My massacre wurm approves of 2x howl of the night pack in the deck

"There's no way they have it again, right??"

"Uuugh, just go for--"

"GAAHH THEY HAD IT AGAIN"

I was sick all week. Here's Peacekeepers:

Land (25)
25 x Plains

Creatures (23)
3 x Elite Vanguard
3 x Accorder Paladin
3 x Squadron Hawk
3 x Captain of the Watch
2 x Attended Knight
2 x Crusader of Odric
2 x Fiend Hunter
2 x Archon of Justice
2 x Geist-Honored Monk
1 x Odric, Master Tactician

Other (12)
4 x Captain's Call
2 x Honor of the Pure
2 x Glorious Anthem
2 x Journey to Nowhere
2 x Oblivion Ring


Here we're trying to play as many threats as possible as early as possible. Every card in this deck is a headache that will need to be dealt with sooner rather than later, or the opponent dies. Triple Accorder Paladin solves the creature/buff ratio problem by being both on top of an amazing clock. We make up for total lack of card draw and card filtering by using all of the three-for-one and four-for-one bodies. This also helps ensure that Odric himself will be 'online' most of the time. Basically, every card we play at every point in the game should feel like a bomb, so we tend to win most games provided only that we don't get stuck on 2 lands for nine turns.

Crosswinds:

Land (25)
25 x Island

Creatures (10)
3 x Fog Bank
3 x Azure Mage
2 x Archaeomancer
1 x Spiketail Hatchling
1 x Talrand, Sky Summoner

Other (25)
4 x Talrand's Invocation
3 x Rite of Replication
3 x Sleight of Hand
2 x Mana Leak
2 x Disperse
2 x Repulse
2 x Cancel
2 x Future Sight
2 x Time Warp
1 x Call to Mind
1 x Bribery
1 x Sphinx-Bone Wand


I wanted to make mono-blue control a little more interactive than a Panoptic Mirror lock. While we're still capable of taking infinite turns with enough mana and hard work, we have three real win conditions in the form of Sphinx-Bone Wand, bunches of 2/2 Drakes, and multiple copies of our opponent's best creatures.
A high concentration of Instants and Sorceries is important for both the Sphinx wand and Talrand himself, so we run every copy of Talrand's Invocation and Rite of Replication. The drakes are especially important because our low creature count means no Kraken Hatchlings. We often have to trade Azure Mages and Drakes to stabilize.

This also results in our mana curve being a little top-heavy, so land counts should be prioritized for mulligans and Sleight of Hand digging. It is advisable to keep most openers with 4+ Islands in them, as we can easily outdraw the enemy, but only if we can actually cast our spells.

Red-White is my favorite color pair. It hurts that it's one of the weaker decks in this game. Whether it's due a lack of 10 extra promo cards or something more is debatable, but it does still have a turn-4 kill available, so that's nice.

Act of War

Land (25)
11 x Mountain
10 x Plains
4 x Terramorphic Expanse

Creatures (25)
4 x Veteran Armorer
4 x Skyknight Legionnaire
3 x Boros Recruit
2 x Boros Guildmage
2 x Boros Swiftblade
2 x Mentor of the Meek
2 x Sunhome Enforcer
2 x Flame-Kin Zealot
1 x Basandra, Battle Seraph
1 x Balefire Liege
1 x Nobilis of War
1 x Sunblast Angel

Other (10)
3 x Lightning Helix
2 x Glory of Warfare
2 x Scourge of the Nobilis
2 x Rise of the Hobgoblins
1 x Brightflame



We've got a lot of haste in here, along with all the creature-based global buffs that aren't attack triggers, essentially making those abilities have haste even if the attached creature doesn't. This makes it dangerous not to hold back blockers against us, as our lineup's attack power could triple or more without warning. With static buffs, mid-combat blowouts are a risk, so we have Basandra running interference, and we've sideboarded out any of our own cards that she would hamstring. All the lifegain combined with damage and damage boosts makes us difficult to race, especially Scourge of the Nobilis on either Sunhome Enforcer or Boros Swiftblade, which is fortunate because a lot of our matches come down to grindy slogs. For grindy slogs, we can try to avoid them entirely with our burn's reach, or dive in with Mentor of the Meek, Basandra again, and a large quantity of first strike.

Overall it's probably below average for what I've been posting, although some of that is the natural 2-color handicap with the poor mana fixing available. But this build is capable of some very swingy, very satisfying plays if you're looking to try something new.

2014 Dragon deck if I'm remembering right. Hell, I haven't played that in a few months now after going ape shiznit on it for a while this year.

There was talk earlier in this thread about super-aggro Celestial Light lifegain builds. I found one that runs unbelievably smoothly.

Land (25)
25 x Plains

Creatures (27)
4 x Soul Warden
4 x Serra Ascendant
4 x Ajani's Pridemate
3 x Kemba's Skyguard
3 x Seraph of Dawn
2 x Ajani's Sunstriker
2 x Knight of Meadowgrain
2 x Lone Missionary
2 x Baneslayer Angel
1 x Felidar Sovereign

Other (8)
2 x Swords to Plowshares
2 x Recumbent Bliss
2 x Divine Favor
1 x White Sun's Zenith
1 x Swell of Courage


It has a very low curve with twenty-two one/two drops, and is incredibly hard to race. Our primary objective is to maximize the value of our early game lifelinkers. Divine Favor is a risk/reward play that squeezes more value out of early Ascendants and Sunstrikers that would otherwise shy away from combat rather than risk trading. With the Favor and a Lone Missionary, turn-one Ascendants can come online by the end of turn three. We're also running Recumbent Bliss to push through early damage and keep the enemy off-balance. Swell of Courage shines as an uncounterable perma-buff combat trick and an overrun for our army of 2-power flyers. Felidar Sovereign tops the curve. Hitting 40 life is easier than I expected, and it makes for a nice "do you have it" moment for your opponent when they're up against the wall. Easily swappable for Purity against red-leaning players.

It's faster but less flexible than the midrange value build I posted before. I love that midrange build, though, so I revamped it into a multiplayer FFA/Planechase deal:

Land (25)
25 x Plains

Creatures (26)
4 x Soul Warden
4 x Serra Ascendant
4 x Ajani's Pridemate
3 x Kemba's Skyguard
3 x Seraph of Dawn
2 x Knight of Meadowgrain
2 x Lone Missionary
2 x Archon of Redemption
2 x Baneslayer Angel

Other (9)
2 x Swords to Plowshares
2 x Day of Judgment
2 x White Sun's Zenith
1 x Marshall's Anthem
1 x Well of Lost Dreams
1 x Loxodon Warhammer


"Revamped" meaning changed three cards. The same basic list as a couple pages ago split into Threats/Enablers/Contingencies. Multiplayer is ruled by flyers and enters-play value, so we've got the Archons again. We're just as comfortable as before trading 2/2 flyers, but our contingencies are a little more potent because we've also got a couple board wipes. It's still debatable whether the Ascendants should be 4-ofs, but you learn to appreciate the 1-drops when you're dumping all your free mana into drawing cards off Well of Lost Dreams.

Try it out and let me know how it goes!

Revisiting Pack Instinct:

Land (24)
24 x Forest

Creatures (21)
4 x Garruk's Companion
3 x Leatherback Baloth
2 x Primordial Hydra
2 x Fangren Firstborn
2 x Ant Queen
1 x Master of the Wild Hunt
1 x Chameleon Colossus
1 x Rampaging Baloths
1 x Obstinate Baloth
1 x Dungrove Elder
1 x Primeval Titan
1 x Vorapede
1 x Ulvenwald Tracker

Other (15)
4 x Nature's Lore
3 x Prey Upon
2 x Primal Bellow
2 x Blanchwood Armor
2 x Howl of the Night Pack
1 x Predatory Rampage
1 x Lightning Greaves



Plan-A seems to be the same aggro as before, but we now have a much lower mana curve, optional Haste, and we're all-in on pumps to get the most mileage out of Garruk's Companion. Primal Bellow lets us steal wins out of nowhere. We want to force our opponent to have removal ready at every point up the mana curve, or they die. Basically, every card we play should make the enemy whine "UUUUUGH, THIS THING AGAIN--"

Any combination of the 4-mana creatures can be swapped for Timbermaw Larva for similar results, though the Firstborns have a little more synergy with the rest of the deck, and the Colossus and Baloth provide some breathing room that's hard to part with.

Plan-B has changed slightly. Rather than pre-sideboard against a handful of powerful cards, this build instead runs creatures that will take over the game single-handedly if left unchecked. An extra Primordial Hydra is a fire-and-forget missile from turn 3 onward. We've also replaced the usual 5-mana misfits with Ant Queens. The previous build often found itself with 13 mana and nothing to do, so we've got mana sinks, and the 5/5 body is relevant. It makes us a little less flexible, so flyers and noncreatures are a worry, but it doesn't matter because we tend to win a lot faster than before. Acting beats reacting. Also, there's now a zero percent chance of Stomphowling our own stuff.

I miss Felidar

Me too, buddy. Me too.


I rebuilt Dream Puppets to be less focused on the turbo-mill that Jace's revenge deck is geared towards. One thing that bothered me about that deck was that it was basically auto-lose against mono-red.

25 x Island

4 x Jace's Phantasm
2 x Hedron Crab
2 x Aether Adept
2 x Clone
2 x Body Double
2 x Chancellor of the Spires

3 x Crippling Chill
3 x Thought Scour
3 x Mind Sculpt
2 x Tome Scour
2 x Unsummon
2 x Into the Roil
2 x Counterspell
2 x Mind Control
2 x Sword of Body and Mind


This version still has some pure milling cards, but rather than winning by decking, what we're trying to do is use graveyards as a resource. Most decks have something tasty for Chancellor of the Spires to rummage for, even if it's just Prey Upon. Tome Scour and [Mind Sculpt] ensure that Jace's Phantasm is 'online' as early as possible. Between those, bounce effects, and double Mind Control, we usually have the best creature on the board one way or another. Using the strengths of our opponents' decks against them makes for some varied and interesting games. I had a match against Lilianna where land screw had me discarding Chancellor of the Spires. When I finally hit 5 Islands, Body Double became Chancellor, finding Rise from the Grave, returning real Chancellor, finding Rise from the Grave, returning Clone as Chancellor, which also got back a 5/5 Phantasm. It's not quite "infinite chancellors and then Time Warp, but it's plenty fun.

I tried some other ways with Dream Puppets but turbo mill turned out to be the most efficient use of the cards for me.

Did you go full creatureless (besides Hedron Crab), or did you keep phantasms around for defense? My last one had all three Dreamborn Muses, and it was fun to see it do its thing, but it always felt like scratching and clawing for every win.

I tweaked Born of Flame slightly. My previous build had a couple weak spots to address:

24 x Mountain

3 x Chandra's Phoenix
2 x Obsidian Fireheart
2 x Magma Phoenix
2 x Inferno Titan
1 x Chandra's Spitfire

4 x Searing Spear
4 x Chandra's Outrage
3 x Searing Blaze
2 x Ruby Medallion
2 x Red Sun's Zenith
2 x Flames of the Firebrand
2 x Flamebreak
1 x Earthquake
1 x Chain Reaction
1 x Rain of Embers
1 x Beacon of Destruction
1 x Lightning Bolt
1 x Fireblast
1 x Blaze


Chandra's Spitfire comes in to enable our turn-4 kill. The previous build had trouble counting to 20 without creatures in play, so we added one of the creatures that act as burn amplifiers. We're using the cheapest one because this deck also has trouble counting to 4 Mountains sometimes. Our primary non-matchup-specific cause of death is "uncastable Inferno Titan". On that note, the titans also trigger the spitfire, so we're not too worried about running out of fuel for it.

The previous build was also weaker at board control than we wanted, so Chain Reaction is in, as is Rain of Embers. I don't like Rain of Embers, but it kills Invisible Stalker, various elves(shutting off Natural Order), and at least some goblins, so we don't have to emergency-fireblast our own Magma Phoenix quite as often as before.

Ruby Medallion is debatable. It's ironic that 'the burn deck' is the only mono-colored deck where I'm currently running the cost reduction artifacts. But it's nice to be able to Fireblast something in a pinch without completely killing our late-game potential. It might be okay to swap them out for Flame Slash or Torch Fiend(I love that guy. Sometimes he just gets there on his own), the idea being that slowing down the enemy is analogous to speeding us up. But nothing more expensive than that. This deck is a lot more mana-intensive than you'd think, and sometimes we have to wait for an opening to unload as much as possible.

This build loses to its own mana base a lot. Between guildmages, X-spells, lifebreathing, etc. we're a lot more mana-intensive than the mana curve lets on.
Flame-Kin Zealot wins games from nowhere often enough to make us forget that we lose just as many games because it was uncastable on turn 4 on account of that double-red.
Mentor of the Meek is not good at drawing cards. It's a 4 mana investment just to draw the first one, half the time the card draw is deactivated by our own Glory of Warfare or Balefire Liege, and having the card draw on a body is not a benefit because we never use it for combat, ever.
Furthermore, our entire lineup is small creatures that aren't numerous enough to make up for the fact that they're so small.

So we want to lower the mana curve overall, keep the hasty surprise-win-from-nowhere, get more or bigger creatures out there, and do something about color screw. Okay...

Land (25)
11 x Mountain
10 x Plains
4 x Terramorphic Expanse

Creatures (24)
4 x Veteran Armorer
4 x Skyknight Legionnaire
3 x Bull Cerodon
3 x Boros Recruit
2 x Boros Guildmage
2 x Boros Swiftblade
2 x Sunhome Enforcer
1 x Basandra, Battle Seraph
1 x Nobilis of War
1 x Balefire Liege
1 x Spitemare

Other (11)
3 x Lightning Helix
2 x Rise of the Hobgoblins
2 x Scourge of the Nobilis
2 x Glory of Warfare
2 x To Arms!



+To Arms! comes in as the 'card draw', beating the mentor's mana investment by 2, and giving us more combat value than we ever got out of the mentor by virtue of surprise removal of utility creatures in the early game.
+Spitemare's hybrid mana is a breath of fresh air over the Zealots triple color demands. Historically(in Duels2013 anyway), this card has been sort of a bad Phyrexian Obliterator, but the aforementioned To Arms! lets us do some mean things with it.
+Bull Cerodon gives us something that goes thud and steals the win for us. You don't realize how important a natural 5/5 is until you spend all week seeing your only source of global +2/+2 die ignominiously over and over again.

Black and Green are my two least favorite colors, so I never really gave the black/green deck much of a look the first time around. At a glance it appears to have a lot of removal, so by default it should be good in creature-based metas because decks with lots of removal tend to be that way.
But I don't like sitting around trading 1-for-1 all day until my finisher shows up, so here's a pretty fun aristocrats swarm build:

Land(24)
10 x Swamp
10 x Forest
4 x Evolving Wilds

Creatures(25)
4 x Yavimaya Elder
2 x Viridian Emissary
2 x Ravenous Rats
2 x Blood Artist
2 x Blood Connoisseur
2 x Oracle of Mul Daya
2 x Creakwood Liege
2 x Master of the Wild Hunt
2 x Mitotic Slime
2 x Lord of Extinction
1 x Gleancrawler
1 x Penumbra Wurm
1 x Drana, Kalastria Bloodchief

Other(11)
2 x Rancor
2 x Pernicious Deed
2 x Maelstrom Pulse
1 x Consuming Vapors
1 x Damnation
1 x Grave Pact
1 x Asceticism
1 x Defense of the Heart



"Aristocrats" is the nickname for a deck that generates value with free sac outlets, for which we've chosen Blood Connoisseur over Greater Good.
Primary payoffs are Blood Artist for swingy 'burn', and Grave Pact for repeatable board wiping. Bodies are provided by the 7-in-1 Mitotic Slime, and the slower swarm producers Creakwood Liege/Master of the Wild Hunt, both of which can win the game on their own if left alone.
Making sure they get left alone is important enough to run Asceticism over one of our other 5-drop bombs.
It's a little weird to see the Oracles when there's only one 7-mana spell, but it's nice to be able to drop Pernicious Deed and activate it right away if you have to. Recurring Yavimaya Elder and Penumbra Wurm with Gleancrawler can also be pretty taxing on our mana supply.

We're probably lighter on removal than most Sepulchral Strength builds(I wanted Ravenous Rats for its 2-for-1, sac benefits, and rancor-swinging abilities), so all our removal has multi-kill potential, and Drana can be tutored for with Defense of the Heart.

Something in here should probably be Spiritmonger, but I like how they all tie in together as is.

Why do you guys throw 4 Terramorphic Expanses or Evolving Wilds into everything? Are you trying to play fetch lands on T2 and T3 with a 2-color low-curve deck? I don't think you are.

Most of the Duels decks should have 3 or 2 depending on how fast you want your deck to be, and with GG being the defining deck of the meta, that's normally very fast.

Of the games where I have land problems, the vast majority of the time it's of the "not enough" variety. I keep 3 and don't find the fourth until turn 6 with probability laughing at me while drawing only from the top end of my mana curve. My Aura Servants blue/white control build from earlier is pretty bad at it, and it's not because the curve sucks. The curve is fine, it just gets stuck with only a quarter of the lands in the top third of the library. Grinning Malice seems to have it worse because it doesn't draw many cards in the first place.

There are articles out there about how many lands you want in your deck to reliably hit your land drop by turn X. I like hitting 5 by turn 5, and doing that with less than 24 lands feels unreliable.

Every fetch land that you play is like pulling 2 lands out of your deck. Saccing a fetch land on T1-3 is going to reduce your chances of drawing a land on T4-6.

I'm aware of the theorycrafting that is out there. Grinning Malice should top out at 5CMC with Demigod of Revenge. There's no need for that much land in that deck.

Using one does thin the deck a little, but the fix for that would be to run as many lands as possible, yeah? This is the 2013 thread- we don't have the option of replacing them with basics. The only way to get more than the default number of basic lands is to inflate your deck to 63+ cards.

...I'm suddenly wondering if inflating some of the guild decks might make them a little better. Would the bigger deck's lack of consistency be made up for by reducing the chances of finding enters-tapped lands?

Experiment in running less than full land counts:

Subject: Aura Servants

Subject was chosen for its high concentration of 2-drops and ability to draw extra cards.

Pre-modification list:

11 x Plains
9 x Island
4 x Evolving Wilds

4 x Invisible Stalker
4 x Kor Spiritdancer
2 x Auramancer
2 x Totem-Guide Hartebeest
2 x Sun Titan
2 x Aven Mimeomancer

2 x Winds of Rath
2 x Pacifism
2 x Narcolepsy
2 x Mind Control
2 x Daybreak Coronet
2 x Empyrial Armor
2 x Griffin Guide
1 x Drake Umbra
1 x Mammoth Umbra
1 x Eel Umbra
1 x Triclopean Sight
1 x Ophidian Eye
1 x Pariah


If we're going to trade away lands we probably don't want to do it in a way that makes the mana curve higher.
-2 Evolving Wilds
+1 Lifelink
+1 Gift of Granite

For evaluation purposes, land screw will only be declared a new problem if those two new auras are involved, as those specific cards are the reason we don't have land right now.

For the most part, the deck functions exactly as before, since we do most of our work at 2-3 mana anyway. The first change comes in response to a game where our side of the board was two Aven Mimeomancers and nothing else, which would have been vastly superior if one of them was a 3/1 flying Geist.
-1 Aven Mimeomancer
+1 Geist of Saint Traft

Our first loss came against Goblins, but the cause was actually color screw with an otherwise perfect 7. Would you keep Island, Island, Plains, Invisible Stalker, Kor Spiritdancer, Empyrial Armor, Daybreak Coronet? Because I did, and then drew 3 more Islands, Auramancer, Narcolepsy, Pacifism, and Sun Titan.

We want double white far more often than we ever need double blue. Getting a 12/8 Plains/Island split requires removing any blue or gold card and replacing it with a mono-white card. Flickerwisp can do a ton of neat little things, but using a double-white card to fix our color screw problem feels like spinning our wheels a little. I feel bad about using Nomad Mythmaker because it's bugged. Weirdly, it's bugged in a way that makes it stronger by allowing you to attach things to your opponents' creatures. But we already have two Auramancers anyway...

-1 Drake Umbra
+1 Mammoth Umbra

I chose to replace Drake Umbra with a second Mammoth Umbra, figuring that giving vigilance to an Invisible Stalker is more important than giving flying to a Sun Titan or something. This change was a good one, and Mammoth Umbra has really been pulling its weight.

Shortly after fixing our land situation, we encountered a 'worst-case' scenario in the other direction: 7 Plains, 1 Island, and 2 Mind Controls stuck in hand while our 4/4 vigilant Invisible Stalker was in a losing race vs Divinity of Pride, which we pulled out of and won with the timely arrival of Daybreak Coronet. No changes were made.

The situations we're really fearing only happened three times. Once we had to concede immediately after a mull to 4 and no land. Twice we were stuck waiting on land with our new 1-drop cards in hand. We still won the first, though it wouldn't have been so close if we could've cast Winds of Rath on time. The second one we lost stuck on 5 lands with Lifelink, Sun Titan, and many tasty targets in the graveyard. Which felt really, really bad.

Overall I'm happy with these changes, and most games were resounding victories that were not even close. The potential for each of the new auras to draw up to 4 cards for 1 mana, combined with more and cheaper enablers of Daybreak Coronet, seems to be worth it.

Thumbs-up for 22-land Aura Servants!

Lands(22)
12 x Plains
8 x Island
2 x Evolving Wilds

Creatures(16)
4 x Invisible Stalker
4 x Kor Spiritdancer
2 x Auramancer
2 x Totem-Guide Hartebeest
2 x Sun Titan
1 x Aven Mimeomancer
1 x Geist of Saint Traft

Other(22)
2 x Winds of Rath
2 x Pacifism
2 x Narcolepsy
2 x Mind Control
2 x Daybreak Coronet
2 x Empyrial Armor
2 x Griffin Guide
2 x Mammoth Umbra
1 x Eel Umbra
1 x Triclopean Sight
1 x Gift of Granite
1 x Lifelink
1 x Ophidian Eye
1 x Pariah

Yeah, I've tried running less than 4 tap-sacks, and it oftentimes leaves you will a 22-land deck because of the game's dumb algorithm. Sometimes that's nice, but I usually like 24 lands, depending on the curve. And to do that requires 3 or 4 tap-sacks.