[Seriously Casual] Holy Compass

[Mouth for War]

With the introduction of the Urza's block, I thought it would be a great idea to make a deck involving all four cardinal direction Paladins, but until Masques came out with the Distorting Lens, it wasn't really worthwhile.

Here goes :

Holy Compass

Lands (24)
10 swamp
10 plains
4 Scrubland


Creatures (18)
4 Northern Paladin
4 Southern Paladin
4 Eastern Paladin
4 Western Paladin
2 Juggernaut (just for a threat)


Spells (18)
4 Dark Ritual
1 Sol Ring
1 Demonic Tutor
3 Distorting Lens
4 Disenchant
2 Dingus Staff
1 Charcoal Diamond
2 Righteous War


Card Explanations

     Northern and Southern Paladins have the added bonus of reading "target permanent," allowing me to hose peoples' mana bases if gotten out early enough with a Lens.

     The 2 Dingus Staff were put in to provide an additional method of dealing damage, since the Paladins end up locking down the board (and using mana) more often than simply swinging away, but the 4cc is a bit much for a deck already loaded down with 4cc's...

     The Charcoal Diamond is in there for additional mana - even though it sucks donkey song.  I'll definitely be looking for something ot replace it with.

     The 2 Righteous War were put in there to avoid the Northern and Southern being nailed by black creature removal and by each other if one of my creatures is Controlled by an opponent.  More often than not, however, they end up being a wasted slot.


     Suggestions for these 5 slots (I'll probably add another Distorting Lens, since the deck depends so heavily on them)?

     Creature-based decks without much creature control simply roll over to this deck, even in multi-player...  Its speed (or lack thereof) works against it, though.

[BWM]

If you feel like splashing a color, Reap might be cool...

[Ephraim]

I can definitely understand why you would want to have four of each Paladin in the deck, but I think that you could clear up a lot of space that you could use to set yourself up better by running only three each of the white Paladins and two each of the black Paladins. You'll still see them a lot, but since with a Distorting Lens in play, they're essentially identical, cutting back there would allow you to build a more versatile deck.

Supposing you've followed that suggestion, that opens up six slots. Drop the cards you were thinking of dropping and add the fourth Distorting Lens and you have ten slots open.

Four Disenchants may be excessive. Your white Paladins should help to cover this area. Because you lack instant-speed card drawing, this slot is probably better filled by Seal of Cleansing anyhow. I'd suggest using two Seals and opening slots 11 and 12.

If you're concerned about mana acceleration or mana fixing, use one or more Darksteel Ingots. I've often found that getting from three mana to four can be a difficult transition, which DIngot eases. Anywhere from 2-4 DIngots could help your mana base. If you'd like a more themely suggestion that can come down earlier, you might consider Star Compass. It barely accelerates you and it doesn't fix your mana at all, but hey -- it's within the deck's theme. I'd suggest 3, which leaves 9 slots remaining.

In all seriousness, I'd add some walls (or something defensive) to this deck. Your offense/lock doesn't seem to begin to come into play until turn 4, which is plenty of time to fall too far behind to recover. Wall of Glare, Angelic Wall, Wall of Souls, and Wall of Esence are all solid defensive cards that can give you time to set up your Paladin lock. Obviously, you could go with any sort of cheap creatures you want, but if you really want to win with the Paladins, this ensures that you're not winning "prematurely" by some other mechanism. I'd probably devote 6 slots to defense, which leaves 3 slots remaining.

The last 3 slots would do well filled with some card drawing. I'm not really sure what else to put there, so three copies of Night's Whisper couldn't possibly hurt.