Dark Design

Friday 19 November 2010

Red/black/white madness

Well we’ve been here for 3 weeks and the feedbacks been great. So I did a bit of listening and it turns out a lot of folks want the same thing; something competitive and something cheaper than the tier. Well i 'm not sure how competitve this one is but its a lot of fun..

This deck is unusual in that it uses s few higher price cards, but as the game has changed these cards have dropped in value and the very idea that you could create a budget deck featuring them would have  been a joke three weeks ago.. Ladies and gentlemen this deck uses Baneslayer Angels and in a previously unheard of fashion. Before you say I’ve gone corporate, remember that a month ago these cards were £30/$45 and now you can pick them up on ebay ‘buy it now’ for £13/20 (just to prove my point look here). This deck also uses the planeswalker that proliferate was so clearly aimed at.... Sarkhan The Mad. You can currently pick one up for just £6.99 and by now you might be thinking ... ‘Oh yeah... I get it...’  Well good but we’ve got more to add, but these two cards have a natural synergy which this deck will exploit to the nines.   I call it.

Scars Tech 2- The Wrath of Sarkhan

You will need


Lands, well I am open to suggestions ... right now I’m running 4 terra morphics and 4 evolving wilds and a mix of basics 

Ok basically this is red black control with a double splash of white for the Angels and condemns. The condemns will keep out early threats and defend well against dragons.  In fact most things in the deck will do well against dragons, which is also lucky because you are going to be facing lots of dragons. Why? Because you’re going to be giving them away like they are going out of fashion.

Ok so in what universe is it a good idea to give away dragons? Well it all depends on planning, let’s say you knew there would be dragons and maybe you had planned ahead and ordered the industrial size tins of wieners and a great big dragon cake for the party... and basically set your deck up around that fact... Well surely that would be better than having just anything turn up and try and eat you... and besides... you might be giving your opponent dragons, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to let them keep them.

So what’s the plan, well first things first, you’re not going to be giving away anything unless you a) need to and b) can handle it.

So here’s the general plan...

Early game you’ll be looking for the outcasts and condemns  to get in the way of early attacks. Then the game can run two ways, firstly use Sarkhan to make your opponent sac their biggest threat and give them a dragon, which will just bounce off your angels until you’re ready to steal them back and swing. Then either sac them to Sarkhan, to get a dragon all of your own or you can get Sarkhan to make it deal damage equal to its power to your opponent or their biggest threat before turning in to an artifact and sacking it to the throne to proliferate Sarkhan back up...
...Or you can steal their creatures, or even just sac an outcast, to make a dragon and swing through the air for massive damage... Obviously their dragons will just bounce of your Angels which have the all important ‘protection from Dragons’. Andif one does get through, don’t worry, that turn two ratchet bomb can take them out at instant speed.

Late game the outcasts will conjure up all sorts of chaos and give Sarkhan more fuel for the fire...  
Use the Chalices and the throne to ramp and you should be able to keep pace with most decks. 

Sarkhan can take out most threats and as long as you can deal with the dragons you are going to give your opponents you can mix up their strategies and confuse their game. Use the mimic vat to steal their sacked creatures and keep swinging.

Dependent on which of the tier you’re up against your play will vary, against Eldrazi Ramp don’t be afraid to blow up overgrown battlements with Sarkhan and obviously any actual Eldrazi, against Red Deck blow up your own outcasts and against elves blow up the mythic regenerator and the archdruids.

In testing it’s proving pretty capable, but as always I’d love to hear some suggestions...

News just  in fromn Karchev.... Bloodghast is a good additon to the gang maybe over the thrones ???  anyway keep em coming...



2 comments:

  1. haha this looks intriguing: with one big assumption. What land package would you run with this? 24?

    and why liquidmetal coating? to fire throne?

    I don't think it's needed. If you can pull off the BB with your lands, I would go
    -3 throne
    -3 liquidmetal
    +4 bloodghast
    +2 chalice

    ReplyDelete
  2. you could go a different direction and use Skittles

    ReplyDelete