Mono White Soul Survivors

Here’s a life gain deck that you can put together for pennies. Its mono white and there’s a subtle nod to my wall or nothing deck and the gentle aroma of Soul Sisters. 

So what is the point of this deck? Well it’s life gain Jim, but not as we know it.  Most life link comes from creatures that gain life when they cause damage by attacking or defending, this one does almost the opposite. In this deck you’ll gain life every time you block and thanks to a few tricksy plays that’s going  to be a lot.... Anyway here it is...

 I call it...

Soul Survivors...

You will need....

4 Serra Ascendent

4 Goldenglow Moth

3 Palace Guard

4 Sun Titan

4 Echo Circlet

4 Luminous Wave

3 Soul Parry

3 Safe Passage

3 Felidar Sovereign

1 Elixir of Immortality 

4 Emeria The Sky ruin

4 Tectonic Edge

3 Brave the Elements
16 Plains

So here’s the plan... most of your creatures like to block and the rest of them like to bring back the dead. So send your martyrs to the graveyard whilst pumping your life total and there are a couple of sneaky ways to really pump that total.

Golden glow moth gains you 4 life when it blocks right?  So... if we equip echo circlet, it can block another creature... so that’s 8 life right?  But then it dies... shame... mind you 8 life isn’t bad for a one drop, but hang on a second... What if we cast soul parry on the creatures it blocked? Now you’re getting it.... just because it didn’t take damage, didn’t mean it didn’t block  Now add a Luminous Wave to it yep...  that’s another 8 life each turn... So for a one mana critter and a two mana equipment and a 3 mana enchantment that’s 16 points of life gain in one turn and all it did was sit there...  Palace guard can block any number of creatures... add a wave to that and you can see where this is going..  

 

So what if your opponent has removal?  Well it wouldn’t be a game, if they didn’t have some answers, but what are they going to do doomblade a 0/1 moth? Or maybe they’ll Mana Leak an echo circlet? The truth is your opponent won’t have a clue what you’re doing and therefore won’t know how to react. By the time they realise just how much life you are gaining each turn it will too late to Mana Leak the one drop Serra Ascendent ( or is that Baneslayer Angel ) and when they  eventually doom blade it, you can simply bring it back with the Sun Titan...  or you can choose pretty much anything else in the deck...   

 

The Emeria’s are only really there for the long game and shouldn’t be your first play if you can help it.

It’s also a pretty safe bet that you’re only going to get away with the ploy once or twice early game, before your opponent realises you have more to gain by their attacks than you’ll lose. So my advice is to take the early swings if need be, so you can establish your board position. Then the next thing they’ll know you will have shot up to over 30 life and it’s not quirky little monks you're dropping, but huge 6/6 life linking angels... 

Seperated at birth?

Of course they’ll see it coming, but what can they do? Either use valuable removal on cheap creatures leaving less for your real threats late game, or they could just not attack, which will allow you to play the long game and get Emeria online, but most likely what they will do is just grin and bear it and try to take out your life linking 0/1’s with assault after assault, of course they’ll expect you to gain a bit of life, but your first soul parry will wipe the determined grin of their face and before they know it you’ll be swinging in for 6 in the air.  Your opponent will probably hate your deck and they’ll probably still be banging on about 2 for 1 and card advantage long after you’ve hit 60 life and laid the game winning Sovereign.

Now importantly this deck is misdirection... You want your opponent to think you are building up to something and that your army of little life linking moths and guards are there expressly to persuade him not to attack ( Emeria will help with this)... The last thing you want to do is let them see a Serra Ascendant until you’ve reached 30 life.  

Importantly you’ll need to play game two in a totally different way.  So sideboard in Rest for the Weary and Survival Cache. This time what you want is turn one ascendant, turn two rest for the weary and land drop and for the clincher turn 3 Luminous Wave on the ascendant, because as soon as you attack your life will jump over thirty and the Ascendant will become a 6/6, even if he wasn’t before you attacked.   

    

You can try many different versions of this deck...

Splash green for lures and fog and force your opponent to attack every turn...

Splash black for removal and disentomb so you can keep recurring and playing the moths.  

Splash blue for leyline of anticipation and flash in luminous wake and sneaky moths.  

Weaknesses? Of course it has weaknesses, even superman wasn’t best fond of Kryptonite, like everything this deck has enemies and basically anything with wrath effects will give you headaches.  

Mirrodin Besieged Speculation

Well the whole set is out now... and we've got a feature at the top of the blog about our picks for the prerelease (just look at the latest post...) We'll come back later and take a lok at what we got right and what we got wrong.... We predicted the return of the Mythic Swords and we got Goblin Wardriver horribly wrong.. lol, but thats all the fun of the game.. anyway have a look at our newest post and enjoy the Weekend...)   

(update jan 14th- this is important...with a bit of trial and error and tinkering with the orb of Insight.. we have some findings... look for any thing in red in this article....) 

Mirrodin Besieged wil soon be upon us and now's the time to start guessing...So we at Adventures in the Meta have been harrasing our contacts, making some educatred guesses and making stuff upand we've come to some conclussions and a load of speculations....

So what do we know?

Well we know that Scars contained a meagre 20% Phyrexian cards and that for Mirrdodin to be besieged by them its gonna take more than that, so we can assume we are due a large swing to the dark side... Perhaps 50/50? perhaps even more. Update Dec26th - Bingo - factions listed as 50/50

 We also know that there is at least one major player in the story missing and most likely two. So I’m gonna bet we see a return of Tezzeret and Nicol bolas. Tezzeret was once a seeker, but I’m guessing from the hints we’ve had that perhaps now he might be a thinker or perhaps a shaper?

 He is an Agent and he fits right into my Masterhy Forgery deck...

Speaking of which has anyone actually read any of their Scars cards? Have a look at Tempered Steel and tell me we won’t be seeing Ghalma the Shaper any time soon, perhaps a Loxodon Articifer?  As to her abilities we can only speculate but I’m guessing she could be a tutor of some description.  On the Pyherxian side I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a Sheoldred Whispering One popping up quite soon. As we already have an Infect lord, I suspect she may be tainted strike on a stick… In red, I’d bet my Alpha collection that we’ll see Krol the Furnace Priest, who I predict will be another goblin lord. There’s two more jumping out at me, but I couldn’t guess at their colours, but nonetheless I reckon we may see Vorimnclex, Voice of Hunger and Kara Vrist, Neurok agent…

Guys it looks like we have have to wait until the next set for some of these legends as if seems the most likely legendary creatures will be Glissa (which we know) and Thrun (possibky a troll...) 

And here he is and he is AWESOME...

Ok so we’ve made some educated guesses what else are we likely to see?

Maybe a vampire land? What exactly is the Mephidross? I haven’t got a clue, but its popping up all over the place, Speaking of lands I reckon we may see the Bladehold too… Update dec 26th - We haven;t seen the bladehold yet but we now know we were on the right lines With the release of (Hero of the Bladehold) 


There are 4 new non basic lands - 3 affiliated to Phyrexia and 1 to Mrran

There are at leas two heroes in the new set... 

Ok now the lateral thinking…   

Why do Rise From the Grave and Grave Titan make zombies? (asides from the obvious) (update 28th we forgot Nim Deathmantle thanks to Max from Brighton UK for pointing that out) Are we missing a zombie lord? Why if everyone is playing blue/white and mono green do we have 5 dual lands in the first part of the series? Logic tells me that there’s a whole pile of gold cards coming…

Zombie lord looking very likely, there are 5 new zombies too

Ok we’ve got the Myrs so what else is missing from the original Mirrodin? Well, with infect and distortion strike and vines of the vast wood it would be insane of Wizards to return the mighty Loxodon War Hammer, but are there any other artifacts out there that could make a re-appearance?

Personally, I ‘d love to see Pentavus return, but I wonder if it might just be a little too powerful since the addition of the proliferate mechanic… 

no pentavus yet... boo!

I can totally se the return of Annul, its s good sideboard safety net if Wizards have made anything too broken…

We''ve had all the Swords and all the Towers now and the last two were a little bit of a disapointment compared to their countreparts, so maybe there are more?

Here are our artists impressions of the missing tower and sword...

(UPDATE DEC 16th) look at this IMAGE  from the newly released Beseiged  Art Gallery and tell us we wrong about the new tower.. (WE WERE WRONG ABOUT THE NEW TOWER LOL...Well you can't get it all right : ) )

Update Jan 7th We are now almost certain to see a new sword in Beseiged.... My vote is for...

Sword of Chaos and Order?...  red/white?

equipped creaures has +2 +2 

when equipped creature attacks destroy target artifact (equipment?) and gain 2 life...

and protection form relevant colours

BINGO on the sword 100% confirmed as Mirran and pro red and white - possibly sword of something and ORDER but not chaos and god chance it gains life...OR... It's phyrexian alligned and pro green and black....UPdate Jan 15th - WE can now completely confirm that the sword is Mirran (fact) and its name is Sword of Feast and Famine (about 90% certainty) colours we're still shaky on it sounds black green... We just can't say for certain...as for ability... I am only guesng but... when equipped creatures attacks - each player sacrifices a creature and put two 1.1 somethings into play... 

Here's the sword at last....

There is No tower yet....

Wild stabs in the dark?

Well I personally think we’re a bit shy of walls, so I reckon we’lll be seeing a Steel wall or the equivalent and I’d like to see some colourless removal… Anyone remember Ghost fire? Also Wraths… We lost both Planar Cleansing and Scourglass in the last rotation and I wouldn’t be surprised if we got one of them back… Or maybe a return for Oblivion Stone? 

There is most certianly a wrath or two but not sure what kind yet...

Here we go.. A new kind of martial coup....

Also we now know that there are at least two mirrored cards Peace Strider and Pierce Strider (dreadful play on words by the way…)but it’s likely that there will be more..,

There's deefinitely more and we know there's a Forestwalk v's Mountianwalk one...

 Here's a gamble for you... Currently you can get a Mox Opal for about $20/£15... If Wizards decide to bring back Artifact lands then these little beauties could well be the most played card in standard.  So what do you think punk? Do you feel lucky?

There's an unconfirmed possibily of a legendary artifact land called ISH something

Well we got very close with this one...

Update dec 26th - new mechanic - 

Battle Cry (Whenever a creature with Battle Cry attacks, each other attacking creature gets +1/+0 until end of turn.)

7 creatures have battlecry all mirran

Ok so we've had a sneaky peek at some of the new cards... Glissa the traitor, thopter squadron and and hero of bladehold and a sudden thought struck me... We are running low on cheap removal...So I predict we are going to see a new Path or Swords and I think we are going to see it very soon...

Update Jan 7th - Ok what we know....

Well we now know for certain, that there is a Glissa the Traitor, A Hero Of the Bladehold, Peace and Peirce Striders, Thopter Squadron and two knights one black one white... We also know that there is a hydra of some kind in green( Perhaps blight hydra? or poison Hyrda? (phyerxian hydra) or maybe Venonmous  Hyrda? ) We know that there is a Crawler of some kind.in black ( Phyrexian Crawler )and that there is some sort of (Angelic? ) Herald... in white or red or maybe even red/white.(Destiny's Herald)

Update jan 10th some new cards at last...

Further eveidence to suggest a powerhouse knights deck is on the way...


Update Jan 11th...unnofficial card alert...

I haven't seen an official version, but it's looking pretty likely....

As if red needed more quick critters...We should point out that this card doesn't officially exist yet, but I for one wouldn't be surprised if it does turn up soon looking pretty muxh as it does here...

looking good for this fella 


Well we got close...


Another unnofficial card...

seems like tatterkite is back... looks at first glance to be the answer to infect... but it ain't gonna stop a  plague stinger...


And yet more eviendce to suggest knights are going to be the deck of choice... Personally I still reckon it wiill be black/white rather than mono white...

And here's another....This one's a reprint...

Looking at this card I can't help thinking that this time it may be one of a pair like Peace and Peirce striders or Mirran and Phyrexian Crussadors.  Is there a Mirran Rager and if so what will it do? perhaps a 1/1 for three that draws a car and gains a life? ( if this is the case it'll be going straight in my Emeria deck...) Also note the reference to SHEOLDRED, whispering one in the flavour text, further eveidence to suggest we may yet be seeing her very soon...

Ok This is an Adventures Exclusive... We can now reveal that there is a phyerxian card that can potentially lose you the game... if it's cost is not met.. There is a slim chance this card says you can't lose the game, but ts far morelikey to be a kind of immortal coil or Slaughter pact... 
(Update Jane 16th... There is a slim chance that this card may actually be a target player loses the game... Or and I really hope not...but it could even be a reminder of the infect rule on a card... i.e If a player has more than 10 poison tokens they lose the game....:  (  ) OK this card has turnerd out to be a conination of cards including a wurm card that enters the battlefield and effectively draws your entire graveyard and allows you to have any hand size for the rest of the game...

We'll bring you more as we get it...

Phyrexia have an 11/11 perhpas a juggernaught

 Here;s the 11/11


There's a new Miran hell kite and they have a 9/9  (could be the same card who knows?)

Heres' the Hell Kite and she's a princess...


Jan 17th more new cards...

Bonehoard and Shimmer Myr are the most exciting for me... but I think we're starting to get  a picture of how prominent infect will be in this set...

BUDGET LEGACY IT EXISTS

 So we've got ourselves some legacy!  This deck idea and indeed article comes from Max Fan and I for one tip my hat to the man... It's all very well making a decent standard deck on a budget, but it takes some deep thinking to make a playable  legacy deck... Mr Maxfan I salute you!

And here it is...


I've been working on this list for Legacy for a while, it doesn't use a card over $12 except the fetches which anyone playing a Legacy tournament should own sets of anyway, and All Is Dust which is not an absolute must and was actually only $6 when I bought it.

Maindeck beats match-ups like Stifle-Naught, Enchantress, hands that are not the absolute fastest from Goblins/Zoo/Merfolk.

Sideboard has cards to win the creature matches, Engineered Plague is awesome, and then anti-combo cards.  It's surprising how many combo decks fold to Dark Ritual into Sadistic Sacrament.

So what's with the All Is Dust?  Well, when a blue deck runs out of counterspells, but has Jace down and keeps bouncing your creature, All Is Dust away Jace and proceed to beat face.

This deck uses creatures as a win con, but it is NOT a beatdown deck, it's really disruption/control.

Against decks where I expect to play the long game, I side in Leyline+Helm of Obedience.  For those unfamiliar with this combo, let me explain.  If you resolve the activated ability from Helm of Obedience with X=1 while Leyline of the Void is in play, you will exile your opponent's entire library.  This works because Leyline's replacement effect exiles the card attempting to go to the graveyard, then Helm checks and sees that no card has yet been put into a graveyard, and repeats the process.

Even Wheel of Sun and Moon isn't effective against this combo, because it only creates an infinite loop if your opponent keeps making the choice to put their card on the bottom of their library.  The rules force them to make the other choice even though it's not in their interest simply because they can to break the loop, so you get to exile their whole library.

I have yet to face a deck where I go "Man, I can't win this matchup" when I sit down in around 25 matches.

Creatures (15)
4 x Gatekeeper of Malakir
4 x Nantuko Shade
4 x Vampire Nighthawk
3 x Tombstalker

Other (23)
4 x Dark Ritual
4 x Duress
4 x Hymn to Tourach
4 x Diabolic Edict
3 x Phyrexian Arena
4 x Nevinyrral's Disk

Lands (22)
4 x Verdant Catacombs
4 x Marsh Flats
2 x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
4 x Bojuka Bog
8 x Swamp

Sideboard (15)
1 x All Is Dust
3 x Chalice of the Void
2 x Helm of Obedience
4 x Leyline of the Void
3 x Engineered Plague
1 x Sadistic Sacrament
1 x Extirpate


And there we have it our first budget Legacy deck... I for one can't wait to sleeve this bad boy up and test it out... I hope we'll be hearing more from Maxfan and I just want to say thanks again for sharing your deck ideas...

An outside opinion

I fund this little gem on my travels recently and I just had to post it… If you are new to the game and want a deck that will give more experienced players a bit of a headache without spending lots of money or having to rely on god hand draws for your game winning combo then this is a good bet…

The premise is very simple it has three agendas and they’ll all give your enemy the fear…

Win condition one…

Make lots of little spawn creatures and play Beastmaster’s Ascension and swing, swing, swing… Once it triggers you’ll be overwhelming your opponent before they can say OW!

Win condition two…

Do the same thing except play a broodwarden instead of the ascension and swing swing swing.

Win condition three…

Sac 4 of your little monkeys to drop massive turn 3, 7/7 Eldrazi monsters …

You can mix and match any of the above… It’s cheap, it’s simple and it will win you games…

You will need….

4x nest invader
3x Overgrown Battlement
4x Kozilek's Predator
4x Emrakul's hatcher
4x Broodwarden
4x hand of Emrakul
4x Spawning Breath
4x Brood Birthing
2x Growth Spasm
4x Beastmaster Ascension
4x Khalni Garden
4x Terramorphic Expanse
4x Evolving Wilds
5x mountain
6x Forest

Credit for this deck is down to JP meka you can find him here… I’m sure he has other decks and I’m sure they will be good, but I wanted to highlight this one because it uses a lot of cards that are strong and are just not played any more…

Anyway top hat off to Mr Meka well done dude..

Tangle Mangle

OK we’re coming out of The Twilight Zone for a moment. This one is fast, nasty and cheap. It’s mean blue/green aggro and this is a contender

Tangle Mangle

You will need.

4 Tangle Angler

4 Blight Mamba

4 Overgrown Battlement

4 Prized Unicorn

4 Gargoyle Sentinel

4 Twisted Image

4 Garruk Wildspeaker

4 Overwhelming Stampede

4 Turn Aside

4 Khalini Gardens 
use 4 teermorphics to find one of the 4 islands and the rest can be forests...

Simplicity itself this one... Regenerating toxic defenders and throwaway chump blockers to start and then quickly into mid game with tricksy lures and then for a finisher either use Garruk or the stampede to trample up that poison damage, of course don’t forget to switch the anglers power an toughness before you use the stampede... or if you’ve managed to get it past the blockers..  Ramp with the Battlements and Garruk, use the plants to get in the way and remember there’s more than one way to use Twisted Image. If you’re desperate it will draw you a card, if you’re smart it will draw you a card and take out a blocker or a ramper and if you’re lucky and smart it can draw you a card and win you the game. Yoiu can also use the Gargolyes as targets for the stampede, just remember to pump them frrst....

Remember that 8 of your creatures can force your oponents to block and theefore you can choose what a you want to get through... :

Use tangle angler or prized unicorn to tie up the blockers while you pile through with a combination of trample damage and poison counters. So why split the damage? Well what you are trying to do with the deck is to attack on two fronts. It has a few tricks which you’re opponent will have to watch unless he wants to concede and early defeat.  It’s nasty on a lot of levels, but there are some sneaky moves hidden in its midst.  Got a prize unicorn and a tangle angler in play with a twisted image in hand?  Left unchecked that’s 5 poison counters in one turn and you get to draw a card, add an Overwhelming Stampede and that’s game.

Twisted Image is not only a cantrip its also a doomblade for walls

  

Or it might just win you the game