Staples?

[waveshine]

In my opinion, there are too many cards in this game that warrant serious consideration in every deck, so much so that they hamper theme building.

Drain Magic
Golden Totem
Haste
Fly
Holy Word x
Bind
Shatter
Soltis
Lightcraft
Wind of Hope
Silence
Necro Scarab

Kind of makes originality a chore.

[AceLeader]

I disagree with a lot of that. Pretty much all I do agree with is Wind of Hope and Shatter (but I could argue them both if I wanted to). It isn't every game that your goal will be to get through the board quickly (with Haste, Fly, Holy Word X, and Bind to a lesser extent). For example, I have a deck that utilizes Invisibilty, which makes most of your cards unrunnable (because casting a spell removes invisibility). On top of that, I haven't found a deck yet that wants me to run Golden Totem, Silence, or Necro Scarab.

Now, that sounded a bit harsh, and I am sorry for that. I am not trying to be offensive. But to say that these cards must be in virtually every deck goes too far, I think. Sure, they are good in the right situation, but so is Battering Ram, which I wouldn't run in every book. A lot of that is personal preference. I know that I have played Counter Amulet in every deck I have built, and that isn't on your list.

In the spirit of comradery, I will post a list of cards that *I* think should be considered for most decks:

Wind of Hope
Shatter
Rust
Counter Amulet
Manna
Binding Mist

Creatures are tough, because I try to stay in 2 colors, but if you are running creatures of this color, I would consider these cards too:

Nightmare
Wall of Ice
Valkeria

[waveshine]

I used to think Wall of Ice was good until I found out it couldn't use Water Shield. Sea Bonze is much, much better IMO. Drain Magic is broken. Against a human, Drain Magic will basically stop them from leveling their land. Most humans don't want to jump from one to anything less than four, and they know that if they accumulate anywhere near that much wealth, you'll zap it from them, so they continue dropping creatures with no real purpose, or you sap 250g from them.

[AceLeader]

I have a much different viewpoint of Drain Magic. Most of the time, when I play against it, my goal is to spend, spend, spend, so the opponent never has a good opportunity to Drain me. If someone lands on my Level 4 space, and I gain 600G from it, I will be more than happy to share 30%. That's still profit in my mind.

And the Wall of Ice is just so hard to kill. 70HP for almost 40G (I think, don't remember off the top of my head), and no land requirements. Sea Bonze is good too though.

[waveshine]

Without the ability to use Water Shield, Wall of Ice isn't too hard to kill. About Drain Magic, if you spend, spend, spend, you shouldn't have enough money together at one time to take a land from level 1 to level four. A land at level 2 or 3 is very vulnerable to be taken, so most people wouldn't upgrade a land to level 2 or three.

[AceLeader]

See, I am fine leveling something up to level 2 or 3. But I guess that's just my style. I don't like putting all my eggs in one basket, like with a high level Kelpie, or something. But, that's just me.

EDIT: And, just so we are clear, it doesn't cost any more G to go through the levels when upgrading. Just riskier, like you said, if you aren't going to rely solely on items to defend you.