CardShark

One card i like to see with tainted sigil and sanguine bonds is Howling Banshee.... you are gaining life anyway so you don't care about the 3 life loss... plus if you have the sigil and the bond out... you gain at least 3 and your opponent loses 9.... just mean... and yes Breath of Malfegor

Hey guys. I have a little deck i put together recently that's really fun to play, if not just for the looks i get when i play it.

Switcheroo

Lands: 23
3 Godless Shrine
3 Sacred Foundry
2 Blood Crypt
4 Swamp
6 Plains
5 Mountain

Creatures: 12
3 Degavolver
3 Dawnfluke
2 Ethereal Champion
4 Magus of the Mirror

Spells: 25
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Dark Ritual
4 Holy Day
2 Banefire
3 Terminate
3 Seething Song
2 Promise of Power
3 Ghostly Prison

If you can't tell, the whole point of my deck is to get myself down to a low life (preferably 1) and then switch life totals with an opponent. I need more things that prevent all damage in an efficient and effective way. So far, Dawnfluke is holding down that part of the fort, and it seems to be doing ok so far. Any suggestions (like in-color cards that let me play the magus during my opponents' turns) would be really helpful. Thanks

If you wanna play risky-but-dirty, you could always run a "can't lose the game" effect like Platinum Angel so that your life total could in fact drop to 0, then swap life totals with someone else. 7 might be a bit much and artifacts are notoriously fragile for people not running blue, but you've got the dark rits and it's impervious to color screw.

Vedalken Orrery could add some instant-speediness to your deck. Also, you might be interested in Safe Passage in place of Dawnfluke.

Thanks Kurai and Garthok and I did, in fact, add some platinum angels. Also, this deck is on Magic Workstation and, as of yet, I can't seem to find M10 on it. If anyone know where I can upload it to the program, that would be great. I would love to run harm's way or safe passage, but right now i can't. I'll definitely try the orrery in place of Belbe's portal though, just to see which one stacks up.

P.S., yes i'm on Magic Workstation quite a lot, and if anyone else is, my handle is The Aids and usually i'm on pretty much all the time. I'm bored a lot and no one that lives 2 or less minutes away from me plays magic. I need to get my fix somehow

Let me preface this by saying I can't build a deck to save my life. In true Johnny style, when I first saw Warp World, I knew I had to build a deck around it, even going so far as to (perhaps ill-advisedly) first-pick it in an M10 draft. (I won the draft though, despite my choice).
Here is what I have so far. Any comments/suggestions?

Tosus' Warp World (Standard-legal)

Enchantment (4)
4x Fertile Ground
Land (20)
10x Forest
10x Mountain
Sorcery (3)
3x Warp World
Creature (33)
3x Ant Queen
4x Ball Lightning
4x Birds of Paradise
3x Bloodbraid Elf
2x Bogardan Hellkite
4x Boggart Ram-Gang
3x Elvish Visionary
3x Keeper of Progenitus
2x Mulldrifter
3x Siege-Gang Commander
2x Wort, the Raidmother

I know what Wort does in this deck, but I'm not really understanding how it helps. Can you elaborate?

It does two things really. Firstly, it gives me tokens, which are good if WW goes off, and can be used by Siege-Gange Commander. Secondly, when I do cast WW, conspiring it helps me get around the inevitable counterspells.
Or is that what you meant when you said you know what it does? It's mostly a defense against counters. I've seen some versions of this deck running Hive Mind to get multiple copies of WW out so that the control player has trouble dealing with all of them. Also, it can make up for the lack of spells by stealing your opponent's. But I'm not sure I want to go that heavily into blue. Though if I do, I was also considering Nucklavee to return WW to my hand after it goes off.

Tosus wrote:Let me preface this by saying I can't build a deck to save my life. In true Johnny style, when I first saw Warp World, I knew I had to build a deck around it, even going so far as to (perhaps ill-advisedly) first-pick it in an M10 draft. (I won the draft though, despite my choice).
Here is what I have so far. Any comments/suggestions?

Tosus' Warp World (Standard-legal)

Enchantment (4)
4x Fertile Ground
Land (20)
10x Forest
10x Mountain
Sorcery (3)
3x Warp World
Creature (33)
3x Ant Queen
4x Ball Lightning
4x Birds of Paradise
3x Bloodbraid Elf
2x Bogardan Hellkite
4x Boggart Ram-Gang
3x Elvish Visionary
3x Keeper of Progenitus
2x Mulldrifter
3x Siege-Gang Commander
2x Wort, the Raidmother

My roommate has a Warp World deck that went 4-1 at FNM on Friday. Here is the list.
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Fertile Ground
4 Trace of abundance
4 Warp World
3 Bloodbraid Elf
3 Mulldrifter
3 Elvish Visionary
3 Siege-Gang Commander
2 Kitchen Finks
2 Broodmate Dragon
1 Ant Queen
1 Hellkite Overlord
1 Bogardan Hellkite
1 Regal Force
1 Murderous Redcap
1 Keeper of Progenitus
13 Forest
9 Mountain

SB
4 Vexing Shusher
3 Cloudthresher
2 Shriekmaw
2 Acidic Slime
2 Anathemancer
1 Vigor
1 Banefire

The first big difference between this deck and your deck is the 4 Trace of Abundance. This not only helps in accelerating more than your deck can, but also ensuring that he has the ability to play some off collor spells, those being Mulldrifter, Broodmate Dragon and Hellkite Overlord. It also allows him to play Anathemance and Shriekmaw out of the sideboard. The more important difference between these decks, in my opinion, is that you only have 3 Warp World in your deck. That, along with the Ram-gangs and Ball Lightnings make this seem more like a Bloodbraid Aggro deck that randomly has Warp World in it. I think that you should try to focus yourself in one direction or the other. By smashing two decks together, I think you greatly dilute the power of either way of winning. Also, you only have 3 Visionary and 2 Mulldrifters, which is not a lot of card draw for a deck that potentially has the ability to go off on turn 4. You need to be able to hit your WW early if that is the plan. Skip even adds a Regal Force to draw extra cards from his BoPs, Bloodbraids and Visionaries.

I am not a big fan of the 3 Ant Queens. You cannot profitably play a more than one of them, since the ability becomes redundant. That is why I like the diversity of threats that Skip includes, specifically the Broodmate Dragons, not only does it stick with the theme making multiple guys per card, but it also provides a sold threat to win with if you cannot get WW to go off. Speaking of getting WW to go off, you use Wort as a way to try and force it through. The problem is that she does very little beyond that. If you are paying six mana for a spell, I think that you are better off with the threat power provided by the aforementioned Broodmates.

I think that the differences between the two decks boils down to when you want to play WW vs. when your non-WW spells matter. For you, you have all these three drops that are very aggressive, but you do not have as much in that helps with finding and maximizing your WW. For Skip, he plays out a lot of acceleration, while dropping early dudes, which allows him to ramp into more power at the top end.

Anyway, hopefully the list and thoughts are useful to you. Now, go have some fun!

Very helpful, thank you!
This is exactly what I meant when I said I couldn't build a deck. But it's from listening to people like you who know what they are talking about and can explain it to us that don't that help me build my deckbuilding skill.
I overlooked the traces, but they will definately go in. Many of the low counts of some of the cards were to keep the budget down more than anything else. But then I took a closer look at cardshark.com... at it turns out I could afford more than I thought
Once again, thanks for the pointers. I shall have fun giving this a whirl.

Alright. It's now time to capitalize on my Leveler/mirror of fate combo. Any ideas for cool cards to play once this combo hits?

wow i haven't done this in a really long time: okay boys i wanna be pimped out lets see what we can do with this

"Sphinx Dust"
Lands:
4 swamps
5 islands
5 plains
3 obelisks of esper
2 reliquary towers

Artifacts:
3 Herbal poultice
3 spellbook
3 mana cylix
3 masks of riddles
3 grogon flail

Artifact Creatures:
3 Arsenal Thresher
3 Sludge Striders
3 Esper Stormblades
2 Metallurgeon
3 Glassdusk Hulk
3 Etherium Sculptors
3 Ethersworn Canonist
3 Filigree Angels
3 Enigma Sphinx

The first problem is that there is not nearly enough mana in this deck. You only have 16 lands. The obelisks cannot be played until you have at least three of those lands. First step, up the land count to at least 24 given that you have six creatures that cost more than 6 mana. Herbal Poultice is all but useless and can be replaced by infinitely better cards. Other than Mask of Riddles, you have no card drawing, so the Spellbooks are not needed, and you most definitely will not need them if you are using Reliquary Tower, which I think is still unnecessary. Since none of the cards in your deck have any heavy color requirements, Mana Cylix seems extraneous.

To replace the regeneration effect from Poultice and Metallurgeon, I would suggest Ethersworn Shieldmage. He is a guy with flash that can completely screw up combat math for your opponent. Most of the artifacts in the deck cost less than Arsenal Thresher, which makes him less than ideal. I would rather see a Glaze Fiend/Thopter Foundry package come in for your heavy artifact interaction. That would also combo well with your Sludge Striders. If you can fit in the appropriate borderposts in place of lands, that would also be good with Glaze Fiend and Sludge Striders. Glassdust Hulk also gets the benefit from artifacts entering the battlefield. There will be times when you get behind, so the deck needs some removal. Scourglass seems like a pretty good inclusion to me if you can find them. Master of Etherium is also really good with all the artifacts going around(including the mana base). I am not sure if you need the 3 Ethersworn Canonists. If you are worried about facing cascade or something like Elves, then the canonists are fine. Ethersworn Adjudicator might be a good finisher as well. He comes down much earlier than Filigree Angel and can put a big hurting on opposing creatures.

4 Fieldmist Borderpost
4 Mistvein Borderpost
6 Plains
5 Island
5 Swamp

4 Glaze Fiend
4 Thopter Foundry
4 Esper Stormblade
4 Glassdust Hulk
3 Sludge Strider
4 Etherium Sculptor
3 Enigma Sphinx
3 Scourglass
3 Sharuum the Hegemon
2 Mask of Riddles
2 Path to Exile

This is how I would evolve things from the list that you gave me. I think that it will be able to hit harder than the orignal list and should have little trouble being able to cast all the spells. If you can get Master of Etherium in there, he would be great as well. You might use him to replace the Sludge Striders and an Enigma Sphinx. Let me know what you think.

sounds good to me. I really haven't had any problems drawing land but i understand where you are coming from. I will make the changes and do a couple play tests and we will see what happens