F0X's MtG Deckbuilding and Advice Workshop!

[F0X]

Hello!! And Welcome to F0X's Magic the Gathering Deck-building and Advice Workshop!
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So, as you might imagine, this thread is for people to ask questions about Magic and seek help and advice in all things MtG related! I used to play Magic on a Semi-Professional level in 2011-2014, and now I host MtG workshops at my local cardshop once or twice a month in addition to playing regularly at low REL (Rule Enforcement Level) tournaments like Friday Night Magic, Game Day, Pre-Releases, ect.

The most fun I have ALWAYS had when it came to playing magic is deck creation! There are so many elements to creating a magic deck that it alone keeps me invested in the game. But for many players this can be overwhelming difficult and can even discourage many players from even wanting to play the game at all! So this is where I can come in!

The reason I am creating this thread is for three reasons!
1. To help players create and improve their deck for the appropriate format they wish to play in.
2. To showcase decks that I create for either my local tournament, or something I would like to share just because I think its great!
3. To help answer rules questions, clear up card confusion, or just give advice on strategy and tactics!

So, if you'd like to submit a deck for improvement/alteration, please use the following format:
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Deck Submission Example

Format (Examples: Standard, Modern, EDH, Legacy, Casual, ect)
Colors: (Examples: Mono Red, Boros, U/W, Jund, G/W/B, G, ect)
Theme/focus: (Example: Hyper-Agro, Control, Midrange, Tempo, Combo, Dragons, Soldiers, ect)
Deck:
#_of_Cards Name_of_Card
Example Decklist:
Format: Modern
Colors: Jund, AkA R/G/B
Theme/Focus: Midrange
Deck
Creatures
2 Broodmate Dragon
3 Thundermaw Hellkite
3 Stormbreath Dragon
4 Solemn Simulacrum
3 Huntmaster of the Fells
Planeswalkers
1 Garruk, Apex Predator
1 Ugin, the Spirit Dragon
1 Vraska the Unseen
Instant
2 Abrupt Decay
3 Terminate
3 Lightning Bolt
Sorcery
4 Farseek
3 Maelstrom Pulse
Land
2 Blackcleave Cliffs
2 Raging Ravine
4 Verdant Catacombs
1 Mountain
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Blood Crypt
1 Ghost Quarter
2 Stomping Ground
3 Overgrown Tomb
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Wooded Foothills
2 Swamp
1 Forest
Sideboard
SB: 2 Feed the Clan
SB: 2 Anger of the Gods
SB: 1 Chandra, Pyromaster
SB: 1 Thrun, the Last Troll
SB: 1 Obstinate Baloth
SB: 2 Fulminator Mage
SB: 2 Ancient Grudge
SB: 1 Duress
SB: 3 Thoughtseize

So there ya go!! By all means I look forward to helping you all in your MtG endeavors! Never hesitate to ask, and I am always happy to help anyone test out their deck as long as I have time to do so!

-F0X

(Disclaimer! This thread is somewhat under-construction and I will be adding more content to this post, but I will happily accept requests/questions at any time.)​

 

[F0X]

So in my General Chat Thread, @Gwazi Magnum asked me to make a deck revolving around Elderscale Wurm and today I am going to post that Deck List here and talk more about it. But first, why would we want to make a deck around Elderscale Wurm in the first place? Well first let me start by saying you should play this card just for the amount of "7"'s that are in it! That alone will win you all the games ever. =P

But seriously, this guy is great for the fact that as long as he is play, your life total cannot go below 7, and that is a big deal. People who are trying to race you can no longer do so, you can accept as much damage as you'd like, but each time your life total would be reduced to 7, it goes back up to 7 again. Pretty sweet! But... There are two big flaws with this guy that we should probably look at very closely.

1. He cost 7 mana! That is quite a bit of mana to be throwing him down, but luckily he is in green and we can easily solve this problem.
2. He has no way to protect himself. While this is frustrating, good deck building will make this point not matter too much. We are going to focus on having some early threats in the deck that will need attention, as well as spells that protect all of our creatures.

The Deck

GW Elderscale Wurm

Format: Modern
Colors: Green White
Theme/Focus: Midrange/Ramp
Deck
Creatures
3 Elderscale Wurm
2 Avacyn, Angel of Hope
4 Avacyn's Pilgrim
4 Mirran Crusader
3 Blade Splicer
2 Sun Titan
4 Solemn Simulacrum
Artifacts
4 Sphere of the Suns
Enchantments
3 Asceticism
Sorcery
4 Farseek
Instant
3 Valorous Stance
Land
4 Gavony Township
4 Windswept Heath
4 Canopy Vista
4 Temple Garden
2 Ghost Quarter
4 Sunpetal Grove
1 Plains
1 Forest
SB: 3 Oblivion Ring
SB: 3 Day of Judgment
SB: 3 Obstinate Baloth
SB: 3 Thragtusk
SB: 2 Gaea's Revenge
SB: 1 Dragonlord Dromoka

Alright, as you see I went for green white rather than mono green, so I'll talk about that for a moment. Green White gives us some fantastic threats to work with in the forms of Mirran Crusader and Blade Splicer for the early game (They can come out T2 with an Avacyn's Pilgrim) and recursion with Sun Titan who can get these back as soon as he comes into play, and every time he attacks. Restoration Angel in the deck because there are so many great things she can bounce, but I opted for another card I'll talk about when I start talking about the protection. Restoration Angel might still be better, but without testing both more its hard to say.

So I talked about the threats a little bit, but how are we getting there? Well, we have Avacyn's Pilgrim, Sphere of the Suns, and Farseek. The OG list I posted had Rampant Growth instead of Farseek, however I realized that isn't nearly as good. Having access to Avacyn's Pilgrim in the deck gives our deck a one drop, and allows us to cast our two and three mana spells for sure on turn two. This makes our deck much more consistent than just having another form of ramp. Farseek allows us to snag those wonderful Canopy Vistas or Temple garden out of our deck. Sphere of the Suns is in our deck for one big reason, there is a chance that we have two Gavony Townships in our opening hands, and this gives us a way to stay in the game and still cast our spells after turn three! And Solemn Simulacrum is also a great 4 drop that not only gets us another land, but also snags us a card if he dies! So attack away with him, or block anything they throw at us, he helps us dig deeper into out bigger scary stuff! So, if all goes well, we can do the following turn order:
T1: Land, Avacyn's Pilgrim (2 mana)
T2: Land, Farseek (4 mana)
T3: Land, Solemn Simulacrum (6 mana)
T4: Land, Eld.Wurm
Now... This is just one option, so we could always do something like this too...
T1: Land, Avacyn's Pilgrim (2 mana)
T2: Land, Blade Splicer (3 Mana)
T3: Land, Farseek, Sphere of the suns (6 mana)
T4: Land, Whatever we want with Seven Mana...

So, the point is the deck can very easily hit 7 mana by T4 very easily, which is pretty great. Ramp also makes it so that we are not reliant on land in the late game, and there is nothing worse than "top decking" a land when you really need a powerful spell. But that is also the downside, late game it can be often that we draw more of our ramp that we don't really need, which can put us a bit behind. If you find that this happens often in your games, consider playing cards like: White Sun Zenith, Entreat the Angels, or my favorite Secure the Wastes. Having lots of mana is a great means for casting a bunch of Cats, Angels, or Soldiers. Especially since we are playing Gavony Township which makes tokens really strong really fast.

So, what's protecting our deck from other people's removal and such? Well, we have three different cards (8 cards in total) that offers the deck some great protection. First up we have Avacyn, Angel of Hope. Pretty great, give everything indestructible, and since we are a ramp deck, we can play her turn 4, but more likely turn 5 or 6. If she is in play, she wins us the game. Next up, we have Asceticism! This card is pretty sweet, though this is the worst of the three spells I am going to talk about and why I considered Restoration Angel over it. It costs 5 mana, and gives creatures we control Hexproof, and if they were to die in combat or from a wrath effect, we can pay 2 mana and regenerate our guy! Seems pretty sweet! It helps our deck get around all sorts of nasty stuff, and if we see they are a black deck with lots of kill spells, we can not play our threats until after this card is in play! The last card is Valorous Stance. Giving one of our creatures indestructible and saving their life is why its there, and killing a scary guy they have can be great to!

The land I have talked about quite a bit, so I won't touch on that too much. So now I'll go over the sideboard. There are really only two types of decks that give us big problems: Burn/Hyper Agro, and Control.
Against Control we have Dragonlord Dromoka and Gae's Revenge. Our Dragon makes it so that they can't cast spells on our turn, making their instants a whole less relevant. Our Elemental has Haste, is an 8/5, and can't be targeted by anything other than green spells. Oh... And neither of them can be countered... Also, if they are playing discard, Obstinate Baloth is great!

Against Agro we have Obstinate Baloth and Thragtusk. If we go T3 Baloth T4 Thragtusk, Agro has lost. They can't deal with those bodies, and you just gained 9 life in two turns. Against the masses or high volumes of tokens or many creatures, Day of Judgement is great. We don't have to play our creatures, and if they have 0 hand and you've been ramping, DoJ kills everything they have and then you can follow it up with Sun Titan and get your guy back. Pretty great!!

Oblivion Ring is there for your problem non-creature stuff like Artifacts, Enchantments, and Plainswalkers. It was kinda slow to have in our mainboard, but once you know what you're going up against, you'll know if you need Oblivion ring.

And there you have it!! Now, this deck could be a lot different in many ways, but the main request was to build around Elderscale Wurm, and that is what I did! Let me know what you think and if you'd like a deck crafted as well, don't hesitate to ask!!

^.^'~
F0X