A Planeswalker's Guide to SPPf (Magic: the Gathering)

[palingensia]

vhati il-dal+curse of death's hold. enjoy.

[niedude]

Curse of death's hold needs 5 mana, it comes in way too late to have a chance of having any good effect with Vhati. Especially when a Planar Cleansing or similar spell can do everything this combo does and usually better.

[Kamotz]

Some people like to combo. Sure, it's easier to hit a Wrath of God and wipe the board with that, but the above combo works as spot-removal, meaning you get to keep your creatures as well.

We've been lacking in combo decks in Standard recently, but I've seen an interesting RUGw combo deck that works off of Deadeye Navigator and cards like Zealous Conscripts, Gilded Lotus, Restoration Angel, Thragtusk, and Huntmaster. You can combo for "infinite" mana, which lets you use the ETB abilities of all your creatures as much as you like (essentially). You can steal all their creatures with Zealous, flicker them with Resto to keep them permanently, and get tons of life/tokens as well. It's a cool deck, but easily disrupted, I've found.

The power a combined Armada Wurm and Thundermaw Hellkite have is downright terrifying.

Armada Wurm is manageable. Because it sits on the field for a whole turn before doing anything and you're usually tapping out to play it (especially in my god-hand scenario). I'm thinking of going down to 1 to increase the number of...something else in my deck. A. Wurm is good, but not against everything. I really like my Naya build...Bant too, but the rise of aggro has made control much harder to maintain. It's definitely still doable, but needs re-tweaking to deal with the increase in these faster aggro builds.

[the3rdH0kage]

I bought the Rakdos Pre-con slong with 2 extra booster packs (for a grand total of 4 pack and the deck). Good pulls were, a second Cryptborn Horror to go along with the one in the deck, a Dreadbore (destroy any creature or PW for 2, Hecks yeah), Sphinx of the Chimes, and Counterflux. Overall some decent pulls and the best one I've gotten from RTR packs (I have had horrible pulls with RTR a Conjuring Currency). But anyway I'll put some of these cards into my B/W/G Token deck.

[palingensia]

Curse of death's hold needs 5 mana, it comes in way too late to have a chance of having any good effect with Vhati. Especially when a Planar Cleansing or similar spell can do everything this combo does and usually better.

yes but curse conveniently curves after vhati, so you can start destroying their dudes immediately. just playing damnation is probably better but w/e it's a perfectly sweet jank combo.

[Kamotz]

yes but curse conveniently curves after vhati, so you can start destroying their dudes immediately. just playing damnation is probably better but w/e it's a perfectly sweet jank combo.

This^.

And like I said, Vhati is targeted, meaning he can tap to kill a specific creature and not just one of your own.

[the3rdH0kage]

I made a Rakdos deck!!!

[Kamotz]

I made a Rakdos deck!!!

Prove it! [/challenge initiated]

Rakdos is very good right now with people still reeling. The format is shifting from the slower control builds to a faster game.

[the3rdH0kage]

Challenge Accepted.

I wish I had Hellrider and Thundermaw Hellkite.

[D-World]

I heard someone won a GP with a self-mill reanimator with Chronic Flooding and Angel of Glory's Rise, then the players ranking from 2 to 15 were all rakdos.

[Kamotz]

That self mill is teched for Rakdos. I played against it last night with Naya and Bant and wrecked face.

Terminus and/or any counterspell stops any of the reanimation from occurring. Also, once you sideboard for it it's criminally under-prepared. Rest in Peace shuts it down completely.

[DucksGoMooful]

My Maelstrom Wanderer deck is up!

[the3rdH0kage]

I got the Selensya pre-con today. Din't get any extra packs though so I got the deck+2 packs. and rare were Cyclonic Rift (yay good card) and Mana Bloom (yay horrible card). I also spent 25 minutes organizing my local K-marts card section because it was absolutely atrocious. It looks awesome now.

[The Admiral]

I think I have everything I need for the Hydra deck, but I need to hash out the sideboard a little more. All I've got for that atm are four Tragic Slips (it runs Ultimate Price main board; Slip kills Aristocrat readily. I'm not sure how useful Victim of Night would be in it. I considered running a few Human Frailties in sideboard) and three Golgari Charms.

[Kamotz]

Victim of night is Great. Best instant-speed kill-spell in the format. It kills Thragtusk, Restoration Angel, Angel of Serenity, Thundermaw, Trostani, Centaur Healer, and Rhox Faithmender. The only creatures it doesn't kill are:

Vampire Nighthawk, Geralf's Messenger, Gravecrawler, Olivia Voldaren, Huntmaster of the Fells, and Falkenrath Aristocrat. That's it. And you don't want to be using a kill-spell on the Zombies anyway since they just come back. And the last three are immune to Ultimate Price too.

Human Frailty is crap.

[The Admiral]

Yeah, there are... like, no good targets for Human Frailty. It looks good on paper (a one-cost kill spell that boffs targets in the most common creature type?), but the targets are more easily managed by almost any other kill spell (Isn't the best human creature, like, Zealous Conscripts, whose biggest threat to the opponent occurs on cast?). Falkenrath doesn't take Slip well, as stated, but I'm not really sure what to do with Voldaren or Huntmaster.

So currently, sideboard of:
4x Tragic Slip
4x Victim of Night
3x Golgari Charm

[Kamotz]

Well. As a strategy you aren't really controlling the board. And you don't really care what they play. You just want to get primordial hydra and corpsejack menace out until you can swing or Essence Harvest for game.

[The Admiral]

Hm... also true, but I think I need a little bit of defense in there, since there are still some things that can bite me.

Also, it seems this standard is a spot... low on early game ramp (or am I just nuts/really missing Birds?). Mind, I have Arbor Elf and Farseek, so that's pretty good already.

[Kamotz]

Arbor elf. Avacyn's Pilgrim, Farseek, Deathrite Shaman. That's basically the Ramp right now. There's also Rangers Path, but its 4mana and doesn't really get as much done at that point in the game.

[niedude]

I posted a WB deck that also makes heavy use of Essence Harvest in the Rate section, be sure to check it out guys!