Standard: 2012-04-13
to be played at: Magic United, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Attendance: hasn't happened yet.
Final Score: hasn't happened yet.
Deck piloted by: Deckschrobber
Deck designed by: Herr Kapitän & Deckschrobber
After the Magic downtime and last week's disaster of the Burning Vengeance deck it is time again to play a potentially competitive deck again. One that might actually give me a shot at winning this month's FNM Promo Card, the fancy looking Dismember, the shiny precioussshgghh. The weapons of choice tonight shall be Human Soldier Spirits with an Intangible Virtue and proud carriers of Sorin's Emblem.The spirit / token deck as it stands now:
Feeling very inclined to play more copies of the Hero of Bladehold and Sorin, Lord of Innistrad in this deck. The Hero is such an aggressive card that posses a real threat to your opponent's health. And between the Honor of the Pure and the Intangible Virtue some of the tokens that the Hero spawned should be able to survive and then turn into mighty strong Soldiers with vigilance, how awesome is that? Pretty rocking awesome!
// Lands
4x Isolated Chapel
2x Ghost Quarter
2x Vault of the Archangel
10x Plains
5x Swamp
// Creatures
2x Hero of Bladehold
4x Doomed Traveler
// Spells
2x Shrine of Loyal Legions
4x Tragic Slip
2x Elspeth Tirel
1x Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
4x Honor of the Pure
4x Intangible Virtue
2x Oblivion Ring
1x Increasing Devotion
3x Timely Reinforcements
4x Lingering Souls
4x Midnight Haunting
// Sideboard
SB: 2x Elixir of Immortality
SB: 4x Mirran Crusader
SB: 1x Gideon Jura
SB: 3x Nihil Spellbomb
SB: 2x Divine Offering
SB: 3x Doom Blade
But for everything that goes into a deck an equal amount needs to go out again as well. Raising the number of Hero of Bladehold to 4 in favor of a Shrine of Loyal Legions and a Tragic Slip seems like a reasonable compromise. Gaining striking power over direct influence on your opponents board seems okay. The Shrine of Loyal Legions, while interesting, is a horrible late game top deck. If you want something that just finishes the game the Hero of Bladehold has a better chance of providing you with victory than a late game top deck of the Shrine. On top of that if our opponent has a Gideon in play that forces all creatures to attack him [Gideon] than the tokens generated by Hero of Bladehold offer a nice out as they are not spellbound to fulfill Gideon's masochistic desires.
To get a bit more Sorin action going on an extra copy of it would probably not be an excessive luxury. Thinking that the third copy of Timely Reinforcements can migrate to the sideboard to make room for Sorin, Lord of Innistrad. While it is a good card to get back into the game after a set back such as a Day of Judgement or Ratchet bomb I think I'd rather go on the offensive and either create Vampire Lifelink Tokens or make my already strong creatures beat down even harder upon my opponent's face.
The Sideboard could use a bit of a tweak as well. While I like Herr Kapitän's random tech in the form of Gideon Jura I am not convinced it is the end all or final solution. But as I don't have any real better plans for it so he can stay. Think I'd rather play Day of Judgement over Doom Blade. Sure, it cleans up my Token army as well but that is often quite easily reassembled and the Day of Judgement does take care of those pesky Hexproof creatures that the Doom Blade or the Tragic slip can't touch. Also feeling a lot for the Celestial Purge. Kills Curse of Death's Hold never to come back again. Kills Inferno Titans and Huntmaster of the Fells, among many other potential threats to our well being.
So currently my take on the sideboard looks like this:
Potential sideboard candidates are:
// Sideboard
SB: 2x Elixir of Immortality
SB: 1x Timely Reinforcements
SB: 1x Gideon Jura
SB: 2x Nihil Spellbomb
SB: 2x Revoke Existence
SB: 3x Day of Judgement
SB: 3x Celestial PurgeRevoke Existence over Divine Offering because it gives me access to enchantment removal making it a more versatile answer to questions asked by my opponent. Besides, lifegain is for pussies!
Elixer of Immortality is on the short list for cards to leave the deck. While very necessary against milling decks and useful against other aggro deck match-ups it doesn't do a whole lot of good in this deck other than refilling your library. The most important spells in our deck use the Flashback mechanic, exiling those cards when Flashbacked and thus not shuffling back with the Elixir of Immortality.
The potential for repetitive life gain is appealing but I think that between the Vault of the Archangel and the Timely Reinforcements enough life can be gained to stay in the game long enough to win, meow.
- Shrine of Loyal Legions, cause, well, it is fun getting a whole bunch of tokens.
- Stony Silence, shutting down artifacts such as equipping Swords or Batterskulls is a fun, fun thing that tends to screw quite fiercely with your opponent's plan.
- Surgical Extraction, always a good option though this deck might be lacking in the control department so that is why it didn't make the cut.
Making the final decklist look like this:
// Lands
4x Isolated Chapel
2x Ghost Quarter
3x Vault of the Archangel
10x Plains
4x Swamp
// Creatures
3x Hero of Bladehold
4x Doomed Traveler
// Spells
4x Tragic Slip
2x Elspeth Tirel
2x Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
4x Honor of the Pure
4x Intangible Virtue
2x Oblivion Ring
1x Increasing Devotion
2x Timely Reinforcements
4x Lingering Souls
4x Midnight Haunting
1x Gather the Townsfolk
// Sideboard
SB: 2x Elixir of Immortality
SB: 1x Timely Reinforcements
SB: 1x Gideon Jura
SB: 2x Nihil Spellbomb
SB: 2x Revoke Existence
SB: 3x Day of Judgement
SB: 3x Celestial Purge
SB: 1x Stony Silence
Final consideration, swapping out a Swamp for a Vault of the Archangel. the lifelink and deathtouch are very powerful keywords that make attacking your opponent even more unpleasant for them than it already is, easily turning it into a lose, lose situation for them. And from our perspective that is a very good thing indeed.
Not much else to do now but to sleeve things up and start looking forward to tonight.
