Icarus's blog: "Somantics"

My AC is fixed.

I hosed somebody at a card shop and bought a bunch of MTG rares (some I actually needed) for about 1/10th their collective value.

As for my "just say no" deck. I am getting POUNDED by my other decks.
Kinda disappointing but ... I don't think it really means anything. I'm going against one of my best designs (has a lot of resets, has a lot of one-way POWA)

Let me break it down again

I have:

Unblockable, accelerated, resetting, progressive "Zombies".

The "black weenie" deck which just dumps out resource efficient minions every turn and burns both players hoping to jump ahead of the damage curve. I own almost all the cards I need to "fix" this deck, I just haven't picked them up from my parent's house. Also, this deck probably cost... $5 to make?

"black artifact" which ... is kind of a design paradox. It was a bunch of really powerful cards that got orphaned and misplaced over time, but it also has a couple cards and a couple themes that rely on sacrificing creatures to get MASSIVE creatures out. Let's put it this way, your average ...3rd turn creature takes three lands to play and probably has ONE ability like "can't be blocked" "isn't damaged by X" "draw/discard cards"
this deck puts out 9 cast cost creatures with at least 3 abilities each and on average, triple the power of a third turn creature.
Its progressive, accelerated, and backdoor.
this is the deck that probably needs THE most work, and has a pretty terrible win average. It has an infinite life stealing combo, but its WAY too hard to get.

"Clerics" which uses 2 cards to create infinite creatures, three cards to create infinite life for the player, and if necessary can take down... oh... about 30 players at once.

I think this is my masterpiece. It's the most progressive, it has an infinite combo, and I know how to win without actually pursuing the infinite combo.
Its good. It can also win with alternative methods. If I get locked out, I search for a different way to win.

"Glimpse"
this is the new deck. In version 2 it has more ways to prevent my opponent's actions, and retained all of its previous "milling" offensive capabilities.
Problem is it is STILL getting hammered.
The one time I beat my Zombie deck was by going into an infinite turn loop.
Basically I had a card that ONE time could give me an extra turn, well I found a way to reuse that card every turn.
I stayed in the loop, burned my opponent's library, and built up my hand with prevantative cards, and then took one turn where I didn't repeat the process. At the beginning of your opponent's turn they have to draw a card (unless they have a card out that prevents this) if at any point, a player can't draw cards from their library when they are being forced to (like if I had a card that made them draw a card when their library was empty) they lose the game.

Damage from creatures is the most common way to beat someone. Its how most of my decks win, whether its by overruning blockers, ignoring blockers, or dumping out giant fatties. "milling" was just a product of Magic putting a rule in place saying "first one out of cards in their library loses" and then later developing cards exclusively for that purpose.

Minimum deck size is 60 cards.
There is no maximum, but its pretty stupid to go bigger than 70. You can only have 4 copies of any one card other than basic landcards.
After 80, your odds of effectively performing your deck's function go way
way
way down.

So most people build a sixty-seventy card deck.

Your starting hand is 7, you draw one card at the beginning of every turn except your first (if you're going first). There are effects that stop card drawing, but its rare, and there are cards that allow or force (there is a difference) card drawing.

So I have to "mill" faster than they can put cards out. Or- I have to mill about 40 cards... and survive twenty.

About 1/3 of any SANE deck is lands.
You should try to stay within your resource curve too- unless you have a way to play more per turn, its one land per turn.
As you progress cards become more and more expensive.

If I can find a way to minimize my opponents offensive capacity to ... say... 5th turn instead of 10th, I can probably survive long enough to mill their entire deck.

Problem is increasing my capacity to mill lowers my capacity to survive.

See where the infinite turn combo came in?

There are ways to prevent damage/offsent damage done with life gain (mostly a green and white function) there are ways to prevent action (mostly a white and blue function) there are ways to ignore both (mostly a red function, some green)
and then there's black
who says
Fuck you, you're already dead.

I'm only running black and blue in this deck. If you understand probability (and I'm hoping you do) you'd understand that a sixty card deck with more than 2 colors (and the colors would need congruous functions) without a method to consistently produce multiple colored resources will fail.

Mana production actually matters.
Just saying.

So, obeying probability, obeying the function of my deck with the most efficient and powerful cards available to me
without making it a "trick" deck
after reviewing version 2 against "creature heavy" decks
I think the deck still needs a little more survivability.

My only alternative to my zombies (which my brother actually says is my best deck)
is to basically hold for the infinite turn combo, and then mill.

I've tried milling fast, I've tried holding and countering power cards
the deck resets too well against Glimpse.
With an average deck I could probably just power mill and take a few attacks, Zombie attacks 3 times (normally unanswered) and most players are dead.

weird thing is, when I'm playing smartest and smartest (no self handicapping to see one deck win) I'm usually one card away from winning with Glimpse.
Could be that I just KNOW zombies better since I've had this deck up and running with mostly the same cards for 8 years.
Could be that Glimpse is just really weak to a deck that actually BENEFITS from mill, resets from Mill, punishes it severely and might not actually reflect a defecit in Glimpse's design.

So I'm going to playtest version 2 against my other decks now :P