont run out of creatures like I did in G1. Again, this was a very particular matchup where the circumstances were very specific. I'm an advocate for 60 cards and I do run 60 in every deck, this was post-sideboard.

You could definitely make a 60 card deck post-sideboard, but then the mix of ramp/threats might not be optimal. You want around 1/5 cards to be 2- or 3-mana ramp spells, while maximizing the number of threats. As you aren't really looking for a specific card in that scenario, every ramp/threat is basically the same. Of course there are some cards that are slightly better than others, but there isn't a card you really rely on (maybe Primeval Titan, but not as much in this match). And then there's the infinite amount of tutors if you do need a specific card for certain situations, so having more "tools" can be useful.

Another interesting fact about Chant is that the later the game goes, the better your draws become, as you filter out a lot of lands with your ramp cards. And a card like Explore becomes a much better draw in the lategame than Rampant Growth for example. Although Growth is more reliable in the early game.

Some of these posts are probably more at home in the Chant deck thread, but I just wanted to round out my thoughts.

If being someone who understands/believes the logic behind math makes them a math nazi, then sign me up!



I think it's pretty clear that everyone on both sides of this argument is a zealot.



I really wanted to comment on that, but, no matter how I try and word it, I feel like it might be offensive, which is not what I'm going for (especially being Jewish myself).

I really think this quote sums it up - if I ever decide to setup a signature again, this might need to be part of it:

I am amazed to see sarah post in this subforum >.>

Also Im not a zealot! :c

No disrespect, but I didn't read past this because this is where this entire argument ends.

Seriously, this is to EVERYONE.

Nothing more need be added to the subject. This line I quoted is literally End of Story as far as that discussion goes.

I don't think the issue is that Shadow runs more than 60 cards. The issue is that he claims adding cards to a deck can enhance its performance. In reality, he's just being results-oriented and remembering the flashy win he got because of Zombie Apocalypse (fictitious example) and failing to remember all the times where it did exactly nothing.

Either that or he's just irritating people for fun because he knows they'll take the bait rather than just ignore him.

100% agree. It's been argued to death and I'm guilty of it more than any other. I'll continue to speak of trying larger decks, but in my own thread. Disagree if you like, but please let others post their own larger deck builds. Critique their card choices, not the deck size.

Cause let's face it. The choice of this or that card is what this forum really helps with.

I don't know exactly what your post board deck looked like, but we'll continue arguing the 65 cards deck for lack of better example. So we already know that this is equivalent to cutting one of your 12 ramp spells. Did you add lands to it or did you just add 5 threats as you seem to imply? In the latter case, this is equivalent to cutting two lands. In the former case, you added 2 lands and 3 threats to keep the same ratio. So either way, assuming we end with a 60 cards deck, we can start with a very obvious first round of cut to go down to 62: 2 lands and 1 ramp. How many tutors were you playing? Playing with 65 cards is probably the equivalent of cutting 1, more or less, so might as well just cut 1! Now, did you really need to add all those additional threats or could you just play more intelligently? Did you really get to a point in the game where you were like "crap, there is no threats left in my deck!"? If the actual situation was more "I can't seem to draw into my remaining threats"!, then again, 65 cards is the equivalent of cutting 1 of those threats (if not more), so might as well cut one threat and go down to 60.

There you go, a 60 cards deck that is equivalent in lands, threats, tutors and ramp to your 65 cards deck, except you are more likely to draw into the other support cards that may be left in your deck post board (tangle, all is dust, whatever.) and into your better tutors and threats.


No, no it's not. We all know we're allowed to play more than 60 cards. This is a discussion about whether or not it makes the deck better. Saying that you are allowed doesn't answer the question. If you're not interested in this discussion, you are certainly allowed to just leave the thread.