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Source: Atharva's Decklists & Strategies Thread

Deck Name: One Way Heroics





I really like the Heroic mechanic as i think its a great tool for some nice tricks and tried to build around that. after finding which colors had the best heroics (imo) i built around those. Once i had the few creatures with heroic i was happy to be in the colors that i was and here is a little breakdown of the deck strat.

-Vizkopa Guildmage combos well with Ajani's Pridemate.
-Banisher Priest for obvious reasons is a great card
-Mentor of the Meek Is the perfect fit for this deck. With the highest costing spell being Armored Ascension and just about every creature having 2 or less power you will have the mana to spend to draw and play and doubly so.
-Ajani's Pridemate i felt was a perfect fit for this deck and was one of the last selections i made for it once i realised that this deck actually has alot of ways to gain life and i feel that this guy could very well be a win condition.
-Gods Willing was added as a form of protection from spot removal from shock spells. This could be used to save your pumped pridemate or keep a Heroic hero alive and activate it.
-I'm on the fence about Cutthroat Maneuver and am debating wether to swap those out for Nimbus Wings.

If anyone has any ideas to make this better please let me know. thanks in advance.

How useful has Reprisal been in your experience? Looks like a good card but i am not entirely sure if its worth running in this format.

Undying Evil is a HUGE nonbo with Hero of Iroas, a Pridemate with any +1/+1 counters on it, and any creatures with +1/+1 counters from Ordeal of Heliod.

Just so you know.

I don't think Vizzie can actually activate heroics. Has to be a spell cast, not an ability targetted, unless I totally misunderstand Heroic.

A deck based off of a small indie game?

~SE++

Vizkopa Guildmage won't trigger Heroic abilities (unless Heroic is bugged in this game). Undying Evil would be great used on Tormented Hero, Agent of the Fates or Wall of Omens, but I probably wouldn't use it on anything else, and as mobius said, it doesn't play nice with Ordeal of Heliod.

Cards worth considering:
Swift Justice: Combos with Vizkopa Guildmage's second ability and Ajani's Pridemate.
Gods Willing: Protection is awesome... plus scry.
Nimbus Wings: Cheap aura made cheaper by Hero of Iroas.
Marked by Honor: Better than Armored Ascension in a dual color deck, I feel.

Turn 4 win:

1. Plains Hero of Iroas
2. Swamp Vizkopa Guildmage
3. Plains Ordeal of Heliod on Hero of Iroas (Iroas gains +1/+1 counter)
4. Plains Activate Viszkopa Guildmage's second ability, Cast a second Ordeal of Heliod on Hero of Iroas (Iroas gains +1/+1 counter), Attack with Hero of Iroas (gains third +1/+1 counter, sacrifices both Ordeals in response to attack trigger resolving), gain 20 life, each opponent loses 20 life.

If only Mox Pearl was in the game, so you could actually cast hero of Iroas on turn 1..

It still works btw, just cast guildmage turn 3 together with ordeal.

Not sure about what entering the late game with wall accomplishes, most things that get cast that late can trade easily with an enhanced creature ,early you have lifelink to race aggro, so maybe put god willings instead?

Reprisal can't target agent unless his power is increased,as a counterexample something like last breath could trigger heroic on hero of iroas and fail to resolve, thus not actually gaining life or exiling the creature.

Maybe switch ascension and cutthroath maneuver, the latter was not that good in sealed and draft

Since you are kinda lacking in ways to get blocking creatures out of the way, what about dead weight? It can also trigger heroic in a pinch.

Orzhov is open

hey thanks for the info and feedback guys. Im embarassed that i thought heroic was affected by spells and abilities. next time i will read the mechanic even if i think i know it . Im going to make some changes and edit the OP so it describes only what its suppose to and not the mistakes.

-I like Nimbus wingsas it is cheap but for 3 more mana and high probability that out of that 4 mana 2 could be plains which already makes Armored Asension better. i guess thats personel preference at that point.

-Gods willingis a great and perhaps a better choice than Undying evil But i feel they both serve a purpose but i suppose for this deck as stated by mobius it doesnt combo well with the current selection of cards, i would lose all those counters ><. I think i will switch out the 4 for an even swap.

-I thought reprisal was a good choice as ive been seeing that many decks created have 3-4 bombs with power greater than 4 but i then thought that if i need to worry about late game creatures then im most likely in a losing position at that point in the game so your right i am going to take those out and put in 2 more auras. Either Marked by honoror more evade with Nimbus wings.

thanks again. this is going to be a deck i use and i want to make it work so i will fix and tweak it as time goes on.

The Name was perfect. and have you played that game? its quite fun for about 5 minutes.

The game gives you a nice little shell with it's Life and Death archetype/deck that it offers you, but it can be made so much better. So, I made it better.

0 (0): None

1 (3): 3x Ulcerate

2 (16): 3x Ajani's Pridemate, 2x Ordeal of Heliod, 4x Lone Missionary, 4x Child of Night, 3x Vizkopa Guildmage

3 (9): 1x Brimaz, King of Oreskos, 2x Mentor of the Meek, 3x Banisher Priest, 3x Tribute to Hunger

4 (5): 2x Rhox Faithmender, 3x Angelic Accord

5 (2): 1x Baneslayer Angel, 1x Sanguine Bond

6+ (0): None

Lands (25): 10x Plains, 7x Swamp, 4x Orzhov Guildgate, 4x Radiant Fountain

- As you can see the big selling points are Vizkopa Guildmage's 2nd ability and Sanguine Bond (which basically is the 4th Guildmage we don't get to use...I left the 2nd one out as I feel 4 of these effects is fine) and Angelic Accord

- It's really not that difficult to start grabbing angels off of accord. It measures the 4 life as a whole, so it doesn't have to be from a single source, meaning, you could hit with 2 Child of Nights, or hit with 1, post-combat play a Radiant Fountain and THEN an Angelic Accord. Simply playing a Lone Missionary will do it (which is why I, and you too, shouldn't really view it as something to be played on T2)

- 9 removal spells here, though 3 of them come attached with a body. If you're going to play Ulcerate anywhere, this is the deck to do it in as it rarely cares about the life loss.

- Only 2 of the 3 Ordeal of Heliods. Don't want to give your opponent too many opportunities for blowouts. But in this case I'm fine with the aura because it let's you pressure early with a Child and eventually you grow your own Sorin's Vengeance with the Guildmage or Bond in play...plus with the Pridemates you can potentially trigger it in one swing

- Brimaz and Mentor don't really have much in the way of synergy with any of the lifegain shenanigans going on. But, Brimaz is Brimaz, he's good, and Mentor draws you cards. The only things that don't trigger the Mentor are Brimaz (but his tokens do), Baneslayer, and the Angel tokens. Everything else does.

- The manabase looks funky at first but it's fine in practice even with the 4x Radiant Fountains. It's not essential to have a Guildmage on T2, and you only need double-black for Bond or double Guildmage activations (T5 and T6 and beyond). More of a white skew to support T3 Brimaz and Priests when applicable. I tend to hold the Fountains as long as possible to combo off, but if you have to play them to stay on curve, obviously don't hesitate. It's good when you combo, but not good enough to afford not curving out for.

- You can double (or even triple and beyond) down on a Vizkopa Guildmage 2nd ability activation if you weren't aware of that. That's right, live the dream of 1-shotting someone with an Ordeal of Heliod.

- As far as premiums go, I'd hesitate to add any. You could possibly swap the Ulcerates for Vicious Hunger for additional synergy, but the double-black gives me pause, as well as not being able to hit the x/3s and sorcery speed. I also wouldn't find a straight-up swap of Banisher Priests for Arrests to be indefensible

- I think I covered all the main points? If not, I'm always happy to address whatever. Again, you can always load up this bad boy and play against it yourself (though don't be corny and play on less than 'Walker difficulty, we all know how awful the AI is)

Since life gain is sort of a control element...why not make it mostly a black deck splashing white for the little synergies? Elixir seems to be more reliable than Ordeal which doesn't really combo off with most of the deck. Suffer the Past is perfect for those long games. If your looking at Elixir of Immortality then you could also consider Planar Cleansing and Griselbrand.

Just a thought...

I don't see how lifegain is a control element at all, unless you can convert that lifegain to affect your opponent's permanents or counter spells. I don't see any way of doing that, do you?

Suffer the Past is a bad sideboard card in this deck. For every 1 game where you disrupt a graveyard interaction there are 100 others where you're better off running something like Meditation Puzzle.

Ordeal doesn't combo off? I think you missed the Sorin's Vengeance comparison there. You can also trigger it immediately by casting it on attacking with a Pridemate with 2 counters. Elixir is more reliable at simply gaining you life, sure, but the Ordeal can buff any creature you have in play, and then potentially go off with the life gain.

Planar Cleansing? I don't even know if we're talking about the same deck anymore.

Looking at past year sealed decks, I fear too much removal will be crammed into decks by the playerbase to make ordeal relevant without heroic to reduce the time lost waiting.
But I don't really see anything worth running over it.
Maybe gods willing or undying evil since keeping one mana open should not be hard, but those aren't really that better and could require triple colored mana.
Cobbled wings?(this look so bad)
Swift justice?(probably no)

Four fountains with priest and brimaz is risky, but the free mulligan can probably help.

Except it's not sealed this time and everyone has access to all the same cards, plus there's barely any removal anyway outside a bunch of burn and a few or spells. People are going to actually want to build different decks which they easily can do this time unlike sealed were you are limited to a few cards.

I like the idea Mobius, I did the same but went bigger

4 x Orzhov Guildgate
11 x Plains
10 x Swamp
1 x Elixir of Immortality
3 x Ulcerate
2 x Cloudshift
4 x Lone Missionary
3 x Wall of Omens
3 x Vizkopa Guildmage
3 x Banisher Priest
1 x Arrest
2 x Mentor of the Meek
3 x Tribute to Hunger
1 x Brimaz, King of Oreskos
3 x Angelic Accord
2 x Rhox Faithmender
1 x Sanguine Bond
1 x Baneslayer Angel
1 x Rune-Scarred Demon
1 x Griselbrand


Same idea but with a bigger end game, I am not a fan of Child of night in a control version and without the help of ordeal as it needs more help to trigger accord, I have chosen wall of omens instead as this deck needs multiple pieces to come together, wall and mentor can dig to find them.

I have gone with brimaz as he wins the game on his own and works well with mentor. Griselbrand is probably overkill but he is too much fun to play.

Only 1 arrest for the same reason I believe Mobius left them out. The nonbo with tribute to hunger makes it almost unplayable in this deck. I still like 1 as the last piece of removal

@Monk: I didn't have Arrest in the build because it's a no-premium build. I'm also getting the game on Xbone and I'm not paying for premium twice. But on that subject, if you want another piece of removal, why not throw an Assassinate in there? A little harder to "hit your target", but at least it doesn't nonbo with anything.

It is also my personal opinion that a lot of you are severely underestimating how hard it is to hard-cast a Griselbrand given the manabases we're able to build.

I certainly see how your build is bigger, but I don't see how your version is more controlling. Walls don't control anything. They make things inconvenient for a time, maybe, sure. Sorry, sometimes I have a hard time dealing with the way people throw Magic terms around here.