A couple of weeks back I was thinking of some way to abuse the new, very cheap double striker from Ravnica, Boros Swiftblade. For RW you get a nice 1/2 double-striking body. I wanted to abuse this cheap beatstick with some neat equipment, so I started constructing, and this is what I came up with:
Hawt Metal v1.1
4 Bigass Swiftblade
4 Auriok Cheatshaper
4 Selesnya Carddrawer (Evangel)
2 Leonin Shikari
2 Capashen Unicorn
4 Skullclamp
4 Insanial Plating
1 Fireshrieker
1 Sword of Night and Day
1 Sword of Fire and Ice
1 Loxodon Warhammer
4 Steelshapers Gift
4 Swords to Plowshares
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Glimmervoid
4 Ancient Den
4 Tree of Tales
3 Great Furnace
1 Tolarian Academy
4 Aether Vial
The deck is build around a couple of tricks. First, there is the Evangel / Skullclamp drawengine. Both cards fit very nice into the deck, as both are cheap, and easily reached. Second, there is the mana-distribution. In the ideal case, Aether Vial and Auriok Cheatshaper will work together to lighten the mana requirements, so you can spend your mana on casting equipment and drawing cards from the Evangel engine. The deck can have a nice early game, dropping some artifacts and a Swiftblade and smashing face, but it can also have a very strong mid-late game by drawing loads of cards, returning critters with the B/W swords, drawing with the U/R one, and gaining life with the hammer. Having a 40+/2 double striker with trample, spiritlink and double strike on turn 8 is not uncommon
At the moment I am pondering about a couple of things. One of them being if red is actual the right splash to go with the very nice Wg core of the deck. Although swiftblade and bolts add a nice touch, black has some nice removal too, and may have some cool critters to boot (a certain card-drawing critter for 1B comes to mind...). Or could blue add some nice tricks I am missing (meddling mage or something?).
Anyone have suggestions on this?
Second thing I am thinking about is maybe replace a couple of critters for a couple of Eladamri's Calls, as I did with the steelshapers gifts to add some flexibility to my equipment base. Cutting an Evangel and maybe 2 swiftblades could get me the Unicorns when I need to wreck an artifact / enchantment, the Shikari when I want to fuck up the opponents blocking plan, or the Steelshaper when it is hiding in my deck somewhere.
Last is the choice for the Capashen Unicorn. Although it looks nice in the deck (I can draw cards from it AND wreck stuff with it AND return it with the BW sword), maybe there is a more interesting one? I have seen Viridian Zealot already, but I don't like the GG cc, and also, the 2/1 body makes it less interesting for clamp-shenenigans.
This deck is build for single AND multiplayer by the way, with removal, draw, beats and lifegain (important to be able to smash face and gain loads of life at the same time).
Oh, and I am considering a Words of Wilding or two, which turns double clamp + steelshaper into 1: draw three cards
