T4 Stack Question

[AceOfJacks]

Greetings everyone.  


I am a fresh player in the Type 4 environment.  I decided that since I do not have the resources to make a very good Type 4 Stack I decided I would take one of each rare that is currently with the new card format (minus Unhinged, because my playgroup does not play with Unhinged cards, and minus BoK, since I don't have any of those yet).  I ruled out some cards, such as Birds, Chalice, Grim Reminder, Rule of Law, Hum of the Radix, Chrome Mox, etc etc ...

I am still missing a few cards, and I was wondering if this stack sounds like it's good?

I has some crap, and it has some good cards, I think I'm missing 40 rares, and the current card count is 297.


The rules my group plays by:
1- Rule of Law (Arcane Lab) in effect.

2- You have infinite mana for spells.

3- You can use each ability a maximum of 2 times per turn, or you have a maximum of 10 mana to use on each ability.  
-Example:  Leonin Sun Standard has the ability "1W: Creatures you control get +1/+1 until end of turn."
You can use this ability twice per turn, because the maximum amount needed to use this twice is 4 mana, which if I remember correctly, is less than 10.  The reason we capped it off at 2 is because of that very card, as well as Kumano, Master Yamabushi.
-Example2: Tatsumasa, the Dragon's Fang has the ability "6, Remove Tatsumasa, the Dragon’s Fang from the game: Put a 5/5 blue Dragon Spirit creature token with flying into play. Return Tatsumasa to play under its owner’s control when that token is put into a graveyard."
You can only use this ability once per turn (assuming the token dies and you get the Tatsumasa back in the same turn), because if you would use the Tatsumasa again, you would exceed the 10 mana limit for this ability.

Note: This rule does not apply to all of the abilites on the card.  You have 10 mana for EACH ability, not 10 mana total for all abilities.  This means that if you had Greater Morphling in play, you would be able to use each of his abilites twice, because each of them would cost less than 10 mana to play if you played them 2 times.

4- At the beginning of the first game, we all get 40 card decks(either by draft or by shuffle up and deal, based on how much time is available), and at the end of each game, each player chooses 10 cards in their deck and sets them aside.  10 new cards (for each player) will be shuffled and dealt from the remainder of the T4 stack and will be added to your deck.

5- Cards that are banned:
a- a card with an ability that is broken (Glissa Seeker, as we cannot determine how much mana is in the pool)
b- a useless card for the format (Grim Reminder, as this is a singleton format; hum of the radix, as we have mana available; altar of shadows, as we do not always have a use for that extra mana; goblin charbelcher, as there are literally 6 lands in the format "blinkmoth nexus and 5 of the CoK lands"; etc etc)
c- creatures that have less than 4 points of power and toughness combined (less than 1/3, 2/2, 0/4, etc) UNLESS they have a good ability (temporal adept is good for this, because it bounces stuff.  Savannah Lions however ... sucks for this format)
d- things with x unless they have limits or require proper choices (death cloud is banned, but engineered explosives is not)

Cards that are banned at the moment:

Mirrodin - Glimmervoid, Tangleroot, Spellweaver Helix, Quicksilver Fountain, Nightmare Lash, Goblin Charbelcher, Gilded Lotus, Extraplanar Lens, Chrome Mox, Chalice of the Void, Altar of Shadows, Hum of the Radix, Glissa Sunseeker, Grim Reminder, Rule of Law

Darksteel - Wand of the Elements, Trinisphere, Thought Dissector, Serum Powder, Death Cloud, Reshape

Fifth Dawn - Vedalken Shackles, Salvaging Station, Fist of Suns, Doubling Cube, Door to Nothingness, Crucible of Worlds, Rude Awakening, Joiner Adept, Beacon of Creation, Cosmic Larva, Artificer's Intuition

Champions of Kamigawa - "Unditake, the Cloud Keeper", Hall of the Bandit Lord, Forbidden Orchard, "Boseiju, Who Shelters All", Orochi Hatchery, Journeyer's Kite, Nature's Will, Heartbeat of Spring, Glimpse of Nature, Budoka Gardener (2/1 with useless ability), "Asuza, Lost but Seeking" (1/2 with useless ability), "Ben Ben, Akki Hermit" (1/1 with useless ability)

8th Edition - City of Brass, Dingus Egg, Defense Grid, Vernal Bloom, Primeval Force, Plow Under, Natural Affinity, Birds of Paradise, Seismic Assault, Blood Moon, Savannah Lions, Sacred Ground.


Cards I'm not sure about banning:

Reversal of Fortune - Does it violate the one spell limit?
The Snake Legends in CoK - Are there enough snakes to play them when BoK comes out?



My biggest question is ...
Is this stack playable?

[Hi-Val]

T4 should be about huge, flashy stuff and not balance. I like some of your rules, but the limit on mana should just be adapted to limiting certain abilities, such as Quanar. I'd say that if you think a creature is too powerful in its current form for your stack, instead of errataing it, cut it temporarily. Glissa for example looks really fun and not overpowered at all. If you're just building newer sets in now, I'd keep some of the more powerful stuff out, like Tatsuma, The Dragon's Persistent Annoyance.

EDIT: You should really be running Door too. It's not overpowered when you play it if you have enough removal like Gorilla Shaman and Disenchant. It's also really fun and a diplomacy card. Stifle really reins it in too.

[AceOfJacks]

Please note what cards are in my stack.  RARES ONLY from Mirrodin, Darksteel, 5th Dawn, CoK, and 8th Edition.  There isn't enough countermagic, or enchantment/artifact removal.  So Door can actually win the game.

[Nefarias]

Play with the deck. If you and your friends enjoy yourselves, then it's a playable stack, though it could be even more so by adding choice commons, uncommons, and older cards.

[Hi-Val]

You might want to add other neat stuff in as you come across it as well. I found that Hinder (esp with Door) is useful. As far as Door goes, you have Stifle, Ouphe Vandals, Brown Ouphe and Hinder all in the last few sets, as well as oodles of artifact destruction, so if you want Door in, you can easily add stuff to counter it.

If you can find it, grab a Smokespew Invoker from Legions. Heck, I can mail one to you if you need it! They're really useful, have a powerful effect and they're cheap enough to go into any stack. I've also found that if you want/need to, proxying cards to throw in to up the power of the stack works as well. Nobody complains about them and they can make the game more dynamic.

I think what Walkinsponge said is spot-on though. If you guys have fun, it's a good stack. It doesn't need to be foil, foreign or signed to be a sweet deck. By the way, Kiki-Jiki is NUTTY in T4 : )

[CrazyCarl]

I think what Walkinsponge said is spot-on though. If you guys have fun, it's a good stack. It doesn't need to be foil, foreign or signed to be a sweet deck. By the way, Kiki-Jiki is NUTTY in T4 : )

Not gonna lie, a buddy of mine had out Kiki-Jiki AND Quanar out a few days ago.  It was some insane.

But don't worry about what you "do" and "don't" have for your stack - build it so that it's fun for you to play, then spend your free trading time picking stuff up for it .  Eventually you'll get to the point where you want to start pimping it out, and then the world ends

[AceOfJacks]

I think what Walkinsponge said is spot-on though. If you guys have fun, it's a good stack. It doesn't need to be foil, foreign or signed to be a sweet deck. By the way, Kiki-Jiki is NUTTY in T4 : )

Not gonna lie, a buddy of mine had out Kiki-Jiki AND Quanar out a few days ago.  It was some insane.

But don't worry about what you "do" and "don't" have for your stack - build it so that it's fun for you to play, then spend your free trading time picking stuff up for it .  Eventually you'll get to the point where you want to start pimping it out, and then the world ends

The world already ended for me, but I still don't pimp out my cards.  I don't have the resources OR the extra sets of eyeballs to shine up my cards.

[Hi-Val]

If you have lots of crap rares and stuff that will never get traded (like Quanar) then you can get people to draw on them who have the time/resources/artistic skill (points toward signature). Having your friends write nasty comments on cards that killed them is great fun.

[Pern]

I pulled all the foreign cards out of my stack,
except a German Terror, which is called Terror.
You can drop a Type 4 stack on a bunch of casual players
and they get it immediately,
but it screws things up if they can't read the cards.

Shiny, though? Signed? Oh, yeah.
JSS alternate art foil Two-Headed Dragon, foil Cromat, that shit is hot.

[AceOfJacks]

It's people like you that make me hate a lot of things.

[doomhed]

when first starting a T4 stack, take some advice from someone just starting his own- Gold bordered championship deck cards. I had a bunch I got from a n00b collection I bought, and about 75 of them were cards everyone uses for T4. they really bring the cost of a stack down to mere pennies. when you can get wraths, survivals, and all kindsa other goodies like obliterate for nealy free, it is some good.

[Pern]

Your idea of limiting the card pool is interesting.
Has it been fun to play?

So Door can actually win the game.

Door can kill one player, sure, but win the game?
In the entire card pool there are only a couple of cards
that can bring it back or duplicate it.

[doomhed]

in his deck he has white bringer, trash for treasure, second sunrise, roar of reclaimation, and tons of ways to search them out in Type 2 rare only stacks.

[AceOfJacks]

Correct.  It can be revived using several ways.

Some are the ones that were mentioned by doom.

And it's been fun, considering a lot of the people in my group are into T2.  I'm not though.  I'm slowly weaning them into T1.