Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Six Point Strategy-- Recycling

RECYCLING: 6pt Combo Deck
A Magic: The Gathering Deck

Fastbond




http://ww2.wizards.com/gatherer/CardDetails.aspx?&id=148


The biggest risk with this card is that you must never have more than one of them in play, or both of them will damage you every time you play a land after the first in a turn. However, the shear tempo-acceleration this card produces will be WELL worth the loss of life, especially as this combo continues.


Lifegift


http://ww2.wizards.com/gatherer/CardDetails.aspx?name=Lifegift
Keep in mind that this card will give you life EVERY time a land comes out, not just the times when Fastbond will damage you. More importantly, you'll gain life every time your opponent plays a land. Quite Devastating in multiplayer games. Put more than one of these in play, and you'll actually start gaining 2 (or however many) life every time a land comes into play. You'll start getting quite fat.

Horn of Greed


http://ww2.wizards.com/gatherer/CardDetails.aspx?name=Horn%20of%20Greed

Ok, so now we've got a complete "Mana Well," in that our deck can safely play every single land it draws, instantly replace it, and lose no life. So you win the mana game. Period. Now, these three cards would actually be devastating in ANY deck, even if these were the only green cards in the deck. Keep in mind that this card doesn't actually give you card-advantage on its own, since your opponent will gain the benefits as well. HOWEVER, when combined with the Fastbond, which only you benefit from, the result is that you can cycle through all your lands, while they can only cycle through one per turn. Put out two of these... and the card advantage gets quite insane. If that happens, you don't actually have to worry about decking yourself. The reason is because you can always choose to NOT play those lands, and because playing non-land cards doesn't make you draw. The real devastation and protection from decking yourself comes later though...

Seismic Assault


http://ww2.wizards.com/gatherer/CardDetails.aspx?name=Seismic%20Assault

So now when you draw up to a hand size of 20, you can discard all those extra lands, and kill an opponent. Now, in a two player game, you win once you have this combo out, perhaps. In multiplayer, you just make everyone suddenly hate you. This is the reason you don't need to worry about decking yourself, since if you've drawn 30 cards that turn, one of them is gauranteed to be this card, which you can play with all that excess mana, and then discard 15 land for a large quantity of damage.


Zuran Orb
[[Blogspot refused to upload this image for some reason, so you'll have to see it on the wizards site.]]
http://ww2.wizards.com/gatherer/CardDetails.aspx?name=Zuran%20Orb

At this point all those excess lands you played that you don't really need anymore can be sacrificed to gain additional life. Hurray. Now you're even more hideously life-swollen. Your opponents have no chance.



Crucible of worlds


http://ww2.wizards.com/gatherer/CardDetails.aspx?name=Crucible%20of%20Worlds

NOW YOU WIN. It seriously doesn't matter whether you discard those lands or play them and sacrifice them. You can instantly play them AGAIN, from your graveyard, to gain life all over again. HOWEVER, you have to be smart, in that once a land is out of your hand, you can never get it back in your hand to do damage, so your damage ability is a limited resource, unlike your life ability, which is truly infinite. Seriously, if you have this card with the Fastbond, Horn of Greed, and EITHER the Lifegift or the Zuran Orb, you truly have an infinite life combo right there, even if you have only one land in play. However, with the Seismic Assault, you get a large amount of damage as well. With that in mind, I would recommend Sacrificing them first, since that will be the only opportunity to do so, and then keep playing and sacrificing them for life.


So in this deck, nothing is ever lost, it's all recycled...





The Rest of the Deck...
This combo should win you the game. So the rest of the cards don't REALLY matter.
However, here are a few suggestions about what to do with the rest of the deck.


Library of Leng
This artifact allows you to skip your discard step, and gives you no maximum hand size, so you can have all 30 of those cards in your hand and not lose them.
However, the most important aspect of this card comes from the fact that it allows you to put cards on top of your library instead of discarding into your graveyard. So with Seismic Assault, Horn of Greed, Fastbond, Zuran Orb, and Crucible of Worlds, you can keep discarding lands to damage an opponent, and then sacrificing a different land (requires two), and then playing from your graveyard the land you just sacked, which makes you draw the one you just discarded to seismic assault. Repeat. You'll get infinite life, infinite damage, and you WILL NOT deck yourself, as long as you keep the order in your head properly.


Crumble or Shatter
These two spells destroy target artifact.
The reason you might want this is if you have two Horn of Greeds out and decide you want to get rid of all but one of them, so you don't draw two cards for each land you play.


Meloku the Clouded Mirror
This Legendary Blue creature allows you to pay one mana to return a land you control to your hand, which puts a 1/1 flying creature in play. Now... the awesomeness of this is that with the above combo, one land can give you and infinite force of 1/1 flying creatures, because it'll go to your hand, and come back into play untapped, so it can pay for its own returning again, which starts the cycle. The OTHER very important reason this is useful is because it allows you return lands to your hand so you can DISCARD them to Seismic Assault. Perfect. Be CAREFUL though... if you have a Horn of Greed out, every time you cycle that land like that you'll be drawing another card in addition to the land you just put in your hand. You'll have to kill ALL the Horns in order to do an infinite creature combo. Otherwise you'll deck yourself very quickly. The reason I chose this Moonfolk as opposed to the others is specifically because it's land-returning ability costs only 1 mana, which means that with the Fastbond + Lifegift combo it can cycle infinitely. The others all cost more mana than that, and thus have a limited run.

Feldon's Cane
This artifact allows you to shuffle your entire graveyard back into your library. It removes Feldon's Cane from the game, so there are a limited number of times you can do this, but seriously... Now even things in your graveyard can be recycled, and the possibility of decking yourself is almost NILL. This increases the amount of damage the deck can do through Seismic Assault considerably, since you can put all your lands in the graveyard, then shuffle them into your library, so you can draw them all and discard them again if you still have your Horns out... Now EVERYTHING is recycled.

The Big Weakness:
This deck has no way to defend itself against a control deck.
It's also helpless against mass Enchantment or Artifact removal cards like Shatterstorm or Tranquility or Aurashards. And, as always, the fact that my good friend Orphanned God has a green deck with lots of creatures that kill enchantments means that you can never play this deck against him.
Against creature-aggro decks, I think this deck would do very nicely, as you're acceleration rate should be far beyond their swarming ability. If you go the Meloku Clouded Mirror route, you'll actually end up out-creaturing them anyway, unless they've got a viscious Trample deck or a deck with cards like Pestilence that do damage to all creatures.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I use Seed the Land to get a creature per land cast, Words of Wilding that my just played land pays for to curb unnecessary or unwanted drawing from Horns. A saproling cluster or that enchantment that let's you cast centaur tokens for 2G 2Untyped could also be used. This also works well with Storm Cauldron as it returns lands tapped for mana to your hand, recycling it to use in that discard damage enchantment.


If you are really imaginative, you can also use that enchantment that turns forests into all land types and Stroke of Genius your enemy for infinite cards. The Blue mana cold also go towards protecting stuff through counter spells.