Time for another deck tech article!
First, sorry that I haven’t been as active as normal lately. My “real” job has been really busy, and I still need to get a professional looking article submitted to www.quietspeculation.com to go live for next week. BUT I wanted to hook you up with a really cool deck I’ve been playing for the past 2 weeks (1 at LA Mood and 1 at Imperial Hobbies) to a 13-3 game record.
Traditionally, Puresteel Paladins decks tended to wilt if they didn’t draw the namesake card in the deck. Sure, I guess living weapons on their own are “OK”, but they really shine when you’re drawing a card whenever you play one a la Paladin style. So sometimes you end up with a hand full of mediocre equipment and nothing else.
When I designed this build I wanted it as threat heavy as possible so that if I DIDN’T manage to draw a Paladin I could still win. When we lost Basilisk Collar it really hurt the deck, but as a fellow QS writer (Josh Justice) suggested, we can get the same effect by sacking deathtouch wolves to Mortarpod… and thus was born the green splash!
************************
Here is the deck list!
Creatures
4x Vault Skirge
4x Puresteel Paladin
3x Mirran Crusader
3x Etched Champion
3x Hero of Bladehold
17
Equipment
3x Flayer Husk
4x Mortarpod
2x Sword of War and Peace
2x Sword of Feast and Famine
1x Batterskull
12
Spells
4x Oblivion Ring
3x Garruk Relentless
1x Mox Opal
7
Lands
2x Inkmoth Nexus
1x Gavony Township
4x Razorverge Thicket
4x Sunpetal Grove
1x Forest
12x Plains
************************
As you can see, this deck is creature heavy. Some of my opponents incorrectly assumed I was playing W/G tokens as there are many of the same cards cross deck, and G/W Puresteel is not an established archetype yet so it’s a good assumption, albeit incorrect.
In this deck Puresteel Paladin acts more like a “Trump Card” in the fact that you can play out a bunch of dudes, achieve metalcraft, then drop paladin to form Voltron and swing. It doesn’t matter if you have a Puresteel for this to still be an effective strategy as (most of) the equipment itself helps our team regardless. Equipping Mirran Crusader with ANY equipment is dangerous… but giving him a sword or 3 ends games right away!
Believe it or not, Gavony Township actually won me a few games! It really plays nice with Hero of Bladehold, making the team he creates 3/2’s on the swing instead. It also gets Paladin / Crusader out of “shock” range, and since people seem to have eschewed incinerate in favor of the faster spell it = win.
Garruk is amazing, as he is both removal and creates bodies to equip to! As stated above, when he’s making deathtouch wolves and throwing them with a Mortarpod he is insane.
O-Ring is the best piece of removal in the format right now IMHO. It deals with EVERYTHING except for an Inkmoth
In the 19 games (over 8 rounds) I played with this deck I won 16 of them (only dropping 1 match), so it has some great potential! Pick this up if you want to try something powerful, yet different that can attack from a lot of different angles J.
Cheers!
Carl Szalich
No comments:
Post a Comment