Folks, I have to admit, it has been a long time since I sat down and set about to brewing up some new decks. With the excitement that Khans has provided I have been engrossed watching the new top tier Standard decks take shape and getting primed for the draft format. This means I have not spent nearly enough time brewing my own wonky concoctions for fun…but that has finally changed. I sat down and put together some new decks that I want to share with you for your next casual game. Will these EVER win you anything at a Constructed event? Not a chance. But around a kitchen table they are loads of fun and well worth the time to put them together.
The impetus this time was that my friends and I had our casual night a couple of weeks ago and we agreed to play Hobo. For those who are new here on Three Kings Loot, Hobo is basically the name my friends and I gave to playing decks with no rares or mythics…just commons and uncommons. This is often called Peasant, but we thought the name was lame and preferred the name Hobo. This particular time the extra restriction we set was that all the cards needed to be from Khans or M15 in an effort to force us to play new cards.
Most people brewed heavily with Khans because many of the cards are just more powerful than what we find in M15. However, I decided to go the other route for one of the two decks I put together. I figured that many of the M15 uncommons would be unplayed, giving me the chance to surprise my opponents and come at them with a bit of a curve ball. The first card I wanted to brew with was Brood Keeper. I really feel like the potential upside of this card has largely gone unexplored and I wanted to do something with it. Well, the deck was a mess and I affectionately called it “4 colour mess”…and it was terrible. I’m not even going to bother to post the list because I took it apart so quickly, but it did lead me to attempt number 2 on the Brood Keeper deck. Here is what I’ve got.
The plan behind the deck is dead simple. Cast a Brood keeper and then hit it with an aura or two in order to produce the Dragon token it makes. The token (a 2/2 flying dragon with Firebreathing) is a real card…Furnace Whelp was an uncommon in M13. Dragon Whelp has been a thing since the beginning of Magic…and Brood Keeper just produces them as value. Wow. That’s mildly insane. Everything else in the deck is designed to help you get there. Heliod’s Pilgrim allows you to fetch up an aura if you don’t have one in hand. Sightless Brawler can be used to Bestow it on the Brood keeper or play it as a dude. Bladetusk Boar and Eagle of the Watch give you suitable targets to cast auras on if you don’t have a Brood Keeper and both come with a form of evasion. The auras are cheap and many cantrip for more cards or have some other upside to them being in the deck. It isn’t a fancy deck, but the curve is low, Brood Keeper is most certainly a thing, and it feels like a much more reliable build than a 4 colour mess.
The other deck I ran was an unadulterated Sultai deck. I feel like the Delve mechanic has been breaking formats since Khans hit the shelves and I wanted in on the plan. The deck wants to dump a ton of cards in the graveyard and then do broken things with the extra resources. At Hobo night the deck fared quite well because it just could make more use of its resources than many of the other decks. I mean, Treasure Cruise for 1 blue mana (+ a bunch of cards in the exile pile) is pretty solid card advantage and leaves you wide open to cast any spells you picked up when you drew off the top. It proved to be a very potent combination and left many opponents unable to handle the relatively potent spells that I could follow up with. Here’s the deck list.
Essentially I’m not paying the full casting cost for all my most powerful spells on account of the Delve mechanic or the Convoke mechanic. Satyr Wayfinder and Sultai Soothsayer dump cards in my yard that I will then turn around and Delve to cast something else…and then in the next breath tap them to pay the Convoke cost of the Feral Incarnation I want to play. It really was kind of disgusting and a couple of opponents just looked on, in bewilderment, as I paid the Convoke cost of Feral Invocation and then in the next turn played Overwhelm meaning that things got crazy fast. It was a fun build and one well worth keeping together and fixing up to make it more…I’m not sure…spicy?!. Ok, more spicy.
The last deck I have for you is an update of an R/W heroic deck that I was running several months ago and I wrote about here on Three Kings Loot. I like the deck, but with Standard rotating I wanted to freshen the deck up somewhat. My build around piece was Preeminent Captain and the ability to play soldiers without paying their mana cost. The deck is full of soldiers and combat tricks to protect the creatures or to trigger Heroic and get in there for big damage. Here’s what I’ve got.
The game plan is to play my Preeminent Captains, protect them with a Gods Willing or Feat of Resistance and attack to drop another soldier card from my hand for free. Since I can play the creatures for free I can use my mana to play the tricks in my hand to make combat miserable. The addition of the Refuge lands from Khans has been a neat twist and really enabled the playing of Ajani’s Pridemate, which is a terrific card. Play it for free and have it pile on counters each time you gain a life is a nice boost. Dragon-Style Twins and Fabled Hero are just the sort of hammer you really need should things start to get out of control and can seal up a win in short order if you can fire off a few tricks. Along that same vein, Flying Crane Technique really serves the same role to just snatch a win out of nowhere by making your team Double Strikers with Flying. Oh, and the Ainok Bond-kin is a terrifying little creature because this deck can pile up +1/+1 counters very quickly…making the Bon-kin super useful to give my team First Strike and just make combat totally miserable. Will this deck wow the world at the neck Standard event? No. But it is a lot of fun, particularly if you can get the Captain on-line to play creatures for free. And it isn’t even that expensive to build! Nice value!
Well, there we have it, three new brews to share with you guys. These may not be Standard worthy, but they have given me plenty of enjoyment around a Kitchen table and letting me to do some pretty silly things. The best part, many of the decks I have here are relatively kind to your wallet, which is always a secondary consideration when playing Magic. No one likes to be broke, so why not try to keep the costs of playing this hobby down a bit.
So, until next time, keep it fun, keep it safe…keep it casual.
By Bruce Gray – Casual Encounters @bgray8791 on Twitter
Ajani, Mentor of Heroes- I always love checking out the new planeswalkers that each set reveals, and this one looks super sweet. The art is sweet, so right there we have a plus. The 5 mana is steep, but with the improved abilities on this guy over some of the other incarnations of Ajani, I think it is very playable. What I like most is that he comes in at 4 loyalty and starts ticking up right away…and you can’t minus him until he ultimates. The 2nd ability, of being able to filter through your deck for an Aura, a creature or a planeswalker gives this guy a huge card draw advantage and will be super powerful. The 1st ability of handing out 3 +1/+1 counters is also amazing and steep upgrade from Ajani, Caller of the Pride. The ultimate is kind of silly, because by the point he reaches 8 loyalty you should probably have things under control, but just in case you didn’t the 100 life will pretty well put things out of reach. The only drawback that I can see, and it is a relatively small one, is that he can’t protect himself. Sure, he can make basically your entire team much tougher to deal with, but there is almost no way you really want to cast this guy into a board state where you are behind and empty because he just can’t do enough to save you or stay alive. However, this Ajani is very cool and I see big things for him. I’ll give him an A+ because I think this guy is going to be a beast for a long time to come.
Crystalline Nautilus- This will join the realm of the Phantasmal Bear as fun cards with hilarious abilities. The relative overpowered nature of this card is totally balanced by the fact that when it is targeted you need to sacrifice it. On the whole, a fun and flavourful card that will have a home in a limited game. It gets a B- from me.
Mogis’s Warhound- A super aggressively costed 2/2 for 2 mana, but even more so is the Bestow cost of a mere 3. Sure, it attacks every turn, but if you are playing this Red deck that’s pretty much all you want to do anyway. It is a good solid card and a matching good solid B from me.
Sage of Hours- This is another Mythic Rare released last night and he’s very solid. A 2 mana 1/1 with Heroic that gives him +1/+1 whenever he is targeted with one of your spells. The casting cost makes him very competitive and will slide nicely into W/U Heroic decks without a second glance. However, it is his second ability that is pretty wild. If you remove all the +1/+1 counters from Sage of Hours and for each 5 counters you remove you get to take an extra turn. Taking extra turns is always very powerful, although by the time the guy is a 6/6 you should either have the game all sown up…or something terrible has happened to you. However, I love the card and think that it could be broken by a Johnny out there. I’m giving this guy an A for being a solid Heroic creature and having a super powerful additional ability to be exploited.
Sightless Brawler- a 3/2 for 2 mana is pretty awesome as we have seen in limited. Swordwise Centaur has done good work for draft players and this guy will too. The drawback on this guy is that he can’t attack alone, but he is probably fitting in nicely in a White based Heroic deck and will have plenty of friends to follow into battle. Also, he is still able to block, so he comes down early to play a little D, and then when he lands a friend can roll into attack mode. The Bestow ability is just extra value in the late game and gives a pretty sizeable boost for 5 mana. I like this guy and give him a B for being just a very useful body despite his drawback.
Spirespine- A 4/1 for 3?! Ok…and he can Bestow too?! Wow! Ok, so he needs to block, if able, but let’s be realistic, he’s very aggressively costed and powered up so blocking isn’t really a big deal for this guy…he wants to go on the attack. We have seen that Nyxborn wolf has been very good at limited and he Bestows for the same 5 mana, so it would reason that a 4/1 for the same Bestow cost would be pretty sweet too. I like him and is another really sweet Bestow creature and gets a B from me.
Note: The more Bestow creatures I see, the more I like the ability! Nothing quite like getting extra value!
Temple of Epiphany and Temple of Malady- Ah yes, the corresponding Temples for this set. We have seen that these are super useful cards and the free Scry ability is very relevant. I can’t wait to get my hands on these guys. Further to that, I really like the art work. In particular the Temple of Malady looks very cool and foreboding.
