Need ideas on what deck to play

[liquidrain101]

Hi, thanks for looking. Heres my situation: My friends and I play casual magic together and I'm looking for a fun yet effective deck to build. We don't really have a specific format we play in so all cards are allowed, but none of us have dual lands and other type 1 uber cards. So I'm not really limited in card choice but by price. I don't plan on going to any tournaments and I really only want to pay around $50, possibly more. By the way, most of my friend's decks are from the old onslaught-oddyssey type 2 block with new cards from recent sets.

I think some kind of control type deck would suit me best, since aggro tends to get boring after while because you just do the same thing and attack. Perferably I'd like a tier 1 deck of some format that can be altered for budget so I can still research and get new ideas about it. I also want it to be competitive against a variety of aggro and control.. elements since I could be facing anything. However, I don't want some kind of broken combo using restricted cards that wins on turn 2, etc. It's really hard looking for good decks that suit my particular situation but I've looked into peasant magic and extended a bit for some inexpensive, fun, and effective decks. So far Mono Black Control from extended seems intresting, but I'd like to hear any ideas you guys might have before I make a decision. Thanks for the help.

[Matt]

Buy four Survival of the Fittest and a Squee, because then you can buy just one of a card and pretend like you have five. When you have four Survivals, every creature you get feels like you just radically changed your whole deck - it's very nice on the wallet.

[Ephraim]

If you would like to build a control deck, then I would suggest starting with Extended-legal Dredgatog and working from there.  One copy of Life from the Loam and four Psychatogs are really the only expensive requirements.  I think you can get by, substituting weaker cards for the likes of Fact or Fiction, Gifts Ungiven, Pernicious Deed and Cunning Wish.  Buried Alive, for example, can put Stinkweed Imp, Wonder, and Genesis into your graveyard.  Deep Analysis is still pretty good.  You could also play with Telling Time or Peer Through Depths.  Heck, if you're not too concerned about legality, just play with Impulse or Brainstorm.

[Shmn]

Cheap, control, alterable, and competitive. To keep it cheap, you will probably have to go with mono color and investing your budget into better spells instead of manasources. Red, green and white hardly support a control by themselves so that leaves us with black and blue. Both fair well, but they are not tier 1. In fact I don't know if any powerless deck is tier 1 right now, much less anything under at least 300-400$ budget. Anyhow, I argue that you can build a competitive deck within the given constraints. Black control is fairly fun, but it's not alterable much. Sinkholes would also be rather important, so I would lean on blue on this.

I have to admit that I'm not completely unbiased here: I just built a mono blue control for myself. I had a larger budget but the same basic principle: non-powered, alterable and at least to some extent competitive. Basically you can pretty much build it as you like; there is an extensive variety of counterspells and drawing spells to choose from. I would recommend at least Counterspell (duh), Muddle The Mixture and Mana Leak. Others include but are not limited to Rewind, Thwart, Daze, Force Spike, Remand, Memory Lapse, Remove Soul etc. To be truly competitive, Force Of Wills are neccessary, so you could consider them in the future. It is actually a must have card for almost all control decks. For drawing and shuffling you should look into cards like Brainstorm, Impulse, Accumulated Knowledge, Sensei's Divining Top and Ophidian.

As for other cards in the deck you should include the cornerstone of the deck, Back To Basics. Vedalken Shackles or Propaganda is good against aggros, and why not for controls or combos that rely on creatures aswell. Additionally, Chalice Of The Void and Powder Keg work well as catastrophe prevention strategies. All of these are relatively cheap cards, and replaceable with cheaper variants if need be. For win condition you can go Morphling, Rainbow Efreet or hell even Benthic Behemoth*.  :lol:

You can modify the deck with relative ease to a Landstill for example, or add another color for several possibilities as almost all control decks base on blue. Keeping with blue you can also change the win condition to Trix (Illusions + Donate), or create an artifact heavy deck with Tinker + DSC and Thirst For Knowledges.

That's just a suggestion, however. Go with what feels right for you.

*A friend of mine had a mono blue control with Benthic Behemoth and he demanded that everyone who lost to him would sign the card. In a short while the Behemoth was all black, covered with signatures. Even guys with p9 lost to it occasionally.

[liquidrain101]

Thanks for the replies, although psychatog would fit my needs, one of my friends already plays psychatog and I don't want something similar. I did some more looking around and I think blue control WOULD suit my tastes, but don't most people run U/W Control? I looked at this article: http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=13910.0

Does this guy know what hes talking about? By the way, my friend has 2 force of wills and 1 morphling which I may be able to get for a good price so I am considering this deck. I don't need it to be "tournament" competitive, just able to beat most random decks that I face, none of which are tier 1 tournament quality.

[Jacob Orlove]

If the decks you're playing against aren't insanely good, you can very easily run 2-3 colors on a $0 manabase. Between stuff like Sakura-Tribe Elder and the rest of the green manafixers, Ravnica block bounce duals, and reasonable spell selection, you can easily accomodate 2+ colors, more if green is your base color (which is not a bad idea, actually).

Matt's Survival suggestion is a good one. Survival control is both powerful and resilient, although the survivals themselves aren't that cheap anymore.

[Shmn]

I used to play U/W Control a few years back. Swords To Plowshares, Balance and Seal Of Cleansing are probably the strongest contestants for splashing white. And Jacob is right that you can play several colors without duals or fetches, but less efficiently and being open to Wastelands which are very common.

As for Survival, it's pretty fun aswell - especially with Sneak Attacks and Genesis'.

Here's my current Mono Blue Control decklist if you're interested:

Spells (33)
4 Counterspell
4 Force of Will
3 Misdirection
3 Stifle
2 Back To Basics

4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Brainstorm
1 Fact or Fiction

4 Powder Keg
2 Crucible Of Worlds
2 Vedalken Shackles

Creatures (2)
2 Morphling

Mana (25)
14 Island
4 Polluted Delta
4 Wasteland
1 Strip Mine
1 Sol Ring
1 Mox Diamond

Though I am going to try Hatching Plans + Perilous Research for a drawing engine.

[Ephraim]

If the decks you're playing against aren't insanely good, you can very easily run 2-3 colors on a $0 manabase. Between stuff like Sakura-Tribe Elder and the rest of the green manafixers, Ravnica block bounce duals, and reasonable spell selection, you can easily accomodate 2+ colors, more if green is your base color (which is not a bad idea, actually).

Matt's Survival suggestion is a good one. Survival control is both powerful and resilient, although the survivals themselves aren't that cheap anymore.

Not to toot my own horn, but Oversold Cemetery control is a reasonable facsimile of Survival-based control.  It just places the emphasis on effects that will add up over time instead of effects that will do more immediately.  (To use Anthony Alongi's terminology, in both single- and multi-player games, it has a high "Cockroach" factor.)

[Harlequin]

I think madness is very fun for budget.

I would suggest Blue Green control madness or the more popular Blue Green Red Madness.  Lets see...

UG Control Madness:

Mana [22] --
0-2 Gaea's Craddle (a bit $)
0-4 Yavimaya Cost (again can be expensive)
Fores and Islands *I would keep lands about 1 to 1 Forests and Island

Control Magic [12-14 cards]
4 Rune Snag (coldsnap)
2-4 Circular Logic
0-2 Echoing Truth
0-4 "Gain control of" cards* see bellow

Draw/Discard/control creatures [6-8]
3-4 Merfolk Looter
1-2 Wonder
0-4 Deep analysis
0-4 Compulsive Research
0-4 Careful Study
0-3 Memory Mask
0-2 Quiet Speculation (obviously only if you have deep analysis and Roar of the wurm)
0-2 Waterfront Bouncer
0-4 Hapless researcher

Muscle Cards [16-18]
3-4 Basking Rootwalla [not to be confused with normal "Rootwalla"]
3-4 Wild Mongrel
2-4 Arrogant Wurm
0-3 Roar of the Wurm
0-3 Aquameba
0-2 Terravore

** Stealing cards are always fun, they include (but are not limted too)
Control Magic
Dream Leash
Domineer
Legacy's Allure
Vedalken Shackles
Gilded Drake (Good if you have alot of waterfront boucers and/or Echoing truth)

======
Money Modifications:

-- Umezawa's Jite would be a fantastic addition to the deck, also Sword of Fire and Ice ain't that bad either.

-- Obviously Tropical Islands (and the Desentian Shock-Duel) and fetchlands will help stabilize your mana

-- Force of will is a staple for competative magic players

[netherspirit]

I've played various casual decks for ages and control always seems the best, cards I'd recommend (obviously these are casual, if you can get better do so) are:

Counterspell
Rewind
Demonic consultation
Diabolic edict
Discombobulate
Extraplanar lens (great in mono blue control)
Ensnaring bridge
Necropotence (yes, I know it's broken, but it's still cheap and easy to get)
Power sink
Lifetap (good sideboard material, depending on metagame)
Paralyze
Meekstone
Future sight (can often mean game over)
Juntu stakes
Dream halls (again this can mean game over)
Opt
Frantic search (few people seem to play this now, hence why I'm classing it as casual)
Drain life
Propaganda/Ghostly prison
Crosis's charm (so fun with stasis)
Stasis
Truce
Psychic possession

Obviously the majority of those are control based, but in general I've found a control deck can be easily built for £20-30 (dunno what that is in dollars) and sometimes even less. I hope that helps, and don't dismiss cards like Truce until you've actually tried them.

If you do decide to try control I would seriously suggest investing in a Dream Halls, 2-3 Future Sights and some card drawers, a lot of which are run in tier 1 decks anyway, but can still be easily got (in general), ie Brainstorm, Thirst for Knowledge, Accumulated Knowledge, and even Flow of Ideas (especially with Dream Halls). Oooh, and try Delusions of Mediocrity if you find you have a few slots that need filling.

[Illissius]

Hmm, lots of interesting possibilities here; especially if no card is outright disallowed.
You could play Oath. Stasis. Accelerated Blue. Forbiddian. Draw-Go. CounterPhoenix. TurboHaups. Napster. Trick. Hell, Squirrel Prison. Can't really go over two colors though, or the mana base starts becoming either unstable or expensive... (which is too bad; Dromar's Charm is a fun card).

I like blue. UB pretty much means Psychatog, which is apparently out. (Or does someone know of a distinct and not strictly worse UB control deck?) UW is traditional, but sort of boring. That leaves UG (Oath), UR, or plain U.

Crapping out decklists is easy and fun, so I'll do all three.

Oath:

4 Brainstorm
4 Impulse
4 Fact or Fiction
2 Sensei's Divining Top
2 Future Sight
4 Counterspell
4 Mana Leak
2 Dissipate
2 Confiscate
4 Oath of Druids
2 Gaea's Blessing
1 Phantom Nishoba
1 Tidespout Tyrant
1 Palinchron
4 Forbidden Orchard
3 Treetop Village
2 Faerie Conclave
10 Island
4 Forest

Estimated cost: $55-ish (I'm looking at this, not sure if it's an accurate resource)
Palinchron got its errata reversed, so Oathing it up is fun.


CounterBurn:

4 Counterspell
4 Mana Leak
4 Remand
4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Fact or Fiction
4 Fire // Ice
4 Electrolyze
3 Nevinyrral's Disk
2 Shard Phoenix
2 Niv-Mizzet, the FIremind
2 Palinchron
4 Shivan Reef
4 Faerie Conclave
2 Nivix, Aerie of the Firemind
8 Island
5 Mountain

Estimated cost: $65-ish.


Accelerated Blue:

4 Whispers of the Muse
4 Fact or Fiction
4 Counterspell
4 Remand
2 Mana Leak
2 Dissipate
4 Powder Keg
2 Nevinyrral's Disk
2 Masticore
2 Meloku the Clouded Mirror
2 Palinchron
4 Grim Monolith
4 Faerie Conclave
20 Island

Estimated cost: $50-ish


On a random note, some powerful cards like Strip Mine and Demonic Tutor are fairly cheap. Not sure how frowned upon they would be.

[Matt]

Isochron scepter's always fun.

[nataz]

Squirrel Prison.

I vote for that. I always wanted to play that.

[technogeek5000]

ok my little bro plays this.

buy a golgari deck then add odyessy block threshold BG cards, good ones are chlrorophant, krosan beast, stitch together, cabal ritual, nimble mongoose, and frightcrawler. add multiple golgari brownscales, grave trolls, stinkweed imp, shambling shells and some control (duress, naturalize) support (demonic, vampiric tutors, and imperial seal [all restricted]) and you have a crazy fun deck to use. dregde your cards to activate thresholders, thats how you play it.

its fun to use this deck because all at once your opponent has to see something like this: you dregde golgari brownscale gain 2 life and you will most likely activate your thresholders making a good number of the cards on your board getting power boost, the brownscale will be back in that turn

[technogeek5000]

just like this deck it is always a fun thing to take a pre built deck and look at mechanics from other sets that work very well with them.