Deck Suggestions

[Magickman]

Hello everyone. I'm finally trying to get back into playing T1 on a semi-regular basis and I've been doing a little research. This is the deck (Version 1.0) that I have come up with after looking at other various decks and cards. Any suggestions?

// Lands 14
    4  Polluted Delta
    4  Tundra
    3  Underground Sea
    1  Badlands
    1  Scrubland
    1  Tolarian Academy

// Creatures 8
    3  Auriok Salvagers
    4  Trinket Mage
    1  Aven Mindcensor

// Spells 38
    4  Force of Will
    4  Mana Drain
    2  Misdirection
    1  Time Walk
    1  Ancestral Recall
    4  Brainstorm
    1  Rystic Study
    2  Thirst for Knowledge
    2  Swords to Plowshares
    1  Yawgmoth's Will
    1  Crusible of Worlds
    1  Tormod's Crypt
    1  Fact or Fiction
    1  Tinker
    1  Mox Jet
    1  Mox Pearl
    1  Mox Ruby
    1  Mox Sapphire
    1  Black Lotus
    1  Lotus Petal
    1  Demonic Tutor
    1  Vampiric Tutor
    1  Mystical Tutor
    1  Burning Wish
    1  Decree of Justice
    1  Tendrils of Agony


// Sideboard 15
SB: 1  Moat
SB: 1  Swords to Plowshares
SB: 1  Eon Hub
SB: 1  Crucible of Worlds
SB: 2  Twin Casts
SB: 4  Disenchants
SB: 1  Decree of Justice
SB: 1  Tendrils of Agony
SB: 1  Wrath of God
SB: 2  Engineered Explosives


Thanks in advance!!

[hvndr3d y34r h3x]

-misdirections.  I've played a lot of misdirection on my day, there aren't enough targets right now other than fow and drain. duress is much more useful in the current meta

-2 polluted delta +2 flooded strand. makes you less hated by to pithing needle and extirpate.
(^this is one of those basic tricks you'll learn pretty soon)

- badlands - scrubland + basic island. waste lock and magus of the moon pops up a lot

-burning wish

- rhyistic study. its not fast enough to be effective.

+2 thirst for knowledge. its the best draw spell for any deck using artifacts and yards.

-crucible. seems a bit awkward and clunky in this list, its more for shop decks.

+gifts ungiven. this will get you your win condition

+aether spell bomb+ lions eye diamond. you forgot the "bomb" part of bomber man.

I know my numbers don't work out but these are just things that jumped out at me right away.

Some of these cuts might seem a bit harsh, but that’s because t1 is about optimizing as much as possible. Everyone has access to almost every card ever printed, black lotus set the bar pretty high.

[MirariKnight]

Aside from the above suggestions, which are mostly good, I would like to point out a few things:
You run Tinker but nothing worthwhile to Tinker out (if you really want to use it, look at Darksteel Colossus or Platinum Angel)
Pithing Needle and Chalice of the Void are really good in this deck and they work nice with Trinket Mage (even as 1 ofs)
Decree of Justice is kinda interesting, but I think that I would take that out in order to fit in more Mindcensors (at least 3 of them is really good imo)

[Magickman]

Thanks for the suggestions. I call really see what you mean about extirpate and pithing needle. That makes sense.

Darksteel Colossus or Platinum Angel are good tinker choices, I will look into maybe putting one of them in if I keep tinker.

This may sound stupid, so I apologize in advance, but how does the combo work in bomberman? Or maybe a better rephrasing of the question is how is the combo/win condition set up and executed in bomberman? I think I have an idea, and I know what the win conditions are in this deck currently (Tendrils and/or Decree), but if I modify it to better reflect "bomberman" outright, what will I need to know?

And finally, in your guy’s opinion, what is the most common 4 card deck pull from gifts ungiven?

Thanks for all the advice and help. I'm a little rusty as you can see.....ok, ok, A LOT rusty....but at least I have a willingness to learn. lol

[Harlequin]

Bomberman combo:

Resolve a salvager
Have Both of these in play or in your yard:
 a Black Lotus (or Lion's eye diamond)
 any of the Mirodin Spellbombs
(trinket mage with find both)

Now you activate salvager targeting the lotus.  play lotus pop for white, activate salvager to get back to lotus, play it, pop for white ... then you have an arbitrary about of white.  Now with all your white, you can pop it for any color you want and continue to recure the lotus with your left over white mana while you pop the lotus for other colors.  Now that you have all the mana you need in all the colors you want - you start using salvager to return the spellbomb.  Now you activate the draw a card ability of the bomb and ... continue to do that until you draw your deck.   

In the earliest itterations of the combo was to run 1 Pyrite Spell Bomb.  With the pyrite bomb, you just get infinite off the lotus, and recure the Pyrite bomb for infite "deal 2 damage" to the face. 

The "wins" of today's bomberman are a bit more complex.  The idea was that bomberman could be a deck with zero dead cards (or possibly 1 giant robot as a dead card) and still stay in WU.  There really is no reason to run Pyrite Spell Bomb... because in non-omg-I-win situations, AEther spellbomb is generally beter.  This is especially true today where AEther Spellbomb is great against GAT.   I think Bomberman of today should be running 2 AEther bombs and at least 1 (maybe 2) Engineered Explosives.  Ands thats all you really need to win.  You draw your deck, then play EE for 0 and pop it.  Now recure EE (along with all your moxen) and replay them.  At this point it might be smart to use AEther spellbomb to return all your non-salvager creatures to your hand.  Now pop EE at 1, and 2, and 3, [not 4 - salvager], and 5 if needed.  Now you've basically cleared thier board.  If you really need to blow EE at 4 (say becaue of moat or something stupid), then you can cast EE @4, now cast AEtherbomb and return your salvager to hand (make sure you have ample mana), now blow the EE and then recast the salvager.  At any rate, once the board is decimated - now you play ALL your creatures from hand, and timewalk if you have it.  Either way, when you pass the turn, you're looking at having 5+ playable counters in hand.  Make sure you state that you spend all your mana before you end the turn.  There are two easy ways to do this.  #1 sac lotus for white, and then declare that you activate salvagers ability thousands of times without passing priority, all targeting lotus until you have no mana left in your pool.  Then when the first resolves, all the other do not resolve because they have no legal target.  The other way is to return your EE and just say that X = all the mana left in my mana pool, and cast it.  It will come into play with presumably 5 counters and your all good.



As for big robots for tinkering - I'd go with Sundering Titan.  Just learn how he totally 'cheats' in your favor around double targeting duels.

[Purple Hat]

it's not just that Aether spellbomb is better when you're not winning, it's that after you generate infinite mana, draw your deck, blow up the world for 0-3 and 5, bounce your salvagers, blow up the world for 4, replay your salvagers along with all your other dudes and time walk or pass the turn with 7 counters in hand and tons of mana it doesn't really matter if your opponent has any life left.  the effect of pyrite is completely redundant.

LED is a terrible card in a control deck.  discarding your hand is like the worst play ever for bomberman.

you're gonna want to have multiple mindcensors.  that card is amazing and reason to play bomberman type decks all by itself.

[Harlequin]

Bomberman, or more accurately: Salvager based decks, are actaully surprizingly loose in terms of how many "meta" or "open" slots the deck has.  Personally, I would say that one of the best Salvager players on the east cost has got be Oliver Beaumont.  If you look at Myriad Games reports for the past 6 months, not only does Oli consistantly make top 8 with a salveragers deck - but the decks dramatically differant.  So for the core deck I would say:

Core Mana [23]
7 5Mox,Lotus,Sol
1 Tolarian Acad
12-13 Fetchs+Duels+Basics
2-3 "Other" lands (LOA, Strip, Ruins of Tolaria Academy Ruins *edited, Tolaria West)

Core "Always 4-ofs"
4 Force
4 Brainstorm

Core Cards not always 4-ofs:
3 Trinket Mage
3 Mana Drain
3 Thrist for Knowledge
3 Salvagers

Other Core Cards:
1 Recall
1 Timewalk
1 Engineered
1 AEther Spellbomb
1 Bounce spell
------------------


That Leaves an amazing 12 slots left in the main deck.

To hash out those slots the general structure would be:

1 [TMage, TfK]

~3 Aven Mindsensor or Meddling Mage.  I think Aven Mindsensor is leaps and bounds ahead of MM in this meta, so much so that I almost put it in the core deck.  But if MM is better for you, this is the slot it would fill.

3-4 "Trinkets" [Tormods, Top, Needle, extra spellbomb, extra EE, Chalice, even something crazy like skullclamp is not unheard of]

2-5 extra control cards [Leak, extra drain, Nix, Misdirrection, Swords to Plowshare, extra bounce]

2 "Win" bombs [Tinker/Bot, Cunning Wish, even crazt things like: Grand Arbitor IV, Terrifi, or Decree of Justic] 

--- Or you could slim down on the above and splash black for Tutors and even Yawg.

[zeus-online]

Personally i see no reason not to splash black for demonic and will, this is a recurring theme for me in almost any controlish type 1 decks...Those two cards does so much for just a few slots and a slightly worse mana base...I'd probably go with:

Mana: (24)
4 Flooded strand
1 Polluted delta
3 Island
1 Plains
3 Tundra
2 Underground sea
1 LoA (Not exactly urgent, but it wins games)
1 Tolarian academy
7 Solomoxen
1 Mana crypt

Beats: (9)
4 Trinket mage
3 Aven mindcensor
2 Auriok salvagers (Potentially 1 more if you want)

Disruption: (11)
4 Force of will
4 Mana drain
3 Mana leak

Draw/Search: (10)
4 Brainstorm
3 Thirst for knowledge
1 Fact or fiction
1 Ancestral recall
1 Demonic tutor

Bombs: (2)
1 Time walk
1 Yawgmoth's will

Utility: (6)
2 Cunning wish
2 Æther spellbomb (1  is cutable)
1 Engineered explosives
1 Tormod's crypt

SB:
1 Stroke of genius or Brain freeze for the combo kill...Stroke works on oath, freeze dosn't...But freeze can potentially kill GAT mid-combo in a bad spot.

/Zeus

[Purple Hat]

Personally i see no reason not to splash black for demonic and will

you can't go off on a will turn.

[zeus-online]

Personally i see no reason not to splash black for demonic and will

you can't go off on a will turn.

That is true, but you can replay ancestral, time walk and whatever else you got in the yard... Will isn't necessarily a kill card. Replaying 4+ cards should get you a big enough advantage to win the game.

/Zeus

[Grand Inquisitor]

That is true, but you can replay ancestral, time walk and whatever else you got in the yard... Will isn't necessarily a kill card. Replaying 4+ cards should get you a big enough advantage to win the game.

This deck doesn't run many tutors, and it rarely goes for early ancestral like so many other decks do.  This makes YWill weak early.  Later in the game, you can't win via combo unless you've found time walk, making it situational late game.

Demonic Tutor isn't as powerful in a deck that's redundant and has rather uniform power level among cards.  Also, unlike intuition or gifts, DT doesn't get all the combo pieces together.

It's not that these aren't good, powerful cards, but they can be dead early and the effect on the manabase is enough of a reason not to play them.

[Magickman]

wow guys! Thanks for all the input!

Harlequin, thanks for explaining in just detail. I appreciate it.

Yeah, I'm really not sure about Lion's Eye Diamond myself.

hvndr3d y34r h3x, MirariKnight, zeus-online, Purple Hat, Grand Inquisitor, you all have really great points. I understand this deck A LOT more now. lol

Any further advice and/or discussion are more than welcome. It's nice to insight from people who really now the not only T1 in general but the current metagame.

I'm going to analyze my deck here in a bit and rebuild it for version 2.0 lol.

Thanks again guys!