Invasion.

[nightmare]

Hi,

just figured I'd post my own deck, seeing as I've commented on 2 decks here so far.

This one is pretty simple.

*INVASION*

Dragonfly x 3
Mintoaur x 3
Pyro Drake x 3
Gas Cloud x 3
Hellhound x 3
Valkyria x 3
Fire Giant x 2
Gladiator x 2
Ares x 2


Chariot x 2
Telegnosis x 2
Telekinesis x 2
Upheaval x 2
Influence x 2
Mountain Leap x 2
Holy Word X x 4


Counter Amulet x 4
Fire Shield x 3
Power Bracelet x 2
Winged Boots x 1

Basically, the deck has powerful offensive creatures (gets really scary when Ares hits the board) and seeks to place them on the board and use movement to attack the enemy cepters' territories. Items are used to either exploit or defend against the effects of Ares/other powerful attackers. It does a good job of exploiting the attack phase, as with a spell and movement over your creature, you can have 2 attacks per turn. The deck in testing has the ability to rip through opponent's chains in the space of 2 turns.

Generally the deck starts slow, and builds up momentum around the second/third lap.

Against a stock deck or the creatureless cataclysm deck, this sucks (duh.) against other creature based decks, it seems to fair well.

[Moptop]

Nice looking deck! I have been pondering how to use Ares effectively, but I could never quite figure out formula that would prevent it from backfiring on me. The mono theme certainly helps, allowing the use of the elemental shields. And the Counter Amulet is a great idea.

The potential to invade twice in one round makes this deck terrifying!

I'll see if I can make something like it and give it a test run. I'll let you know if I have any suggestions. On paper, though, the deck looks great..

[TheTampaCepter]

That deck is scary looking. How did you fare in story mode with it?

[ExMortis]

The idea of constant invasion is pretty interesting. I see a problem though, in that once your opponent realizes what you're up to, they'll start focusing on their Decoys, Wonder Walls, etc. which the deck can't do anything about.

A couple sorcerers, a couple scrolls, or both, I think would allow you to deal with more situations.
Gas Cloud and to a lesser extent Pyro Drake kinda clash with the rest of the book, as they're more defense than attack, so maybe you could sub in some scrollage for one of them.

But yeah, I like the idea, I think I'll try something similar myself.

[gnightmare]

Hey guys,

Thanks for the feedback!

I just tested a few games in the beginning of story mode (just to run through and see how the deck is played sans needless complexities like shrines/temples/wierd boards), and it functions really well.

One thing to note is that losing a territory isn't that big a deal --you're going to out-invade most opponents by a substantial rate, so you can get back your land pretty quickly.

Another thing is, as the game goes on, you keep getting Telegnosis/Chariot back sooner, since they recycle. You can sustain the onslaught even more in the late game...

Winged Boot is awesome in this deck -every time I got it, it rocked- against a first attacking defender, you get to return attack order to normal, and against an opponent's offense critter, you interrupt with one of your beefy creatures so they're denied (essentially) Ares' bonus. I need to sneak more in.

Valkryia can quickly get out of hand. Each of my three test games, she hit the board and quickly became a 50 - 80 ST first attacker with support (+Ares...), capable of killing anything without neutralization.

ExMortis, thanks for the comments. RE: Pyro Drake, he actually works pretty well. He's got a big butt (high HP) but he also gets up to 50...all for relatively cheap.

RE: Gas Cloud - you're right. He's gone, and I dropped in 2 sorcerers and 2 Hell Blaze to address the Decoy issue. Hell Blaze also works as a quick fix for highly land-protected creatures, so it fights nicely.

The worst part about this deck is that I made it for my fiancee...this is gonna hurt...<sigh>

[AkinaSS]

Hmm...i'm of the opinion that single element decks are only good against the AI. Sure you may catch a human player off guard the 1st time, but he'll probably wise up and come up with a deck to counter yours.

For example since yours is fire based, water element creatures fare best against them, as do some neutral creatures.

Giant Amoeba
Nymph
Shell Creeper
Yeti

Grindylow (immune against opponents <=30ST)
Applies to Dragonfly, Pyro Drake, Gas Cloud, Sorceror and Valkyria. Hellhound also only does 50% damage to water creatures.

Migoal
Decoy
Wonder Walls

All of the above are immune to fire attacks (except Grindylow), so it doesn't matter how high your ST is. Throw in some hardhitters like Dagon, Storm Giant or Vodyanoi and items similar to yours except water based, and that should be able to counter your deck. The only thing that could hurt it is your Hellblaze scrolls. Of course this is only in theory though, we'll have to battle it out to find out

[Ben-Ra]

if you've played against it or know what's in it, ANY deck can be countered. Therefore, a deck being counterable isn't really a weakness. What's important is how well the deck achieves its own goal. If a deck relies on opponents to do something for it to work, that's a big assumption right there. This deck assumes the opponent(s) will play creatures, and that attacking them constantly will be a good thing for you and a bad thing for them.

More and more I find myself thinking that the best decks are those that pursue a self-contained goal. More on that later...

[nightmare]

Ben-Ra said:

If a deck relies on opponents to do something for it to work, that's a big assumption right there. This deck assumes the opponent(s) will play creatures, and that attacking them constantly will be a good thing for you and a bad thing for them.

More and more I find myself thinking that the best decks are those that pursue a self-contained goal. More on that later...

True...I've been thinking about how this deck would do against a symbol deck (wrecked, as I was saying before) or a 'racing' deck (wrecked also). Moptop's Cataclysm deck (I really like that by the way) will destroy the deck as well. But it's really hard to state at all what performance one will get from a deck without knowing a stated or implied metagame.

If anyone's played (semi-)competitive magic the gathering from back in the day, then think of it this way: Necro is a good deck generally (until they banned it, heh), but is not so great in a field of fast burn, e.g. Sligh. Knowing that, you'd be better off with WW or Fires. It's all paper rock scissors. /mTg_geek

In a tournament scenario, I probably wouldn't play this deck at all. If I did, I would probably replace some of the fighting/invasion stuff with silver bullets against creatureless decks. But more than likely I'd go with what you said: a self-contained deck (many of which I'm working on, I just thought this was fun).

But I'm not really arguing with you here; I'm just saying that without knowing what's popular, i.e. without tournaments for us English speaking slubs, it's impossible to state what is truly optimal.

What we need are more deck listings, to create an inventory of what's possible. We can then start assembling and testing (get gamesharks people!) and deliver performance results.

Let me wrap this up, because it's getting (is?) long.

--you were posting about symbol decks before. Will you post a symbol deck in this section?

--given my assumption pays off, how do you think the deck functions, sans AkinaSS's (brutlal) counters?

[OWell]

Please you shouldn't take me seriously. One "Neutral Amulet" is added.

[AkinaSS]

Haha don't take my counter-deck seriously, i was just listing it for fun since you said your fire deck was made for your g/f. You could take her on using the counter-deck...of course that would also mean no happy ending after the match

As Ben said, all decks can be countered once you know what's in it. I'll probably try to come up with a theme based deck of my own later, but for now i'll concentrate on getting the 100+ cards that i'm still missing.

[nightmare]

oh no, the 'brutal' was a compliment! ;D It was pretty much perfect as anti-deck.

[Ben-Ra]

I'm an old hand at mtg myself, though it's been years. Having a magic goal (as opposed to depleting opponent's life) creates a pretty different dynamic. Actually you could almost view it as removing the dynamic, or giving you the choice to (by having a self-contained deck). Now that I think about it, it can be similar, but instead of attacking an opponent with your creatures you're attacking them with tolls, and the first to get to X wins. Unlike mtg, though, they have to land on your tolls, which means you can't be certain when you will get to 'attack.' Of course, certain cards such as Kelpie or Holy Words give you more control over that (which is why they are pretty good).

This is getting long (and really has no point), but I guess I'll finish by saying I think the best decks will be those that are the hardest to meta against and don't rely on opponent deck/action to succeed. I guess that sounds obvious and stupid, but eh whatever.

And yeah, my symbol deck will be posted soon. I been kinda lazy of late.